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not. The press arrived-was stored, the building was attacked by an armed mob; the protection which had been requested was withheld; shots were exchanged, and Mr. Lovejoy was murdered defending his rights, in the hearing of hundreds who should have sprung forward to interpose their aid. Mr. Lovejoy's defense before the meeting is one which must have touched the heart of any one who had not hushed his generous feelings in the cry of passion or prejudice :

"Mr. Chairman,-it is not true, as has been charged upon me, that I hold in contempt the feelings and sentiments of this community, in reference to the question which is now agitating it. I respect and appreciate the feelings and opinions of my fellow-citizens, and it is one of the most painful and unpleasant duties of my life, that I am called upon to act in opposition to them. If you suppose, sir, that I have published sentiments contrary to those generally held in this community, because I delighted in differing from them, or in occasioning a disturbance, you have entirely misapprehended me. But, sir, while I value the good opinion of my fellow-citizens, as highly as any one, I may be permitted to say, that I am governed by higher considerations than either the favor or the fear of man. I am impelled to the course I have taken, because I fear God. As I shall answer it to my God in the great day, I dare not abandon my sentiments, or cease in all proper ways to propagate them.

I, Mr. Chairman, have not desired, or asked any compromise. I have asked for nothing but to be protected in my rights as a citizenrights which God has given me, and which are guaranteed to me by the constitution of my country. Have I, sir, been guilty of any infraction of the laws? Whose good name have I injured? When and where have I published any thing injurious to the reputation of Alton? Have I not, on the other hand, labored, in common with the rest of my fellow-citizens, to promote the reputation and interests of this city? What, sir, I ask, has been my offence? Put your finger upon it-define itand I stand ready to answer for it. If I have committed any crime, you can easily convict me. You have public sentiment in your favor. You have your juries, and you have your attorney, (looking at the Attorney-General,) and I have no doubt you can convict me. But if I have been guilty of no violation of law, why am I hunted up and down continually like a partridge upon the mountains? Why am I threatened with the tar-barrel? Why am I waylaid every day, and from night to night, and my life in jeopardy every hour?

You have, sir, made up, as the lawyers say, a false issue; there are not two parties between whom there can be a compromise. I plant myself, sir, down on my unquestionable rights, and the question to be decided is, whether I shall be protected in the exercise and enjoyment of those rights-that is the question, sir;-whether my property shall be protected, whether I shall be suffered to go home to my family at night without being assailed, and threatened with tar and feathers, and

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assassination; whether my afflicted wife, whose life has been in jeopardy, from continued alarm and excitement, shall night after night be driven from a sick bed into the garret to save her life from the brickbats and violence of the mobs; that, sir, is the question." Here, much affected and overcome by his feelings, he burst into tears. Many, not excepting even his enemies, wept-several sobbed aloud, and the sympathies of the whole meeting were deeply excited. He continued: Forgive me, sir, that I have thus betrayed my weakness. It was the allusion to my family that overcame my feelings. Not, sir, I assure you, from any fears on my part. I have no personal fears. Not that I feel able to contest the matter with the whole community. I know perfectly well I am not. I know, sir, that you can tar and feather me, hang me up, or put me into the Mississippi, without the least difficulty. But what then? Where shall I go? I have been made to feel that if

I am not safe at Alton, I shall not be safe any where. I recently visited St. Charles to bring home my family, and was torn from their frantic embrace by a mob. I have been beset night and day at Alton. And now if I leave here and go elsewhere, violence may overtake me in my retreat, and I have no more claim upon the protection of any other community than I have upon this; and I have concluded, after consultation with my friends, and earnestly seeking counsel of God, to remain at Alton, and here to insist on protection in the exercise of my rights. If the civil authorities refuse to protect me, I must look to God; and if I die, I have determined to make my grave in Alton."' pp. 278–281.

He did make his grave in Alton, and as he was borne forth on his hearse to his last resting-place, the mourning train were saluted by the jeers and scoffs of bystanders. There he sleeps; but long and bitterly will the advocates of slavery rue the night which, by their bloody outrages, has opened a thousand voices to speak their condemnation. We must close; but we hope that this book will be widely disseminated and read. We have occupied more room already than we can well spare; but less, we have felt, we could not say. Mr. Lovejoy did as we doubt not every man who valued his rights, in his circumstances, might have done. They who have been foremost to condemn him, would, we believe, have been full as obstinate in upholding their own rights. The remainder of the volume we must pass over; but there is much interesting matter still untouched. We are glad to learn, that so wide-spread a feeling of honest indignation has prevailed in regard to this outrage. It will never cease. The name of Lovejoy will be mentioned with feelings of respect, when the censures which have been heaped on him will be forgotten. If the press is to be fettered; if men are to be murdered while protecting it, to propitiate the demands of slavery; we augur, that it will not be long before the whole of New England, at least, will be as one man in opposition to its claims.

ART. VIII.-NATURAL THEOLOGY.

On Natural Theology; by THOMAS CHALMERS, D. D. & LL. D., Professor of Theology in the University of Edinburgh, and Corresponding Member of the Royal Institute of France. New York: Leavitt, Lord & Co. 1836.

THE peculiar characteristics of Dr. Chalmers as a writer, are well known to our readers. Ever delaying on his main thoughts, expanding them, and reiterating them in new forms, almost to satiety and disgust, and employing, withal, a phraseology elaborate and bordering on magniloquence, he still keeps his eye firmly and intently fixed on the conclusion at which he is aiming, and renders the delaying care and caution with which he surveys each step of his way, but the means of a more resistless and triumphant progress: like the flow of a deep and broad river, with its eddying whirls, slow, but powerfully onward; or rather, like the march of an invading army, careful to guard well every post it takes, that its way may be more sure to the citadel, stepping, as it goes, to the piping of lofty and exulting notes.

