now once appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself."-Hammond.

"Hagiasmenon (Heb. x, 10) expresses the same idea as Kekatharmenous in verse 2, and Kathariei in chapter ix, 14; and being employed to denote what immediately results from the sacrifice of Christ, these words do not refer to the inward change denominated sanctification, but to the removal of guilt from the conscience. They are both employed in the Septuagint as renderings of the Hebrew word Kipper, whose appropriate meaning is to expiate, to make atonement for an offence." Here (Heb. x, 14), as elsewhere generally in this epistle, both Teleioo and Hagiazsō are used, not in a moral sense, but in the sacrificial sense of purging from guilt."-Lindsay.

So Bloomfield, M'Lean, Stuart, A. Clarke, the Translators of Calvin on Hebrews, &c., &c. A. D.-G.

NOTICES OF BOOKS.

The Life and Times of Rev. Finis Ewing, one of the Fathers and Founders of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. By REV. F. R. COSSITT, D.D.

Lectures on Important Subjects in Divinity. By REV. FINIS EWING. 1870.

The Doctrines of Grace, as revealed in the Gospel; or Medium Theology in familiar Lectures: being a revised and enlarged edition of “Error Unmasked." By MILTON BIRD. 1856.

Foreknowledge and Decrees. In two Parts. By REV. H. S. PORTER, D.D. 1852.

Astronomical Sermons. In two Parts. By H. S. PORTER, D.D. 1854. Life of Rev. George Donnell, First Pastor of the Church in Lebanon; with a sketch of the Scotch-Irish Race. By PRESIDENT T. C. ANDERSON. 1858.

Life and Labours of the late Rev. Robert Donnell of Alabama, Minister of the Gospel in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. By DAVID LOWRY. 1867.

Mahlon's Letters to a Young Pastor, Session, Congregation, and Presbytery. 1869.

Origin and Doctrines of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. In two Parts. By REV. E. B. CRISMAN.

1870.

Why am I a Cumberland Presbyterian? By RICHARD BEARD, D.D. 1870.

Psalms and Hymns, adapted to Social, Private, and Public Worship, in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. 1869.

Alice M'Donald; or, the Heroine of Principle: being a succinct account of her parentage, family, birth, education, conversion to Christ, union

with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, and subsequent life to the present day. A Tale of the Nineteenth Century. By JAMES THE LESS. 1871.

The Theological Medium. A Cumberland Presbyterian Quarterly. T. C. BLAKE, D.D., Editor. New Series, Vol. II. 1871.

History of the Christian Church from its Origin to the Present time, compiled from various Authors; including a History of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, drawn from authentic Documents. By the REV. JAMES SMITH. 1835.

Lectures on Theology. Vols. I, II, III. By RICHARD BEARD, D.D., Professor of Systematic Theology in Cumberland University, Lebanon, Tennessee. 1869-70.

A MUCH prized bundle of Cumberland Presbyterian Books, for which we are indebted to the kindness and courtesy of the Rev. E. B. Crisman, permanent clerk of the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.

The Cumberland Presbyterian Community has had the high privilege of being born and cradled amid the hallowing influences of religious revival. The Spirit of the Lord, who broodeth everywhere, and "bloweth where he listeth "--though never anywhere capriciously, -was moving o'er the moral chaos. The hearts of the population at large felt the quickening power. There was longing. There was aspiration. There was self-dissatisfaction. There was undefined expectation. At length the right men arose, burdened with a sense of responsibility, tremulous with solemnity, and animated with the selfsacrificing determination of heroes. They were "thrust" into the fields everywhere "white unto the harvest;" and, under their devoted labours, the evangelical "work of the Lord" advanced apace. Part of that work at length consolidated itself into the Cumberland Presbyterian Community. Other parts, as in all kindred movements, got translated into a higher sphere; while other parts still were derivatively infiltrated into other ecclesiastical communities, and diffused an influence of vitality, which, even when ignored, continued, and still continues, to exert a powerful and beneficial influence.

Amid the urgent practical labours devolving on the pioneers of this great evangelical movement, and on those who immediately succeeded them, it was impossible that much of their time and energy could be devoted to literary pursuits. They had more imperious, and, in the circumstances, more important duties to discharge. To the present hour, moreover, as we understand, a large proportion of their ministers are still immersed as it were, or whelmed, and almost overwhelmed, in those practical engagements, which justly claim precedence in the times and scenes of revival. They have an immense area of country to cultivate. The "handful of corn in the land" has multiplied amazingly. It is found, not only in the outstretching vallies, but "on the tops of the mountains." "The fruit thereof is shaking like Lebanon; and they of the cities are flourishing like grass of the earth." In the midst of such a vast extent of spiritual agriculture, and of spiritual horticulture too-for many are the

flowers of holiness and fruit-trees of righteousness that require to be tended, there must be a constant and irrepressible demand for hard and self-denying work in the shape of conducting protracted meetings, and building up stations and new churches.

