characteristic of modern infidelity. This is accomplished by a method at once ingenious and irresistible. Though not so designed by the author, it is congruous, and opportune, therefore, to the state of thought produced by the volume entitled "ESSAYS AND REVIEWS," which has attracted so much of public attention in Great Britain, not because of any originality of reasoning or assertion which it contains, but solely because it emanates from such a source, the Teachers and Professors of the Anglican Church.

May the learned author of so many useful volumes, whose mind is still hale and vigorous in his seventy-fifth year, be long spared to fill his bosom with many sheaves. Thousands who have been refreshed by his masculine thoughts, will say to him, across the seas, more truthfully and affectionately than the Roman bard to Augustus Cæsar:

"Serus in cœlum redeas."

But whenever it may please the All-wise to remove him to "Another life," of which he has written so well in the way of hypothesis, let him be cheered by the thought of meeting

many who never saw his face on earth, but who will greet him with "permitted and secondary gratitude" in heaven, as an instructor and benefactor of their minds,

WILLIAM ADAMS.

Madison Square Church,

NEW YORK, Nov. 18, 1861.

THE SPIRIT OF THE HEBREW POETRY.

CHAPTER I.

THE RELATION

WHE

OF THE HEBREW POETRY TO THE RE

LIGIOUS PURPOSES IT SUBSERVES.

THEN THE Scriptures of the Old Testament are accepted, collectively, as an embodiment of First Truths in Theology and Morals, three suppositions concerning them are before us; one of which, or a part of each, we may believe ourselves at liberty to adopt. The three suppositions are these:

1. We may grant that these writings-symbolic as they are in their phraseology and style, and, to a great extent, metrical in their structure, as well as poetical in tone-were well suited to the purposes of religious instruction among a people, such as we suppose the Israelitish tribes to have been at the time of their establishment in Palestine, and such as they continued to be until some time after the return of the remnant of the nation from Babylon.

2. More than this we may allow, namely, this

that these same writings - the history and the poetry taken together, are also well adapted to the uses and ends of popular religious instruction in any country and every age, where and when there are classes of the community to be taught that are nearly on a level, intellectually, with the ancient Hebrew race : — that is to say, among those with whom philosophic habits of thought have not been developed, and whose religious notions and instincts are comparatively infantile.

3. But a higher ground than this may be taken, and it is the ground that is assumed throughout the ensuing chapters; and it is in accordance with this assumption, that whatever may be advanced therein must be interpreted. It is affirmed then, that, not less in relation to the most highly-cultured minds than to the most rude-not less to minds disciplined in abstract thought, than to such as are unused to generalization of any kind - the Hebrew Scriptures, in their metaphoric style, and their poetic diction, are the fittest medium for conveying, what it is their purpose to convey, concerning the Divine Nature, and concerning the spiritual life, and concerning the correspondence of man- the finite, with GoD-the Infinite.

It is on this hypothesis concerning the Hebrew Scriptures, and not otherwise, that the books of the New Testament take position as consecutive to the books of the Old Testament the one being the com