operation, but recognize in scanty results a call to stronger efforts; that, failing a delegated ministry, we will go forth ourselves into the places of want and sin, and make aggression on them with a mercy that can wait no more; in this sense, let the mission pass for a temporary trial. But if it be meant that,

disappointed in our hopes, we are to give it all up and do nothing; that, having once set plainly before our face the beseeching looks of wounded and bleeding humanity stretched upon our path, we are to 'pass by on the other side,' thinking it enough to have come and seen where it was,'. then I must say that any work, undertaken in this spirit, has failed already. For my own part, I should say that were we even to make no visible progress, were we able to beat back the ills with which we contend by not one hair's breadth; nay, were they to be seen actually advancing on us, still no retreat, but only the more strenuous aggression, would be admissible. For what purpose can any Christian say that he is here in life, with his divine intimation of what ought to be, and his sorrowing perception of what is, if not to put forth a perpetual endeavor against the downward gravitation of his own and others' nature? And if in the conquest of evil God can engage himself eternally, is it not a small thing for us to yield up to the struggle our threescore years and ten? Whatever difficulties may baffle us, whatever defeat await us, it is our business to live with resistance in our will, and die with protest on our lips, and make our whole existence, not only in desire and prayer, but in resolve, in speech, in act, a remonstrance against whatever hurts and destroys in all the earth. Did we give heed to the councils of passiveness and despondency, our Christendom, faithless to the trust consigned to it by Heaven, must perish by the forces to which it has succumbed. For, between the Christian faith, teaching the Fatherhood of God and the immortality of men, between this and the degradation of large portions of the human family, there is an irreconcilable variance, an internecine war, to be interrupted by no parley, and mitigated by no quarter; and if faith gives up its aggression upon the evil, the evil must destroy the faith. If the world were all a slave-market or a gin-palace, what possible place could such a thing as the Christian religion find therein? Who, amid a carnival of sin, could believe in any deathless sanctity? or, through the steams of a besotted earth, discern the pure light of an overarching heaven? or, through the moans and dumb anguish of a race, send up a hymn of praise to the All-merciful? And are there not thousands already, so environed and shut in that their world is little else than this? In proportion as this number is permitted to increase, does Christianity lose its evidence, and become impossible. Sensualism and sin cannot VOL. XXXVI. 4TH S. VOL. I. NO. II.

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abide the clear angelic look of Christian faith; but if once that serene eye becomes confused and droops abashed, the foe starts up in demoniac triumph, and proclaims man to be a brute, and earth a grave." pp. 249-251.

In the preface Mr. Martineau announces his purpose to follow up this volume with another, on the Divine Ministry of Christ, and a third, on the Christianity of Paul. He also has in preparation another and still more important work, designed to give a distinct answer to the question, "What is Christianity?"

James Richardson, f.

ART. IV. - THE HEAVENS.

J. W.

It is midnight in October; midnight in the time of harvest-moon. No sound disturbs the profound stillness, save the half smothered chirp of the cricket, or the fall of the crackling leaf, sere with the autumn frosts. The trees cast out on the broad plains their long black shadows, and the very winds, which at night-fall were making sad music in their rustling foliage, now sleep. "Speech is silver, silence is golden," says the German. And how much grander is the silence of the heavens than the noise, and revelry and restlessness of this lower world.

We are fain to believe that in older times, as now, the heavens had much lofty, spiritual meaning for man. The terms, etherial, spiritual, lofty, and celestial, express in different tongues all that is pure and holy and noble and excellent in man's nature, as well as the character of the Deity himself; and we are persuaded, not from the mere examination of language, but now as with devout awe we contemplate the heavens above us, that something more than the lofty and sublime has been imaged forth by them in all times to the human mind. The air of heaven has ever been to man a sign and emblem of the invisible and the pure; the clear silent firmament of stars has ever been the expression of the calm, serene glory of Him who "is a spirit." Man has ever believed in a Power-a Spirit— unseen like the wind-known by its wondrous effects

"that bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth." Up in the pure infinite ether—in the heavens

was the throne, the seat of the Invisible; and thence came all powers, spirits, breaths, that moved upon earth and gave it life and action. Thither also must have ascended the lives and spirits that, leaving the bodies of the dying, were to be found no more on earth forever. They had gone to the invisible world of which the heavens are a constant type.

