gation. Yet various as was the character of his discourses, Philip Mayer says truly, that through them all there runs, like a shining thread, a practical religious spirit, and a true oratorical talent, so that it is easy to value at their true worth all the doubtful or spurious works that have come to us with his name attached to them.

Certainly, it would be folly to hold up the great orator of the ancient church as a perfect model for our age, or for our country. Boston is not an Antioch, nor is the nineteenth century much like the fourth. We live in an age of the general diffusion of knowledge and the inductive exercise of intellect. The Reformation, together with the discussions consequent upon it, has given great predominance to the critical understanding, and made systematic doctrine and polished writing more acceptable than authoritative statements or glowing appeals; yet there is much that the modern pulpit may learn from the pages of Chrysostom, and not only learn, but apply. Many a modern audience might be refreshed by listening to a racy homily formed on his principles, and would regard its free expositions of Scripture and fervent appeals to the heart as a pleasant relief from doctrinal dissertations, moral lectures, or æsthetic essays. We dislike flippancy in the pulpit, and have no relish for off-hand crudities anywhere. As little friendly are we to the too common dulness and feeling of constraint that would have afflicted the gravest of the old fathers, could they have become acquainted with the pulpit habits of our time.

We may learn, too, of Chrysostom how to be independent, and, whether as hearers or preachers, that we are bound to keep the pulpit independent. As Americans, especially as inhabitants of New England, we must regard the Christian pulpit as a conservative institution second to no other. Our homes, our schools, and our laws rest in no small degree upon its support. Its history has been and will be intimately connected with our national history. Let it keep its high place, and neither become the minion of the few nor the sport of the many; let it mildly, yet fearlessly, speak the truth as given by the Scriptures, rebuking evil in the few and the many, and throwing a mantle of charity over repentance and faith, whether in the rich and powerful, or the poor and enslaved; and, above all, let it never confound the oracles of heaven with the dictates of men, nor cry out, at the voice of a single

Herod, or of multitudes with a Herod's spirit, "It is the voice of a God, and not of a man." Subserviency may profit for a season, but truthfulness conquers in the end. Better fall for a time with Chrysostom, than triumph for a time with Theophilus.

Thirty years after his death, the remains of John of Antioch were borne in triumph from the tomb in his place of exile to a splendid mausoleum in Constantinople. Two centuries ago, his bones were carried as relics to Rome, where they now rest in the chapel that bears his name within the walls of St. Peter's. To few of the hallowed spots within that majestic cathedral would one more eagerly hasten than to that chapel. Thoughts would there be inspired that might sometimes force the attention to wander from the seraphic music of the Sistine choir, and compel one to listen to voices from another age and land. The church of Rome is still in the ascendant; her power is still majestic, whilst her Oriental sister is cast down and in humiliation. The Roman patriarch Innocent, fourteen centuries ago, interceded, though in vain, for his brother of Constantinople, when the latter was driven into exile; and now Rome protects the ashes of him whom when living she vainly sought to defend. The treatment which Chrysostom received at the hands of the ruling powers in the Greek empire was a turning point in history, and in its consequences has done much to make the fate of the Eastern church differ so widely from the long continued prosperity of the church of Rome.

When his spirit shall come to be again duly honored among the nations where his name was first canonized, and the East shall return to his principles, something of the glory of the former age may come back. If, either by the awakening of the Russian clergy and nation, by the decline of the Turkish power, or by the revival of moral life among the churches of the East, Constantinople shall again become Christian, and the cross supplant the crescent on the dome of St. Sophia, next to that of our great Master and his apostles, no name would deserve to be proclaimed with greater honor on the day of triumph than that of John Chrysostom.

ART. III.1. Report in Favor of the Abolition of the Punishment of Death by Law; made to the Legislature of the State of New York, April 14, 1841. By JOHN L. O'SULLIVAN, Member of the Assembly from the City of New York. Second Edition. 1841. 8vo. pp.

168.

2. Punishment by Death: its Authority and Expediency. By REV. GEORGE B. CHEEVER. Second Edition, with an Introduction by HoN. THEODORE FRELINGHUYSEN. New York. 1843. 12mo. pp. 156. 3. Essays on the Punishment of Death.

By CHARLES SPEAR, Author of "Titles of Jesus," "Essays on Imprisonment for Debt," &c. Fourth Edition. Boston and London. 1844. 12mo. pp. 237.

Or all forms of government, a republic stands most in need of laws, and of power to execute them. If it be not a government of laws, it is no government at all. Where the people are sovereign, and every man a law-maker, there is the greater need that they make and sustain laws which all will acknowledge, a tribunal to which all must submit. Such a tribunal presupposes a system of restraints and penalties. Penal consequences must be annexed to the violation of law, and some certainty must attend these consequences, or the whole is unmeaning and useless, if not pernicious.

