bread for my babes. God will protect thee with his own hands!" "Hast thou heard the prayer of the poor woman?" the Lord asks Peter; "now thou must take this goat into thy care to day, because thou art to-day the Lord God." Peter does as he is bid. He runs after the young goat the whole day, up hill and down hill. The day is very hot and the goat seems never tired. At evening St. Peter, all covered with sweat, and sufficiently humbled, brings back the goat, fully convinced that he, who cannot even rule a goat, is not fit to govern the world; and that man does better to leave it to God. Thus all these tales are calculated to inculcate a certain religious truth ;* while the Dutch ballads_above-mentioned, on the contrary, have nothing of a moral tendency. The style of the German stories is certainly equally familiar; the Lord speaks exactly in the same manner as the story-teller is wont to speak to his inferiors, and the whole representation is as familiar and material as possible; but we nowhere meet with so many trifling particulars, with such a minute execution of details in the imitation of every-day nature, as in the Dutch and German ballads above specified. They resemble exactly in this respect the pictures of the Dutch school; while in respect to simplicity and want of skill in their conception, they are like the scriptural designs of the old masters, who represented God in his night-gown and with his pipe, taking a walk in Paradise on a fine summer evening, while lions and lambs skipped joyfully around him, and Adam and Eve hid themselves behind the trees. Some of the English Christmas carols may be compared to them; e. g. the ballad of the Cherry-tree, beginning:

But the collection of Mr. Sandys affords few traits like the following in a Dutch ballad:

* In another of these amusing and characteristic German popular tales, the home of which is Westphalia, a tailor to whom St. Peter has denied entrance into Heaven, slips in when the door is left open a moment. One day, when the Lord happens to take the air with his holy angels, the tailor peeps through the hole before the throne, through which God is wont to look at the world beneath. There he sees one of his brother tailors put aside a yard of cloth. In his virtuous anger he breaks off one of the feet of the throne, and flings it down on the thievish tailor. The Lord returns from his walk, and discovering what has happened, reproves him: "Take care! take care! if I had been so rash, what would have become of thee !"

"The mother she made for the child a bath,
How lovely then it therein sat!

The childling it plashed with its little hand,
That the water out of the bason sprang."

Or the following, relating to the manner in which the holy family labored in Egypt for their sustenance:

"Mary, that maiden dear,

Well could she spin;
Joseph was a carpenter,

And could his bread win.

When he was grown so old
That no longer work he could,
The thread he wound;
And Jesus to rich and poor
Carried it round."

The following family picture is from an ancient German ballad, preserved in the Kuhländchen. Joseph calls Mary up to make the fire and take care of the breakfast. Every thing is minutely described; how she rises, obedient to her husband, blows the coals left in the ashes over night, etc.

"And Mary took a porringer

So small and neat;

She made for her babe a gruel in it,
And put of butter in a bit,

And that was sweet!

And Mary to the hostess went,
And hung a kettle over the hearth,

The child to bathe so warm;

And then she bathes her dearest child,
It never will do him harm.

The hostess she had a little child,
It was both crooked and lame;
She bath'd it in the self-same bath,
Wherein dear Jesus just lain hath,
And so it strait became."

It would be easy to adduce parallels to this nursery-scene from among the ancient scriptural ballads still current in the West of England; but we have already trespassed beyond our limits.

ART. II. Moral Philosophy.

1. The Elements of Moral Science. By FRANCIS WAYLAND, D. D., President of Brown University, and Professor of Moral Philosophy. Second edition. New York. 1835. 8vo. pp. 448.

2. Christian Ethics; or Moral Philosophy, on the Principles of Divine Revelation. By RALPH WARDLAW, D. D. From the second London edition, with an Introductory Essay. By LEONARD WOODS, D. D. New York. D. Appleton & Co. Boston. W. Pierce. 12mo. pp. 380.

