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EVERY TEACHER AND FAMILY SHOULD HAVE

WEBSTER'S NEW DICTIONARY. WITH THREE THOUSAND ILLUSTRATIONS.

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The best English Dictionary,(1) in its ETYMOLOGIES; so says the North American Review for January, 1865; (2) VOCABULARY; has 114,000 words, 10,000 more than any other English Dictionary; (3) DEFINITIONS; always excelling in this, made now still more valuable; (5) PRONUNCIATION; Prof. Russell, the eminent orthoepist, declares the revised Webster "the noblest contribution to science, literature, and education ** yet pro

duced;" (6) PICTORIAL ILLUSTRATIONS; (7) TABLES, one of which, that of Fictitious Names, is worth the cost of the volume; (8) as the LATEST; (9) in MECHANICAL EXECUTION; (10) the LARGEST single volume ever published.

In One Volume of 1,840 Royal Quarto Pages, and in various Common and Fine Bindings.

"GET THE LATEST." "GET THE BEST." "GET WEBSTER." Published by G. & C. MERRIAM, Springfield, Mass. SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. Specimen pages of Illustrations and other new features will be sent on application to the publishers. Etymological part remarkably well done. ** We have had no English Dictionary nearly so good in this respect."-North Am. Review, Jan., 1865.

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"In our opinion, it is the best Dictionary that either England or America can boast."-National Quarterly Review, Oct., 1864.

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"No English scholar can dispense with this work."-Bibliotheca Sacra. Jan, 1865. Truly a Magnum Opus, a monument of industry, research, and erudition, worthy the most cordial recognition and the highest praise of all who write, speak or study the English language."-Evang. Quarterly Review, Jan., 1865.

"In its general accuracy, completeness, and practical utility, the work is one which none who can read or write can henceforward afford to dispense with."-Atlantic Monthly, Nov., 1864.

'Viewed as a whole, we are confident that no other living language has a Dictionary which so fully and faithfully sets forth its present condition as this last edition of Webster does that of our written and spoken English tongue."-Harper's Mag. Jan.,'65. "THE NEW WEBSTER is glorious-it is perfect-it distances and defies competition -it leaves nothing to be desired. As a monument of literary labor, or as a business enterprise, magnificent in conception and almost faultless in execution, I think it equally admirable."-J. H. Raymond, LL.D., Pres. Vassar College.

WEBSTER'S SCHOOL DICTIONARIES, Viz.:
III. HIGH SCHOOL.
V. COUNTING HOUSE.
VI. UNIVERSITY.

I. THE PRIMARY. II.

COMMON SCHOOL. IV. ACADEMIC. These popular School Dictionaries, having been thoroughly revised, being extensively regarded as the standard authority in Orthography, Definition, and Pronunciation, and as THE BEST Dictionaries in use, are respectfully commended to teachers and others. They are much more extensively sold and used than all others combined.

Webster's School Dictionaries are published by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., Philadelphia; MASON BROTHERS, New York, and sold by them and all Booksellers.

Twenty-five copies of WEBSTER'S NEW ILLUSTRATED DICTIONARY have just been placed in as many of the Boston public schools by the school board of that city. The State of Maryland having recently established a Free School system, its State Board of Education has just adoptel Webster's series of Dictionaries as the standard, and for exclusive use in the Public Schools of that State.

Nearly every State Superintendent of Public Instruction in the Union, or corresponding officer, where such an one exists, has recommended WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY in the strongest terms. Among them are those of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Penn sylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Iowa, Wis consin, Minnesota, North Carolina, Alabama, California, and also Canada-TWENTYTHREE in all.

STATE PURCHASES.

The State of NEW YORK has placed 10,000 copies of Webster's Unabridged in as many of her Public Schools. The State of WISCONSIN, over 4,000-nearly every School. The State of NEW JERSEY, 1,500-nearly every School. The State of MICHIGAN made provision for all her Schools. The State of MASSACHUSETTS has supplied her Schools-nearly all.

More than ten times as many are sold of Webster's Dictionaries, as of any other series in this country. At least four-fifths of all the School Books published in this country own Webster as their standard, and of the remainder, few acknowledge any standard. SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES & BRITISH PROVINCES.

Ce list of Rev. E. P. Tenney,
of Boston.

BOSTON REVIEW.

VOL. VI.-APRIL, 1866.-No. 32.

ARTICLE I.

NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL.

History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe. By W. E. H. LECKY, M. A. Two Vols. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1866.