It is interesting to follow such a writer into the field of Natural Theology. Here, amid lofty themes, which merge away into the mysterious, and the incomprehensible; and practical themes, too, which touch at every point the duties, interests, and destinies, of ourselves,-we like to follow a guide who is sufficiently cautious and dilatory to show us the solidity of his premises, and sufficiently firm and decided, as a reasoner, to speak out the conclusions of truth. Dr. Chalmers, however, has brought to the task the discipline of a long course of study and thought on other and kindred subjects, and those special preparations which have arisen from his previous essays on the same subject, as in his Bridgewater Treatise; and more especially in the many discussions which must have come up in handling the various topics of the scriptures during the several years of his christian ministry.

To the last mentioned cause, in our opinion, is to be attributed the chief interest of these volumes. We feel, that we are following in them the pulpit, rather than the academic theist,the one who, from his high station of a servant of Christ, intent to call the guilty to salvation, sends forth the calls, the cries and warnings of nature itself, to help him in his message, and

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to oppress with a sense of obligation and want, even those who, in their ignorance and unbelief, are farthest from God, rather than the academician, intent chiefly on the acquisition or communication of science, and who, in his philosophic pride, seems to withdraw himself and his pupils from the gospel itself, to repose in the substitute which his reason has discovered. True, the very topics in the natural world which he has selected as the basis of his arguments, stand in most intimate relation to the obligations and spiritual wants of man, and thus strongly favor the subserviency of the subject in his hands to the ends of christianity; but it is the minister of Christ, who, by the very nature of his vocation, in studying and ministering to the moral maladies of mankind, is most at home in these topics, as well as most disposed to urge them to their highest and best results.

The topics of Dr. Chalmers are taken from a field, we have intimated, than all others more subservient to practical christianity. In Ray and Derham, and in the consummate work of Paley, the eye is kept chiefly on studying physical and external nature; the exhibitions are chiefly those of wisdom, and power, and skill; the emotions chiefly called for are those of wonder or of calm delight: and though we allow these topics a high and useful place in subservience to true religion,-as indeed adoration and delight in the wisdom and goodness of God are,yet they are chiefly so to a mind and heart that has already become reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, in lifting it up in the ways of God; while to a heart averse to God and reconciliation, this survey of the natural loveliness of God, portrayed in the external objects of the natural world, may lead that heart to repose and linger on this outer field of truth, rather than take refuge, as a lost sinner, in the saving truths of christianity. Dr. Chalmers, on the other hand, after taking a brief survey of the external world for evidence of the being of God, enters into the internal and spiritual world of man, to fetch up from man's nature the memorials not only of his Creator's being, but of his Creator's righteousness,-the bonds of obligation are felt to be around him, the moral laws of his Maker and Sovereign are heralded in his very nature,-the voluntary course on which he is embarked in life, is seen to be against the law, and working its righteous penalty of death upon his very nature, in the fixedness of destructive habit; and amid the terrors of apprehended wrath, and the faint gleamings of mercy, that dawn from the forbearance that is waiting on him, he is led to cry out, "What must I do to be saved?" Nature thus warns of danger, and points the guilty to a refuge in Christ.

We would not imply, in these remarks, that each topic and branch of evidence in Natural Theology is not worthy of strict and close attention; but rather, that the whole field, and every part of it, should be exhibited as a practical system, landing man in no place of security short of the gospel. "Along the confines of its domain," as says the writer we are reviewing, "there should be raised, in every quarter, the floating signals of distress; that its scholars, instead of being lulled into the imagination, that now they may repose as in so many secure and splendid dwelling-places, should be taught to regard them only as towers of observation-whence they have to look for their ulterior guidance and their ulterior supplies, to the region of a conterminous theology."

We will, however, descend from these general remarks, to a more minute survey of the work itself we are reviewing:-The work opens with a chapter on the distinction between the ethics of theology and the objects of theology, and on the ground of this distinction proceeds, in the next chapter, to show the duty which is laid upon men by the probability or even the imagination of a God. The design in these chapters is, to bring on the conscience of every one the obligation to inquire, with candor and earnestness, after the evidences of God and his ways; to reach even the atheist, in his darkest retreat of ignorance and unbelief, with the obligation, if not of the instant belief of God, of the instant and earnest inquiry after him. After showing, that the atheist cannot possibly take the positive position, that there is no God,-which would require for its demonstration a knowledge of the whole universe, and that he cannot recede from theism any farther than to the simple point of ignorance and unbelief, he remarks:

'Now to this condition there attaches a most clear and incumbent morality. It is to go in quest of that unseen benefactor, who, for aught I know, has ushered me into existence, and spread so glorious a panorama around me. It is to probe the secret of my being and my birth; and, if possible, to make discovery whether it was indeed the hand of a benefactor, that brought me forth from the chambers of non-entity, and gave me place and entertainment in that glowing territory, which is lighted up with the hopes and happiness of living men. It is thus that the very conception of a God throws a responsibility after it; and that duty, solemn and important duty, stand associated with the thought of a possible deity, as well as with the sight of a present deity, standing in full manifestation before us. Even anterior to all knowledge of God, or when that knowledge is in embryo, there is both a path of irreligion and a path of piety; and that law which denounces the one and gives to the other an approving testimony, may find in him who is still in utter darkVOL. X.

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