present state of existence; in other words, they are a symbol of some great temporal and spiritual blessings.

What, then, is the construction which may be placed on these verses from Peter? We have already intimated that they imply that a great change was to take place in the affairs of both Jews and Christians. In a short time after this chapter was written, Palestine was ravaged, Jerusalem conquered by armies of Romans, hundreds of thousands of the Hebrews were slain by sword or famine, the miserable remnant sold into slavery, and the Jewish power humbled and broken. But the Jews had been the bitterest opposers of the Christians; the heathen, indeed, seldom seem to have persecuted them, save when they had been instigated thereto by the Jews. No sooner, therefore, were the Hebrews prostrated than the affairs of the followers of Christ became more prosperous. No longer exposed to the arts of the bitterest of their foes, no longer followed by Jewish malignity, they had a breathing spell from their trials, and opportunity peacefully to propagate their faith. It seemed to them as though they were in a new world. The terrific convulsions and trials which caused the destruction of the Hebrew nation, and which, had they been protracted, might have involved the Christians themselves in ruin, (Matt. xxiv. 21, 22,) were as dreadful and fatal to the Jews as the destruction of the universe itself; while the more quiet state which succeeded was to the believers in Christ a new heaven and new earth. Violence and cruelty had been the law of the former state; but in this new world righteousness dwelt.

From the above remarks, it will be seen that we regard the apostle as foreshowing, not the destruction of the outward universe, but terrible reverses that were to overtake the Jews, and the consequent introduction of a better, more peaceful condition of affairs for Christians. A change in the outward circumstances of the latter, and an improved moral feeling on the part of their associates, were as beneficial to them as though the former earth, loaded as it was with fraud and cruelty, had been annihilated, and a new universe been created. Probably, too, the reference which he had already made to the antediluvians, shapes his metaphors in the verses under review.

The flood made an improvement in the moral condition of Noah and his family, because it freed them from association with ungodly men, and from their persecutions. The state of things after the Jewish power was broken in the first century, was for the Christians somewhat analogous; the deadliest of their foes, the most cunning and untiring of their adversaries, had been swept from earth. Was it, then, any exaggeration of poetic license, to speak of Christians as occupying a new world?

This fact, however, that a change in the mental and moral condition of a people is as important in its effects as would be an absolute re-creation of their land, may be illustrated by citing the case of Mexico. There is a country on which Providence has showered his bounties. lavishly. Situated, as it is, almost under the tropics, the chains of mountains which lift their crests heavenward diversify the scenery, and secure a wonderful variety of climates. Within a few miles of each other, the rich fruits of the torrid zone, and the hardier plants of a temperate clime, can be reared in abundance; rich mines, too, are hidden beneath the surface of the ground, and need only patient, skilful industry to drag their treasures forth. There is every thing within the land to secure abounding prosperity, but men. Beings wearing the human form are found there, but high-minded, intelligent, upright men are sadly wanting. Let us imagine a case; suppose that of the multitudes of priests in that over-burdened land, thousands of whom are sensual, indolent, and radically vile, one-third should emulate the devotion, obtain the intelligence, and perform the toils of the average of Protestant ministers, another third become teachers of youth, and the residue either give their attention to some useful scientific pursuits, or engage in some department of productive industry; suppose that a system of common schools like those of New England were established; that canals were dug, railroads built, irrigation practised: would not the general comfort of the people be immensely increased? Would not the earth yield far more bountifully, and poverty, leprosy, and kindred evils be speedily lessened or entirely destroyed? Such a change, though simply of the mental and moral character of the people, would be productive of greater benefits

than though the mountains were cleft by some volcanic agency, and poured forth silver and gold in one blazing stream, or the earth were to be made to yield as bountifully as Eden. In one sense, the land would be the same; the gushes of sunlight would descend no more powerfully, the mountains would stand no more grand, the streams flow no more rapidly, the earth have no more elements of fertility or wealth in its bosom; but labor, perseveringly, skilfully applied, would make the soil teem with plenty, and a higher tone of moral sentiment convert the country from the pandemonium which now it is, almost into a heaven. Indeed, this mental, moral change in the people, introducing as it would outward improvements of the most beneficent character, were infinitely better for the Mexicans, than any change in the external atmosphere that might secure a blander climate, or give to the light of sun and stars more gorgeousness, provided the people were left ignorant, slothful, destitute, and corrupt. It were hardly poetry to say that the old heavens and former earth had passed away, and that they lived in a new universe, were such a reform in their spiritual condition to be brought about.

