other by conditions arbitrarily appointed and imposed. The conditions will become intensely and grossly natural. Salvation will be through external appliances, covenants, and arrangements. The believer will expect heaven, not primarily by what he is, but by the creed, and by the ceremonials required of him. It will not be by unfolding the angel from within him, so much as by ecclesiastical and precatory rites; not by a righteousness in him, but by a make-believe righteousness credited to his account, so that he can be lifted up and shown in among angels by the proper certificate and countersign. Hence the evils from which we suffer. Hence the ecclesiastical villanies in all ages. Hence the masses of worldliness imported into the Church and embarked for heaven. We do not mean that any church avows this in terms, or neglects a great deal of talk about sanctity and holiness. But sanctity changes insensibly into sanctimony, and myriads, with all the holy talking and praying, are dominated by the natural idea, and expect when they die to travel somewhere and bring up at some good place, for reasons that have no reference to their most cherished love. In short, when theology has sunk into naturalism, the highest type of character which it henceforth produces is that of the natural man acting through religious forms and sanctities, and its internally regenerating power has gone for ever.

CHAPTER V.

FORESHADOWS.

But

WE rise from these theories to something more positive than anything they can furnish. before we attempt to unfold the pneumatology of the Scriptures, let us pause one moment and gather up the probabilities of the case. We may

But

not be able to discover the truth ourselves. we may be able to find some intimations and finger-marks that show us which way it lies.

Is it rational, then, to suppose that what we call natural body is the most substantial among the creations of God, or that the materia which composes it is the best substance of which bodies can be made? Is it probable that the natural degree of life is the most real of any, and puts forth into the highest and most glorious forms? Is it very likely that, while our spirits are clothed in this material vesture, they get the most perfect perceptions of form, color, figure, extension, contour, motion, distance, or see them under their

highest laws and combinations? We trust we are not insensible to the charms and the grandeur of this material scene, where the seasons follow in their mystic round, and Day and Night and Even and Morn spread out their ever-changing panorama; nor can we move a hand along the surface of this body we wear, without a feeling of wonder and awe. We have not the least regard for the old Manichæan doctrine of the essential evil of matter, for it is the fair and beneficent creation of God. We would not give back to its kindred dust the clay garment which our friends have worn and made sacred, with indifference; rather would we watch over it with tender interest, and keep both the sod and the memory green. Whatever has invested a human soul and imaged forth to us its holy affections, we have a right to place among the treasured memorials of our love. But when you say that the substance out of which these bodies are made is the only kind there is, or the highest kind, we hold it a most improbable assumption. The human imagination in fact constantly transcends Nature, and paints a world beyond the dominion of her laws, where life flowers forth with sweeter grace and more celestial beauty, and the vast and the sublime are actualized in a higher expanse of grandeur. What we call matter is the most outward creation of God, and, so to say, lies on the

circumference of his universe, the most inert of all created substance. Is it not extremely probable, then, that, as you rise out of its domain, and come nearer the Central Life out of which all things are evolved, you come among substances which are more real, instead of less so, and which are carved into forms that radiate more brightly the everlasting beauty? Will not the sense of existence be more vivid and plenary as you advance inward towards God, and is it not least so on the outer circumference? And if this be true, is it probable that, having risen out of the natural degree into that circle that gathers nearer around Him who is Life and Substance itself, you will be turned into a ghost, or into nobody, and be put to the hideous necessity of coming back to the churchyards for a substantial form to dwell in?

What is it that makes matter a substance at all, or even permits it to be? If our naturalism had not infected the whole subject of the creation, such a question would not be pertinent. The conception of the natural mind is, that God rose up at a certain epoch and made the universe out of nothing, and after working six days brought it under its present arrangements; since which it has gone on like clock-work with God's oversight and care. He exists outside of it somewhere, and reaches across space to regulate it and keep it going; and when he thinks it has gone long

enough, he will reach across again, and smash it in pieces or burn it up. The subjects of Creation, Providence, Divine Government, Eschatology, all are affected with our naturalism, and God becomes an almighty mechanic, and not a Creator and Governor. But can any reasonable mind doubt, in its highest thoughts and moods, that the inmost principle of matter is the Divine Life itself, not the Divine Essence, as the Pantheist would say, but an effluence from it, whence all the qualities of matter are but as the leaves and blossoms from a parent stem? And is it not therefore true,—not that he created it once out of nothing, but that he creates it every moment out of himself? And does not the great truth begin to dawn upon us, that the relation of creator and created subsists all the while, and if suspended for a single instant, the universe vanishes like a bubble that breaks in air?

One of two things you must believe, that matter is self-existent, as the Atheist says, or else that it exists because a Life not of itself transfuses it and gives it laws. We broach no theory as to what matter essentially is. The Atomic philosophers may be right, or Berkeley may be right, who resolves matter into states of mental perception, or Boscovich may be right, who resolves it into points of resistant forces.