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Such are the proved and universal results of this grand corruption of the patriarchal faith. Instinct with the false and lying spirit of its malignant author, this system, under every form, betrays its origin in a hellish conspiracy to defeat the purposes of redeeming mercy; to turn the antidote of human misery into a yet more subtle and deadly poison than that which originally destroyed man's soul, and thus to cut off the last hope of his salvation. Let us fully apprehend this affecting Let us remember that, in seeking the overthrow of Heathenism, we are secking the destruction of Satan himself. And if, on the one hand, we are appalled at the unequal strife with "principalities and powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world, and spiritual wickednesses in high places," let us, on the other, remember that our quarrel is in the cause of Him against whom all this guilty and terrible array is mustered, whose mercy it is designed to neutralize, but by "the brightness of whose coming" it is destined to be destroyed.

It is not our intention to specify with any minuteness that corresponding departure from the spirituality and purity of revealed religion, which is exhibited in the history of the Israelites. That "stiff-necked and rebellious" people, it is well known, (albeit chosen of God to be the special objects of the religious culture and preparation which we have reviewed,) failed to comprehend or to sympathize with the purposes of Heaven; relapsed again and again, through the greater portion of their history, into the idolatrous corruption which it was their mission to counteract; and, though at last weaned from this practice by the judgments of the Babylonish captivity, they lost the spirit of their religion, in an exclusive regard to its letter; suffered the divine service to degenerate into an unmeaning form; and became at last so reprobate, both morally and religiously, that the name of God was blasphemed among the Gentiles through them. The measure of their iniquities was filled up by the rejection and crucifixion of the Lord of Glory, though He was the theme of their Prophets' testimony, the key to their whole typical system, and the hope of that ancestry which they made their boast.

Here the line of our inquiries properly terminates; but we cannot conclude our remarks without an attempt to take a general view of the portion of man's religious history over which we have passed, and to consider its bearing upon the purposes of God, and the future spiritual destinies of the human race.

Recurring once more to the analogy of an individual life, we must contemplate the human race as an organic whole, pervaded by a law of spiritual growth and progress, and placed, just as any individual is, under methods of education adapted to its degree of development. In contemplating that period to which the "Sacred Annals" relate, we behold, on the one hand, the

unfolding of the vast design of Infinite Mercy for the redemption and regeneration of our fallen world; and, on the other, with comparatively few exceptions, the perverse rejection, or systematic corruption, of the truths in which that design is announced. Hasty and superficial minds might conclude, when they see idolatry every where rampant, and even the chosen people almost universally unfaithful, that the plan and purpose of Heaven were in vain; that, after all, human depravity and wilfulness had proved too strong for the remedial grace of God. But, when we look again, we see the steady march of providence and revelation towards the appointed end. The combinations of men against the truth, if for a moment they seem to retard this progress, are nevertheless ultimately made to accelerate it. Neither is Omnipotence overcome, nor divine long-suffering exhausted. All things else in human affairs grow, and fade, and disappear. The most mighty empires crumble into dust; the most august and splendid ceremonials of worship perish; the most elaborate and subtle schemes of religion die from sheer inanity, and amid universal contempt. But the plan of God abides, dilates, developes; and, just when six thousand groaning years have completed the proof of the folly of all human wisdom, and the weakness of all human might, He comes who alone is "mighty to save," and His own arm brings salvation. You are not to gather, therefore, your evidences of the success or failure of the antecedent revelations from their effect upon those to whom they were immediately given, but from the history of the cause and kingdom of Him, for whose sake they were all imparted, and to whose work they all relate. Not in the childhood or youth of the world are we to read the end of human existence, or the scope of the education which men received, but in its ripe and Christian manhood. True, in that manhood we see the same antagonistic principles at work; the same conflict of divine grace with human and Satanic wickedness; but, looking over the wide field of the race in all its varieties, and through the annals of the past in all their periods, we see upon the whole, not only a steady persistence in the scheme of mercy, but a gradual enlargement of the area of its influence, and an everbrightening and accumulating evidence of its suitability, blessedness, and power. Amid all the fierce and purposeless conflicts of men, we see the nations making progress in the path of civilization and happiness, tending to a wiser, holier, more blessed condition, than they have ever known. The religions of men are grown old and effete. The strongest of them hardly holds its own. The religion of God, on the other hand, is uniformly aggressive, and constantly victorious. The history of modern civilization coincides with that of the kingdom of Christ. Those nations which have imitated the ancient Heathens, and borrowed from them the means of paganizing Christianity, are all far in the rear

General View of "Sacred Annals.”

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of the onward movement; while those which adhere to the simple Gospel are in its van. These have the largest wealth, the most fertile resources, the most cultivated intelligence, the most extended commerce, the most widely pervading influence, the most active enterprise, the vastest empire. Through their instrumentality, the cause of Christ is exerting a more powerful and general influence than all other institutions or agencies combined. It is gradually moulding and transforming mankind into the image of God. It is daily enlarging its sphere and multiplying its conquests. The moral and spiritual interests of the world are rising, and have been ever since the advent of the Redeemer, into the ascendant, predominating more and more over those which are material and earthly; and all things presage the final triumph of redeeming grace. All things point to that issue which alone can satisfy the longings of Infinite Mercy, and be worthy of Him who made all things for Himself, and whose "manifold wisdom" shall be made known to "the principalities and powers in the heavenly places," more by the recovery of the ruined earth to holiness and bliss, than by the radiant glories of that primeval hour, when "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.”

