Christians now that the worship of this form is called idolatry, and the cross is become an "abstraction?"

In the lapse of a few years, in the change of manners and circumstances, every form comes to lose its vitality; the lively intelligence which it once possessed has vanished; it is left empty, unmeaning-in one word, a lie. Then arises a season of mystery and skepticism; the world abounds in hypocrisy; faith, both of religion and all authority, appears dead; society has lost its firmest links-a time, truly, of danger and darkness, such as we are now passing through. And the remedy?" Restore the faith,' say some. "Breathe into the forms a new spirit-revive a new life in the decayed or torpid frame of society." Yes; but how? These forms have not suffered violence, and cannot be restored by endeavor. They perished irrevocably through the change that the world has undergone; they became unfit, and a mockery; the atmosphere was too clear and rarefied for them, and they died away. "Can these dry bones live?" Or where shall we find a "quickening spell" capable of accomplishing the miracle of their resurrection?

Newton must have had a far more living faith in the principle of attraction, which he had himself discovered by long investigation, than ourselves, to whom it has come as an inheritance. It might happen that the study of mathematics should so fall into disuse that none remained capable of going through the process of demonstration: yet a faith in it would remain for a generation or two undisturbed, and the forms of that faith would be exhibited in orreries, and worked out in almanacs; but all under a dangerous predicament, at the mercy of any bold theorist who should propound some newer, plausible doctrine.

But we are warned that change is most injurious, and exhorted not to venture on it, since nothing planted can flourish while you are perpetually disturbing the earth around its roots. We consent to the assertion: change is indeed destruction; but the deduction we draw from this is, not that we should therefore postpone it for the present, but that we should render it unnecessary forever by cutting away all that is liable to decay and degradation, by abolishing forms, whether they be saint-praying and adoration of relics, or appear in the shape of an arbitrary ritual and dogmatical articles: All are cumbrous, temporary, local, things" of seasons and circles." Why should we join the eternal to the evanescent-the spirit, which should penetrate the universe, to a body that a span can circumscribe?

By far the most interesting chapter in Dr. Taylor's volumes is that which concludes the work entitled "The Conservative Principles of Society." Our article has already extended to too great length for us to even lightly touch upon the varied subjects discussed in that chapter. They are most significant and important: education of the lower classes; their labor and their amusements; benevolent societies; factory government; crime and punishment; all are treated of briefly, but judiciously, and many of the remarks and principles laid down are eminently just. Upon the vexed question of religious education, as it has been called, Dr. T. observes: We deeply feel that all knowledge is religious; that every re

velation of the world of matter, or the world of mind, increases the emotions of wonder, love and praise towards the Almighty Being who has so nightily called both into existence, and so marvellously accommodated them to each other," and recommends that all secular instruction, communicated on the Sunday, should have a directly religious aim.

On the relation of crime and punishment we have an excellent exposition of the true purpose of punishment-not vengeance, but prevention. "The means of prevention are the only proper objects of penal legislation. It was long a prevalent error, and is still a very common mistake, to suppose that society inflicted punishment upon a criminal in vengeance for the wrong he inflicted upon it, and thus the necessity of inflicting a certain amount of suffering was closely associated with the administration of justice;" a union which we may well call mischievous, as it has so long tended to continue that fatal system of destructive justice, whose end and aim appears to be, not how to amend the man, but how to visit with most keen severity the criminal. We regret that its too great length prevents our extracting, or re-extracting, M. Cousin's interesting account of his visit to the "Institution for the Reformation of Juvenile Offenders" at Rotterdam.

An "age of transition," such as is the case of the European world at present in an eminent degree, will always be attended with its own peculiar difficulties. Both in the material and the mental world great changes have taken place; a rapid progress has been effected, which has undoubtedly elevated society as a whole, but yet has thrown into much disorder many of its separate portions; and this state will last until a mutual adjustment can be made. New arts, novel processes, an altered system of manufactures, and many changes in the fields and relations of commerce, have involved multitudes in perplexity and distress; while the new principles of knowledge, and the vast stimulus given to education of all kinds, have opened to the general mass of our population a new power of which they can perceive the vastness, but not the limits; and this falling into hands unaccustomed, as yet, to its possession, is liable to be misused, as riches always are when suddenly bestowed upon those bred in poverty.

