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directory of our faith, and claims a total the human mind deserted its guidance, and ascendency over the souls and the under- rambled as much as ever in quest of new standings of men. It will enter into no speculations. It is true, that they took a composition with us, or our natural princi-juster and loftier flight since the days of ples. It challenges the whole mind as its Heathenism. But it was only because they due, and it appeals to the truth of heaven walked in the light of revelation. They for the high authority of its sanctions. borrowed of the New Testament without "Whosoever addeth to, or taketh from, the acknowledgment, and took its beauties and words of this book, is accursed," is the abso- its truths to deck their own wretched fanlute language in which it delivers itself. cies and self-constituted systems. In the This brings us to its terms. There is no process of time, the delusion multiplied and way of escaping after this. We must bring extended. Schools were formed, and the every thought into the captivity of its obe- ways of the Divinity were as confidently dience, and as closely as ever lawyer stuck theorized upon, as the processes of chemisto his document or his extract, must we try, or the economy of the heavens. Univerabide by the rule and the doctrine which sities were endowed, and natural theology this authentic memorial of God sets be- took its place in the circle of the sciences. fore us. Folios were written, and the respected luNow we hazard the assertion, that with minaries of a former age poured their a a number of professing Christians, there is priori and their a posteriori demonstranot this unexcepted submission of the un- tions on the world. Taste, and sentiment, derstanding to the authority of the Bible; and imagination, grew apace; and every and that the authority of the Bible is often raw untutored principle which poetry could modified, and in some cases superseded by clothe in prettiness, or over which the hand the authority of other principles. One of of genius could throw the graces of sensithese principles is the reason of the thing. bility and elegance, was erected into a prinWe do not know if this principle would be ciple of the divine government, and made at all felt or appealed to by the earliest to preside over the counsels of the Deity. Christians. It may perhaps by the dispu- In the mean time, the Bible which ought to tations or the philosophising among con- supersede all, was itself superseded. It was verted Jews and Greeks, but not certainly quite in vain to say that it was the only by those of whom Paul said, that "not authentic record of an actual embassy which many wise men after the flesh, not many God had sent into the world. It was quite mighty, not many noble, were called." in vain to plead its testimonies, its miracles, They turned from dumb idols to serve the and the unquestionable fulfilment of its proliving and the true God. There was nothing phecies. These mighty claims must lie in their antecedent theology which they over, and be suspended, till we have settled could have any respect for: nothing which-what? the reasonableness of its doctrines. they could confront, or bring into compe- We must bring the theology of God's amtition with the doctrines of the New Testa-bassador to the bar of our self-formed thement. In those days, the truth as it is in ology. The Bible, instead of being admitted Jesus came to the mind of its disciples, re- as the directory of our faith upon its extercommended by its novelty, by its grandeur, nal evidences, must be tried upon the merits by the power and recency of its evidences, of the work itself; and if our verdict be and above all by its vast and evident supe- favorable, it must be brought in, not as a riority over the fooleries of a degrading Pa- help to our ignorance, but as a corollary to ganism. It does not occur to us, that men our demonstrations. But is this ever done? in these circumstances would ever think of Yes! by Dr. Samuel Clarke, and a whole sitting in judgment over the mysteries of host of followers and admirers. Their first that sublime faith which had charmed them step in the process of theological study, is into an abandonment of their earlier reli- to furnish their minds with the principles gion. It rather strikes us, that they would of natural theology. Christianity, before receive them passively; that, like scholars its external proofs are looked at or listened who had all to learn, they would take their to, must be brought under the tribunal of lesson as they found it; that the information these principles. All the difficulties which of their teachers would be enough for them; attach to the reason of the thing, or the fitand that the restless tendency of the human ness of the doctrines, must be formally dismind to speculation, would for a time find am-cussed, and satisfactorily got over. A voice ple enjoyment in the rich and splendid discoveries, which broke like a flood of light upon the world. But we are in different circumstances. To us, these discoveries, rich and splendid as they are, have lost the freshness of novelty. The sun of righteousness, like the sun of the firmament, has become familiarized to us by possession. In a few ages,

was heard from heaven, saying of Jesus Christ, "This is my beloved Son, hear ye him." The men of Galilee saw him ascend from the dead to the heaven which he now occupies. The men of Galilee gave their testimony; and it is a testimony which stood the fiery trial of persecution in a former age, and of sophistry in this. And