If, in the prosecution of our design, in the above remarks, we have appeared to make little reference to the works at the head of the present Article, it is not because of any indifference to their varied and exalted merits; but because, first of all, the multiplicity and range of their contents appeared to us to forbid such an analysis as would alone have done justice to them; and, secondly, because the subject seemed to demand a condensation and method of treatment unfriendly to the production of extracts. We should, in many cases, but for this latter reason, have given the ipsissima verba of the learned and much respected author, with whom it is our happiness to agree on almost every topic embraced within his profound and comprehensive work. But, if our own observations have stimulated the curiosity of any reader hitherto unaccustomed to such studies, we can assure him that his curiosity will be abundantly and what in these days, especially, can be said of very few such books-safely gratified by a diligent and thoughtful perusal of the work itself. Mr. Smith is every where true to those religious convictions which he avows with so much manliness and modesty in his various Prefaces; and no one need fear being led astray by him from the simplicity of the Gospel. That a gentleman, immersed in the cares of an extensive business, active in the local interests of his immediate neighbourhood, and assiduous in his attention to the concerns of his own religious denomination, should have been enabled to amass and methodize such an amount of curious and uncommon learning, is a surprising

instance of conscientious industry. But not less remarkable are the candour, devotion, and critical sagacity, which he has brought to his task. We have often wondered at the skill with which he analyses the confused, absurd, and contradictory legends with which he has frequently to deal; the moderation with which he proposes his own conjectures, where certainty is unattainable; the ease with which he winnows the chaff from the wheat. Our design and limits forbade our following him into details; but whoever wishes to see both those aspects of man's Religious History on which we have written, fully, evangelically, and most learnedly discussed; whoever wishes to see the varied and complicated legends of Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and of India and China too, brought into small compass, presented in a Christian aspect, and made unanswerably to confirm the teachings of God's holy word; must by all means procure these volumes. They are in a high degree entertaining; but, what is of far more importance, they are more instructive and more thoroughly evangelical than almost any works of a similar character which we have seen. We trust that the learned and pious author will long be spared to enrich, by similar productions, the religious literature of that body of which he is so distinguished an ornament.

ART. II.-Lives of the Princesses of England, from the Norman Conquest. By MARY ANNE EVERETT GREEN, Editor of the "Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies." In Six Volumes. London: Henry Colburn. 1850-1854.

THE great duty of a historian indisputably is, to narrate all the facts he can collect as circumstantially as possible, and in such terms and arrangement as may best tend to perspicuity. We do not want from him theories, but facts unabridged and unadulterated; being apt enough of ourselves to form deductions, to generalize, and come to conclusions more or less sagacious and impartial. The more valuable the history, and the greater the historian, the more minutely and lucidly related are the facts. Yet this, which is undoubtedly the case, has, in the present age, been most woefully lost sight of. It is a common remark that, fertile as we are in greatness of various kinds, we seem incapable of producing a great historian. We have essays upon history, reviews of periods, theories of development, growths, laws of progress, harmonic philosophies, innumerable; but we have no history. We cannot find a man who will be content laboriously to investigate facts, and to narrate them plainly, without stringing them upon some theory of his own, and favouring us with generalizations which are often mere platitudes, and aphorisms

Dearth of English Historians.

335 which are often mere truisms. A true historian is an artist, and therefore deals with individual things, and ought to be very careful how he abstracts from his subject the life and action which can belong only to individual things, in his eagerness to unfold their principles, and give his own ideas upon their relations and general bearing. What constitutes the right of Herodotus to the title of "Father of History?" Those very qualities, that guilelessness, that garrulous innocence, those long-drawn impossible stories, which procured for him from the little philosopher, Vicesimus Knox, the sobriquet of "Father of Lies." Much we should have thanked the old Halicarnassean, at this enlightened date, for a view of the invariable causes of human action, with facts to match, selected from the early history of Greece, with which we should assuredly have been regaled, had his task fallen to the lot of one of the so-called historians of the day. As it is, the old Ionian goes rambling on,-coherently enough, indeed; for his great design, the history of the wars between the Greeks and the barbarians, re-appears from time to time,-looking with the same vivid interest on the waggon of the Scythian and the tower-temple of the Babylonian, and then leaving them as he found them, until he has collected a mass of fact, detail, and anecdote, from which the intelligent students of all ages and nations have been able to draw their own conclusions, and derive their own instruction; and to this day we acknowledge that Herodotus is among the greatest historians, and that we owe nearly all we know of the remoter periods of antiquity to his unwearied industry and love of truth.

It may be affirmed, that the history of England is yet to be written. All the essays and dissertations so constantly produced, are comments upon an unedited text,-the jostling opinions of lawyers upon an unreported case. The so-called "dignity of history" is now exploded, more as a phrase than in reality for though we have a few writers who certainly are industrious enough in collecting facts, and not intentionally dishonest in narrating them, yet so long as there is a theory in the case, it is impossible but that facts should be imperceptibly warped and coloured, that prominence should be given to favoured coincidences, and that the author should step before his work. The real "dignity of history" consists in ascertaining truth; this is its function, in the discharge of which alone history can attain to its own peculiar perfection. And, we ask, in which case is a man more likely to acquire this perfection and resultant dignity, -when he is writing in support of some scheme, philosophy, march, or development of his own imagination, and which must have its origin in some kind of vanity,-or when he is writing simply because he takes delight in truth, and wishes to present it to others with what accuracy he can? A great deal has