above are various pools, varying in depth "from a few inches to four fathoms or more," and "supplied by some half-dozen springs of the purest and coldest water, bursting from rocky crevices, at various intervals."

"Richer land I have never seen than is much of this charming valley; capable, too, of being made yet richer by the guano of goats, many large mounds of which-the accumulation of long ages-are here found. Several kinds of cattle were voraciously feeding on the rich herbage near the stream; and thousands of sheep and goats were seen approaching the stream, or resting at noonday in the shadow of the great rock composing the overhanging cliff, here and there. The cooing dove and the kharking raven are here seen in strange affinity. And many birds of many kinds, from the chirping little sparrow to the immense cordon-looking vulture, were sweetly carolling, or swiftly flitting across the valley, or securely reposing upon its lofty cliffs; and the most delicious perfume pervaded many spots in this beautiful little Eden. Rank grasses, luxurious reeds, tall weeds, and shrubbery and trees of various kinds, entirely conceal the stream from view in many places, forming around its pebbly little pools just such shady and picturesque alcoves and bowers, as classic poets picture out for the haunts of their naiads, sylphs, and fairies."

"This being the only accessible water for many miles, herds of gazelles, that graze on the neighbouring hillsides, resort here in great numbers; and the dense forests of cane-brakes are the favourite resort of wild boars, which abound below."

One of the wadys, within a mile and a half of this place, bears the name of Salim, Shalim, Saleim, &c. ; but, without insisting on this coincidence, or detailing the author's course of argument, we accept his conclusions, and rest with him in an assured conviction that this is, indeed, no other than the Enon, near to Salim, where John was baptizing, because there was much water there."

Dr Barclay makes no pretensions to refined scholarship, a consideration which invites the indulgence of his readers for occasional defects in style and taste; but we must beg leave to enter an earnest protest against encumbering our noble language with such terms as "pio-traditional hands;" "eccehomo appeal;" "in-hoc-signo-vince standard," "miracle multiplying," "depuration, natatoria, chatogant talents," &c. In a work of such beautiful mechanical execution, we notice also, with surprise, occasional citations of Greek, in English typea blemish which ought not to disfigure a work so scientific, and displaying such liberality, taste, and enterprise in its execution. The work is profusely embellished with engravings on wood, stone, and steel, with chromographic prints in the highest style of this beautiful art The work, as a contribu

tion to the department of Biblical Geography and History, is, like the Researches of Drs Robinson and Smith, a noble result of American missions in Syria and Palestine, and as a treatise on the topography of the City of the Great King, the most thorough, minute, and satisfactory that has fallen under our notice.

There is a pleasure in giving a fixed position to a floating uncertain locality. Tired of such painful uncertainties and perpetual changes, we long for a settled location, where we may be at rest. With cordial satisfaction, therefore, we accompany our author as he proceeds to build anew the walls of Jerusalem; to rear her bulwarks; to tell the towers thereof, and give to each gate, palace, and garden, to every street and public pool and fountain, its place in the general plan, until it stands out to view complete and entire, the City of the Great King as once it was, or may be supposed to have been. Possibly the plan, in some of its parts and proportions, may be ideal and unsubstantial, but the error, if such it be, is a pleasing illusion. Dissevered from vain superstition, it ministers to spiritual edification. In the absence, therefore, of more certain knowledge, let us abide in the error, until corrected by future researches.

We hail with peculiar satisfaction the appearance of this and kindred works on the History and Topography of the Holy Land, as working out together the result devoutly to be desired, of raising higher still the rising interest of the public in studies which shed such light on the Word of God, and give such reality, life, and power to its teachings. A journey through the lands of the Bible is more effective than a whole library of learned, dry commentaries to illustrate and enforce religious truth. Egypt is, with the traveller, as with the Israelites, the beginning of the dramatic scenes of their sacred history. The pyramids recede, and the desert begins, as he goes out upon it, together with them in their exodus. With them he stands beneath the awful brow of Sinai and views the land. Onward still in their footsteps he treads their weary way, until, on going up from the desert, the wilderness melts into the hill country of Judea, and Jerusalem forms the climax of the long ascent.

Here the scenes of the gospel history succeed the Jewish, like as the Gospel itself follows the Law and the Prophets. The shifting scenery of Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, with Lebanon in the background, enliven and impress the several acts of the tragic drama of the gospel. The actors themselves, in all this long, eventful, and impressive drama, have indeed passed away, but all else remains, the amphitheatre, the stage, the scenery, the costume even, all remain. The heavens above, the earth beneath, the mountains round about, the hills, the valleys, the cheerful fountains, the silent, solemn lake, the sa

cred river in the background, and that dismal sea of death deep down in its dark abyss, all, all are the same, the very same, as when Moses beheld afar the prospect of that goodly land, or when, on the heights of the Royal City, David sung the songs of Zion, and holy men of God strung their harps to the wild and melancholy strains of prophetic denunciation. They are the same as when lived and died the Redeemer of men, the just for the unjust, that He might reconcile us unto God. Nothing gives such reality to his mysterious mission, nothing so illustrates and enforces the messages of his grace, as a familiar acquaintance with the scenes of his private life and public walks through Galilee, Samaria, and Judea. Here we learn of the Great Teacher when sitting in the house, when walking by the way, when rising up, and when lying down; when leaning on his breast he breathes into our heart his loving Spirit, we feel his quickening power to form our souls anew after his own image.

