regarding the relation of the civil magistrate to religion as those which Dr Alexander has so well and ably expressed should become generally prevalent, there might soon exist a truly evangelical alliance of all the true churches of Christ throughout a truly evangelical Christendom.

When the Congregational churches in England adopted the very important resolution to found a Congregational lectureship, by which encouragement and opportunity might be given to the production of valuable works on subjects which could not well be discussed in the pulpit, Dr Wardlaw was selected to begin the course. This led to the composition of his work on Christian Ethics. Dr Alexander gives some statements of his own opinions on the main topics of this work, so valuable that we feel it to be a duty to extract a considerable section of his brief but admirable disquisition on the subject of moral obligation :

"The work, as published, consists of nine lectures (the eighth in the delivery having been divided into two in the publishing), besides a considerable body of notes, to which extensive additions were made in subsequent editions. The author's main design is to maintain the supreme authority of the Bible as the only infallible rule of moral action; and, with this view, he not only contends for submission to the Bible on all points on which it gives judgment, in preference to every other source of moral decision, but asserts that no other source is valid or can be trusted, in consequence of the depravity which the Fall has introduced into the soul of man. He is thus led to examine the different theories of moral obligation, and to apply to them the test furnished by this fact in man's moral history. The theories which he examines are the Aristotelian, the Stoical, the Epicurean, that of Cudworth, Clarke, and Price, that of Adam Smith, that of Hutcheson, that of Brown, that of Hume, and the Utilitarians, and (with especial minuteness) that of Butler. Against all these he maintains that they are vitiated, even when in other respects most correct, by the radical error of assuming that a depraved mind, investigating a depraved nature, can arrive at any certain and fixed principles of right and wrong. Such principles, he proceeds to show, can be found ultimately only in the Divine Nature; and, as this nature can become knowable by us only through revelation, he argues that it is in the Bible alone that we can obtain a certain guide to moral truth. In the three concluding lectures he shows the identity of morality and religion, inquires how far disinterestedness is an essential quality in legitimate love to God, and illustrates the peculiarities of Christian obligation and duty. "A second edition of this work was speedily called for; and not long after this appeared, it was noticed in an article in the Edinburgh Review, vol. Ixi., p. 59. The reviewer, whilst admitting it to be of the ablest and most plausible' of the class of publications among which he places it, animadverts somewhat sharply on the views it contains, as to the influence of depravity on our capacity for ascertaining moral truth. These views, he thinks, involve the conclusion, that we are deprived of all assurance respecting those fundamental truths

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which natural theology has been supposed to teach;' whilst, on the other hand, if we be referred,' he says, to faith in confirmation of their reality, still the evidences of that faith have no power of affecting our minds, except through the medium of those very powers whose authority has been previously thrown aside; so that,' he adds, this absurd endeavour to thrust Christianity into the room of philosophy, ends in the palpable triumph of scepticism over both.' To these strictures Dr Wardlaw thought it proper to reply; and this he did in a lengthened preface to the third edition of his work, which came out in 1836. Besides some skirmishing on minor and collateral points, he offers a full answer to the objections above cited; the substance of which is, that he has nowhere affirmed that reason itself is so depraved, that it is physically impossible for man to discover or to appreciate the grounds on which the truths of natural religion rest, otherwise man would not be accountable; but only, that reason is so impeded in its operation by depravity as to conduct to false and dangerous concluThis is true, he affirms, whether the subject of investigation be the principles of natural or the evidences of revealed religion. Man is intellectually capable of ascertaining the truth in both cases; the evidence in both is sufficient; but evil influences, arising from depravity, are apt to warp reason in its exercise, and pervert it in its decisions. The question Dr Wardlaw holds to be one simply of fact. Is it not true, that men, left to themselves, have invariably misread the lessons of natural religion? Now, how is this to be accounted for? If we say the evidence for these lessons is insufficient, or that man is incapable of discerning it, we destroy his responsibility, and make his ignorance excusable; and if, on the other hand, we hold the evidence to be sufficient, and man capable of apprehending it, his failing to do so can result only from some perversity of inclination interfering with, or preventing the due exercise of his reason in the matter. In maintaining, therefore, this latter hypothesis, he contends that he not only does not thrust Christianity into the place of philosophy, but simply borrows from Christianity the only adequate explanation of a fact which philosophy must admit, but cannot explain.

