ciation of the sins of social life, made the sum total of their armor, and resulted in the entire failure of their efforts. The one found it out in time, the other did not.

We attribute much to the natural greatness of Chalmers; his almost unequaled eloquence; his enlightened and statesmanlike mind; his broad philosophy and learning; his wise adaptation of means to ends; his great physical ability, producing the thunder of his power; his capacity to influence and deal with all orders of mind; his simplicity of life, transparent honesty and candor of purpose, all go to constitute a character of the highest order and most admirable proportions. But, magnificent as this galaxy of qualities and attainments is, yet they never produced the weight of a feather in reforming any single human heart, until they were regenerated with the heart of their great owner. Until that great event, they had been frittered away and lost upon empty vanities. But now he became great and powerful, in a new sense, under the operation of a new and living faith. The heart now felt what the intellect believed. It was this which enlightened and animated the whole of his great and well trained power. He no longer wielded the sword of the natural man, but the sword of the Spirit. The very highest honors which he had courted before, now became, as other worldly things became, baubles in comparison with the new and lofty things which had begun to shed their glory upon all things within him and without him. He now began a race of ever-during honor and of the most gigantic usefulness.

He made an era of the times in which he lived. He left upon his country the stamp of his wisdom, his eloquence, his intellect, his energy, his ecclesiastical statesmanship, and supreme fidelity to the greatest and noblest trusts that God at any time allots to mortals. He was strong, but it was the Cross of Christ which made him so. He was genial and world-wide in his sympathies with man, but he was genial and world-wide as Christ was, and not as the teachers of false doctrines, who cover over, but bring no remedy for deep moral diseases of man. His doctrine was Christ Divine and Christ Human. Man lost and man recovered by an adequate and God-honoring remedy. Had there been no depravity in man, and no divinity in Christ, there had been, not only no Chalmers, but none of that long list of magnificent men, whose names shine out like luminaries along the whole track of Church history. It was the utter renunciation of all self-righteous

ness and all self-salvation, and an entire reception of salvation through the grace of Christ the Redeemer, that saved Chalmers from the dreary lot of a mere worldly preacher.

Like Channing, he might have studied literature, taste, elegance, history, sciencé, or philosophy; he might have written books, essays, and reviews, and won such renown as such things give, but as a minister of the Divine Word, his life would have been the merest blank. The memories and admiration which now hang around him in rich festoons of glory, would never have had an existence. Men live and rejoice in leagueing themselves with the great living powers of Truth and Righteousness; and men die by leagueing themselyes with the feeble inanities and frigidities of false and superficial errors, however specious they may be. Doctrines, wholly unfitted to the nature of man, may flash like meteors for the night, but must die when the morning cometh.

Had the heart of Channing been warmed by the same heat, and his soul lit up by the same light, we can not think the results of their lives would have presented so great and so unhappy a contrast. The one might not have had the opportunity of leaving the stamp of his ecclesiastical statesmanship upon his church and country, and though not equal in power and depth, yet he might have trodden closely upon the heels of his great Scotch brother.

We know, indeed, that it is far more to the liking of his ecclesiastical kith and kin, that Channing should stand just where he does. But time, and eternity, and the nature of man will yet proclaim it, that mere ambitious learning, worldly fame, and errors which overturn the whole nature of the gospel, are but poor compensations in a dying day for those high achievements which distinguish the life and evangelical ministry.

We have not one word to say in slight of any amount or variety of learning which ministerial preparation and constant industry may bring into the field of its contests and conquests. The more of learning, and of the high equipments which constitute the workman that needeth not to be ashamed, the better and more important it is for the cause of Truth and Righteousness. Orthodox Christianity has never shrunk from any of those great conflicts requiring the profoundest learning and rarest attainments. Sound learning is our admiration and our sine qua non in the ministry. It is one of the ends and aims of our Church. Nor do we yield for a

moment to those supercilious claims of superiority in learning so arrogantly put forth about Boston.

But we regard every thing as an impertinence and an offense, which comes in as a succedaneum for the doctrines of the Cross. We have no taste and no approbation for any sermon, or pulpit exhibition, however eloquently grand, or elegantly tasteful it may be, when it does not shine in the Light of Heaven, and when its fires do not glow with the heat of Divine Truth. We have a liking for essays and elegant dissertations in the Rambler and Spee tator; but in the pulpit, the proper tone and drift are far more Heaven-ward and Christ-like than these. A sermon is always a profane affair to us when its literature is manifestly the chief material in its structure. The whole thing lacks fitness, and is a most conspicuous manifestation of the worst of all unfitness.

Yet, Knowledge and Preaching are twin sisters. The pulpit, without learning, is ignorance attempting to teach mankind. There is no spot on earth where regenerated and sanctified learning shines with such splendor, and works with such Divine efficiency, as in the pulpit. But, like the sun, it shines without effort and without display.

