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pate with the minister in some of the church services. The Psalms here selected are arranged for all the Sabbaths of the year, and so divided in printing as to assign a verse alternately to the minister and to the congregation. For such a purpose the selection and arrangement are admirable.

Little Joe Carter, The Cripple, or Learning to Forgive; Sophia Bleecker, or The Girl who was always in a Hurry; Country Sights and Sounds for Little Eyes and Ears; The Beginning and The End; Willie Elton, The Little Boy who loved Jesus; The Gulf Stream, or Harry Maynard's Bible; The Penitent Boy and Other Tales; Mysie's Work, and How She did it. Presbyterian Board of Publication, 821 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. 1865.

These are volumes that will gladden the eyes of young readers, and improve their manners, and hearts too. We rejoice in the issues of this House, and cordially wish them a wide circulation.

22.-OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED. Fisher's Essays on the Supernatural Origin of Christianity. Scribner & Co. A valuable and timely work, to which we shall have occasion to return in our next number. Meanwhile, we will only notice here, that throughout the text, and in the general index, it gives the name of the Positivist Comte as Compte, contrary to the usage of the American Cyclopædia, Worcester and Webster, and all foreign and home authorities known to us. Is this an error or an innovation?

Bushnell's Christ and His Salvation; and Vicarious Sacrifice: Scribner & Co. :-To be reviewed.

Robertson's Life and Letters: Ticknor & Fields :-To be reviewed. Herman, or Young Knighthood. By E. FOXTON. 2 Vols. Lee & Shepard. A story of recent perils and deliverances, in our country, dedicated to the mothers of some of our dead heroes.

Massachusetts Ecclesiastical Law. By EDWARD BUCK. Gould & Lincoln. A book deserving more attention than we can now give it.

Hereward. The last of the English. By CHARLES KINGSLEY. Ticknor & Fields. A graphic picture of the barbarism and budding manliness of our early ancestors.

War Lyrics, and other Poems. By HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL. Ticknor & Fields. The best poems produced by the war, though not of equal merit.

The Mediterranean Islands. Sketches and stories of their Scenery, History, Painters, etc. By M. G. SLEEPER. With illustrations. Gould & Lincoln. Much better for young people than fancy tales, albeit fancy has not a little to do with its making up.

ARTICLE XII.

THE ROUND TABLE.

OUR SIXTH VOLUME. Perhaps we have come to such years and proportions and standing as not to need an annual introduction to our readers.

We can not forbear, however, to make record of our satisfaction in having established such a Periodical, and in finding it on an independent basis as early as its sixth year. It was our misfortune to commence the work in the opening year of the Rebellion, when so many literary interests came to a close, and almost all contracted their limits. Yet through this trying era we have steadily increased, and open a new volume under more favorable auspices than ever before. These things assure us that we have entered on unoccupied ground, and have the favor of God in our beginning and progress. We hope we are doing a good work for a sanctified literature and the church of Christ; and our increasing patronage by eminent Christian scholars is fast changing that hope into belief.

While we lessen the number and increase the size of our issues, changing from a Bi-monthly to a Quarterly, we do not design any real change in the quality of the Boston Review. We do not feel, in making this change, that we are yielding ourselves up to a massive and heavy dignity. We trust we are not yet compelled to that. We hope we shall not become learnedly uninteresting. We purpose the same brevity in our articles; and if some of our contributors say true things in a droll way, or raise a smile midway in some scholastic thesis, or trim their thoughts to a style that is only their own, we shall not mar their manuscripts by making them write by pattern after some renowned authors, who gained their renown by not following any pattern. With something of theology, and religion, and literature, and broad topics of the day, we purpose to furnish a Review that many will read, all respect, and not a few delight in.

PIOUS GAMBLING. We find the following in the advertising columns of the Daily Evening Traveller, of Dec. 20, 1865:

"NOTICE TO UNITARIANS. Fairs are becoming unpopular. Why? Because they have features of questionable propriety. Among those are lotteries, raffles, grubs, and other sales by chance.

"The East Boston Unitarians will hold a Bazaar at Horticultural Hall, Boston, commencing Dec. 18th, and lasting one week, without any of those obnoxious peculiarities. Gifts, presents, holiday articles, flowers, wreaths, refreshments and other articles for sale at reasonable prices."

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We read the above with profound satisfaction, and we take this method of tendering to the Unitarians of East Boston our most heartfelt thanks for the valuable service they have thus rendered to good morals. How greatly such an example is needed in this particular direction, it can not be necessary to remind our readers. We take leave to commend this action of the East Boston Unitarians to the attention of those professing a stricter creed. To buy a slice of cake at a fair, for the chance and with the hope of getting a gold ring which is concealed in the loaf, is a transaction which no casuistry can remove from the category of gambling. All" sales by chance fall under the same character. If a minister goes into his pulpit on the Sabbath and preaches earnestly and eloquently to the young men of his congregation against the ruinous vice of gambling, and if, during the week, in the vestry of the same church, those young men be persuaded by pleasant smiles and soft voices to buy a slice of the ring-cake, or a ticket in a lottery or a raffle, and all, it may be, for the embellishment of the aforesaid pulpit, there is a painful inconsistency. And if one of the young men should win the gold ring, or, perchance a gold watch, and should find the scruples which had been strengthened by the faithful warning of his pastor strangely giving way, and, step by step, should pursue the downward road, until he should plunge recklessly and hopelessly into all the profligacy and wretchedness concealed in the gilded saloons they call "hells," would it not be according to the immutable law by which

"Tall oaks from little acorns grow"?

and would no part of the responsibility of that hopeless wreck lie at the door of those by whom the little acorn was planted? We commend this especially to the very serious consideration of those Christian matrons and maidens who may be honored with a place in the Committee of Management in getting up a Fair.