yet, instead of hearing Jesus Christ as dis- | system moved in orbits which are purely ciples, they sit in authority over him as circular, we would oppose to him the objudges. Instead of forming their divinity servations and measurements of astronomy. after the Bible, they try the Bible by their Were he to tell us, that in winter the sun antecedent divinity; and this book, with all never shone, and that in summer no cloud its mighty train of evidences, must drivel ever darkened the brilliancy of his career, in their anti-chambers, till they have pro- we would oppose to him the certain renounced sentence of admission, when they membrances, both of ourselves and of our have got its doctrines to agree with their whole neighbourhood. Were he to tell us, own airy and unsubstantial speculations. that we were perfect men, because we were free from passion, and loved our neighbours as ourselves, we should oppose to him the history of our own lives, and the deeplyseated consciousness of our own infirmities. On all these subjects, we can confront him; but when he brings truth from a quarter which no human eye ever explored; when he tells us the mind of the Deity, and brings before us the counsels of that invisible Being, whose arm is abroad upon all worlds, and whose views reach to eternity, he is beyond the ken of eye or of telescope, and we must submit to him. We have no more right to sit in judgment over his information, than we have to sit in judgment over the information of any other visitor, who lights upon our planet, from some distant and unknown part of the universe, and tells us what worlds roll in those remote tracts which are beyond the limits of our astronomy, and how the Divinity peoples them with wonders. Any previous conceptions of ours are of no more value than the fooleries of an infant; and should we offer to resist or to modify upon the strength of these conceptions, we would be as unsound and as unphilosophical as ever schoolman was with his categories, or Cartesian with his whirlpools of ether.

We do not condemn the exercise of reason in matters of theology. It is the part of reason to form its conclusions, when it has data and evidences before it. But it is equally the part of reason to abstain from its conclusions, when these evidences are wanting. Reason can judge of the external evidences for Christianity, because it can discern the merits of human testimony: and it can perceive the truth or the falsehood of such obvious credentials as the performance of a miracle, or the fulfilment of a prophecy. But reason is not entitled to sit in judgment over those internal evidences, which many a presumptuous theologian has attempted to derive from the reason of the thing, or from the agreement of the doctrine with the fancied character and attributes of the Deity. One of the most useful exercises of reason, is to ascertain its limits, and to keep within them; to abandon the fields of conjecture, and to restrain itself within that safe and certain barrier which forms the boundary of human experience. However humiliating you may conceive it, it is this which lies at the bottom of Lord Bacon's philosophy, and it is to this that modern science is indebted for all her solidity, and all her triumphs. Why does philosophy flourish in our days? Because her votaries have learned to abandon their own creative speculations, and to submit to evidence, let her conclusions be as painful and as unpalatable as they will. Now all that we want, is to carry the same lesson and the same principle into theology. Our business is not to guess, but to learn. After we have established Christianity to be an authentic message from God upon those historical grounds on which the reason and experience of man entitle him to form his conclusions, nothing remains for us, but an unconditional surrender of the mind to the subject of the message. We have a right to sit in judgment over the credentials of heaven's ambassador, but we have no right to sit in judgment over the information he gives us. We have no right either to refuse or to modify that information, till we have accommodated it to our previous conceptions.

Let us go back to the first Christians of the Gentile world. They turned from dumb idols to serve the living and the true God. They made a simple and entire transition from a state as bad, if not worse, than that of entire ignorance, to the Christianity of the New Testament. Their previous conceptions instead of helping them, behoved to be utterly abandoned; nor was there that intermediate step which so many of us think to be necessary, and which we dignify with the name of the rational theology of nature. In those days this rational theology was unheard of; nor have we the slightest reason to believe that they were initiated into its doctrines, before they were looked upon as fit to be taught the peculiarities of the Gospel. They were translated at once from the absurdities of Paganism to that Christianity which has come down to us in the records of the evangelical history, and the epistles which their teachers adIt is very true that if the truths which he dressed to them. They saw the miracles; delivered lay within the field of human ob- they acquiesced in them, as satisfying creservation, he brings himself under the tri-dentials of an inspired teacher; they took bunal of our antecedent knowledge. Were the whole of their religion from his mouth; he to tell us, that the bodies of the planetary their faith came by hearing, and hearing

the alone directory of our faith, where we can get the whole will of God for the salvation of man.

by the words of a divine messenger. This was their process, and it ought to be ours. We do not see the miracles, but we see their reality through the medium of that clear But is not this an enlightened age? and, and unsuspicious testimony which has been since the days of the Gospel, has not the handed down to us. We should admit them wisdom of two thousand years accumulated as the credentials of an embassy from God. upon the present generation? has not sciWe should take the whole of our religion ence been enriched by discovery? and is from the records of this embassy; and, re- not theology one of the sciences? Are the nouncing the idolatry of our own self-form- men of this advanced period to be restrained ed conceptions, we should repair to that from the high exercise of their powers? word which was spoken to them that heard and, because the men of a remote and barit, and transmitted to us by the instrumen-barous antiquity lisped and drivelled in the tality of written language. The question infancy of their acquirements, is that any with them was, What hearest thou? The reason why we should be restricted like so question with us is, What readest thou? They had their idols, and they turned away from them. We have our fancies, and we contend, that, in the face of an authoritative revelation from heaven it is as glaring idolatry in us to adhere to them, as it would be were they spread out upon canvass, or chiselled into material form by the hands of a statuary.