But we must draw these observations to a close. This whole chapter has, as we conceive, special application to the contemporaries of Peter, and to events which they were to witness. Principles, however, are of eternal importance, and applicable to all times. Now, as eighteen centuries ago, it is a truth that spiritual excellence is the highest attainment of man, and the only ground of permanent security. God did not make some strange departure from the ordinary course of his providence, when he hurled the Jews down to destruction for their crimes. Their wretched fate was but another illustration of the old truth, that "the nation and kingdom that will not serve God shall perish." Let our nation consider this lesson and tremble. And let our sect, too, learn from the wonderful protection extended to the early Christians, and from the success they won, that earnest devotion, calm faith, sterling integrity, are sure causes of happiness and triumph.

M. G.

ART. XXVII.

Rev. Albert Barnes on Endless Punishment.

The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature. By Joseph Butler, LL. D., Late Lord Bishop of Durham. With an Introductory Essay, by Albert Barnes. New York: Jonathan Leavitt. Boston: Crocker & Brewster. 1833. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. 294.

In an age when infidelity and dissoluteness of life had become so wide-spread, as they had in England between the middle of the seventeenth and the middle of the eighteenth centuries, a work like that of Butler's Analogy could not fail to be hailed with joy by every lover of Christian truth and human virtue. And it could hardly fail to produce the happiest results, wherever it was attentively read and carefully weighed. Well does our essayist, who writes the introduction to the edition before us, remark of that dissolute period:

"Those were dark and portentous times which succeeded the reign of the second Charles. That voluptuous and witty monarch had contributed more than any mortal before or since his time to fill a nation with infidels and debauchees. Corruption had seized upon the highest orders of the state; and it flowed down on all ranks of the community. Every grade in life had caught the infection of the court. Profligacy is alternately the parent and the child of unbelief. The unthinking multitude of courtiers and flatterers that fluttered around the court of Charles had learned to scoff at Christianity, and to consider it as not worth the trouble of anxious thought. The influence of the court extended over the nation. It soon infected the schools and professions; and perhaps there has not been a time in British history, when infidelity had become so general, and had assumed a form so malignant. It had attached itself to dissoluteness, deep, dreadful, and universal. It was going hand in hand with all the pleasures of a profligate court; it was identified with all that actuated the souls of Charles and his ministers; it was the kind of infidelity which fitted an unthinking age-scorning alike reason, philosophy, patient thought, and purity of morals. So that, in the language of Butler, 'it had come to be taken for granted, by many persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject of investigation, but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious, and accord32

VOL. IX.

ingly they treat it as if, in the present age, this were an agreed point among all people of discernment, and nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were, by way of reprisals for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world." "

Originating soon after such an age as this, and throwing up so powerful and timely a bulwark against this tide of infidelity and dissoluteness, it is no wonder that Butler's Analogy was welcomed by all denominations of Christians, and that it has since become so widely popular in the Christian world, as to be regarded as a kind of textbook, or manual of reference, on the subject of which it treats, among students of theology, and in nearly all our colleges and higher institutions of learning. No wonder, after the attempts of the theologians of former ages to stay the tide of infidelity and vice by denouncing reason in matters of religion as a dangerous and carnal weapon, that such a work as this should have opened a new era in the mode of religious discussion; and when by this it was seen how easily infidelity might be met and confounded by its own weapons, it is not strange that Bishop Butler was clothed with high honors, appealed to as a standard writer, and that this great work has exerted a powerful influence, both upon Christian writers and upon the more candid and honest part of infidel opposers. Far from agreeing with the Bishop in all the views advanced in his Analogy, or admitting the justness and legitimacy of all the deductions he makes from the premises laid down, we nevertheless admire the originality of his thoughts and the bold and vigorous style of his arguments.

But it is not so much our object, in this paper, to notice and comment on the great work of Bishop Butler, as to notice the Essay introductory to the present edition, and its distinguished author, Rev. Albert Barnes,1 of Philadelphia. Mr. Barnes is doubtless a man of genius, of originality, of a vigorous and independent mind, of much broader views and greater liberality of feeling than most men of his class, (Presbyterian,) and withal, we believe,

1 We omit the title D. D., often given to Mr. Barnes, for the reason that when conferred upon, or proffered to him, some years since, he declined accepting it, stating, if we rightly remember, that he believed it wrong for any man to wear it.