the eye of public law, no disloyal man, since the 22d of last September, holds property in a single slave. In the eye of the government policy, not a slave exists throughout the territory covered by the proclamation of the 1st of January. These

two it seems to us the easiest, the simplest, and surely the only just and honest way, to assume as fixed points which must govern all the relations held by the revolted section. towards the national authority. To a certain extent, the precise application of them will depend on circumstances. It is among the possibilities of things, that the rebellion may get head again, win back the ground it has lost, and fight out a separate recognition. It may, by possible supposition, be reinforced by new allies, among the politicians and the mob at home, in imperial counsels and jealous hostilities abroad. It is quite unnecessary to insist that emancipation becomes a fact only by virtue of actual conquest. Nay, it is possible to conceive of an offer of return to the Union made in such a way, by here and there a State, and so backed by general sympathy at the North, that the government shall be compelled to recognize it, yet without securing the absolute certainty that the policy of freedom will be carried out in good faith, in a community naturally hostile to terms imposed by conquest and subjugation. But what then? We hold that in the law of the United States, and in the declared policy of its government, every slave in such a State is free already; and that this legal recognition of freedom will be a power of immense force and value in securing the ultimate fact of freedom. The Fugitive Slave Law falls to the ground. The internal traffic in slaves becomes an enormity which the nation is every way pledged to overthrow.. The vast numbers of slaves already liberated by the war, and in actual service of the United States, or living under its express protection and guaranty, -it were an infamy not to be thought of that they should be surrendered back to bondage. A nation can survive disaster, defeat, conquest, almost annihilation itself, but could not survive the deep ignominy there would be in such an act. We are surprised that the language used by anybody should seem to have supposed it possible. And with this great population free under every sanction that can assure liberty to any citizen, with the great number

also trained to the arms and discipline of soldiers, by all testimony the most admirable preparation for citizenship, with the new dignity, honor, and respect won for the subject race by so many examples of heroism in the field and fidelity in service, the very attempt to keep up or restore slavery as it was would seem too wild and dangerous a thing even for the insanest schemes of reconstructionists. If there is one point of testimony more constantly echoed than another, on either side of the boundary line where our battles are fought, it is that slavery has received its death-blow from this rebellion. We cannot suppose our government weak enough to quit its advantage here, or criminal enough to retract its solemn faith.

Another point follows immediately from the preceding, — is, indeed, its natural set-off and counterpoise. It should soothe the pride, diminish the jealousy, and reconcile the temper of the conquered States, that the same act which declares their subjugation also adds to their political power and advantage. Of slaves only three fifths are counted in the apportionment of representation, but of freemen all. Emancipation, as always argued, will promote the prosperity of the State, by ceasing to sacrifice it to the interest of a class. It will also give it relative eminence and strength, since so many of its people are made citizens. Losing a hundred thousand slaves, it has added forty thousand to its standard of numbers, when reckoned by its ratio to the free and populous North. Doubtless this new distribution of power will have its jealousies and embarrassments. Doubtless it may bring its dangers too; since class power may be virtually retained, the workingclass virtually disfranchised, while the theory of freedom gives it the larger range. The more urgent the need that absolute loyalty should be secured first, that the nation should dictate its own terms of reconstruction, — that the policy of freedom and justice should be placed impregnably on its foundations, before the hazardous experiment is tried of rendering back the forfeited rights of sovereignty.

One point only remains, to justify this people in maintaining, through so vast a struggle, and in the face of political difficulties and problems so serious, the right to territorial unity. Why not, comes the question from across the water,

jealous in our victory, taunting in our defeat, why not abandon a contest so great and all but desperate? Why not accept disunion as a fact, and continue a free, great, and prosperous people, only with less enormous territory, and with a less divided and heterogeneous population? To this we answer, first, that the question is not fairly before us to answer, if we would. Whatever it may have been before the fatal 12th of April, 1861,-whatever it may be hereafter, when the combatants have laid down their arms and terms of peace are to be negotiated, that is not the stake at issue now. Neither have we taken up arms, or now retain them, in behalf of any abstract theory or scheme of philanthropy. That a principle of humanity as well as justice is involved, that the rights and liberties of an oppressed race of men are at stake, is part of our glory and joy in this contest. But the contest itself we wage on other grounds. We do not consider philanthropy a fit matter for the arbitrament of war. We do not consider battles and carnage a fit method of establishing policies of mercy, or extending the Divine kingdom upon earth. If we had, undertaken this war for the liberation of other men's slaves, we should have been condemned already, and justly punished by the disasters we have suffered. And, much as we value their sympathy, and respect their sincerity, we hardly find it in our hearts to thank those of our English friends who rest their justification of our cause only on the fact that emancipation is announced as the result and policy of the war. The nation has taken up arms, because a nation, to be free, must be ready to defend itself in whatever quarter and with whatever weapons it is assailed. It is for our liberties, rights, and peace, it is for the integrity, the honor, the existence of a nation which we belong to, and believe in, and are loyal to,—it is for these things, which we sincerely believed were put to imminent peril by the conspiracy of unscrupulous and traitorous men,-it is for these we fight, and invoke the blessing of Heaven upon our arms. And if we fight also for the rights and liberties of others,which on grounds of conscience only we should have defended by weapons of love and the army of truth alone, we believe it is because God has honored us, and called and chosen us, VOL. LXXV.—5TH S. VOL. XIII. NO. II. 24

