them. Without doubt, the more intelligent of the former slaves may safely and wisely be entrusted with this privilege; and it is unjust to debar men from political advantages on account of the color of their skin. We protest, however, against Mr. Sumner's doctrine of universal suffrage. The distinction between natural and political rights must not be ignored. Society exists for the protection of natural rights; political rights, society confers. The statesmen who framed the Constitution were not generally advocates of universal suffrage. Nor, we may remark, is it of any avail for Mr. Sumner to pick out sentences from Locke and Sidney, Samuel Adams or Jefferson, on the foundation of society and the social compact, with the design of fastening upon the constitution his idea of the essentials of a Republican government. The practice of the framers of the Constitution overthrows all his theoretical reasoning on this point. If a State is republican while holding a part of its people in slavery, it is at least equally republican when it has clothed these slaves with civil rights, even though the privilege of voting is denied them. It is important that the reserved rights of the States, in relation to the powers of the General Government, should remain substantially as they were before the war. The war has annihilated the false dogma of secession and slavery with it. The main thing to be required of the rebel States is proofs and guarantees of absolute loyalty, and of a disposition to give to the former slaves the substance and not the mere shadow of freedom.

5. This brings us back to the grounds of complaint against President Johnson. He has apparently failed to sympathize with the Union party in Congress in the desire to extort reasonable guarantees on the points which we have touched upon above. He has set himself against deliberations and measures looking to this result. Owing to his course, the prospect of reaching a solid, righteous, and beneficent settlement of the great conflict, is somewhat clouded. Moreover, his improper rebukes of Congress, official and unofficial, and his undignified abuse of "the radicals," have done great mischief at the South, by awakening the old defiant, insolent

spirit which the events of the war had humbled and silenced, and which might have been exorcised forever. We hope that President Johnson will be faithful to the interests which the Union party have at heart. If he proves to be, he will receive their cordial support; but if he does not, he will encounter the opposition of the great body of that party, who have no selfish motives to sway their political action, and who are too intelligent to "endorse" the men who betray their cause.

Since the foregoing remarks were put in type, Mr. Johnson's veto of the bill granting Civil Rights to the Freedmen, and his ambiguous position with reference to the Connecticut election, which served to stimulate and strengthen the opposition party in the State, have revealed more clearly his views and designs. By declaring that the freedmen are not citizens, he has placed himself in conflict with the cherished sentiments and resolute policy of the great Union party. The demagogical references to our "foreign population," are plainly adapted to inflame still further that unchristian and eruel hostility to the blacks which the greater portion of them already feel. The doctrines and the spirit of this message are alike repugnant to the immovable convictions of the powerful and intelligent party which raised Mr. Johnson to his high office. Against these established convictions, Mr. Johnson will struggle in vain; and if he perseveres in his present line of conduct, we firmly believe that, whatever temporary mischief he may do, he will at length sink under the weight of that determined resistance and indignant condemnation which he will receive at the hands of a betrayed people.

ARTICLE VIII.—NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

THEOLOGICAL AND RELIGIOUS.

ELLICOTT ON PHILIPPIANS, COLOSSIANS, AND PHILEMON.-This volume completes the series of commentaries on the Pauline Epistles by this author, the republication of which in our country was promised in 1860. We now have, within reach of all persons even of quite limited means, the best English work of this character on all the writings of the Apostle, with the exception of the Epistles to the Romans and Corinthians. No minister or Biblical student ought to be without the set,-which we see, by the publisher's recent advertisement, can be purchased, in two volumes, for ten dollars,―for these commentaries supply a place that is filled by no others. Indeed, there is scarcely anything to be found in our language, bearing upon the interpretation of most, if not all, of the Epistles covered by these books, which is of any very great value. And we cannot but regard the author as more worthy of the name of scholar, than any other among his countrymen who has of late years entered upon the same field and published the results of his studies. He seems to us, more nearly than any other, to approach the scholarly commentators of Germany, and to have begun upon a course, in which we trust others will follow him, until our own language shall furnish us with works which may rival in excellence those of that land of scholars.