It was this living apprehension of religious truth, this sight and sense of all that is taught in the Word of God, that gave such unction to the ministrations of Arnold, the accomplished Christian scholar and preacher of the Rugby school.

"He appeared to me to be remarkable for realising everything that we are told in the Scriptures. You know how frequently we can ourselves, and how frequently we hear others go prosing on, in a sort of religious cant or slang, without seeing, as it were, by that faculty, which all possess, of picturing to the mind, and acting as if we really saw things unseen, belonging to another world. Now he seemed to have the freshest view of our Lord's life and death of any man whom I ever knew. His rich mind filled up the outline,-it was to him the most interesting fact that has ever happened; as real, as exciting as any recent event of modern history of which the real effects are visible. Such was the union of reverence and reality in his whole manner of treating the Sunday-school, which distinguished them from lessons merely secular."

It is this we need in all our teachers, whether in the school, the college, the theological seminary, or pulpit. With their whole heart, and mind, and soul, transfused with this spirit and method of searching the Scriptures, all men take knowledge of them that they have been with Jesus, and learned of Him. The whole Word of God becomes instinct with life and power. The sinews and the flesh come up upon the dry bones of a dead orthodoxy. The breath from the four winds breathes upon them, and they live again; they stand up to view, in the symmetry, the beauty, and the energy of living forms divine. God's own Word becomes, to teacher and taught, a palpable reality, a great truth, armed with fresh power to enlighten, to convert, and to save the soul.

ART. VII-The Convert; or Leaves from my Experience. By O. A. BROWNSON. New York: Edward Dunigan & Brother, (James B. Kirker.) 1857.

MR BROWNSON has long been noted for attempting bold and reckless feats as a writer upon literature, philosophy, politics, and theology. This audacity, combined with a considerable power of expressing himself in classic, nervous English, has given him a place among our American notabilities. On his own showing, he has, by turns, been the adherent, expositor, and defender of Universalism, Infidelity, Atheism, Materialism, the Communism of Robert Dale Owen and Fanny Wright, St Simon and St Hilaire, the Eclecticism and Pantheism of Cousin, together with the social, political, and ecclesiastical theories which thence emerge. After this tortuous course, becoming "everything by turns, and nothing long," he very rationally concluded that the best use men can make of their intellects is to submit them to infallible and authoritative guidance. From historical and philosophical considerations, he reasoned himself into the belief that the Roman Pontiff alone possesses these prerogatives of infallibility and authority, which are sufficient to keep him out of those vagaries into which and out of which his unaided reason had so long been worming its way,

to find no end,

In wandering mazes lost.

He appears to have forgotten that the Scriptures are the ultimate, the only infallible guide, sufficient to make "the man of God perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." Despairing of any adequate light from these, he does not seem ever to have searched them, whether these things be so.' So far as we can see, although he strenuously insists to the contrary, he had recourse to the Roman Pontiff in a mere "fit of intellectual despair." His argument was simply this: The consequence of trusting mere human reason is endless vacillation and scepticism. The consequence of relying on the Bible, without the Pope, is the sects and divisions of Protestantism. The only alternative, therefore, for those who crave unity and stability, is implicit submission to the Pope. Extremes meet. The rankest Rationalism and Infidelity are on the margin of abject submission to the most stolid and domineering hierarchs -just as in the civil state, the anarchy of mobs is the immediate precursor of absolute despotism. He judged well, that in matters divine we need a divine guide. He shewed his wonted facility of educing great conclusions from slender pre

mises, when he judged the Pope of Rome to be such a guide, rather than the sure word and very oracles of God himself.

It requires no slight courage in one man to set himself up as the expounder and champion of the multitudinous and contradictory systems which our author has successively espoused and repudiated. But it requires still greater courage to attempt, as he has done in this volume, to vindicate his moral integrity and intellectual consistency in such a course. It is somewhat of an exploit to appear as the advocate of nearly every type of opinion, except evangelical truth-to career through the whole compass of fatuous error, from the credulity of Atheism to the credulity of Superstition. But it is a still more prodigious exploit for such a man to undertake to expound and justify himself.

His method of doing this is simply to narrate his successive changes of opinion, together with the reasons which led him to make them. He strives to give unity and consistency to this series of contradictions, by referring them all to one radical principle-that of being true to his own reason and the conclusions to which it led him. The cause of his constant changes, was a continual change in his apprehension or knowledge of the facts and first principles which constituted the premises from which he reasoned. This, he would have us understand, explains his rapid espousal and rejection of nearly all the most radical and destructive errors of modern times, without impeachment of his moral integrity and intellectual capacity. The whole brood of paradoxes, contradictions, and, as he styles them, "horrible doctrines," which, with morbid fecundity, he brought forth to the public, were all irrefragably demonstrated, if the premises from which he reasoned had only been true! He was morally upright, because he was faithful to proclaim and defend the foul doctrines developed logically from false premises! Speaking of the impious and revolutionary principles of various kinds, with which he scandalized the public in his Boston Quarterly Review, he says

"I should have been right, if my facts had been true. It will generally be found, to speak after the manner of the logicians, that my major was true, but my minor often required to be denied or distinguished." P. 197.

In joining the Roman Church, he says—

"I kept faithfully the resolution I made on leaving Presbyterianism, that henceforth I would be true to my own reason, and maintain the rights and dignity of my own manhood. No man can accuse me of not having done it. I never performed a more reasonable or more manly act, or one more in accordance with the rights