that, in fighting for ourselves because we must, we could not do it without also fighting for the dearest and most sacred principles of universal humanity.

The future destiny of this great continent we do not profess to dictate or to predict. The one issue is great enough for the time. We will save the nation first; then we will discuss what the length and breadth of it shall be. For ourselves, we believe that this continent is so shaped and marked by great natural forces, that it both invites and requires intimate political union among its populations. We believe that our form of government-a strict union of sovereign States is at once so strong and flexible, so accurate in its machinery of details, and so fitted for indefinite expansion, that it is, as it were, expressly designed and foreordained for the governing of such a continent, as much, for example, as the town polity was for Greece or the empire of the seas for England. And difficult as the problems must needs be which we are forced to meet, when we would adapt our form of government to the emergencies of the time, we do not see that they are more difficult, or necessarily more fatal, than those of France or Italy; not half so formidable as those we should be sure to meet, if we let go this firm hold on our historic past, and essayed those of a divided sovereignty.

We rejoice with a good hope in that grand series of successes which have made the past summer memorable, and which seem to bring the end of the dreadful conflict near. We look, not without anxiety, but without apprehension or alarm, to the long working out, under faithful and able hands, of those principles of public policy which shall make our true conditions of peace. Now, more than ever, it seems clear that the way of peace is also the way of victory and honor. "The work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever."

ERRATUM.

In the note on p. 263 of this article, for "July "read" August."

ART. IX. REVIEW OF CURRENT LITERATURE.

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THEOLOGY.

THE noble volume of M. Renan * is the first instalment of his great work designed to trace the development of Christianity down to the age of Constantine. It could not fail to attract attention, both for the eminent scholarship and fame of the author, and for the clear, bold, and brilliant treatment which puts it beyond comparison with any other work of similar design. We learn, accordingly, that a war of pamphlets has already sprung up about it, and a theological crusade equal at least in virulence to that in England in re Colenso, of which we have already had so much to say.

We have nothing to do at present with the merits of the controversy, and shall reserve most of what we have to say upon the book itself for another number. Meanwhile, we offer only the briefest recognition of it, with a slight attempt to sketch the position which it occupies in the theologic and historic field.

The first thing which strikes the reader of this volume is its strictly historical method of dealing with its topic. That school—if school it be where there is so much independence of inquiry and result to which M. Renan belongs has produced no work to represent so well its own tendency, and at the same time so to interest, thoughtful minds outside itself., M. Réville's Études Critiques sur l'Evangile de St. Mathieu,t Les Evangiles of M. d'Eichthal, and M. Nicolas's late critical papers on the Gospels in La Germanique, are more close to its distinctive task of simple historical search into the sources and composition of the books of the New Testament. But they address, necessarily, a small audience. The present work employs higher powers than their careful and conscientious research. It brings to bear the faculty of imaginative insight, the rarest as it is the finest gift of the historian, — and the power of religious sentiment; and so passes beyond their audience, from the study and the school to the people. It is a striking sign of the times, and a good omen for free thought in France, that the exhaustion of a large first edition within these few months has made room and demand for the second. The only English work to which we can readily compare it, in its purely historic aim, is Mr. Hennell's "Inquiry concerning the Origin of Christianity." But it is far truer to that aim in this, that it is wholly free from that polemic tone, and that aptness to impute motives of conscious deception to the early disciples, which so damage Mr. Hennell's book, and make it, in many parts, less an historical "inquiry" than a controversial essay. Nothing of this is apparent in the Vie de Jésus. With the great wealth of learning which M. Renan brings to bear, and that singular facility.

* Histoire des Origines du Christianisme. Livre Première. Vie de Jésus. Par ERNEST RENAN. Paris: Michel Lévy Frères.

A translation of M. Renan's notice of this book appeared in the Christian Examiner for November, 1862.