here is self-consistent and absolute truth." The same is true of the other fundamental doctrines of Christianity, viz., sin—its nature and effect on the race, redemption, justification, and the like. And to us it seems "difficult to resist the conviction " that he who tampers with these old forms of expression, and lightly changes the statements of truth that have been the slow growth of ages, and the result of patient, earnest thought in the best minds for generations, is attempting that which is both unwise and dangerous. Surely, to disturb these corner-stones of the temple of truth must weaken, if it does not endanger the whole structure. And what good can it accomplish? Is it likely that in this superficial, sensuous age we shall improve the phraseology that has grown with the church, and incorporated itself into the very spiritual being of multitudes of Christians? For ourselves, having drank of this old wine, we do not desire new, for to our taste "the old is better." We are glad that the late National Council of Congregationalists seemed to feel very much as we do in this respect, and with such unanimity and heartiness endorsed the old Confessions of Westminster and Savoy. It is a very hopeful sign of the times, and gives us no little confidence in reference to the future of our churches and of our nation.

A few words upon the method of our author. As the conception of the work seems to have been original with Professor Shedd, he of course had no model on which he could shape his treatise. The method of treatment therefore must, of necessity, be an experiment. And fortunately for us the experiment has proved a very successful one. It is, in the words of the author, briefly this: "To investigate each of the principal subjects of dogmatic history by itself, starting from the first beginnings of scientific reflection upon it, and going down to the latest and most complete forms of statement." The advantages of this method are obviously many and great. It is strictly philosophical. It takes one subject and follows it out according to the laws of development. It starts with the germ, and traces its growth until it reaches the ripe fruit. This is the natural method, the true method, perfectly in accordance with the "philosophia prima" about which the old writers talk so much. This method secures continuity of thought. You begin and follow

The mind is

out the same stream until you reach its mouth. not confused and distracted by the vain effort to grasp and hold half a dozen different lines of thought at the same time. Dr. Porter, in his Homiletics, advises his students to avoid antithetic topics carried along in pairs. It reminds him, he says, of a laborer attempting to manage two wheelbarrows, but compelled to roll one a short distance, and then go back after the other. But the man who would carry along, pari passu, the history of the great doctrines of Christianity would have not two, but a dozen or so of wheelbarrows to manage, and much of his time and labor would be spent in running from one to the other, and the result would be a most vague and confused notion of dogmatic history. The mere loss of time required in bringing up the different trains of thought, and giving one the means of resuming the thread of the narrative is no small item; and, when all is done, it is impossible to get a clear, definite idea of any one doctrine unbroken and unconfused by other doctrines. The method of our author saves all this trouble and confusion, and as a consequence he generally leayes with his reader a clear, well defined notion of the subject in hand. One might therefore well characterize the method of this work as simple, clear, straight-forward, natural, philosophical and impressive. And of the work as a whole we would say; it is a monument to the author's genius, learning and industry which the world will not willingly suffer to perish.

ARTICLE V.

REMINISCENCES OF LIFE AMONG THE ZULU-KAFIRS.

BY THE REV. LOUIS GROUT, FEEDING HILLS, MASS.

THOSE travellers of by-gone days who were wont to picture Africa to us as a realm of burning sand, her rivers all dry, her birds all silent, her men and her monkeys all of a kith and a kin, could never have seen Natal and her borders, else they had made at least one exception. No doubt they saw many barren plains, empty channels, quiet birds, and here and there an old, gray monkey, looking somewhat like man, and withal as near akin

to the white as to the black; but such is not all Africa. Such is not the realm of Natal and Zululand, to whose luxuriant fields, ever-living streams, and most diversified natural and civil history our thoughts now revert.

Passing around the stormy cape, the Cabo Tormentoso of Diaz, the Cabo de Buena Esperanza of John II. of Portugal, who saw in it a prelude to success in his search for a new way to the Indies, a week's good sailing will generally suffice to bring the voyager to a sight of the beautiful terraces of Tierra de Natal, the Christmas-land which Vasco de Gama discovered on the 25th of December, 1497. But in the early part of 1847, the writer had the misfortune to find the passage of a thousand miles along the south-eastern coast of Africa not a little prolonged. We left the Cape of Good Hope in what they called "the Rosbud," on the 15th of January, setting our faces eager and resolute to the eastward; and yet, at the end of four days the only progress we had made was to go a hundred miles to the west. By this time we had come to the conclusion that Diaz spoke from experience, and was in the right in giving the name Cabo Tormentoso to that stormy extreme about which both wind and wave were now tossing us. Finally, after a full month's struggling with opposing winds and deceitful currents, for more than a week reduced to the smallest possible allowance of hard-tack and water, we woke one morning to find ourselves lying off the long desired land, only five miles from port. The country is beautiful- so runs the record of the hour equal to the finest scenery in the land' of our birth. The striking feature is a grand series of table lands or terraces rising one upon the other, some four or five gradations, as they recede from the coast inland a hundred and fifty miles, to the Drahensberg range, by which Natal and Zululand are skirted on the northwest. At this, the summer season, as it is, and at this distance from the coast, it is easy to fancy that we see extensive fields of grain, large and fruitful orchards, and beautiful groves of oak or maple, though we know that neither oak, nor maple, nor other American trees grow here. The whole country is covered with grass, diversified with here and there a cluster of bushes or a grove of trees, a brook, river, or mountain, so that, from a general glance at this distance, you are