At different periods, this country and others have passed through many of the "eras of transition;" with long wars, rebellions, and other fierce convulsions: the present period has also to be struggled and suffered through, if not with actual blood-shedding, yet with distress and confusion enough of a quieter sort. Amid this confusion we live, and have to seek the remedy-several being offered to us, from many quarters, ready made. Stop the progress," say the quacks, with that one nostrum of theirs; "destroy the factories; shut up the schools, or let us manage them, which is much the same; redeant saturnia regna-let the good old days return." Not so, Messieurs Quacks; we have more than once ere now tried this salve of yours, and not found it healing. On another side we are advised to hurry through the "transition" by unloosing all the bonds and connections of society, resolving it into its elements, and then let these reunite, according to the laws of their mutual attraction, into a

state of equilibrium. This, too, is empirical, destructive. It has been asserted of our solar system, that if its smallest atom were to perish, it would be a system no longer. The theories of those last-mentioned worlddoctors would adopt the same assertion into the system of social philosophy, that if the smallest truth be suffered to perish, or the minutest falsehood to find entrance, a principle of destruction has been admitted which nothing will obviate but to unform and reform the whole system. Instead of this, why not endow your system with some repellant power which shall disengage the falsehood, making it elastic, so as to expand and contract according to the circumstances of its position?

The truth that regulates the political world can never be the rigid, immutable verity which governs the moral; it must partake in some measure of the nature of expediency, and must change in form and fashion to suit the varying condition of the social being it is intended to preserve. You cannot confine a gas in the same vessel which will hold water, and you cannot bind a fluid in chains as you can a solid mass; and thus as mankind pass through every intermediate state in their advance towards improvement, the forms of the government which is to keep them in harmony must also vary; each of them being, for a certain period, suitablethat is true and after the lapse of time becoming unfit, and so must be changed as worn out and obsolete. Victor Cousin calls these rejected forms" errors that have served their time." But why "errors" at all? Was the Athenian democracy an error, because at length it produced a Cleon, or succumbed to the Thirty Tyrants? Under the government of consuls, Rome grew into majesty: was that government an error, because, after seven hundred years, Caligula made his horse a consul?

The divine right of kings was a necessity during ages of unrule and turbulence, as an attractive power to bind into allegiance the self-willed ferocity of feudal barons; but it was broken through on the first occasion that a sovereign dared to abdicate, and is now practically annihilated. In like manner, the British House of Commons has grown since its establishment from a mere assembly to petition for redress of grievances to being the highest power in the realm; just as the commons themselves, of whom it is the representative, have risen from almost nonentity as beings of thought and intelligence to their present eminence of wealth and knowledge.

Still the want of" elasticity" is perpetually felt in every national enactment. Legislating upon the old principles, we pass our laws with a view only to the immediate present, to heal some crying evil, or remove some too glaring inconsistency-but seldom having any prospective reference to futurity, or furnished with the power to adjust themselves to an altered state of society. From this cause we are compelled to be forever renewing and amending, till our whole polity has become most intricate and heterogeneous," a thing of shreds and patches." The reform bill already wanted reforming, even when the final words were speaking which passed it into a law. All church bills, corporation bills, commercial bills, however well adapted to the moment of their enactment, must, in a few years, become unsuitable, because they are "unelastic," and so continue

to exist as "grievances," becoming every year more grievous, or be altered and botched up into an ill-looking, ill-wearing web of patchwork.

The "conservative principles of society," those principles which alone prevent its foundations from being broken up by the conflict and expansion of its discordant elements, are comprised in all those institutions, national and private, for ameliorating the condition of the lower classes, for removing their ignorance, improving their morals, and increasing their. happiness. Many of these institutions are insufficient in their power, others are temporary in their character, and all require constant watchfulness to prevent them from becoming useless, or even hurtful; for, as the evil we have to encounter is always changing in its nature, the remedy by which it is to be opposed must also be modified to the altered circumstances, or it will itself become an evil. "Chivalry has departed from the earth," because the evils it was intended to cure had departed before it. We cannot regret its departure, when considering how much oppression and suffering must exist to find work for one knight errant. Suppose that institution had been perpetuated, how Quixotically ridiculous it would have proved sometimes, and sometimes how terribly injurious!

