greatness, and that it is the grand office and privilege of creatures, to exalt their all-perfect Creator and Father, and to experience an entire annihilation of themselves in the contemplation of his excellencies, and the desire of promoting his honour and praise. They find, indeed, that God has created them for their own happiness, as well as for his glory; but they also feel, that this happiness is enjoyed in keeping their place as created and dependent beings, and in manifesting, by their gratitude, their praise, and all their services, the perfections of the Divine character. Happiness does not enter into their minds as a sole or chief object of pursuit, but comes to their heart, I had almost said without their solicitude and care, as a donation from the appointment of God, while they pursue as a constant and supreme aim the glory of his name.'

We can do little more than give our readers the heads of the chapters which compose the second part of the treatise: they are as follow. 1. The pleasure which is derived from the exercise of affection. 2. The power of moral excellence in awakening affection. 3. This power of moral excellence increased in proportion to our own improvement in holiness. 4. The provision made for the exercise of affection in heaven. 5. The conclusion from these premises respecting the future blessedness of the servants of God. In treating this part of his subject, we are surprised that Mr. Joyce should have overlooked an Author who may be justly styled at once the most philosophical and the most heavenly-minded of English divines, and whose treatise on the "Blessedness of the Righteous" fairly exhausts the theme. If Mr. Joyce is a stranger to the works of Howe, he has a high intellectual gratification in reserve. In reading his works, he will find himself in company with a kindred though a mightier mind, richly imbued with all the treasures of Grecian and Roman lore, but by nothing more singularly distinguished than by the exquisitely attempered state of his affections, the elevation, tranquillity, and benignity which seem the native element of his feelings. Such a subject was the very fittest for the pen of such a man, and he has brought to it all the resources of his mind. The treatise is replete with the learning which was then regarded as an essential qualification of a divine, and it is in parts too scholastic and metaphysical for modern readers. We by no means wish to bring Mr. Joyce's performance into comparison with that of Howe. The one is not superseded by the other. Mr. Joyce's design is in part different, his style is more popular, and his work is altogether better adapted to the class of readers for whom it is designed. But we regret that he had not seen the treatise to which we allude; for we cannot for a moment imagine that, having seen it, he would not have availed himself of its philosophy and its eloquence. We are unable to resist the

temptation to transcribe the following specimen of the noble views entertained by that admirable Writer on the subject of love to God, as a contrast to the cold abstractions of the American metaphysician, and the Stoical ethics of the English prelate. He is speaking of a sense of dependence on the Divine all-sufficiency as an element of love to God, and as a source," in itself, of the highest pleasure in the heavenly world.

The thoughts of living at the will and pleasure of another, are grating; but they are grating only to a proud heart, which here hath no place. Things are now pleasant, to the soul in its right mind, as they are suitable, as they carry a ⚫ comeliness and congruity in them; and nothing now appears ⚫ more becoming than such a self-annihilation. The distances of Creator and creature, of infinite and finite, of a necessary and an arbitrary being, of a self-originated and a derived 'being, of what was from everlasting and what had a beginning, are now better understood than ever. And the soul, by how much it is now come nearer to God, is more apprehensive of its distance. And such a frame and posture doth hence please it best, as doth most fitly correspond thereto. 'Nothing is so pleasing to it, as to be as it ought. That tem'per is most grateful that is most proper, and which best agrees with its state. Dependence, therefore, is greatly pleasing, as it is a self-nullifying thing. And yet, it is in this respect pleasing but as a means to a further end. The pleasure that attends it, is higher and more intense, according as it more immediately attains that end, namely, the magnifying and exalting of God; which is the most connatural thing to the holy soul, the most fundamental and deeply impressed law of the new creature. Self gives place, that God may take it; 'becomes nothing, that he may be all it vanishes, that his glory may shine the brighter. Dependence gives God his proper glory. It is the peculiar honour and prerogative of a Deity, to have a world of creatures hanging upon it, staying ⚫ themselves upon it; to be the fulcrum, the centre of a lapsing creation. When this dependence is voluntary and intelligent, it carries in it a more explicit owning and acknowledgment of God. By how much more this is the distinct and actual 'sense of my soul, "Lord, I cannot live but by thee;" so much the more openly and plainly do I speak it out, "Lord, thou art God alone; thou art the fullness of life and being, the only root and spring of life, the everlasting I AM, the Being of Beings."

How unspeakably pleasant to a holy soul will such a perpetual agnition or acknowledgement of God be! when the perpetuation of its being shall be nothing else than a per-.

petuation of this acknowledgement; when every renewed aspiration, every motion, every pulse of the glorified soul, ⚫ shall be but a repetition of it; when it shall find itself, in the 'eternity of life, that everlasting state of life which it now. possesses, to be nothing else than an everlasting testimony that God is God: "He is so, for I am; I live, I act, I have the power to love him; none of which could otherwise be." When, amongst the innumerable myriads of the heavenly host, this shall be the mutual, alternate testimony of each to all the rest throughout eternity, will not this be pleasant? When each shall feel continually the fresh illapses and incomes of God, the power and sweetness of Divine influences, the enlivening vigour of that vital breath, and find in themselves, thus we live and are sustained; and are yet as secure, touching the continuance of this state of life, as if every one were a God to himself, and did each one possess an ⚫ entire Godhead ;-when their sensible dependence on Him in their glorified state, shall be His perpetual triumph over all the imaginary deities, the fancied Numina, wherewith he was heretofore provoked to jealousy, and he shall now have no rival left, but be acknowledged and known to be all in all;-how pleasant will it then be, as it were to lose themselves in him, and to be swallowed up in the overcoming sense of his boundless, all-sufficient, every where flowing ⚫ fullness! And then add to this; they do by this dependence actually make this fullness of God their own. They are now met in one common principle of life and blessedness, that is sufficient for them all. They no longer live a life of care, are perpetually exempt from solicitous thoughts, which here they could not perfectly attain to in their earthly state. They have nothing to do but to depend, to live upon a present self-sufficient good, which alone is enough to replenish all desires: else it were not self-sufficient.* How can we divide, in our most abstractive thoughts, the highest pleasure, ⚫ the fullest satisfaction, from this dependence? It is to live at the rate of a God, a God-like life, a living upon immense ⚫ fullness, as He lives.'

