apostasy, the punishment, and the final redemption of Israel; and they have in a large measure already been ful filled. How can it be denied that the apostasy of the Israelites to idolatry, and their addiction for ages to the debasing and impious rites here foreshown of them, are verifications of these predictions? How can it be denied that the inroads on them by the warlike nations around them, the slaughters by which hosts of them were swept to the grave, the plunder and devastation of their cities, and their banishment and dispersion among their conquerors for ages, which began soon after these prophecies were uttered, are fulfilments of these predictions? No verification of a revelation can be conceived more exact, none on a scale more vast and overwhelming. It began with the very dawn of history. It has been protracted through the twenty-five hundred years that have passed since, in the presence of all the great actors in the theatre of the world, and by their agency; the Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes, Greeks, Romans, Saracens, Turks, and the present nations of Western Europe. To deny that these events are the events of the kind foreshown in these predictions, is in effect to deny that any events can justly be considered as accomplishments of prophecies in which such agents, acts, and occurrences are foreshown. If the exact correspondence of persons, acts, and conditions to predictions is no proof that they are the persons, acts, and conditions foreshown in those prophecies, there plainly can be no proofs of a verification of a prediction; and prophecy itself is converted into a deception. But if these predictions of the apostasy of the Israelites to idol worship, and in its most debasing and odious forms; of the unfaithfulness, selfishness, worldliness, ambition and cruelty of the priests and rulers; the devastation of their land by conquerors, and their exile for ages among the nations, are predictions of their acts, and the punishments with which they were to be smitten, and have been verified in their apostasy to idols, their general demoralization, and their banishment from their country for a vast tract of centuries; then indubitably the prophecies that are inwoven with these of their restoration from exile, readoption as Jehovah's people, and redemption from sin under the sceptre of the Messiah, must be equally

taken as prophecies of what is to befall them, that are to have an equally exact and literal fulfilment. To deny it is to deny that those parts of these prephecies are prophetic, as absolutely as the denial that the predictions of their worship of idols and their exile, are predictions of these events, is a denial that those predictions are prophetic.

On the other hand, to ascribe to them a representative signification-making Israel, Zion, Jerusalem, denote the church of the present dispensation, is not only to involve them in inextricable confusion and contradiction, but is to overthrow the most essential truths of revelation. If the second coming of the Messiah is to be spiritualized, his first advent must also be; and his death and expiation made mere representatives of events in the history of some other being. But if that be so, men have no longer a Redeemer whose blood cleanses from sin; there is no longer a Saviour who can restore the race and the world from the ruin sin has brought on them. The whole promise of a reign of the Messiah; of a new creation of the heavens and the earth; of a conversion of all nations; of an abolition of Satan's empire and of death; and of an endless age of righteousness and peace, becomes a gorgeous mockery.

ART. VII.-LITERARY AND CRITICAL NOTICES.

1. THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN LIFE. By Rev. W. G. Boardman. Boston: Henry Hoyt. New York: Sheldon & Co. 1859.

Mr. BOARDMAN exhibits the Christian Life as consisting usually of two stages: the first, on which the believer enters at conversion, the chief characteristic of which he represents to be faith in the Lord Jesus Christ for justification: the second, commencing at what he denominates a second conversion, the peculiarity of which he holds is faith in Christ for sanctification. And it is this trust which he denominates the higher Christian life, and cites examples to exemplify.

That such is the experience of now and then an eminent believer, and perhaps of many, we do not doubt; and that faith in Christ, in a very comprehensive sense, contemplating him in all his great perfections, in all his offices, in all his promises, and

all the vast purposes he has revealed extending through eternal ages, is eminently distinctive of those who make large attainments in intelligence, in holiness, and in assurance and peace; and may be taken in a large degree as a measure of their love, their strength, and their enjoyment, we fully believe. The life of believers, however, is not, by any means, so generally cast in the particular mould Mr. Boardman depicts, as he imagines. In the first place, a direct, unreserved, and emphatic trust in Christ for justification, is not so characteristic of the first stages of the new-born mind, as he represents. That a direct specific faith in him for justification is exercised, and becomes at length a conspicuous element of the new affections, is indubitable; but the first obedient act, and the leading attitude for a time of the mind toward God, is determined very much by the great truths which are before the eye at the moment of renovation, and in the presence of which it is that love, subjection, trust, and peace, are first excited. From the time of Edwards till within thirty years, it was very generally held in New England, that submission is at least among the first and most characteristic acts of the renewed heart; and submission to God, an unconditional surrendry of all its interests to him, was regarded as the most decisive test of piety. And that sprung from the theology that prevailed, which occupied itself in a higher measure with the rights and acts of God as moral governor, than with Christ's expiation and righteousness as Redeemer. While the latter was not neglected, so much greater prominence was given to the former, that it was natural that the first acts of the renewed should take the form of subjection to him as ruler, holy in all his demands, and just in his threatenings, and submission to his sovereign will; and in those cases a lofty and rapturous sense of the glory of his justice and holiness, and the beauty of his goodness, and grace, and love, adoration, trust, joy in him, delight to be saved by his mercy, and desires to do his will, were the most conspicuous shapes the new-created affections assumed: while faith in Christ by a direct and specific acceptance of him as Redeemer by his obedience and death, and trust in him for pardon and acceptance-in distinction from trust in God's mercy for redemption through him, was only reached at a later period; and sometimes at the distance of years, in seasons of great affliction, or at the approach of death. And to this class belong some of those, probably, whom Mr. Boardman cites as examples of faith in Christ for sanctification.

