.

V. The citizen of the New Jerusalem has a very tender regard for the poor and neglected among men. He espouses them as his friends. He adopts them as fellow-citizens. He takes them as his Master's representatives. "He that putteth not out his money to usury: nor taketh reward against the innocent."

The Levitical law against oppressing the poor, is not a law against taking interest. The poor were to be helped and encouraged. The innocent are constantly before the public for judgment. They are constantly urging upon men some claim for redress of grievances, for restoration to privilege and immunities. No good time coming till Christ comes, when this will not be the case. Right and wrong are in deadly conflict. In this country are four millions of men, women and children, whose status civil, social and religious, is to be determined by the citizens of the nation. They innocent of all crime against the republic. They were faithful among the faithless. They have purchased the civic crown. They have helped to save the life of the state. If we are citizens of the New Jerusalem, we shall look after their interests. We shall not accept political tranquility, place, anything, as a reward against them.

are

These are the qualities requisite for entrance upon the joys of the New Jerusalem. It is a sanctified character, a sanctified spirit, a sanctified tongue, sanctified taste, a sanctified life, all sanctified by the blood of the Redeemer, that gives man a passport to heaven. Have we these qualities. If so, we shall never be moved. Though heaven and earth pass away, His word shall not pass away.

CHRIST AS A PREACHER.

"A greater than Jonas is here."-Math. xii. 40.

THE Lord Jesus Christ was greater than Jonas, and greater than all others, as a PREACHER.

Preaching was a great work with him, as many texts show. "And he said unto them, let us go into the next town, that I may preach there also; for therefore came I forth." And he preached in their synagogues throughout all Galilee." "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor."

He was greatest of all preachers in real eloquence. This was predicted of Jesus by Isaiah xi. 1, 2, 3, 4. And the Psalmist refers to him when he says, "Grace is poured into thy lips." He

was earnest, natural, clear and complete in his views, and master of language. He recognized the dependence of thought upon language, and was exact in statement, and could draw at will upon all imagery, and paint to the life. Witness his summary of the Decalogue, his talk with Nicodemus, and many of his parables. Neither Peter the Hermit nor Whitfield drew such vast and admiring crowds to hear them as he drew, even into deserts. How often his crafty enemies secretly counseled to take him, and no man dared to lay hands on him lest the people should rise up in his defense.

Our Saviour was the greatest of all preachers in the presentation and enforcement of doctrine. Even Paul did not set forth depravity so positively and forcibly as did Christ. "The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." "The whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick." "A good tree can not bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." In the parable of the laborers, he brought out Divine Sovereignty with such force as to silence cavilers; and again, at Nazareth, referring to the many widows, and the many lepers in Israel, in the days of Elias, that were utterly passed by, he so pungently preached this humbling doctrine that all that were in the synagogue were filled with wrath. In the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, he presented the doctrine of eternal punishment with such vivid reality as no other preacher ever did. The freeness and fulness of divine grace stands out to all the world in the parable of the Prodigal Son. And so of all the doctrines of the Gospel sys

tem.

He could expose and rebuke with terrific power. No prophets ever unearthed and denounced wickedness as he did in the case of the scribes and Pharisees. The invective of Demosthenes is nothing in comparison for severity.

No minister could comfort the sorrowing as he did Martha and Mary, and others, nor minister hope to the trembling penitent, as he did to Mary Magdalen. He never broke the bruised reed, nor uenched the smoking flax.

ARTICLE X.

LITERARY NOTICES.

1.-The Intuitions of the Mind inductively investigated. By JAMES McCOSH, LL.D. New York: Robert Carter & Brothers. pp.

448.

THIS is an effort to state the claims, define the limits, and rescue intuitions or native convictions from the modern school of sensational and " experential" philosophers. Not that the claim for the validity of the intuitions is a new one. On the contrary, an important place has been assigned to intuitions by every writer of note, from Plato to Sir William Hamilton, but the tests and grounds of evidence have not been so strictly defined till now.

The position here taken is that the mind begins its acts of intelligence with knowledge. (p. 100.)

This was the ancient doctrine to which a return is now proposed. Since the days of Hume it has been a favorite theory with many that perceptions of the mind were only impressions, and that ideas were only faint images of such impressions. It has always been difficult to show the steps by which we get from impressions to ideas of externalities. If the mind in its earliest operations can not perceive, at what precise period of its existence, it may be asked, does it begin to perceive? Not that the mind in its earliest operations possesses abstract knowledge, but it is claimed that it has perceptions, just as truly as years afterward. From such perceptions of the concrete comes the abstract.

