GERERAL LITERATURE. Η ΚΑΙΝΗ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗ, ΕΚ ΤΗΣ ΠΑΛΑΙΑΣ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗΣ ΚΑΤΑ ΤΟΥΣ ΕΒΔΟΜΗΚΟΝΤΑ ΕΡΜΗΝΕΥΟΜΗΝΗ.—Novum Testamentum Græcum. Editio Hellenistica The Church of England-her Excellencies and Defects: with Shadows of the Future. A Series of Resolves on the Data of Chronological Pictures of English History, from William the Conqueror, to Queen Victoria. By John Gilbert Lectures on Poetry; delivered at All Saints, Leicester, on the Wednesday Evenings in June, 1842 Rational Conviction the Groundwork of Faith-Good Works its Superstructure. A course of four Sermons Sixpenny-books, Fourpenny-books, Threepenny-books, &c. The Life and Times of Girolamo Sovonarala: illustrating the Progress of the Reformation in Italy during the Fifteenth The Jews in China, their Synagogue, their Scriptures, &c. The Warden of Berkingholt, or Rich and Poor: a Tale . The Priest's Companion in the Visitation of the Sick A Practical Exposition of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, and the first to the Corinthians, in the form of Lectures designed to assist the practice of Domestic Instruction and Devotion. By John Bird Sumner, D.D. The Discipline of the Church, in the choice of her Ministers A Voice from the Holy Land; purporting to be the Letters of a Centurion, written in the days of the Emperior Tiberius. Reeds shaken by the Wind. By the Rev. R. S. Hawker, M.A. A Letter to the Right Hon. Lord Ashley, M.P., on the present defective state of National Education D'Aubigne's History of the Great Reformation. Abridged by Edward Dalton, Secretary to the Protestant Association A Letter to Lord John Manners, M.P., on his late Plea for Na- On Diseases of the Bladder and Prostrate Gland The National Psalmist. By Charles Danvers Hacket The Life of William Bedell, D.D., Lord Bishop of Kilmore Aids to Devotion: being a Manual of Prayers, Instructions, and Modern Miracles Condemned by Reason and Scripture The Doctrine of Purgatory, and the Practice of Praying for the Dead as maintained in the Romish Church, examined The Cambridge University Register and Almanic for 1843 Theory and Solution of the Algebraic Equations of the Higher Orders. Mathematical Dissertations Songs from the Parsonage; or, Lyrical Teaching Apostolic Doctrine and Fellowship. A Sermon The Holy Bible, &c. &c. : accompanied with a brief Herme- neutic and Exegetical Commentary, and revised Version The Teacher's Companion; designed to exhibit the Principles of Sunday School Instruction and Discipline A Defence of the Principles of the English Reformation from the Attacks of the Tractarians, or a Second Plea for the Re- formed Church Hymns from the Church Services, adapted to Public, Social, and Africa wasted by Britain and restored by Native Agency An Elementary Etymological Manual of the English Language. THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND Quarterly Review. JANUARY, MDCCCXLIII. ART. I.-The Triune Constitution of the Mind: a Sermon. By the Rev. HENRY MACKENZIE, M.A., of Pembroke College, Oxford; Minister of St. James's, Bermondsey; and sometime Master of Bancroft's Hospital. London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co. 1842. THERE is a philosophy in all things, and in no sentiment of the human soul can there be found a more profound philosophy than is evolved in the consideration of that great element which has its objects beyond the reach of sense (and hardly within the perception of the abstract), and its hopes beyond the gravewhich discusses the great points of the mysterious affinity between the body and the soul, between the soul and its source, between mortality and immortality, between time and eternity, between man and God. We have had it in contemplation to express a few of our feelings on this point, and have only been deterred by the fear of wandering from the subject-by the dread of inability to grapple with the magnificence, and analyze the phases of so vast an object; but as it is the duty of every one to take a part either as teacher or pupil, we will also do our endeavour, feeling, however, that we must, in some respects, pursue a path that lies between the two. We are not to be instructed in its rudiments, neither can we dictate on all points as doctors of the law, but occasionally express simple opinions. We are aware that such a subject requires the abilities of one skilled in the mysteries of the soul. It is required that the institutions of society should be analysed, the moral relationship VOL. XIII.