ART. VII.-REVIEW OF CURRENT LITERATURE.

THEOLOGY.

IN the "Astrology of the Reformation," it is Dr. Friedrich's purpose to show, that Luther wisely availed himself of the popular belief in astrology to promote the Reformation; that he accepted in good faith the prevailing ideas respecting the influence of the stars upon human destiny, and turned them to account in carrying forward his work. Luther's faith in astrology is shown, not only from numerous passages in his correspondence, but also from the preface to his edition (1527) of the "Proquosticon Propheticum" of John Lichtenburg, a renowned German astrologer. This work was filled with predictions of direful events that would occur in the natural world, as well as to the Church, the papacy, and the Empire.

Why should not Luther have believed, what was so wisely accepted, that even scepticism was constrained to support its ridicule? It is a mistake to suppose, that the increase of scientific knowledge has rendered astrology impossible in this age; that the boundaries between the natural and the supernatural are so well determined that the stars no longer minister to superstition. Astrological almanacs are annually published in England. In America, astrologers advertise in the papers. Many a farmer consults the position of the planets before he sows his seed, or kills his animals. Many a man likes to see the new moon over his right shoulder. Nurses inquire of the stars, before weaning an infant. We are informed that, in this very year, the Viceroy of Egypt has postponed his intended visit to Europe because the astrologers pronounced it unlucky. Multitudes of men look upon comets with 'something more than admiration, although the discovery of their periodical times has put an end to any serious belief in their fatal influence.

Why should we wonder that Luther shared in the universal delusion of his times, when scientific men like Cardan and Kepler confessed their faith in the influence of the planets over human impulses ? when Tycho Brahe drew horoscopes, and was frightened at the appearance of Halley's comet? The German emperors, contemporary with Luther, kept astrologers in their service, and consulted them in important undertakings. Charles the Fifth and Catherine De Medicis patronized astrology, and the Vatican admitted its power. "Paul the Third appointed no important sitting of the consistory, undertook no journey, without observing the constellations, and choosing the day which appeared to him recommended by their aspect."†

*Astrology of the Reformation. By Dr. JOHN FRIEDRICH, Theological Instructor in the University of Munich. Munich. 1864. ↑ Ranke's History of the Popes, i. p. 157.

This philosophy of the ruling classes was the religion of the common people. They believed that certain conjunctions of the planets portended misfortunes, storms, floods, epidemic diseases, wars, revolutions. This was Luther's life-long faith. He was an attentive observer of unusual appearances in the natural world. "Within the last four years, how many signs and wonders have we seen in the heavens, suns, crosses, extraordinary rainbows, and other wonderful things not in the natural course of events; and portending, as reason teaches us, the wrath and judgments of God! If they do not announce the last day, yet tumults and wars that shall change the governments of States, and occasion extreme misery to the people."

In this is nothing censurable. It was the faith of all classes. Our own fathers accepted it. In England the art of astrology was publicly taught and practised more than a century after Luther's death. In 1666 a parliamentary committee consulted a professor of astrology concerning the origin of the great fire in London. There is no evidence that Luther made improper use of the popular superstition, or any use of it different from what any other earnest and intelligent man would have made. Dr. Friedrich's book is written with a strong bias against Luther, but fails to establish his complicity with the authors of the peasants' war, which, it is alleged, originated with the astrologers. That their predictions had a great influence on the popular mind, in connection with the war, is true; and it is also true, that a religious reform was included among the demands of the peasants. But that Luther favored the insurrection is not proved. His tendencies were against it. His sympathies were with the Government, and the higher classes who supported his movement,ment which did not penetrate the lower ranks of German society, as is shown by the extensive re-action that soon took place. His feelings were conservative, and he strenuously opposed the peasants' war, and deplored their excesses. It was not for astrological predictions, or the oppressions of peasants, to originate, or greatly to modify, a religious movement which was already prepared in the history of past ages, and only required a fitting occasion.

a move

Dr. Friedrich's book is the result of careful research among the curious old literature of Germany, and would be an important contribution to the history of the Reformation, if its allegations against the spirit and method of Luther's work were established.

