men exclaim with Mills, "Glorious sovereignty! glorious sovereignty !"—and like him too, fly to the outermost bounds of human sin and misery, on the wings of divine charity, in Christ-like missions of mitigating love. Dr. Tyler's reverence for the Scriptures is patent in all he wrote or did. Having settled its theopneustic character, the only remaining question with him was,-what does it mean? This determined, there was no appeal. He did not derogate from the dignity of human reason, but he remembered that in man's fall, it fell; that its decisions, however plausible, can never discredit the written word of the Infinite Reason. If this word opened to him deep mysteries which he could not fathom, so did God's works of nature; and he learned herein that both have the same author-that He is infinite and man finite. Yet his faith, though implicit and childlike, was not blind. His reason, taxed to its utmost, and his conscience, tutored by the most rigid discipline, both justified it. This is a legitimate effect of the old Bible theology. The most indisputable masters of reason and quickeners of conscience, who have employed both most successfully in combating ignorance, error and sin, are just those who, by the tractors of study, prayer and faith, have drawn this theology out of God's infallible Word, as the vital element of their life of love. Where the Bible, by such an influence, reigns over man most sovereignly, there reason is mightiest, conscience freest, and love purest;-man has most good of the life that now is, and best hopes for that which is to come. In this fullness of justifying faith, and of a faith fully justified by the best reason, Dr. Tyler in a moment of perplexity remarked, "I am past being greatly troubled. I have committed myself to God, and wait the guidance of his hand." "I have not the ravishing views which some have had," he said just as he was passing down into the valley of the shadow of death, "but I have no fear,-I enjoy perfect peace." "Thou art gone up, victorious saint, My father, O, my father!" ARTICLE X.-THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, AND THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE. WE are sorry to see that this hitherto successful Monthly is running away from its own title, and has begun to meddle with "sectarian Theology." It declares by its title page that it is devoted to Literature, Art, and Politics; but the Professor at the Breakfast Table seems determined to make it in some sort a Theological Journal. To use a figure derived from the profession whence the majority of his illustrations are taken, he has fallen a victim to a theological mania, that has already reached the acute stage, and may be followed by a more serious convulsion. His sensibility on theological subjects seems to be greatly exalted; and there is imminent danger of chronic irritability. The symptoms premonitory may be distinctly traced for several months previous to the severe attack in May. He was obviously laboring with some great internal uneasiness when in January he tells us so emphatically, yet in a sort of incidental way, that "Boston has opened, and kept open more turnpikes that lead straight to free thought, and free speech, and free deeds, than any other city of live men or dead men :" and in answer to the question, 'How high are the Boston steeples?' avers that they are "as high as the first step of the stairs that lead to the New Jerusalem." After discoursing for several pages about the clergy, and the Bible, and Theology, and common sense, and Spiritualism, and the depolarization of scriptural terms, in a somewhat incoherent way, he comes down upon his readers with the following: "Parson Channing strolled along this way from Newport, and staid here. Pity old Sam Hopkins hadn't come, too;-we'd have made a man of him,-poor, dear, good old Christian heathen! There he lies, as peaceful as a young baby, in the old burying ground! I've stood on the slab many a time. Meant well,meant well. Juggernaut. Parson Channing put a little oil on one linchpin, and slipped it out so softly, the first thing they knew about it was the wheel of that side was down. T'other fellow's at work now; but he makes more noise about it. When the linchpin comes out on his side, there'll be a jerk, I tell you! Some think it will spoil the old cart, and they pretend to say that there are valuable things in it which may get hurt. Hope not,-hope not. But this is the great Macadamizing place,—always cracking up something." Jan. No., p. 91. After a relapse for two months, as was to be expected after so violent an attack, the fit returns again in April, and he breaks out thus: “It is here, Sir! right here!—said the little deformed gentleman,-in this old new city of Boston,-this remote provincial corner of a provincial nation, that the Battle of the Standard is fighting, and was fighting before we were born, and will be fighting when we are dead and gone,-please God! The battle goes on everywhere throughout civilization; but here, here, here! is the broad white flag flying which proclaims, first of all, peace and good-will to men, and, next to that, the absolute, unconditional spiritual liberty of each individual immortal soul! The three-hilled city against the seven-hilled city! That is it, Sir,-nothing less than that; and if you know what that means, I don't think you'll ask for anything more. I swear to you, Sir, I believe that these two centers of civilization are just exactly the two points that close the circuit in the battery of our planetary intelligence." p. 493. And then again : "Oh, don't talk to me of modesty!