Men of this order, having no certain truth to start from, and to which they may occasionally refer back, to ascertain whether the opinions and systems they have formed can be logically deduced from it, are left without any regulator to their machinery; and the reasoning faculty acts under a disturbing, irregular power. The imagination, so necessary, in reasoning, for furnishing materials for comparison and illustration, becomes the stronger force; reason is swept round and round by it as in an eddy, and judgement goes to the bottom. Their minds become loose and discursive; and though they may sometimes reason acutely enough upon a single point, they fall into contradictions and sophisms when they spread out from it. The character of their minds may be seen in their modes of attack. They make their assaults with rambling rhetoric, which proves nothing; or bear against a single principle, which they neither rightly represent nor understand, because they do not consider it in its relations. Of God, of whom they boast of having so enlightened and enlarged views, they do not think as a whole. A single attribute is made the object of their contemplation, or rather of their imagination; and thus his character-even his benevolence becomes distorted, and its harmony is destroyed. They have no systematic truth, and they can have none, being ignorant of a whole, with its many justly adapted parts. Perverted man cannot of himself find out truth; and he who is too vain to receive it, must live on, the captive of his own delusions.

They not only make a perverted use of their own powers, but are sometimes the occasion of a wrong bent in the minds of those who receive the Bible as full, divine authority. In order to meet the rationalists in their objections, and perhaps, too, from an unobserved fear of not being held quite so enlightened as they, believers become excessively anxious to account for all that is contained in the word of God, to show that everything is upon perfectly rational principles, and adapted to the real nature of things, and that all objections arise from the want of fair, clear and comprehensive views in the objectors. In doing this, they seem, sometimes, to be under great fears for the reputation of the Bible, and to be unconsciously possessed by a misgiving, that, were it not for their intellectual efforts on its behalf, it might turn out at last not quite wise and philosophical enough for advancing reason, and that the ingenuity of man was in a fair way to circumvent the wisdom of God himself.

To be able to refute opposers, and to show the rationality of the scheme of revelation to an age vain of its reason, and consequently skeptical, and not profound, is well; but there is danger of its unawares forming in the believer's mind a habit of

way, while to the desponding friends of truth it says-'There may be a return.' See the Spirit of the Pilgrims, vol. iii. p. 57.

resorting too much to his own argumentation for the strengthening of his faith, and to find a place of rest for his belief more in that which his own sagacity has enabled him to account for, than in the simple declaration of the Word itself, and for the single reason that it is God's Word. Notwithstanding he holds the Bible of divine authority, he slides into the habit of making his own processes of reasoning the resort of faith, rather than the single fact that God has said it. Now this process of arriving at or confirming faith, is not faith; and the believer who resorts much to it is in great peril of losing something of the thorough, home conviction of the truth: his belief will not be so entirely a portion, as it were, of his consciousness, the element of his existence-his belief is not faith, not the faith of which the apostles speak. He too faintly considers that Bible truths are not mere intellectual truths, or to be sought intellectually alone, and that man cannot have a mere intellectual knowledge of them-that, in fact, (let the rationalist sneer if he will,) without experimental religion there can be no true knowledge of the highest and most glorious truths of the Gospel.

This mode of treating upon religious concerns is, also, not without its unfavorable effects upon those to whom it is addressed. They look upon the great Book of God's law rather like judges who are set to put their own constructions upon it, than like criminals whom it condemns; rather as if they were to see whether it were worthy their obedience, than to find through it a way of pardon for their transgressions. Something like a feeling of intellectual superiority arises in the heart, as if it were a matter of favor for beings such as they to accept it. They will think of it; they will make up their minds about it.'

The apostles did not go thus round about, to persuade men by long argumentation. They took man as he is, a sinner; with this they went directly to his heart. They compelled him to turn his eyes inward, and look at the prison there; to behold how dark it was; to hear the mutterings of wrath; to see Sin, the jailer there, with his chains, and bars, and instruments of torture; and then they would open the door of hope, and let in the soft, still light from above, and man would look out through it, and, lo, the revealed glories of heaven, and the dazzling splendors of the cross! Then man saw and felt the truths of God's word. This was the plain, apostolic way of dealing with man; and let this wise age learn, that it was and is the only philosophic way. Man must be born again, and must have had a thorough conviction of sin, before he can have seen the harmony and beauty of the great Scripture doctrines, and have learned their adaptation to his own wants and desires.

If unbelief, under its various modifications and names, would be wise against what is written, have there not been, from the

first, believers who would be wise beyond what is written? From what else proceed the speculations with which Evangelical Christendom has been kept astir for ages? Is there not enough lying within the light of revelation, that men must needs be forever passing out beyond its borders, and holding sharp contest with the shadows hovering in the twilight there? Men deceive themselves in supposing they do all this for truth's sake. It has its origin in an unwillingness to acknowledge practically that there are limits to the intellectual powers, or, at least, in an ignorance or forgetfulness of the fact. When we shall have learned that the only remedy for this lies in a child-like humility of spirit, we shall have discovered that its origin was in pride. Or if we suppose it to arise in part from a fondness for intellectual exercise, it grows to a disease, which spreads from our own minds to other minds, and, what is more, lays upon the Bible the burden of our errors, extravagances and presumption. When we see a scheme set up by one man only to be pulled down by another, and two theories in battle array, both overthrown by a third, and system after system coming up, and passing off, to return with a new name, and pass off again, we cannot but apply to their authors the words spoken of a less harmless race of men, These ingenious and hard-working people toil incessantly to draw up Truth from her deep well. After unceasing efforts, by many turns of the windlass, and having eagerly watched scores of fathoms of dripping rope, instead of bringing to light a naked goddess, they very carefully land-another bucket of water."

