Page images
PDF
EPUB

5. Being unbaptized such an one ought to be baptized; for "thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." P. 292. "When the Quaker, on recognizing the doctrine of water baptism, after it may be years of Christian profession, is baptized, he fulfils an act of righteousness after the example of Christ. Exactly in the same degree does each unbaptized disciple of Christ who is baptized fulfil it in honoring baptism he honors Christ who has instituted it." P. 294.

6. Our influence upon others ought to be regarded. "Baptism, as a profession of faith in Christ, being of great importance, it should be earnestly commended (by example) to the attention of all unconverted persons,-all such ought to begin their religious profession by being baptized." "Your neglect of baptism will confirm theirs." P. 295.

7. "The practice of admitting to the Lord's table none who are unbaptized is sanctioned by the usage of nearly all Christian Churches, because nearly all reject unbaptized persons from the Lord's table." P. 296.

8. "If Pædobaptists claim the admission of the validity of their baptism, we are obliged to refuse their claim, because truth does not allow it." P. 298.

9. "That there is an instituted connection between baptism and the Lord's Supper, I freely admit; and it is no less clear, that after the institution of baptism by our Lord, no person who refused to be baptized was ever admitted in any Christian church to that supper." P. 303. "I own that he (the Pædobaptist) is unbaptized." P. 306. "We must never do evil that good may come." P. 307.

In taking leave of Mr. Noel's book, we beg to thank him for his valuable contribution to the cause of truth. Though his views of communion will not meet the concurrence of Baptists of the United States, yet, should it be agreeable to Mr. Noel to honor this country with a visit, we have no doubt that a general and cordial welcome would prove to him that they nevertheless appreciate justly his powerful advocacy of the views which lie at the basis of the denomination, and admire the Christian firmness with which he has followed his convictions of duty.

R. T.

ART. II. THE ORIGIN, AND POLITICAL LIFE OF THE

ENGLISH RACE.

The Saxons in England; a History of the English Commonwealth till the period of the Norman Conquest. By JOHN MITCHELL KEMBLE. London. 1849.

THE work whose title is placed at the head of this article is one of many that have been produced by the lately revived. spirit of research into the antiquities of the nations of modern Europe. Hitherto these inquiries have been pursued only by a few antiquaries, and their laborious researches have hardly been thought worthy of attention by the great majority of the learned world; still less have they been thought worthy of the study of politicians, and men engaged in the active pursuits of life. But within the last twenty years a great change has been wrought in the spirit of historical students, while their number has been greatly increased. Indeed it may be said that within this period Modern History has been created. The works of men like Guizot and Augustin Thierry and their worthy compeers in France, and Turner, Thorpe, Bosworth, Palgrave and Kemble in England, have laid open sources of information which have been imperfectly known and studied by former historians. The results of these men's labors have been given to the public in popular form, and a widely extended interest in this class of studies has been excited, and the close relation of such studies to the history of the political, moral and intellectual life of nations, has been clearly seen and fully appreciated.

In this day of revolutions, when a total reconstruction of human society and government is fiercely called for by reformers, who act on the assumption that there has been no God in the past, and that whatever is is necessarily wrong, it may be well for us to turn our attention to those laws of growth by which the Supreme Being indicates his will in the affairs of nations. The experience of the past in history is but the revelation of God's will. Whatever system of polity is constructed in bold disregard of the historical development of the political life of a given nation, contains within itself the germs of disorder and decay.

In studying the life of the English race, the work of Mr. Kemble is an important assistance. His labors in editing the mass of ancient documents, published in six volumes under

the name of " Codex Diplomaticus Ævi Saxonici," have prepared him to give exact and curious information on many disputed points in English antiquities, as well as comprehensive views of the infancy of our race. Mr. Kemble inclines more than any of his predecessors to historical skepticism, looking upon the story of Hengist and Horsa as a mere myth, having no foundation in fact. The reasons for thus doubting the account of Bede and all the succeeding chroniclers, seem to us exceedingly unsatisfactory. No doubt much that is fabulous has in the lapse of ages gathered around the story of the Saxon migrations. It may be that our author is right in thinking with Lappenberg, that Germans have been settled from the time of the Roman invasions on the eastern coasts of Britain; but that there was a special immigration of Germans for a special cause, about the middle of the fifth century, all the chroniclers are unanimous in affirming, and in the absence of proof to the contrary it is reasonable to believe them. Excessive skepticism is as likely to lead the historian astray as excessive credulity. The fashion of resolving every historical fact about which there are exaggerated or doubtful statements into a myth, is as destructive to true historical science as the easy faith that led the older scholars to believe everything true that has come down to us written in Greek or Latin; or that could receive Geoffrey of Monmouth or the Irish chronicles as veritable histories.

