revealed truth, as of divine authority. The miracles of Christ and his precepts and revelations were as truly the works of God and the truths of God, as they could have been, had the miracles been effected and the truths uttered by an audible voice from heaven, without the medium of the Messiah. According to Christ's own words the Father who dwelt in him did the works, and taught him what he should speak.

I agree with you that correct views of the Messiah are highly important. But correct views of his natural dignity are to us of less importance than correct views of his moral character and moral dignity. The moral attributes of his character are what we are required to love and imitate. We are not required to be like him as to his natural dignity, nor are we required to imitate anything in him that was miraculous; but we are required to let the same mind be in us which was in him; to learn of him who was meek and lowly of heart, to take up the cross and follow him in the path of self-denying humility and benevolence. He was the image of the invisible God; and God was in him reconciling the world to himself. As the Messiah was the medium of divine manifestation of the word of saving truth; so "his name is called THE WORD OF GOD." Thus he said to Pilate, " To this end I was born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth." This witness he bore by his preaching, and by his obedience unto death. Wherefore God hath highly exalted him, as a prince and a Saviour, and the Judge of the living and the dead.

A. You have said many things which I regard as very true and important; but you have avoided the points of controversy and confined yourself very much to such representations as are given in the Sacred Books.

O. The Sacred Books are the sources of my information in regard to the character of the Messiah; and the more careful we are to pay a due regard to what they teach, the less likely we shall be to fall out by the way, and the more likely to avoid error, and secure true peace of mind.

A. In this I think you are right; and let us both henceforth study the things which tend to peace of mind, and peace one with another.

Thus closed the interviews between Alpha and Olio.

The foregoing Documents have been carefully transcribed for Oromanio by his friend

THEOPHILUS.

The Transcriber takes the liberty to subjoin the following Notes.

1. Tradition says, that Alpha returned home with favorable impressions in regard to the character of Olio, and from that time forbore to urge a belief in his Septenarian doctrine as essential to salvation. He was also observed to be less selfconfident and more candid than he had previously been for several years. He became satisfied that a good man might dissent from his creed.

2. It is said, that in the country where Alpha resided there was a sect of people who were then called Trinitarians, and that their reasonings in support of the doctrine that there are three distinct persons in the one God, led him to inquire whether there were not a still greater number of Divine persons in the Godhead than three. On inquiry he became satisfied, that if the Word of God and the Spirit of God denoted distinct persons, it might be so with Truth and Light, Wisdom and Love. He therefore took the liberty to assert the doctrine of seven distinct persons in the Godhead. By the Trinitarians he had been much opposed and reproached as a heretic and innovator. It is supposed that he was not a little gratified to find that the reasonings of Olio were not more against his own doctrine than against that of the Trinitarians. The reasonings and explanations of Olio excited in his mind some doubt whether the One God is really more than one person. He, however, retained the belief that if God is more than one person, seven is the number which should be admitted; because we do read of "the seven spirits of God," but not of the three spirits of God.

3. One idea Olio omitted to urge in his intercourse with Alpha, which might have been presented by him with propriety and force. Of the seven supposed Divine persons in one God, only one of them is usually represented as of the masculine gender. The FATHER is uniformly so represented by the corresponding pronouns he and him.

TRUTH, WISDOM, and LovE, when fully personified, are represented as of the feminine gender, by the pronouns, she and her. The WORD, and the SPIRIT, are usually represented as of the neuter gender, by the pronoun it. In some transla

tions, when the Word is strongly personified, it has been allowed the pronouns he and him. The propriety of this, however, has been doubted; and in some languages the name answering to Word is of the feminine gender, and has the pronouns corresponding with she and her. It is also to be observed, that when the SPIRIT is personified by another name, such as Paraclete, Comforter or Monitor, it is allowed pronouns in the masculine gender. But far more common it is in the Sacred Books to exhibit both the Word and the Spirit as of the neuter gender. The same may be said of Truth and Light, Wisdom and Love. It may now be asked, would such have been the facts, had the inspired writers regarded the Word and Spirit, Truth and Light, Wisdom and Love as distinct persons, and equal with the Father? What can be more unphilosophical than the hypotheses of seven distinct persons of different genders in one intelligent Being? Who would not be shocked should he see and hear she and it used as pronouns for the Holy One of Israel, the living God? The hypothesis, that God is seven, or even three distinct persons of different genders, seems to be something less to be venerated than a mystery in the divine nature; but the doctrine that God is one person only, although his attributes are occasionally personified, may yet dispel the gloom and give us day for night.

