introductory essay by the esteemed Foreign Secretary of the London Mission. The neat and cheap form of this reprint will secure its extended circulation.

Progressive Education: or Considerations on the Course of Life. Translated from the French of M. Necker du Saussure. 2 vols. small 8vo. Longman: 1839.

This is a very excellent work and well deserving the attention especially of those who are concerned in the management of young children. It contains the experience of a close and intelligent ob

server.

Several of the chapters, particularly those on obedience, will form a valuable antidote to the notions of laxity in discipline which have been so rife of late years. The fallacy of resting obedience to order, whether from parents or teachers, on the persuasion of the pupil is properly denounced. Parents say now, We never oblige him to do what he does not see the propriety of doing; we endeavour to show him the reason why he should do this or that.' They seem to have forgotten that when they have given an order, they have in so doing given what ought to be the strongest motive for obedience, and that by adding other motives, inducements, persuasions, and coaxings (for it soon comes to that), they are only weakening the grand motive and habit of obedience, and encouraging the arts of dissimulation and hypocrisy. Obedience, unless prompt, is as much like disobedience as it can be.

Literary Entelligence.

In the Press.

The Voluntary System: or The 'Purposes of the Heart'-not the Enactments of the Law-the rule of Christian devotedness. By Joseph Angus, M.A., being the Essay to which the Prize of 100 Guineas offered by the Society for the Protection of Religious Liberty has been awarded.

Miss Emma Roberts announces for Publication early in July a 'Guide to India,' in one vol. post 8vo., containing all needful information concerning the voyage out, and the overland route to India, with complete lists of necessaries and expences.

Memoir of the Life and Correspondence of Robert Morrison, D.D., F.R.S., M.R.A.S., &c., compiled by his Widow, with a Portrait, to which is appended, besides other interesting documents, a critical Essay on the Literary labours of Dr. Morrison. By the Rev. Samuel Kidd, Professor of Chinese in University College.

Just Published.

Notices of the Reformation in the South West Provinces of France. By Robert Francis Jameson.

The Life of Sir Richard Hill, M.P. By the Rev. Edwin Sidney, A.M. Conscientious Clerical Nonconformity. A Discourse delivered at Chadwell Street Chapel. By Thomas Binney. Second Edition.

The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Mrs. Shelley. Vol. IV.

Principles of Teaching; or the Normal School Manual; containing Practical Suggestions on the Government and Instruction of Children. By Henry Dunn. Third Edition.

The Pictorial Shakspere. King Henry V. Part 8.

The Pictorial History of Palestine. By the Editor of The Pictorial Bible.'

The History of Christianity in India from the Commencement of the Christian Era. By the Rev. James Hough, M.A., late Chaplain to the Hon. East India Company at Madras. 2 vols.

Dialogues, Poems, Songs, and Ballads, by various Writers in the Westmoreland and Cumberland Dialects, now first Collected with a copious Glossary of Words peculiar to those Counties.

Hindoo Female Education. By Priscilla Chapman.

Capital Punishment: the Importance of its Abolition. A Prize Essay. By the Rev. James Peggs.

The Listener in Oxford. By the Author of Christ our Example,' &c.
The Outlaw; a Drama in Five Acts. By Robert Storey.'

Floreston or the New Lord of the Manor. A Tale of Humanity, comprising the History of a Rural Revolution from Vice and Misery to Virtue and Happiness.

The Works of the Rev. John Newton. With a Life of the Author by the Rev. Richard Cecil; and an Introduction by the Rev. Francis Cunningham. Imperial 8vo.

Historical Shetches of Statesmen who flourished in the Time of George III. Second Series. By Henry Lord Brougham, FR.S.

The Dukes of Normandy, from the Tune of Rollo to the Expulsion of King John by Philip Augustus of France. By Jonathan Duncan, Esq., B.A. Practical Illustrations of the Virtues. By Miss Caroline Ward. Part I. Faith.

The Christian Ministry Contemplated in the Devotional Spirit it requires, in its Labours, its Importance, and its Results. By J. G. Pike.

Ancient Christianity. Part II.

Memoirs of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, and of the Court of Queen Anne. By Mrs. A. T. Thomson. 2 vols.

A General outline of the Animal Kingdom and Manual of Comparative Anatomy. By Thomas Rymer Jones, F.Z.S. Part VI.

Glimpses of the Past. By Charlotte Elizabeth.

Supplement to the History of British Fishes. By William Yarrell, F.L.S. Illustrated with Woodcuts.

Lectures to Professing Christians. By Charles G. Finney. From Notes by the Editor of the New York Evangelist, revised by the Author.

Elegy written in a Country Church-Yard. With versions in the Greek, Latin, German, Italian, and French Languages.

The Lords of Effingham; a Drama in Five Acts. By Henry Spicer.
Blanche of Navarre; a Play. By G. P. R. James, Esq.

The Spaniard; or, Relvindez and Elzora, a Tragedy; and the Young Country Widow, a Comedy. With three Letters of Dr. Blair; and Thoughts on the Present State of the British Drama, and what seems calculated to improve it. By Simon Gray, Esq.

Desultory Thoughts and Reflections. By the Countess of Blessington. Woman's Mission.

Chronicles of the Law Officers of Ireland. By Constantine J. Smythe,

B.A.

THE

ECLECTIC REVIEW

FOR AUGUST, 1839.

Art. I. Modern Protestant Church Courts Unmasked. Providence : John E. Brown; New York: John S. Taylor.

