from it before what is unquestionably useful in the common dialectics has incorporated itself with the other stores of their mind. But there is another study still more necessary than logic, for the acquisition of sound religious knowledge, of which there is scarcely a notion among the British divines-I mean the study of the sources, limits and application of the mental faculties according to their essential nature. The absence of such acquaintance with our faculties, &c. &c., this ignorance of what should be the foundation of all regular instruction, shows itself in almost every page of the theological writings which daily multiply among

us.

There is to me a most striking result of this ignorance of our own spiritual self, in the blind-man's-buff debate which is carried on between those who contend that we must go to the Bible if we are to have any knowledge of God," and their opponents. "To me it is clear that if they were well acquainted with their spiritual self-the invisible world within them-if they had begun their philosophical and theological studies by examining what is man, they would not have involved themselves in this unmeaning controversy.......A truly philosophical work on this most important point-this [the] foundation of true religion-is very much wanted in England." To all this we say, aye, most heartily, and add that its importance is most sig. nally illustrated by the writer's own views of revealed and inspired truth.

Another deficient element in his reasonings, was right views of the moral character and condition of man. We speak of this as a defect in his argument only, for here is no place, and we have no desire, to judge of its influence on the honesty of his inquiries. It is poor business when you argue with or about a man, first to pass judgment on the state of his heart. But we do assert, that the Bible contemplates man as a sinner, as morally deficient and

corrupt, and that on this fact it bases the argument for its reception as a revelation from God. To conduct the argument for or against its claims without keeping this distinctly in view, is to our minds as unreasonable, as to argue for or against a system of medicine, and to begin the argument with an actual (whether formal or implied we care not,) presupposition that there is no such thing as disease.

Now in the whole course of White's reasonings, there are no manly and sober views of man as a sinner-there are no strong views of God as administering a holy government-there are no just notions of man as sinful and helpless and guilty. We wonder that a man apparently so honest as he, so self-suspecting, so scrupulous in the scruti ny of his own motives, should not have seen and held right views respecting this matter.

The bearing of right views on this point, on the argument for revelation and for the Bible, is obvious. Such views justify and demand an inspired and supernatural interference. We may allow that on the score of intellectual and moral capacity, man does not need such an aid

that he can be inspired and "is inspired by his reason;" and yet such is his moral perverseness, that he will not be, without extraordinary, extranatural or supernatural influences. Allowing that if he were honest and pure in heart, he could not but see God, even in this life, yet the fact being true that he is not thus pure, there is need that the heart of one and of another should be made so, in order that he might commune with God, and then declare what he had seen. In order to start these men from their sensual sleep, it might be needed also that the ordinary course of nature should be broken in upon, and then, when they were to go forth to speak their visions to others, still morally corrupt, they might also need

the same enginery, in like manner, to awaken them.

The fact of man's sinful character, relieves the Bible from many strong objections. It establishes and confirms the necessity of a progressive revelation of moral and religious truth. The diseased eye can not bear that measure of light, which is its joy and strength when in health. It rejects in agony of pain, the meridian beam. So with the soul dis eased morally. It is offended by the Godhead revealed all at once. It can not comprehend him. Hence the necessity of the breaking of the morning, of the softened dawn before the day comes up, in the history of God's revelations to man. This necessity is greatly aug. mented by the intellectual feeble ness and degeneracy that attend moral corruption, which in turn, are again increased by the power of custom and social influences, roll ing up at a geometric rate of increase, as one generation leaves to its successor its heritage of ignorance, of passion, and of shame.

If such a race are to be raised at all, they must be raised by just such a discipline as that described in the Scriptures of the Old Testament; and all the so-called objections to the Jewish ritual, and the Jewish conceptions of God, so far as authorized by supernatural messengers, vanish before this necessity.

The objections against Christianity, as revealed in the New Testament, which make a good argument when the character of man is not understood, are turned into confirmations of its truth and of its divine origin, when looked at with the knowledge of man's actual wants. We need hardly say, that the want of this element in the argument for the truth of Christianity, is not confined to Blanco White. It pervades the entire circle of rationalistic philosophers, so far as we know them.

