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ceive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in Christ. Among those, therefore, upon whom the gospel has produced this identity of moral effect, there should be a harmony of feeling and purpose. It is utterly preposterous that they should stop to contend about differences of opinion, peculiarities of genius and constitutional character or the different modes of operating to which they give rise, or any thing else which does not amount to a denial of the authenticity of the Scriptures,their explicit statements, or their perfection as a system of faith and duty.

The cursory view which we have taken of this subject, will enable us to perceive that mistaken notions concerning the degree of uniformity which the gospel is adapted to produce, and upon which it requires us to insist, do much to excite and perpetuate those dissensions among true christians, which, for so many ages, have done discredit to the holy name by which they are called.

CHAPTER II.

Religious Philosophizing.

We are aware that our subject is conducting us through a field of discussion that may seem tedious and uninteresting. But it is only by descending to the latent causes of the present divided state of the religious world and spreading them before the view of those whose business it is to make it otherwise, that the way can be opened to a better state of things. As the same soil gives support to poisonous and nutritive plants, so religious systems and measures as different from each other as can well be conceived, will be found to derive their existence and nourishment from the same general principle. When that principle, therefore, is annihilated its dependences may be expected to disappear. And it is our own opinion (and we trust we also have the spirit of Jesus Christ,) that no permanent and healthful adjustment of our differences can take place, till we submit to the labor of examining minutely and dispassionately into the principles from which they take their rise. In this way we shall probably find means of obviating those, (and they are the most of them) which are in themselves reprehensible.

The practice of philosophizing upon religion, to the consideration of which we now come, may require a more elaborate attention than either the ability of the writer or the inclination of the reader will admit. Being, however, in our view the pregnant source of most of the evils of our present religious

condition, we see not how we can do justice to our subject in passing it over. And though the historical details, and the allusions to men and systems, which seem wholly unavoidable in doing any thing like justice to our subject, may do much to give variety and interest to a discussion naturally dry and difficult, yet, we fear they may do still more to disgust those readers with whose views or prejudices they may interfere. We must, therefore, entreat this class to hear us with patience, to judge with candor, and to remember that nothing of this kind is said which was not deemed indispensable in making the principles of our work clear, appropriate to the state of the world, and available to purposes of utility.

Our remarks upon the practice of philosophizing upon religion will be chiefly confined to the following topics-attempts to reconcile the facts of the Bible among themselves—to modify them by the other materials of our knowledge-to ascertain their import by appealing to abstract philosophy or connecting them with the metaphysics—or resting our understanding of them, not so much upon philological investigations, as upon our sense of what would be adapted to subserve the best results.

SECTION I.

Attempts to reconcile the facts of the Bible among themselves.

The portions of universal truth which God has subjected to human inspection, or which are capable of being compressed within the grasp of our minds, are too limited and detached to admit of our tracing out their harmonious connection among themselves. The attempt to do it would be as fruitless as that of a school boy to discover, by walking through a splendid factory, the mutual play of every wheel and cog and band and other implement of the complicated machinery by which cotton is reared into a fabric for human use. Yea, no comparison of this kind can meet the case in hand. For, when immensity is the laboratory, and the suns, planets and satellites of innumerable systems make up the visible machinery, which is operated upon by spiritual natures

"The least of whom could wield these elements
And arm him with the force of all their regions,"

who are too mighty to be conceived, and too remote from the media of our knowledge for eye to see or ear to hear, or heart to understand; when this august, this stupendous and illimitable field of truth is laid open to us, what can we know, what can we do? Our tardy powers could not accomplish during an age like that of Methuselah, so much as to name the separate topics of inquiry, each of which would open to a range of exhaustless investigation.

But with all the circumstances which now limit our research and fetter our aspiring knowledge, how much reason have even our Newtons to exclaim from the sublimity of their elevation, "we have been mere children gathering pebbles upon the shore of the vast ocean of knowledge." The truths which the wisest

of us have gleaned from this illimitable field exist in fragments and parcels, which we are no more able to trace out in their connections, than we are to grasp the mighty whole. Why these truths should be thus and so, or how they are linked among themselves, is a vast profound in whose attenuated atmosphere our, cumbrous means of knowledge will not a moment sustain our flight. We cannot proceed an inch towards the solution of these inquiries. As Lord Bacon observes, "The subtlety of nature far exceeds that of sense and understanding, so that our researches at every point leave much more unknown, and the conjectures which we are so apt to form about the unknown part, doubtless appear to those qualified to judge of it as a species of madness.*

Now, these remarks are as true in their applicacation to what God has condescended to make known to us by express revelation, as to any other department of knowledge. It is presumptuous in the highest degree to attempt a reconciliation of the separate facts of revelation among themselves; for they are of such a nature that there is an inherent impossibility that minds constituted as ours are, should be able to discover the links which unite them into one harmonious and perfect whole. Before this can be done, God must so alter the model of our being, that we may be able to take in a much wider range of conceptions.

As an illustration of these remarks, take the two facts, both of which are repeatedly stated in the Scriptures, that the death of Christ, as to its time, manner, means of accomplishment, and all attending circumstances occurred in accordance with the previous determination and express decree of God; and yet, that those who were concerned in putting him to death were in all respects as criminal as if no such

Novum Orgamum.

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