"This seems a sufficient reply to the somewhat superficial strictures of the reviewer. In making it, however, Dr Wardlaw, I cannot help thinking, has unconsciously laid bare the weak point of his whole book, and of the theory of moral science it is designed to uphold. For it appears from this reply, that all he intended to assert was, that natural reason and conscience are liable to be perverted in their decisions on moral questions. But if this be all he means to teach, then we may observe, in the first place, that his doctrine is one which the adherents of nearly all the theories of morals on which he has animadverted would at once admit as perfectly compatible with their principles; and, in the second place, that as the alleged liability affects our reason and conscience only in the way of perverting their decisions, this can have no bearing upon the foundation of moral distinctions, but will operate exclusively on our practical determination and application of the standard or rule of morals. In objecting, therefore, to all the moral systems which he has examined, that they are vitiated by a radical error arising from their not taking into account human depravity, Dr Wardlaw has applied to them a test which, from his own

subsequent assertion of the doctrine he meant to teach regarding the influence of depravity on the operations of the natural reason, may be shown to be irrelevant.

"I do not conceive that it would be proper to drag the reader of this volume into a lengthened disquisition on the subject of moral obligation; but I cannot, without disrespect to Dr Wardlaw, pass on without endeavouring, as briefly as may be, to make good the remark which I have just ventured to make as to a defect in the doctrine of this work.

"The moral judgment is either the result of a process of reasoning, or it is given immediately as a product of intelligence. On the former hypothesis, the basis of moral distinctions and the standard of moral discrimination are both without us; on the latter hypothesis they may be both within us, and the latter must be so in other words, on the former hypothesis, right and wrong are alike determined and indicated by something that is not part of our own mental being; on the other, it is in virtue of our being constituted as we are that we know what is right and what is wrong, just as we know the qualities of bodies; and, for aught we can tell, this may be the only reason why one thing is right and another wrong. This diaresis of opinion has separated ethical writers into two great sections; to the former of whom moral distinctions have an objective validity, while to the latter they are only subjectively valid. The two comprise within them all the varieties of ethical speculation as to the foundation and standard of morals.

"Now, on neither of these hypotheses does it appear that the fact of human depravity can be adhibited either as an element of speculation or as a test of validity. Not on the first, because there the basis and the standard of morality being both assumed to be without us, cannot possibly be affected by any change that may have passed over us since man was first made: Not on the second, because if morality, theoretically or practically, depend on the constitution God has given us, to affirm that that constitution is fatally vitiated, quoad this very thing, is virtually to pronounce morality an impossible thing for On either hypothesis, then, it seems that to apply this fact as a test of moral systems is irrelevant.

us.

"On turning to Dr Wardlaw's own theory of moral obligation and prescription, the remark occurs, that if the objection he urges from the present condition of human nature were applicable to any of those who, like himself, attach an objective validity to moral distinctions, it would be applicable no less to him than to them. For on his theory as well as theirs, (seeing in neither can the basis or the standard of morals be affected by the state of man's nature,) the only place where depravity could possibly have any effect, would be in the application of the standard to actual occurrences. But if depravity make a man read the revelation of nature wrong, will not the same influence operate to make him read Scripture wrong? In the former case the lesson may be less full and clear than in the latter; but that is not the question: the question is, Can a man, whose mental eye is so disordered that he will certainly read the former lesson imperfectly or erringly, hope, without a cure of his disorder, to read the latter correctly and savingly? If the question were one of natural capacity, of course the plainer the lesson the more likely would the learner be to acquire it; but Dr

Wardlaw has strongly repudiated this supposition, and has rested his case entirely on man's moral disorder. Well, the point I would press is: If moral disorder unfit a man for ascertaining aright the truths unfolded by the hand of the Creator in the constitution of the moral universe, will it not equally unfit him for ascertaining aright the truths unfolded by the word of the Creator in the Scriptures?