A time may come when the existing remedies for present ills,—the almshouses, free schools, public charities,-may also pass away for "want of work," and be regarded only with veneration as the proofs of an ancient virtue which had become needless. Yet doubt it not that other evils will arise, in their turn to be resisted with equal watchfulness, and call forth the exercise of an enlightened benevolence. In this world man was never intended to go to sleep-it was meant that, in some things, he should "take thought for the morrow." With his motto, vigil et sanctus -watchful and holy-he should wage unshrinking war with sin and error wherever they may be found. Forgetfulness of this has infected so many carefully-constructed systems with fatal error. Their founders have been too anxious to set the world moving with such machinery that it should thenceforth go alone; that its motions should be continued forever in a regular, noiseless revolution within the orbit prescribed by an exact balance of separate forces, and that man need take no further trouble, but leave its government in the hands of calculation: therefore they have always endeavored to restrain and compress; chilling every warmer feeling, and reducing all the wild spiritual flights of intellect within the narrow pathway of a cold philosophy. Their systems, indeed, look well upon paper, are impregnable in logic, exact and beautiful in their process of reasoning; but they fail in practice because they regard the mind of man as a machine-supposing that this mind can be trained into a perfect, unresisting compliance with the decrees of a demonstration, and will take its direction implicitly according to the calculated preponderance of evil and good. Having no allowance for eccentricity, granting no forgiveness to those outbursts of enthusiasm which are perpetually breaking the firmest boundary marks of long settled ethics, but from whose generous daring this world has so often received fire from heaven, their moral policy is formed on the plan of the ancient conquerors,―solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant: they destroy every feeling, stifle every emotion, freeze up all the

fountains of affection; they make a solitude of the heart, and call it peace. Truth lies so entirely in the reverse of this principle that not only is it important for the well-being of society, but also it is necessary for the purity of every man's own moral condition, that his impulses towards the good should never subside into repose. He can never be safely left one moment to be good " upon system," but must be kept aroused into energetic opposition to his foe; while out of this ceaseless antagonism of truth and falsehood, going on round him and in him, will be produced a perfection of moral energy, as from the bosom of the tempest are born the germs of terrestrial beauty and fruitfulness.

We must now conclude; our limits are exhausted, and our subject is inexhaustible. Dr. Taylor's volumes will, we doubt not, have considerable circulation, which they deserve on many accounts; but we yet hope to welcome the appearance of a work which shall more amply fulfil the vast requirements of a natural history of society. A. J.

ARTICLE III.

ILLUSTRATIONS of Men and THINGS IN CHINA.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

THE Chinese Repository is a monthly periodical, of 60 pages or more, published at Canton. It is conducted by the American and English Missionaries and other Europeans, resident in China. We have on our table several of the latest Nos. of this valuable work, and have made arrangements for its regular receipt hereafter. It contains many specimens, notices and illustrations of Chinese and Japanese history and literature, which are at once curious and instructive, and from which we propose to make occasional selections for the pages of our work. To the immense population of China and Japan the attention of the whole civilized world has been recently directed, with an unwonted interest, not only by the questions of trade and morals involved in the success or failure of the British war against the Chinese empire, but by the encouraging prospects of the missionary enterprise in that important quarter of the globe. It will be only by little and little that we can hope to make our acquaintance with the internal condition of a people so peculiar and an empire so iron-handed and mysterious. Such sketches, however, as shall fall in with the design of our work, we shall, from time to time, lay before our readers. We begin with the following "illustrations of men and things in China."-SR. ED.

From the Chinese Repository.

POPULAR NOTIONS AND ALLUSIONS TO THE POWERs of Nature.

The few sentences here given will exhibit some of the most current notions of the Chinese upon the heavens, and metaphors drawn from them. VOL. III.-No. I.

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