shall stimulate some more successful enterprise in the same kind, and be to this what the "Biblical Dictionary" of Smith is to the "Biblical Dictionary" of Calmet. C. H. B. Mr. HUNT'S" Essay," which is the modest name for a pretty solid octavo of some four hundred pages, owes its origin to the sense of his ignorance of theology, which came upon its author after he had been four years in orders. He found many difficulties which he could not answer, and which nevertheless he believed could be answered. Accordingly, he removed to a curacy in London, and formed a plan of reading all the books which had been written against Christianity, and mastering all the systems which are said to be in opposition to it. He went to work reading at the British Museum: but he found his subject continually growing larger; he found it to be connected with departments of research that he had had no conception of; and that it would take him twenty years to complete his design. So he took the advice of a friend, and completed and published this first part of his work, — an inquiry into the character of pantheism. This Essay is not philosophical or controversial, like Saisset's work, but chiefly historical. It is an inquiry which seeks, by an exhibition of the different forms that pantheism has taken, and the language which it has spoken in the various religious systems, philosophies, and individual thinkers of the world, to determine what pantheism is. Commencing with Brahmanism, it traces the traits and metamorphoses of pantheism through Buddhism, the Egyptian, Persian, and Greek religions, Greek and Jewish philosophy, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Scholasticism, Sufeyism, German mysticism, and Spinozism, to modern transcendentalism. It passes thus over a broad field. It occupies a space in English literature before vacant, and much needing to be filled. The work has been done with a good deal of hard labor; and it gathers together a large stock of very interesting material. We wish that the author had taken time enough to do it more completely and more thoroughly, so that it would not need to be done over hereafter by somebody else. The material has been left too undigested, and the accounts of many of the systems (we would especially instance those of Spinoza and Hegel) are lacking in satisfactory clearness. To the question, "What is Pantheism," which is the object of his inquiry, he educes the answer, that, – * An Essay on Pantheism. By the Rev. JOHN HUNT, Curate of St. Ives, Hunts. London: Longmans, Green, Reade, & Dyer, 1866. 66 'Substantially and primarily, it is the effort of man to know God as Being, infinite and absolute. It is ontological theism, - another, a necessary and implied, form of rational theism. The argument from teleology proves a God at work; the argument from ontology proves a God infinite. We cannot take the one without the other, whatever may be our difficulties in reconciling the conclusions to which each leads us." We must regard God, therefore, he says, as both personal and impersonal; as both having human attributes and not having them; as acting both by general laws and by special acts. This conclusion seems to us to be not quite accurate. Pantheism is not quite ontological theism, but the error into which the fundamental truth of ontology has run by relying on itself, and neglecting the corrections of observation and experience. The solution is not, to allow both ontology and teleology, both a priori and a posteriori reasoning, to develop their results quite independently, and then accept both opponents in all their irreconcilable contradiction. It is to employ one to correct the errors of the other, using abstract reasoning and a priori ideas to give enlargement to the outline which observation and experience give; using observation and experience to tell what God actually is, and what interpretation and limitation, therefore, the ideas of the Infinite and Absolute require. Thus we may obtain not a selfcontradictory representation of God, to be accepted by the force of faith; but the consistent, reasonable, and apprehensible representation of Him as only personal, yet therefore not limited; the source and the immanent life of all creation, and yet transcending and distinct from all created things. MISCELLANEOUS. J. T. B. THE fifteenth Annual Report of the New-York Children's-Aid Society opens a promising chapter in New-World philanthropy. A careful census shows, that this society, with others of kindred nature, has