WE

E have received a small volume thus entitled, which has recently been issued in the United States of America; and as may be inferred from its title, it is a decided opponent of all ecclesiastical tyranny, whether exercised at Rome, or in the mimic usurpations of transatlantic church-courts. It is a survey of the spirit, character, operations, and tendency of those daughters of Mother Babylon' which American Protestants have nursed, until they find that they have cherished a serpent to torture with its fangs, and to taint them with its poison. Although concise in its details, the book discloses some complex traits of American affairs, which we shall endeavour briefly to illustrate.

Mr. Colton, during his four years' residence in Britain, and Messrs. Reed, Matheson, Cox, and Hoby, have supplied many details and statistical facts concerning the American churches; but they have not conducted us into those recesses where the interior management is discoverable. Active and diligent as were the British Delegates, their intercourse was necessarily restricted; so that the true character of the churches in America, their organization, government, collisions, actual condition, and future relations, are very partially estimated, and the exciting controversies, with their momentous consequences, which have long agitated the religious community of that country have not as yet been adequately explained to us.

The citizens of America are a motley people, gathered from nearly every European country; but the large majority of them are of British extraction. The multitudes perpetually resorting to the United States, from Europe, necessarily modify the charac

VOL. VI.

K

ter and relations of society. This remark applies chiefly to the States south of New England; because few foreigners except merchants, settle in that section of the republic; and, therefore, the commonwealths of the Puritan Pilgrims retain to the present hour many of their pristine attributes and steady habits,' as stamped by their Christian founders.

New England is emphatically the land of enterprise, freedom, education, and good morals. It has not, indeed, wholly escaped the withering blasts of Modern Infidelity, with the irreligion, errors, dissoluteness, and 'love of the world,' which have desolated so many countries within the last half century; but in all the grand lineaments of humanity, it stands a light-house to the nations, teaching them, that no other men are qualified for municipal self-government but such as are swayed by the dictates of revealed truth, and who combine ample knowledge with salutary decorum.

The general character of the Americans has doubtless been powerfully affected by the New England influence-and to the Puritans must be awarded the honour of having, by their religious principles, hindered the establishment of a state church, with a compound aristocracy of domineering prelates and hereditary civil dignitaries. The separation of those States from Britain could scarcely have been effected, or would have been attended with much greater difficulty, had such an oligarchy existed. The unquenchable spirit of conscientious insubordination to religious despotism, which originally impelled the Puritan Pilgrims to migrate, is the grand main-spring of all public movements in America. Occasionally it may appear to be dormant, or it may partially be diverted from its legitimate course, or it may be cajoled to expend its energies in defence of a bad and pernicious cause, or for a season it may be counteracted; but all is vain-there it remains, solid as their boasted granite; lasting as the tempest-beaten rock of Plymouth; ' and the gates of heli shall not prevail against it.'

During British supremacy, questions respecting church-government and the power of ecclesiastical judicature,' to use the pompous phraseology of the American Rabbes, seem not to have occurred. In New England that anti-christian machinery was unknown. The Reformed Dutch churches being nominally combined with their brethren in Holland, were as little subject to that jurisdiction as the Congregationalists. The Episcopalians were part of the diocess of London, and that supervision being nominal only, they were like the Israelites of old, every man did that which was right in his own eyes.' The Baptists have always strenuously adhered to the principles of Roger Williams, who was religious and civil liberty personified. The Presbyterians left their hierarchical assumptions in Scotland, and freely

united with Congregationalists; so that little or none of the authority which Church Courts' now claim was arrogated by their Presbyteries or Synods. In that state the Christian denominations remained, until the war of 1775 to 1782 nearly severed the brittle ties which had previously united them.

After the peace of 1783, the surviving ministers and lay officers of the confederated churches recommenced their ancient systems. Little comparative interruption had occurred in New England, because, after the evacuation of Boston, excepting a few attacks upon insulated points, the actual conflict was removed from that region. Successively the various denominations became organized as at present; and an instructive lesson they give us, respecting the prodigious evils which flow out of a departure from the evangelical standard and simplicity.

The review of ecclesiastical affairs in America which we now propose, will principally advert to those large combined bodies submitting to an aristocratical government, which in many respects includes the evils of that lordship over God's heritage that mark our own Spiritual Courts.

The admonition of the apostle Paul addressed unto the churches of Galatia-Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath 'made you free-is neither so accurately comprehended, nor so highly prized by transatlantic Christians generally as by British Nonconformists. That overwhelming conviction of human responsibility which characterized the early Puritans, and the burning and shining lights' of the seventeenth century, is but a partially operative principle among the members of the American churches, who seem disposed to transfer their moral accountability to their ecclesiastical officers and Church Courts.'

There has been a tendency to sectarian concentration among ourselves, but its mischiefs were averted by a wakeful solicitude, that the executive should not possess more authority than that which the apostle implies in his instructive and delightful phrase, 'the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. The hallowed intercommunion thus defined has recently been transmuted among the two most influential denominations of our American brethren into Ishmaelitish alienation.

From a variety of causes it happens that the extensive and numerous ecclesiastical confederacies in the United States, indirectly exercise a powerful influence over the religious character and the secular condition of that country. The principal combinations are those of the Methodists, the Presbyterians, and the Episcopalians; and to these our remarks will be restricted. We shall not advert, except incidentally, to the truth of their respective creeds, or to the consistency of their church government and discipline, with the Scripture rule; our design being to present a