ingly ignorant" of sin and of its predicted judgments, that sees nothing present but flowers and fruits, and nothing future but a glorious harvest. Let it be that Christianity has done so little. Yet, what but little have we of any other good, as things now are in the sin-distracted world, of health, or wealth, of beauty, genius, learning, power, success; of sympathy, help, encouragement, of pleasant memories and cheerful hores; and that little mixed with so much evil in our best conditions, and presently taken from us before it can be called our own?

Be it so. But what is that little, not in degree, but quality and effect, as compared with the paganism which Christianity has not supplanted, or the infidelity which hisses at it, or the antichristianism of the modern Rome, Byzantium, or Athens, that has interpreted its virtue out of it? If it be little, what is that little, to have tempered the asperities of its own contentious sects; to have raised and invigorated otherwise inert and lifeless masses, or checked and balanced their destructive agencies, and diffused through long dark ages of credulity and superstition, a leaven of art and learning, and restraining reverence, that has given to its own apostate nations so great social and political preeminence above the barbarous nations of the earth? What is now that little in these ends of the earth to which Christianity has retreated from the lands of its nativity, that in our families, villages and cities, our schools and colleges, our governments and laws, our labor, trade and commerce, a conservative element should exist with power to regulate, in measure, the social movement, and produce a civilization so rapid, prosperous and brilliant, that even Christian men, dazzled by the worldly splendor, have rejoiced in the illusion as significant of a speedy return to paradise, and already stretched out their hand to the tree of life; as if "the cherubim and the flaming sword" were not still ordained to keep us back? They too have mistaken the apparent for the real, the interpretation for the text. For the palingenesia is not so. It is not yet; though it will yet be.

But, if, in the way of cavil and objection, it should be still argued, that Christianity is not worth much if it fail to realize our speculative hopes and its own predictions as interpreted by the philosophers and politicians everywhere, let such persons

inquire what would be the natural consequence, if its light, such as it now reflects, should be quenched, and a sheer naturalism succeed? There are not wanting large portions of the world to which, if Christianity be not absolutely unknown, it has not penetrated with any practical effect, or from which it has been, for centuries, practically excluded. It were mere affectation to pretend that the so called Christian nations, if the light of Christianity, such as it is, were withdrawn from them, have any advantages which those countries had not for social and political advancement, or would not, in due time, be equally degraded. If any country could claim such advantages it would be our own, on whatever grounds the reckoning should be made. Let it then be supposed that the experiment were here attempted, not of abolishing Christianity by legislative enactments or popular violence, but of overshadowing and insensibly annulling it by the more ordinary process of secularization; by the fashionable insinuation of a worldly spirit, the gradual substitution of speculative conceits, of learned mythologies, of a licentious literature, of æsthetic entertainments, of mere philanthropic enterprise, political agitations, the arts of diplomacy, or the pomp, parade and circumstance of war. Let it be supposed that in our upward intellectual and material career, we should become giddy from the very height of our greatness, and that, looking abroad upon the outspread panorama of the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, we should, for the sake of the proffered boon, fall down and worship the lying spirit. Let it be supposed that the more distinctively religious classes should lose their propo:tion to the rapidly increasing native and foreign population, and, gradually, their restraining influence upon the body politic; that the church should consequently become stationary or retrogressive, subsiding into indifference, or stimulating itself unnaturally with ambitious and romantic hopes, or wasting its energies in political or sectarian controversies. Let it be supposed that this professed expectant of a heavenly kingdom should join in the universal physical activity, multiply its outside organizations, and exhaust its spirit in working its apparatus. Let it be supposed that while it was becoming lavish in its furniture and adornments, proud in its gorgeous display, fantastic in its movements, and boastful of its worldly patron