The author holds that the mind is endowed with at least two cognitive powers, semi-perception and self-consciousness. This consciousness of externality is fundamental, and hence trustworthy. If not trustworthy, when does it become so?

The doctrine is expected to find opponents. There will be found men who affirm the unreliability of the senses, and deny the existence of matter. Such speculative minds content themselves with unsettling rather than establishing views. But the great body of intelligent men have neither time nor inclination for metaphysical bewilderment, and will forever return to their native convictions as proof of the existence of matter, the general reliability of the senses, and the duty of divine worship.

66 per

Native convictions or intuitions are defined by McCosh as ceptions formed by looking in upon objects." He shows that there are intuitions regulating our cognitions, beliefs and judgments, whether intellectual or moral.

An inquiring mind will naturally ask: Though we in general resort to native convictions for proof of many phenomena, can we place implicit confidence in those convictions? Are not our intuitions sometimes in error, and if so, what degree of reliance can be placed on them? What are the evidences of reliability? "May we, when hard pressed, resort to native convictions as self-evident, and declare them beyond the reach of refutation?" The author answers such inquiries by giving some tests of intuitive knowledge. First, the primary mark of the truth of such convictions is self-evidence. A second mark may be necessity, and a third universality of conviction. These are not necessarily distinct and equal. A conviction which is universal would seem to be necessary, and therefore self-evident. If argued that the truth of such tests is not susceptible of demonstration, it may be answered that the reasoning is as conclusive as most metaphysical reasoning, and much more satisfactory, and that if the same principle can be used in later years in derived operations, why not in earlier years in primary mental operations?

Passing from primitive cognitions, he considers the relation between our intuitions and primitive beliefs. He connects belief intimately with cognitions, holding that all belief is dependent on and subsequent to, knowledge; that the mind starts with cognitions, but that the representative power involves beliefs; that beliefs gain upon cognitions, so that a body of primitive beliefs soon goes far beyond our knowledge; that the superstructure of belief may be grand and imposing, but the foundation must always be knowledge.

Of the objective existence of space and time, it is held the mind has clear, native convictions. It must be admitted that McCosh argues for the validity of our intuitions, in this respect, in a negative manner, as if to avoid rather than establish results. He holds that if we deny the objective existence of space and time, we may as easily deny the existence of objects in space and events in time, which would be repugnant to common sense. So he falls back upon our intuitions to relieve us from this dilemma.

Primitive judgments follow naturally after primitive beliefs. An important place is given to intuitions in morals and theology. It is held that intuitions require man to be a moral and religious being, and point him to the one being, the source of all power and good

ness.

This book is something of a novelty in one direction. It is full of readable metaphysics. The style, somewhat diffuse, will perhaps render it popular, while supplementary chapters and sections. give critical notes of the history of the several points discussed.

2.--Felix Holt, The Radical. By GEORGE ELIOTT. New York: Harpers. 1866.

THE whole impression of this story is that of power and incompleteness. The first makes itself felt throughout, in the description of scenery, the delineation of character, the action of the plot, the grouping and working of the incidents and forces of the drama. The latter confronts you at the close, where you feel that the vigorous author has failed to do justice to more than one of her people, and has left us quite too much in uncertainty concerning the fruits of the seed which she has been sowing, with much zeal, along her pages. She has, with not a little painfulness, got up an agent to accomplish a large amount of social good. One would like to see more plainly whether the results are equal to the great expectations. Felix is a giant. Gaza?

Was he strong enough to carry off the gates of

That is to say this book is a dissertation, under the form of a novel, on human and social renovation. It looks toward the millennium. It would set forth the powers which shall bring in that year of political and moral jubilee. Felix Holt is the good man coming, who, being adequately multiplied, shall work out the problem which thousands of weary watchers would be glad to see finally and fully solved. Much of energy and goodness, however, as there is in him, we confess that we do not see in him or his theory of life, a sufficient pledge of the social regeneration of which he is made a kind of John the Baptist. This book would rank, as a work of genius, far higher than "John Halifax, Gentleman." But we are free to say that, as a type of the self-denying philanthropist, John Halifax suits us much better than Felix Holt.

As a working power in society, there is not enough of essential Christianity in this gospel for the times. Yet, in the portraiture of the dissenting clergyman, who so strongly and justly enlists our sympathies, the author shows that she can both understand and love the thoroughly Christian spirit and life. Her present volumes are rich in truth and beauty, and are worthy of her fame as the author of Adam Bede and Silas Marner. At times she touches deep soundings in human experience. Many passages have held our attention as evidencing her thoughtful study of life. This is one of them :

"There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer, committed to no sound except that of low