As the earth represents movement and activity, so the skies image forth to our mind repose-silence - eternity. The earth is beautiful with its waving woods, its fields of green enamelled with purple and gold, its lofty hills, its dancing streams, its ever sounding ocean; and the eye delights and expands the soul with the messages of love and truth it gathers thence. But the joy of earth is active, wild, stirring—an image of the life and ever-moving face of the earth. It is a joy that incites to action, to move, and to do, and to take part in the universal stir and motion of life. The earth is, indeed, the beautiful and finite, but the skies, the sublime and infinite, exciting in the beholder a calm and holy joy, that raises him from earth and exalts him to a communion with the High and Holy One, whom the mind of the devout man in every age has seen enthroned there.

Especially when day has set, and earth's bright reflection of sunlight has become gray and dim, and its glare and tumult passed away, when we are compelled to leave the labors of the day, does the heaven become beautiful and useful to us. We grow calm, serene, silent, like the vault above. Thus the twilight and the midnight hours are the Sabbath time of every day. Then, if ever, do we enjoy a Sabbath of the soul. They open to the weary traveller of life's daily journey "the comfortable inn" of spiritual refreshment and repose. For by night the heaven seems nearer to us than by day; then it bends down over us and speaks to our souls with a voiceless melody. Thus even the divine Jesus, and good men in all times, have retired to the desert-the solitary place far from the turmoil of man, and have spent the night in prayer - in spiritual communion with the Invisible: thus have they

departed in the day from the bustle of earth, and ascended the mountains to approach nearer the silence and the sublimity of the heavens.

Various simple nations have made the mountains, that lift up their heads to the heavens, the places of their worship; and the Indian points to the lofty summit as the altar and temple of his Manitou. So the Grecian placed his Gods in the etherial top of Mount Olympus. The heavens then, in the abstract, are the emblem of all that is pure, sublime, and infinite in the spiritual nature. As heaven arches above earth, so does this high and pure state of the soul rise above worldly passion and earthly interests. As the glorious vault above glows the brighter to our eye, when darkness shrouds the earth, so the heaven within becomes more clearly discernible, as the noxious vapours of earthly life disappear, as worldly cares and passions die within us, and earthly attractions fade away. As the sublimity of the firmament most strongly impresses itself upon our minds in the deepest silence of creation, so

"In secret silence of the mind,

Our God, and there our heaven, we find."

There is a grand principle of analogy throughout the universe, binding all things together and proving their intimate relationship. In all this variety is perceived the great unity. One beautiful thing suggests to the mind all other forms of beauty; and outward loveliness calls up the inward grace. So too the sense of God's love as manifested in the universe awakens the latent spirit of love in Thus the beauty of nature and the beauty of the soul ever suggest each other, and the love of the Divine cannot be parted from the love of the human.

us.

The heavenly state and the heavenly place the material and the abstract heaven are too apt to be confounded. We forget, when mingled with man and his present imperfections, that God is acting in and with this mysterious mankind, and regard him as existing only in the fields of azure purity above. We forget that he is everywhere, and that there is no point in the infinity of space to which his peculiar presence is confined. To us, indeed, he is most clearly manifested in the soul. The human spirit is his most glorious temple, and there is he more directly present

with us.

The more we know ourselves, and thus God and

his creations, the more we shall find that

"The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."

For the heaven of peace and purity and love within the soul knows no place nor time; it illumines the darkest abyss with its serene light; it chastens the brightest sunshine. It is everywhere; it is now; and it exists in the real and present salvation—in the sense of God's presence in the soul.

J. R.

Genge Héken bursts,

ART. V.- PRESCOTT'S HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF
MEXICO.*

THE scholar who will take the time and expend the research necessary to produce an important history, confers a benefit on his age and country, which it is the duty of criticism to measure with its best diligence. The subject of the present work, the Conquest of Mexico, including the personal history of the conqueror, so far as connected with or flowing from his great enterprise, possesses extraordinary attractions. The author expresses a fear, in his preface, that his plan, combining a philosophical discussion of the Mexican civilization with a history of the conquest, concluded by a biography of the hero, may seem incongruous. He will not be sorry to have us say, after a careful perusal of his three volumes, that we have not experienced the impression he was afraid of producing. He has succeeded in uniting the three departments of his work through the interest of his reader; and while doing so, he has had within the scope of his pen the three kinds of historical composition, which lord Bacon thus defines: "History, which may be called just and perfect history, is of three

*History of the Conquest of Mexico, with a Preliminary View of the Ancient Mexican Civilization, and the Life of the Conqueror, Hernando Cortés. By WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT, Author of the "History of Ferdinand and Isabella." 3 Volumes. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1843. Royal 8vo. pp. 488, 480, 524.