How can Henry, if he has taken this oath, still shew towards his heretical parents, or afford them aid, favour, and relief? Ah! I have lost my son lost him for ever!" bus rob to 221009-ib

The mother's tears, which here burst forth, and with which Wilhelmina mingled her's, interrupted the conversation, and were, as usual, the prelude to va long but melancholy silence, during which; nothing was heard but the mother's suppressed sighs, and the father's heavy step, as he violently and hastily strode up and down the room. How is it possible," thought he to himself," that Henry, a well-informed Protestant, could have suffered himself to have been led blindly by the blind? What poison of error must they have infused into him! Through what delusión must they have deceived him!" anioti bre mam

What appeared inexplicable to the father had happened in a very simple and usual manner. Henry, when a boy, had been instructed by a very orthodox Lutheran schoolmaster; he had learnt perfectly the Lutheran catechism, and could answer every question concerning the mystery of the Trinity and the two natures of Christ; for he had learnt the Athanasian Creed by heart. The doctrines of original sin and Tof atonement, particularly, had been impressively inculeated upon him, as they are received in the Lutheran Church, namely That all men, through Adam's fall, are become altogether sinful and depraved in reason and will, incapable of any good, and eliable to eternal damnation that this condemnation can only be averted through the blood of the Son of God, as an offering for sin, who, by his life and death, has offered satisfaction for all mankind; but that the only means of reconciliation consist in a firm belief in the power of this atonement; and that true repentance and true Christian virtue can proceed only from is beliefel 19q ft of noitsutani aid b9197il by The father believed his son most firmly grounded in the Protestant faith through such genuine Lutheran

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instruction. In treating of the duties of man, the master had never gone further than the Ten Commandments. Henry had learned little more of the discourses of Jesus and of the exhortations of the Apostles, than he learnt from the verses of Scripture contained in the national catechism. No reference whatever had been made to the history of the Christian Church, and nothing had been said of the difference between the Roman Catholic and Protestant confessions, except as far as regarded the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Lord's Suppers The minister, who prepared Henry for confirmation, extended, rather good-naturedly than wisely, the duty of love, which we owe towards the persons of the erring, even to their errors, and declared it inhuman and intolerant to interfere with the differences between the Roman Catholic and Protestant creeds, and impressed upon the children, that nothing depended upon the differences of Churches, and that a Roman Catholic might be as good a Christian as a Protestant. At confirmation itself, although it decides the first admission to the Protestant Church communion, nothing was said concerning a pledge of fidelity towards the Protestant Church, and a confession of its distinguishing principles. The minister considered this rite only in the imperfect view of a pledge to virtue, of which there is no need, since every man is pledged to it by his own conscience. The idea that we owe duties to the religious community to which We belong, and that we dare not separate ourselves from it without urgent reasons, had, therefore, never entered Henry's mind. at parol

Henry was now removed to a celebrated school, where religious instruction also was certainly given, -but where there was no opportunity to improve the defect of his early education. The Rector, who delivered his instruction to the upper classes, thought that he did all that was required of him when he read the New Testament with his pupils, As he was only

a linguist, habit had led him to treat of the New Tes tament only in reference to grammar and language, on which he himself had written a large and learned work. Here he was in his element, and expatiated so copiously upon these points, that, during the four years that Henry listened to his instructions, he had happily proceeded from the first to the eighth chapter of St. Matthew. Henry had heard nothing, through this, of the peculiarities of Christianity or the Protestant Church.

