Christ crucified and risen without us; he sanctifies as Christ crucified and risen within us; he glorifies in virtue of both as Christ enthroned in the fullness of consummate power, and at length 'subduing all things unto himself.' Feel this and know this, as it ought to be felt and known, and you may leave the rest to the schools. These are days of harsh disputings— days when men are very bitter to each other for the love of God. I know not how others feel, but it seems to me as if-could a man once thoroughly realize to himself the depth of this union with the infinite purity of Christ; could he once realize the heaven that is in him when Christ is there; could he gaze, not to question and criticise, but in humble adoring joy upon the face of the risen Jesus, and there but once behold his own 'acceptance in the beloved;' all difficulties were dissolved in that blessed vision, every doubt would be forgotten in the fullness of its glory! Fix soul and spirit steadily upon the oneness of the Son of God with the forgiven and adopted sons of men, and all the littleness of proud, restless disputation will disappear from the view, consumed in the blaze of that transcendent thought, 'He is made unto us righteousness, sanctification, redemption.' What need of more? For all the practical purposes of comfort and holiness, what need of more? . . . . Christ can not be ours and any grace be absent; this King can not enthrone himself in our spirit and not bring with him his whole retinue of blessings. Blessings maythey must-arise in succession to creatures that live in successive time; but the first instant that Christ is ours, the seed of every blessing is ours -a life of sanctification is hidden in that moment object of all true wisdom, as he is the source of VOL. XL-NO. III. also ap nay, a long perspective of glory is there— death is conquered, Satan chained, and heaven won; for he who accomplished all these things is made unto us righteousness and sanctification, and redemption.'"-Second Series, pp. With this our extract should break off; but we can not persuade ourselves to omit the eloquent peroration which immediately succeeds. It is highly characteristic of the style and genius of Professor Butler; and the reader will not fail to admire how beautifully Christian doctrine is blended with the language of faithful practical appeals-or rather, he will remark with pleasure how the clear assertion and pointed application of divine truth have more than the effect of florid and unchastened rhetoric: "All this is mysterious indeed; of course it is: who is he that will believe God made one with man, and have the union wrought without mystery? Children of the living God! ye walk in mystery. Your spiritual birth is a mystery, your fellowship with Christ is a mystery, your daily graces are a mystery, your triumph and 25 death is a mystery, your resurrection to glory | the language of Scripture, so pointed and will be but the consummation of mystery. appropriate; yet it is not a thing of shreds Mystery there must be wherever an infinite and patches; it has integrity as well as Creator and his finite creature embrace; and it is therefore your glory that you are thus robed and shrouded in mystery. Trust no one who would draw you forth from it: it is the awful shadow which eternity casts across time. Believe no one who would give you a religion without much and solemn mystery; and above all, when you think of God in Christ, of what he has done, and what he still does, and what he will do, be well assured that in all his dealings there must be much you can never expect to fathom; before which therefore you can but bow in prostrate humility of adoration; knowing-simply knowing-that all he will do he can do, such is his power; all he can rightly do he will, such is his love. Go forth, then, ye ransomed ones, and remember that you bear through the world this day the image and superscription of Christ Jesus; in whatever company of men you stand, forget not that his signature is upon you; and when men, thoughtless and ungodly, would win you from his service, tell them that there is one in heaven with whom you are one, that you live as members of his spiritual frame, incorporated into him, in and by him righteous, sanctified, redeemed; and being thus not your own, but Christ's, you are resolved, whatever the dreaming world may say, in him to live, that in him you may die-in him to die, that in him you may live forever." Pp. 15, 16. There is no doubt that such preaching must have been effective, and even popular; but we beg attention to the fact, that its effectiveness is of the most legitimate and practical description. Here are no prepared surprises, no foreign and elaborate ornaments, no feats of accumulated and incongruous imagery. The hearer is not bewildered by a tasteless combination of sacred and profane ideas, nor is the clear substance of Divine truth overwhelmed by a profusion of illustrations drawn from the most questionable sources. The preacher displays invention, reason, and passion; but his invention is carefully limited to the discovery of God's mind