ery thought, word and action of creatures in the balance. The justice and the truth of God shine with a lustre in the gospel, beyond what could be seen in any other of his works. But these are not the brightest beams on which we look in the pages of redemption. It was goodness to appoint a perfect law, and institute a righteous government among the creatures he had made. But how much clearer the manifestations of goodness in redemption! An infinite Redeemer, pitying those who were justly condemned to eternal misery; extending his compassion to them against their own will; stepping into their place, and by his own sufferings bearing the curse in their stead, and purchasing for them heavenly glory, when by their temper and practice they were endeavouring to overturn his throne, and banish such a place as heaven from the universe. This is such a display of the nature and greatness of divine love as is found in no other of God's works. All the dignity of the Godhead, the sternness of his justice, and the ocean of his love are seen in union. Here we learn that pity and compassion to the guilty are not inconsistent with the righteousness of their Creator; and that revenge is a principle not admissible into the kingdom of God. Here the unchangeable holiness of God, and the stability of his law and government, are witnessed by the very fact of his forgiving the rebellious. Whatever reasons are held forth in the law against transgression and sin, there are much stronger in the gospel. This bright display of God's moral glory in the gospel is one ground of the Christian's assured faith in its truth. Another evidence which gives him an assured faith of the truth of the gospel, is its perfect adaptedness to deliver sinners from all their wants and miseries. When a scheme of doctrine and practice is presented for our accept ance, one of the first things by which we judge of its truth is its fitness to answer the purpose for which it is designed. This is a high evidence of the truth of the gospel. We have seen how it displays the glory of God, and the dignity of his government in forgiving transgression. How it shows him to be just in justifying the ungodly. The gospel is equally suited to the wants of sinners. What does a sinner need to restore him to divine favour, and to blessedness? Is it forgiveness? Is it deliverance from condemnation to eternal death? Is it reconciliation between God and his own heart? Is it a righteousness perfect and spotless through which he may be accepted before his Judge ?-Is it a perfect sanctification of his soul in all its powers and faculties? Is it an Almighty friend to bless him here; and a portion of God which will fill his heart through eternity?-All these the miserable sinner needs, and he may find them all in the gospel, freely offered to all who will receive them. Not a want, not a sorrow, not a stain of sin will remain when the gospel hath done its perfect work in the soul. This gives the Christian an assured faith of its truth. That must be true which so glorifies God, and spreads blessedness through his kingdom. The power of the gospel on his own heart, is to a Christian the completing evidence of its truth. He needs no other evidence for the most assured faith of its being both the power and the wisdom of God, for salvation unto all who believe. Whatever other evidence he may have, it is this which gives unshaken confidence that it is safe being in the hands of Christ, whether living or dying. This shows us why the unsanctified are so liable to doubts, not only concerning their own safety, but whether the gospel be real. The understanding may be deceived, reason may err, and they have no higher knowledge than these can give. They do not feel themselves subjects of what the gospel promises to its friends. The Christian feels the gospel acting on all his intelligent powers and faculties. By its power he is become a new creature. His understanding sees what he never before conceived, the glory of God, his law, his kingdom, and all his works. His heart is become new. His affections have changed their objects. He hath new desires and purposes, aversions and delights, and from earthly, his conversation hath become heavenly. The Scriptures express the change more perfectly than it can ever be again: "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things have passed away; bebold, all things have become new!" On these grounds the Christian hath an assured faith of the truth of the gospel; the evidence with which its doctrines were published to man; the astonishing display it makes of the glory of God, and the dignity and stability of his kingdom, its suitableness to deliver sinners from all their miseries, and raise them to the most perfect blessedness of which they are capable; together with its power on his own soul, to enlighten, sanctify, and make him blessed.-This also is his evidence, not only of the truth of the gospel, but also that he is himself such a subject of it, that to die will be his gain. Beholding by faith this divine scheme of grace, and its promises, he feels a new, a holy, an unextinguishable, a glorious life kindling within him. He knows that it is wholly different from whatever is worldly and mortal, communicated from his great Redeemer, the fountain of life and love. It was said that faith and love are the two graces by which a Christian is raised above the fear of death. The faith which has been described increases love into ardent exercise. Hence one description which we read of a true faith, is that it works by love, and faith and love acting VOL. VII.-No. 2. 