Still, literature has not been neglected; and already, in the list of books which we have given, there are the first-fruits and the healthy promise of a rich and abundant harvest.

Finis Ewing was one of the honoured founders of the community. A noble soul he was. A noble preacher too. He was the last and twelfth child of pious parents, who seemed to have a presentiment that he would be their last, and hence, as Dr. Cossitt remarks, "they gave him the fanciful name of Finis." But though Last, he was not Least. He became in an important respect First, and was the chief actor in effecting the ecclesiastical organization of the original Cumberland Presbytery. Dr. Cossitt's Life and Times of Finis Ewing is characterized by all the good qualities of an able and appreciative biography. He esteems and admires his hero. He loves the cause for which his hero lived, laboured, and suffered, and in which he triumphed and died. Dr. Cossitt wields, moreover, an accomplished pen.

Mr. Ewing's Lectures on Important Subjects are eminently practical, and full of grave sound sense. He says, concerning faith:

"The shortest and clearest definition that I can give, of every kind of faith spoken of in the Scriptures, is an assent and consent of the mind to certain propositions, according to the evidence with which such propositions are presented to the understanding."-p. 100.

"The command to believe clearly implies, or expresses, all necessary aid on the part of the commander. The command itself clearly implies that it is not impossible for the creature to believe. It, moreover, implies that faith is, indeed, the creature's act, though the gift of God as it regards the evidence and power to believe. Hence faith may properly be said to be the gift of God."-p. 108.

We make one other quotation, on justification by faith,-

"But how are we to become interested in this righteousness? I answer, by faith. Being justified by faith, we have peace with God.' When the soul believes, God justifieth. Hence the wounded, the convicted, the condemned are, in Scripture, everywhere exhorted to believe. What for? Is there any merit in believing? No, by no means. But it is the medium through which God has determined to acquit a condemned sinner. Then faith is not the righteousness for which a sinner is justified, but the instrument. When Paul says, 'Abraham's faith was imputed to him for righteousness,' his meaning (not to contradict himself) must have been, that it (faith) stood in contradistinction works that is, to that legal, imperfect obedience to the law, which can never justify the soul, and to the object of faith; for he says, expressly, that we are justified by his blood.' It is Christ's merits, then, not the merit of faith, for which we are justified in the sight of the divine law. Faith, though the gift of God, is the creature's act. Consequently, it is a mental work. If a work of a creature, it is imperfect; and no imperfect work or act can justify in the sight of a perfect law."-p. 114.

Dr. Milton Bird's book on The Doctrines of Grace is entirely con

troversial. It is a reply to a treatise of a Dr. A. G. Fairchild in defence of views that were considerably narrower than the broadest. Dr. Fairchild entitled his work The Great Supper. And Dr. Bird, unable to repress his pleasant tendency to pleasantry, gives, as the heading of his Fifth Lecture, the following bill of fare:- "Atonement-Great Supper of the Gospel-Scant Supper of Dr. F.—Its Dry Bones Unveiled." He says, in a noble outburst, at the conclusion of his Third Lecture :-

"Convince us that the atonement is not general! As well undertake to prove that the sun, cloudless in mid-heaven, is not shining for the whole planet on which we dwell. Can he who does not see the doctrine of general atonement in Holy Scripture see anything aright in the sacred volume?"-p. 85.

He remarks again :

"The doctrine of general atonement forms the great stand-point in the system of theology believed and maintained by Cumberland Presbyterians."-p. 16.

He has occasion, as may well be conceived, to refer to Jonathan Edwards's distinction between natural and moral ability. It is a distinction, as our readers are aware, on which the great American metaphysician seeks to ground the consistency of the Calvinistic doctrine of man's inability to do his duty with his responsibility for not doing it. Dr. Bird says on the subject :

"Here allow me to say that the terms natural ability and moral inability are quite apt to puzzle the most profound sophist and the erudite theologian well versed in the metaphysics and technics of theology.

