sects in a comprehensive church. Let not the speculative reformer, who meditates upon the sins of mankind, and points out their remedy in the abstractions of a purely spiritual code, despise the practical reformer, who has confronted wrong in real life, and by his moderate measures won to peace minds whom extreme measures might have driven into disgust, or theoretic systems might have withdrawn from action. We will honor Grotius as a peacemaker, quite as much as the speculative Kant, and more than the sentimentalist Rousseau. He stands at the head of the practical school of international moralists. His direction has been followed by Puffendorf, Bynkershoek, and Wheaton. Leibnitz, Wolf, and Vattel have trodden in a more ambitious path of speculation. Kant, St. Pierre, and Bentham have set forth far more dazzling schemes of pacification. When shall the man appear who shall combine the excellences of them all, the scholar, moralist, philosopher, and Christian, who shall concentrate all the light of truth and force of influence now available for the subject, and show the sin of war alike against the laws of God and the good of the nations ?

We must leave Grotius now to our readers, with only a few words upon his character, words, perhaps, which might as well be left to be inferred from our previous remarks as be explicitly stated.

His mind was strong and comprehensive, wonderful in its power of gathering and retaining particulars, yet not deficient in the faculty of deducing from them general ideas. If his intellect, however, disappoints us at all, it is in point of philosophical depth. He was a scholar and statesman, rather than a philosopher, and cannot by any means be ranked with the two commanding thinkers of his century, Bacon and Descartes. He did not discern the law of inductive reasoning, like the former, nor recognize the value of the human soul, like the latter. His mind was eminently practical, so much so, that he valued science more for its available powers than for its wonderful truths. He was not by any means insensible to the dawn of that new age of science which Galileo, his contemporary and correspondent, was bringing on; but, in a letter to Galileo, he shows the direction of his thoughts by a passing allusion to his discoveries in physics, and dwells chiefly upon his new method of calculating longitude, which, he thinks, will be of especial importance to the commerce of Holland.

He was remarkable for practical sense in all things. In his interpretation of Scripture he exhibited it eminently. His sober judgment saved him from the usual vagaries of interpreters, and his course in commenting upon that book so perilous to sanity, the Apocalypse, is such as will meet with little rebuke from the readers of Eichhorn or Stuart.

If we are to class him with one of the two chief divisions of intellects, we must rank him rather with Aristotelian than Platonic minds, rather with those who go from particular instances to general truths, than with those who deduce particular instances from general principles. Poet though he was, he lacked inspiration, the inspiration of kindling thoughts and overpowering emotions. As a theologian, he trusted not much in the soul, opposed as he was to the dogma that would make of it a passive clod. He regarded the soul not as immortal by nature, but by especial endowment, and sought more in the authority of Scripture and the enactments of Councils for intimations of eternal life, than in the instincts of his own heart, or the witness of the Divine Spirit. But a heart just and humane as his was could not have refused him assurances of peace. He was habitually devout.

He was a man of large affections. He had many friends, and never abandoned them. He clung fondly to the companions of his youth. He could not bear to give up any scene or object that had been familiar to him. For years a sad exile, he never ceased to care for and love his country. The minuteness of his references to Holland, in his letters, is remarkable. It is almost amusing to see how often he alludes to the chest in which he escaped from imprisonment, and urges his brother to try to find it.*

His life was undoubtedly a broken one, and his plans were much interrupted in consequence. To do justice to. the force of his will, and to screen him from the charge of desultory effort, we must remember the influence of national position, the strength of his patriotic feelings, and the bitter loss of motive and aim which his exile must have caused him. To his honor, not to his shame, be it said, that, while he did not cease to feel like a son of Holland, he accepted cheerfully the lot which had been put upon him so cruelly, and labored for Christendom as a citizen of the world.

* The year before his death, he thus writes to his brother William :"About the chest nothing? I should be sorry to have such a monument of the Divine goodness towards me lost." Such remarks reveal character.

Estimated from our point of view, the career of Grotius is full of important lessons. We might dwell upon its bearing on the principles now asserted by liberal Christians, and show how near his great scholarship and candid judgment brought him toward our own conclusions. We might trace the progress of the Arminian controversy, show the triumph of the doctrines for which he contended throughout the chief part of Protestant Christendom, and portray the vast changes between the times of the Synod of Dort and the recent Evangelical Union at London. We might set forth in what manner his mantle of patriotism and misfortune fell upon his illustrious countryman, De Witt, and his spirit of universality, with a far deeper philosophy, entered into Leibnitz, who was born the year after his decease, and who prepared the way for the Kants, Schellings, and Hegels who have swayed the empire of philosophic catholicity in recent times. We might vindicate the wisdom of his moderate political course, and prove how sadly Holland suffered from the neglect of his counsels, how long and painfully she oscillated, first towards the undue ascendency and regal prerogative of the house of Orange, then towards democratic licentiousness, then to military despotism, to settle at last in the somewhat equivocal repose of the present monarchical constitution. We might exhibit the course of Dutch theology, and show the issue of the Calvinistic triumph, first in a lifeless and merely nominal orthodoxy, then in the attempt to revive the Genevan strictness, and, as a counter movement, the recent rise of a more living, free, and spiritual Christianity in the school of Gröningen. We might compare the religious history of Holland with that of other Protestant republics, especially with Geneva and New England, who likewise began with Calvinism, — and end not there. But we must forbear.

