From how many churches would one who should doubt or dispute this be excommunicated! If one single relic of the law has such power over us Americans in this nineteenth century, how must the Jew in the first century have needed some dispensation from the hand of the law itself.

This came to him in no unnatural or accidental manner. It was, so far as we can see, inevitable. If Christ had lived and died in good and regular standing among the Jews, he would have left his followers under the same bondage. All his influence and authority would have been on the side of the law. If he had made war upon these ordinances, each harmless in itself, and the established law of the land, he would have justly merited the reproach of being a stirrer up of sedition. This too would have been a side issue. He would have gone out of his way. He would have stood in opposition to the law, and by opposition it could not be destroyed. The only way in such a case is to let the tendency one would oppose work itself out to the full, when, being finite, it will strike over into its opposite. This was the course which Christ chose. He placed himself in its centre. Not only was he no opposer of Judaism, he was the very Christ, the centre and soul of Judaism. Such a Christ the formal and worldly Jews could not accept. We have here no side or chance issue. The Messiahship was the central point in Christ's mission. It was the central point of Judaism. The collision must take place. This collision is the necessary climax of Christ's ministry. He foresaw it and its results. His system was prepared within the old. Its development was not sudden and harsh. It fell in with the regular and mighty processes of nature. As the seed rounds itself, and smooths itself, and hardens itself into its own shape, within the parent plant, as the embryonic life is formed within the parent life, taking its own shape, establishing its own circulation and independent centre of being, so was Christianity formed within Judaism. As this new life does not force its way out of itself, but is cast out with pain and labor, so was Christianity born of Judaism, taking from it its best life and strength.

This fact does not stand alone. Not only does it fall in with the processes of the lower nature, it furnishes the type

according to which Christianity has ever since developed itself. Luther, for instance, did not attack the Church; he would reform it only. He clung to it as to his mother and his life. But the Church cast him out. Thrust out from it, he found himself free and glad, and established his new and broader system, which was in turn to give birth to newer and broader forms. Thus does the founder of the new cling to the old, till he is cast out from it. It seems to him, at first, like being thrust out from heaven. He wanders without the camp, out of that Church which seemed to him to be the only dwelling of God; but being out, he finds then that it had obscured more than it had revealed his glory. He finds himself beneath the broad, blue sky. He is still the child of God. He looks up into God's face with no intervening veil. Christ seeks him out, as he did the man who was born blind, when he had been thrust out from the synagogue. Surprised and delighted he cries, "Lord, it is good to be here. Let us build a tabernacle." And so he establishes a new camp, a new church, from which the next free soul must be in turn thrust out. When the outcast from the old departs,

Thus it is ever.

"He bows his head,

He thinks, at going out, but enters straight
Another golden chamber of the King's,
Larger than that he leaves, and lovelier."

This is the long travail of the ages, which must continue until the Christ be indeed born into the world; until men have learned that Christianity is not a dogma to be maintained, but a life to be lived, a spirit to be partaken of,—that it is not of the past only, but a present inspiration. It shall last till the war of the creeds is ended, till men have learned that Christ was not set up as an arch of triumph which the captive train must stoop under to enter heaven, - not sent as a harsh proconsul to reduce a foreign race to submission, but was a manifestation of the infinite love of God, set forth to draw the soul upward, from glory to glory. When this is accomplished, the truth, no longer held in strife, will settle itself. The glory of Christ, no longer made the watchword of parties, no longer insisted on as a test, will shine forth and fill the world with its brightness.

ART. II.

THE WOMEN OF THACKERAY.

Vanity Fair. 3 vols. Pendennis. 3 vols. Henry Esmond. 2 vols. The Newcomes. 4 vols. The Virginians. 4 vols. By WILLIAM M. THACKERAY. Collection of British Authors. Tauchnitz Edition. Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz.

THACKERAY'S books, like Mrs. Primrose's "wedding gown,' wear well, though they may not at once captivate the fancy. His peculiarities of style must be softened to us by familiarity, before we can detect the great humanity under the surface cynicism, and fully recognize the artistic grace of his life-like creations. His delineations are quiet and natural; he startles with no stage effects, no burlesque, no caricature; we smile or sigh as the living panorama passes, but seldom laugh or passionately weep. We are lookers on, not actors in the drama, and earnestly but calmly watch the progress of the plot, and the developments of character, our judgment unwarped by intensely excited feelings, our mirth rational, and our sadness salutary. His stories are eminently suggestive, as he rarely analyzes his characters. This is a great charm of his books. It undoubtedly requires much less skill to describe a character, than to force that character to unfold itself, and to change and modulate it in harmony with the incidents of the story. And it is in this gradual development that Thackeray excels.