age and prospective conquests, the heavenly fire was going out upon its altars. Let it be supposed that the church and the state should imperceptibly lose their balance and proportion, and now become mutually repulsive, or again, coalesce for a common political effect. Let us suppose their respective venerated institutions to fall off insensibly from their old foundations; that the oracles should give out wild and contradictory responses; and, amidst the subtleties of philosophical dispute, the envenomed sophistries and falsehoods of partisan or sectarian controversy, the heats of popular harangue, and the uncertainties of loose and inconsistent interpretations, society should. become more and more excited and distracted; that the common atmosphere should be filled with murky vapors; that governments, politics, arts, science, commerce, trades, should crowd, every one upon every other, and all be driven onwards in fitful and phrenzied movement. Let us suppose that to the bewildered and infatuated people all this unnatural activity should seem only to indicate the march of a more vigorous civilization; that its progress should be hailed from every hill-top, its hozannas be rung in every temple, and the wild cry of the intoxicated thousands should be held as the voice of God heralding the material and political, and, by an absurd consequence, the moral, renovation of the world. What, upon these suppositions, would become of the last, the westernmost, the best, the most highly privileged of the nations, when, as so often before in history, its highest, proudest, most magnificent and exultant civilization should be weighed in the balances of moral government, and the fiery letters should come out upon the wall: Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin? Could philosophy guide us in such difficulties? Could it save us in such extremities? Would the deceitful cause of these evils be also their remedy and cure?

These suppositions are not impossible; for such things have been, or all history misleads us. They are sufficient, therefore, to call for the greatest consideration of educated men, and to awaken a deeper sense of their difficult responsibilities. Christian scholars will not refuse to see things as they are, to be cautioned and corrected. We are assured, in regard to the great questions which invite them, that "The wise shall

understand." But the true wisdom dwells not in "haunts obscure of old philosophy." None of the princes of this world have known it. "But the Spirit searcheth all things, yea the deep things of God," and it is his province to show them to the humble; and it is theirs to speak them, "not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth,” comparing spiritual things, not with the natural, but with the spiritual, making God his own interpreter. That promised Spirit waits for our call out of a lowly mind, in the utterances of a contrite heart. "The meek will he guide in judgment, and the meek will he teach his way." Whoever is emptied of himself will be filled with the fulness of God.

ARTICLE II.

EARLY LIFE OF GOVERNOR WINTHROP.

The Life and Letters of John Winthrop, Governor of the Massachu setts Bay Company at their Emigration to New England, 1630. By ROBERT C. WINTHROP. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1864.

We do not know when any biography has been more welcome to us than this. It meets a real want in the annals of New England, and we wish it might be followed by the lives of others of those ancient worthies, now so dimly seen, and fast fading out of sight as to their individual characters. It is a strengthening, inspiriting book for these gloomy days of war; a book that increases one's faith in God and humanity; a book of lessons for young and old. Its origin is detailed in the introductory chapThe author, on a brief visit to England in 1847, "ran down" to spend a Sunday in the home of his ancestors, the little town of Groton, Suffolk. He joins in the service at the same church where they had worshipped; he finds their tomb in the churchyard, and, by a striking coincidence, just repaired,

ter.

almost as if in anticipation of the arrival of one who might be presumed to take a peculiar interest in its condition"; and he searches out the traces of their home, the outlines of the cellar, and one old mulbery-tree still standing in what was probably the garden-plot," being all that is left to mark the spot. He finds a story current there that the Winthrops were regicides, and had fled to America, leaving money buried somewhere about the family precincts.

"Perhaps," says he, "it was supposed that I had come over to search for it! At any rate, I believe it was the monstrousness of this tradition which prompted the resolution which I then formed that I would employ my earliest leisure from public occupation in rendering an act of filial justice to my progenitors. I did not, indeed, imagine that this absurd story had obtained currency or credit anywhere except where I heard it, or that there were not those on the spot who understood its utterly apocryphal character; and certainly I did not forget that here, in New England, there are memorials enough, both of the elder and the younger Winthrop, to leave no room for such a mistake as this, even in the mind of any well educated school-boy. But it is not the less true, that there has been no extended biography of either of them; nor any book containing such an account of their lives, services and characters, as would be likely to render them familiar to the modern public mind."

There is no doubt that the book will, according to the author's expressed wish, "do its own proper work of justification with those into whose hands it shall fall.” Its style, no less than its subject, will bespeak not only attention but admiration.

The biographer traces back the family name in its varied orthography, through six and a half centuries. The first of the family of whom he gives any account, is Adam Winthrop (the grandfather of the Massachusetts Governor), who was born in 1498, at Lavenham, Suffolk, and passed the most of his life in London, becoming a distinguished member, and finally master, of the ancient and honorable company of Clothworkers. His son Adam was born in London in 1548; and Groton, formerly the lordship of the Abbot of Bury, having at the dissolution of the monasteries some years before, been granted to the father, it fell to his second son, Adam, in the distribution of the family This Adam was a man of intelligence and scholarship,

estate.