and will; his reason to tracing the connection of God's holy truth; and his passion to the earnest declaration of God's love and mercy. It is on the observance of two cardinal rules that his eloquence depends: he preserves throughout the attitude and style of direct persuasive speech, and he draws all the intellectual and moral elements of his address from the sacred text before him. Hence the fullness, unity, and force which characterize this Sermon. It is richly fraught with variety; and though admirably suited to its original use in the public service of the sanctuary, it may be read in the closet with the utmost pleasure and advantage, and with no suspicion that any essential feature of the truth has been sacrificed to popular effect. This latter is a severe but proper test of every pulpit exercise. Why should the most eloquent discourse shrink from the most deliberate scrutiny? If it is good to be remembered, why is it not fit to be perused? and it is surely as unworthy of the manhood as of the mission of a preacher, that he should allow himself to indulge in language intended only to excite a vague and temporary impres sion, and then to be utterly forgotten. The heart will not long profit by that in which the mind has no share. Of course it would be unjust to bring an extemporaneous sermon, or indeed any sermon, to a literary standard; but it is very right to demand that no audience assembled for religious edification shall be imposed upon by any language or sentiments whatever which will not bear the light of sober memory and of solitary reflection. We are reluctant to conclude without offering one example more of sacred eloquence from the book before us. Our readers may recollect the character and style of the famous chef-d'œuvre of Bossuet, pronounced on the occasion of the death of Queen Henrietta Maria, widow of Charles I. of England. Like all the funeral orations of the great French preachers, it is highly offensive to a pure religious mind because of its extravagant eulogy, and the absence of the genuine spirit of the Gospel; but, considered even in the most favorable point of view, as a lofty flight of sacred oratory, we should still give the preference to a Sermon of the late Professor Butler, included in the volume already quoted, and entitled, Lessons from a Monarch's Death. It was preached on the demise of King William IV.; and though it is only when regarded as a whole that its impressiveness is fully felt, yet the following extract will show something of the author's great success: our meditations of this time, if I confined your "But I would ill do justice to the subject of thoughts to the general subject of earthly and successive change. This, brethren, is no common change. The inheritor of the throne of a thou sand years has passed to his fathers. Death | ness of a tomb, the long array of mourning has been busy, reading once more his terrible watchers, (mourning in truth as well as showlesson to living men; proving, in a new instance for our monarch was loved by his people!) the of power, that he is indeed 'the last enemy that sadness that hangs like a cloud over that mashall be destroyed,' and that no control (how-jestic pile, itself a monument of buried ages; ever widely recognized on earth) shall interfere the dreary bustle of preparation for the final with his supremacy, save his who, through solemnities of a regal interment- these are death, destroyed him that had the power of things that would move, if any thing could move. death. Alas! brethren, what availeth it that And if I dare unfold the page of a deeper sorrow placed at the summit of the first social system if I presume to point your eyes to the veneon earth, our departed monarch saw no recog-rated form of that imperial widow-the woman nized dignity intervene between himself and the of many virtues, whom her subjects know but beings of a higher world? What availed it, to love-if I point to that form bent by a sorrow that he stood (by the constitution of his only the more affecting because struggling to country) the source of all the innumerable be repressed in the midst of that scene of crowdstreams of honor and distinction that separate, ed and stately woe-it is not that I would idly and, like other streams, while they separate, intrude upon griefs too sacred for public utterreally unite, the divisions of society, in this ance, but because I would beseech you, in prayer, vast and complicated empire? These things to ask of the Comforter of mourners to be with vanish as a morning dream, when, from the her in her affliction. But, God be praised! we sacred throne, where sits the Governor of all have reason to know that she is no stranger to the world, is heard the sentence of the text, that path of consolation."