almost ready to believe you are looking upon some of the more highly cultivated districts of New England; only here in this heathen land, you have as yet none of the civilized farm-houses, Christian churches, and villages which dot and adorn that western home of the Puritan race.

Nor does the natural beauty of this African scene fade at all on a nearer approach. Coming to land, and traversing the fields that lie before us, our first feeling is, how home-like. But this idea is soon dispelled. The trees, grass, flowers, are all different from any ever seen, except as exotics in our fatherland. The fields are all open, undulating, prairie-like. As for a forest, at least in the old-fashioned American sense, you find really nothing deserving the name. Here and there a large fig tree, a kind of banyan, here and there a beautiful, thorny mimosa, looking at a little distance like an apple tree, here and there a dense bush, where, in other days, the elephant and buffalo were wont to roam and browse, where even now the leopard and lion have not ceased to make their lair; here and there a fine grove of the laurel, the yew, or other tribe of large trees, serve the double purpose of enriching the landscape and affording a moderate supply of timber and fuel for building and culinary purposes. Most of the trees belong to the evergreen class. The leaves of many are thick and glossy. Through all the season of spring and summer not a few of them are adorned with gay and bright blossoms. This is specially true of the thick jungles along the coast, where many of the evergreens belong to the leguminous tiibe, and have large branches of papilionaceous flowers. To this class of glossy-leaved, pod-bearing trees belongs the Kafir boom, as the Dutch call it, a species of erythrina, whose branches begin to be literally covered with thick masses of scarlet blossoms ere the winter is more than half gone, and so along till spring, the leaf-buds only opening as the flowers fall away. When these large clusters of beautiful scarlet blossoms are seen impinging upon the rank, green, glossy foliage of the African fig-tree, as, in due time, will always be the case when the latter has "married" the former, we have a combination of floral beauty on a scale of the greatest magnificence.

Whether the fields of Zululand were always so generally

open and prairie-like in appearance, or once all covered with wood, as our fathers found this western world, is more than we can say. Of the earlier ages of this part of Africa we have no record, save what we find in the comparatively dim, yet long-enduring tablets of Nolem. For the present, at least, the inhabitants have an aversion to extensive wood-lands, because of the refuge they afford the wild beast. Hence, every year, late in the fall and winter, when the earth, for months without rain, is parched, and the grass all withered and dry, one patch or district after another is burnt over, and most of the trees and shrubbery, save some of the more hardy kinds, or that which grows in deep ravines, or along the banks of rivers, is consumed. Of course previous care must be taken to burn off the grass in the immediate vicinity of dwellings, gardens, and other things that might be affected by fire, else the sweeping flames will lick these up with the rest. The dry grass once on fire, the line of flame moves on majestically, with power, often with speed, especially if there be wind at the time, sometimes at a rate of four or five miles an hour, till it reaches some well-beaten line of road, or some river, or until it is checked and extinguished by the dew of night. Where the grass is light, and there is little or no wind, the fire may be beaten out by the people, who arm themselves with brooms of green bushes for the purpose. But where the grass is tall, thick, and dry, and the wind brisk, the flames sweep along in the wildest, most furious way, their lambent crest streaming up here and there often four or five yards, rising and swelling with a crackling roar at each most delirate tide of freshening breeze. Now the poor traveller who is unfortunate enough to find the flames running athwart his path, must know how to set a bush-fire, else quicken his pace in flight. Then buffaloes, antelopes, and other quadrupeds are obliged to abandon their secluded retreats, the birds take to their wings, snakes and toads resort to their holes, snails draw up, lie still, and roast, centipedes round themselves into balls, while other smaller reptiles and insects

"Are melted into air, into thin air,

And, like the baseless fabric of a vision"

perish utterly at noon, and "leave not a rack behind."