-B which exists between the great family of man should be known, and the connection between external things and internal ideas— for we must speak of a time when the idea became the teacher. We should pick and sort, weigh and examine, an infinite number of opinions and prejudices; and this we cannot well do, for want of time and of materials; we can only on this universal principle, this philosophy of religion, take an abstract view of the profession by a people of religion as it stands in the canon of society. In all countries and in all times, from the earliest day to the present hour, we have found, and do find, that religion is the chief sentiment of man. And we use the term sentiment here in its primary and etymological meaning, as implying simply a feeling, not the result of ratiocination, not the effect of conviction, but an impression powerful with us whether we will or not, coming from we naturally know not where, and implanted in us by we naturally know not whom. It stamps him with a character, it regulates his conduct, it becomes a nature to him, and it is exhibited in every thought and action; we can read his heart by his theology, and guess his nature from his worship. We use this word religion with a great latitude of meaning, perhaps we should say veneration; but as the idea of a God necessarily includes the idea of a worship-we use then, the term religion. It is invariably found, that man by this innate instinct, hath placed his dependence in this state, and his hopes of a future on the interposition of something exterior to himself. Feeling, by the promptings of his own soul, and the awakening of a rude uncultivated intellect, that deep and strange feelings were being continually called into life-called by the many voices of nature, by her vastness, her beauty, her sublimity-seeing "seed time and harvest," summer and winter, follow successively-seeing that things in their onward and harmonious march (tending towards a perfection), were obeying the decrees of an unalterable law, he conceived the idea of a Framer, of a Creator. True, we find that man originally had a knowledge of God, also find that this knowledge hath been lost in the mists of time, none agreeing as to the truth of the traditions. Yet we may, by curious analogy and close examination, trace the germ, the chief idea, modified, changed, enlarged, or compressed, according to the circumstance that surrounded the individual, and the state of nature in which he existed. If such be the case, it will only add strength to our argument, viz., that man has an idea of God, and may have it (distorted however), from its original source. St. Paul, when he said to the Athenians, "Whom then ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you," gave us a very exact transcript of the heathen mind, not altogether dark, but yet with the full blaze of the godhead hidden by the mists of men's devisings. In such a worshipper, then, this conception of a deity enlarged his thoughts; he planned a worship, felt a reverence, an adoration for the Supreme Power; he clothed it with high and august attributes-attributes that were dignified by the majesty of nature, and grand as the grandeur of the soul could conceive them to be, and gave them a fitting language. It may be said that man, in his original worship, impressed upon the attributes he gave to the nature of God, the impressions, or feelings, or attributes he found in himself, and that these were inconsistent, contradictory, and unworthy both of the Creator and the creature. While we fully allow the doctrine of man's natural corruption, we do not believe the divine image once impressed upon him to be utterly and entirely eradicated. No, we, however, dissent from this, and imagine from the conceptions of men, even now that they could, from their own natures, have a vast, great, however distant, idea of the unapproachable nature of God. When we contemplate the great conceptions of the "divine Plato," we can easily imagine that he had ideas so great, so vast, so unutterable, that he could but give forth a faint shadowing of them in language such as hath not oft been listened to since. What man can express in words the feelings or the conceptions of his heart? If we look with wonder on the works of ancient art, poetry, painting, sculpture, or the devotional pages of Shakspeare, or the lofty sublimities of Milton, shall we not wonder more at the ideas which they could not express. What should we think of their works if the whole soul had been breathed forth as it were upon their pages. Is not the spirit clogged with its clay? and mightily has it struggled to give forth its stirring language to the world. Having thus shown that man may by conceptions of the great and the beautiful, have ideas, though frail and feeble ones, of a God: we proceed Society, in its progress, formed tastes, habits, and ideas, which we may designate as manners and customs, and by which nations are now known. Individual feelings and thoughts became harmonized-they were blended and turned into one channel, from which a whole people drank; this formed a unity of thought and of purpose, and gave a system to their notions, as of other objects, so also of a God. They reduced the scattered traditions of their forefathers to a worship, to a religion. Laws, regulations, and observances were made for its establishment, and rendered sacred to the hearts of men. Its principles were connected with |