-Pp. 110-112. Remove the diadem, and take off the crown!' Of all the tributes that his subjects paid him, he takes with him from the world but one-you pay it, brethren, in this temple! Yes! he, for whom your prayers so often have risen to the throne of heaven-he, for whose temporal and eternal welfare each Sabbath day ten thousand ministers offered the incense of their supplication he is no more the subject of prayer; let us trust in God that he is gone to receive its fruits!.... Sabbath after Sabbath, brethren, we preach to you of death and eternity! It is the great, the perpetual, burthen of our discourse. We can not help its monotony. The sin that brought death into the world is in fault for that! When men are holy enough to hail the death that opens the pathway to eternity, we will cease the strain-but not till then And, with all our repetitions and variations of the one tremendous theme, how seldom we can enforce it upon men's hearts! how seldom we can fix a thought that will pass the doors of our churches! But here, brethren, you have circumstances themselves and history preaching to you! These terrible orators deal not in figures of rhetoric or artificial declamation. The stern reasoning of events is all they bring. Where we argue to the understanding, they address the eyes and the heart! And would to heaven, that at this hour (how much better than a world of sermons!) it were given to us to cast an eye upon the scene that now encompasses the perishing remnants of departed royalty! The dignity of the sovereign still invests the lifeless form: is is fitting that the useful distinctions of time should follow to the tomb: if they deeepen the impressions of authority during life, they become still more touching instructors in death. Man, by a most just and noble instinct of respect, venerates the body for the soul and honors the temple, though the god has fled. But there, night after night, and during days whose gloom is more melancholy than night, the stately vigils of a king are held! The magnificent chamber, darkened to the like We must leave this passage incomplete, for the paragraph next succeeding is necessary to its due effect; but even in this fragmentary form, we believe the reader will find in it indications of peculiar merit. It is not, indeed, as we conceive, of the best or truest kind of religious eloquence, nor so pure a specimen as might have been adduced from other discourses of our author; but we quote it chiefly to show, that in that department of sacred oratory which the world most highly lauds, and which critics scarcely venture to arraign, the evangelical preacher has a place and an advantage of his own. Certainly there is nothing to detract from the effect of this Sermon in the same way as the theatrical and puerile absurdities of Bossuet which deform and injure his great masterpiece. Of the theology of these Sermons we have not yet spoken; nor shall we at present do so, except in the most general way. In the main, it is such as we heartily concur with, evincing the fullest confidence in the plain declarations of Scripture, attempting no refinements, and accepting no "rational" compromises. The docrine of The Trinity, and the lessons of The Ascension, are severally treated in an original but faithful manner, and The Word of God is the subject of a beautiful, profound, and eloquent discourse. The volume closes, solemnly but worthily, with a Sermon on the doctrine of Eternal Punishment. The argument is nobly sustained on the affirmative and scriptural side; and, except in one point-where the preacher seems to assert the increasing sinner's guilt, and left him to fulfill its guilt of the damned to be one reason of penalty-we do not anywhere know a their hopeless and eternal punishment, more weighty and convincing answer to without reflecting that the end of proba- the lawless speculations of the age on this tion has determined the measure of the momentous theme. HUMBOLDT AT HOME. [HAVING recently embellished the ECLECTIC with a portrait of this illustrious man and renowned traveller, (vide August No., 1856,) it seems fitting here to record the following sketch of an interview with him at Berlin, November 25, 1856, by Bayard Taylor, the very intelligent correspondent of the New-York Tribune, who seems inclined to become a second Humboldt, or universal traveller.-EDITOR.] ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT is the would willingly receive me, and appointed world's greatest living man. At present, 1 o'clock to-day for the visit. I was puncwith his great age and his universal tual to the minute, and reached his rerenown, regarded as a throned monarch sidence, in the Oranienburger-strasse, as in the world of science, his friends the clock struck. have been obliged, perforce, to protect him from the exhaustive homage of his thousands of subjects, and, for his own sake, to make difficult the ways of access to him. The friend and familiar companion of the King, he may be said, equally, to hold his own court, with the privilege, however, of at any time breaking through the formalities which only self-defence has rendered necessary. Some of my works, I knew, had found their way into his hands: I was at the beginning of a journey which would probably lead me through regions which his feet had traversed and his genius illustrated, and it was not merely a natural curiosity which attracted me toward him. I followed the advice of some German friends, and