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ions, whatever they may be, by printing or otherwise; that the Church, be it ever so Catholic, has no power to employ force; that the Church, of whatever name or dogma, should be separated from the State, and the State from the Church; and that civil government is under no obligation to repress religious error by legal penalties. Father Hecker and his colaborators in the Catholic World, do not profess-nor so far as we know, do they admit-that in regard to liberty of conscience and of worship, liberty of speech and of the press, the freedom of the Church from State control, and of the State from ecclesiastical dictation, their principles differ from ours or from the principles incorporated into the constitutions and laws of the United States.

Yet, in the Council at Rome, the American bishops, one and all, are as ready as the Italians to accept and affirm the personal infallibility of the Pope, and in so doing to accept and affirm the inallibility of the Encyclical, which calls on all the faithful to condemn all the principles most essential to the American idea (which has become the nineteenth centu ry's idea) of good government. Some persons, reasoning in a common place way from known principles of human nature, ascribe this remarkable phenomenon to the fact that those American bishops are in no sense representatives of the great communion which they govern, but, being designated as well as consecrated by the Pope, are simply functionaries of his. The Paulists, in the "Catholic World," assure us that the Roman Catholics generally in the United States, and in particular those of them who were once Protestants, are eagerly waiting to accept with religious confidence the dogma of Papal infallibility-in other words, the declaration that the Encyclical, with all its denunciation of civil and religious liberty, caine from an infallible author. We are willing to believe that not only the bishops and the Pauli-ts, but the Jesuits, and the Redemptorists, and the monastic orders generally, in the United States as in other countries, are the devoted adherents of the Pope-his "regular army," and venerate him as embodying in his person the infallibility of the Church, which is to them the infallibility of God. But we do not believe that the secular clergy-the "militia" of the Church, the priests who

have the charge of congregations, and are in contact with the people-still less do we believe that the more intelligent laymen of their communion are ready to accept a dogma that draws after it such consequences. If the laity could speak and vote in the ecumenical Council of 1870, the decrees and acts of that body would be very unlike what we are likely to see. But that so-called Catholic system which has the Bishop of Rome for its Head-Center, excludes the Christian people from all participation in ecclesiastical affairs. It is an absolute hierarchy; and its professed infallibility—whether lodged in the Pope or in the Council-is simply hierarchical. Under that system the Christian people have only to accept whatever dogmas the hierarchy may define, and to bear all burdens, however grievous to be borne, which the hierarchy may lay upon their shoulders.

ARTICLE IV.-REVIEW OF THE LIFE OF DR. JOSEPH ADDISON ALEXANDER.

The Life of Joseph Addison Alexander, D. D., Professor in the Theological Seminary at Princeton, New Jersey. By HENRY CARRINGTON ALEXANDER. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1870. 2 vols. 2 vols. 12mo.

1870.

WITHIN the last few months the public have been favored with biographies of two of the eminent men who, for many years, were instructors in the Theological Seminary at Princeton. In the case of both alike the work of recording their history has been delayed for a much longer period than usual -eight years in the one case, and nineteen in the other-and for a longer period than is ordinarily desirable. But it is better that such a work should be done late, than that it should never be done; and, in the reading of these volumes, we feel anew the regret, which we believe many have often felt, that no one has as yet undertaken to give to the world the record of the lives of one and another of those remarkable men, who gave to Yale College its wide reputation in the last generation. The one point, however, to which we have referred, is almost the only one wherein these two biographies resemble each other. Dr. Miller was a man whose whole career, from his early manhood, was connected with the public life of the Church. Dr. Alexander, on the other hand, was a retiring scholar, who mingled little with the outward world, and had little to do with the controversies of his time. As a natural and necessary result of this wide difference between the two men, we find the volumes, which speak of the former, abounding in incident, and largely filled with a wide extended correspondence; but those which have reference to the latter have almost nothing to tell beyond the limited circle of his daily studies and his nearest friends. The life of a scholar, however, possesses a peculiar charm belonging to itself, and the story of it must have, to appreciative minds, something of the same interest

which the experience, while it continued, had to the one who lived it. We are glad to see the biography of this distinguished scholar presented to the world.

Dr. Addison Alexander was one of those fortunate-or, as some would think, unfortunate-men whose whole life is pas-ed in the Academic sphere. He was born, indeed, in Philadelphia, where his father, the celebrated Dr. Archibald Alexander, was pastor of one of the Presbyterian Churches. But at the time of the establishment of the Theological Seminary at Princeton, when he was only four years old, the family removed to that place, and from that date (1813) to the date of his death, in 1861, he knew no other home. The influences of a collegiate town and of a professor's house were, therefore, about him from the early opening of his intellectual powers. Books and students were on every side of him. Inviting calls to the scholarly career came to him with more alluring voices in every succeeding year. His nature, too, answered to these calls and influences. His mind seems at once, and eagerly, in his boyhood, to have turned toward the study of language. He had such strong inclinations, and such irresistible enthusiasm, that his friends wisely felt it to be useless to interfere with him, or even to attempt to guide him. They left him alon in the library to follow his own sweet will, and were assured that he was safe in the keeping of one of the best of earthly loves -the love of reading. The future of such a youth can hardly be doubtful. Divine Providence does not give such talents, and such circumstances, and such prophesyings of the coming years, without caring for and bringing to its realization the result so manifestly designed. Somewhere there will prove to be a field for the working of such powers and, in general, it will be within that circle of scholars, among whom the powers have displayed themselves as they were developing. The gifted youth will become, as it were, the child of his own University. He will pass on through his whole career, and, at last, quietly close it in the same peaceful and pleasant retreat where it began. The influence and blessing of his life to the world will become a part of that which gives fame to the great institution, while his life itself will be as happy as it is unpre

tending and uneventful. This was, in an eminent degree, the case with the subject of these memorial volumes.

The story of Dr. Alexander's life, as one might naturally anticipate after what has been said, can soon be told. He was born on the 24th of April, 1809, and removed to Princeton, as already intimated, in 1813. As he advanced in his boyhood he attended different schools, and came under the instruction, among other teachers, of Robert Baird, who afterwards became so well known to the Christian world. To him he seems to have been indebted for much inspiration and efficient guidance in his linguistic studies. The friendship resulting from their intercourse at this period continued through life, and was alike honorabie to both. At the age of fifteen, he had made such progress that he was able to enter the Junior Class in Princeton College. Immediately he took a prominent position among his classmates, and was esteemed by them all as a man of extraordinary powers. "The boys at the Academy," says his biographer, "thought he knew as much Greek as Mr. Baird, and that it was impossible for him to be entangled amidst the intricacies of mathematics; and some of his associates of the college fancied that he was superior, on the score of his attainments, to most of his instructors of the college faculty. This was not only the enthusiastic estimate of youth, but the deliberate and mature judgment of riper years." Such judgments respecting classmates are oftener formed by college students than they are justified by the facts of the case, but occasionally, no doubt, they are true, and, if we look at certain departments of study, they were no doubt true in the present instance. the graduation of his class, in September, 1826, he shared the first honors of the college with two others. By lot the Valedictory Oration was assigned to him, and thus he was put for ward as the speaker for the class. Though only five months beyond his seventeenth birthday, he is said to have acquitted himself on this occasion so well, that several eminent persons at once predicted for him a very brilliant career. A year afterward he was elected to the office of Tutor in the college, but declined it, and devoted himself for a while to private study, after which he engaged in teaching, and, at the same time, in editorial labors. The college, however, was not content to

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