sentence, in a foreign language, that might be submitted to him by way of experiment. But whatever word or phrase may be necessary to the more full elucidation of any point which he is explaining, seems to come spontaneously to his lips, from the same source with the body of the disclosures themselves; and that these are suggested or dictated by the influx of some other mind into his own, is, I think, beyond question. But that it is any mind inhabiting a material body which prompts his revelations I am convinced is not the case, for they are often in direct contrariety to all the opinions which have ever been advanced upon the same subjects; and when not contrary, they are frequently beyond all that has been known to be propounded respecting them."

But Dr. Bush has found an antagonist in Dr. Lewis, the Greek Professor of New York, who treats Davis and his abettors as a set of impostors. He says, "The book bears upon its face the evidence of gross imposture, abounding not only in philosophical scepticism, but in the lowest and most ribald infidelity of the school of Tom Paine-an authority whence a large portion of it is evidently derived. Add to this its numerous absurd mistakes in philosophy, in history, in science, and in biblical interpretation-the unmeaning bombast -the hundreds of pages where there is, covered up by an ocean of words, either no meaning at all, or what appear, when translated from the Swedenborgian vocabulary into common language, to be the most empty truisms. Take into view, too, the rancorous sectarian spirit which no one can fail to detect in it who is acquainted with the peculiar aspects of universalism or infidelity, and which so clearly appears amid all its professions of charityoften the most virulent where these professions are the most abundant-and how could it be supposed that it would receive any attention or any commendations, except from the infidels for whom it was written, and the parties themselves who had been directly concerned in the nefarious imposture?"

The infidelity of the Seer's revelations extorts from Dr. Bush, who is a great believer (having recently added to his other articles of faith belief in the inspiration of Emanuel Swedenborg), an indignant disclaimer of sympathy. The Hebrew Professor styles his mode of treating the Bible "an absolute enormity." Being, however,

as the Christian Examiner pleasantly expresses it, "in the dilemma of believing in Swedenborg and in Davis also," he invents an ingenious mode of escape by conjecturing that the infidelity of the lecture was instigated by the Devil, who was joint tenant with the Seraphim in the mind of the Seer. To complicate the case still farther, Davis protests that in his proper person, or his normal state, he is altogether orthodox, and believes fully in many things which in his lectures, or his abnormal state, he denies and derides. The critics who have taken the trouble to wade through this new revelation, say that they can trace his ideas to tolerably well-known books. To the author of the Vestiges of Creation he is said to be indebted for his cosmogony. Whether that ingenious writer will feel flattered or annoyed by the Poughkeepsie Seer's patronage of his new philosophy, our readers must judge for themselves.

The Editor of the Athenæum has devoted two long articles to "The Principles of Nature, her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind," which is the title given by Mr. Andrew Jackson Davis to his 'delirious concoction,' as an American critic styles the work. With an extract from the Athenæum, we dismiss the subject, to which our readers may perhaps justly think we have given a greater space than its merits entitle it to:

"In his theology, Mr. Davis (at least when clairvoyant) is a rationalist, in the sense in which the term is usually here received. He gives authority to no revelation but his own. The following surpasses Horne Tooke's notion that truth must be matter of opinion, because the word is originally derived from that which a man troweth :-'In concluding my remarks upon the Bible, I will speak historically concerning its origin and formation. Let it first be observed that a great deal of veneration is attached to the word BIBLE-more, indeed, than should be attached to a large portion of its contents. The word bible signifies merely a book. It is derived from the Greek biblos, which signifies the soft bark of a tree, upon which the ancients wrote their thoughts. To this was subsequently prefixed the word 'holy,' which term was employed by the Jews to express excellence. Thus the terms 'Holy Bible,' might be rendered 'excellent soft bark,' and then the world would understand their original signification.'

"We ought rather perhaps to say that Mr. Davis accepts many revelations. He admits David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, Malachi, Jesus, Confucius, Brama, Zoroaster, Mohammed, Swedenborg, Galen, the Seeress of Prevorst, Luther, Calvin, D'Holbach, Charles Fourrier (whom he puts on a level with Christ), and many others, to the rank of revealers. He is then rather omnifidel than infidel. He gives what he calls the true life of Christ, asserting that it is impressed upon him that the Saviour was not more than forty minutes in the manger. It is also revealed that the celebrated interpolation (as it is universally considered) in Josephus is genuine."

The Editor closes his criticism by advising his "Transatlantic friends not to abandon the excellent soft bark until at least they can find a better substitute for it than Davis's preparation of quinine."