THE two works, whose titles stand at the head of this article, appear to have attracted not a little of the public attention; the former having reached a second edition within six months from its first appearance, and the latter having been thought worthy of a reprint in this country, with the imprimatur of a Professor of Theology in one of our most popular institutions. At first sight, they seem to possess many points of close resemblance to each other, and one who had not actually read them, might expect to find some general similarity, to say the least, in the views which they present. The three clergymen, whose names are given on their title-pages, are all engaged in actual instruction, direct or indirect, on the subjects of which they treat. In their respective denominations, they are held to occupy a high rank, and from the supposed tenets of those denominations, might be presumed to agree, at all events very nearly, so far as theology is concerned, in their views of human nature, of its relation to the great principles of right and duty, and of the mode in which those principles are to be ascertained and proved. This, however, is very far from being the case. It is hardly indeed too much to say, that on these points the two books are absolutely contradictions to one another. Both written with evident care and ability, by men who could not previously have been supposed to differ widely from each other; both adopted as standard works by classes of men in the same predicament; they nevertheless proceed on altogether different principles, and of course arrive at very different results. If either one is right, the other must be radically wrong.

The object of the Scottish divine is to prove the insufficiency

and even danger of all moral speculations, based on any other ground than that of biblical interpretation. In his view, every Moral Philosopher who has preceded him, Butler himself included, has fallen into serious error, from this inherent vice of the whole system. The chair of Ethics is to be henceforth merged in that of Theology; and the seeker after truth, instead of reading, or attempting to read, as well that copy of the law of God which was " graven with his own finger on the table of the heart," as that other copy which was afterward "graven on a stone," instead of by this means adding at once to his understanding of its requirements, and to his confidence in its authority, is hereafter to regard the one of these two books as sealed; lest, after having read it, his views should not precisely square with those of his fellow-inquirer, whose attention has been wholly given to the other. To use his own language, "if the authority of the document be established, and the verity of its statements consequently ascertained, then it becomes, on all matters of which it treats, the only philosophy;""the sole object of investigation comes to be, the meaning of the language in which the intimations of the Divine Oracles are conveyed." The wise man of this world is to become "a mere learner, a listener and asker of questions at the feet of Prophets and Apostles;" setting himself" with his grammar and his dictionary, to find out what it is that these men say; and in every point of which they treat, to bow without gainsaying to their authoritative decisions." The adoption of any other course, can lead only to a "science. falsely so called." The "amalgamation of Philosophy and Theology, has, from the beginning, been a copious source of error." "We should be unfaithful to our God, and throw a disparaging insult on His name, were we thus to consent that the wisdom of the only wise,' should make its obeisance to the chair of human science; or were we to admit that he has left his word with less conclusive evidence in its behalf, than that by which the wise men of this world can vindicate the dictates of their own sagacity."

Dr. Wayland, on the other hand, has ventured, in spite of this threatened danger, to pursue the older course in regard to Moral Science, and has given us a text-book on the subject, in which other authorities, besides those allowed by Dr. Wardlaw's system, are acknowledged and referred to. Human nature, which the author of the "Christian Ethics "

declares to be so corrupted, from its original character, that the study of its actual manifestations can afford us no real clue to its true design, is made in even greater measure than has been common in previous works on Morals, the basis of Dr. Wayland's arguments. His whole system, indeed, is mainly founded on the view which he has taken of it. Here and there, as we shall have occasion presently to remark, he has not altogether followed out this plan; but in the ablest and most interesting portions of his work, it is to be clearly traced. Scripture is referred to throughout, in confirmation of the views which he presents, but the general line of argument is by no means drawn from it. On the contrary, the whole of Dr. Wayland's book proceeds on the supposition, which the "Christian Ethics" controvert, that a careful study of human nature, as now manifested in its various states of comparative vice and virtue, may, and indeed will lead us, so far as it will lead at all, to right results as to its true character; just as a careful study of any other portion of God's creation, will enable us to ascertain much that is true concerning it, and need not conduct us to anything that is erroneous.

The appearance of two works, thus seriously opposed in principle to one another, and each receiving so considerable a degree of attention to its views, seems to offer a fit occasion for some general remarks, bearing on the main point at issue between them. This course will enable us to give our judgment on the general merits and defects, as they appear to our mind, of the books themselves. In adopting it, it may be well to take a rather wider range, than the discussion of the actual difference in this case requires, and to consider somewhat in detail, a question which has not yet received its full share of attention from the public, viz. "What is the true foundation of Moral Science, as a branch of Philosophical Study?" Is the distinction between right and wrong to be referred, as some of our controversialists would seem to intimate, only to the prescriptions of human law, or of public opinion, or even of the written law of God; or is it not rather to be traced back to the very constitution of the human mind? Are we, in order to follow it out satisfactorily, in all its details of practical application, to confine our attention to any simply written institutions, to any special decisions, of what sort soever; or are we not rather, by a careful analysis of the mental faculties which God has given us, of their rela