6. In my former essay I stated that the Spirit did not renew men by mere moral power. and gave this illustration. A person wishes to carry a certain point with his neighbor. He expresses all the arguments he has to offer on this point. His neighbor attends to the arguments, and fully comprehends them. This being the case, the person according to Mr. Campbell's theory, has not only exerted, but developed his whole moral power. He can do no more. Suppose this point carried to an important duty which the neighbor hates to do, and is unwilling to do, notwithstanding he his convinced he ought to do it. Is he changed? No, his disposition remains the same. He will not do it. How is this man to be made willing? All moral power is at an end.

Mr. Campbell replies to this by saying that it assumes two positions which have never been proved. 1. That a sinner may fully comprehend all the arguments of the Holy Spirit, addressed as they are to the whole moral nature of man, feel all his moral power in his understanding, conscience, and heart, and that to full conviction too, and still remain an enemy, alienated and indisposed.

"2. That a power not moral can work upon disposition; or what is the same thing, that disposition may be changed without an object, without motive, without moral considerations."

Now it appears to me that Mr. Campbell has not only misconceived my argument, but has taken for granted the very point in debate. I have not assumed either of the positions stated. I have not for a moment supposed that a sinner may feel all the force of divine truth in his conscience and heart, and sti!! remain an enemy. For all that Mr. Campbell knows to the contrary, this may involve the very influence for which I plead, an influence of the Spirit which gives such efficiency to divine truth as to affect the conscience and the heart of the sinner, and cause him to feel all the force of truth, and without which he would not feel its force. When he supposes that a sinner's understanding of the arguments of the Holy Spirit is necessarily connected with his feeling the force of those arguments in his conscience and his heart, he assumes what he cannot prove, and as I shall show presently, he assumes a position which the gospel does not sustain.

Again, I have not assumed the position that the disposition of a sinner may be changed without an object, without motive, without moral considerations. All these are employed by the Holy Spirit in renewing men. This has been fully admitted in speaking of the instrumentality. But because the Spirit uses object, motive, moral consideration, adapted to the moral nature of man, does it follow that he possesses no power to give a peculiar efficiency to these means? Neither of these positions grow out of my argument, and consequently the argument itself is unanswered.

But here let me observe that Mr. Campbell evades the force of my argument. He makes disposition to mean nothing more than an exercise. In my argument it is the foundation or basis of an exercise. It is the depraved state of the heart. It is true that it is exer. cised only in view of an object, but that exercise displays its enmity to the object in every instance. The first exercise of that disposition towards God and holiness is one of aversion. Does Mr. Campbell deny the entire depravity of human nature?-the entire want of conformity and love to God in the disposition of every sinner? My view is substantially expressed by the Rev John Harris, illustrating the nature of the Spirit's influence.He says, "The same truth appears in another original statement of Christ, declarative of the means by which the Holy Spirit should operate on the mind. He shall take of mine and show it unto you.' Sin is the disease and derangement of the soul, in consequence of which the understanding fails to discharge its appointed function on the heart. The eye of a corpse as long as its transparency remains unimpaired, will receive the picture of an object on the retina as well as if the organ were living; but there is no corresponding impression produced on the brain. So religion may be easily imported into the understanding, but then it has ceased to be a medium of conveyance to the heart; the cominunication between them is obstructed, and we have the mortification of finding that to obtain the assent of one, is no security whatever for the concurrence of the other. To produce this essential coincidence between the understanding and the heart is the province of the Spirit alone."

LYND ON THE HOLY SPIRIT.

55

Mr. Campbell says, "Show me the man living who has fully attended to the whole argument of the Holy Spirit, and who fully comprehends it, and yet is indisposed." But I am not bound by the argument to produce this case. If every person who has fully attended to the arguments of the Holy Spirit, and who fully comprehends them, is a renewed person, that will not settle the question whether he became such by the mere exhibition of truth, or by an influence superadded to the truth.

He observes further that "the arguments of the Holy Spirit are addressed not only to the head, but to the heart. They are not mere light, but love. They speak to the understanding, the conscience, the affections.' I can readily conceive that arguments may be address. ed to the understanding, and I can suppose too that the understanding may misapprehend the arguments; but I cannot conceive how the understanding, when it is addressed may misapprehend the arguments, and yet that the conscience and the affections when address. ed always comprehend and feel their force. The conscience and the affections can be addressed in no other way than through the understanding; and when this is perfectly satisfied, the conscience and affections, according to his view, are satisfied and move in harmony with it.

Let it be remembered that when he speaks of full conviction or full persuasion, he means that the understanding fully approves, and that the conscience and heart feel the full force of divine truth. He considers all this necessary to the entire development of the moral power of the Spirit, "provided always, that the argument of the Spirit is understood." It would puzzle the strongest intellect on earth to analyze this language.Sufficient, however, may be gathered from what he has said to mark the prominent features of his system.