-answered Little Boston,-I'm past that! there isn't a thing that was ever said or done in Boston, from pitching the tea overboard to the last ecclesiastical lie it tore in tatters and flung into the dock, that wasn't thought very indelicate by some fool or tyrant or bigot, and all the entrails of commercial and spiritual conservatism are twisted into colics as often as this revolutionary brain of ours has a fit of thinking come over it. No, Sir,show me any other place that is, or was since the megalosaurus has died out, where wealth and social influence are so fairly divided between the stationary and the progressive classes! Show me any other place where every other drawingroom is not a chamber of the Inquisition, with papas and mammas for inquisitors, and the cold shoulder, instead of the dry pan and the gradual fire,' the punishment of heresy '!" pp. 495, 496. These ebullitions are premonitory of a severe attack in May, in which the patient seems to have dreadful visions of all the horrid theologies that have lived since the year One, and to break out in a maledictory defiance of them all. What has been happening all the while to the Professor in a private way, we are unable to say, as we do not read the Boston newspapers. What comments have been ventured that should provoke the humane Professor to such theological fury; what foes have been raised in his own household by his zeal for truth, through the newspapers teaching his servants to be irreverent and saucy, of all this we are profoundly ignorant, and espe cially who are those awful people named Messrs. Ananias Shimei and Rab Shekah, that seem so to haunt his phantasy. After having exhausted himself by the violence of his own denunciations of all the sects, past, present, and to comeexcept his own-he relapses into good humored quiet, and begins the next month to meditate on good manners, as might be expected on returning to himself, wherein, among other excellent principles, he lays down the following: "Under bad manners, as under graver faults, lies very commonly an overestimate of our special individuality, as distinguished from our generic humanity. It is just here that the very highest society asserts its superior breeding." We respectfully submit whether all this is not preliminary to a theological discussion, or an exposition of the Professor's "special and individual" theological dogmas. Doubtless the Professor has a creed, or he would not be moved to such excitement against those whose creed differs from his own. Or if he has none yet, he is searching after one,* and in due time will find it, and be ready to expound it at all the length which its probable brevity will allow. We should be most happy to hear his theological opinions, and the reasons for them, by any other medium than the Atlantic Monthly. We will listen to him as long as he chooses to discourse upon Theology at the anniversary of the Unitarian Association. If the Christian Examiner declines for any reason to publish his Theological Essays, we will possibly find room for them on our own pages, but we must respectfully decline being pleased to hear them from the mouth of the Professor at the Breakfast Table. are not content that the easy flow of his humor should thus be chafed and ruffled-that his sharp wit should become caustic invective, and his playful sallies degenerate into bitter personali The following Prescription has been found effectual in similar cases: We ties. The odium theologicum is of uncertain influence, even when indulged by a liberal Christian; and we do not care to see the genial and thus far successful humorist of the Atlantic Monthly lose his temper and fail of his fame, by becoming an indifferent and bad tempered theologian. We take a somewhat more serious view of the matter. The Professor not only challenges for himself the liberty to say what he pleases at his own Breakfast-table, but he does in some sort invite himself to a seat at our own and assert the liberty to indulge in somewhat free conversation. If he takes advantage of this liberty to insult our faith, shock our feelings, sneer at our religious instructions-if his wit shall be discordant with the morning prayers and the evening praises of the thousands of Christian homes to which he has hitherto been a freely admitted guest, then he must expect to be welcome no longer. He will not be burned at the stake for his freedom of thought, nor be socially ostracized for his private creed. He will not be turned out of doors as a dangerous heretic, but he will not be invited to call again,-simply for defect of civility. Nor will it be the clergy or the men of the country that will be thus offended, at the freedom taken with the theological opinions which they accept. Christian women will repel from their home circles the humorist that seems to understand so little the sacredness of the name that they would. write upon the hearts of their children, and with whose early faith and worship they would fain allow not a single scornful or disturbing association. For the heart of woman the Professor professes a reverence near to religious, and for her instructive judgments an almost implicit faith. Could he know how much he has offended both the feelings and the judgment of hundreds of the true-hearted, he might find an argument stronger than any which we can write. It is fortunate for the country, for many reasons, that the Atlantic Monthly is published in Boston. For one reason, however, it may not be so fortunate for the journal itself. If Boston is, in respect to its views of the Christian faith, so far in advance of other cities, as is thought by many, then there is some danger that the conductors of the Atlantic should now |