example. Wonderfully self-reliant, she was even more remarkably trustful in God. She had no difficulty in finding a sphere not because of her capacity, but because of her spirit. She did "what she could." With half or with twice her abilities she would still have found something to do,— and that something, enough to fill her great heart.

It is refreshing to contemplate the life of a remarkable woman, who thoroughly realized both the Christian spirit of labor and the Christian standard of greatness. It is strengthening to commune, at this time, with a really great woman who never imbibed the distinctly heathen notion that greatness consists in station, prominence, publicity; that a person can have no "sphere" without a chance at the presidency, a senatorship, or at least a platform speech; a woman who spent no time in admiring her own genius, boasting of her pure womanly instincts, bewailing her oppressed condition, lamenting her want of opportunities, or abusing men, but whose humble faith and loving labors wrought results of blessing and blessedness as wide as the earth and as lasting as eternity. In the presence of such a woman the Catharines and Elizabeths, the De Staels and the Ossolis hide their diminished heads.

THE PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK.-The article in our May number on this subject, by Professor Seymour, attracted, as well it might, the attention of those capable of judging,- though, we believe, one editor found it "heavy." It was not only written "by the book," as some one remarked, but from personal communication with continental scholars. We expect, in due time, an article on the Pronunciation of Latin, from the same competent source.

THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION bids fair to assume new phases, theoretical and practical, which will force the advocates of temperance to consider well their position and duties. While many individuals and one national society are still laboring to show that all use of fermented liquors, even a sip of true wine religiously taken at the Lord's table, is disallowed in the Scriptures, the foreign population of Chicago are constraining the city government to repeal the prohibition of liquor selling on Sunday-though fortunately the State law lies on the statute book - and so able a paper as the Nation openly argues against "prohibition," with arguments that seem to defend the practice of moderate drinking as the gratification of a natural and legitimate craving, attended with only the ordinary "risks of life."

Part of the fallacy of the argument fastens on the inaccurate word prohi: bition — whereas the real aim of such laws was and is only rigid restriction; part of it lies in an underestimate of the immense and needless calamities to society wrapped up in this individual vice; part of it in overlooking the claims which society — including not only and specially wives and children, but all that are taxed and liable to be outraged by its pauperism and crime— have to protection from the effects of a self-abuse, which also becomes abuse of others; part of it in forgetting those well-known principles of law which

restrain the practice of open and deliberate temptations upon the unwary, such as obscene books and the gambler's trade, and which abate nuisances. We have no doubt that, as things are, the propriety of a rigid law of restriction on the sale of intoxicating drinks can be justified, and the Christian duty shown of refraining from the use of such drinks merely as a beverage. It becomes temperance men, however, to consider maturely their principles and arguments, and, casting away all that is questionable and unsound, to occupy ground that is defensible and to defend it.

MASONIC CORNER-STONES.-The New York "Tribune" protests against the proposal to lay the corner-stone of the new capitol at Albany with Masonic ceremonies as improper. The objection comes with more weight from a journal which in the same article lauds the Masonic order with praises in which we can not sympathize. It is time that these unwarrantable intrusions ceased.

A VALUABLE UNITARIAN DISCOVERY." It is great folly," says the "Liberal Christian," "for the theists and free religionists of the Unitarian body to imagine that the more conservative men do not, some of them, know all that they know, and have not weighed all the arguments that have overturned their faith in a positive Christianity-without being upset by them." Well said. And the remark has a little wider application. There are a good many men in the orthodox ranks who have considered all the arguments, objections, difficulties, cavils of both these sets of men, without being disturbed by them. Many a Christian scholar has fully contemplated far more of the "difficulties" of his faith than the keenest of the skeptics, so that he could even teach him how to cavil, and rests all the more unshaken on God and His Word.

IT IS, perhaps, needless to remark to our contributors that their articles must wait their turn. We have also book notices necessarily deferred.

THE

CONGREGATIONAL REVIEW.

VOL. XI. — SEPTEMBER, 1871. — No. 61.

ARTICLE I.

RELIGION ACCORDING TO CARLYLE. *

In "Harper's New Monthly Magazine" for January, 1863, is an article on "Carlyle's Table-talk," as reported by Rev. Mr. Milburn, the "Blind Preacher," which may furnish a clue to the origin and religious import of the enigmatic and remarkable work the title of which we have given.

We will give several extracts from the "Table-talk," relating to the religious history of Carlyle. According to Mr. Milburn, he thus speaks of his father and his minister:

"I think of all the men I have ever known, my father was quite the remarkablest. Quite a farmer sort of a person, using vigilant thrift and careful husbandry ; — abiding by veracity and faith, and with an extraordinary insight into the very heart of things and men.

"He was an elder of the kirk; and it was very pleasant to see him in his daily and weekly relations with the minister of the parish. They had been friends from their youth, and had grown up together in the service of their common Master. The parish minis'er was the first person that taught me Latin; and I am not sure but that he laid a great curse upon me in so doing.