One of the prominent features of his system is this,-to be fully convinced is to be fully disposed. He says, "A fully convinced person, yet remaining indisposed, very much resembles a white crow or a black swan. I should like to see one." I should be sorry to have him go where he might see one, but I can tell him of one. Judas was fully convinced that he had done wrong in betraying innocent blood, and yet he was indisposed to return by true repentance to God. I grant he had a disposition, but it was to suicide. The principle is not correct, that every man who understands the arguments of the Holy Spirit must of necessity have a disposition to obey the Holy Spirit. There is no common sense, no philosophy in it. It assumes that no man ever lived who fully knew his duty in any given case, and was indisposed to do it. It denies the possibility of being led away into sin by the temptations of the devil and the desires of the flesh. On this principle David was not fully convinced that he was doing wrong when he committed adultery with Bathsheba, and then caused her husband to be slain. Peter did not know that he was doing wrong when he denied his Lord. Who believes it? Jesus Christ himself is at issue with Mr. Campbell here; for he teaches that the servant who knows his Lord's will, and does it not, shall be beaten with many stripes. This principle has no relative proportions, as all correct principles have. Mark the connexion between holiness and happiness; between obedience to God, and his blessing. He who is perfectly holy, is perfectly happy. But it is also true that in proportion to the degree of holiness below perfection, is the happiness enjoyed. Just in proportion to our obedience to God is the blessing we enjoy, and he who obeys perfectly, is perfectly blessed. If he who understands the entire arguments, motives or moral consideratisns, presented by the Holy Spirit, of necessity feels the full force of them in his heart and conscience, then in proportion to his knowledge must be his disposition to obey; but this not the fact.

Mr. Campbell himself cannot give full credence to his own theory; for if he could he would never make a distinction between fully comprehending the arguments of the Holy Spirit, and feeling all the force of truth in the conscience and heart. Ile cannot believe that tight in the understanding is sufficient to dispose the heart aright, or he would not have reminded me that the arguments of the Spirit are not only light, but love. Besides, if it be true that when a person is fully convinced he is necessarily fully disposed, then all that is necessary to his conversion is to enlighten his mind. All that is wanted is light. If all that is necessary to the renew ing of a sinner, and this is all that is necessary upon

56

LYND ON THE HOLY SPIRIT.

Mr. Campbell's theory, is light in the understanding, then all the aid of the Holy Spirit that is required, is to the understanding. It cannot be questioned for a moment by a dispassionate reasoner that divine influence is absolutely necessary to the salvation of every sinner who is saved, and also to the exercise of faith in Christ as the medium of justification. What further proof is needed than the language of Christ furnishes. “No man can come to me, except the Father, which hath sent me, draw him." Here is inability to come to Christ, and inability that must be removed by the Spirit of God. But it is a moral impotency, expressed in another place by the words "Ye will not come to me." It is the disposition of the soul, the entire depravity of the heart, that causes the difficulty, and not any defect in the understanding. Men are so opposed to Christ that they will never come to him or believe in him unless they are drawn. There is no relish for spiritual good in the soul; and while this want of relish continues, no exhibition of the truth will diminish their aversion.

It will be perceived by the reader that some difficulty is created upon this subject from the use or application of certain terms. In my essay I had observed that we were ac. quainted with but two kinds of power among men, physical and moral. I had defined physical power, as that power which we mean by the word force, and in this sense repudiated the use of physical power in the change of a sinner's heart. In the use of the term moral, it will be recollected that I used it altogether in the sense which Mr. C. had given o it, the power which we possess to influence mind by motive and argument. He contends that all the moral power which a man possesses is in his words or arguments, and that all the moral power which the Holy Spirit can exert upon the mind of a sinner is in the words of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, following out Mr. Campbell's definition in his dialogue, I maintained that the change of a sinner's heart is not the result of the mere power contained in the words of the Holy Spirit. I maintain this still, and say that the influence of the Spirit in renewing is more than this. Let it be admitted then that all the power in the universe is exhausted by the terms moral and physical; still were we to enter the metaphysics of this subject, we should probably in the end be as wide apart as the poles. We may call all that power moral which acts upon mînd, and all that power physical which operates upon matter.

We can operate upon the minds of men only by words, motives, or arguments. Thus far our idea of moral power is definite. But when we think of the Holy Spirit suggesting to a whole assembly, at the same instant, the same thoughts and the same expressions, as Mr. C. says he did in primitive times, we are lost. Our views of moral power become indefinite, just as the notion which a mariner has of the depth of the ocean, when having let out all his sounding line he fails to reach the bottom. Of the length of his line he has a positive idea; but of the depth of the ocean beyond that he has not a distinct idea. He only knows that it is something beyond the length of his line. Mr. Campbell may contend that it is after all moral power. But then his argument is good for nothing, for there is a inoral power in the case just specified that goes beyond the mere words and arguments printed in the Bible; the power of suggestion without words or signs.

But it is not necessary to enter into an investigation of these terms. As to any physica agency which implies force or which implies an operation upon the heart, independently of what are termed moral means, I do repudiate. But whether the power by which God changes the heart is physical in another sense, or moral, I have not determined. Suffice it to repeat that when I said the change of a sinner's heart was not by mere moral power, I had solely in view the position of Mr. Campbell that all the moral power of the Holy Spirit is in his words and arguments printed in the Bible. And I say that we are at issue upon the thing itself, not upon the word. The thing itself, according to the position o Mr. Campbell, is, that no other power is exerted upon the mind of a sinner in his sanctifica than that of the written word. This is his meaning, or he means nothing.

