come worthless elsewhere. He is like a "knee” in ship-timber, good for only one thing in one place. He is wanting in a round, full, wellproportioned ability for the every-day work of a common Christian life. Such men are apt to feel that their specialty is central among the great moral labors and interests of the age, and that the pointing of their pin or the smoothing of the eye of their needle ranks with building the turret of a Monitor or the Vicksburg Canal. More piety would make fewer pets in the Church.

AN ANTIQUE.—The recent paper famine has brought out of their hiding-places some curiosities. Here is one, found between the leaves of a sermon of the year 1774, which, with several hundred more, has left its attic-seclusion for the paper-mills. We give it exact in everything but its almost microscopic fac-simile:

"Edward Manning With his Wyf & Children, Desiers Prayers for him being in a very week Languishin Condition & full of Pain, that God would Direct to & Bless meens for his Recoverry, However to fit & prepair him & al Concerned for his Holy plasure.

"Now Sir I Submit it to you Wheither to Reed or no, for I Continu to Ride out Every Day when the weather is good & I intend to Ride to Moro ye Weather be good & I Be Not Wors."

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THE "SUCCESSFUL MAN." His business was to accumulate property and keep it, and he succeeded. Or he coveted some public office or honor, and he succeeded. Life had no luxuries for him, and he had none for his family. Leisure hours, that are the most profitable when spent socially and joyfully by one's fireside, he never had. All his pecuniary transactions were the closest and the hardest, and he succeeded. He had but little mercy for a debtor, and no charity for a beggar, but he was a "successful man."

We often extemporize little rills of pity on the sides of our rustic and happy valleys, and they run by the widow's door, making her sing for joy. He never added to such streams. They could not drink from any spring in his rich pastures and meadows, but he was "a successful man," the neighbors said.

When there was sickness or sorrow at the next door, or in the poor cottage at the end of the lane, he could not afford a brief call, or the use of his carriage for an hour, or the helping hand of one of his workmen. The pressure of business made it impossible, for he was a "successful man.”

No public institution, as the library, the church, the monument, the public square, the benevolent society, gained aid from him. He paid

nothing to public interests but what the law compelled. He knew nothing of moral and social taxation, and contributions to public spirit. But he was a "successful man." He could not spare time from his pecuniary or political pursuits to take care of his children. He had no leisure to govern and educate and mould them for the true honors of existence. So they were left to servants and tutors and the streetschool; and so they grew up to be a reproach and grief to him and a bane to society. But he was a successful man." Nothing but business was done at his office, and eating and sleeping at his home; and between the two he was always hurried.

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When little Susan died the funeral was hastened into the next day, for the trade-sales he must attend at the opening; and he left lame Johnny to die with his mother because he had an engagement with the commissioners, for he was a man very punctual and successful in his business. And when he himself died he left a "handsome estate" and no friends, for he was a "successful man."

TEXTS AND TOPICS. The times are unfortunate for sensationpreachers. We have not of late had any great battles or railroad accidents or shipwrecks. There must be a dearth of material for those popular sermons that are heralded in the secular papers. If, for want of a recent, or quaint, or out-of-the-way topic some of those pulpit-orators should be compelled to preach the common Gospel, what would they do? How could they gather an audience and hold it spell-bound, and gain the notoriety of a square from the penny reporter by preaching on repentance or the love of God? And how could they advertise themselves as about to preach from their own pulpits on faith, or humility, or holiness? There would be nothing catching in such a notice.

In scanning the Saturday's dailies of late we have seen but few announcements of sermons for the coming Sabbath, on queer subjects or thrilling incidents of the times, and we have pitied those preachers who depend on a strange theme to fill the pews. For the benefit of such we suggest a theme, fresh, popular, and, so far as we know, unused in this region, viz.: "Virginia Mud." Text: "And they draw them heavily," Pharaoh's chariots, through the Red Sea.

ERRATUM. In the No. for January, p. 6, line 2, for "placed, i. e. substituted," read “offered, i. e. as the substituted victim.”

BOSTON REVIEW.

VOL. III.-MAY, 1863.-No. 15.

ARTICLE I.

ATONEMENT. - STEPS DOWNWARD.

