these people, and that perhaps their crying when children was stopped too suddenly, or by too harsh and violent methods, and their hereditary evil was checked, and has been pent up in them and plaguing them all this while. When we were at the water-cure, as a visitor, we mean, a man who had been pining for years, and nobody could tell what ailed him, was put into the cold packing, and very soon an eruption of measles came out all over him. It turned out that the man had the measles years before, and the doctor drugged it out of sight, and ever since it had been tormenting him inwardly. Even so the grief of childhood may be violently flogged out of sight, instead of being drawn to the surface by more gentle methods, and the result may be a sorry temper that never knows the relief of tears, but always sulks and whines.

LITTLE WILLIE WAKING UP.

SOME have thought that in the dawning, in our being's freshest glow,
God is nearer little children than their parents ever know,

And that, if you listen sharply, better things than you can teach,
And a sort of mystic wisdom, trickle through their careless speech.

How it is I cannot answer, but I knew a little child,
Who among the thyme and clover and the bees was run ing wild,
And he came one summer evening with his ringlets o'er his eyes,
And his hat was torn in pieces chasing bees and butterflies.

"Now I'll go to bed, dear mother, for I'm very tired of play!"
And he said his "Now I lay me" in a kind of careless way,
And he drank the cooling water from his little silver cup,
And said, gayly, " When it's morning, will the angels take me up?”

Down he sank with roguish laughter in his little trundle-bed, And the kindly God of Slumber showered the poppies o'er his head. "What could mean his speaking strangely?" asked his musing mother then. "O, 't was nothing but his prattle: what can he of angels ken?"

There he lies, how sweet and placid! and his breathing comes and goes
Like a zephyr moving softly, and his cheek is like a rose;
But she leaned her ear to listen if his breathing could be heard:
"Oh," she murmured, "if the angels took my darling at his word!"'

Night within its folding mantle hath the sleepers both beguiled,
And within its soft embracings rest the mother and the child;
Up she starteth from her dreaming, for a sound hath struck her ear,
And it comes from little Willie, lying on his trundle near.

Up she springeth, for it strikes upon her troubled ear again,
And his breath, in louder fetches, travels from his lungs in pain,
And his eyes are fixing upward on some face beyond the room,
And the blackness of the spoiler from his cheek hath chased the bloom.

Never more his "Now I lay me" will be said from mother's knee,
Never more among the clover will he chase the humble-bee;
Through the night she watched her darling, now despairing, now in hope,
And about the break of morning did the angels take him up.

FINE WRITING.

A PREACHER had been discoursing for several Sabbaths on the highest themes, from a high pulpit, and in a highly wrought style, adapted to the place and the subject. It at length occurred to him that the children might not be able to follow him; and having finished the series, in order rightly to divide the word to the people, he preached a sermon for the special benefit of the little ones. Much to his surprise, the older ones opened their ears wider than before, and the accustomed sleepers all kept awake, and some of them thought he had better preach to the children all the while. The truth is, that, when we get into a pernicious habit of fine writing, we use book words instead of the good old Saxon English, redolent of home associations and memories, that comes directly to our business and bosoms. When an earnest preacher, like old Berridge, for instance, breaks away from the trammels of the pulpit, and gives full play to all his humor, pathos, and fire, we shake our heads at his want of dignity and propriety; but, nevertheless, he draws the crowds after him, and, what is better, convinces them of sin. Dr. Holmes suggests that he once wrote a poem which so affected a poor fellow with laughter that he "tumbled in a fit," since which he never dares to write as funny as he can. Would it not be a good rule in sermonizing, for some preachers, at least, not to write quite so well as they know how, and to present more jagged points and angles and rough surfaces, that the sermon might stick in the memory?

S.

EDITORS' COLLECTANEA.

The Extent of the Atonement, in its Relation to God and the Universe. By the REV. THOMAS W. JENKYN, D. D., late President of Coward College, London. Third Edition, carefully revised by the Author for the American Edition. Boston: Gould and Lincoln.— The author is no more in this world. He has been called, as we may trust, to a more intimate communion with Him who accomplished at Jerusalem that wondrous decease through which the kingdom of Heaven hath been opened for all believers. As Moses and Elias spake with the Lord upon this transcendent theme when they were seen together upon the Mount of Transfiguration, so, we may believe, the gracious Teacher lovingly unfolds the mystery for the dear friends who have been redeemed by his Spirit, and gathered into those bright mansions which are invisible for us only because they are so real. As a treatise upon the Extent of the Atonement, this work of Dr. Jenkyn is very satisfactory; and, as this is all that is directly proposed as the subject of discussion, we do not know that we have any right to look for anything more. It is the fruit of a clear and careful mind, whilst a very tender, loving spirit, a heart yearning for the salvation of man, an earnest Christian sense of the practical and experimental, meet the reader at every point. We cannot, indeed, subscribe to their judgment who compare Dr. Jenkyn with Bishop Butler. In passing from the Analogy to this treatise, we are sensible of a great descent. To provoke such a comparison is unwise, and cannot be serviceable to the reputation of a really thoughtful and Christian writer, who has acquitted himself admirably in the controversy with those that hold the opinion of a limited atonement. No very important controversy, some of our readers may think; but to a multitude of sincere Christians it is an important controversy.