actually checked the growth of the "dangerous class;" that streetvagrants in New-York city have diminished from thirty thousand to about fifteen thousand; commitments to prison, from 4,299 vagrants in 1861, to 2,717 in 1867; arrests of pickpockets in 1860, 480; in 1867, only 348; while population has increased five per cent per annum. For particular spots this effectual cure of the disease can be demonstrated. The failure of the revolutionary movements of 1848 drove a crowd of Italian exiles to the Five Points, hardly any of them able to read or do any thing better than grind a hand-organ. The first efforts to instruct their children were utterly discouraging, being viewed with suspicion as a stealthy attempt to proselyte. Now, through the persistent benevolence of this society, fifty of the number are known to receive good wages at respectable callings; one is a shoemaker in business for himself; one is a foreman in a machineshop; two are the keepers of tasty confectionaries; several have found their way home to Italy; and the aspect of their dwellings is permanently changed from squalid misery to cleanly comfort and modest independence. We have asked attention to this society, because there is nothing better of the kind in the world, and because it roots up the Upas-tree in city life, instead of watering it with misplaced charity. It sustains seventeen industrial schools, four reading-rooms for young men, and five lodging-houses for children; almost two thousand little folks have been sent out to Western homes during the past year; 35,000 meals and 52,000 lodgings have been provided in 1867, the boys themselves bearing more than a third of this burden by paying five cents for each bed and five for each meal, — their eighteen thousand dollars being as remarkable a contribution as the two hundred thousand which Mr. Chauncey Rose, of Indiana, has from time to time contributed. Such facts need no comment. The heart and soul of the movement is Charles L. Brace. F. W. H. NOTE. It should have been observed, in the review of Mrs. Dall's "Presentation" of Bunsen's "Egypt," in our last number, that the several dates given for Zoroaster were simply copied, without attempt at reconciliation, from Bunsen's own work. The paragraph respecting "Mashallah," in the pamphlet under notice, was taken, not from Bunsen, as we learn, but from a French review, which fact the reader of the pamphlet had no means of knowing. The dates and other assertions respecting the Aryan emigrations, &c., are, of course, chargeable to the account of Bunsen, and not of the pamphlet, which simply aims to give his results. It was not in the plan of the pamphlet to harmonize those results, or to compare them with later authorities. And it is this defect of plan to which our criticism applies, not to lack of fidelity in execution. NEW PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. THEOLOGICAL AND RELIGIOUS. The Word of God opened: its Inspiration, Canon, and Interpretation considered and illustrated. By Rev. Bradford K. Peirce. pp. 223; Sabbath Chimes; or, Meditations in Verse for the Sundays of a Year. By W. Morley Punshon. pp. 223; The Bible Doctrine of Immortality. By Hiram Mattison. pp. 96. New York: Carlton & Porter. The Prodigal Son: Four Discourses by the Rev. W. M. Punshon. New York: Carlton & Lanahan. pp. 87. Plain Talk about the Protestantism of To-day. From the French of Mgr. Ségur. pp. 253; Imitation of Christ. pp. 304; Spiritual Consolation. pp. 256; Treatise on Prayer. pp. 256. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. Notes, Critical, Explanatory, and Practical, on the Book of Psalms. By Albert Barnes. Vol. I. New York: Harper & Brothers. The New-Testament History. With an Introduction, connecting the History of the Old and New Testaments. Edited by William Smith, LL.D. Maps and Illustrations. New York: Harper & Brothers. pp. 780. Problems of the Age; with Studies in St. Augustine on kindred topics. By Rev. Augustine F. Hewitt, of the Congregation of St. Paul. New York: Catholic Publication House. Footprints of Life; or, Faith and Nature reconciled. By Philip Harvey, M.D. New York: Samuel R. Wells. pp. 140. MISCELLANEOUS. Cape Cod, and all along Shore: Stories by Charles Nordhoff. 12mo, pp. 235. New York: Harper & Brothers. Harper's Pictorial History of the Great Rebellion. Parts XXV.XXXV. New York: Harper & Brothers. The Moonstone. A Novel. By Wilkie Collins. Author of "Armadale," "No Name," &c. With many Illustrations. 