many school-boys to the lesson that is set before us? It is all true that this is a very enlightened age; but on what field has it acquired so flattering a distinction? On the field of experiment. The human mind owes all its progress to the confinement of its efforts within the safe and certain limits of observation, and to the severe restraint which it has imposed upon its speculative tendencies. Go beyond these limits, and the human mind has not advanced a single inch by its own independent exercises. All the philosophy which has been reared by the labour of successive ages, is the philosophy of facts reduced to general laws, or brought under a general description from observed points of resemblance. A proud and wonderful fabric we do allow; but we throw away the very instrument by which it was built, the moment that we cease to observe, and begin to theorise and excogitate. Tell us a single discovery which has thrown a particle of light on the details of the divine administration. Tell us a single truth in the whole field of experimental science, which can bring us to the moral government of the Almighty by any other road than his own revelation.

In the popular religions of antiquity, we see scarcely the vestige of a resemblance to that academical theism which is delivered in our schools, and figures away in the speculations of our moralists. The process of conversion among the first Christians was a very simple one. It consisted of an utter abandonment of their heathenism, and an entire submission to those new truths which came to them through the revelation of the Gospel, and through it only. It was the pure theology of Christ and of his apostles. That theology which struts in fancied demonstration from a professor's chair, formed no part of it. They listened as if they had all to learn: we listen as if it was our office to judge, and to give the message of God its due place and subordination among the principles which we had previously established. Now these principles were ut- Astronomy has taken millions of suns terly unknown at the first publication of and of systems within its ample domain; Christianity. The Galatians, and Corin- but the ways of God to man stand at a disthians, and Thessalonians, and Philippians, tance as inaccessible as ever; nor has it had no conception of them. And yet, will shed so much as a glimmering over the any man say, that either Paul himself, or counsels of that mighty and invisible Being, those who lived under his immediate tui- who sits in high authority over all worlds. tion, had not enough to make them accom- The boasted discoveries of modern science plished Christians, or that they fell short of are all confined to that field, within which our enlightened selves, in the wisdom which the senses of man can expatiate. The moprepares for eternity, because they wanted ment we go beyond this field, they cease to our rational theology as a stepping-stone be discoveries, and are the mere speculato that knowledge which came, in pure and tions of the fancy. The discoveries of modimmediate revelation, from the Son of God? ern science have, in fact, imparted a new The Gospel was enough for them, and it energy to the sentiment in question. They should be enough for us also. Every natu- all serve to exalt the Deity, but they do not ral or assumed principle, which offers to contribute a single iota to the explanation abridge its supremacy, or even so much as of his purposes. They make him greater, to share with it in authority and direction, but they do not make him more compreshould be instantly discarded. Every opi-hensible. He is more shrouded in mystery nion in religion should be reduced to the than ever. It is not himself whom we see, question of, What readest thou? and the it is his workmanship; and every new adBible be acquiesced in, and submitted to, as dition to its grandeur or to its variety,

which philosophy opens to our contempla- | evidence, that a falling stone proceeds from tion, throws our understanding at a greater the eruption of one of those volcanoes, and distance than before, from the mind and the chemistry of the moon will receive conception of the sublime Architect. In- more illustration from the analysis of that stead of the God of a single world, we now stone, than from all the speculations of all see him presiding in all the majesty of his the theorists. It brings the question in part high attributes, over a mighty range of in- within the limits observation. It now be numerable systems. To our little eye he comes a fair subject for the exercise of the is wrapt in more awful mysteriousness, and true philosophy. The eye can now see, every new glimpse which astronomy gives and the hand can now handle it; and the us of the universe, magnifies to the appre- information furnished by the laborious hension of our mind, that impassable bar-drudgery of experimental men, will be rerier which stands between the counsels of ceived as a truer document, than the theory its Sovereign, and those fugitive beings of any philosopher, however ingenious, or who strut their evanescent hour in the however splendid. humblest of its mansions. If this invisible Being would only break that mysterious silence in which he has wrapt himself, we feel that a single word from his mouth, would be worth a world of darkling speculations. Every new triumph which the mind of man achieves in the field of discovery, binds us more firmly to our Bible; and by the very proportion in which philosophy multiplies the wonders of God, do we prize that book, on which the evidence of history has stamped the character of his authentic communication.

The course of the moon in the heavens has exercised astronomers for a long series of ages, and now that they are able to assign all the irregularities of its period, it may be counted one of the most signal triumphs of the modern philosophy.