"Now, I insist that this moral inability is nothing else than natural inability, an absolute inability, inability of the highest and most perfect kind, since it is an inability to will, and, of necessity, an inability to act. By introducing the word moral, it cannot be distinguished from natural inability. The attempt is perfectly vain. I therefore insist that the so-called natural ability is no ability at all. How unmeaning to assert that the sinner is naturally able to do what he is naturally unable to will to do! There is not the least shadow of truth in the assertion that natural ability to do a thing consists in the power to do it, if you will; while at the same time the power to will, in any direction, in view of motives, is denied. If the sinner act at all, he can only act as he wills. Action proceeds from will or choice. Where there is no will, there can be no moral action. Consequently an inability to will is a real inability. And there is no magic in the word MORAL to make it anything else."-p. 195.

Dr. H. S. Porter's pamphlet on Foreknowledge and Decrees indicates that he must have been possessed of a peculiarly inquisitive and penetrative intellect. The true spirit of an investigator was at work within him; and he only wanted leisure and literary appliances to have achieved still more important results than are realized in his published works. His Astronomical Sermons, especially in the First Part, are,-like those of his illustrious predecessor, Dr. Chalmers,ablaze with great conceptions. There is, too, a certain well sustained dignity of diction, which is in harmony with his lofty theme. He has, in the Second Part of his work, two sermons on the Locality of Heaven and the Locality of Hell, respectively. The latter subject, especially, seems to have interested many of his hearers in America; and it is, too, interesting to ourselves, in consequence of a strange

coincidence. The theory propounded by Dr. Porter is, as will be known to several of our readers, the theory that was propounded in private by the late Rev. Robert Morison of Bathgate. Dr. Porter says:

"Hell must be located either in the created universe, or else beyond, in those voids of space where silence and darkness reign. If it be located in the created universe, it must be in the earth, or in the voids of space intervening between planets and systems, or else in some orb, such as a comet, a satellite, or a sun. The Scriptures do not warrant the conclusion that it is located in any of the orbs of the universe. The fact that the wicked will be punished in bodies, raised up, precludes the idea of the interplanetary spaces being the locality. Attention has already been called to the theory of its being located in the earth. If it were necessary, this could be shown to be impossible. The earth increases in density from the surface to the centre. There can be no very large cavities, or prison houses, near the centre of the globe on which we live. But it is needless to say more as to such a locality. Who, in this day, believes it? The whole created universe, in all its vastness, embracing innumerable and various worlds, constitutes a great and sublime house--a created, physical mansion, star-built and sun-adorned, the house of God-a magnificent and God-like temple, in which the music of the spheres, and the hallelujahs of glorified ones, in divine harmony, celebrate the praises of its august Creator and Ruler. Within this universe-house the sigh of despair and the groan of the lost surely cannot be heard. Within this august and gorgeously illuminated temple there is no place for eternal misery-there is no place for incurable woethere is no fitting focality for Hell. We must look elsewhere for the place of darkness, which in the sacred Scriptures is called the 'blackness of darkness.' "We must look beyond the created universe, into the infinitudes of space, for the locality of that world where the lawless ones are punished." "The latitude or longitude of those outer regions I pretend not to determine. Not even so much as any relative position in them, where Hell may be located, do I pretend to point out. The distance from pole or equator is not affirmed. Anything of this nature I repudiate and disclaim. I cannot point to the place or direction of space where it is located. Course and distances must be banished from our minds, in an investigation of this sort. But I affirm, led to the conclusion from the light of the Scriptures, that Hell is located beyond the created universe, somewhere in the voids of space."

"Says our Saviour, 'Many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven; but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness.'-Matt. viii, 12. Again, 'Bind him hand and foot, and take him away and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'-Matt. xxii, 12. Again, 'And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness.'-Matt. xxv, 30. "You will here be so good as not to confound the word outer with utter, which is often done. The word outer is opposed to inner, as the outer wall of a town or fortification, an outer gate, or the outer court of a temple. Beyond the limits of the created universe is, in the true sense of the term, and in a sense worthy of being connected with the final punishment of the wicked, outer darkness. Where is the outer darkness of the Scriptures, if this be not it? Where is darkness answerable to the Scripture outer darkness,' save in those infinite voids of space, beyond the frontiers and boundaries of the created universe, where darkness and night hold an eternal and undisturbed reign?

6

"Jude affirms that 'the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgement of the great day.' One place of punishment serves for both the devils and for lost spirits. Note that fallen angels are in chains under darkness.' Satan is called the prince of darkness. He is the prince of those fallen ones imprisoned in darkness; and as such delights in dark deeds and dark councils. It is said concerning the rejecters of Gospel, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the