in it, they can only enjoy and admire, and think of their splendid choir. How unlike to what Edwards describes his Church music at Northampton to have been at one time: "Our public praises were then greatly enlivened. God was then served in our psalmody, in some measure, in the beauty of holiness. It has been observable, that there has been scarce any part of divine worship, wherein good men amongst us have had grace so drawn forth, and their hearts so lifted up in the ways of God, as in singing his praises. . . . . ... They were wont to sing with unusual elevation of heart and voice, which made the duty pleasant indeed." RELIGION THAT CAN WALK A MILE. It would not seem to require very vigorous piety to do this. An ordinary Christian diet should give strength for it. Many a man walks farther with his business; and surely one's religion cannot be a heavier burden than his worldly work. How comes it to pass, then, that not a few of our churches, small and half filled, and large and half filled, too, are so near together, and their pastors within hail of each other? The outlay for a building is great, from two to fifty thousand, and often by a draft on the charity of the surrounding churches. The pastors are put on the lowest figures for a living, and then often tardily paid; and as the enterprise is feeble and often desperate, a very smart man is thought to be indispensable. So the annual expenses are burdensome to the little flock. The strain on them is so great that they have little or nothing left for broad and urgent national and world-wide Christian charities. Indeed, some of these village and suburban and city enterprises are constitutionally small and feeble, like dwarfed swarms of bees that need feeding to be kept alive through the winter. Yet they do not find it difficult to arrest many of our young ministers. The clerical supply is so nearly exhausted that only here and there one reaches the great border field of destitution. In that outside world men and women and children are willing to go five and nine miles, if they can but hear the Gospel. And their piety is strong enough to take them that distance, while these feeble churches, of which we speak, have so feeble a piety that it cannot carry their members a mile to a church already established. Here is a mystery. Is piety feeble in proportion to its privileges? Can the means of grace for a man be so great as to reduce his religious vigor so that he can go only around the corner to church? With some personal knowledge of the spiritual destitution and vig. orous piety in Home Missionary fields "down East," and "out West," we venture a suggestion to some of these unprogressive enterprises of which we have been speaking, and to certain communities that are anxious to start more of them. We suggest that they give their house of worship, after paying up the mortgages on it, to some destitute county in Minnesota. It would furnish from two to twelve houses for such humble and tough piety as they have there. We suggest that they give their pastor to the Aroostook, and his annual salary to support half a dozen more ministers there. What a contribution for one feeble church! A minister and salaries for six, as its annual donation! But they can do it by walking a mile. A contribution of from nine hundred to three thousand annually by one feeble church that can now hardly keep itself alive! And all this after paying its proportion for sustaining worship in the inviting and half filled church a mile off. As some gracious return for such benevolence the self-denial and exercise of walking a mile to worship God will impart to a formerly weak piety something of the vigor and hardiness of frontier religion. The idea, moreover, will prove a positive and constant Christian luxury that one, for Christ's sake and the destitute, has given up a church enterprise not needed, and is now giving as much for Home Missions, as he once gave to have his own will. And all by walking a mile to church! AT last we have the creed of the "Broad Church," at least upon one point of importance. Bread and the Newspaper in the September Atlantic enlightens our darkness on this long dubious subject. The credo aforesaid is this that all the poor fellows who fall (on our side, that is,) in the war now raging, are therefore sure of a place in Abraham's bosom. The Divinity professor of the Broad Church (at the corner of Washington and School streets) affirms this, and notifies the "Narrow Church" that its presence is not wanted at the funeral rites of such. We heartily wish that every soldier of our flag was a soldier also of Christ. We know that many of them are. But we remember no gospel voucher to the saving efficacy of lead and gunpowder per se. This dogma smacks a little of the Koran ;- heaven to all who die in arms against the Infidel. We think that we recollect a good deal said in various autocratic and other talks, about the odium theologicum. Have we here an attempt to smother the orthodox with a puff of the odium patriot-icum? After all, however, our Medical Doctor of Doctrines has not widened his ecclesiastical longitude so very much-bounding it thus, as he does, by Mason's and Dixon's line. 7.12 THE Reverend Pyro Technics preached a splendid sermon last Sunday evening at the Church of the Holy Vanity on "Man Etherial and Explosive; the Heroism of Dogmatism," which kept the audience a full hour. We are induced to refer to this wonderful performance, partly that the congregation at the Holy Vanity may know what a very remarkable minister they have, and partly, also, that the natives in general may know. Such a candle must not be put under a bushel. Be it ours to set it on a stick. Then all around may see and admire, and another pleasant illustration will be supplied of Mr. Shakspeare's observation, "How far that little candle throws his beams." We have heard of a minister who always made it a point to enter tain his funeral audiences with the good qualities of the deceased -on the charitable "nisi bonum " principle of the old poet. Of course, his stock of eulogistic material sometimes was decidedly scanty. On one occasion, all that he could say was this that the departed was said to have been a capital hand in running to fires. If some of our religious newspapers, and even pulpits, should give up the ghost, we have a notion that the thing, which would be most characteristically remembered about them, would be their skill in playing the cold-water hose on consciences that should rather be kept in a quick blaze of awakening under the truth and spirit of the Lord. WE cannot close the first volume of the Boston Review without an expression of devout gratitude to the Author of Truth for the favor he has shown to our endeavors. In the opening of unprecedented civil and commercial reverses in the country we commenced this work. We looked for neither popular credit nor pecuniary profit. We entered into it because we thought that Evangelical truth and the Great Master asked of us the sacrifice. In the number of friends discovered and in the variety and quality of the communications offered us, in the number of subscribers obtained, and in the very extensive and favorable notices of the Review by the press, we have succeeded beyond our best expectations. We are now prepared to enter into another year of this work with stronger hopes, and greater energy, and with a wider and more cordial offer of theological and literary resources. INDEX. A. About Beginnings, - ΠΕΡΙ ΑΡΧΩΝ. Αr- Accidents or Providences, Which? Article After the Storm, 594. Annihilation of the wicked, theory of, ex- Apocalyptic symbols, Generic Application Augustine and his mother, 363. B. Beecher's, H. W., theology reviewed, 129, Bible, Latin Vulgate, origin of the, 184. 53 tutor to the Dauphin, 544; is denied a Bull-Run Battle, and its teachings, 505. C. Canaan, not invaded, but repossessed by Carthage, Council of,on Infant Baptism, 21. 595; three classes of ministers with ref- Circumcision, as related to baptism, 24. Creasy's Fifteen Decisive Battles of the Creeds, article on, 489; danger of being uses of, 496; a system of principles, Cyprian's Letter to Fidus, article on, 21. D. Daniel Safford, Memoir of, noticed, 608. Dexter's Twelve Discourses, noticed, 201. Doctrinal Preaching, article on, 209; doc- Du Challau's Explorations and Adventures E. Edwin of Deira, noticed, 606. Ellicott's Commentary on the Epistle to the Evenings with the Doctrines, noticed, 93. pose was such as made the result a cer- F. Fear as a Christian Motive, article on, 165; Future Punishment, Will it be merely the Re- G. Gibeah, A Lesson for the Times, article 432. Goodhue's Crucible, or Tests of a Regenerate H. Historic Arminianism, article on, 287; Ar- |