We believe, however, that the Bible is to bring in a sounder philosophy, and juster views of the nature of man than the world has yet known. Not that in certain words and passages there are wonderful influences locked up in a sort of hieroglyphics, of which another Young or Champollion is to discover the alphabet, and lay open the mysteries to the astonished world; nor that what we now humbly bow before as among the hidden things of God, some self-complacent rationalist is to apply his key to, and let in upon them the light of his mind, to show that they meant nothing at all, or nothing but what the reason of man might have suggested of itself. But we believe that the light of revelation is to spread through the mind in a manner it has not hitherto done, and that, as God is now, in an especial manner, sending it abroad over the dark places of the earth, so He is preparing the way to let it shine into that dim, and shadowy, and imaginative philosophy, which has reached us fromheathen lands, and to shed warmth and life where a later cold and soulless philosophy has spread its deadly chill.

From one cause or another, it has been a matter of course to shut the doors and windows of certain intellectual departments against the light and heat of revelation, and to light up candles,

and kindle a new fire, before men went about their work. These doors and windows are, however, yet to be thrown open, and into these abodes revelation is yet to shine; and by its fires, and with its light, the noblest labors of men are yet to be performed. Men are not forever to gather their knowledge and make up their systems of philosophy from anything and everything rather than the Bible, and then to bring that book to their preconceived notions. It is to become the great source whence man's philosophy is to be drawn. When this shall be the case, the moral character and the intellectual will move together in an harmonious advancement. Man will learn, that to be wise in philosophy, he must be wise unto eternal life. The Holy Spirit is to be the great Teacher; abstract philosophy is to become, as it were, experimental philosophy--in other words, true philosophy will be learned through experimental religion and the Bible. We believe that out of the fall of man, and through his restoration, God is not only carrying on a great moral plan, but is exhibiting a wonderful intellectual process for his study and joy and steadfastness, and that He is about showing more clearly than He has yet done, that receiving his Word in faith, being renewed in his image, living obedient to his law, and being regulated in all our affections by the love of Him, are to lead to a glorious display of the powers of man, and that this intellectual world is to move on with the even energy and splendor of the spheres. System after system has come up and shone, and men have gazed at it, and then it has rolled far off into the darkness, to be wondered at no more. But that which God is about making manifest, to vindicate his own mind, will have His revealed Word for its central light, and planets shall move round it in sweet obedience to its influence, till these heavens shall pass away, and then shall they circle his throne forever and ever, and drink forever of His light.

That which man goes through to be regenerated to God, opens depths in the soul, down which not only had he never looked before, but which till then had been unthought of regions. The stillness which had brooded there is broken; far, far down, deep is calling unto deep, and the waters of the dead sea move. O, if men would know something of that truly shoreless oceanthe soul, something of those caves which no line has fathomed, and feel the power of the spirit that is moving there, let him see and feel himself a sinner before the Almighty God! If thou wouldst know the infinite capacity of thy nature, man, feel thyself a worm, and less than a worm, before thy God! To hear one prate of the light of reason, and the dignity and perfectibility of his nature, who has never felt the searchings of conviction, and the agonizing throes of sin-how gaudy, how poor, how sad it is! What does such a man know of those depths out of which a re

deemed one is come, or of the height and grandeur to which he is fast ascending?

This event in the life of man gives him a wonderful knowledge of himself, not only by calling into intense action powers that had slept within him, but by bringing them into action as he and all within him stand related to God, the source of all power, knowledge and wisdom; seeing himself as he is, a dependent being, and not, as he once esteemed himself, sufficient to himself in his own reason, independent and unrelated. But to see one's self in one's true relation is the better part of self-knowledge. More than this, when the world rouses us, and the whole soul is up with the stir of the passions, the mind is looking outward, and fastening upon something there, and takes no observation of what is within. And when it afterwards philosophises about its emotions, it is through the memory, which brings back the past faintly and partially. But when man is conscience-stricken before his God, and would fain turn to Him and live, the whole mind is set inward; and as the working of the soul waxes stronger and stronger, and he sees into himself with a power of vision almost, nay, perhaps, altogether, supernatural-not to philosophise about himself, not even, it may be, with a purpose to know himself-he feels driven, as it were, to search himself through and through; so that the passions are working, and the self-examination going on with an almost simultaneous movement; and the man observes and examines his emotions while they are in full life and fervid action.

When man shall form his philosophy, not by wandering to the ends of the earth after his God and to become acquainted with himself, but shall learn that the Life and Light come from God's Spirit, and must be within himself, or cannot be to him at all; the Book which will teach him this, so distinctly requires of him the humility of a child, and so surrounds him with its solemn mysteries, that it will call up with his first thoughts a consciousness of his short-sightedness, and will show him on all sides how closely the limits of his earthly vision press upon him. But to learn early what things cannot be understood, is the surest way to understand aright that which is knowable. To be ever reaching forth after the indefinable, gives exaggerated proportions to the distant, and belittles the near; while to make the distant and undefined nothing more than the present and obvious, exaggerates the near, and robs the distant of its glory. In the one case, imagination seats itself on the throne of reason; and in the other, reason would stretch its rule where even imagination can catch but glimpses. The etdeavor to subject to reason what lies beyond its control, obscures its clearness of vision, disturbs its precision of action, and turns it off from truth in its results. The strength which appears sometimes imparted is unnatural energy, followed by a weakness which can be again forced into action only by being forced out of its nat