very difficulty, or rather impossibility of such justification shows Paul's estimate of the law. He assumes that it is still in force as the measure of obligation, still in force to condemn every violation of its precepts. "By the law is the knowledge of sin." Grace, then, does not set the Christian free from obligation to obey the law perfectly, but simply from the necessity of depending upon such obedience for justification. Christian liberty is not freedom from law. The subject of grace is saved notwithstanding the law condemns him, and is filled with new impulses and new energies in the direction of obedience.

With such views of the law of God, and of the obligation, but at the same time the moral impotence of man, we can never say in the language placed at the head of this article- "Certainly we can be perfect because we are required to be." It does not follow that we can render obedience to God which shall be "finished, complete in all its parts," in which "no part is defective or wanting," because we are required to do so. We cannot, for a moment, admit the correctness of such reasoning, when reference is had to the law of God, and the voluntary fall and depravity of its subjects.

While writing the above we chanced to read a small Sabbath-School book from the same publisher as the question book under consideration, in which the question of ability was incidentally alluded to in language so just, that we are tempted to quote it.

"But if I do my best, I shall fall so short!"

"I know it," said Henry, gravely, "but feeling that you can never reach perfection here, should not prevent your aiming at it. God will complete his work in the hearts of his servants, not on earth, but in heaven. Then the copy, feebly commenced below, shall be made a likeness indeed! For what says the Word of God? We know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is!'"-Sowing and Reaping, p. 83.

Here is doctrinal teaching directly in the face of the question book. Here is the truth. And we cannot avoid the feeling that it is a great calamity to have this diversity of teaching in works designed for our Sabbath-Schools. One or the other of these statements must be false. There is criminality somewhere in allowing this discrepancy in the essential doctrines

of our faith, as discussed in question and library books. The evil is the greater, when, as in this case, the heresy is in the question book that is to come under the eye of teacher and pupils for study, and is concealed by sophistical reasonings, and Scripture quotations. Were teachers generally qualified to detect the sophistry, and correctly expound the Scriptures, the evil would be less, the needful corrective would be furnished. But this is not the case.

Besides, both teachers and pupils naturally feel bound to defer to the doctrinal statements of a text-book, when they have adopted it. It has been written and published by responsible religious men. It is recommended by the religious press, and the advertisements of publishing houses. It is circulated without protest, and introduced after examination, more or less critical, on the part of pastor, superintendent, and teachers. In such circumstances, not one teacher in a hundred will venture to say to his class—“This is erroneous," and then set himself to the task of refuting it. The evil cannot be estimated of mingling tares with the wheat in this covert manner, and putting the mixture into the hands of unskilful sowers of the Word. A harvest of heresies in coming generations, with the consequent corruptions, and divisions and controversies, and loss of souls will be the inevitable result.

Thousands of children in New England are, doubtless, at this moment, making the question book under consideration their guide to the knowledge of God's Word. Hundreds of teachers have been called, or will be called, to enforce the doctrines of this defective lesson, not ten of whom perhaps will be able to expose satisfactorily its errors. Many will pass over it in silence, esteeming it so plain, so thoroughly settled by the ipse dixit of the author as to need no remarks. Some will seize upon it with avidity, as favoring their crude Antinomian views, and make the argument of the author respecting ability, rather than the teaching of Christ respecting obligation the topic of discussion; while a few, more enlightened in their views of truth, will utter a feeble or manly protest.

The discrepancy in the teaching of the two books we have incidentally fallen upon, and which, for aught we know, may be a common feature of our Sabbath-School literature, (though

we trust this is not the case,) suggests the need of the most careful surveillance on the part of committees of publication, publishers, pastors, superintendents, and teachers. "What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord.”

We would most earnestly call the attention of the author and publisher of this valuable question book to the passage under review, in the hope that they may be induced so to alter this paragraph in future issues, that it may enforce the obligation of man, and lay it in all its length and breadth upon the conscience, and then leave the matter where the Saviour left it.

We would suggest to teachers to strike out the last clause of the final answer, in the existing edition.

"Ques. Are we required to be thus perfect?

"Ans. Certainly we are."

Stop at the semicolon. Throw away the remainder, the argument of the author respecting ability. It contains the germs of the worst Antinomianism that was ever preached, or rested in for salvation, to the exclusion of the grace and Spirit of God. Christ omitted it, so may you.