Unitarian Ministers' Protest against the Mexican War.-A friend has forwarded us a file of recent Boston newspapers, in which are several articles, some praising and others severely censuring the conduct of the Unitarian ministers of Massachussets, for combining to express their detestation of the Mexican war, and for making its abominableness the subject of their pulpit addresses. Some of the complaints of their proceeding professedly come from Unitarian laymen, who allege that they shall be driven from Unitarian worship if their ministers continue to discuss mere party politics in their pulpits. On the other side, it is asserted that the war is so palpable and flagrant a violation of the principles of the Republic and of the first principles of Christianity, that the ministers would be wanting in their duty, both as citizens and as preachers of the gospel, if they did not distinctly protest against the continuance of the war. We need scarcely say that we rejoice to see that our brethren in Boston are so faith ful to their convictions of duty.

ward objection that the remonstrating Bishops did not themselves allege the unsoundness of Dr.Hampden's doctrine, but rested their case on the decree of the University of Oxford passed in 1836, it was felt to be necessary that the heresy of the Bishop-designate should be judicially established. Certain members of the University of Oxford, therefore, petitioned the Bishop (Dr. Wilberforce, one of the remonstrants) to proceed against Dr. Hampden, in the Arches Court, for heresy. This was rather too direct a proceeding for the taste of that versatile Prelate, and he declined granting the petition. A little more clerical pressure was put on, and the Bishop intimated that he would not prevent others from commencing proceedings, or throw any impediments in the way of the proceedings should they be commenced. The prosecution was devised under the Clergy Discipline Bill. As Rector of Ewelme, Dr. Hampden fell of Oxford. On the 16th of December, under the jurisdiction of the Bishop the Bishop granted the letters of request to certain members of the Oxford Tractarian party, and the suit began in the Court of Arches. The Bishop-designate, thus arraigned before the whole country for heresy, is next addressed by his Diocesan in a private letter, stating in detail the points of doctrine which it was alleged his writings impugned, and asking him to affirm his full belief in them, and next asking him, as a peace-offering to the offended Church, to withdraw the "Observations on Dissent" and the Bampton Lectures. On Dec. 18, Dr. Hampden gave the Bishop an affirmative answer to the queries respecting his belief, and the answer (the best rebuke!) of silence in respect to the request to withdraw the obnoxious books. It had now become appa.

rent that the Government would not retreat from its position. Dr. Hampden became provokingly cautious, and, like a wise man, putting himself under legal direction when the proceedings in the Court of Arches began, declined to answer, or even to receive from his Diocesan, "proposals" for an accommodation of matters. The Bishop of Oxford, before the end of the month, resolved to turn tail on the Tractarian prosecutors, and had to make out an apology for his tergiversation from the unsatisfactory materials before him. By putting together the Doctor's curt profession of faith ("I say 'Yes' to all your queries on my belief"), and misunderstanding a passage in a private

letter to a mutual friend, and extorting a somewhat large meaning from a passage in Dr. Hampden's letter to Lord John Russell, he was enabled to "alter his view of the case," and withdraw his letters of request. The light now broke in upon the Bishop, that he ought to be personally satisfied that there was matter for a criminal suit to justify him in sending an accusation against Dr. Hampden to be tried in the Arches Court. He had joined in the proceedings of 1836 against the Regius Professor of Divinity; he had signed, in November, 1847, the remonstrance against Dr. Hampden's appointment to the vacant Bishopric; and yet it is not till near the close of December that he "applies himself to a thorough and impartial examination of the Bampton Lectures"! The result of the strangely delayed examination is his conviction that the Lectures "do not justly warrant those suspicions of unsoundness to which they had given rise, and which, so long as he trusted to selected extracts (i. e. to say, so long as he listened only to the accusers' charge), "he himself shared." He finds in the Lectures little which will not admit of a favourable construction, and therefore he not only withdraws the letters of request, but professes his intention to quiet the alarms of those who dreaded Dr. Hampden's consecration to the office of a Bishop.

In extenuation of Dr. Wilberforce's partizan and unjudge-like proceedings, it is urged by a clerical apologist (whether maliciously or simply we can scarcely decide), that "he did not suppose he could go far wrong in accepting the soundness of the University of Oxford, the theology and judgment of the Bishop of Exeter, the honesty and integrity of Dr. Pusey and Mr. Newman in making extracts from a book." We will not stop to inquire what grounds Dr. Wilberforce had for reposing such large faith in the simple integrity of Bishop Philpotts, Dr. Pusey and Mr. Newman, but we must record our amazement at the enormous deficiency of the moral sense displayed by him, and we fear by many hundred other clergymen, in the condemnation of a book which he and they had never read! Archdeacon Hare, in his masterly "Letter to the Dean of Chichester," deliberately states that few of the condemners have "any correct notion of the nature and purport of the work which they are so eager to condemn." Two letters, of very unequal degrees