N. W.

Kellies

BOOKS FOR THE PEOPLE.

"TALES for the People" is an English title of a series of volumes, that has been adopted in this country in the reprint of the same books here, but which it is more significant of society and of public opinion in Britain than in America. Every person who has heard or read anything of English society knows that the great nobility, professional men generally, retired persons of fortune, artists of any distinction, those who grace the pension list, in short, all welleducated persons, are not of the people; though if one has not been an actual eye-witness of the separateness that exists between the divided classes, and which is constantly felt and acknowledged in all their intercourse, it is not easy in this republican country to apprehend its whole meaning and effect.

Those who write for the people of England appreciate this matter justly; they understand the necessities and the improveableness of those they write for, and supply them with instruction in this form, as those who have never had much use of books; and who, of course, have never been accustomed to derive their notions of truth and duty from the printed page. The author therefore is supposed to render a service to the long-neglected, when he sends from the press a book especially adapted to the wants of the people the wants of a palpable ignorance, which the more favored have just come to the conclusion, that it is their duty to enlighten, and for the future to prevent. In England this is doing, and has of late years been done, under influence of praiseworthy motives, and in many instances with admirable skill. This service of the privileged to the people is treated by some with contempt and opposition. Knowledge, say some, will be dangerous to them; it will make them discontented with their condition, and unfit them for its indispensable duties. Ignorance, say others, is more dangerous to the state than any effect of knowledge. Ignorance delivers moral beings to the mastery of animal nature; it seeks gratifications of the moment, and is reckless of consequences; it leaves men a prey to the designing, and takes from them all defences against misfortune, and all supports when they cannot escape from it. Ignorance cannot discriminate between benefactors and betrayers, and cannot do justice to good govern

ment; nor is it likely to preserve the peace of society by cheerful concurrence in its wisest regulations. Teach men their duties, or how will they know them? Teach them the laws of nature, and the Providence of God, and then they will fall willingly under obedience to those laws, as they are artificially modified by several causes. The people belong to a harmonious system of society, and they will feel their own dignity and responsibility, when they understand their proper relations, their highest interests, and their natural destiny;

They are the best, who best know why."

Reasoners of this class hold, that there should be no monopoly in knowledge. They maintain, that he, who finds in it the dearest possession he enjoys, owes the communication of this greatest of blessings, so far as he may dispense it, to all within. reach of his influence; to all that stand in need of it; to them whose eyes are dimmed, whose ears are dull of hearing, whose hearts have waxed gross for want of that instruction that quickens every sense, and refines every de

sire.

More than forty years ago, when the wise in England, not looking beyond the day, saw nothing but revolution and destruction, in the new ideas held up to all Europe by rash innovators so they deemed them-who had not separated good from evil in their speculations and their deeds, it seemed good to the best friends of old institutions to keep the people on their side by giving them monitory books. Then, first, tracts and tales for the people were made cheap and popular; for, notwithstanding what Bunyan and Defoe had written long before, nothing like the same agency was, until that time, employed in the dissemination of books of a popular character. Whether one be whig or tory, aristocrat or democrat, any person of just taste and sound morals must admire. for some of them are not quite forgotten many of Hannah More's cheap tracts, which were the first of the proper people's books, not purely devotional, published in England.* Her politics are

* Even devotional books often needed the seasoning of superstition and falsehood to render them popular. The publisher of Drelincourt on Death procured Defoe to prefix to it the story of Mrs. Veal's ghost, that appeared to Mrs. Somebody else, to make the book acceptable to vulgar readers.