To train them up for heaven and meet them there; A change has since come o'er the pastoral tie, 441 Where the relation continues, the advancing years of the minister are saddened by the apprehension of failing strength and of failing support at the last. Worn down with labor and anxiety, broken in health, and wellnigh hopeless of relief, he either travels South to try the effect of a change of climate, where, like the subject of this notice, he lies down to die, "glad to have reached the end of a long and wearisome journey, and to be at rest;" or he survives his strength to labor, a superannuated incumbent of his pulpit, which is a synonym with incumbrance in the vocabulary of many of his people, to whom a stinted and reluctant support is voted; or he is turned over to the cold charity of a subscription, or of relatives, if he have them, or to the colder charity of an alms-house. This is no fiction, as the experience of many a faithful pastor, outliving his usefulness, has proved. Will not the opulent and humane of our cherished faith contribute of their abundance to the fund proposed to be established for the relief and aid of ministers who survive their strength to labor, and who have saved nothing from their usually inadequate means of support during the days of their strength? The Sermons of Dr. Brazer will be prized and read with interest and delight by the intellectual, and by all serious persons of a cultivated literary taste, who enjoy clear and logical argument, or lucid and definite statements of religious truth and duty. They abound in awakening and awe-inspiring appeals to the conscience. They speak less of a loving and trusting heart than of the strict obedience, the watchfulness and self-denial, necessary to the saving of the soul. Human responsibility, as it is often stated in its rigorous application and extent, is fitted to startle and terrify rather than to incite and encourage to an earnest and cheerful endeavour to grow in love and filial obedience to God, in fraternal love and doing good to men, in which, after all, consists the true Christian life. Reiterating and dwelling ever upon the stern law of duty repels and discourages, certainly is not calculated to win souls to Christ. If it do not recall to mind the dreadful phantom of a Deity hostile to mankind, from which horror," according to Fichte, "the presVOL. XLVI. - 4TH S. VOL. XI. NO. III. - 38 ent age has been delivered by Christianity," it is apt to produce an impression that we live under the government of an exacting God, jealous of his authority and rights, extreme to mark iniquities, instead of a gracious Father, who is love, and who requires of his children only to do what is best and happiest for them, and to avoid being or doing what is hurtful to themselves or others. God's love and Christ's love to us are not so often made the ground of appeal and motive of loving obedience in return, as the fearful retributions which await the negligent and disobedient. Dr. Peabody's sermons, recently noticed in this journal, leave no such painful impression upon the mind of the reader. Yet they are not deficient in showing men their duties and their transgressions, and the consequences of living a selfish and worldly life. But with "pointed rebuke" there is "kind encouragement." The poetical element, so living and salient in him, had but faint existence in the friend whose sermons are now under our notice. In the one, faith, hope, and charity, especially the greatest of the three, while they shone out in the life and character, were the main source of the beauty and attractiveness of his discourses. We doubt not they dwelt richly in the inmost heart of the other; but they did not enter so largely into his preaching, nor, if these are taken in proof, did they impart so much of their cheerful light to his views of life, of human character and destiny. Appeals to the conscience and the heart, to those natural sentiments which are universal and eternal, when uttered in simple and natural phrase, and in tones of true brotherly kindness, never fail to awaken a response in the heart of the hearer or reader. The appropriate imagery and illustrations, as well as the originality and beauty of the thoughts, are strong attractions in whatever Dr. Peabody has written. Dr. Brazer speaks more to the intellect than to the heart, its generous sympathies, and that natural love of the right, the true, and the beautiful, inherent in all souls, though often dormant, and waiting only the fitting speech to awaken and call it forth. He deals much in argument, in the logic of duty and the sins of disobedience, more in the ethical and didactic than in the spontaneous, the devotional, and spiritual. He addresses his exhortations rather to the reason than to the feelings. He would enforce persuasion by demonstration. He accumulates particulars, but seldom generalizes. He says all that he can find to say upon his topics, and 1849.] Household Education. 443 leaves little to be supplied by the imagination or reflection of the reader. He says well what has been said by thousands before him. He is never obscure, neither is he ever profound. He urges with earnestness and solemnity the necessity of repentance, of a heart right with God, of living for duty, for virtue, not for pleasure or enjoyment, sternly rebukes vice, worldliness, and frivolity, and shows strongly the inevitable issues to which they lead. No one can read these Sermons, we think, without deriving from them the most salutary impressions and powerful incitements to a sober, righteous, and godly life. J. F. HOME! How many associations of life and joy are there in that one word! How dear to the human heart the place which it designates! How stronger than all else the hold which it has on human affections! How, when the mind of the absent muses in solitude, does it turn, with a fondness which no other theme awakens, to this! How do thought and memory overleap all barriers of time and space, of