He now went to the University. It was celebrated, highly esteemed, and every thing was taught there but a knowledge of religion, adapted to those, who do not, immediately, study theology. Such lectures) as might have opened the religious eyes of the students of law, physic, and philology, had never been held there since the foundation of the University! Henry, therefore, heard nothing but what he could hear as a philologist, viz. philosophy. The man who lectured upon this science of science was celebrated and orthodox also, and had on this account been presented by the pious curators of the University, in preference to many others, with the professorship of philosophy. He belonged to the school of SCHELLING. Henry was, therefore, not a little astonished, when he heard demonstrated, in a philosophical manner, from the nature of the Absolute, all that the instructor of his youth had impressed upon him, concerning the Trinity, both natures of Christ, hereditary sin, by which the whole human race has apostatized from God, and has become liable to eternal condemnation; concerning the necessity of atonement by a God-man; and that Christianity is nothing else but an institution of expiation. and 959dbe pon bib odw Is to goril

Schelling is a disciple of Hichte, and is now secretary of the Royal Academy of Belle Lettres at Munich. He has established a new system of philosophy, entitled the Philosophy of the Absolute. He has chosen his Terminology in an arbitrary manner, and often attaches his own ideas to terms, which, in common language, have a very different meaning. His philosophy has, therefore, been misunderstood even by his own pupils. "Jeind ) in somalado aft of girvi. Ая

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1

The Professor did, certainly, not mean it as it sounded to the ears When he spoke of God, he only meant the Absolute; when he discoursed of the union of the Godhead with manhood, he only understood the idea of the Absolute in the human brain; when he lamented the great apostacy of man through hereditary sin, he only meant apostacy from the Absolute Essence, which had taken place through the arrogance of man in wishing to become an individual, a person in the Absolute; and when he praised the atonement, he only intended man's renunciation of his own personality. But all this was unintelligible to the pupil. Henry thought that, when the Professor spoke of God, of original and hereditary sin, of atonement, and the like, he could mean nothing else by these terms but what his old instructor had intended by them. He certainly did not understand how all this harmonised with philosophy. But he only admired it the more, and believed the more firmly, that a most excellent kernel must be concealed in the nut, whose shell was too hard only for his youthful tooth, And the more his told teacher had impressed upon him the falsely translated words of the Lutheran Bi ble, that we should bring into captivity reason to the obedience of faith, the more exalted human reason appeared in his present instructor, that it could, notwithstanding its corruption, still attain to the divine mysteries, and demonstrate so clearly their necessity. 9dThis instruction was not without fruit. Henry was morally disposed when he left his father's house, but he now became a rigid advocate for the Lutheran doctrines of hereditary sin, satisfaction, and faith, and thought that no man could be a Christian, or have any religion at all, who did not adhere firmly to these doctrines.

As the preachers of the town did not enter into

awo id esdostis none hos 19nson vidis mai volobimist vid -*m2 Conlx. 5. More correctly rendered in our English translation, and in that of Van Ess in German, “Bringing every thought into capi tivity to the obedience of Christ." aliqug awe

this system of his instructor, and did not, in their discourses, treat of original sin before all conscious ness, and the guilt of our apostacy from God; or, at least, did not expatiate upon these subjects according to Henry's views, he repaired rather to a chapel of the Moravians that was in the town, where their melodious singing and external devotion powerfullý -attracted him. staid Sequbai atdT Original sin, satisfaction, and saving faith, were the foundation of all he heard and saw here. But it was not clear to him, or it was good-naturedly overlooked by him, that they attached here any other ideas to these terms than those which were contained in the philosophy of the Absolute. He often mentioned, in his letters to his father, the satisfaction which he felt in this chapel. His father had, certainly, many objections to the Moravians, which he did not conceal from his son; but he was glad to find him religiously disposed, and he thought his inclinations towards the Moravians a sufficient safe-guard against that mode of thinking, which a rigid advocate for orthodoxy had rendered suspicious to him, under the name of Rationalism; as capable of undermining and destroying Biblical Christianity, on which every good Christian ought immoveably to rest.

The natural consequence of this direction of Henry's mind was, that he became more inclined to melancholy and religious anxiety than to the cheerfulness of a virtuous life. The idea, ever present to his mind, that the whole human race has apostatized from God, and can only be preserved from eternal damnation through the mediation of a God-man, and that all must inevitably sink into the gulf of perdition who do not cling, with a firm faith, to this Mediator, made him anxious and melancholy: the reflection that the world is nothing but a sinful opposition to God, threw a gloomy shade over all nature, and made him suspect even the innocent emotion of natural impulse.

With this disposition of mind, it was natural that