universal enterprises, collossal works, for whose completion the cooperation of nations and centuries is required; the time of the most perfect outward sovereignty of the visible church. Such a well ordered and imposing system of authority was necessary, at the same time as an educational institute for the Germanic nations, to form them to the consciousness and rational use of freedom; for parental discipline must go before independence, the law is a schoolmaster towards Christ. This consciousness awoke even before the close of the Middle Ages. In proportion as the dominion of Rome degenerated into tyranny over conscience and all free thought, the subjective and national spirit was roused into an endeavor to shake off the ignominious yoke. All these struggles of waking freedom concentrated themselves finally into a world-historical movement, and assumed a religious determinate character by the Reformation of the sixteenth century. With this commences the age of subjectivity and individuality. Still the Reformers aimed to free the Christian world only from the oppressive authority of human ordinances, and not by any means from the authority of God; on the contrary they sought to bring reason into subjection to God's word, and the natural will into subjection to his grace. They wanted no licentiousness, but a freedom filled with the contents of faith and ruled by the Holy Scriptures. Inasmuch however as history, by reason of our human sinfulness and its constant attendant error, proceeds only through contradictions and extremes, the Protestant subjectivity degenerated gradually into its corresponding abuse of division, wilfulness, and contempt for all and every sort of authority. This has taken place especially since the middle of the last century, theoretically in Rationalism, and practically in Sectarism. Rationalism has formed itself into a learned and scientific system, particularly among the Germans, a predominantly theoretic and thinking people, and in the Lutheran church; but as to substance is at hand also in other European countries, and in North America, under various forms, such as Arminianism, Deism, Unitarianism, Universalism, and infects to some extent the theology even of the orthodox denominations themselves. As is well known, it places private judgment above the Bible itself, and receives only as much of this as it can grasp with the natural understanding. The system of sect and denomination has sprung more from the bosom of the Reformed church, and owes its form to the practical English nationality. In North America, under the banner of full religious freedom, it has reached its zenith; but strictly it belongs, in actual power, to Protestant Christianity as a whole, which is sadly wanting in unity, outward 1849.] New Evangelical Theology. 441 visible unity, the necessary fruit of that which is inward, as much as works are of faith. Sects, it is true, do not commonly reject the Bible; rather they are stiff for it, in their own way; but it is in opposition to all history, and in the imagination that they alone, of all the world, are in possession of its true sense. Thus their appeal to the Bible still runs out at last practically into rationalism; since they always mean their own sense of the Bible, and so at bottom follow their private judgment. Finally, the principle of subjectivity shows itself in this, that since the Reformation the different spheres of the world, the sciences, arts, politics, social life, have separated themselves more and more from the church, and pursue their own way independently of its authority. In such wide spread rationalism and division into endless party interests, and the consequent weakness of the church over against the world, with its different spheres, especially over against the State, we have presented to us only a bad, diseased subjectivity, which forms just the opposite pole to the stiff, hard objectivity of degenerated Catholicism. Against this evil state, however, reäcts the deeper life of the church, which can never be extinguished. In opposition to Rationalism, arises with victorious conflict a new evangelical theology, which now satisfies the demands of science together with those of faith; while the misery of sect comes more and more into painful 'consciousness, and calls forth a longing for church union. At the same time, the question concerning the nature and form of the church presses evidently into the foreground. The deeper although by no means prevailing tendency of the time is thus towards objectivity; not however indeed towards that which had place in the Middle Ages; for history can as little flow backwards, as a stream up hill; but to an objectivity which shall be enriched with all the experience and manifold living fulness of the age of subjectivity, to a higher reconciliation thus, (vermittelte Einheit) of Protestantism and Catholicism, without their respective errors and diseases. These struggles of the present, when brought to due ripeness, will issue doubtless in a far more glorious reformation than any the church has yet seen; and then will open a new age, in which also all spheres of the world shall return, in a free way, into league with the church, science and art join to glorify the name of God, and all nations and powers, according to the word of prophecy, be given to the saints of the Most High. ARTICLE II. CEMETERIES. By Rev. J. Richards, D. D., Hanover, N. H. Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial, or a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk. By Thomas Browne, Doctor of Physic. London. Printed for Charles Brome, 1686. pp. 21 Fol. The Church in the Catacombs: a Description of the Primitive Church of Rome, illustrated by its Sepulchral Remains. By Charles Maitland, M. D. London, 1846. pp. 312 8vo. Le Veritable Guide et Conducteur aux Cimitieres du Pere La Chaise, Montmartre, Mont-Parnasse et Vangirard. Par M. M. Richard Paris, 1836 Roy Terry, Editeur. pp. 360 18mo. et "IT is the heaviest stone," says the sententious doctor of physic, Sir Thomas, "that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him that he is at the end of his nature; or that there is no further state to come, unto which this seems professional, and otherwise made in vain." Hence the vast majority of men have endeavored to avert such missiles by cemeteries, monuments, cremations, embalmings, and obsequies of endless name. By these they testify to an