abounded near Tyre. It is the celebrated Tyrian purple, used for dying wool, and is commonly rendered in the Bible "blue." It was much employed in the construction of the Tabernacle, and in the garments of the high-priest.

The force of the metaphor lies in the admitted strength and fixedness, as well as depth and glariness of these colors. No usage, exposure, nor washings could remove them. Such is the nature of sin in man. No human power, no rights, no repentance, no resolves, no prayers, nor tears nor penances avail to remove or lessen its guilt. It is deep-fixed in the heart, as scarlet in the cotton and crimson in the wool.

"No bleeding bird, nor bleeding beast,
Nor hyssop branch, nor sprinkling priest,
Nor running brook, nor flood, nor sea,
Can wash the dismal stain away."

Sin is so fixed and incurable because its seat is so deep in the soul. In the centre of our moral being, where the will, the affections, the thoughts, imaginings, tastes, and aims, take their rise, there is its strong citadel and seat of government.

The guilty stain of sin is not in the actions, for the same actions may be right at one time and wrong at another. Nor is the crimson dye to be charged to the passions. For these may cool and change all the way from childhood to old age, and yet the soul constantly increase in guilt. The hot, impulsive passions of youth are certainly no more offensive than the more concealed and better controlled passions of manhood and age. The evil passions are but the outgrowth, the results of sin ruling in the heart and nature.

Nor yet is the source and seat of sin to be found in the direct, conscious choices of the soul. Paul speaks out the deeper experience of mankind when he says, (Rom. vii.) "The good that I would I do not; but the evil which I would not that I do. I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members." He closes by admitting his helplessness, and crying out for a deliverer.

David, in his confession, like Luther and Augustine, and thousands of eminent Christians, refers his guilt back to its deep native domination in the soul. "I was shapen in iniquity." An ancient and much used confessional hymn runs,

"Lord I am vile - conceived in sin,

And born unholy and unclean;
Sprung from the man whose guilty fall
Corrupts the race, and taints us all.

"Soon as we draw our infant breath,
The seeds of sin grow up for death;
Thy law demands a perfect heart ;
But we're defiled in every part."

But though sin is so deep and fixed in our nature, though we are so helpless in its slavery, thanks be to God, he hath found out a ransom. The text contains a positive and glorious pledge of God, that sin can be eradicated on the conditions given. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."

ARTICLE X.

THE ROUND TABLE.

NEW WRECKS ON OLD ROCKS. When one of our contributors reviewed "The Theology of Plymouth Pulpit," and showed its vast deficiencies in some respects and glaring unsoundness in others, it was thought by some to be a work uncalled for. A part deemed the weekly teachings of that Pulpit at home and through the Independent and Traveller unworthy of any public notice, however unsound they were. Others thought the critique the outburst of an old school feeling, so splenetic and dogmatic and illiberal, that it could tolerate no teachings unless set forth in the ipsissimis verbis of the Westminster Catechism. Doubtless our contributor wrote in all kindness of feeling toward the incumbent of Plymouth Pulpit, and with a deep sense of responsibility to Christ and his doctrine and church. If he had any fears that he had overdone a painful duty, or excited undue alarm among the lovers of the ancient faith, recent disclosures of that pulpit, and disclaimers of its teachings must quiet him.

We are comforted, in the trying work we performed, by the fact that the new Boston Light, thus placed on Beecher's Rocks, is beginning to be acknowledged and used by some of those who had denied that there were any rocks in that channel.

A sermon of the Plymouth Pulpit on Justification, and published in the Independent of July 4, has alarmed even his publishers and friends. Mr. Beecher takes occasion to say in this sermon, that "theologians have put forth the absurd notion that God has made a plan of salvation." After caricaturing, in his inimitable way, this notion of a plan, he continues: "Is not the whole of this talk about a plan of salvation a mess of sheer ignorance, not to say nonsense?

"Not

on account of any arrangement he has made, not on account of any expedient he has set up, not on account of any settlement or plan that he has fixed, but on account of what he is, he looks upon a sinful man and says: 'I so love you that I accept you just as if you were not sinful.'"

The Independent confesses to be "somewhat surprised" at these sentiments of Mr. B.; admits that he "caricatures" the common theory of a plan of salvation, and "hardly mentions that which the Scriptures make the very essence of the atoning sacrifice - the death of Christ upon the Cross as a propitiation."

