on ignorance, insanity, or dishonesty ;" and, if we remember rightly, to show that infidelity is a "monomania." The lectures of the author were crowded with people anxious to hear the proof of these assertions, and among them were, of course, some of these very monomaniacs. They challenged Dr. Sleigh to a public discussion of the question of Christianity. This, as it turned out, was no very clear proof of their wisdom. The Doctor accepted the challenge, and boldly encountered the advocates of infidelity, in successive debates, in Philadelphia, New-York, and Boston. Whatever may be thought of the expediency of public discussions of this sort, which give to infidels the opportunity to state their sophistical objections to Christianity before multitudes in a promiscuous crowd, who would never otherwise have heard of their existence; we judge, from what we have heard from a variety of quarters, and from what we ourselves saw on some of these occasions, that this debate was assuredly productive of good. The champions of infidelity were routed on every point; their miserable quibbles and sneers turned back upon themselves; and the cause of religion triumphantly vindicated from their objections.

The idea was subsequently suggested to Dr. Sleigh of assailing infidelity in another form, and the book before us is the result of that suggestion. It professes to be a refutation of the common objections of infidels, arranged alphabetically; in other words, to use its title, it is "the Christian's Defensive Dictionary." Many will think, perhaps, there is scarcely any need now of new books on evidences of Christianity, that of works of this sort we have an abundance, and that nothing can be better than some of them are. Yet so long as there are infidels and sceptics, there is no objection to the publication of new works on the subject. Some will read new publications who would perhaps never examine those of established reputation. Besides, they are mostly composed, as a set treatise on any disputed point ought to be, as a regular argument, which it requires time to examine, and some effort of mind to comprehend. Most of them, too, give the direct evidences of Christianity; touching only incidentally upon the other side of the question. But a dictionary of a small size, such as Dr. Sleigh's volume is, with its articles independent of each other, so as in each to be complete; and its different subjects arranged alphabetically so as to be referred to in a moment to satisfy a doubt, to settle a dispute on a particular point, (and it is in the form of distinct and isolated points that difficulties arise in the popular mind), is not without some advantages of plan, and if executed with any thing like tolerable

ability, must be useful, precisely because it will be read, and may be read without effort and without trouble. A work not encumbered with profound discussions, not burdened with long articles, but thrown together in the ad captandum style, suits the ignorant and the half-learned. We have no doubt that Dr. Sleigh's "Defensive Dictionary" will attract attention. Among the hundreds who have attended his discussions, and the thousands who have heard of his almost laughably triumphant defeat of the champions of Infidelity, there are multitudes who will buy the book, and read it, and keep it by them for reference, and quote it, and lend it. Many will examine it who have never in their lives read a treatise on the evidences; and many a one will read here and there an article, and then turn to the other articles to which it may refer, that would never read any book continuously or long.

With feelings perfectly friendly to the author, we intend to speak of his work with freedom. There are things in it calculated to do good, but we regret to say it is marked with glaring faults, which exceedingly diminish its value, which will do harm; indeed, we fear the book, on the whole, is calculated to do more harm than good. We do not find fault with it because it is not perfect. It does not profess to be so. Nor is it of unavoidable imperfections and incidental blemishes—the maculæ quas incuria fudit-we speak. And yet, perhaps, it affords ground for complaint that the author should have permitted himself to dash off from his pen a stout_volume like this, of more than four hundred pages, in less than three months. It does not indeed follow, that because a man writes fast, he will write badly, but it is very likely to be the case in a work like this; and it is very easy to discover in the "Defensive Dictionary" the crudities of haste and the defects of carelessness. We scarcely recollect to have seen a more striking specimen of a hastily composed book. How much it is to be regretted that advantage should hereby be given to the enemies of religion, will be strongly felt by every intelligent Christian who reads the work before us.

Some specifications will be expected of us to exemplify and sustain our judgment against our author. But our limits compel us to be brief.

First of all, then, the work strikes us as singularly different from what it professes to be. It is intended, and promises to be, a "refutation of the general objections against the Bible." We have looked in vain for even an allusion to many difficulties and objections which infidels are in the habit of advancing; and very often, when difficulties and objections are re

ferred to, they receive no "refutation" whatever, and are met with nothing but statements and declarations unsustained by proof. The work, in truth, has more of the character of a Bible dictionary than that of an alphabetical refutation of infidel objections. Even this may be thought a vague and general condemnation : let us go into particulars.

Under the article " ADAM," Adam and Eve are said to have been mere children in knowledge; and God is said to have selected the prohibition respecting a particular tree, because "no test of their obedience could possibly have been better suited and adapted to their infancy and childish understandings." (p. 24.) These assertions are perfectly gratuitous and unreasonable; besides, in what an indefensible light does our author place the conduct of Almighty God. Where did our author learn that our first parents were "mere children" in understanding, in a state of intellectual "infancy?" The inspired record does not say so, or even say any thing from which such an inference may be drawn. We know that Adam had, before his fall, the intelligence to "give names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field;" and that whatsoever he called them, "that was the name thereof" by God's approval. He must have had, then, sense enough to perceive the prominent features and characters of each, since their names are known to represent these; and this required no small degree of intelligence. Does this look like "childishness" of understanding?