Of error in regard to the Atonement it may be truly said, as of sin, "when it hath conceived it bringeth forth death." All sin, even the least, has in it active, germinal, fatal poison. So with mistake in relation to this central, vital doctrine of grace. By a slight change of the acorn in your hand you may easily destroy the mighty oak.

So by taking away what seems to be a very little of the Atonement the whole system may be corrupted. And, in these days of studied perversion of doctrines, and of the opening afresh the Imprecatory Psalms, if the apostle were here, he might be moved again to address the Church, "I marvel that ye are so soon (ovτw Taɣéws, so readily) removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ, unto another gospel; which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed."

In the January number we attempted to state clearly, and establish, the true Scriptural view of the Atonement; meeting also the common objections which are charged against it. We now undertake to mark some of the steps in the scale, or, rather, different scales, downward from it towards acknowledged infidelity.

Before proceeding directly to mark the several processes which contain the uniform, initiatory steps downward, some preliminary views should be given of them as a whole, by way of accounting for them, and of showing how natural and easy it is for man, as he is, to take them.

By the gravitation of apostate nature, it is easier to descend than to ascend; and, in either direction, great changes are rarely made at a bound. They are, especially at their beginnings, either by slight, often unconscious inclinations, or by easy steps, wrought by skilful engineers, or worn by the footsteps of preceding travellers. If any ask why steps should be taken down from so fundamental and divine a doctrine, we might answer by asking, why should steps be taken downward from the high ground of Inspiration? The same cause operates in both. They are the hinges which connect the human with the divine. While the connection is palpable and essential, there must of necessity be many things which belong to the infinite, and which man can neither reach up to, nor pry into. It is natural for the human reason to seek some theory which shall remove these difficulties.

Some attempt boldly to sweep away all that is supernatural, and of course what remains may be a simple system. But in it God is dethroned, and henceforth it is nothing above, nor better than, Platonism. Others are willing to allow the supernatural partially to remain, and seek to soften down the difficulties to meet the demands of human reason. In the case of Inspiration, the account of the creation is regarded in the light of an allegory; the book of Jonah is severely questioned; old manuscripts which omit certain passages of the gospels and epistles are hunted up; a corresponding theory must be invented, such as, that God has given us a revelation, but no special record of it; and man is left to his reason, his cravings, and experiences, to pick out of the Scriptures the divine revelation. This theory once admitted, of course all is easy and beautiful. Human reason has triumphed, but at the terrible sacrifice of cutting asunder earth and heaven, man and God, hope and Paradise!

When the same process of removing difficulties for the satisfaction of the human reason comes to be applied to doctrinal religion, it must always begin with the Atonement; for this is

the fundamental doctrine and the controlling centre of the gospel system, as it is also the hinge between the soul and its God in a religious point of view. For as the great battles of the world raged around Palestine for its possession, so have the great moral contests, for ages not yet finished, raged around the doctrine of the Cross for its rightful interpretation. The Atonement is ever the great moral prize for which Christian and Turk contend in oft-renewed and mortal combat. Let the Atonement be secured in its scriptural and experimental integrity, and the religious system cannot be essentially wrong. Let it be lost, and the religious system cannot be essentially right. It is to be expected, therefore, that the human reason will strive specially to level this great central doctrine down to its own low plain. Hence, removing the supernatural, the deep, the inscrutable, in doctrinal and experimental religion, can only be accomplished by taking successive steps downward from the mysterious and wonderful hill of Calvary.

Again, the case and naturalness with which steps may be taken downward from the Atonement, may be accounted for by the prevailing littleness and feebleness of faith. It requires clear and strong faith, and the deepest and truest Christian experience, to be able to stand on the top of Calvary and receive this great mystery of godliness in its spiritualizing and transforming power. It was the strength of Abraham's faith that enabled him to see Christ's day with gladness. All men have not this faith and experience. Unbelief is the besetting and blinding sin of the Christian. We ought not to be astonished, therefore, if many learned and good men are unable to receive this profound and divine remedy for sin in all the fulness of the Scripture representations, and in all the positiveness of the writings of the greatest and best men of the Church. We may expect to find many so-called improvements and re-statements, to be but steps downward from the divine plan of saving grace.

It should also be taken into the account that moral courage is not a natural grace, or an easy acquirement. In many persons it seems to be the hardest and last of all the attainments in Christian virtue. In the face of carnal misunderstanding and of learned scepticism, it is far easier to invent plausible com