acquainted with the new volume, we have been especially interested in its illustrations of our New England history. All the early history of New England is intimately connected with the history of Congregationalism; and we are confident that Dr. Waddington's forthcoming volume will find many readers-more than its predecessor has yet found-in our country.

There ought to be an American edition. This is just the book which the Congregational Publishing Society might issue with great advantage to the churches which it undertakes to serve, and with advantage also to itself as a manufacturing and trading institution.

JOHN STUART MILL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY* will of course attract the attention of all students of philosophy. It is interesting as a careful record of the progress and development of his own mind under one of the most thorough processes of discipline to which any Englishman of the present century has been subjected, at least in his very earliest years. It gives a deeply interesting and a most instructive sketch of the school of thinkers and reformers, of which Bentham was in a sense the founder, and in which James Mill, the father, and John Stuart Mill were preeminent. It gives the autobiography of a confessed atheist, who from his earliest childhood never had any religion; who not only never had any religion, but was taught from his infancy to regard the Christianity of England as like the old idolatrous superstitions in unreasonableness, and as intensely demoralizing in its influence. Last and not least, it records the history of the transformations of opinion and of character through which Mr. Mill proceeded till the end. Incidental to all these historic records there are many personal notices of some of the most remarkable men of the last two generations, such as James Mill, the father, who must have been a man of extraordinary intellectual and personal force, and deserves the most conspicuous place as the organizer, if not the founder, of his party; Jeremy Bentham, the first mover of the same, whose seething brain, self-satisfied spirit, and kindly nature and ample fortune, were all brought into requisition; Thomas Carlyle, who had so many points of sympathy with and so many more in antagonism against Bentham and the utilitarian reformer; the leading Coleridgeians, as Charles Julius Hare, John Sterling, Autobiography. By JOHN STUART MILL. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1873.

Frederic Denison Maurice, the Christian Liberals and Reformers, etc., etc.

From infancy to the age of fourteen Mill was subjected to a very severe intellectual training under the immediate supervision and with the constant companionship of his father. From fourteen to eighteen he was left more to himself and the influence of others, who were almost exclusively men of his father's ways of thinking. At about eighteen he began his public life as a writer and reformer of the Bentham and Malthus type, and had no other ambition than to devote his life to the reformation of man by means of a change in his circumstances, preeminently by the perfection of social and political institutions. When he was about the age of twenty, he passed through what he calls a crisis in his mental history, which carried him a stage onward, in respect to his practical principles and conceptions of life. It was preceded by several months of unaccountable depression of spirits, in which he was asking himself the question: What if all this perfection in humanity for which I am laboring should be achieved, should I be happy? This question he was forced to answer in the negative. This state of mind Mill supposes may be analogous to what the Methodists call their first conviction of sin. From this profound and long-continued depression Mill was delivered by a process as sudden as a Methodist conversion. He was reading a pathetic tale of disinterested self-sacrifice and he was moved to tears. This experience awakened him to a new theory of life, which was expressed in two leading principles, viz: not to aim at happiness as the consciously proposed end of each action, and to make culture, that is, the culture of the feelings, a definite object. Music and poetry began to be esteemed by him as important instruments of the culture of the sentiments and the inspiration. He abandoned his favorite fundamental theory that institutions could make over man, and substituted very largely the theory that institutions are the growths and products of what man is. The literary and personal sympathies of Mill were greatly enlarged by this conversion. The hard, uncompromising radical became the accommodating and appreciative critic and admirer of men whom he would previously have assailed and denounced. Another tone is plainly discerned in his writings. While he did not abandon his original party and principles, his intellect and sympathies were enlarged and liberalized.

At the age of twenty-five, Mr. Mill became acquainted with Mrs. Taylor, with whom he maintained the closest intimacy for

some twenty years, after which, subsequently to the death of her husband, they were married. After seven and a half years of married life as Mrs. Mill, she died suddenly, and the survivor records most movingly his feelings on his bereavement and the influence which her memory had on him. His friendship with her he calls the most valuable friendship of his life. His mind and character were stimulated and elevated by her intellect and heart. The best books which he wrote were as much or more her work than his own. What he gave to her in thought was more than given back to him after passing through her mind and being transfigured by her feelings.

The book, with all that there is in it to instruct and move, is still fearfully sad and depressing. There is neither hope nor cheerfulness in the impressions which it leaves. Mr. Mill tells us his own story and retraces his own development and analyzes his own character. With all the advantage which the story gains from this circumstance, it is only sad and depressing, and adds one more comment to the familiar phrase, "Without God and without hope."

LIFE OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG.*-Emanuel Swedenborg was born in Stockholm, Sweden, Jan. 29, 1688. His father, at that time a chaplain in the army, was afterward professor of theology in the University of Upsal, and in 1719, was made bishop of Skara in West Gothland. The bishop says of himself: "I can scarcely believe that anybody in Sweden has written so much as I have done; since, I think, ten carts could scarcely carry away what I have written and printed at my own expense, and yet there is much, yea nearly as much, not printed."