It has been Thackeray's mission to portray life as it is. He brings more than great creative genius to the task; he has read with clear vision the mysterious scroll of the human heart, and gives us the pages as he finds them,— now bright with the record of noble deeds, now blurred by weakness and folly, and now deeply stained by guilt and crime. His books are full of moral lessons,-lessons that will make us wiser and better if we heed them. We find there no glow of false sentiment, which perverts while it dazzles; vice is never clothed in attractive garb, and though deceit and hypocrisy are unmasked, honor is paid to every womanly grace, and every manly virtue.

Our present purpose, however, is not to review the general

merits of the novelist. It is limited to the consideration of his female characters; in regard to which justice, in our judgment, has not been done to him. He has been charged with being unjust towards the sex; and it has been said that his intelligent women are "uniformly represented as wicked," whilst his "good women are foolish." We can find little truth in these assertions.

Surely the term "a perfect woman" does not imply a faultless one; and the novelist who paints his heroine in colors which, though glowing, are false, can awaken but a momentary enthusiasm; for it is only that which is essentially true, as well as beautiful, which can long retain a place in the heart, or satisfy the understanding. Thackeray's heroines are no misty shapes, or brilliant meteors, fitted only to dazzle and captivate the imagination, and which fade away under the palpable touch of criticism and analysis. It is with his conceptions as it is with Shakespeare's, they bear the closest and keenest analysis; the more they are thought of, and reasoned about, the more tangible and life-like they become. And it is by such analysis that we propose to show their true and exquisite humanity; bearing in mind ourselves, and asking the reader to bear in mind, that it is exclusively with English social life our author deals.

As a type of a class Becky Sharp is faithfully drawn. She is a female sharper, and the experiences of her miserable childhood, while they have developed her intellect and increased her natural acuteness, have made her insensible to true sentiment and feeling. She has a genius for intrigue, and had she been a man, she would have made the wiliest of diplomatists. Still there is nothing masculine about Becky; her arts and her vices are strictly feminine. She is entirely selfish; her sole aim is her own advancement, and having no principle to guide, no generous impulse to restrain her, she is consistently unscrupulous as to the means by which these ends are attained. Her good-humor is more a policy than a virtue; she has perfect command over herself, and thus never loses an advantage by any outbreak of temper. Her philosophy and her quick perception of the ridiculous often reconcile her to defeat, and she laughs heartily at jokes at her own expense.

She is seldom discouraged or cast down by adversity; like a skilful general, she does her best to turn her defeats into victories, and her energy and perseverance are worthy of a better cause. But Becky's cleverness, like Falstaff's wit, never betrays us into kindly interest. We are never beguiled into sympathy with the wicked old jester, nor are our feelings ever enlisted in favor of Becky throughout her checkered career. The pomp and glare of her town life never conceal the skeleton which lurks in the rear of the glittering pageant; her dazzling successes never hide from us the yawning gulf beneath her feet. Brilliant, clever, witty, she attracts around her a circle of admirers ;- but her charms are not the secret of her influence; the vanity of her lovers does more for her than the melody of her voice, or the sparkle of her eyes. Skilfully she applies to this vanity the touchstone of flattery; this is the spell that subjugates, the all-powerful magic ring, the open sesame to the hearts of her victims.

A woman who loves, however erring, can never be entirely selfish, for love has a humanizing influence, and a true passion renders any self-sacrifice easy. Lady Macbeth's devotion to her husband softens her character, and the associations of childhood paralyze her murderous arm: "Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I could have done it." But Becky had no such weakness to contend with; even her child awakens no maternal love in her icy bosom. Like Richard of Gloster, the world, she thinks, is made for her "to bustle in," and, like him, she is devoid of all natural affection. We should have been better pleased with the author's portraiture of Becky, had he endowed her with one generous impulse, one redeeming moral trait; and in not doing this he has erred. Once, and once only, does she seem to be actuated by a kindly emotion, when she reconciles Amelia and Dobbin. But even in this case we suspect her of interested motives. The retrospect of her career is very melancholy; never has vice been made more unlovely than in her character. Who would envy Becky even her days of prosperity, her crowd of admirers, her fictitious triumphs, her hollow splendor, bought with the price of odious lies, and the sacrifice of every good and generous emotion? Who does not shudder as he contemplates the VOL. LXIX. — 5TH S. VOL. VII. NO. II.

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