We must pause from our review of the life and services of a man who deserves a place among the leading minds since the Reformation, with a single word of honor to his name for the universality of his thought, the catholicity of his spirit. Other men have cherished grander visons of the future prospects of our race. Few men of so large schemes have enforced their purposes by a life so practical and laborious. Some may assign to him almost a prophetic power in his dreams of Christian union under a Catholic Church. We deem him no such seer, however some events of this century may favor the thought. The catholicity of the age

of Theodosius, and still more of Hildebrand, cannot return. The giant race of Teutons have set their faces against it, and God calls mankind to new and unexplored scenes. What developments, what new powers and harmonies, are in store for the world, we will not predict. It is safe to say, that, whatever form the better spirit of our race may take, however much society may succeed in combining its new knowledge and resources with Christian love, if justice, humanity, and piety are still honored, the men of the new age will not forget the memory of Hugo Grotius.

S. 0.

ART. II. BEARD'S EXHIBITION OF UNITARIANISM.*

THE immediate occasion of the preparation of Dr. Beard's volume, as he informs us in his Preface, was the passage of the Dissenters' Chapels Bill, which suggested to the author the idea of "collecting evidences of one of the consequences of free inquiry, and the prevalence of Scripture knowledge, in the renunciation of the pagan and metaphysical notion of the Trinity." The event referred to furnishes in itself no trifling evidence, if not of the strength of Unitarian sentiments in Great Britain, yet at least of that growing liberality of opinion and disposition to respect the rights of private judgment, to promote which has been one important part of the mission of Unitarianism. The present work comes to us in good time, and fills a void in Unitarian literature which has been long felt and regretted. The members of the great body of Unitarians in different parts of the world have hitherto known too little of each other. The volume before us will have the effect of making them better acquainted with each other's condition, progress, and views, and we hope may lead to a more intimate union and sympathy.

No small portion of the articles in the book are from the pen of the compiler, Dr. Beard himself; others are from different hands, abundantly competent to the task committed

* Unitarianism exhibited in its Actual Condition; consisting of Essays by several Unitarian Ministers and others, illustrative of the Rise, Progress, and Principles of Christian Anti-Trinitarianism in different Parts of the World. Edited by the Rev. J. R. Beard, D. D. London. 1846. 8vo. pp. 346.

to them. We cannot, in the brief space we can here give to the subject, present a minute analysis of the contents of the work, nor enter into any critical disquisitions on the merits of the historical sketches or 66 " which com

essays

pose it. We shall attempt little more than to offer a few extracts relating to the existence and progress of Unitarianism, especially in those countries in respect to which its history is least known, believing that in this way we shall best meet the wishes of our readers, and at the same time recommend the volume to their favorable regard.

The work opens with a brief, but clear and satisfactory, account of Congregational Unitarianism in the United States, embracing its history, an exposition of what it is, and some remarks on its present condition. This was furnished by Rev. F. A. Farley, of Brooklyn, N. Y. We speak of it as satisfactory. By this we mean, that its statements are entitled to confidence, and the information it embodies is as full as the nature of the work of which it forms a part admitted, fifty-three pages being all that is devoted to the subject, constituting, however, a larger number than is given to any other article in the volume with the exception of two, those of Unitarianism in England and in Germany. American Unitarianism deserves to be treated at much greater length, and materials enough might be collected by diligent research to fill a volume. Mr. Farley has done, and done well, what he could within the limits prescribed by the necessity of the case. He will excuse us for mentioning one slight error, however, which he has allowed to escape him, relating to the constitution of the clerical part of the Board of Overseers of Harvard College. He describes it as consisting of fifteen ministers of Congregational churches. The restriction limiting the choice to "Congregational" ministers no longer exists, having been removed in 1843.

For the greater part of the articles on the "Christian Connection," the Quakers, and the Universalist “Anti-Trinitarians," in the United States, the editor acknowledges himself indebted to Rupp's History, noticed in our September number for 1844. Rev. Mr. Cordner, of Montreal, furnishes the account of Unitarianism in Canada. The article on Unitarianism in England, by Rev. Mr. Turner, to whom we were indebted for the valuable paper on the same subject in our number for May, 1845, and whose volumes on the "Lives of English Unitarians" have also received notice in our jour