And it admits, too, that it is led to make this rebuke only after "the views of Mr. Beecher in the sermon here cited are condemned by several religious journals as a dangerous heresy, and the Independent is censured for giving them publicity." It excuses it all, however, as a "rhetorical excursus" against strait theologians of the Princeton Repertory and Boston Review stamp. For ourselves we confess frankly to believing that God has a plan of salvation, and that we are, therefore, justly exposed to such a "rhetorical excursus," as "hardly mentions the very essence of the atoning sacrifice," when unfolding the doctrine of Justification by Faith. As yet we are so far Protestants evangelical as to hold with Luther to this "articulum stantis vel cadentis ecclesiæ."

The Chicago Herald is "alternately filled with admiration and consternation," as it confesses. It "grieves to see such loose theology circulated in the columns of the Independent." And then to show how the friends of the Independent in the West feel about the publication of such teachings, it quotes from a private letter to the editors of the Herald. The writer, it says, is a "progressive minister," and has been a stanch friend of the Independent. The letter says: "Is H. W. Beecher as much of a Unitarian as his last published sermon would indicate? What are we to do? Are the editors of the Independent themselves on the high road to Unitarianism? . . . Beecher may ridicule orthodoxy once a month the year round, and pitch into the doctrines we preach, and on which we rest our salvation, and not an editorial pen has one word of reply or rebuke. . . I am exceedingly distressed in view of that man's sermons. I have taken the Independent a long time, have recommended it, and aided to some extent its circulation. May God forgive me! All the religion that it now brings to its readers is in the sermon, and that is such a religion as our denomination did not formerly relish."

The Congregationalist echoes by quotation the gentle and apologetic caveats of the Independent, but has no original warning, or protest, or surprise.

Nor must we omit the manly declaration of the Congregational Journal, -so like itself. "If we rightly understand him, the doctrine of Justification by Faith, as revealed in the Scriptures, and received by the Protestant world, as embodying all the cardinal doctrines of Christianity, he totally subverts, and treats with most offensive levity."

The conviction grows with us that our contributor did not speak too early or too plainly of "The Theology of Plymouth Pulpit."

MRS. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING has gone from earth to join the immortals. Her frail body failed longer to imprison that soaring, mighty soul, and she died in Florence June 29th. In common with the religious literary world we lift up our wail of sorrow at her early departure. Yet our sorrow is tempered by the reflection that she is henceforth to be associated for higher and, it may be, more important and useful employment of her poetic genius, with the band of the world's greatest poets, at the head of whom are Isaiah and David, as they sing before the throne the growing praises and triumph of the "Lamb that was slain."

But though she has gone, her bold and great creations remain; and we cling to them and wander over the new-found worlds of original beauty and literary and religious fruits with only increased interest. In "Aurora Leigh" we read perhaps the strangest and sublimest poetic prose novel that was ever written. In "The Seraphim" we shall never weary of trying to catch an awe-stricken angel's view of the crucifixion scene. In "The Drama of Exile" we tread the path of Milton's "Paradise Lost" as it were a new and better road under the guidance of the truest womanly grace and tenderness as well as the loftiest and most courageous genius.

In both the poems and letters of this gifted Christian woman we find the greatest strength, the highest imagination, and the most versatile knowledge that are ever given to mortals.

We trust she now realizes the anticipation which she addressed to the angels at the close of "The Seraphim."

"I, too, may haply smile another day

At the far recollection of this lay,

When God may call me in your midst to dwell,

To hear your most sweet music's miracle
And see your wondrous faces. May it be!
For His remembered sake, the Slain on rood,
Who rolled his earthly garment red in blood
(Treading the wine-press) that the weak, like me,
Before his heavenly throne should walk in white.”

BOSTON REVIEW.

VOL. I.-NOVEMBER, 1861.-No. 6.

ARTICLE I.

DISTINCTIONS WITH A DIFFERENCE.

We have a new Gospel. Its title is the Tares and the Wheat. Its burden of glad tidings"let both grow together until the time of harvest." That is; it is no use to try to separate the precious from the vile in this mixed state of things. This must be adjourned to the end of the dispensation. Christ will attend to that matter in due time. Does not the wise man say — “that which is crooked cannot be made straight?"

We accept the parable, but deny its interpretation. Christ did not intend thus to contradict the after inspiration of the one and self-same Spirit — that his word is a sword which is sharp to divide between the joints and marrow, and so to be a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Our discoverers of this new Gospel in an old one must be cautious how they preach a kind of husbandry which will be sure to leave in the Lord's garden not a mixture of tares and wheat, but only a rank crop of thorns and thistles. Your field which is never weeded will soon produce nothing but weeds.

We are noting a tendency of not a few of our own pulpits and churches, with respect both to doctrine and discipline. Those of the Liberal types have long ago avowedly adopted the let-alone policy. They think it work enough to drag the net, without troubling themselves to sort over the fishes. They