ARTICLE IV.

VICTOR HUGO'S LES MISERABLES.

Les Miserables: - Fantine; Cosette; Marius; Saint Denis; Jean Valjean. By VICTOR HUGO. New York: Carleton. 1862.

WITH the rest of the world we have read, as expeditiously as other duties would allow, the five parts of this chef d'œuvre of the veteran French poet and novelist. Drawn to it by the popular fame of its unusual power, we have finished its perusal under the growing attractions of its own masterly development. A dozen pages of notes in pencil beside us must aid in

giving such impression as we may of this very extended and remarkable production.

'Les Miserables' is an elaborate work of art. It sparkles and throbs with genius. It is full of high creative imagination. Diffuse in its general style, it gathers itself into occasional passages of condensed force like Erie rushing through the cut of Niagara. Its prolixity is seldom wearisome, for it is the unforced exuberance of the play of the liveliest of fancies, combined with a wealth of learning singularly curious and recondite. One is quite willing to stop in mid route of this engrossing story to let the author talk through whole chapters of the mysteries of the Parisian argot, the language of outlaws, “always in flight like the men who use it," and of the yet darker and deeper sewerage of that city. These long digressions can hardly be called irrelevant to the plot, and convey much valuable information. The writer gives us the statistics and thoughts of a statesman, as well as the scenes of a dramatist.

His descriptive power is admirable. He catches the salient points of his subject, and makes his picture with a few bold strokes, or with the most minute filling up, as the occasion demands. He is equally at home in the most contrary and dissonant surroundings; as, for example, in painting the tropical luxuriance and bewitching moonlights of the sequestered gardens of Le Rue Plumet, and the splendors of a June morning after a night of rain-"all the velvets, all the satins, all the enamels, all the golds, which spring from the earth in the form of flowers. . . irreproachable; irreproachable; "— or, in tracking that horrid underground tour of Valjean with his ghastly burden on his shoulders, which approaches to the horridly sublime of the Inferno. What can be finer than the running of the country into the great town" end of trees, beginning of houses, end of grass, beginning of pavement, end of furrows, beginning of shops, end of ruts, beginning of passions, end of the divine murmur, beginning of the human hubbub." This is something more than Teniers. The last tint reveals the poet-heart. His pencil touches delicately a young girl "in that undress of the morning hour. . charmingly becoming . . . which has the appearance of a cloud upon a star;" and it has a pallet full of color deep and intense enough to depict with terrific vividness

the hellish fury of a battle of the barricades, "the flush of the crater on the forehead of the people." If he wishes to give us the exact geography of the place where this fierce conflict was fought in the summer-days of 1832, the strokes of the letter N make it all as eyesight to the reader; just as the field of Waterloo will forever after this be seen through the lines and angles of the letter A. It is worth comparing this magnificent description of that contest, by the way, with Thackeray's feeble handling of the same engagement, in Vanity Fair, (it can hardly be called a handling of it at all, though never did a better opportunity present itself,) to note the superior genius of our author for grasping and grouping and giving life and movement to such a tempest of war as burst over that memorable spot. The terrors of "the sunken road of Ohain burn a furrow into one's memory which lasts like the vision of a seething volcano. Of course, there are conceits enough sprinkled along these pages to please the fancifulness of La Belle France: thus of the dismal porte-cochére of 'Petit Picpus'"The door smiled; the house prayed and wept;" a bold personification even of a convent of Spanish Bernardines. And how exquisitely Frenchy is this: "To breathe the air of Paris. preserves the soul." What more could be wanting to bring all the little hands of grisette-dom together in enthusiastic applause? If anything, surely these must finish the feu de joie : "Paris is the expression of the world"—" Paris is the ceiling of the human race"-" Paris is always showing its teeth; when it is not scolding, it is laughing."

This writer shows a yet greater skill in delineating human character. The opening portrait of the good old Bishop Bienvenu is a charming study, well limned and shaded, of a Romanist Oberlin in charge of much the same kind of a rude and even savage people. He overflows with love almost to a feminine softness; and yet his visit to the dying "Conventionist," and his tour among the mountains of robbers, display a passive courage which is more saintly than masculine. He is a great bundle of amenities very creditable to the heart and head of his creator. We admire his quiet, compassionate philosophy with a half doubt if it is not rather over mixed with mucilage. His practical kindliness runs into the widest im