Bishop Ellicott's commentaries are all written upon the same plan, so that a person who has used any of them will know what he may expect to find in all the rest. They are, as they profess to be, critical and grammatical-even in the highest degree grammatical, and dryly so. It seems to us that, in the reading of Meyer, who is as thoroughly of this character as any German commentator, we find far less of this dryness and far more of interest, far more that would induce a person to read on for a few pages beyond the single verse or point which he happened to be exam

A Critical and Grammatical Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles to the Philippians, Colossians, and to Philemon: with a Revised Translation. By Rt. Rev. CHARLES J. ELLICOTT, D. D., Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. Andover: Warren F. Draper. 1865. 8vo. pp. 278.

ining. These works of Ellicott are very concise in their styleremarkably and felicitously so, but yet with something of the same accompanying fault. No writer, in any language, is more concise than De Wette, but we think the student of his well-known writings will find more that is suggestive and quickening than our author gives us. Of course we do not expect to read a commentary through in course, or to find it very interesting in and of itself, any more than we do in the case of a dictionary, but it actually seems as if this writer had studiously and carefully limited himself, in this regard, within the narrowest bounds, and had, with fixed determination, excluded all that might awaken and inspire the mind, as if this were altogether outside of the proprieties of his sphere. We have alluded to this characteristic of Ellicott's works, on a former occasion, on the pages of the New Englander, but it impresses us the more with every new volume which reaches us. In books of this kind, indeed, it is a minor fault. The possibilities of the opposite character are not large in a critical and grammatical commentary; we may add, that the possibilities are the only thing that is large in most practical commentaries. The Bishop has written so much, and has adhered so closely to his one original plan, that we hardly anticipate any change, in this respect, if he continues his labors in his chosen field; and we hardly know whether anything, that we may say, would impress him with the correctness of our view. But if others are to follow him, and that, too, among our own countrymen, and if they are to imitate the excellences of his style and learning, as they may, we hope they will be careful to avoid, as far as possible, the failing of which we speak.

But it is not the most grateful task to speak of failings, and we did not intend to do so at the beginning of our brief remarks upon the commentaries to which the volume now before us calls our thoughts. Their good points are so far more numerous than their defects, and the real value, which they have, has been so long appreciated by us in our daily use of them, that we can only express our acknowledgments to the author for the great service he has rendered in this department of study, and, at the same time, we are glad to renew our commendation of them to all our theological readers. Such commendation will not be needed in the case of the large numbers who have already used them.

It will be remembered what the design of the author is, as indicated by the title of all his separate volumes. As we speak of the

peculiarities or excellences of his works, therefore, to those who have not examined them, it will, of course, be borne in mind that they profess to be only what the author sets forth. They do not pretend to discourse upon the text, or to suggest practical reflections, either for the edification of the private Christian, or for the use of the writer of sermons, but only to give the thought and meaning of the Apostle in every verse. Within the limits of this design, they have many excellences. The author is exceedingly happy in the clear presentation of his own views, and also of the views of other writers. He has a most praiseworthy earnestness in ascertaining what is the exact shade of thought of the sacred writer, and an equal readiness to admit and accept what the rules of language, and the whole light which can be shed upon it, determine the thought to be. Like every true scholar, he acknowledges the good which he finds in the writings of others, from whatever quarter, upon the same subject, not shrinking in alarm from the continental commentators, or making the place of their residence, or the errors which may be found around them or among them, a sufficient reason for turning aside from them altogether. At the same time, he does not servilely follow them or any one else, but patiently and thoroughly investigates for himself, and defends his own conclusions by reasonable arguments. We think the reader, of whatever school or belief he may be, will accept the work of Ellicott as that of an earnest, candid, openminded and warm-hearted man, who sincerely loves the truth, and is ready to follow it, whatever it may be, or whithersoever it may lead him. The author seems to have given himself, with much energy and enthusiasm, to the study of the early versions even from the time of the beginning of his plan; and in his later volumes, though it is with the modest admission of his small attainments even up to the present time, he speaks confidently of his progress under all the difficulties of the case. "Poor and insufficient as my contributions are," he adds, in the volume now before us, "I still deem it necessary to offer them, for I have been not a little startled to find that even critical editors, of the stamp of Tischendorf, have apparently not acquired even a rudimentary knowledge of several of the leading versions which they conspicuously quote." In this commentary on the Epistles to the Philippians, &c., he has referred to the Coptic and Ethiopic versions, as well as to others with which he had made comparison in earlier volumes. Upon the importance of the study of these ancient ver.