dividual, nor of a whole course of life. The singular, angel, is a collective noun; for one angel could not be said to encamp round about any thing. They that fear the Lord are all the pious in general; and the time or occasion referred to, is the season of danger and distress. The meaning of the text, divested of its poetic form, is simply this, that God employs the ministry of angels to deliver his people from affliction and danger. The text in Matthew says, that the infant children of believers; or, if you please, the least among the disciples of Christ; whom the ministers of the church might be inclined to neglect on account of their supposed insignificance, are in such estimation in heaven, that the angels who stand before God do not esteem it below their dignity to minister to them; it does not mean that one of those angels is assigned to each of these little ones; for in that case, if the number of those angels be seven, only seven such infants could be provided for. The idea of a guardian angel, or of two contending angels, striving for the control of an individual, is not derived from the Scriptures, but from the fancies of the Jews; or, rather, from those of Gentiles and it is one among the many proofs of the incompetency of the fathers, even of the earliest among them, to serve as guides in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. The superstitions of the age, and the philosophy of the Grecian schools, held too strong a hold of their minds, to be sufficiently kept from mixing with the instructions of the sacred text, and polluting its purer streams even where they issued from their fountain.

The world of spirits is not, as many think, at a great distance from us, in other regions of the universe: it is wherever the material world is; we are in the midst of it. We are separated from it only by the gross matter with which we are now united; and when we shall be divested of these bodies, we shall be in another world, without being in another place. We shall then perceive objects of which we can now have no perception, because our senses are not adapted to them. The material world also will be to us a wholly different thing from what it is; inasmuch as its impressions will be made upon wholly different organs. It may be presumed, there will then be no such ideas of extension, of solidity, of space, etc., as we now have; nor shall we receive either pleasure or pain from the same objects which produce them now. In a word, we shall be as the angels of God, and the world will be to us what it

now is to them. The world of spirits, therefore, is not another place, but another state of being. We are now in the presence of God, and of Christ, and of angels; and we shall see them as soon as we shall have passed through our coming change. Of this truth Jesus gave intimations to his disciples, when he appeared to them, and disappeared, without locomotion, and knew what they had spoken in his absence; when he told them, "Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them;" and when he said, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world." What the Scripture says about a heaven above us, and a sheol or hades below us, is accommodated to our capacity and previous conceptions. When Jesus ascended into heaven, he did not quit our world; but he withdrew from our state of being into another, and adapted the manner of his withdrawing to the conceptions and the mode of thinking of the mass of mankind. Christ is with us still; his angels are near us; we are in the immediate presence of God. If we sin, we cannot be hid; if we do well, we are seen in so doing; if we are in distress, or in danger, our situation is observed, and our help is nigh at hand. In the church on earth we "are come to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first born, which are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling which speaketh better things than that of Abel," Heb. 12: 2224. "Wherefore, seeing we are compassed about by such witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith; who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God," Heb. 12: 1, 2. The Father's house is the great universe our world is but one of its mansions: there are others besides this one; and all of them are inhabited by the innumerable family of Jehovah, the common Father of all.

ARTICLE VI.

REVIEW OF MISS MARTINEAU'S WORKS.

Society in America, by Harriet Martineau, author of " Illustrations of Political Economy." In two volumes. New York and London, 1837.

Retrospect of Western Travel, by Harriet Martineau, author of "Society in America," " Illustrations of Political Economy," etc. In two volumes. London and New York, 1838.

see.

SOME of our readers may wonder why we have not sooner noticed this lady, who has made herself so conspicuous of late years both in Great Britain and in this country; and some may wonder why we notice her at all. To this latter portion of readers, we would say, by way of apology, that after going over the 815 pages of her "Society," we had come to the conclusion of leaving her work to the praises and the censures of those more immediately concerned. But she has since put forth these other two volumes about America. And as this last work was not premeditated by her, (as she tells us,) nor expected by any body, neither we nor she can tell how many more we may yet We have therefore thought it proper to be at the trouble of giving such of our readers as have not perused the books, some brief notice of their character, and more especially of their moral and religious character. This is what more directly concerns the mass of our readers, and what is the most likely to exert either a good or a pernicious influence in our land. Some recent transactions, too, in respect to the assertion of " female rights," seem to render a brief notice of the present champion of these rights, both appropriate and timely. We say the present champion, because Fanny Wright, like some others, when becoming entangled in the bonds of wedlock, has ceased to lead the van in this enterprise.