of merit, next solicit public attention. The first is from Dr. Hampden to Lord John Russell. It is long, and, notwithstanding much effort and many protestations, somewhat feeble. Its best point is the quotation from Tillotson's Sermons of the well-known passage in which he complains "that every one that offers to give a reasonable account of his faith, and to establish religion upon rational principles, is presently branded for a Socinian," &c. Dr. Hampden very stoutly avers that he is unimpeachably orthodox. He holds and has ever held most firmly the full doctrine of the Holy Trinity. In his Observations on Religious Dissent, published in 1834, when the question about the admission of Dissenters was agitated, Dr. Hampden thus expressed himself: "In religion, properly so called, few Christians, if any-I speak of course of pious minds-really differ. All acknowledge with nearly unanimous assent, I believe, the great original facts of the Bible. They may not be conscious, perhaps, that they do so far agree; and the reason of this is clear; namely, that they judge of their religion from their theological opinions, and reflect back on the one, simple, invariable truth of God, the various lights of some speculative system of doctrines, the mere conclusions of their own reason. would take the extreme case of the Unitarians, and I would say to them, Why do you take so much pains to convince the world that you do not agree with the mass of professing Christians, in believing in the same sense

I

one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all'? Is it not that you identify your religion with your dogmas; that you transfer the natural partiality of your own minds for certain principles, to the broad outlines of Scripture truth, and dissent from your brethren in the faith because they will not assent to your metaphysical conclusions? For when I look at the reception by the Unitarians both of the Old and New Testament, I cannot of my part, strongly as I dislike their theology, deny to those who acknowledge this basis of divine facts the name of Christians. Who, indeed, is justified in denying the title to any one who professes to love Christ in sincerity?"

We have quoted at length this passage, both because it has been made the groundwork of much censure, and in order to place by its side the Bishop. of Hereford's interpretation of the words of the Rector of Ewelme :

"If on any occasion I have ventured to call Unitarians Christians, surely this must be understood in the wide, charitable sense of the term- not in that strict sense in which it belongs to a believer in the divinity and the blessed atonement of our Lord, but in a sense not unlike that in which it is used in our Liturgy, when we pray for all who profess and call themselves Christians, that they may be led into the way of truth,' &c. What I may have said, then, in charity of the persons, or of the modes of reasoning, of misbelievers, cannot in any fairness be understood as indulgence to their tenets."

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The second letter to which we have alluded is a very superior document. It is from the pen of Lord John Russell, and is in reply to an Address from the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Bedford. We regret we cannot find room for the whole of this very able State-paper. After alluding to the very unfair means taken to injure Dr. Hampden, he says, "If such means are to deprive a clergyman of those distinctions which our Church boasts of maintaining as the rewards of learning, a fatal blow is struck at all profound inquiry, at all enlightened pursuit of truth, at all clerical independence."

The Premier writes with a graphic pen when he describes sectarian characteristics: "The Church is not in that easy security of the last century which gave birth to so much negligence, to so much abuse of wealth, to such a perilous apathy. The Church of Rome on the one side, with abundant knowledge, with an imposing authority, seduces many to her communion. The right of private judgment is by many avoided as a dangerous snare; the duty of private judgment is thrown off by many more as too heavy a burden. On the other side, the Protestant Dissenter assails the Church Establishment as an engine for fettering the conscience and taxing the property of the subject. Novelties have their charm: the HighChurchman and the Independent speak alike with complacency of the separating Church and State.'

Lord John Russell shews that the fanatical outbreak of 1847 has its precedents: "But it is said I have disturbed the peace of the Church. There is no use in crying Peace where there is no peace. The appointment of Dr. Tillotson to the Primacy provoked a party whose relentless fury pursued him to the day of his death. They

denounced him as a Socinian and an Atheist. Yet our great Deliverer never made a wiser or more judicious appointment. In our own day we have seen the learned Dr. Lloyd, once Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, pursued with bitter invective when, on the Roman Catholic Relief Bill, he gave expression to the loftiest feelings of Christian charity."

The congé d'élire appeared in the Gazette of December 14th. The latest possible day for the election was fixed on by the Dean of Hereford, Dr. Merewether, whose letters and acts secure for him a fourteen days' notoriety. Like nearly all the other clerical actors in this Comedy of Errors, the Dean plays but a sorry part. Privately and publicly, and with an earnestness worthy of a better cause, did the Dean of Hereford protest against the appointment of the intended Bishop. He pleaded conscience, and vowed his purpose to oppose the election and brave the penalties of a præmunire. A long letter from the magnanimous Dean, dated Dec. 22, draws from the Premier this somewhat startling reply, the scornfulness of which could not easily be surpassed:

"Woburn Abbey, Dec. 25. "Sir,-I have had the honour to receive your letter of the 22nd inst., in which you intimate to me your intention of violating the law.