We name as the last defect, the intellectual and moral habits of the man. The appreciation of the claims of the Scriptures, where these claims are searched to the profoundest depths and followed out into all the refinements of philosophical analysis, demands a superior mental structure and a just mental training. The claims of Christianity as a practical system, demand only a sense of one's wants, and a willingness to acknowledge and apply the remedy. But it is a differ ent thing to understand all the philosophical and critical difficulties that have been raised in the schools

to give them a full and fair hearing, and as a critic, a historian, and a philosopher, to understand and justify the Scriptures. Whatever may be a man's learning, or acuteness, or ability to generalize, if he does not do full justice to the wants of living men, and of men as they are out of the study and beyond the precincts of the university, he can not decide the question. He wants the first, the prime condition, to pass judgment upon the relations of one truth to another. All these other qualifications are what the advocates and the testimony are to a tribunal without a judge to pass upon them. The habits of a scholar tend to deaden this intuitive power of deciding -this instinctive delicacy in appreciating the force of an argument, especially when that argument turns on the wants and judgments, not of the reflecting and astute scholar, but of the unreflecting and stupid man. The scholar too, dry as he is, is a dreamer,and his dreams are to him the most glorious of realities. Unless they are shaped and corrected by the world of fact, they lead astray. So too he is often bewildered by the variety and amount of his knowledge, elated if not intoxicated, by the excitement of his own etherealized spirit. Then, he dwells apart, and years add strength to his habits of thought, dogmatism to his fond opinions, and

enthusiasm to his generous dreams. What wonder that the abundance of his resources, and the intellectual adroitness to control them, should have been earned at the expense of the capacity to use them in an argument that depends at last on a knowledge of man as he is, and not as he is thought to be.

It is to these deficiencies that we ascribe, in very great measure, the sad perversions of rationalizing Germany. These defects are most apparent on every page of this memoir, and the training of White was fitted in every particular to produce and augment them. Let a man be made a priest at the age of 14; let him be imbued with an eager desire for letters, which is gratified only at the peril of his soul, as he thinks. Let him be shut up in a confessional and see man only in his depraved passions there disclosed, or his morbid self-accusings, which the confessor learns to loathe. From the same confessional let him watch the lovely eye of some fair penitent. Let her lips utter the language of love in the words of self-upbraidings before God; and let him feel that woman's love for him is denied forever. Let him become an unbeliever for conscience's sake; and after doubt and despair, let him believe again. Let him find little sympathy in his aspirations for freedom, among his English friends. Let him find himself alone in his studies; in advance of all about him in his philosophical and theological attainments. Let him have been a recluse by training, by necessity, by foreign birth, and a foreign tongue: and such a result as occurred to White should not surprise us.

We do no discredit to his mental capacity, to his very remarkable attainments, to his manifest force and acuteness in understanding an argument, when we say that he lacked the prime essentials deliberately and calmly to judge on a question like this. Book-madness is no uncom

mon affection in these days, we believe. In some of its forms it is very innocent and harmless. In its actual influence, if its dreams are taken for the inspirations of wisdom, it may often delude and destroy.

This memoir has been to us a study, not merely because of the interest that arises from the very eventful life of this unhappy man, nor even because of the intense and agonizing sorrow which he endu red, but because of its marvelous illustrations of the tendency of religious systems. It is very common, we know, for many wise and good men to raise the cry of rationalism, neology, and German studies, and to point to the sad results to which they lead, as the strong and suffi cient argument against what they deem to be dangerous error. The argument from results is good enough in its place; but it is a poor substi tute for the detection and exposure of sophistry, and the distinct analysis of a fallacy. To those men who have the blessed ignorance to believe that German philosophers and theologians are all mere dealers in moonshine, and weavers of arguments of film, we have nothing to say. Their self-complacency is so pleasant to themselves, that we have not the heart to interrupt it.

The rationalism which is illustra ted in this memoir, is abroad in this land. It has spread more widely than is known by many, and than is acknowledged by all who know its extent. Its secret influence is far more extensive. There are districts in the gay capital of continental Europe, on whose solid pavement if you strike, you will be startled at the vibrations from the caverns of death beneath. Even so it seems to us that beneath fair portions of our own land, the social and moral structure has been deeply undermined by the silent ravages of ter rific unbelief. God grant that its nature and extent may never be revealed by the convulsion that shall

swallow up all that is so fair and goodly on the surface.