A little further on, he proceeds to speak of love itself as an eminent part of the image of God in his saints. This,' he continues, is an excellency, whether in its original or in the 'copy, made up of pleasantness. All love hath complacency or pleasure in the nature and most formal notion of it. To

"We esteem that to be self-sufficient, which of itself makes life desirable, and leaves no want." Arist. de mor. lib. i. c. 4.

search for pleasure in love, is the same thing as if a man should be solicitous to find water in the sea, or light in the body of the sun. Love to a friend is not without high pleasure, when especially he is actually present and enjoyed. Love to a saint rises higher in nobleness and pleasure, ac'cording to the more excellent qualification of its object. It is now in its highest improvement in both these aspects of it, ⚫ where whatsoever tends to gratify our nature, whether as human or holy, will be in its full perfection. Now doth the 'soul take up its stated dwelling in love, even in God who is love, and as he is love: it is now enclosed with love, encompassed with love; it is conversant in the proper region and 'element of love. The love of God is now perfected in it. That love which is not only participated from him, but terminated in him, that "perfect love" casts out tormenting fear; so that here is pleasure without mixture. How naturally will the blessed soul now dissolve and melt into pleasure! It is new framed on purpose for such enjoyments. It shall now love like God, as one composed of love. It shall no longer be its complaint and burden, that it cannot retaliate in this kind; that, being beloved, it cannot love.'

This is truly sublime theology. We will not weaken the impression of the passage by a single comment. It only remains to add, that this is the philosophy of the Bible, and of the Bible exclusively. Now, on comparing this view of the principle of love to God with the ancient doctrine of the Peripatetic school respecting the chief good, and the sublimer reveries of the Platonic philosophers with regard to moral beauty; taking into consideration too the inaptitude and indisposition of the Jews for scientific inquiries, among whom this transcendent moral discovery originated; an argument of the most satisfactory kind is supplied in favour of the Divine inspiration of the Scriptures. It is a principle, Mr. Joyce remarks, which in effect satisfies every condition of the problem relating to the supreme felicity of man, so long and so anxiously sought for in vain, in the heathen schools of philosophy.'

What escaped the acutest and most active minds on earth, we find was known to those who were represented as the most inert and the most incapable. The principle which seemed to require a perspicacity which could look without confusion through the entanglements and perplexities of the most extended and comprehensive argumentation, is simply announced as from an oracle by the least philosophical people of the world. The doctrine which is founded upon the justest views and noblest apprehensions of the perfections of God and the properties of man, of the condition of this world and

the promised glories of the next; which seems to demand a grasp of mind sufficient to embrace at once the most varied, the most momentous, and the most complicated interests of earth and heaven, of time and eternity; which was so high that the strongest human minds, acting in combination, stimulated to unwearied exertion, and extolled by the universal voice of mankind as pre-eminent and unequalled, were not able to attain to any thing more than a feeble and remote approximation or faint resemblance to it; this doctrine is found to be in the possession of a despised and ignorant community unknown in the annals of science, and pointed at in mockery as the most stupid of mankind.

The ancients had some faint notion about a universal and eternal law, superior to the positive institutions and moral rules which were proposed for the government of communities on earth; they sent their thoughts abroad occasionally into other possible worlds, and other higher states of being; and they attained to some conjecture or apprehension of a perfect and sublime principle or code which united the great Author of all things, and his whole dominion of intelligent creatures, in one general bond of government, like that of a vast and well-ordered commonwealth. Now, this obscurely conceived notion with which their minds ineffectually laboured, and which they could not bring from its recesses into light; this basis of the constitution of the universe on which they ventured crude conjectures, and broached unsatisfactory hints; in a word, this unknown principle which they ignorantly venerated without comprehending its nature or describing its form, is found clearly known and publicly proclaimed in a neglected corner of the earth; it is discovered shedding its Divine light on the understanding, and elevating and purifying the heart of the Jewish people, the most despised portion of mankind. "Where is the wise, where is the scribe, where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of

this world?" "

Art. II. 1. Mémorial de Sainte Hélène. Journal of the Private Life and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon at St. Helena. By the Count de Las Cases. Vol. I. Parts 1 and 2. 8vo. pp. 769. Price 17. 18. London. 1823.

2. Memoirs of the History of France, during the Reign of Napoleon, dictated by the Emperor at St. Helena to the Generals who shared his Captivity; and published from the original Manuscripts corrected by Himself. Vol. I. In 2 Parts. 8vo. pp. 781. Price 17. 8s. London. 1823.

IN

N reviewing these publications, two questions present themselves for discussion. The first relates to the genuineness of these records; the second to their value as historical documents. As to the primary consideration, with which the latter is so closely connected, it must, to a certain extent, be referred