goes; and we have still from forty to fifty inquirers, that is, persons whom we believe to be awakened to a sense of their lost state, who lament over their sins, and are seeking forgiveness through Jesus Christ. Most of them are of the Fingoes, among whom the work of God is still powerfully advancing. “On Lord's-day I visited Upper Blinkwater-the source of the rivulet on which Mr Calderwood is residing. It is one of our out-stations, and there we have an excellent native teacher, who is a great blessing, and has been the means of bringing many souls to Christ; he has a school of nearly 100 children. I had a large congregation, chiefly Fingoes and Gonas. As the place of worship could not contain more than half of those who attended, I stood at the door and preached both to those within and those without, from ‘Behold, he cometh with clouds.' "The native teacher has succeeded in getting several members of the church to reside, one at each kraal, or village, of the Fingoes. Consequently there is now at each of these places a religious service every evening, at which all the people attend; a hymn is sung, an exhortation is given, and prayer is offered -these simple means seem greatly blessed. On the Sabbath all attend at the place of worship; a great change has taken place in this part of the settlement in the last two years-Caffres, Gonas, Fingoes, Mantatees, Hottentots, and numbers of the late apprentices, have been brought to a knowledge of the Saviour. "From Buxton, we have also had a rich harvest of souls: it is one of our largest locations-we have a good school there. The school-room, which is so large, that it serves also for a chapel, has been built chiefly at the expense of Sir Fowel Buxton. The people are very proud of the name of their place; the situation is delightful; the soil very fertile, being watered by a small stream which is tributary to the Kat River. It is furnished with forests of the finest timber. "About three weeks ago eight inquirers were sent in from this place. One of these, a very interesting young Fingoe female, was much affected. When asked what she had to say, she exclaimed, 'O, Sir, I am a murderer.' 'Whom have you murdered?' I said. 'O, I have murdered the Son of God,' was the answer. 'How have you murdered the Son of God?' "By my sins,' she said, I bave rejected his word, I have resisted his Spirit.' And what will you now do?' I said. I throw myself at his feet,' was the answer. "A Fingoe man, when asked what had brought him, said with much emotion, 'My heart brought me-my heart is unclean-my heart is full of sin—I wish to give my heart to Jesus Christ.' 'Who,' I asked, 'is Jesus Christ?' 'God's Son.' 'Where is he?' In heaven.' 'Was he ever on earth? 0, yes, he came to suffer and die for me.' "Next Sabbath, with the Lord's will, five persons are to be baptised-two Gonas, two Fingoes, and one female of mixed descent. The last has been living a bad life, but God has most powerfully given her to see the evil of her ways, and turned her to himself; her convictions have been most keen, but her joy is now great. To-day she could scarcely speak; her heart was full; and, trembling from head to foot, she said, 'I have been one of the greatest sinners on earth; but God has, I trust, forgiven all my sins, for the sake of Jesus Christ.' I said, 'Are you ready to give yourself openly to Jesus Christ?' With floods of tears she said, To whom otherwise should I give myself? I wish henceforth to live to him alone.' ERRATA IN THE Present Number. Page 325, line 17 from bottom, for "reformed provinces. How" read “reformed, proving how." Page 326, line 16 from bottom, for "fifteenth," read "sixteenth." THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. JANUARY 1845. No. LXVII. ART. I.-Luther and Calvin; or the True Spirit of the Reformed Church. By J. H. MERLE D'AUBIGNE, D.D., Author of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century,' Geneva and Oxford,' &c. Blackie and Son, pp. 60. 6 THE times are pressing. We must proceed to what is useful, and not lose ourselves in much speaking, but search, according to the apostolical precept, for what may truly contribute to the edification of the church. These arc winged words,' iria Tragoevra, in the best of senses, and in the best of causes. They form the first sentence in this address. At one stride the author rushes into the field, lifts his weapon, confronts the enemy, and the combat is begun. Men were not wont to write thus. We have read, in our day, many a treatise of the olden time, and upon subjects urgent enough, and in a style nervous and fervent as the occasion demanded. But never do we remember of stumbling upon a commencement like the above. Take Richard Baxter. No man ever wielded pen with a more vigorous, energetic, impatiently eager hand. His whole soul is poured into his words. His very eyes seem to flash out in some of his burning sentences. His treatises are torrents of persuasive words and heart-thrilling appeals. Yet even in him we are obliged to thread our way through prefaces and introductions,-nay, and after the treatise has fairly commenced in good earnest, there is still the opening up of the passage, or the logical laying down of the thesis. And after this process has been gone through in due form, then he seizes his subject with a desperate grasp; nor does he relinquish his hold till he has swept all before him. VOL. XVII. NO. IV. 2 G Men write differently now .from what they once did. Formerly they could afford time to loiter a little by the way, and bestow a little (not ill-bestowed) leisure in selecting words, balancing clauses, and shaping into one another their well-knit sentences. But now there is no time for such delay. The times are pressing.' Every thing rushes forward, (downward shall we say?) with the speed of the hurricane. The world's whole machinery is moving at a fearful rate. It makes one giddy to look upon it. The powers of evil have awoke as from a refreshing sleep. Their nerves are full of vigour and activity; resolution, eager haste mark their every step. The days of slumber and of silence have passed away. The world is thoroughly awake, whether for good or for evil. Hence the time for prefaces, introductions, and dedications is gone by. If men will write, they must come right to the point at once. Formerly it was only the epic poet that was to dash in medias res; now every author must do the same. What is written must be direct, pointed, and brief. The times demand this. The times are pressing,' says our author. And in saying so, he lets us know what he thought of the times. The words themselves though brief, tell us