have recently in such immense numbers gone over from the Scottish Establishment to the Free Church? What has made the Celts of Ireland and, we may add, of Brittany, so obstinately conservative of their church-traditions, and the Welsh and Scottish Celts so willing to part with them, and so ready to attach themselves to new church-organizations ? How is it to be accounted for that the Irish Celts, with more sensibility and moveability than all their kindred, have hitherto been immoveable in their modern devotion to the Church of Rome, and that the Scottish Gael, so tenacious of old ways, and so clannish in their feelings and habits, have yet twice in three centuries made an exchange of churches? These are surely interesting questions; and, no doubt, a. solution of them can be found; but we suppose it will only be found by bringing into account not only the action of external historical causes, but also the deeper-lying operation of the idiosyncrasies of the Celtic race.

What advantages would result from such a treatment of Celtic church history as we have suggested above, we can only hint at, in conclusion, in a few additional sentences. It is manifest that the connections existing between the various sections of the history would thus be more fully discovered and exhibited than they can ever be on the plan of sectional and separate treatment. But such historical connections of events are the most essential parts of history, and without a knowledge of them all history must be full of insoluble problems and difficulties. In the present case, e. g., how hard is it to account for the fact that the peculiar Easter usages of the churches of Asia Minor were reproduced in the churches of Wales, and Ireland, and Scotland. But if, now, we bring into view the ascertained fact that the Christianised Celts of Galatia adhered to these usages, and that no early missionaries could be so well qualified to diffuse the gospel among the Celts of the west as the converted Celts of the east, we become sensible of a highly augmented probability attaching to the ancient tradition of the British churches, that the gospel came to them in the first instance, not from Gaul or from Rome, but from Asia Minor, after the churches planted by St Paul there had fallen under the apostolic rule of St John.

Another signal advantage of the proposed method is, that it would enable us distinctly to appreciate what in modern phrase would be called the special mission of the Celtic church, as distinguished from the churches of other great races. We are familiar with such a conception in regard to the Jewish race, the Greek, the Roman, the Teutonic, and the English races. We are able to assign at once the several

Advantages of the Study.

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great contributions to church life and history made, or still making, by all those important sections of the human family. But the Celts were at the beginning of the Christian era one of the principal races of mankind. When they were gained to Christianity, had they no mission of their own to fulfil ? It can be shewn, we think, that they had, and that their Celtic nature, once brought under Christian influences, specially fitted them for the work. It was the work of Christian missions among the barbarous peoples which soon after began to pour down from the north of Europe upon the enfeebled and corrupt Roman empire; a work which, in point of fact, they carried on with immense success for several ages, and by which the rude founders of the kingdoms of modern Europe were first brought under the humanising yoke of Christ. The collections recently made. by Professor Ebrard of Erlangen throw a flood of light upon this subject; and it is easy to discover, even in the descriptions given by ancient pagan writers of the constitutional qualities of the Celtic temperament and genius, that no race of men could have been better fitted than the Christianised Celts of the far west, of pure descent, and unmodified by any mixture of either Hellenic or Roman blood, for the rough and arduous work of bringing into the Christian church the rudest and the most energetic tribes of the great northern invasion.

We shall only add a third advantage which would attend the prosecution of such a method of Celtic church history. It would not only help us to understand better a good many things in the history itself, but would aid us in understanding better some things in the religion, the churches, and the theological literature of our own times in these three British kingdoms. In the valuable papers of Mr Arnold, before referred to, the author discriminates with eminent acuteness and truth the characteristics of the three main race-elements which are now mingled "in the composite genius" of the British people,-the Germanic genius, the Celtic genius, and the Norman genius; and he traces with much success, we think, the modifying effects which the crossing currents of these three forces have produced and are still producing upon the national temperament, character, and literature. He also gives us his impressions of the effects which they have produced upon the national religious life. "The same modification of our Germanism by another force which seems Celtic is visible in our religion. Here, too, we may trace a gradation between Celt, Englishman, and German; the difference which distinguishes Englishman from German appearing attributable to the Celtic element in us. Germany

is the land of exegesis, England is the land of Puritanism. The religion of Wales is more emotional and sentimental than English Puritanism; Romanism has indeed given way to Calvinism among the Welsh, but the Celtic sentiment which made the Welsh such devout Catholics remains and gives unction to their Methodism; theirs is not the controversial, rationalistic, intellectual side of Protestantism, but the devout, emotional, religious side. Among the Germans, Protestantism has been carried on into rationalism and science. The English hold a middle place between the Germans and the Welsh; their religion has the exterior forms and apparatus of rationalism, so far as their Germanic nature carries them; but long before they get to science their feelings, their Celtic element, catches them and turns their religion all towards piety and unction. So English Protestantism has the outside appearance of an intellectual system, and the inside reality of an emotional system; this gave it its tenacity and force, for what is held with the ardent attachment of feeling is believed to have at the same time the scientific proof of reason. The English Puritan, therefore (and Puritanism is the characteristic form of English Protestantism), stands between the German Protestant and the Celtic Methodist; his real affinity, indeed, at present being rather with his Welsh kinsmen, if kinsman he may be called, than with his German."

