Notice of Recent Publications [pp. 443-477]

Notices of Recent Publications.
young men entering on the path should know what is the swamp in
which it terminates. Some who have gone so far will draw back.
But they will not fall back upon the icy crystals constructed by Channing, or the melted snow of Parker and Emerson. Yet they cannot
stand where they now do. If they do not draw back, they must go
forward; and they will find that, beneath this deep, there is a lower
deep still. This deep is Materialism, which I mean to examine in my
next Lecture."-Pp. 174-8.
The Reverend Georqe Junkin, D.D., LL. D. A Historical Biography.
By D. X. Junkin, D.D. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1871.
While this important volume'breathes everywhere the tender affection and admiring appreciation of a true brother, it also aims at scrupulous truth, justice, and fairness towards all persons and parties.
Even where he has failed, or, in the view of any parties touched, may
seemn to have failed, of exact truth or justice in his representations,
we think all candid persons must give him credit for the intention
and desire to render them. In this effort we think he has generally
been successful. The Biography is very thorough and complete,
leaving nothing untouched of any importance in the more. private
relations and public career of its distinguished subject. His public
offices and labors were so many, so momentous, so implicated with
the founding or conduct of institutions, and with the critical movements of the Presbyterian Church which culminated in Disruption,
that a true biography of him must needs be historical, and is rightly
styled an "Historical Biography." For the great acts of his life, by
which his name is most known, are so involved in the history of the
Presbyterian Church from 1830 to 1840, that no intelligible account
of them, and no justice to his memory were possible, without a
thorough and candid presentation of that history. This, his brother
found it absolutely necessary to give. It occupies something like
half of the volume, which it serves to make very, and perhaps unduly,
extended, but by no means tedious. It is written with a graceful and
graphic pen, and sheds light on some of the most important events of
the century.
The strong impression produced upon the mind of the writer of this
notice, who had no personal acquaintance with Dr. George Junkin, is
that, notwithstanding an occasional dissent from him, he was an
extraordinary man, of strong intellect, high culture, devout and earnest piety, scrupulous conscientiousness, incorruptible integrity, unflinching courage, great self-denial and self-sacrifice, unflagging indus
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