The Christian Examiner and Religious Miscellany

BUSTLING and utilitarian as our age is generally called, it cannot reasonably be accused of slighting the lessons of the past or despising the names of the good and great of former times. Indeed, the very ardor with which we are urged to join in the bold enterprises and sanguine movements of the day has led many to take an opposite turn, and seek in the study of antiquity a quiet and a wisdom which they find not in the restless tumult around them. They meet with more to soothe and edify them in the Greek and Roman classics or the Christian Fathers, the wisdom of Indian sages or Egyptian priests, than in the

* 1. Histoire de Saint Augustin, Sa Vie, Ses Œuvres, Son Siecle, Influence de Son Genie. Par M. POUJOULAT. Paris. 1845. (History of Saint Augustine, his Life, his Works, his Age, the Influence of his Genius. By M. Poujoulat.) Three Vols. 8vo.

2. A Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, Anterior to the Division of the East and West. Translated by Members of the English Church. Oxford. 1840-45. Vols. I-XX. 8vo.

3. Ancient Christianity and the Doctrines of the Orford Tracts for the Times. By the AUTHOR OF "SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM.” Fourth Edition, with Supplement, Index and Tables. London. 1844. Two Vols. 8vo. VOL XL. 4TH S. VOL. V. NO. I.

pages of political newspapers or reform magazines, the visions of financial schemers or the disputes of sectarian divines.

While we are receiving from the principal nations of Europe every school of new philosophy and every project of social innovation, we are assured from the same quarters by other voices, that all philosophy is a sin against faith and all innovation is a rebellion against authority. France gives us Fourier with his promised millennium of industrial association, and De Maistre with his eulogies of the dark ages and his predictions of the return of Papal dominion. From Germany the reverent voices of Adam Moehler and Frederick Schlegel have entreated us not to listen to the war-notes of Frederick Strauss and Henry Heine, nor prefer to the ancient Church with its literature of faith, modern rationalism with its literature of the senses and understanding. England, too, our own England, sends forth antagonist influences quite as various. Robert Owen comes to teach us his plans of socialism, and Dr. Wiseman writes to win us back to the Roman Church. Carlyle calls the Pope a miserable chimera, and Kenelm Digby lauds the Papal ages, as the "ages of faith." With one hand our mother country gives us railroads, and bids us by her example traverse the ends of the earth; with the other she holds out to us the Oxford Tracts, and insists upon quietude, fasting and prayer as the path of peace and the way of life. As a people we are ready to welcome every form of foreign influence, and, whether moved by imitation or our own dispositions, are beginning to exhibit on a large scale the antagonist tendencies of which we have spoken. We are carrying out democratic theories, and giving full scope to priestly domination; we are establishing Fourierite communities, and building stately cathedrals; we are engaging in earnest enterprises of business and reform, that agitate the soul, and encouraging music, painting, sculpture, gardening, and the arts, that soothe the soul. We are erecting fine houses as if we were to live forever, and laying out beautiful cemeteries as if it were no great ill to die. From some traits of our character it would seem as if David Crockett with his noted adage embodied our national genius, while in other traits we show some kindred with Old Mortality and his love of wandering among the graves.

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The Christian Examiner and Religious Miscellany, Volume 40