fails him?

a

He has lost the habit of purchasing for himself; and the security that Bibles shall be read, and possessed, and valued by our people, is transferred from the deeply-seated principles of their own hearts to the precarious exertions of society irregular in its movements and uncertain in its duration. Send as much as possible to the London Society; avail yourselves as little of your privilege as auxiliary societies as is absolutely necessary.

Yours truly,

THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. II.-MR. JAMES ANderson to DR. CHALMERS.

DUNDEE, 11th June, 1812.

MY DEAR SIR-I am ashamed I have been so long in acknowledging your kindness at Kilmany, and the happiness I enjoyed under your roof. Could I maintain the impressions I there received, I would deem my Christian course rapidly progressive; but I am here in a widely different scene-little favorable to sober thinking. My mind, distracted with the bustle and cold-heartedness of business, recurs with difficulty to the contemplations of religion; and the want of a friend with whom I can communicate on these subjects deprives me of that excitement which is the life of every pursuit. I, however, feel myself much more decidedly attached to Christianity, and I hope, by the blessing of God, to attain the stability of a true disciple of Jesus. I every day see more and more the propriety of deriving my religion from the uncommented oracles of God, and of forming my system on the connected declarations of the New Testament. I wish to unshackle myself from the vassalage of text-books, summaries, and human systems. I wish to give the Bible a fair trial; for if it alone is not sufficient to make a Christian, we are of all men most miserable." I at present, therefore, confine myself to the perusal of the Bible, and occasionally some book of practical morality. I find many things which I do not understand many passages, indeed, totally unintelligible; but these difficulties are to be got over, not by a religious com

mentary, but by a classical criticism. I conceive, every duty of a Christian to be comprehended in the single word translation-a translation of the Scriptures into his own tongue, and a translation of their truths into his own heart and conduct. All we have to do is to ascertain the doctrines, and to believe them; to ascertain the duties, and to practice them; to make the Bible our vade mecum, our book of reference, our book of trust. I will rejoice, after my opinions are settled, to examine those of others; but I think it is inverting the process to begin with the latter. My objections to the school of theological orthodoxy are three: First, its tenets are not authoritative, and therefore may be wrong. Next, its tenets are not progressive. The New Testament gives you Christianity in its growth; a system of divinity displays it at some given step of its progress, or at best at its maturity. The latter is a religion of results. It has been formed by a man who has become unconscious of the steps of his own cogitations, and who, from familiarity with demonstrative truths, now regards them as axioms. He, from the sublime height of his own conceptions, looks down with contempt on the man who complains that he has removed the ladder by which he first ascended; and, accustomed to the wide ken of his own exalted region, wonders at those whose views rest within a narrower horizon, How different the system of the Bible! It leads you on step by step, and accommodates its lessons to your capacity. While perusing it, one naturally fixes on the truths which are most congenial; familiarity with these prepares us for others more remote, until we at length embrace the whole scheme of the Gospel. Thus, I may first delight to dwell on the Gospel morality; a second perusal may show that faith is also necessary; a third perusal may convince me that morality and faith must be united, and that it is not a union of separate acts, but of consequential duties; and I may finally come to the conclusion that our salvation resolves itself into a simple and disencumbered act of acceptance. But if you at once come forward with this last proposition, you present me with

a system in which I can not sympathize, and which, however well founded, rests on what must be to me a metaphysical distinction, until I arrive at it by a process of individual experience. My third objection is, that theological orthodoxy is too stimulative. It begets a disrelish for the simple excitement of the Gospel. It urges you by such a multiplicity of motives that you become too passive for a New Testament impulse. It clothes the doctrines in so much metaphysical acumen that you consider their Gospel dress as slovenly, and it anatomizes the precepts so much, that the simple exhibition of a text suggests no ideas of vitality. We revel in a kind of religious epicurism, and lose all taste for sober fare.

These and similar considerations have made me resolve to study, in the mean time, only the New Testament. I may not thus so well prepare myself for classing with a particular sect; but I will have greater security in my own principles, and in my intercourse with others I will be more ready to observe the maxim, "I have yet many things to say unto you, can not bear them now."

but you I will soon write you again. And requesting your prayers for my progress, I remain, my dear friend, yours,

JAMES ANDErson.