With Dr. Jenkyn's treatment of the general subject we are not so well pleased. We find, indeed, a vast deal with which we can go along most heartily,- positions that relieve the type of opinion upon this subject with which our author is associated of every positive objection; but in the whole method of handling the great topic there is a lack of breadth and depth, with an extreme literalness,

an absence of all the rich life-juices. The conception of the Atoning Act seems to us immeasurably beneath the greatness and mystery of the theme; it is altogether too intelligible; nothing mystic remains for the heart to feed upon; the "Personage" to whom the writer refers is our dear suffering Lord no longer. Earnestly protesting against commercial views of the Atonement, he has not escaped the dry and measured speech of trade. We do not know that we have anything to offer on our part which would be more satisfactory, but that does not make us any better satisfied with this. We are very sure that what we might say would seem to many very unintelligible. The suffering through which the imperfect and sinful may be reconciled to the Perfect One, - the cost to God, the cost to man, — is a matter for the reason and the heart to ponder. The understanding gives us poor husks, and only belittles a vast topic. To our minds, the hint contained in a small portion of a paragraph from Lord Bacon, quoted by Dr. Jenkyn, is more instructive as to the internal meaning of the Atonement than all the rest of the book. He says: "I believe that God is so holy, pure, and jealous, that it is impossible for him to be pleased in any creature, though the work of his own hands; so that neither angels, man, nor world would stand or can stand one moment in his eye, without [his] beholding the same in the FACE OF A MEDIATOR." There is a look of a seeing eye down into the heart of things, a bit not of argumentation and mere human logic, but of reason. Sacrifice is inseparable from the relation of the Infinite to the finite, of the Holy to the unholy. The Infinite Love provides it without stint; - "God, who is rich in mercy for that great love wherewith he loved us even when we were dead in sins." But although we cannot regard this treatise as anything more than an attempt towards a discussion of the whole subject, it is singularly encouraging to find in a work so widely acceptable such passages as the following:

"It must be remembered that the atonement is not a measure of law, but of prerogative and grace. Had the atonement been a measure of law, it would have been under the direction of pure equity; but as it is a measure of grace, it is, like all such measures, under the direction of infinite and benevolent wisdom."

"The great sufferings of the Son of God were not intended, nor were they calculated, to affect the character of a single attribute in

God; but they were intended, and eminently adapted, to affect the disposition and the character of the sinner."

"In the Holy Scriptures, the atonement is never represented as calling into exercise any divine perfection, which it does not suppose to be in exercise before. By exercise I do not mean expression.”

And here is a passage in which the subjective side of the atonement is put forward, perhaps even to the neglect of the objective. "When the aspect and effects of the Divine dispensations alter, the change is not in the Infinite and Eternal Mind, but in the state and relations of the offenders towards the Divine government."

Testimony of Modern Science to the Unity of Mankind; being a Summary of the Conclusions announced by the highest Authorities in the several Departments of Physiology, Zoology, and Comparative Philology, in Favor of the specific Unity and common Origin of all the Varieties of Man. By J. L. CABELL, M. D., Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in the University of Virginia. With an Introductory Notice, by JAMES W. ALEXANDER, D. D. New York: Robert Carter and Brothers. We have set down the title of this book in full, because it is a fair description of what its pages really supply. It is the work not so much of an original investigator, as of a studious, judicious, and receptive disciple. The facts and the arguments are candidly and skilfully presented, in what must be regarded as a very formidable array; and for those who have neither sufficient time nor sufficient inclination to undertake the larger treatises, this summary will be of great service. The discussion interests us more in a scientific than in a religious aspect; and whichever way it should be decided, we think that our interpretation of Scripture would not be much affected by the result, one way or the other. Whether the tribes of the earth sprang from various centres of creation, or are all descended from one pair, the Scriptures are not broken, so long as we hold fast by the oneness of humanity. According to an exegesis which is recommended by some of the best names in the Church, Adam is the man, and what the Spirit has taught of Adam is the story of the Fall of Man, -the beginning of wilfulness, the turning away of the finite from the Infinite, the cutting away of the branch from the Vine, which is the cause of spiritual death, and is to be cured only by an act of reconciliation, a free return on the part of