It will appear that this facilitas scribendi was inherited by the son. There was little remarkable in the childhood and youth of Swedenborg, except a strong tendency to religious thought and conversation. He was graduated with honor at the University of

*Life of Emanuel Swedenborg, with a brief Synopsis of his Writings, both philosophical and theological. By WILLIAM WHITE. With an Introduction, by B. F. Barrett. First American Edition, 272 pp. 12mo. J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, 1872.

The True Christian Religion; containing the Universal Theology of the New Church, foretold by the Lord in Daniel vii, 13, 14, and in Revelation xxi, 1, 2. By EMANUEL SWEDENBORG, Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. A new Translation from the original Latin Edition, printed at Amsterdam in the year 1771. 613 pp. 8vo. J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1872.

Upsal, at the age of twenty-two, in 1710. The dissertation which he wrote for his degree, consisting of selections from certain Latin authors, with comments on the obscurities of the text, was published. The same year, he published a Latin version of the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes. He then spent four years in visiting other parts of Europe.

In 1715, he published an oration on the return of Charles XII. from Turkey; a small volume of Latin prose fables; and a little book of poems, which has been republished several times. In 1716, he was appointed by Charles XII, with whom he became considerably intimate, assessor of the mines in the kingdom. The same year, he sought to marry a young woman, but was rejected, and always remained single.

In 1717, he published "An Introduction to Algebra,” and the same year, another work entitled "Attempts to find the Longitude of Places by Lunar Observations."

In 1719, the family were ennobled by the queen, and from that time he took his place with the nobles of the equestrian order in the triennial Assembly of the States. The same year, he published four works, namely, "A Proposal for a Decimal System of Money and Measures;" "A Treatise on the Motion and Position of the Earth and Planets;" "Proofs, derived from appearances in Sweden, of the Depth of the Sea, and the greater Force of the Tides in the ancient World;" and "On Docks, Sluices, and Salt-works.” The work on money and measures was republished, after his death, in 1795.

In 1721, he visited Amsterdam, and there published the five following works, namely, "Some Specimens of a Work on the Principles of Natural Philosophy, comprising new Attempts to explain the Phenomena of Chemistry and Physics by Geometry;" "New Observations and Discoveries respecting Iron and Fire, and particularly respecting the elemental Nature of Fire, together with a new Construction of Stoves;" "A new Method of finding the Longitude of Places, on Land or at Sea, by Lunar Observations;" "A Mode of Discovering the Powers of Vessels by the application of Mechanical Principles."

In 1722, he published two works, one at Leipsic and Hamburg, and the other at Stockholm, namely, "Miscellaneous Observations connected with the Physical Sciences," in four parts; and "On the Depreciation and Rise of the Swedish Currency." The latter he republished by request in 1771. In 1724, he declined the profes

sorship of mathematics in the University of Upsal. In 1729, he became a member of the Royal Academy of Science at Stockholm. In 1734, he published, at Leipsic and Dresden, "Opera Philosophica et Mineralia," in three folio volumes; and the same year, “ A Philosophical Argument on the Infinite, and the final Cause of Creation; and on the Mechanism of the Intercourse between the Soul and

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the Body." In 1740-41, he published, at Amsterdam, "The Economy of the Animal Kingdom," Parts I. and II. at the Hague, and Part III. in London, which Ralph Waldo Emerson pronounces a work of wonderful merits. In 1745, he published, in Sweden, the last of his scientific works, which was entitled "The Worship and Love of God."

It thus appears that in thirty-five years, 1710-1745, he issued twenty-three works on literature, finance, the natural sciences, and metaphysics.

Until nearly the close of this period, he seems to have had nothing peculiar in his religious experience, and to have given no particular attention to theological studies. But in 1743, when he was fifty-five years old, and while he was in London, the Lord Jesus Christ, according to Swedenborg's most solemn belief and declaration, appeared in person to him, gave him a free pass for intercourse with the spiritual world, including heaven and hell, and commissioned him to make known to mankind the things which he should thus learn. This endowment continued with him substantially for the rest of his life—a period of twenty-nine years, was ordinarily available at his discretion, and determined the direction and character of his pursuits.

In 1743-47, he learned Hebrew and read the Bible through several times in the original languages, and while doing this made notes which he called "Adversaria," which were published after his death. In 1747, he resigned the office of assessor of the mines, which he had held thirty-one years, but his full salary was continued as long as he lived. In the same year, he discontinued his "Adversaria," and commenced his "Spiritual Diary," or journal of his intercourse with spirits, which he kept up for the next twenty years. This work, in Latin, was published after his death in ten closely printed octavo volumes, of which two volumes are now translated into English, and the others are expected to follow. In 1749-1756, he published, in London, in Latin and in English, his " Arcana Coelestia," being a commentary on Genesis and Exodus, in eight good-sized quarto volumes. Several editions of this