Mr Arnold uses the phraseology of a literateur rather than of a divine; but if there is any truth and solidity in these refined speculations, and we think there is a good deal, it is easy to see how much an appreciation of the characteristic phenomena of our national religion and theological literature would be helped and guided by a careful study of Celtic church history, with special regard to all those distinctive features of it which could be fairly traced to the influence of ethnological causes. L.

ART. VI.-Dr Gardiner Spring.*

Personal Reminiscences of the Life and Times of Gardiner Spring, Pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church in the city of New York. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1866.

THE appearance of these volumes has been eagerly welcomed by the Christian, and especially the Presbyterian, public. Various circumstances invest them with peculiar interest.

*From the Princeton Review for April 1866.

An Octogenarian Autobiography.

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Dr Spring is an octogenarian. His public life runs back nearly to the beginning of the present century. He has been the distinguished pastor of one of the most prominent churches in the country for more than fifty-five years. In this conspicuous post he has, from the first, been in the very front rank of American preachers, and among the most successful of pastors. Born, reared, educated in New England, the son of a leading Hopkinsian divine of eminent piety, who took a prominent part in founding and shaping Andover Theological Seminary, himself a participator in the Hopkinsian and New Haven, and various other controversies connected with the disruption of the Presbyterian church, he is not only the strongest living link between the ecclesiastical past and present, but between the Presbyterian and Congregational bodies, once maintaining an intimacy of mutual fellowship which, if it has abated, has not utterly ceased. All these and many other circumstances impart a special interest to the reminiscences of Dr Spring, and will lead a wide circle, particularly of Presbyterians, to examine its contents with avidity.

The preparation of such a book, by a man past eighty, is a phenomenon. It has its advantages and disadvantages. It gives something of the charm which attaches to the marvellous. Of course, it is no disparagement to say that tokens are not wanting, that the work is not what it would have. been had it been written earlier, occupied a longer time, and had more painstaking elaboration. Of this the venerable author seems to be fully sensible.

"Another embarrassment which I deeply feel, is the fact that I am too far advanced in years to have any very strong expectation that my life and health will be prolonged to the completion of that which I have undertaken. I am driven to the work; I am running a race with time; it is too hasty an effort. Could I have had two years for it, instead of the four months it has occupied, it might have been more interesting, as well as more instructive."-Vol. i. pp. 8, 9.

Notwithstanding any drawbacks on this account, however, we are thankful for the many valuable documents, precious mementos, instructive reflections, and important testimonies which the book contains. To know simply the personal history, training, habits, methods, development, of such a man, the results he has achieved, and the relation between his personal characteristics and ways, on the one hand, and his great public achievements on the other, is itself a treasure. The light, too, shed on great public events and questions with which the distinguished author has been connected, is, of course, important. We shall proceed to call attention to

such matters, practical and doctrinal, brought to view in these volumes, as most concern our readers.

Dr Spring's lineage was of the "seed royal" of heaven, and in the line of the covenant. His mother's ancestors, for several generations, were ministers of the gospel, Nonconformists and English Puritans. Her grandfather, Rev. Samuel Hopkins, D.D., of West Springfield, Mass. (not the author of Hopkinsianism), was the son of a sister of the elder President Edwards. His father was the Rev. Samuel Spring, D.D., pastor of an important church in Newburyport, Mass., descended also from some of the best Puritan stock. He was educated at Nassau Hall, a thing not uncommon at that period for the sons of New England. He studied theology for a time with Dr Witherspoon, whom he greatly admired. He, however, afterwards studied with Bellamy, West, and Hopkins, and, as the result of the whole, became a determined Hopkinsian, quite a leader in his day of that more moderate portion of this school that did not follow Emmons, who, by marriage, appears to have become his kinsman. At all events, Dr Emmons addresses Dr Gardiner Spring as his nephew. While in College, he was the room-mate of President Madison. His tutor was the younger Edwards, who stimulated his metaphysical powers. He also fell under the influence of a resident graduate, named Periam, brilliant both in physical and metaphysical philosophy, for whom he cherished the warmest admiration. This man, of such great early promise, appears to have either died early, or otherwise fallen into obscurity. But he, like many others of that day, became a Berkleian, and for a time succeeded in inoculating Samuel Stanhope Smith, afterwards President of the College, and young Mr Spring, with his views. Says his son: "My father was interested in Berkley's philosophy; and but for the influence. of Dr Witherspoon, might have adopted the opinion that the objects of perception are not real existences, and are simply ideas which exist only in the mind." So it appears that discussions on "Hard Matter," of which Dr Spring complains as unprofitable in our present periodicals, were current in the days of our fathers.

Dr Gardiner Spring was born in Newburyport, February 24. 1785. Few men have enjoyed a more thorough Christian training, or, during childhood and youth, breathed an atmosphere of purer domestic piety. The letters of his mother, published in the first volume, and the high-toned religious character of his father, are sufficient proof of this. The effect is apparent in repeated seasons of seriousness and alarm, not without occasional intervals of trembling hope,