baptism to infants, and that by sprinkling or pouring; from the Independents, in admitting the lawfulness, and in many cases the expediency, of using a Scriptural liturgy; from the Church of England herself, in being free to employ whatever they deem valuable, and to refuse whatever appears to them objectionable in her services, while they are exempt from that corrupting influence, to which she is exposed by her union with the state. Many candid persons have acknowledged that Lady Huntingdon's Connexion, if properly conducted, is calculated to be a great blessing to the country, as affording an opportunity for such pious and orthodox members of the Church of England to exercise their ministry, as cannot give their hearty assent and consent to everything contained in and prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer; as meeting the views of such as have been deprived of the services of an evangelical clergyman, and by a judicious abridg ment and distribution of the prayers in connexion with the faithful preaching of the Word and administration of the ordinancès, providing for the spiritual instruction and edification of the people in general."

But, notwithstanding these points of recommendation, "The Connexion," as we gather from the language of the author, and from that used by Philip in his Life of Whitefield, has not flourished as its friends could wish, nor as it did during the lifetime of its founders. Philip laments especially over the decline of the college at Cheshunt. This general decline of the Connexion is to be traced for its cause, we apprehend, not to any of the circumstances hinted at by either writer, but chiefly to the fact of its strong Calvinism. Strict old-fashioned Calvinism, the Calvinism of the Institutes, can look for no more triumphs. It may continue to exist here and there, but it can thrive and grow nowhere. The age is leaving it behind. In the modified forms of some of the new schools alone can it hope to maintain its ground. Arminianism will more and more be the religion of the many; its milder and more genial spirit accords better, both with our nature, and the character and teachings of Jesus. It is, moreover, readily felt and seen to be true. It needs not the aid of metaphysics. It proves itself. Wesleyan Methodism in differing only in this point, or in this chiefly, from the Methodism of Lady Huntingdon and Whitefield, has spread throughout Great Britain and America, while the other has travelled, we suspect, not far beyond its original limits. One other cause of the decline of the Connexion, we indeed detect in the very constitution of the Connexion itself. It has

wanted freedom. It was, during Lady Huntingdon's life, no other than a religious despotism. The whole control of churches and ministers, and even of the college, was in her hands. All appointments were made by her; removal was at her discretion. And at her death the same power descended by will to the Lady Anne Erskine, from whom it once more passed into a small body of trustees. This was a system of management very unfavorable to growth and expansion. It was one of trammels and fetters. There was too much oversight, too much nursing, too much interference. What at first seemed so auspicious of great prosperity, the munificence and personal interest of Lady Huntingdon, proved at last, we are persuaded, to be nothing less than an injury and an obstruction.

But we are warned to take our leave of these very interesting and instructive volumes. They have served greatly to increase our respect and admiration for the first founders and preachers of Methodism, and for the cause in which they labored. They were, in a remarkable degree pure-minded, simplehearted, earnest, and pious men ; their course was, and is, in an emphatic sense, the cause of practical Christianity, of the Christianity of the affections and the life. We honor it with our whole heart. It has always aimed at the highest objects. It has moved on in what seems to us the nearest approach to the steps of Christ and his apostles. It has concerned itself about no novelty or philosophy of the passing day, and but little with any of the questions of doctrine which have agitated the Church. Since the early separation on the great question of human liberty, it has kept aloof from the stormy regions of controversy, and devoted itself to a better work. It has bent all its forces against sin; it has preached Christ and repentance, and been satisfied when it has regenerated the heart and reformed the life. It has adhered to the Gospel; and rightly judged, that if it could succeed in making men Christians, in renewing the heart, in planting deep the principle of piety to God, all other good would flow in with that. It has struck at the root of all evil; while others have heen assailing the branches. It has toiled to purify the fountain head; while others have been working at the stream. Christians of all denominations may learn from them, as from the early preachers of our religion, lessons of wisdom. We shall, like them, do more for religion and Christianity, the simpler we make our aim. But we are too much

set upon discoveries; upon searching out new foundations of faith; upon finding some undreamed of method of looking upon and applying the character of Jesus; some hitherto unthought of manner of administering Christianity; some adjustment of the relations between minister and people, society and the Church; some organization of Christian institutions, which shall, as it were, cause religion thereafter to go alone; some surprising and rapid advance by means of some new machinery into a state of social and religious perfectibility. Christianity, we are told, is in its infancy, it is not understood, it is to take some new form, which shall bring it more into harmony with the advanced standards of the age, and with minds of a high order. We heartily wish the Gospel might be allowed to remain stationary for a season, to stand stock still where it is, and preachers would go about something else beside reforming it. Let them take the very superficialest truths of the New Testament, those that float on the surface of every page, those which there is no dispute about, and never has been, and never will or can be, the evil of sin, the necessity of repentance, the grace of God, the mediation and example and resurrection of Christ, the future and eternal world, and preach them with a believing heart, let them forget their philosophies and their dreams, and above all, themselves, and follow in the steps of Whitefield, and Wesley, of Methodism and apostolic Christianity, and their ministry will bring forth fruits of holiness, at which they themselves will be astonished, and which the preaching of no other gospel will bear so well. What the people wish to see in the minister of religion is, if we are not greatly mistaken, an earnest, zealous preacher of righteousness, who is the most genuine of reformers. What they want to hear from his lips, and they care to hear little else, is that, with which the ministry of Jesus ended and began, "Repent, for the kingdom. of heaven is at hand."