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"It was a pleasant thing to see the minister, in cassock 'and bands, come

*SARTOR RESARTUS: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh. In three books. By Thomas Carlyle.

forth on the Sabbath day and stand up to lead the devotions of his people — preaching to them the words of truth and soberness which he had gained by pains-taking study and devout prayer to Almighty God to know what was the mind of the Spirit; not cutting fantastic capers before high Heaven, as is the wont and use of many of you modern preachers, seeking to become Thaumaturgists in gathering a crowd of gaping fools to behold - sad spectacle! how much of a fool a man could be in the sight of God. There was none of your so called Popular Oratory, and astonishing vocal gymnastics styled Eloquence- wonderful to gods and men; but only a simple and earnest desire to feed the souls of his people and lead them in the ways of life everlasting. It was pleasant indeed to see my father and his minister together, and to hear their grave and serious talk. You would be satisfied that whoever was out of his duty they were in theirs."

And he indulges in the following strain in referring to the death of his father:

"I had not been in town many days when the heavy tidings came that my father was dead. He had gone to bed at night as well as usual it seemed; but they found in the morning that he had passed from the realm of Sleep to that of Day. It was a fit end for such a life as his had been. Ah, sir, he was a man into the four corners of whose house there bad shined, through the years of his pilgrimage by day and by night, the light of the glory of God. Like Enoch of old he had walked with God, and at the last he was not, for God took him. If I could only see such men now as were my father and his minister men of such fearless truth and simple faith with such firmness in holding on to the things that they believed; in saying and doing only what they thought was right; in seeing and hating the thing that they felt to be wrong - I should have far more hope for this British nation, and indeed for the world at large."

Thus Carlyle was signally favored with an early religious education under the direction of a most remarkable and godly father and excellent and earnest minister.

In answer to Mr. Milburn's inquiries in relation to the origin of the dyspepsia, from which he suffers, we have the following significant and strange disclosures:

"I am sure I can hardly tell, sir," replied Carlyle.

"I only know that for the one or two or three and twenty years of my mortal existence, I am not conscious of the ownership of that diabolical arrangement called a Stomach. I had,grown up a healthy and hardy son of a hardy and healthy Scotch dalesman: and he was the descendant of a long line of such: men that had tilled their paternal acres, and gained their threescore years and ten- or even mayhap, by reason of strength, their fourscore years - and

had gone down to their graves, never a man of them the wiser for the possession of this infernal apparatus. I had gone through the University of Edinburgh, and had been invited by an old friend to become associated with him in the conduct of a school. He was a man, sir, whose name you may have heard upon your own side of the waters. It was Edward Irving — my old friend Edward Irving.

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"To Kirkaldy I went. Together we talked and wrought and thought — together we strove, by virtue of birch, and of book, to initiate the urchins into what is called the Rudiments of Learning; until at length the hand of the Lord was laid upon him, and the voice of his God spake to him, saying 'Arise and get thee hence; for this is not thy rest!' And he arose, and girded up his loins, and putting the trumpet of the A'mighty to his lips, he blew such a blast as that men started in strange surprise, and said that the like had not been heard since the days of the Covenant itself.

“And I tarried the while yonder at Kirkaldy, endeavoring still to initiate the urchins into the Rudiments of Learning, until the voice spake unto me, saying, 'Arise and settle now the problem of thy life.' I had been destined by my father and my father's minister to be myself a minister of the Kirk of Scotland. But now that I had gained the years of man's estate, I was not sure that I believed the doctrines of my father's kirk; and it was needful that I should now settle it. And so I entered into my chamber, and closed the door. And around about me there came a trooping throng of phantasms dire, from the abysmal depths of nethermost perdition. Doubt, Fear, Unbelief, Mockery, and Scoffing were there; and I wrestled with them in the travail and agony of spirit. Thus was it, sir, for many weeks. Whether I ate I know not; whether I drank I know not; whether I slept I know not. But I only know that when I came forth again beneath the glimpses of the moon, it was with the direful persuasion that I was the miserable owner of a d abolica' apparatus called a Stomach. And I never have been free from that knowledge from that hour to this; and I suppose that I never shall be until I am laid away in my grave.'

It may be that here is a key to unlock the mystery of Herr Teufelsdröckh. Carlyle was born in 1795. Consequently it was some time previous to 1818 that he retired to his chamber to settle the problem of his life. "Sartor Resartus " first appeared in "Fraser's Magazine" in 1833-4 -- some fifteen years after this great spiritual crisis. Its ostensible object is, partly, to represent Teufelsdröckh's views of the difference between the forms and outside of things, and the things themselves, under the quaint designation of "The Philosophy of Clothes," and, in part, to unfold the spiritual biography of the hero, and describe the process by which he came to embrace