Mr. Kemble is very evidently disposed to survey the Anglo-Saxon constitution from the monarchical point of view. While he represents justly the ancient Saxon polity, he seems willing to lose sight of the fact that it continued with much of its life and vigor, so far as it regards the local administration of affairs, till the Conquest. Without following in order the particular statements of Mr. Kemble, we propose to trace out in a cursory way the origin and political life of the English race, making free use of whatever sources of informaation we can command, without encumbering our pages with references.

We belong to a wide-spread and ancient race, and it may be interesting and important for us to ascertain so far as possible our moral and intellectual position in the world's history. Every nation and every race has such a position in the moral geography and chronology of the world, and the importance of this position is the measure of the significance and value of its history. History is not necessarily valuable as describing the actions of beings who have borne the human form, but as it marks the means and the relative rapidity of human development-of human progress.

The tribe of Phenician slaves fleeing from the avenging sword of the Egyptian to the desert valleys of Mount Sinai, is of more importance to the world than all the arts and learning of the kingdom of the Pharaohs, for they were to be the depositaries of that wonderful Hebrew Book that has made such a mark on the ages since past. The destruction of one Swiss Canton, or New-England State, would be a greater loss to the world than whole nations of Siberians or Tartars.

There are historical races as well as historical men. The hope of our world hangs, humanly speaking, on a very small portion of its vast population. This portion consists of those races whose moral position is in advance of the rest of mankind. On their fidelity in the discharge of their trust depends the character of the future. God guides these races. He uses them for his high and holy purposes. He sends a Moses and a fiery pillar and a cloud to lead the Hebrews from bondage to freedom, for he had a work for them to perform. He trains them to obedience and civil order by a forty years' sojourn in the wilderness. He sends them seers with light from heaven; and even in their terrible punishments for degeneracy and sin, when with a mark set upon them they become a byword and a hissing and a shaking of the head to the nations, they bear in their inflexible enthusiasm and power of endurance the impress of the archangel ruined. God gave intellectual acuteness and the delicate sense of beauty to the Greeks -"the vision and the faculty divine"-that they might show to all the world that neither beauty embodied in the choicest · forms of plastic art-nor poetry such as flowed in the liquid numbers of the Ionic ballad, "the tale of Troy divine,' swept over the solemn harp of Eschylus, or poured forth in stormy dithyrambics from the deep-throated Pindar-not eloquence such as "shook the arsenal," not philosophy such as Socrates brought from heaven and Plato taught beneath the plane trees of the Academy, was powerful enough so to train and educate a race that it could impregnate the world with the germs of moral order and progress. God gave Rome to be the legislator of the ancient world, that the power of organization and law without a basis in the law of revelation might be tried in their utmost perfection-that the capacity of a military aristocracy with its arms of iron might be tried to resist the tendency to disintegration in ancient society, without a moral power to change the heart and introduce the pulses of a new life into the veins of the dying nations. It is foreign to our purpose to allude even to more of the historical races of earth-to the Theocracy of Egypt-to the priestly and

or

military castes of the East-to the recently disinterred monuments of Assyrian glory.

We shall use the term race not perhaps with technical accuracy, but simply to denote the English and the Lowland Scotch and their descendants in both hemispheres.

Belonging as we do by our lineage to the Gothic stock, and consequently, in the ordinary sense of the term, to the modern world, we often speak of ourselves as of modern origin, as if our blood and institutions were of yesterday. Though the English nation properly speaking had its rise (and thus we shall consider it for our present purpose) when the standard of the "white horse" was unrolled by the Saxon and Norse pirates on the shores of Britain, still as an integral portion of that great tribe of peoples stretching from the Ganges to Iceland, we are ancient. Our ancestors were not separated by an impassable gulf from the gray fathers of the Old World. We are not destitute of the evidence of a remote past. "We are of earth's first blood, and our language is the title deed of our descent." Our noble mother tongue received its "form and pressure" and drew the springs of its life from the high plains of Western Asia. Every sentence we utter tells the comparative philologist that the fathers of the stern Roman and the elegant Greek were our fathers also, and that the swarthy Brahmin of the Ganges and the fire worshipper of the land of Zoroaster belong to the same wide-extended family of nations.

A nation or a race has a life as well as an individual man, and all its history is the development and modification in various ways of that kind of mental activity and moral character that makes this life distinct and peculiar. Our national life has been drawn from that combination of Scandinavian, Saxon and Frisian elements known by the name of AngloSaxon.

Let us dwell for a moment upon the circumstances under which it was at first developed. We may suppose that the primary cause of the last great German emigration to Great Britain was the extended movement of nations which followed the irruption of the Huns into Europe. Those German warriors who had for so many centuries withstood the power of Rome, who under Arminius had cut in pieces the legions of Varus, divided, defeated and disheartened, were swept on in the whirlwind of the Hunnic cavalry and compelled to relinquish their ancient seats by the general displacement of the nations which followed. They were in part forced to seek a retreat beyond the sea, and eagerly followed the stand

[blocks in formation]
« PreviousContinue »