this, but their startling position, much more. It was because he felt that the times were pressing that he wrote at all, and it was because he felt them so pressing that he began in a manner so unceremoniously abrupt and eager. It is like some sudden trumpet-blast, that startles us even more with its suddenness than its sound. It reminds us of a bold hymn, founded on prophecy, whose commencing stanzas often ring in our ears. "A sound in the rampart! I hear the roused lioness In the thicket at midnight, What is it,' asks D'Aubigné, in his second sentence, in our French reformed churches that has characterized the year that has passed since our last anniversary ?' He answers his question by pointing to the new manifestation of their respective principles in these two great bodies of the Continental Protestantism, Luther anism and Reform,'-by the latter expression denoting the work of the sixteenth century, as carried on by Calvin, Zwingle, and their adherents. Essentially these two bodies are one. But at the same time, there is an important diversity in some of their ecclesiastical principles. It is to this that the reader's eye is directed, in order to show how this very diversity, and even apparent opposition, God has made use of to carry forward the gospel, and build up his church. We are led to see how this diversity has been signally over-ruled for blessing, and thereby the Churches of the Reformation saved from much evil which would otherwise, in all likelihood, have befallen them. That there is and has been diversity is what he takes for granted; that this diversity has turned out much to the furtherance of the gospel, the progress of the Reformation, and the promotion of real unity, is what he undertakes to demonstrate. God willed this diversity, that the work of the reformation might be complete.' Without this there would have been incompleteness in that glorious work. There was needed both a centrifugal and a centripetal force in order to preserve the harmony and unity of the system. Romanism is like dead chaos;-rudis indigestaque moles,—having nothing but the unity of the chaotic mass,-a unity of darkness and disorder. It has only one principle, one power,-that is gravitation -drawing everything to itself within its vortex, and lying in space a lifeless, inert mass,-ponderibus librata suis, but nothing more. Protestantism, on the other hand, is a living organized world,— moving round its fixed orbit, and for this end possessing the two forces alluded to, which to the unskilful eye appear as if antagonist and destructive of each other, but which the searching and spiritual eye sees to be admirably fitted to bring about the mighty harmony of motion and unity of end for which they were designed. Opposing tendencies were necessary for that work; and these same tendencies it is which imprinted upon it such admirable unity. Just as for the tidal motion of the sea there are needed two opposing forces, the one drawing downwards, the other upwards, so with the Reformation. Without the gravitating principle to keep the waters in their bed,' the earth would have been perpetually overflowed, land and sea mingled hopelessly together. Without the lunar influence to attract and move the waters, they must have settled down into their spacious hollows, a stagnant waste,-vast, unwieldy, motionless. oozy And further, without the tempest, with its wild irregular motion, crossing and often neutralizing the other forces, till the very depths of the deep are stirred, there would not have been that life or beauty which we now behold, neither would there have been that uniting power which the ocean possesses of binding shore to shore,-not only telling us that in it we possess an instrument for bringing us tidings from afar, but making us feel as we gaze upon its strand, that the very drops that form that ripple now breaking at our feet, may have played around some coral reef in the other hemisphere, or laved the sands of some far island of the Pacific, which our eye has never seen. Such is the way in which diversity and even conflict in the natural world work out one fair design, and effectually subserve true unity and harmony on earth. Just so is it with the church of Christ. And of this the history of the Reformed Churches of Europe furnish a most striking example. We have introduced the latter part of the above figure for a particular purpose. It seems to us as if the first part of it, and also D'Aubigné's own, expressed too much. In reading them, one would be led to infer that diversity and antagonism were as absolutely necessary as the forces which guide the planets in their orbit, and as much forming part of God's original design. Now, it is evident that such is not the case. The simple natural forces that regulate the motions of the universe are essentially necessary, even in an unfallen creation. It is not sin that has made them necessary. They were so before it entered, and they will be so when it is gone, and the world is again arrayed in the purity of its primæval glory. But not so with those diversities in the church. It is sin that has rendered them necessary. They are the badge of imperfection. We need tempests to sweep and purge the earth, because sin has subjected it to the curse. So we need diversities in the church of Christ, because sin still remains in it; elements of discord still exist, which require to be met and neutralized by opposing forces. And in the very peculiarities of a church, while we see that which does certainly tend to divide the body of Christ, we see also that which, by meeting the peculiarities of others, and counteracting the excesses to which they might lead, actually tends to produce the very harmony which they threatened to dissolve. One church fixes its eye upon one particular point, and perhaps magnifies its importance (its relative if not its actual) beyond the truth, so that other points are overshadowed, if not altogether excluded. If there were no other church on earth, what a false and distorted representation of the church of Christ would be exhibited! It might be a true and living church of the one true and living Saviour, yet, by reason of the undue prominence given to this peculiarity, it would present a mis-shapen object to the eye, in which, no doubt, God might recognise his own, but which would be but little in conformity with the Scriptural representation of a church, and of the truth which a church should set forth in all its symmetry and completeness. To meet this, another church is permitted to rear itself, perhaps by its side. That second church has fixed its eye upon another point, very |