"I have dwelt the longer on this, because I consider it the main defect of Dr Wardlaw's book; and because, but for the influence of this idea, he would not only have avoided a certain confusion of representation, singularly unlike his usual style of thinking, but would have presented his own theory of morals with more of completeness, cogency, and interest, than he has done. Nothing, I think, can be more admirable and convincing than his proof that the only foundation of moral truth is to be sought in the Divine Essence; and if he had contented himself with affirming the effect of depravity in leading men to set aside the dictates of conscience, whether instructed by the law of nature or by the written law of the Bible, instead of asserting man's inability to read the one law, while he admits his ability to read the other, his moral system would, in my humble judgment, have been complete and unassailable. As it is, there are many passages in his "Christian Ethics," which every competent judge will regard as affording most valuable contributions towards the just settlement of the great fundamental questions of ethical science."

With Dr Alexander's disquisition we entirely agree, so far as he has thought proper to prosecute the subject; but we regret that he has so strictly confined himself to the point between Dr Wardlaw and the reviewer. The whole important question of the possibility of producing a sound natural theology, rises out of, or may be deduced from, the position brought under consideration. And when we advert to the exceedingly daring speculations and loose theories promulgated on the subject of natural theology in the present day, we cannot but wish that Dr Alexander had taken occasion to give a condensed view of his own, as he so very well can, with reference to the dangerous use that might be made of Dr Wardlaw's untenable position by a dexterous antagonist. Taking Dr Alexander's own position, however, and making it the amended basis of Dr Wardlaw's work, the danger may be avoided; and then the criticisms on other systems, contained in the work, will be found very instructive.

Many of our readers will remember the excitement which arose fifteen or twenty years ago, among religious people, relative to the subject of divine influence in regeneration, and kindred topics, which began to be known by the term Morisonianism, although but the resuscitation of an old and often refuted heresy. The theory was attractive to young, illinformed, and shallow minds, and to people of ardent and emotional temperaments. It was found by Dr Wardlaw that these heretical opinions had begun to spread among the stu

dents in the Theological Acaderny; and as many of them continued to retain their errors, notwithstanding all his attempts, he was constrained to dismiss them, in the due exercise of discipline. But it was soon discovered that several ministers both countenanced the expelled students, and shared with them in their heresy. Discipline had been exercised upon the students, and it was thought that consistency required that the ministers should not escape. But how could discipline be exercised, on the principles of Congregationalism? The Glasgow churches entered nominally into a correspondence with certain other churches in the vicinity, whose pastors were charged with holding these heretical opinions; the result of which was, that the Glasgow churches withdrew fellowship from those in Hamilton, Ardrossan, Bellshill, Cambuslang, and Bridgeton. The correspondence which had preceded this result was published as an appeal to the Congregational Union; but this procedure was not generally approved, as not expedient in itself, and not very reconcilable with the idea of Congregationalism. Dr Alexander thinks the course adopted was injudicious, and says that, in his opinion, "Had Dr Wardlaw and his brethren conferred with the erring pastors in their own name; and had they, on finding them persistent in their error, withdrawn from all ministerial fellowship with them; their course would have been unimpeachably correct, and might have been followed with most beneficial results." We take leave to doubt whether any beneficial results could have followed from a course which would have necessarily left the erring pastors in the complete and unquestioned possession of every opportunity of diffusing error in their congregations, without even the semblance of a public remonstrance against their unsound teaching. If the course adopted by Dr Wardlaw and his supporters was a violation of the strict Congregational theory, it was at least an open attempt to condemn and discountenance error, with a full statement of the reasons why it was condemned, which might well lead men to reflect gravely on the nature of opinions so publicly repudiated by the most able and learned divines in the denomination; while the departure from Congregationalism, which it was thought to imply, might have led many to question whether the Congregational system were indeed the best fitted to preserve and protect the truth, the purity, and the power of gospel doctrines. Dr Alexander says, "As it was their sanction" (the sanction of the pastors of the body) "which first gave him the status of an orthodox minister of their body, so they are the only parties competent to deprive him of that status if he shall afterwards swerve from his orthodoxy." This reads very like a statement of the method by which a presbytery might proceed to depose