ART. II. THE DECLINE OF THE ARTS.

THE last few years have given birth to some feeble efforts in several of our larger cities, to encourage the fine arts, especially the art of Painting, among the busy and gain-seeking

people of the republic. These efforts are certainly laudable; yet we cannot but look upon them as somewhat mean and worthless, when we compare them with the enormous expenditure which has been lavished on works of genius in the old world. But were they far more strenuous than they are, we confess that we could not regard them with much complacency or hope. The very word encouragement, as applied to the more elevated arts, bears to our ears an ominous sound. It brings with it the idea of those forcing processes, which are sometimes applied, with great and enduring results, to the humbler arts, but which are too gross and direct, to bring forth and develop in beauty and vigor the fairer creations of the mind. Upon such means and appliances as the opening of a few galleries and selling pictures by lot, the true spirit of art looks down with wonder, if not with something like disdain. We do not make this remark in any captious or morose mood; but because we believe, that if the fire is to be kindled on the altar of genius, it must be with another torch, and without parade.

History testifies, with great plainness, that the arts will flourish only when the community spontaneously seeks to express its moral and intellectual ideas in outward material forms. Then they necessarily exist; genius comes forth from its hiding places at the irresistible summons, to astonish and awe the world. We may expose paintings and statues to the public gaze, and thus do something to refine the taste of the people; but in vain do we attempt in this manner to create wonderful artists.

Whether the fine arts will ever arrive, in this country, to any remarkable degree of splendor, seems to us extremely doubtful. The intellectual character of our English ancestors is so much in warp and woof our own, that it is greatly to be feared on this account alone, that we shall never soar higher than the eminence which they have reached. Among that comparatively unimaginative and very logical people, the arts, if we except architecture, have never approached perfection. England has had no school of painting or of sculpture, either in her youth or her age; nor is it necessary to say, how inferior she is in both these departments to her neighbors on the continent. The same subjection of the imaginative to the reasoning powers, which has always characterized our father-land, is, if possible, a still more striking feature in our own constitution, and must inevitably link our destiny with hers. This character we cannot VOL. XXIX. 3D S. VOL. XI. NO. III. 40

change; it is the inheritance of ages; and is continually confirmed by a variety of causes quite beyond our control.

We often comfort ourselves with the hope, that, when we are older, the arts will spring forth unbidden, and flourish in immortal vigor. What, it is asked, can be expected of so young a nation? But are we young? Are we not already old? Were we, sixty years or two centuries ago, a tribe of wild men? We sprang at once into manhood. In all that relates to intellect and feeling; in our habits of thought; in our intellectual and moral ideas, we are as old, in some respects, older than our sires. Besides; have not the arts in the old world sometimes flourished in what may be called the youth of nations?

It may be thought, however, that the low condition of the arts among us is owing mainly to the fact, that we are not yet rich enough to pay for them. If we were richer, we imagine it would make but little difference. We contrive, poor as we are, to lavish money in abundance on objects of real or doubtful utility. Why, then, is it, that so little is expended in the grand or graceful creations of genius, but from some cause more radical and permanent, than the want of money? How much has been done for the arts by nations poorer than we? It must be confessed, that we have but little of the spirit of the old world, which has always been ready to sacrifice the merely useful to the gratification of the imagination, and to foster the arts at the expense of almost everything else.

But the great reason why we may not hope that this country will ever make any extraordinary progress in the arts, is not peculiar to ourselves. The arts, we believe, have long since begun to decay, and can never return, in the civilized world, to the splendor of the olden time. The divinus afflatus which inspired those immortal works in modern Europe, which so astonish the mind with their marvellous beauty and grandeur, seems to have fled beyond recall. The true masters in the highest art all flourished within the same short period of half a century; it is now three hundred years since they departed; while the most original, and, perhaps, most wonderful work of European genius, the Gothic architecture, has not flourished since the fif teenth century. Since then, who has arisen to claim equal honors with Angelo and Raphael? What nation can cheat itself into the belief, that, during the long period which has since swept away, it has produced anything original in sculpture, that entitles it to exclaim, "we are brethren of the ancients?" In