"I have the honour to be your obedient servant, J. RUSSELL. "The Very Rev. the Dean of Hereford."

The Premier evidently knew his man, and was not unwilling that others should know him too. The secret is soon told to half the nation by the Morning Chronicle, that the Dean's opposition to Dr. Hampden lacked the virtue of disinterestedness, and sprung from disappointed ambition, the vacant mitre having been applied for by the Dean himself and refused by the Minister. When the day of election came, and the brave and conscientious Dean allowed the election to proceed, satisfying his threats by a very feeble verbal negative, and so far fulfilled the congé d'élire as effectually to protect himself from the consequences of a premunire, the "lot" of the precluded Dean excited more merriment than pity. The Dean's negative vote was supported by only one other member of the Chapter, Čanon Huntingford: for the Bishop, 14 votes were given.

The customary certificates of the

election were granted by the Dean and Chapter, and the capitular seal affixed. In these (which are alone valid) the Dean states that he did give his vote for Dr. Hampden. The matter is thus explained by Rev. Henry Christmas in his "Concise History:"-" What was done inside the Chapter House is not cognizable by law; the Government recognizes only the authorized statement to which the capitular seal is affixed; and thus Dr. Merewether's protest becomes a mere literarycuriosity. Indeed, it appears hardly possible that it could be otherwise; for as the statutes require an unanimous election, by reason of that feeling of brotherhood which they suppose to exist among all in holy orders-a fiction at once legal and pleasant-so they admit of no dissentients; and what is done by a majority is held to be done by the whole body. The Dean being one of the body, has no more power to dissent than any other; and the form of declaring the election must run, in spite of Dr. Merewether's protest, in the name of the Dean and Chapter."

The ceremony of confirmation took place at Bow Church on Tuesday, Jan. 11, amidst much interruption, first from the proctors retained by the Tractarian opponents to appear and protest, and secondly from the scornful merriment of the assembled crowd at the treatment of the said proctors, who no sooner obeyed the official proclamation calling upon them to come forth and object, than they were peremptorily rejected with the intimation that they had no right to object. Absurd and farcical are many of these old usages, and it is not for the interests of the Church that the light of too much publicity should be let in upon them. Unwearied in their opposition, the Tractarians next appear by counsel in the Court of Queen's Bench, and apply for a mandamus calling upon the Archbishop of York to state why he should not give audience to those who appeared to object to the confirmation of the Bishop-elect. The Court granted the rule. Before this falls under the eye of our readers, the whole matter will have been argued, and in all probability the confirmation held to be valid, and perhaps the last step taken, that of consecration.

Men of all parties, in and out of the Church, seem agreed in one thing, that never has any thing occurred, at least since the days of the Hanoverian accession, so thoroughly damaging to the Church of England as this struggle and

all its consequent exposures of men and the system.

The course which the Times newspaper has taken has been somewhat tortuous, but prevailingly anti-liberal. But the articles have been characterized by great and varied ability. It served up one day to its readers a very dainty statement (somewhat of a new version of the story of White's Bampton Lectures) that the mind which produced the Bampton Lectures of 1832 was not Dr. Renn Dickson Hampden's, but rather that of the celebrated Joseph Blanco White, with whom the Doctor was then on the most intimate and confidential terms. To this statement Archbishop Whately has given a strong contradiction. The rumour endorsed by the Times is attributed to "a near connection of Mr. Newman."

We regret we have no space left for extracts from the pamphlet of the Archbishop of Dublin, which is entitled "Statements and Reflections on the Hampden Question." After giving a brief history of the general character of the controversy, Dr. Whately arrives at the following conclusions: I. That the alleged censure of the University of Oxford ought to be totally disregarded. II. That the Ministers would have been much to blame had they passed by a man possessing such claims as Dr. Hampden. III. That if, after having recommended him to her Majesty, they had afterwards, in compliance with the remonstrances addressed to them, withdrawn that recommendation, they would have been guilty of a gross dereliction of duty, would have exposed themselves to merited contempt, and would have shaken the foundations of all lawful authority, including, most especially, episcopal authority. And, IV. That the present movement has caused much discredit and much danger to the Church, which are wholly imputable to the authors of the movement, and would have been incalculably greater still had it proved successful.

Jewish Emancipation Bill.

The appeal of Sir Robert H. Inglis to the "Evangelism" (i. e. the bigotry) of the country to obstruct the Ministerial measure for the admission of Jews to Parliament, is being answered by the clergy in many districts, who are getting hostile petitions signed in vestries and schools and clerical rooms. We are glad to believe that few Dissenters of any sect have joined in this