In the same article (p. 25), Dr. Sleigh explains the penalty denounced against Adam, in the event of disobedience, to mean temporal death. "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely become mortal." We believe he has given the true sense of the word :-whether it is the whole sense is another question. But we agree with him in thinking that the curse of mortality, liability to death, was meant by the words rendered "thou shalt die." But how strangely he seems to forget this interpretation immediately after, in the very next page. There he represents Moses as using the expression, "thou shalt die," without any explanation, as if totally regardless of the interpretation that might be put upon it, and even as not caring whether or not it appeared to contradict its subsequent record that "Adam lived 930 years." This the Doctor adduces as an example of the fairness and boldness of Moses, and other sacred writers, in stating things fast as they were, even when they seemed "contradictory or absurd." He asks, "what could appear to persons then, and now, more contradictory than these statements,--viz: that Adam should

die in the day he violated God's command; and yet Adam lived hundreds of years afterwards"? Now, if Moses used the words to die that day in a literal sense, the passage not only appears contradictory to the other, but does actually contradict it. Either he did or he did not. Our author just before tells us, that he merely said they should become mortal, and not that they should die that day. To what are we to understand him as adhering? If he adheres to the one, he makes Moses inconsistent; and if to the other, he is inconsistent with himself. Such carelessness is utterly indefensible in any one who undertakes so important a cause. We may possibly misunderstand the author's meaning in the close of the article, for certainly it is not very clear. But if we can misconceive it, infidels may misconceive it too, and will have ground to misrepresent it.

Dr. Sleigh deals wonderfully in random assertions. In this very article we have a striking instance. He says, that in not more than one "case out of hundreds, can we, after the most minute investigation, discover any disorganization or alteration in the animal machine sufficient to account for the death of the individual." (p. 25.) It strikes us, that medical men who may happen to read his book will hardly think such an assertion can be sustained. Even, however, if it could be, we do not perceive the pertinency of the remark. It certainly is not a good way to meet the infidel objection to the argument for revelation drawn from the sentence of death passed on mankind for sin. Infidels say, "we die of natural causes, of disease:" and who says or believes otherwise? Surely it cannot be the Doctor's intention to intimate that men die without And whether the traces of disease be discoverable after death, or the symptoms of disease be visible before, it matters not. In either case it is plain that we die of "natural causes -"diseases," which God has made the outlets of life, that the sentence of death may be fulfilled.

cause.

Again, he tells us very sweepingly, that he "himself has performed, or has been present at, the post-mortem examination of the bodies of thousands." (p. 25.) When a person speaks of "thousands," he ought to mean, we presume, not one thousand or two thousand, but several thousands. Dr. Sleigh, we understand, is about forty years old. Supposing him to have been conducting his anatomical researches for twenty years, and to have attended post-mortem examinations at the rate of 125 a year, that would make 2,500. It is some license of language to call that number "thousands." Now, this may not be entirely fair, because, for ought we know, the Doctor may have

devoted his time principally to the inspection of dead bodies. But we know that medical men extensively engaged in business have not the time to devote to affairs of that sort to such an extent; and that others rarely have the opportunity. Even Morgagni, and Baillie, and Hunter, and Bichat, probably never saw "thousands" of bodies inspected.* We do not mean to charge the Doctor with deliberately stating what is not true; but we believe that he speaks largely, that he does not speak deliberately. Should any of his readers be medical gentlemen sceptically inclined, this free declaration, so contrary to their own experience, will occur to them as very improbable to say the least, and may impair their confidence in every thing else the author may assert.

But, unwilling as we are to go on finding fault, we have more serious complaints than these to bring against our author. In the article "AxE," (p. 44,) we have an attempt at explaining, or rather at explaining away, the fact of the prophet's causing the axe to float upon the surface of the water, as related in 2 Kings, c. vi. v. 5, &c. We cannot see how any thing can be made of the narrative, but that the writer meant to relate the circumstance as a miracle. But our "advocate of Divine revelation" denies the miraculous character of the transaction altogether, and pronounces the very idea that it was a miracle "preposterous!" According to him, it amounted to nothing more than this:-that the prophet "hooked it up to the surface of the water!!" Did ever any one but an infidel, or perhaps a German neologist, who is always unwilling to see miracles, give such a solution of the matter before? We are as indisposed to find miracles in the Scriptures, when none are related, as any one can be; and therefore we should find no fault with Dr. Sleigh for resolving this miracle into a very small, common affair, (though its occurrence in the narrative, were it such, would hardly have been worth the 'while,) had he assigned any thing like sufficient, or even tolerable, reasons for his explanation. He says, that miraculous powers are never exercised without some manifest object, and that there could have been no object in God's causing "a piece of iron to swim in a company of professed believers." To say that there could have been no object for a miracle before a company of professed believers," certainly amounts to nothing when we

The professor of anatomy in one of our principal medical schools, who has been engaged in anatomical investigations for upwards of twenty years, has been present at the inspection of about 1500 bodies in that time; and this, we are assured, is a larger number than any other person in this country is likely to have seen in his whole life.