These are axioms. And yet, with these on their lips, a large portion of the people of this republic are talking and acting in direct opposition to them, or entire disregard of their meaning. They are retaining laws in their statute-books which are never enforced; they are withholding that public expression which alone gives strength to law; they are erecting tribunals which the laws neither recognize nor allow ; in one quarter, they anticipate even the judgment of the law by a violent execution; in another, they overawe both judgment and execution by their antipathies or sympathies; while everywhere, at times, they suffer local interests and excited passions to control, if not to defy, the operation of all laws. This is one view of existing facts. In another direction, there is an increase of the opposite feeling, a jealousy, loyalty, and conservative energy, roused by this very tendency to lawlessness, and as yet holding it in check. Which will

prevail ultimately is not our inquiry. Every one must see that nothing will be gained by pushing to extremes in either direction. If one class think to supersede law, and to find something better even than a Christian government, their destruction is sure. If the other class resolve to see no good in any change, ascribing all dissatisfaction and attempted reform to weak understandings or the worst motives, they may hasten that which they fear. And to both extremes there is, as usual, a tendency. Nothing can surpass the soft sentimentality and one-sided condolence which some persons express in reasoning upon crime and the criminal, complaining of the severity of laws, and tracing all offences to physical disease or unavoidable influences. The charge of malevolence or cruelty in our common jurisprudence, the appeal to pity those who suffer, however justly, the attempt to connect all crime with misfortune rather than guilt, and the disposition to screen the murderer under the plea of insanity, are symptoms which might in themselves be overlooked as indicative only of an unsound mind, did they not strike at the highest truths and eternal distinctions.

But this is not the only extreme. There is another, which seems to us as false, if not as dangerous. It is the grave attempt, stimulated evidently by the opposite folly, to defend our penal code by the first ever given to man; to urge the oldest severities, not only as justifications, but commands, for all after ages; to show, as more than one writer has lately attempted to do, that the divine injunction to take the life of the murderer stands on equal authority with the Decalogue, and that to repeal it would be as wicked and fatal as to disregard those ten commandments; even to argue that Christ's repeal of the Jewish penalties and retaliations was not on account of their injustice, severity, or incongruity with his own religion, but because they had been abused. Indeed, we have seen recently, in the resolutions of some religious body, the broad assertion, that the Mosaic code has never been repealed; though we have not yet seen any attempt to reinstate its thirty capital offences, including witchcraft, adultery, blasphemy, man-stealing, blood-eating, and Sabbath-breaking. We have seen it asserted that Christ himself reenacted the legal penalty of death for murder, when he said, "All they that take the sword shall perish by the sword." It is declared that the death-penalty is in accordance with

the very mercy of the Christian religion, if not demanded by its great object; inasmuch as a short term of life is more likely to bring the doomed convict to repentance, while protracted life, though in confinement, would lead only to abuse. Yet more, it is declared that the divine enactment of the law of "life for life" prepared the way for, and helped the efficacy of, the death of the Son of God. Mr. Cheever, in the book whose title we have placed at the head of this article, says," God would prevent the cheapening of human life, in order that the value of the sacrifice of Christ's life might not be diminished in men's estimation. In very truth, had no law ever been promulgated annexing the penalty of death to the crime of murder, it is not too much to say that the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross would have lost, in men's minds, something of its dignity." And a writer in the Biblical Repository for July, 1843, reasons in defence of the punishment of death from the government of God thus: "HE visits transgression with uncompromising retribution. He did not spare even his own Son."

Here is another extreme. We speak of it in no sectarian spirit, for no sect is answerable or censurable for such opinions. We give it first as a simple fact, and then as one of many reasons for subjecting this matter to a rigid and candid investigation. We had ignorantly supposed, until recently, that the Scriptural defence of capital punishment was almost relinquished. We find it not only retained, but renewed and enlarged. Now, if there be ground for this, if it be verily an original and eternal command of God, that the murderer be put to death, and its observance be essential to the principle of obedience, the existence of society, and the salvation of souls, then we say, in all soberness, this nation is guilty before God, and hastening to destruction. For not only is the law of God assailed by many who view it differently, but it is constantly set aside by those who retain and declare it. It is not enforced by those who maintain the right, and possess also the power, to enforce it. The murderer is not put to death. He is liable to it, the law requires it, in every State of our union. But in no one of them are half the murderers convicted, or, if convicted, executed. Here, again, is a fact, and it is a very serious fact, independently of its causes. It is worthy the consideration of all, that the highest sanction of our country's criminal law has no uni