which it would avail little, were it immediately to lift up the voice of denunciation. We all know that long cherished corruptions, which have sent their roots through the whole frame of a community, cannot be torn up at once, without dissolving society. To Christianity is committed the sublime office of eradicating all the errors and evils of the world; but this it does by a process corresponding with man's nature, by working a gradual revolution in the mind, which, in its turn, works a safe and effectual revolution in manners and life. No argument, therefore, in favor of a practice, can be adduced from the fact, that it is not explicitly reprobated in the New Testament. For example, Christianity went forth into communities, where multitudes were held in slavery, and all ranks were ground and oppressed by despotism; abuses on which the spirit of our religion frowns as sternly as on any which can be named. Yet Christianity did not command the master to free his slaves, or the despot to descend from his absolute throne;

but satisfied itself with proclaiming sublime truths, in regard to God's paternal character and administration, and broad and generous principles of action, leaving to these the work of breaking every chain, by a gradual, inward, irresistible influence, and of asserting the essential equality and unalienable rights of the whole human race.—We cannot leave this topic, without adding, that not only Milton's error on polygamy, but many other noxious mistakes, have resulted from measuring Christianity by the condition of the primitive church, as if that were the standard of faith and practice, as if everything allowed then were wise and good, as if the religion were then unfolded in all its power and extent. The truth is, that Christianity was then in its infancy. The apostles communicated its great truths to the rude minds of Jews and Heathens; but the primitive church did not, and could not, understand all that was involved in those principles, all the applications of which they are susceptible, all the influences they were to

exert on the human mind, all the combinations they were to form with the new truths which time was to unfold, all the new lights in which they were to be placed, all the adaptations to human nature and to more advanced states of society, which they were progressively to manifest. In the first age, the religion was administered with a wise and merciful conformity to the capacities of its recipients. With the progress of intelligence, and the developement of the moral faculties, Christianity is freeing itself, and ought to be freed, from the local, temporary, and accidental associations of its childhood. Its great principles are coming forth more distinctly and brightly, and condemning abuses and errors, which have passed current for ages. This great truth, for such we deem it, that Christianity is a growing light, and that it must be more or less expounded by every age for itself, was not sufficiently apprehended by Milton; nor is it now understood as it will be. For want of apprehending it, Christianity is administered

now, too much as it was in ages, when nothing of our literature, philosophy, and spirit of improvement existed; and consequently it does not, we fear, exert that entire and supreme sway over strong and cultivated minds, which is its due, and which it must one day obtain.

He

Milton has connected with polygamy the subject of divorce, on which he is known to have differed from many Christians. strenuously maintains in the work under review, and more largely in other treatises, that the violation of the marriage bed is not the sole ground of divorce, but that 'the perpetual interruption of peace and affection by mutual differences and unkindness is a sufficient reason' for dissolving the conjugal relation. On this topic we cannot enlarge.

We now arrive at that part of Milton's

work, in which his powerful mind might have been expected to look beyond the prevalent opinions of his day, but in which he has followed the beaten road, almost without deviation, seldom noticing difficulties, and

hardly seeming to know their existence. We refer to the great subjects of the moral condition of mankind, and of redemption by Jesus Christ. The doctrine of original sin he has assumed as true, and his faith in it was evidently strengthened by his doctrine of the identity of the soul with the body, in consequence of which he teaches that souls are propagated from parents to children, and not immediately derived from God, and that they are born with an hereditary taint, just as the body contracts hereditary disease. It is humbling to add, that he supports this doctrine of the propagation of sin by physical contagion, on the ground that it relieves the Creator from the charge of originating the corruption which we are said to bring into life; as if the infinitely pure and good God could, by a covert agency, infect with moral evil the passive and powerless mind of the infant, and then absolve himself of the horrible work by imputing it to instruments of his own ordination! Milton does not, however, believe in total depravity, feeling

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