

MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 



ADDRESS ON SLAVERY, SABBATH PROTECTION, AND CHURCH REFORM. 

 BY JAMES DOUGLAS ESQ., OF CAVERS. EDINBURGH: ADAM BLACK. 



THIS is a pamphlet in three parts, containing the substance of speeches 

 upon the subjects enumerated in the title. Upon the subject of Colonial 

 Slavery, Mr. Douglas supposes that the cessation of slavery, and the just re- 

 muneration of the labour of the Negro, will cheapen the production of sugar, 

 diminish the number and expenses of the military establishments, abolish the 

 monopoly of the home market, and thus mutually produce extensive political 

 advantages, to the West Indies and the country at home. In his views upon 

 the subject of Sabbath Protection, we do not concur with him. Indeed, we 

 are sorry to perceive a singular decline in the force of his reasoning, and 

 liberality of sentiment upon this question, as compared to his views upon the 

 subject of Colonial Slavery. Upon the subject of Church Reform, in the third 

 chapter, Mr. Douglas has several striking and valuable remarks. He advo- 

 cates the right of the state to appropriate the property of the church, and 

 suggests some important alterations in the system of the Church of Scotland. 



THE CABINET CYCLOPEDIA. HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. BY 



THE REV. HENRY STEBBING, A. M. LONDON. LONGMAN, REES, AND 



Co. 



NOTHING can be more opportune than the appearance of this volume at the 

 present moment, when the attention of all parties is directed towards the 

 Church Establishment, with such scrutinizing keenness and intensity. 

 Not only has the spirit of analysis and inquiry been employed upon Eccle- 

 siastical Institutions, as they exist at present ; but it has conducted to the 

 sources of those institutions, and set men upon examining the principles 

 from which they have derived their birth, and their subsequent progress and 

 history. It is, therefore, with no slight degree of satisfaction, that we no- 

 tice this first volume of the History of the Church, proceeding from the pen 

 of a man of accredited industry and capacity, and one who has proved 

 himself so well qualified for the task he has undertaken. He has traced the 

 rise and progress of the infant church, with a philosophic candour and a 

 luminous perspicuity, equally removed from the sophistry of the controver- 

 sialist and the blind zeal of the bigot. To wade through the vast labyrinth 

 of the early writers of Christianity, to seek out and separate facts from the 

 figures of declamation and the colourings of enthusiasm and fanaticism, and 

 to arrange these facts in a manner suitable to the minds of the present ge- 

 neration, was a work of no inconsiderable difficulty. 



The narrative of the persecutions of the infant chureh, he has divested of 

 much of the supernatural and miraculous, so copiously appended to it by 

 other writers. However, we cannot altogether conceal the fact, that the 

 constant recurrence of the phrases, " If any credit is to be given to early 

 authors," " If tradition may be safely relied on," with a number of saving 

 clauses of the same kind, sometimes throws an air of coldness and indiffer- 

 ence over the narrative. In his attempt to weed Church History of its 

 supernatural excrescences, and to subject all occurrences to the test of reason, 

 he has gone nigh hazarding the authenticity of the whole, and rendered his 

 account jejune and bare. 