At this stage of theological science, one hardly opens a book upon dogmas with the expectation of finding novelties. The main doctrines of Christianity, rightly or wrongly deduced from the Gospels and the Epistles, were long ago settled; and the great task of modern criticism has been to prove their falsity, or soften their rigor. In noble opposition to the Old-Testament sternness, and the cold intellectualism of Calvin, Wesley undertook the grateful task of developing the social

* Tract on "The Last Day, and the Signs of its Coming."

and emotional nature of believers, and of forming a community that should be held together by the element of love, an element that played by no means so important a part in the old dispensation as in the new. A Church established upon such a basis was in its origin a pleasing and an edifying spectacle. Its continued growth and prosperity show, that it appealed to a deep-seated want of the human heart, and that it did a great deal to satisfy that want. But it is no less plain, from an examination of the career of Methodism, and from the aspect of the congregations that fill its churches, that it has become a religious sect, with as one-sided a tendency as either Lutheranism or Calvinism. It has ever made too great a demand upon nerve force, to the exclusion of intellectual. The groans and the shouts of the faithful, in conference and revival meetings, will remain a blemish upon the Methodist Church, so long as it indulges in violent appeals to the emotional natures of its communicants, and makes no attempt to supply their exhausted systems with the chalybeate of reason. We believe, that a consciousness of their defects has been impressing itself upon the minds of the thinking men of the denomination, and that the late activity of the leaders, both in America and in Germany, is to be traced to a gradual awakening to a sense of what the age requires.

With this conviction of the merits and defects of Methodism, it has given us great pleasure to greet the really able attempt of Mr. Warren * (formerly a pastor in Boston), to put into the hands of the students under his charge a text-book intended at once to spread abroad juster ideas of the doctrines of his sect, and to educate, as its leaders, a class of ministers who should be more intelligent and better versed in theological science than their predecessors. In a subject so vexed and so uncertain as that of the respective boundaries of ethics and dogmatics, many would find fault with the definition given to systematic theology, and with the sphere assigned to its constituents. "Systematic theology," he says, "is the comprehensive, scientific presentation of the Christian doctrine of God, of man, and of the mutual relation of the two. It embraces: first, Christian dogmatics, which treats of the relation of God to man, and the Christian doctrine of God thence resulting; and, second, Christian ethics, which treats of the relation of man to God, and the Christian doctrine of man thence resulting." A definition commendable for simplicity, rather than capable of rigorous and distinct development, or practical treatment. So the einheitlich, or unitary method, consisting in the union of ethics and dogmatics, is an arrangement better suited to oral and informal lectures from the professor's chair, than to a scientific treatise. The two subjects can hardly be mingled without confusion.

It is a remarkable event, not only in theology but in general literature, that an American should write a work in German, and with the

Systematische Theologie einheitlich behandelt. Von WILLIAM F. WARREN, Doctor und Professor der Theologie. Erste Lieferung Allgemeine Einlestung. Bremen: Verlag des Tractathauses. Zürich: Zeltweg, Nr. 728. Cincinnati, Ohio: Poe & Hitchcock. 1865. 8vo. pp. 186.

successful handling of the language that has attended the effort of Mr. Warren. But our interest in the book is not limited by the novelty of the printed characters. With some defects of style, and a slight tendency to rhetorical exaggeration, it takes high rank as an attempt to introduce scientific theology into Methodistic teaching and preaching. Its tables of works upon doctrines peculiar to the various faiths possess some value; more particularly, those relating to Methodism. It contains a large amount of interesting matter, especially a careful criticism, from the Methodistic stand-point, of the different confessions, and an accurate characterization of them, according to their predomination and principle. Of course no one will be surprised when he sees the various creeds arranged, in respect to development and perfection, as Roman Catholic, Čalvinist, Lutheran, and Methodist; and most persons will be unable to join with Mr. Warren in considering the last a complete climax. But, without such a conviction on his part, Mr. Warren's faith would be vain, and the denomination would have lacked this noteworthy attempt to give greater dignity to their

cause.