months and years, of mountains and seas, to reach it, to range over it, to bring it near, though but in imagination, to bring it up in all its wonted endearments and attractions, and enshrine it anew in the heart! The traveller who climbs the pyramids, or is storing his mind with images of wonder, magnificence, and beauty among the broken columns and falling arches of Greece and Rome, breaks away from his classic raptures with a deeper and diviner glow of feeling than they inspire, to think of the humble spot in which all that is dearest in life is embraced; and would gladly sacrifice all their thrilling visions for one glimpse of home. He who, full of sincerest devotion, has gone to the far-off Holy Land of his faith, to tread the soil which was once pressed by the feet of the Saviour, and visit the scenes hallowed by the special presence and revelations of God in days gone by, even he turns back with intense longing to the land he has Household Education. By HARRIET MARTINEAU, Author of "Eastern Life," etc. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard. 1849. 12mo. pp. 212. left, to the home and the hearth where his wife and children are following him with their prayers. And when faith shall have been changed into sight, and "this corruptible shall have put on incorruption," how know we but the spirit will even then revert in memory to its earthly home, and find its heavenly happiness enlarged and enriched by the remembrance? So dear is home, so strong its hold on the heart. We are speaking, of course, of the subject in a general view. We know that there are exceptions. We know, and deeply lament, that there are cases in the sad history of the race, where none of these deep and blessed emotions are felt or are excited by the thought of home. We know, and lament, that there are those who leave their homes with no sorrow, and turn back upon them no look of joy, and drown in other scenes and in distant places all memory of what they seem glad to forget. But who does not feel that this is unnatural ? Who is not ready to say that there must be some cause for this, which a more reverent regard for duty, and a truer love of God, and a firmer religious faith, and a more consistent Christian principle, early infused and faithfully cherished, would have prevented? Who is not prompted to say that what the Creator has made it so natural to love must have been made an object of disgust or hate, if such it be, by perverting the privileges which belong to it, by neglecting the essential conditions on which it can be enjoyed, by losing sight of the high and blessed ends for which "God setteth the solitary in families," and has established the relations of home? These thoughts have been excited by reading Miss Martineau's book on Household Education. We have read it with unfeigned pleasure. The subject was enough to engage at first sight our attention, and our interest in the perusal never flagged. The book is sufficiently systematic. It abounds in excellent suggestions and striking illustrations. It is pervaded by a most kind and genial spirit. There is no silly or affected sentimentalism; all is straight-forward and direct to the end. No parent can help receiving benefit from its study, and we heartily thank the author for giving it to the world. And yet we confess that we have felt one want. We wished to see the importance, the indispensableness, of religion to domestic life more distinctly recognized, and the 1849.] Influence of Religion on Home. 445 prominent place, therefore, which it should hold in every` Christian home more distinctly assigned. That religion, that Christianity, that God, the great object of all religion, and Christ, its great teacher and exemplar, are in sundry parts of the book seen to be great and precious realities to the writer, we admit. But this is implied, not stated, not deliberately set forth, not made prominent, not urged as deserving or requiring special notice and regard in its relations to, or bearings upon, the main subject. We thought within ourselves, as we closed the book, How could a Christian writer, especially a Christian woman, write more than twenty chapters upon household education, and not devote one, at least, to the subject of religious culture? Even in those chapters in which she treats of the training of the higher" powers" of our nature, such as love, veneration, truthfulness, conscientiousness, we missed what seems to us the due and distinct recognition of the loftiest uses and ends of these powers, and of the spirit and the sanctions in and by which they are most sure to be unfolded, ennobled, and made mighty for the goodness and joy of the possessor. With these qualifications, and we do not wish them to be regarded as unimportant, we cordially commend the book to parents, as fitted in many and valuable respects to aid them in the momentous work of domestic education. We propose, not indeed to fill up the chasm which we think Miss Martineau has left, but to lead our readers to consider the important and interesting bearings which religion should have, which we believe God designed that it should have, upon the relations of home, upon home itself. When we contemplate men with reference to their earthly condition, in what relations do they or can they present themselves, so touching, so important, as these? what that have so direct, so unquestionable an influence upon their virtue, usefulness, or happiness? And when the mind extends its view to the eternal future, what present relations, more than these, if so much, may affect our welfare beyond the grave? So absorbing in interest, of such solemnity and importance, do they seem to us, that we are specially anxious to awaken thought on the subject, and to lead our readers so to regard it, that henceforth, peradventure from this perusal, they may find in home a new and unwonted value, the field of more weighty responsibilities than have before been felt, the means of a more thorough self-discipline, the |