of a host of unexceptionable authorities to a point in dispute. To this bold allegation we say, in the second place, that it is absolutely false. We maintain that our Saviour did not pass over the subject of the Atonement in silence, and we appeal to such texts as Matt. xxvi. ver. 28; Mark xiv. 24; Matt. xx. 26; Mark x. 45; John iii. 14, 15. John x. 11; John xv. 13; John vi. 51; Luke xxiv. 25, 26, 45–47. He had no sooner made the necessary sacrifice for sin, than he explained the importance of it to his disciples, and taught them that every thing in the system which had constituted their religion, from the creation of man, and especially from the establishment of the Levitical priesthood by Moses down to that present moment, had a direct regard to his death upon the cross; and thus, by anticipation, the Great Author of our religion has himself answered the objections now brought against the expiatory nature of his death, and has taught us that there can be no remission of sin but in relation to his sacrifice; and that there never had been any forgiveness but in typical reference to that atonement which he had just made upon the cross.-Sect. III. c. 4. p. 274. The remarkable fact, that from the death of Christ, animal sacrifice ceased to be a part of the religion of Christians, is thus excellently commented upon by the pious vicar of Chobham: This fact is, I think, worthy of peculiar attention. A system of sacrifice had been continued without intermission, for four thousand years, from the creation of man down to the death of Christ, in every nation, tribe, and tongue of the whole family of man. Immediately on the crucifixion of the Messiah these sacrifices ceased, and in every church planted by the Apostles, they were superseded by a more spiritual worship, and by a faith which reposed on the meritorious death of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, instead of those animal victims, which had every where, till that time, been presented in behalf of offenders. How can this universally admitted fact be accounted for, but on the principles which are advocated in this Treatise? Does it not show, in the clearest manner, that sacrifice was originally of divine institution?-that, as it has been shown to be expiatory, and vicarious, so also it was symbolical of the death of Christ upon the cross?-and that, as soon as that sacrifice had been offered, the whole system was superseded, and a new order of things introduced, by which, through faith in the crucified Messiah, the penitent sinner obtains the free and full forgiveness of his sins? These things are established, then, both by the facts of the case, the concurrent voice of the whole Scriptures, and by the direct testimony, given on the specific question before us, of the very Author of our religion, our God and Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.-Sect. III. c. 4. p. 275. We would not be captious in our criticism; but we venture to express our surprise that the clauses in the above extract, in which we have printed in italics the important words, "faith" and "penitent," did not induce our respectable author to remodel the passage in the sixth page of his work, to which we have before referred. And, though we are persuaded that there is no real difference between ourselves and Mr. Jerram upon the point, we think there is some danger of teaching men to forget the indispensable conditions of faith and repentance to their salvation, when, without any notice of such conditions, it is broadly asserted that "the sacrifice of Christ is the only condition and consideration, on account of which God forgives sin." Perhaps the danger would be obviated by adding to the conclusion of the sentence, the qualifying words, "whenever it is repented of." The doctrine of salvation through the blood of the Cross was the great instrument of spreading the blessed Gospel throughout the world for, though the Jews were offended at it, and the Greeks thought it very "foolishness," it was "mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, and reducing the world to the obedience of faith. This result, let it be remembered, was the fruit of that doctrine which I have been attempting in this Treatise to establish; and its extraordinary effects are an evidence of its truth. God owned and blessed the labours of those who published it, to an extent far beyond the reach of merely human efforts; and he has thus made known to all succeeding ministers, by what means he will accomplish the purposes of his grace and mercy to a ruined world. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Sin is no trivial affair; it is the casting off of all allegiance to God, and joining against his kingdom in confederacy with the powers of darkness. This defection in duty,-this apostacy from God, -this revolt to Satan, must not be passed over as a matter of comparative unimportance. Repentance cannot repair the breach, nor atone for the transgression. The Son of God, the gift of the Father's pity and compassion to man, undertakes the desperate cause. He becomes the sinner's friend, dies "the just for the unjust," and redeems us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. He thus opens the way to reconciliation with God; and a commission is given to proclaim these glad tidings throughout the world. The Apostles convey the message; they dwell with rapture on the compassion of the Father and the love of the Son. They can neither think, speak, nor write of any other subject than the cross, and are "determined to know nothing save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." God seals the truth of this message by the gift of the Holy Ghost; the understandings of men are enlightened, their hearts renewed; they turn from idols to serve the living and true God, and the ends of the earth see his salvation. And all this was the fruit of the doctrine of forgiveness of sins by the atoning sacrifice of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Sect. III. c. 5. p. 285. We forbear to accompany our author through the two chapters of his fourth and concluding section, in which he strenuously maintains, and that too with no mean talent, that the doctrine of the Atonement is not inconsistent with the constituted order and fitness of things. He has wisely availed himself, in this part of his treatise, of the incomparable analogy of Bishop Butler, and demonstrated, that "there is nothing in the principles of nature, or in the divine government, which forbids the intervention of the Son of God to avert the penalty of sin from man, by suffering it himself." We entertain no doubt of the correctness of Mr. Jerram's argument, though some of his details might, we think, be justly questioned; nor are we greatly enamoured of comparisons, however ingenious, between divine and human government, as a basis upon which to erect the superstructure of our creed. "In what sense, or whether with truth in any sense, justice may be said to demand the punishment of offenders," (Paley, Moral Philosophy, B. VI. c. 9.) what is the proper end of human punishments, and what may be the full satisfaction of perfect justice, are curious questions, which the casuist may dissect, and the philosopher may analyse, but they are not necessarily connected with the establishment of Christian doctrines; and we want no arguments from analogy to prove that what God has revealed and done is consistent with infinite wisdom, immaculate justice, and incomprehensible benevolence! The redemption of man by the blood of the cross is avowedly revealed in the volume of inspiration. We THEREFORE believe it. To the captious objections of conceited Deists, who dare to arraign that stupendous mystery as contrary to the nature and fitness of things, we feel that it is a waste of time to frame a laboured reply. We would rather at once enter our solemn protest against the "fitness" of such false philosophy, and exclaim in emphatic words, "Let God be true, but every man a liar." ART. III.