We have noticed that, about Boston, where Unitarianism most abounds, its ministers, to a great extent, become literary compilers, historians, essayists, reviewers, poets, etc., as a business. Now, we think this the most natural thing in the world; nor do we blame these men for this change of occupation. The cultivated mind. looks for variety, and must have it. But where it has eviscerated its own profession of all that boundless wealth and endless variety of living knowledge and ideas, which every-where shine out from an unspoiled gospel, it is a matter altogether to be expected that it would seek other fields, however poor, on which to expend its power, create its renown, and gratify its reachings after variety. To preach, for perpetuity, a Christless gospel, is a desert of sand with the simoom of monotony ever blowing across it.

It is, therefore, no wonder that men, whose creed lacks variety, vastness, and Divine mystery, should seek other scenes of intellectual exertion. We can scarcely conceive of a life more joyless than his, who having to preach, has often gone the round of all the variety which his system affords. To assign such a task to an honest and able man, is to expose him to manifold causes of uneasiness. And after having tried to impart variety and vitality to

a system which will not sustain either, if he should turn Congressman, Historian or any thing else to relieve his tedium, who can blame him? Another relief, and not so innocent, is preaching to the times.

Thus the Bible, either absolutely rejected, or its great fundamental doctrines torn up by the roots, fails, as a great instrumental cause, to accomplish its great, its wonderful and salutary effects upon the souls of men.

Another thing may here be remarked: No system, denying the Divinity of Christ, has ever yet reared up or sustained a great religious reformer. Had there been no Divinity in Christ, there had been no Paul, no Peter, no Luther, no Calvin. The Divinity of Christ, as an article of Christian faith, has been the great vitalizing principle in every reformer and in every reformation since the days of the crucifixion. There are no motives of sufficient power, in any system, which denies the depravity of man and the Divinity of Christ, to originate and sustain a reformer. When Wesley and Whitfield began their reforming labors in England, the pulpits of the country had ceased to resound with the name of Christ as the life and only hope of sinners. Wintry essays and polished frost-work constituted most of the pulpit pabulum of the land. But when these great trumpeters blew their blasts, they did it, not in the name of a man, but in the name of Immanuel, God with us. And just as all reformers have done this, so has the gospel in their hands become quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword-like a fire and a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces. And as none has yet been, so no reformation will ever be found springing up from the dead embers of a Christless gospel.

ART. III.—The Meaning and Use of 7 (Selah.)

MUCH has been written in the, attempt to show what may have been the meaning and use of D, Selah, (which occurs both in the Psalms and in the song of Habakkuk,) but the result thus far seems to be unsatisfactory. We can not think, however, that this

should be suffered to induce us to abandon the hope of ultimately ascertaining the intention of the Holy Spirit in the employment of the term. And it is preferable still to wait in the attitude of patient inquiry, and of hope, rather than to identify our position with that of too many interpreters of the Scriptures, and with not a few who conduct the worship of God in our churches: for the Latin vulgate and Spanish version have excluded the word entirely; while some preachers of the Gospel have the presumption to omit it in their public reading of those portions of the Bible in connection with which it is employed. The plea offered in the attempt to justify this procedure, that the meaning of the term is not certainly known, if admitted to be valid, will be found fairly entitled to an application much more extensive; since, on this ground, not only must Selah be excluded from the use of the Sanctuary, but, along with it, any and every term, phrase, or portion of the Divine Word, the meaning of which is uncertain in the preacher's estimation; not excepting those "things hard to be understood" to which Peter refers as existing in the epistles of Paul. Surely we are not prepared to concede to any man the prerogative to take such liberties with that inspired word which God has magnified above all his name; Ps. cxxxviii: 2. And to any who may be inclined to assume it, we commend the remark of the late Dr. Alexander, in his exposition of Ps. iii: 3, in which, referring to Selah, he says: "Like the titles, it invariably forms part of the text, and its omission by some Editors and Translators is a mutilation of the Word of God."

We propose to offer a few remarks in relation to the term itself, after which we shall present briefly the view we have for many years entertained respecting it; and shall, also, explain the use which we have been led to make of it in the perusal of those precious portions of the Sacred Volume in which it occurs.

The word is employed seventy-one times in the Psalms, and three times in the Song of Habakkuk, (Hab. iii: 3, 9, 13.) Dr. Alexander on Ps. iii: 3, and likewise Gesenius, sub voce, say that it occurs seventy-three times in the Psalms, which is a mistake.*

For the information of some of our readers, it may be proper to remark that a similar term elsewhere occurring (as in 2 Kings, xiv: 7, and Isa. xvi: 1), although the same English letters are employed in transferring it, is a different word in the Hebrew, (yɔ;) and is in other places translated rock. See for example Judges i: 36, and Ps. xviii: 2, (3,) and xlii: 9, (10.)