Of Blanco White the man, in our waking hours, we have had more than one troubled dream. We dimly beheld a gloomy procession ushered into the presence of the blessed Jesus. It was the spirit of the departed, conducted by four forms, unequal in garb and bearing, personating to our view the four systems of error which had led him astray. First, Romanism, with stately mien and purple robes, and a port that at a distance seemed divine, but at a nearer view, on her face were deeply drawn the lines of human passion, and her countenance was stamped with a sensual look. Next, Anglo-catholicism, imitating the step and swelling with the state of her elder sister, but revealing a nature too noble for her foolish mockery of so poor an example. On the other side was Scholasticism, hard in features, and strong in her tread; the earth shook under her step, but she was narrow in her look, and had been untrue to the generous promptings of her nature and to the sacred

trust which truth had committed to her care. Behind her was Rationalism, who did nothing but sneer at the mistakes of her elder sister, at her hard-favored but truth-loving features. Behind the train, there followed at a distance, with a pensive air, as it were a mourner, sad and sorrowful-she was Truth, she was Christianity. The train went. forward. The clouds parted to receive them, but just as we expected to see them ushered into the presence of Him who is "the Way, the Truth, and the Life," a cloud encompassed them, and we could see no more. There was silence for a while dreadful and still, and then it seemed that from behind sweet sounds rung out in these words of more than mortal melody, "But blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed," and to them a response was heard as from many voices, "Whom having not seen ye love, and in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory."

ALMOST every Congregational pastor is called upon, some time in the course of his ministry, to assist either in framing or revising a confession of faith. If the work is to be done for his own church, it devolves chiefly upon him as a master in theology. If he is called to assist in the organization of a new church, he is bound to examine with care the "Articles of Faith" submitted to the council, and to see that they accord with the general belief of the churches and with the word of God. This is often a difficult matter. Congregational churches

have no uniform standard of faith VOL. IV. 34

distinct from the Bible. The Episcopal church has its "Articles of Religion" established by the Convention of 1801, which next to the "most excellent liturgy" may be consulted as of some sort of authority in matters of faith. The Presbyterian church, whether Old or New School, has one Confession of Faith-that agreed upon by "the reverend assembly of divines at Westminster," and ratified by the General Assembly in 1821,-by which to test the orthodoxy of all its ministers, of all its particular congregations, and of all its individual members throughout the United

States. The Methodist Episcopal church has its form of doctrines and discipline, which is obligatory upon all its adherents. But Congrega tional churches have no such instrument. The Cambridge Platform, agreed upon in 1648, treats wholly of church order and discipline. It was designed as the basis of union among sister churches, and an exposition of their views of ecclesiastical polity to the then dominant party in England, from whom they differed upon this subject only. It has no authority in Massachusetts beyond that acquired by the usages of particular churches. The Synod which framed it declared their as sent to the Westminster Confession of Faith, "for the substance there of," as being "very holy, orthodox, and judicious in all matters of faith."

The Saybrook Platform, adopted in 1708, consists of two parts: "A Confession of Faith," and "Heads of Agreement and Articles for the administration of Church Discipline."

The Confession of Faith is the same which was "consented to by the elders and messengers of the Congregational churches in England, who met at the Savoy in London in 1658," and which was ap proved by "a general synod of the elders and messengers of the churches in New England, (at Boston,) in 1680," and ordered to be printed by the General Court of Massachusetts. This Confession differs from that of the Westminster divines "only in the omission of the chapters on church discipline, and in some unimportant variations in respect to doctrine." The Saybrook

*This does not preclude the adoption of confessions by individual churches. But in theory the Presbyterian church is but one body in the United States, and as such has its Confession of Faith and Book of Discipline.

Platform was binding only upon the churches which assented to it. Many of the churches of Connecticut have never adopted its peculiar platform of church government-the plan of consociation. Mr. Jonathan Parsons was ordained pastor of the church in Lyme, west parish, in 1731, after having "expressly renounced the Saybrook platform of church government, in presence of the council and the brethren."

Its Confession of Faith possesses no such authority as pertains to those already referred to. It was not put forth authoritatively. The wish was expressed in the preface that it might not be "taken upon trust." In the "Heads of Agreement" it is expressly declared, "As to what appertains to soundness of judg ment in matters of faith, we esteem it sufficient that a church acknowledge the Scriptures to be the word of God, the perfect and only rule of faith and practice, and own either the doctrinal part of those commonly called the Articles of the Church of England, or the Confession or Catechisms, shorter or larger, compiled by the Assembly at Westminster, or the Confession agreed on at the Savoy to be agreeable to the said rule."

The General Association of Connecticut in their edition of the Platform, call special attention to the preceding article " for the right understanding of the relation which the Confession of Faith has to the Congregational ministers and churches of Connecticut." They thus publicly disclaim the exclusive or even the general authority of this Confession, while at the same time the particular confession of all the Congregational churches of Connecticut are in the main coincident with it.

The Saybrook Platform was never considered as setting aside the ex

tional Order."

lar churches. Most of the churches of Connecticut have such confes