-The Boor. A Poem, addressed to the Church of Christ, and dedicated to his Grace the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, by the Rev. JOHN HILL, M. A. London: Rivingtons; and Lloyd and Son. 1829. pp. 88. THERE is a species of poetry which, if we are to believe a tolerably good judge of such matters, neither "Gods, nor men, nor columns" are able to bear. In direct contradiction to the axiom of the Stagyrite, that excellence consists in preserving a due medium between two extremes, "Immortal Verse" stands forth the opponent of his theory, or at best the exception which proves his rule. The reverend bard before us, Mr. John Hill, Master of Arts, appears to have been fully aware of this circumstance, and, whatever faults may be imputed to his poem, mediocrity is certainly not one of them. In the preliminary address to our excellent Primate, Mr. H. informs "his Lordship" that it is intended to be "descriptive of the education, life, and occupation of a sensible (?), humane, and pious Christian: to the philanthropist, to the theologian, and to the divine, it is indeed intended to discover a more recondite purpose." With this clue for our guide, let us attempt the labyrinth. The "four first lines of the first stanza" contain, as we are told in the Appendix, a figure of that state of religion against which Inspiration has raised the holy voice and denunciations of Prophecy, with whose admonitions every true disciple of Jesus ought faithfully and honestly to be made acquainted, and on whose eagle wing the Israel of God ought to rise above the storms that gather around them. The fifth, beside its literal and direct effect, is in like manner intended to confirm the pious reader in the belief that the Almighty never leaves himself without a witness in the human breast to testify against error, falsehood, and oppression.; 66 while the sixth and last line will be found to bear an allusion to the lofty and commanding elevation to which the eye of the Christian Church has been elevated." We subjoin the stanza in question. While, gloom-defying, o'er the vale rose crowned A shaggy mount, from darkness sheltering light, Through blackening clouds forestalling hastening night, In devious glee his latent bosom shone, &c. Now on perusing these lines, we honestly confess that we found ourselves much in the same situation with Mr. Puff's dull friend in the Critic, when unable to appreciate the comprehensiveness of Lord Burleigh's nod, and were tempted to exclaim with him, "Dear me! did the first stanza mean all that?" Almost despairing from this outset to unravel all the "didactic and allegorical texture of the work," we set ourselves in the first instance to decipher the narrative itself, leaving the concealed John-Bunyanisms for more mature consideration. The superficial story then, beneath which such a mass of abstruse matter lies hid from "the ordinary reader," is briefly this :A "Boor" (we are tempted to suspect here a trifling deviation from orthography in the reduplication of an o and the omission of a final e) is returning home in this very equivocal weather, and is saying to himself, or rather "Echo" is saying to him, that, "Man's real wants are but few;" when on a sudden, "distant thunder ends the slighted theme," and Through rending heaven fierce spirits rush to battle If this be not a sublime description of a storm, the deuce is in it. Here we have "succeeding," "tumbling," "dashing," "boiling," plunging," and "manuring,” all in six lines. The last two, indeed, are a little too "didactic and allegorical" for our entire comprehension, but they are not a whit the less magnificent. Amidst all this hurlyburly of thunder and lightning, the "Boor," in utter contempt of Dr. Franklin, gets under a tree, and "muses inwardly," how much snugger his wife and child are sitting by the fire in his "cot" at home. After a time, as it does not seem likely to hold up, his thoughts take a wider range, and ramble, in the course of the next 140 stanzas, over Hoe and dibble, pruning-knife and spade, 'Mid tools, and stuff of various use and kind, through a portion of the Book of Genesis, occasionally diverging to pictures of rural felicity, in which "living like dog and cat" does not, after all, appear in the unpleasant light depicted by the proverb. Her (the goat's) tinklings stilled, she joins the evening's sport, After six-and-forty pages, replete with imagery no less fanciful, exhibited in diction quite as felicitous, the rain leaves off, the "Boor" goes home, and finds his cottage has been the prey of the storm; it is in short completely blown down, his wife crushed in the ruins, and every thing animate and inanimate, except his son, reduced to a perfect wreck. What then his growing woe! When to the storm the crags dire trophies raise, Of page revered, cloak, thatch, his plants and hoe!" The unfortunate "Boor" is naturally enough exceedingly shocked at this sad loss of property, and, we are told, "sinks exhausted on a fallen rock," beneath a "circling cliff," which Looks o'er his roofless cot with savage mien, As blood-fed monsters on lost parents glare, Grim death, then, limb by limb their children tear. His Bible is torn to pieces by the fury of the elements; a single page alone remains, containing, as we are informed in a note, two chapters of the prophet Isaiah; this He reads while midnight on the leaf shines clear. His conscience "thrills;" why, we know not, as he has hitherto appeared a very meditative, harmless sort of personage: and seeing his “toil-relaxing seat" still standing beneath his "favoured tree," he goes to sit down upon it: As pines the eagle where his aërie hung, Embattled by the ocean's distant roar, But late by night's black tempest flung, With mate and offspring, on the boiling shore; And seated under this strange configuration of the heavens, the poem somewhat abruptly leaves "the Boor," as we shall do the poet, with the elegant compliment paid long since by the Roman bard to a brother versifier: Tale tuum carmen nobis, Divine Poeta, |