Essays on the Supernatural Origin of Christianity, with special reference to the Theories of Renan, Strauss and the Tübingen School. By Rev. GEORGE P. FISHER, M. A., Professor of Church History in Yale College. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1866.

WHOSE is this world? By whom, and how, is it managed? These questions underlie the scepticism and the faith of all ages. They take up the essential points of belief and unbelief. They are vital to the settlement of a sound religious foundation. They have accordingly been agitated, debated, and variously determined in successive schools and systems of philoso phy, time out of mind. Every generation has given them a fresh hearing; has canvassed them under its peculiar lights and stimulants, now to one conclusion, and anon to another. They are up for the same purpose in our day. Our scholars are handling them, in the spirit of reverent devoutness, of timid or politic compromise, of bold, defiant dogmatism. Some of the most recent and eagerly read issues of the press are controverting these matters. They are prominent in our secular

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as well as our religious periodicals. The special culture of this century is giving this ancient controversy some aspects of its own. One of these is, that almost as many of the prominent supporters of the sceptical side of the argument, and some of the ablest of them, are working their batteries inside of the nominally Christian line. That is, the cause of substantially deistical anti-christianism is finding just now staunch and ingenious defenders in professedly orthodox communions, as well as in others which assume the name of liberal churches. Those of them like Powell and Williams and Colenso appear to stand upon about the same platform with Theodore Parker and his disciples. Their avowed object is, of course, to reconstruct the Christian system into closer harmony with the progress of this period of the world. But as yet they have shown no ability of this kind. They have a genius for disorganization and destruction; but for rebuilding and rehabilitating they have as yet found neither time nor faculty, whatever may be the wishes of some of the more conservative. We are sometimes exhorted to address ourselves to this controversy as something new under the sun, in its elementary positions and forces. We can not so regard it. It is essentially the disputation of the early Christian centuries: "Not whether the first principles of ethics and natural religion are true and valid, but whether natural religion is able to secure the eternal interests of mankind—a question which is constantly recurring, and which constitutes the gist of the controversy between scepticism and Christianity at this very moment, as much as it did in the first ages of the church." For, continues Professor Shedd, from whom we quote: "it was their desire," the anti-christian philosophers, " to establish human philosophy upon the ruins of Christianity, as a universal religion sufficient to meet the wants of humanity, and therefore rendering the revealed system superfluous." What but

this are our sceptics attempting?

The recent volumes of Mr. Lecky and Professor Fisher substantially represent the present state of the argument, on the opposite sides of this great debate. Mr. Hurst's work on Rationalism, noticed in our last number, gives the historical aspect of the conflict from the evangelical stand-point. Mr.

1 History of Christian Doctrine. I. pp. 64, 65.

Lecky writes in the interest of the sceptical school, with much literary ability. His reading is extensive, and he is a master in the art of effective contrast and grouping. He aspires to the philosophical treatment of his subject both in the temper and the method of his discussion, more successfully, however, in the first than the second. Religion and theology, in his view, are under the same law of development with material science; must submit to the same conditions of acceptance or rejection. Here he is alike illogical and unhistoric. His favorite theory, in regard to religious and supramundane matters, is that belief and scepticism flow and reflow by some kind of tidal influence which no one can account for, but which sweeps along resistlessly, carrying away old faiths of immemorial reverence. Thus, he says, that the universal belief in witchcraft drifted off, awhile ago, into the Dead Sea, whither, in the same way, he is sure the belief in all miracles is just going, if not already gone. But, the superstition about witches gave way before the clearer processes of the human understanding carefully re-examining the subject; while no such result is following the most scholarly inquiry into the physical world and textual exegesis, as related to the miracles of the Bible. Mr. Lecky strangely overstates the facts, at this point. The supernaturalism of Christianity is in no such dilapidated condition as he assumes. Then, again, in subjecting the science of theology to the same laws which govern other scientific growths, does he mean to teach that these are the sport likewise of his currents of belief and unbelief which silently work under old foundations, overturning all that the heart used to love, and the reason to venerate? We had thought that thorough study was the especial boast of the natural as well as rational philosophy of the day; that the age was not quite so much afloat as this at the mercy of what seems hardly more than accident.

Under this tendency, the author sees the intellect or sentiment of the modern world advancing to the enthronement of the individual conscience as the verifying faculty of all truth and error; to a theology, the cardinal doctrines of which shall be equality, fraternity, the suppression of war, the elevation of the poor, the love of truth, the diffusion of liberty." Rejecting the dogmatic and the miraculous from the Scriptures, he gives

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