made use of no mediatory influence, but simply dispatched a note to him, stating my name and object, and asking for an interview. Three days afterward I received through the city post a reply in his own hand, standing that, although he was suffering from a cold which had followed his removal from Potsdam to the capital, he A stout, square-faced man of about fifty, whom I at once recognized as Seifert, opened the door for me. "Are you Herr Taylor ?" he asked; and added, on receiving my reply: "His Excellency is ready to receive you." He ushered me into a room filled with stuffed birds and other objects of natural history; then into a large library, which apparently contained the gifts of authors, artists, and men of science. I walked between two long tables heaped with sumptuous folios, to the further door, which opened into the study. Those who have seen the admirable colored lithograph of Hildebrand's picture know precisely how the room looks. There was the plain-table, the writing-desk covered with letters and manuscripts, the little green sofa, and the same maps and pictures on the drabcolored walls. Seifert went to an inner door, announced my name, and Humboldt immediately appeared. He came up to me with a heartiness and cordiality which made me feel that I was in the presence of a friend, gave me his hand, and inquired whether we should converse in English or German. | now and then pointing to a picture or "Your letter," said he, "was that of a opening a book to illustrate some remark. German, and you must certainly speak the He began by referring to my Winter language familiarly; but I am also in the journey into Lapland. Why do you constant habit of using English," As I looked at the majestic old man, the line of Tennyson, describing Wellington, came into my mind: "O good gray head! which all men know." The first impression made by Humboldt's face is that of a broad and genial humanity. His massive brow, heavy with the gathered wisdom of nearly a century, bends forward and overhangs his breast, like a ripe ear of corn, but as you look below it, a pair of clear blue eyes, almost as bright and steady as a child's, meet your own. In those eyes you read that trust in man, that immortal youth of the heart, which make the snows of eighty-seven Winters lie so lightly upon his head. You trust him utterly at the first glance, and you feel that he will trust you, if you are worthy of it. I had approached him with a natural feeling of reverence, but in five minutes I found that I loved him, and could talk with him as freely as with a friend of my own age. His nose, mouth and chin have the heavy Teutonic character, whose genuine type always expresses an honest simplicity and directness. 66 choose the Winter?" he asked. "Your I spoke of my projected visit to Russia, and my desire to traverse the RussianTartar provinces of Central Asia. The Kirghiz steppes, he said, were very monotonous; fifty miles gave you the picture of a thousand; but the people were exceedingly interesting. If I desired to go there, I would have no difficulty in passing through them to the Chinese frontier; but the southern provinces of Siberia, he thought, would best repay me. The scenery among the Altai Mountains was very grand. From his window in one of the Siberian towns he had counted eleven peaks covered with eternal snow. The Kirghizes, he added, were among the few races whose habits had remained unchanged for thousands of years, and they had the remarkable peculiarity of combining a monastic with a nomadic life. They were partly Buddhist and partly Mussulman, and their monkish sects followed the dif ferent clans in their wanderings, carrying on their devotions in the encampments, inside of a sacred circle marked out by spears. 'He had seen their ceremonies, and was struck with their resemblance to those of the Catholic Church. I was most surprised by the youthful character of his face. I knew that he had been frequently indisposed during the present year, and had been told that he was beginning to show the marks of his extreme age; but I should not have suspected him of being over seventy-five. His wrinkles are few and small, and his skin has a smoothness and delicacy rarely seen in old men. His hair, although snow-white, is still abundant, his step slow but firm, and his manner active almost to restlessness. He sleeps but four hours out of the twenty-four, reads and replies to his daily rain of letters, and suffers no single occurrence of the least interest in any part of the world to escape his attention. I could not perceive that his memory, the first mental faculty to show decay, is at all impaired. He talks rapidly, with the greatest apparent ease, never hesitating for a word, whether in English or German, and, in fact, seemed to be unconscious which language he was using, as he changed five or six times in the conversation. He did not remain in his chair more Humboldt's recollections of the Altai than ten minutes at a time, frequently Mountains naturally led him to speak of getting up and walking about the room, the Andes. "You have travelled in Mex. |