Miss Martineau has been called a Scotch lady, though she occasionally speaks of herself, in company with others, as "we English." And saving here and there a word of bad English that she uses, and some severe censures on the fastidiousness and insolence of English travellers in this country, (for which we cannot blame her,) we have noticed nothing in these works

to lead us to suspect her more northern birth. After acquiring considerable celebrity as a writer of tales on political economy, etc. she came to this country, a strong republican, and with the expectation of seeing much to admire in this more free and natural state of society. And her readiness to admire and praise, is generally very conspicuous. Sometimes, indeed, she is delighted with what last of all we should expect a delicate and tasteful female to admire. For instance, she is frequent in her praises of the log cabins in the West, as being not only comfortable but very "neat." She praises also continually our tavern-keepers, stage-coach drivers, waggon drivers, etc. especially when they exhibit their manly independence and give free scope to their mother wit-though perhaps at her own expense. In all such matters, she rejoices in showing herself a perfect contrast to her more fastidious brethren who have come over the water to see us. If the coach breaks down, or the waggon founders in the mud, it is rather an amusement than a vexation. If the driver is stern, or a waiter is insolent, she knows how to put them in good humor. In all such things, we greatly admire her good nature, and readily commend her example to all travellers. In higher matters, too, she is often ready with her ample commendation, though it seems sometimes more of a studied and formal commendation, and not to spring quite so unbidden from the heart. We have therefore no complaint to make of her bad disposition towards us, though possibly some of her English friends may censure her for occasionally praising us through malice towards them. Her prepossessions seem all in our favor; and where she abuses us, as she does abuse us most sadly in some respects, it is generally for things in which we resemble, if not the whole christian world, at least the British nation. The only exceptions which now occur to our recollection, are those rather numerous passages in which she decries us as destitute of all knowledge of philosophy, (by which she means one knows not what,) and those other passages in which she represents our climate as most deleterious to health, and our slavery as the worst of all things.

Nor did she dispense her praises and her censures without being at pains to learn something of the facts in question. In this respect, she stands again as a signal contrast to many who have just seen our shores, and then returned to report of us wonders equally astonishing to the people on both sides of the Atlantic. Sometimes, indeed, she tells a very strange story.

For instance, that while travelling near Saratoga Springs, "a large white snake made a prodigious spring from the grass at the driver, who jumped down and stoned it." But strange stories, as to matters of fact, are not frequent in her pages. And as to her diligence in seeing this new world, and hearing what she could, (for she is too deaf to hear without an eartrumpet,) we presume she has rarely been surpassed by any masculine wanderer. She traversed nearly our whole country, and in almost every direction, and by every species of conveyance, from the steam-boat to the rudest waggon. In the course of the two years she was here, she visited most of the States and most of the important places and curiosities; now sailing on our rivers; now, crossing our mountains; now, off on our western lakes; now, in our halls of justice or of legislation; and now, among the Indian tribes. She consorted with all kinds of people, and seemed well pleased and at home every where-except among orthodox Christians. Of these, she seems to have seen but few, and to have learned but little. And of the few whom she did see, or deigns to notice, she generally shows her sovereign contempt or her bitter hatred. Dr. Beecher she hates the worst of all; at whose house she very drily tells us she was entertained; and whom, in another place, she would most absurdly represent as the incendiary who caused the burning of the Charlestown convent, because he happened to preach against the Roman Catholics the Sabbath before it was burnt-which preaching probably not one of the incendiary mob attended or ever heard of. The catholics she honors and defends, not so much because she loves them, as because she hates those who most oppose their superstitions. The exceptions to her general enmity to the orthodox, seem chiefly confined to a few individuals who displayed the sovereign merit, with her, a zeal for anti-slavery movements. So far as religion is concerned, Unitarians were her chosen companions; and she often reiterates the declaration, "I am a Unitarian." Still it was not religion in any form, nor religious people of any stamp, that most engaged her attention. Civil and political matters and political men were her delight. Full of zeal for acquiring knowledge of men and things like these, and quite as zealous on her darling topics of anti-slavery, female rights, and a freedom from all religious, and many moral restraints, she traversed the length and breadth of our land, putting herself on a level with the highest, and not scrupling to