9 conjointly, purify the heart from sin. Love is the spirit of heaven, and the bond of union between all holy beings. It was love which brought Christ from heaven down to earth, that he might put himself in the place of guilty sinners, and by his death redeem them from eternal misery, and purify them to himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. After his grace bath purified their hearts from sin and guilt, it is love which draws them up to him, that they may be with him where he is, and behold the glory the Father hath given him. Christ is the Christian's treasure, and where our treasure is, there the heart is also. While the world is men's treasure, they will choose to be in the world, and the thought of being parted from it by death will be dreadful. Love is stronger than death, and when the treasure is in heaven, its terrors will vanish.What is there in death which ought to terrify a Christian? Yea, what is there that ought not to draw him with ardent desire to the change. It will deliver him from the pains and vanities of the world, which can in no other way be perfectly overcome--purify him from the sin which his soul loathes-and introduces him to the presence where he desires to adore and praise for ever. The Christian triumphing over death, and desiring to depart, exhibits a phenomenon the ungodly cannot solve, for they never felt it, nor the cause by which it is produced. Unassisted reason cannot explain it, nor can philosophy fortify the soul against its terror. Where reason and philosophy fail, love and faith prevail, enabling the dying saint to say; For me to die is gain; I have a desire to depart that I may be with Christ. Ye who trust in any other defence against the fear of death, will find yourselves overwhelmed with awful apprehensions by the solemn event of its approach. Ye who believe, still feeling yourselves partially under its bondage, pray for increase of faith and love: as these grow in strength, you will be errabled to tread the world under your feet, and feel yourselves joyfully drawn into the presence of Christ your Redeemer and God. AMEN. MISCELLANEOUS. For the Christian Spectator. OF THOUGHTS ON THE RELATION (Concluded from p. 33.) structures reared by the mightiest efforts of buman intellect, now forsaken, without finding a fragment that tells of heavenly origin, or that relates to the highest movements of mind in relation to God and the Redeemer. Does man cease to be an active agent when he converses with ate existence, and cease to exhibit heaven? Does mind lose its separthe properties of mind when man returns to allegiance to his God? Are repentance, and faith, and love, and hope, and joy in religion,less acts of intellect than when originating and ending in earth? No one thing has done more to discredit religion in the eyes of young men aspiring after the honor of distinction in metaphysical science, than thus excluding the exercises of mind in religion from systems of mental science. The operations of mind in relation to the affairs of this life, are laid before the mind as the whole of mental philosophy, and religion is either removed entirely from any notice, or it is left to be inferred-an inference which is readily drawn-that our relation to God and the concerns of the soul have no claim upon our attention. A correct system of metaphysics would be itself a system of theology; and if man ever arrives at the highest dignity of his nature, metaphysics will be the study of mind in all its relations. Religion will ennoble the study; and a correct philosophy, he but the handmaid of a correct theology. It is from this fact to which I have adverted, that religion has always appeared in the garb of a worldly philosophy. It is because in the instrucbeen separated, and the one taught tion of the youthful mind they have independently of the other, that men in all ages have formed their theological opinions, by the rules of their philosophy. They are first imbued with the principles of mental science of mental science without any relation to religion :-and the laws of mental science unimbued with any of the spirit of theology they bring with them to the investigation of the doctrines of religion. Hence Christianity soon after her birth put on the robes of Plato. Next she appeared in the stays of Aristotle and was long, like the Alchymists, endeavoring to transmute the categories, and substantial forms, and dialectics of the schools, into theology. They were wrought into every thing else but religion, and Christianity soon became decked with the tinsel and gew-gaws of Paganism, and beheld herself at once the proprietor of the follies of the world. She has since been moulded, successively by the philosophy of Bacon, and Locke, and Des Cartes, and Reid :-an dhaving adopted the principlesand bold investigation of the modern philosophy, is now, in this country at least, undergoing a new change and tending to a new result. The probability, in one section of our country, is that having rejected the uncompromising investigation of facts, and the rigid induction of Bacon, and having adopted only that part of modern science which proclaims a spirit of fearless independence, and disregard to the opinions of antiquity, philosophy, contending "with moderation" for the name of Christianity, is putting on the open drapery and meretricious ornaments of infidelity and unbounded scepticism; and will soon appear as the open champion of the principles of Bolingbroke and Hume. Yet the spirit of all bold investigation in this country is not tending to the same results. Boldness indeed, and fearless independence, mark every investigation in the eastern part, at least, of our country :-but it is