innate conviction of another life, where thought and memory and affection shall survive. Antique sculpture at Rome (in Aedibus Barberinis) represents a man just arrived at the Elysian fields, holding out his hand to a shade whom he recognizes as his wife, and is mutually recognized by her. This expectation is common to Pagan and Christian, but with the Christian, how ennobled ! Again, it is a very heavy stone to be thrown at a man, as the knight might have gone on to say, to tell him there shall be no memory of him with posterity. Be it that "pyramids, arches, and obelisks are the irregularities of vain glory, and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity," it is a natural feeling and not to be despised, that there lived such a man as I myself. "Siste viator! Stop, traveller! and read, how I once lived as you now do. Haply, if you inquire, you may find what I was, as well as who, and in that knowledge something that claims kindred and challenges interest in yourself, beyond that of community of species. This feeling is in the humblest as in the loftiest; it raises the rude monument in the country church yard as it does the costly structure in the cemetery of the proud city. The lines 1849.] Natural Feelings. 443 of Gray, in which rhythm and sweet melancholy blend so inimitably, are exactly to this point: "For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey, Another heavy stone thrown at a man would it be, to tell him, "Your friends will show no outward marks of respect and affection for your mortal relics. They will carry you out to the Esquiline Hill and throw you into the deep pit's mouth with slaves and malefactors, or leave you to be devoured by dogs and vultures." The man who laughs at obsequies ancient or modern, Pagan or Christian, has acquired an obtuseness of heart that should well nigh make him an outlaw from the community of sorrow and sympathy. The brutes do better when they bellow at the blood of their kindred. Diogenes," said one," when you die, what shall be the disposition of your body?" Hang me up," said the Cynic, "on a tree, with my staff in my hand, to scare away crows." And Humanity says, "Let Diogenes be hung up; but as for me and mine, I crave a better lot-my body, shrived and affectionately committed to the urn or grave, a thrice repeated Vale! spoken, and a stone to mark the spot." On this point, we own no part nor lot with Diogenes, but frankly avow that in the anticipation of the dread hour and the narrow cell, it affords a real consolation that surviving friends will make these outward demonstrations of affection and respect. Nor may we despise that very prevalent feeling in the world in all ages, that, some way or other, a becoming funeral service foreshadows a better condition at the next stage. To throw a little earth upon an unburied body, was a sweet charity with the Roman; it would save the otherwise cheerless shade a hundred years' wandering on the shores of Styx. The utensils and armor exhumed from the graves of our own aborigines, show a similar expectation, How they supposed the kettle, the pipe, the bow and the arrow were to get to the point of their own destination, is not the question. It is true, also, that Christianity scatters to the winds these fantasies of the heathen; but considering them as connected with the innate conviction of immortality, with all their distortion and wantonness of imagination, they challenge our respect. May they not be connected with obscure but real tradition concerning a resurrection of the body? The Greek and Roman fables of Elysium, Tartarus, Charon, Styx, Minos, and his consessors, came from Egypt. According to the ear liest records, the burial place of the ancient Memphis was in an island of the adjacent lake, called Acherusia. On the shore sat a court of judges. If the character of the deceased, whose body was brought thither, had been good, the court permitted the funeral to proceed, and the body was ferried over to the island. The island was most tastefully ornamented with groves and shrubbery, and the place called Elisout-the blest. The court ordered a eulogy to be pronounced. But if the character of the deceased was bad, the body was ordered to be thrown into a loathsome ditch, with degrading ceremonies. The ditch was denominated Tartar-miserable. Hence the Greek and Roman Tartarus, as also from Elisout, Elysium. In times after these, arose the art and mystery of embalming, invented by the Egyptians and by them lost, perhaps irrecoverably. Removing the more perishable parts, the brain and viscera, they filled the body with spices and other indurating substances, so that it seemed to defy equally the tooth of worms and of time. Indeed, judging from the fulness and freshness of those specimens exhibited in our country some four years since, it is not extravagant to say that the mummies of Egypt which shall escape the exhumation of curiosity and vandalism, will retain their identity of form and substance till the consummation of all things. This study of the Egyptians in the art of embalming, and in the time-defying character of their sepulchres, evinces an anxiety for the body which we think it will be difficult to explain short of the hypothesis of a resurrection. The same sort of interest, it may be less in degree, we trace all along the course of time. The few handfuls of earth bestowed by a pious hand was, to the Greek and Roman, a boon of immeasurable value. In Rome, every person was considered as having both a legal and a moral right to burial, that is, to funeral rites; for it made no difference in respect to care for the body whether it were buried entire or burned. Among the Greeks both methods were practised, though burning chiefly. The Romans interred most, till the time of Sylla. This tyrant, fearing his successors would treat him as he had treated Marius, ordered his own body to be burned; and after that, burning became the more common mode. The Jews interred till the time of Asa; thence onward to the captivity, burning prevailed. But after the captivity, interment was again the only practice. The occasion of our learned knight's essay was the digging up, in 1645, in the county of Norfolk, England, between forty and fifty earthen vases or urns, containing ashes and bones half consumed. These "were deposited in a dry and sandy soil, not a yard deep, nor far from one another: . . some containing two pounds of bones, distin |