Critical Notices. [April, 16.-Raphael. By ALPHONSO DE LAMARTINE. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1849. LAMARTINE is certainly a writer of great beauty and power, whether his subject be history or romance. poetry of thought, the beauties of style and imagery, and the extravagance of This work is a fictitious narrative, full of the over-wrought and transcendental sentimentalism. The drift of it is to illustrate the power and workings of that mysterious element in man which we call sympathy, in the affairs of love and conjugal life; showing that the love which is based on the beauties and accomplishments of person, on matrimonial bonds, or rank, station, and wealth, cannot secure the bliss for which the lover sighs in his inner soul; that heart must meet heart in the contact, the outgoing and the communion of a pure spiritual sympathy, or man must pine in loneliness and die with secret grief. There is a profound truth at the bottom of all this; and our regret is that the distinguished author has so marred the description by the most extravagant romantic ravings and superlative nonsense, that all sober-minded matter-of-fact persons will only read to laugh, and sentimental ones to run mad. 17.-The North British Review. November 1848 and February 1849. THIS Quarterly represents the Free Church of Scotland party in English literature, politics and religious matters, and is conducted with great ability. It comes nearer to our own standard of thinking and feeling than any one of the other great Quarterlies which give expression and direction to the English mind; indeed no well-informed American ought to be without it. These last two numbers contain several articles of peculiar interest and great excellence. We have only space to specify those relating to the Authorship of the Letters of Junius; the Final Memoirs of Charles Lamb; the Memoirs and Correspondence of Viscount Castlereagh; Baptist Noel's Church and State; Macaulay's History of England; and the Duke of Argyle's Essay on the Ecclesiastical History of Scotland since the Reformation. The Review of Baptist Noel's powerful work, though kind in spirit and favorable in general, takes decided exceptions to some of his principles and reasoning, as unsound, and pushed to extremes; as having a decided tendency to radicalism in ecclesiastical matters. book a more moderate scheme of reform projected, which might have reconciled "We had hoped to find in Mr. Noel's the extremes; but we are compelled to say, that we despair of him as a leader in any great movement of reformation, when we see him thus merging himself in the confused ranks of existing dissent-descending into the arena, singlehanded, as the champion not of a Church but of a chapel-and pleading with all the ardor of a neophyte for a system of disunion and disorganization, the utter impotence of which, for any combined action, even its veteran supporters were beginning to deplore." "North British" have influenced its judgment we know not: it anticipates How far the decided Presbyterian feelings of the however, far humbler and less beneficial results from this already renowed Essay than are confidently predicted on this side of the Atlantic. The article on Macaulay's History is one of the ablest and grandest things we have read in many a day; and it is doubtful whether many of the thousand and one reviews which it has called or will call forth, will attain to its high standard of merit. While the reviewer is not blind to the faults of the great historian, to his church partialities, and his injustice to Puritan character and history, he still does him noble justice, and profoundly appreciates the incomparable merits of this great work. and valuable than the critique in the British Quarterly already referred to. We think it vastly more truthful and just CONTENTS OF NO. III., VOL. V.-THIRD SERIES. ARTICLE I THOUGHTS ON THE ATONEMENT, WITH REMARKS ON THE PAGE 381 By Rev. HENRY NEILL, Lenox, Mass. II. CLASSICAL STUDY, 314 By Prof. J. J. OWEN, New York. III. THE SANDWICH OR HAWAIIAN ISLANDS; THEIR HISTORY 431 VI. CHRISTIANITY SET FORTH ACCORDING TO ITS TRUE ESSENCE, 486 X. A HOMILY ON THE GREATNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES, 551 XI. LITERARY AND CRITICAL NOTICES OF Books, 559 1. Turnbull's Theophany and Supplement. 2. Dr. Mason's Complete Works. 3. Vinet's Gospel Studies. 4. Cumming's Bible Evidence for the People. THE BIBLICAL REPOSITORY AND CLASSICAL REVIEW. THIRD SERIES, NO. XVIX.-WHOLE NUMBER, LXXV. ARTICLE I. THOUGHTS ON THE ATONEMENT, WITH REMARKS ON THE VIEWS OF S. T. COLERIDGE. By REV. HENRY NEILL, Lenox, Mass. MUCH has been written respecting Mr. Coleridge both as a metaphysician and a poet. In these respects men are fast doing him justice. Of his Theological views, however, much remains to be said. On no one subject was he more anxious to make himself understood, and to give satisfaction to an enquiring mind, than on the subject of Redemption, or the work that Christ does for a fallen soul. It is in the "Aids to Reflection," pp. 187-202 of Dr. Marsh's edition that Mr. C. expresses himself most fully on this great theme. His view was wholly a subjective one. He believed that Christ effected the redemption of men only as He imparted His own spiritual life to their believing souls. The texts which he quotes and dwells upon are such as these; "I am the resurrection and the life." "The Way, the Truth, and the Life." "The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." "The last Adam was made a quickening spirit." John 6: 24-26, was also a favorite passage with him; especially that place in which the Redeemer, after having said "I am the bread of life;" "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me and I in him," perceiving that the disciples murmured and thought it "a hard saying," explained himself by adding, "Doth this offend you? It is the spirit that quickeneth the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. If Mr. C. regarded the Atonement as bearing any relation to THIRD SERIES, VOL. V., NO. 3 1 the government of God, he has not expressed it. The views which he had been accustomed to hear and read, of the connections of Christ's sufferings with the Justice of God, were such as he could not receive. Having been taught to regard the scene on Calvary, in the light, either of a literal "propitiation" to vindictive Justice, or as a "ransom" to satisfy the claims of an exacting creditor, when he came to apply these words as thus explained to the death of the Redeemer, his moral nature recoiled from the idea thus conveyed of the ground of its necessity. He felt it to be derogatory to God to regard the love and obedience of his creatures as a debt which could be paid by another; or the personal feelings of Jehovah such as could be relieved by a propitiatory sacrifice. Thus indisposed to regard the words "ransom, propitiation, &c.," as definitive of the nature, ground, theory, or mode of the atonement, Mr. C. does not appear to have obtained any view of Christ's work in its outward relations which was satisfactory to his mind. That view, which represents the sufferings of the Redeemer, as an expression of Divine displeasure against sin, answering the ends of government, as well as could the endless misery of the offending human race, he does not appear to have thought or heard of. Capable as this view is of a philosophic and scriptural defence, and although propounded by Grotius more than two hundred years ago, yet the author of the "Aids to Reflection" makes no allusion to it in any form. It may be that the revulsion of his mind from the views entertained by many of his day when they spoke of the Atonement, was such as to prevent him from regarding any objective view of Christ's work, with the tranquility necessary for its reception into the understanding and the heart. It may be that he did not feel the need of any such view. Whatever may have been the occasion of his mental position in regard to the external bearings of this great subject, it must always be a matter of regret that some one did not urge upon his attention Romans, 3: 25-26, "whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins," &c. Unsatisfactory as these words and the view contained in them may be to one seeking mainly after a participation in Christ's spiritual nature, nevertheless, it would not have been a difficult matter through them to have convinced a mind as comprehensive and candid as that of Coleridge, that a propitiation " to declare God's righteousness" was a very different thing from a propitiation to satisfy God's vindictive Justice. To say that God, through Christ, who was Jehovah in the flesh, "declared His righteousness for the remission of sins," has long been regarded by eminent divines, both in England and America, as only another mode of saying that God on Calvary so expressed His grief and abhorrence at sin, that he might with safety for give it. |