HISTORY AND POLITICS.

"GREECE is the natural home of poetry," says Ampère,* "and, at a former period, I have studied Greek poetry in Greece; but Rome is the land of history, and now I undertake at Rome to write the history of Rome." And no one who has read his work will fail to regret that his premature death has brought it to an end before his original design of carrying the story down to the age of Constantine had been accomplished. It was his intention, also, upon finishing this work, to enter upon another treating of Christian Rome, which his careful investigation, and lucid style, and quick perception of the controlling features in character and art, would have made, we have no doubt, one of the most entertaining and instructive upon the subject, so little understood after all that has been written upon it. The "History of the City of Rome in the Middle Age," by Gregorovius, which we have already reviewed in these pages, was a work of equal industry, and somewhat similar character, although occupied with a wholly different period; but it was deficient in that vivid portraiture and that keen analysis which make the charm of Ampère. With this exception, there is no history of Rome worth reading, written upon the plan of the present work.

It is impossible, of course, in an exhaustive survey of the Roman world, to confine one's attention to the events of which Rome was the centre, or to the men of whom it was the home. To understand Roman history, we must understand the ancient world. Yet a picture so vast as that of the rise and fall of Rome will hardly ever perhaps be painted. Even Gibbon was obliged to content himself with its decline. For the display of learning, the field is too im

* L'Histoire Romaine à Rome. Par J. J. AMPÈRE de l'Académie Française, &c. Tome Quatrième. Paris: Michel Lévy, Frères. 1864.

mense; and for artistic effect, the subject, if we may say so, is too panoramic. But it is possible, as Ampère has shown in a very brilliant way, to sift a great deal of that mass of facts which goes to make up Roman history, to select the leading men, and to indicate the chief causes that made the civilized world revolve at last round a single city, obedient to a single will.

The greatest man in Roman history was Cæsar; the greatest man in modern history, to a Frenchman, is Buonaparte. Between these two men, not merely in their character and purpose, but still more in the circumstances and condition of the time, it has been much the fashion of late to draw a parallel. If it were a matter merely of literary criticism, the subject would not have much interest perhaps, except to that somewhat morbid class of mind that are ever striving to find in the past some proof of the little progress of the present; some confirmation of their glowing theory, that history does but repeat itself. But as involving a political question, affecting not merely the present administration but the whole future government of France and of Europe, the parallel between Cæsar and Buonaparte is a matter of intense interest, which it did not need the sophistry of the present Emperor of France, in his recent political pamphlet, entitled, the "Life of Julius Cæsar," to increase or diffuse.

But this political question is one not easily stated, and the method of its solution is one not easily indicated. To discuss it is to decide upon the tendency of institutions which have long since perished, and the character of men who have long since passed away. The more you consider it, the farther you are from arriving at a just conception even of its scope. But its existence is the necessary result of the historical studies of the time. The creative faculty has given way to the analytic. We do not have history now, but theories of history. As in art, it is not so much what you do as how you do it; so in history, it has come to be not so much matter what your facts are, as how you regard them. You may, indeed, like Niebuhr, re-write whole chapters of early history, or, like Cornewall Lewis, deny that they were ever written at all; but, when you have fairly entered upon fields where you are never without contemporary chronicles, it is impossible to write without feeling yourself guided, as by an unseen hand, to a far-off but definite conclusion. It is thus that many of the historians of Germany insist upon finding in the history of that divided country, all through its worst distractions, one steady, silent tendency to unity. And it is thus that Ampère, living at Rome, and unable to withdraw himself from that ever-present temptation to interpret the monuments of the past, which is one of the embarrassments, if also one of the inspirations, of the modern city, has written the history of Rome, which has lost none of its point, we may add, in his hands. After a vivid portrait of Cato, who, as Sallust said, loved to be, better than to appear, honest, and of whom even Seneca could say, that while some were of the party of Cæsar, and others of Pompey, Cato alone was for the Republic, he terminates the history of the Republic, "For, the senate conquered and Cato dead, to use the pro