boldness guided by different principles, and which will therefore lead to dif ferent results. The fearlessness of one class of theologians who claim the appellation of liberal-and who in some undesirable senses deserve it is leading to a decisive abandonment of the whole system of revealed truth, and it is because one generation and not two have existed since these principles have operated in this country, that we have not seen this result. The boldness of another class of theologians, is exhibited in applying a philosophy long since gone by; and in exhibiting an acuteness which would have done honor to any age, on subjects which better became the time of Scotus and Aquinas, than the nineteenth century. The acute distinctions and profound dialectics of a certain part of the Eastern clergy of our country, are but a remnant of the untiring subdivisions and puerilities of the schoolmen.-The doctrine which regards God as the efficient agent in iniquity, and which makes all virtue and vice to consist in exercises; a doctrine which has originated from a peculiar opinion respecting the faculties of the mind; and which by a feeble effort might be traced to a system no more modern than Spino za. Whoever imbibes the principles of Brown's philosophy, and founds upon it his theological opinions without any counteracting influence, will be a fatalist :-and though Brown may be the most acute of all metaphysicians, yet his opinions of suggestion, and of cause and effect, made the basis of theology, will either leave a man under the fate of the stoicks, or himself constituting an integral of infinite mind and infinite matter, with Spinoza. So intimate is the relation between philosophy and theology that a man cannot imbibe the principles of the one without suffering it to mould his opinions of the other :--nor can a man deliver the dogmas of the one without infringing upon the province of the other. I do not wish to be understood in any of the preceding remarks as pleading for the union of metaphysics with theology. The position which I would maintain is that from the peculiar relative connexion of the two sciences, from their professing to treat of the same subject though in different relations-and from the experience of the world, the one will in fact, give its impress to the other and theology will to a certain extent receive its modification from those who preside in the schools of philosophy It is then a subject of immeasurable moment that the amount of this influence should be understood; and since they will have a reciprocal influence, it is but common fairness if there be any true system of theology, that it should be allowed to give a form to the speculations of the schools. And while I would humbly pray that no bulwark-not even an outpost of Christianity, should ever be surrendered to philosophy, I would enquire whether there are not some things in our present form of theology as contained in our theological systems, equally at variance with sound philosophy and sound theology, which will prevent any considerable access to souls of the more intellectual part of mankind. There would be no probability of disgusting a man of the highest attainments in mental philosophy in referring him to the Bible as containing a correct system of Christianity. He would find there indeed much to condemn false philosophy-he would find many homethrusts made at the metaphysics of Greece, but in the presentation of the plan of redemption, he would find nothing contrary to the principles of correct mental science. He would find no law of mind violated -none of its movements traced to erroneous principles. He would find many new developments of mind;--many laws operating on a scale infinitely more magnificent than any thing which can be drawn from the schools :-and with the illiterate man might contemplate, with out any offence to the taste of either, these mighty movements of intellect. But Christianity is not learned by philosophic men from the Bible. It is collected by them from the pulpit, and from systems of theology. Indeed if we were asked by a mental philosopher-or by any other man-an account of our religious belief, it would not be the most obvious course to refer him to the Bible :-we should send him to a catechism or a creed, or to Turretin, or Calvin, or Ridgely, or Hopkins. The form in which Christianity appears in these systems is not the form in which it appears in the scriptures-as embodied fact, or simple narrative ;-but it appears in the technicalities of an obsolete philosophy. it is not the flowing robe, fitted for untramelled action; but the tight jerkin and 'small clothes of the "olden time" when men thought and acted by rule; and reduced every thing to the dialectics of the schools. From these schools we have received our forms of theology and though we have professedly abandoned their schemes of mental science, we clothe our divinity with its dark and unintelligible technicalities, and present it to the philosophic world as the religion of the Saviour. And it is no wonder that it excites disgust. It is unknown to the Bible. It is not the form in which religion appears as given by Heaven. Neither is it the form of sound philosophy. It is the form of philosophy long since gone by. It is a monster come up out of the dark ages, and which has fastened upon theology; and has moulded its features and traced its lineaments, by its polluted fangs. But it is not my purpose to trace the influence of theological terms in producing the aversion of men of taste to religion, which has been so ably done by one of the master spirits of our age.* But there is another bearing which Foster. |