8vo, pp. 223. New York: Harper & Brothers. Comer's Navigation Simplified. A Manual of Instruction in Navigation, as Practised at Sea. Adapted to the wants of the Sailor. Containing all the Tables, Explanations, and Illustrations necessary for the Easy Understanding and Use of the Practical Branches of Navigation and Nautical Astronomy. With numerous Examples, worked out by the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac for several years ahead. 8vo, pp. 173. New York: Harper & Brothers. Grandpapa's Arithmetic. A Story of Two Little Apple-Merchants. By Jean Macé. 18mo, pp. 142. New York: P. S. Wynkoop & Son. Harper's New Monthly Magazine for July, 1868. pp. 134. New York: Harper & Brothers. Riverside Magazine for July. New York: Hurd & Houghton. The History of a Mouthful of Bread, and its Effect on the Organization of Men and Animals. By Jean Macé. Translated from the eighth French edition. By Mrs. Alfred Gatty. 12mo, pp. 398. New York: Harper & Brothers. The Spanish Gypsy. A Poem. By George Eliot, author of "Adam Bede," &c. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. (A romance, cast in the form of mingled narrative, dramatic, and lyrical poetry. The story would be better told in prose; but it is as if sober prose had seemed to the writer too exhausted and blasé for so high a strain, and so it had to be written, perforce, in poetic measure. The artistic form also serves to disguise the violence and painfulness of some portions of the plot. Its execution is here and there extremely fine-wrought and beautiful; but we do not consider it, on the whole, a felicitous substitute for prose. The extraordinarily fine, original, and striking feature in the poem is its setting-forth of the pure "faith of fidelity" to an outcast race and a hated name, in contrast to the different faiths of dogma amid which it plays its part. The conception is splendid and bold; the interpreting of religious passion and motive wonderfully clear; the fulfilment, too hopelessly and merely tragical.) Memoir and Letters of Jenny C. White Del Bal. By her Mother, Rhoda E. White. pp. 363; Father Cleveland the Jesuit. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. PP. 178. American Edition of Dr. William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. Revised and edited by Professor H. B. Hackett, D.D., with the co-operation of Ezra Abbot, A.M. New York: Hurd & Houghton. Part XII. pp. 112. (Upwards of seventy pages of this number are taken up with the extraordinarily full historical and topographical article on Jerusalem. The titles extend from Jehonathan to Jeshurun. pp. 1233-1344.) A Man in Earnest: Life of A. H. Conant. By Robert Collyer. Boston: Horace B. Fuller, 383, Washington Street. pp. 230. (The record of a devout and honest pioneer, a faithful preacher, a brave, loyal, and tender army chaplain, who died during his honorable service in the field; a record of few outward incidents, but full of the best instruction and example for the Christian life.) Manual Latin Grammar. By William F. Allen, Professor of Ancient Languages and History in the University of Wisconsin, and Joseph H. Allen, Cambridge, Mass. Boston: Edwin Ginn. pp. 127. (This grammar, though small, claims to be sufficiently complete for any thing less than an extended collegiate course of study. It is especially full in illustrations of the usages of the language; and in convenience of mechanical arrangement, and beauty of typography, is far superior to any book of the class with which we are acquainted.) A Treatise on Meteorology. With a collection of Meteorological Tables. By Elias Loomis, LL.D. New York: Harper & Brothers. 8vo, pp. 305. Jeanie's Quiet Life. A Novel. New York: Harper & Brothers. 8vo, pp. 128. Poor Humanity. A Novel. New York: Harper & Brothers. 8vo, pp. 178. Brakespeare; or, The Fortunes of a Free Lance. A Novel. New York: Harper & Brothers. 8vo, pp. 148. Lilliput Levee. Poems of Childhood, Child-Fancy, and Childlike Moods. New York: Wynkoop & Sherwood. 16mo, pp. 210. Harper's New Monthly Magazine for June. New York: Harper & Brothers. 8vo, pp. 144. Life of O'Connell. By Charles Adams, D.D. New York: Carlton & Porter. pp. 268. The Works of Charles Dickens. With Illustrations by George Cruikshank, John Leech, and H. K. Brown. Pickwick Papers, Barnaby Rudge, Sketches by Boz. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 12mo, pp. 777. Beaumarchais. An Historical Novel. from the German by Thérèse J. Radford. York: D. Appleton & Co. 8vo, pp. 295. By A. E. Brachvogel. Translated |