In the next place, that revivification, that fresh quickening to

clearer and higher views, and more glowing affections, which Mr. B. improperly, we think, calls a second conversion, does not always take the form, as he represents, of a specific trust in Christ for sanctification; nor is it a renewing of which, like regeneration, the mind is the subject but once: instead, like the first acts of holy affection that follow regeneration, it has a diversity of forms corresponding to the special truths or realizations which are the medium of the revivification: and it is from time to time repeated, and with some individuals frequently. It sometimes takes the shape of a far more direct and specific acceptance of Christ as Redeemer in all his offices, and entrustment of the soul to him for salvation, than had ever before been reached; and is attended with towering realizations of the efficacy of his blood to atone ; of the glory of a justification by his righteousness; of his power to accomplish all that is needed in order to a full redemption; and of the certainty of his promises. Sometimes, and perhaps often, it takes place in the form Mr. B. represents, of a direct and energetic trust in Christ for sanctification, springing from the mind's consciousness of its hopeless vassalage to evil, if left to itself. Sometimes it takes place in a urrendry by the believer of all his temporal interests into the nands of God, and submission to his sovereign will, whether it assigns calamities or deliverance from them. Sometimes in yielding a child, a parent, a wife, a husband to death, and bending to the sovereignty that appoints the sorrow; sometimes in suffering the neglect of friends or the malice of enemies; and in other exigencies, when the believer is brought to a vivid sense of his relations to God; a piercing consciousness of his sins; a realization of the emptiness and nothingness of the world; and despairing of himself, he flies in helplessness and anguish to the bosom of the Father and Redeemer for shelter and support. In such seasons, God reveals himself anew to the burthened and trembling suppliant; Christ discloses himself in the greatness of his power, the freeness of his mercy, and the riches of his love; and shedding a fresh beam of light and peace on the heart, imbues it with a new and more vigorous life. Instead of being confined to a single period, or single conflict, there is no trial of life that does not sometimes thus issue in a nearer approach to God, a fuller discovery of Christ, and a higher measure of love, trust, and peace: there is not a solitary exigency through which the fainting disciple is called to pass, that may not thus become, by prayer, penitence, and a fresh resort to the Redeemer, the occasion of a new baptism of the Spirit, a new and higher expe

lished, and undisturbed. The assaults that have been made on it have only served to show it to be impregnable. The bolts hurled against it have rebounded on its assailants, and dashed them to the dust, or put them to flight. Among the most confident, showy, and boastful of those attacks, have been the attempts of sceptics to convict the historical records of the Old and New Testament of error. Could it be proved that the narratives of the Bible are false; that some of its important personages never lived, that some of the events narrated in it never took place, that the writers, instead of reliable, were ignorant, mistaken, and deceptive, it has been felt that its claim to a divine origin would be overthrown; and rectitude and self-respect constrain the learned and conscientious to its rejection, and ignorance and prejudice be inflamed with unconquerable aversion to it. And the most unfair and malevolent expedients that could be devised have been employed to produce this result. The sacred narratives have been assailed at every point, and every spe cies of objection alleged to excite doubt of their truth, and weaken their authority. Some of their statements have been denounced, because they are not in harmony with those of other writers, though their means of knowledge were far inferior; some because they have no confirmation from contemporary or later foreign authors; some because they have not a fuller corroboration from them; and some simply because diversities appear in the narratives of the same events; as in the number, for example, of the incidents related, and the fulness of the pictures drawn of scenes and actions in the gospels, though they involve no contradictions or inconsistencies. Whatever, in short, if believed, would make against the veracity and authority of the sacred word, has been affirmed, reiterated, and set off with all the artifices that ingenuity could devise, and urged with all the audacity that recklessness and malice could prompt; but it has only resulted in the confutation of the assailants. The issue, sooner or later, of every attack has been a fuller verification of the inspired narrative.

It is to a survey of this long controversy, and a restatement of the Historical Evidences of the truth of the Scripture Records that these lectures, written with great calmness, clearness, and ability, are devoted. In the first lecture the author