No. III.-MR. JAMES ANDERSON TO DR. CHALMERS.

DUNDEE, 16th July, 1812.

MY DEAR SIR-I have expected a letter from you for two or three weeks past, but have been disappointed. I wish our correspondence could assume a more decided and regular form, and that I might be able to leave the generalities, which have hitherto occupied me, and proceed to the characteristic parts of Christianity. I must, however, once more beg of you to permit me to state the sentiments under which I peruse my Bible, for even on this point I feel perplexed, and I see it occupying so prominent a place in the systems of matured Christians as to disconcert me with regard to the very first steps of my progress.

I have resolved, then, to make the Bible the rule of my opinions and conduct; not so much from any deep sense of sin or consciousness of my own insufficiency, as from a conviction that the Bible is a revelation from God, and a determination to submit to that revelation, whatever it may be. I have divested my mind of that repugnance to the adoption of truths which arises from their disagreement with our prior conceptions; but I do this in such a state of passivity, that I would adopt without hesitation, if I found it in the Bible, that scheme of salvation, a consciousness of the insufficiency of which is believed by many Christians to be a necessary preliminary in any attempts to become a Christian. As I do not allow my prior conceptions of Divine mercy to obstruct my admission of the declaration that sinners will be condemned to everlasting punishment, so I do not permit my prior conceptions of Divine justice to facilitate my admission of the declaration that there is no salvation but in Jesus. I open the Bible to ascertain the will of God, and so conscious of my inability to judge of His counsels that I would, with perfect security, expect salvation from ceremonial observances, had the Bible declared that with these God would be satisfied. But I at the same time allow that it is possible that such a procedure may be presumptuous, and that God might have declared that He would not permit the truths of the Gospel to be investigated until we approached them under a conviction of their necessity. Here, then, I feel embarrassed. Had I read only the New Testament, I do not think that such embarrassment would have existed; but I have found, both in books and the conversation of Christians, great stress put on this very question, and I do not know whether to refer it to their being wise above what is written, or to my own imperfect acquaintance with Scripture. There are many topics of a similar nature, concerning which I am reduced to the same state of perplexity. For example: Leslie, the bookseller, whom I believe to be a sincere and experienced Christian, asked me, a few days ago, to write an appendix to a small tract

he is reprinting. I did so; and, having given a short account of the nature and beneficent exertions of the Religious Tract Societies, I concluded with a few exhortations-among other things recommending to the reader frequent prayer to God. When I carried it to him, he (with a frankness which in a dependent tradesman I consider no mean proof of the sincerity of his principles) told me that he did not approve of my recommending prayer, " because," to use his own words, "prayer is sinful in the unregenerate." This opinion I heard, at the moment, with extreme disgust; but a little reflection soon convinced me that it is possible his opinion may be true, for the arguments which he used were at least plausible. Although I retain my former opinion, I have a sense of insecurity from these repeated obstacles and difficulties, and I feel a disappointment at not finding the scheme of Christianity so well defined as I expected. I would be ashamed to say it to any one else; but I confess to you that, at this moment, I have no adequate and well-defined conceptions of the plan of salvation, or of the economy of that intercourse which subsists between a Christian and the Godhead. I perceive that there is, if I may so express it, much more of business in the unseen realities of the Gospel than I formerly conceived; and that these realities, whatever they may be, are something as distinct from my simple and generic notions twelve months ago, as the ideas which a clown entertains of the atmosphere are from those of one acquainted with its chemical analysis. What, however, the specific peculiarities of the system. are I do not yet perceive in a clear and uniform manner; and the diversity of opinion, among conscientious, candid, and enlightened men on this subject, is to me the greatest of all discouragements in my progress. One recommends prayer, another says that faith must precede prayer; and thus I am left in doubt as to the propriety of employing such prayers as I at present am most inclined to use. Do you conceive that this prayer, "O God! so guide me in the investigation of thy Gospel, that I may arrive at a distinct knowledge of that faith