The great Soldiers' Fair, held in Boston two years ago, is still fresh in the memory of the community,as are also the things which were done there. An excellent army chaplain expressed to us at the time his deep sorrow, on the soldier's account, that so damaging an example should be set for them in the sober Christian city of Boston, in the raffles, lotteries, etc., by which the receipts of the Fair were unquestionably largely increased. Gambling, he said, was one of the most contagious and ruinous vices of the army: many a young man gambled there who never gambled before, and many wives and children and widowed mothers of soldiers suffered because the money which should, and otherwise would have been sent to them, was lost in gambling. Many a young man, he also said, had stood firm against all solicitations; but he feared lest, in such instances, the last barrier would

give way, when he learned that so many excellent people had been patronizing gambling in Boston for his especial benefit.

In past centuries lotteries were employed by European Governments as a means of raising revenues. In the year 1569 a drawing was held at the west door of St. Paul's cathedral, in which there were 40,000 shares, at half a sovereign each. This was for the repairing of the harbors of the kingdom. Within a recent period the French Government derived a large revenue from lotteries under its immediate direction, but so demoralizing were the results found to be, that the whole thing has been abolished now for some time by a law with very heavy penalties for its infraction-nothing less than confiscation and imprisonment. In England, for the same reason, the popular opposition had risen to such a height in 1823, that the last lottery was tolerated because it was the last. In the United States large sums of money were raised by lotteries in former times for great public works and for the founding of literary and philanthropic institutions, although as early as 1699 an Association of Ministers in Boston denounced the lottery as a 66 cheat," and its managers as "pillagers of the people." Within the present century express statutes for the suppression of lotteries have been framed in many States; in Tennessee, Virginia, Massachusetts, etc. In New York and Pennsylvania, lotteries have been declared to be public nuisances. It is well known that Art Unions have been ruled to be lotteries, and prohibited by the express decisions of both American and English

courts.

Can any one tell us what is the difference in principle between the lottery which was drawn at St. Paul's Cathedral in 1569, and the lotteries, raffles, grabs, and other sales by chance, so much in vogue in modern religious Fairs?

UNSANCTIFIED SCHOLARSHIP. The opinion gains with us, that the best writers on religion are religious men. In writings where the heart must come in so largely to interpret and express, as in Commentaries, theological treatises and works on practical godliness and of devotion, it seems absolutely necessary that the heart of the writer should be both favorably and piously affected towards his theme. Surely in interpreting and expressing the Word and will of God, his friends must be better than his enemies.

We are confirmed in the view by noticing the fact, that unsound religious theories are usually found connected with undevotional feeling in the same person. Indeed we feel assured that ardent piety must lead in the safe exposition of Scripture, and sound writing of theology. And this we say, thinking specially of not a few authors,

home and foreign, on biblical literature, the evidences of Christianity, interpretation and dogmatic theology. They so lack an experimental and hearty sympathy with their work, that it must be taken with a cautious allowance. Many of the German biblical scholars treat the Scriptures learnedly, but professionally as authors, as they would Homer or Philo. This is not reasonable or safe. Devoutly doing the will of God, gives great insight into his Word. Who but a devoted Christian can properly expound the Gospel and Epistles of the beloved disciple? Religious writing and preaching and teaching, as a profession, with only a professional interest in it, is no way safe; an if we mistake not, many errors in theology and religion have come into the church through unsanctified scholarship. Not that pious platitudes, and the names of the Deity, and sacred references, as common-places, make a work religious. A tone of deep, warm piety, practical godliness, and the outlines and bearings of a sound theology, may imbue and pervade a volume, that has little or nothing formally and technically religious in it. But plainly the pen that treats of holy things, to be safe and reliable, must be moved by a holy heart.

SOUR GRAPES-TEETH ON EDGE. That old proverb in Israel, while wrongly applied by the Jews, for which they were rightly reproved, is as true now of transmitted character as it was of the fathers and children of Ezekiel's times. Intellectual traits have been observed to propagate themselves along the line of families and races, as certainly as the magnetized wire carries the telegram. This is very noticeable in the comparison of nations, as of the French or the Germans with the Anglo-Saxons. Certain habits or tendencies of mind become fastened, by repetition from age to age, upon the inhabitants of different countries, by which they become known in the community of the civilized world as familiarly as by their geographical location. So is it with the formation and descent of moral qualities. "False as a Carthaginian" was a proverb in ancient days. "Haughty as a Turk " is another of our own times. Within a narrower limit, we often are witnesses of the same thing. The taint of avarice, of dishonesty, of licentiousness, is seen to pass. on from parent to child, until spreading out into a numerous kindred, it stamps a general reputation upon the whole. This is partly the effect of example-the young imitating the older, and, for aught we know to the contrary, the result also of an occult, yet real and powerful impress, of one vicious life upon others which spring from it in the order of nature. Who knows but there is a sort of spiritual photography even antedating birth, by which images are printed off in

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