At the hazard of being counted fanciful, we bring forward the above as a competent illustration of the principle which we are attempting to establish. We do all homage to modern science, nor do we dispute the loftiness of its pretensions. But we maintain, that however brilliant its career in those tracks of philosophy, where it has the light of observation to conduct it, the philosophy of all that lies without the field of observation is as obscure and inaccesible as ever. We maintain, that to pass from the motions of the moon to an unauthorised speculation upon the chemistry of its materials, is a presumption disowned by philosophy. We ought to feel, that it would be a still more glaring transgression of all her maxims, to pass from the brightest discovery in her catalogue, to the ways of The question lay within the limits of the that mysterious Being, whom no eye hath field of observation. It was accessible to seen, and whose mind is capacious as inmeasurement, and, upon the sure principles finity. The splendour and the magnitude of calculation, men of science have brought of what we do know, can never authorise forward the confident solution of a problem, us to pronounce upon what we do not the most difficult and trying that ever was know; nor can we conceive a transition submitted to the human intellect. But let more violent or more unwarrantable, than it never be forgotten, that those very max- to pass from the truths of natural sience to ims of philosophy which guided them so a speculation on the details of God's adminsurely and so triumphantly within the field istration, or on the economy of his moral of observation, also restrained them from government. We hear much of revelations stepping beyond it; and though none were from heaven. Let any one of these bear the more confident than they, whenever they evidence of an actual communication from had evidence and experiment to enlighten God himself, and all the reasonings of all them, yet none were more scrupulous in theologians must vanish, and give place to abstaining to pronounce upon any subject, the substance of this communication. Inwhere evidence and experiment were want- stead of theorising upon the nature and ing. Let us suppose that one of their num- properties of that divine light which irradiber, flushed with the triumph of success, ates the throne of God, and exists at so impassed on from the work of calculating the measurable a distance from our faculties, let periods of the moon, to theorise upon its us point our eyes to that emanation, which chemical constitution. The former ques- has actually come down to us. Instead of tion lies within the field of observation, the theorising upon the counsels of the divine other is most thoroughly beyond it; and mind, let us go to that volume which lightthere is not a man, whose mind is disciplined upon our world nearly two thousand ed to the rigour and sobriety of modern years ago, and which bears the most allscience, that would not look upon the theo-thentic evidence, that it is the depository ry with the same contempt, as if it were the of part of these counsels. Let us apply the dream of a poet, or the amusement of a schoolboy. We have heard much of the moon, and of the volcanoes which blaze upon its surface. Let us have incontestible

proper instrument to this examination. Let us never conceive it to be a work of speculation or fancy. It is a pure work of grammatical analysis. It is an unmixed question

of language. The commentator who opens the act of renouncing its old habits of conthis book with the one hand, and carries his ception. We call upon our readers to have system in the other, has nothing to do with it. manhood and philosophy enough to make We admit of no other instrument than the a similar sacrifice. It is not enough that vocabulary and the lexicon. The man whom the Bible be acknowledged as the only auwe look to is the scripture critic, who can ap-thentic source of information respecting the peal to his authorities for the import and sig- details of that moral economy, which the nificancy of phrases, and whatever be the Supreme Being has instituted for the gostrict result of his patience and profound phi-vernment of the intelligent beings who oclology, we submit to it. We call upon every enlightened disciple of Lord Bacon to approve the steps of this process, and to acknowledge, that the same habits of philosophising to which science is indebted for all her elevation in these latter days, will lead us to cast down all our lofty imaginations, and bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

cupy this globe. Its authenticity must be something more than acknowledged. It must be felt, and, in act and obedience, submitted to. Let us put them to the test. "Verily I say unto you," says our Saviour, "unless a man shall be born again, he shalĺ not enter into the kingdom of God." "By grace ye are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God." But something more remains to be done. "Justified freely by his grace through the The mind may have discernment enough redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom to acquiesce in the speculative justness of a God has set forth to be a propitiation principle; but it may not have vigour or through faith in his blood." We need not consistency enough to put it into execution. multiply quotations; but if there be any reLord Bacon pointed out the method of true pugnance to the obvious truths which we philosophising; yet, in practice, he abandon-have announced to the reader in the laned it, and his own physical investigations may be ranked among the most effectual specimens of that rash and unfounded theorising, which his own principles have banished from the schools of philosophy. Sir Isaac Newton completed in his own person the character of the true philosopher. He not only saw the general principle, but he obeyed it. He both betook himself to the drudgery of observation, and he endured the pain which every mind must suffer in

guage of the Bible, his mind is not yet tutored to the philosophy of the subject. It may be in the way, but the final result is not yet arrived at. It is still a slave to the elegance or the plausibility of its old specnlations; and though it admits the principle, that every previous opinion must give way to the supreme authority of an actual communication from God, it wants consistency and hardihood to carry the principle into accomplishment.