[TO BE CONTINUed.]

DID we yet need any new evidence of the perfect inutility of Mr. Lynd's theory of conversion, we certainly have it in the very striking

and splendid incomprehensibility which he always throws around it in his most successful efforts to elucidate it. In the first paragraph above quoted in extenuation of his former acknowledgments, or perhaps we should say in illustration of his design in stating the incomprehensibility of his views, he very philosophically asks, "Is it less true because it is above our comprehension?" He adds, "Then suppose we cannot form a clear idea of the nature of the Spirit's influence, will this prove that no such influence exists?" It neither indeed can prove nor disprove it! But the question is, unintentionally I presume, changed in the above remarks. We both admit that such an influence exists. We agree in the fact and in the instrumentality of a sinner's conversion by the Holy Spirit; and therefore the controversy is not about the fact, but about the proper understanding of it. Mr. Lynd says I "virtually" deny the fact. But this Mr. Virtually is a constructive being, often the creature of intolerance, prejudice, and bigotry: and for him to plead that his failure to make my "virtually denying it" comprehensible, does not disprove the fact, (for this is the true state of the case,) is certainly a singular demonstration of the truth of so serious a charge. Like poor "Austin, who had no intellect of his own,” Mr. Lynd cannot speak intelligibly on a subject which he does not understand.

1

Now be it observed, that both the quotation from the dialogue which gave rise to these remarks, and the remarks upon it by Mr. Lynd, are wholly irrelevant to the real point at issue. Mr. Lynd seems not to perceive that what is no argument against a man's faith, may be an insuperable objection to his theory:-for example, we all believe many facts, whose meaning is now, and may always be to us, incomprehen. ble; but no man can admit an incomprehensible theory. The incomprehensibility of a fact cannot nullify it; but the incomprehensibility of a theory always does. Thus a man may reasonably believe what he cannot comprehend; but no mortal ever can admit an explanation or a theory which he does not comprehend. We can easily believe the fact that Jesus, at the marriage in Cana of Galilee, converted water into wines while it is impossible for any man to understand or explain the process of that conversion. Now as this is a controversy about views, and not about facts; for Mr. Lynd to plead that because men may believe what they cannot comprehend, therefore they ought to admit what they cannot understand, is singularly, though I doubt not, unintentially, sophistical and deceptious. This simple statement of a very plain matter, fully, in my judgment, refutes the whole essay now before us, so far as it is an exposition of Mr. Lynd's views of the Spirit's influence in renewing and sanctifying sinners. I reject his views because they are anintelligible; or, in his own words, incomprehensible; and cannot

admit his defence of himself by telling me that because I believe what I cannot comprehend, therefore I ought to understand and admit what I cannot comprehend. That this is the true state of the controversy, I doubt not the sequel will fully and satisfactorily evince.

Having now, as we judge, really and essentially transfixed the whole theory of my friend Mr. Lynd, I shall, in reviewing all that he has written, do little more than corroborate the above most fundamental distinction between admitting an incomprehensible fact and an incomprehensible theory. The reader will please carry with him to the end of this discussion,-that to believe a fact he has only to apprehend its evidence; but before he can perceive the truth of a theory, he must comprehend its meaning!

Mr. Lynd next proceeds to defend so much of his theory as is comprehended in the allegation that "the Spirit does not renew men by mere moral power." On the metaphysics of this question he has given us several columns of details; and in the first place makes a very spirited assault upon one of my former arguments against his theory. My argument was, that all moral power consists in motives; and that when all the arguments which a person has to offer in reference to any duty or action are stated, illustrated, and applied to their full extent of signification, then, but not till then, has he expended his whole moral power. The scriptures contain all the motives which the Spirit of God has to offer to sinful man; consequently they contain all his moral power:

HENCE NO CHRISTIAN ON EARTH CAN MENTION A SINGLE MORAL ARGUMENT OR MOTIVE WHICH INFLUENCES HIM THAT IS NOT WRITTEN IN THE BIBLE.

In my illustrations of this important point, I affirmed that all these motives are addressed to the moral nature of man. They are not fully understood until they have reached those parts of the moral nature of man to which they are severally addressed. This Mr. Lynd calls a begging of the question, or as taking for granted the very question in debate. If that be the fact, then it will follow that it is much more a controversy about the meaning of some two or three words, than I hitherto dared to imagine or represent it.

To "fully comprehend" a moral argument is, in my estimation, to perceive and feel its meaning. Mr. Lynd is of a contrary opinion. In his view, a person may fully understand a moral argument addressed to the conscience, and yet not be convicted of sin; he may fully comprehend the obligations of the love of God, and feel no love in his heart; he may have the fullest comprehension of the hatefulness of sin, and yet not hate it; and he may clearly perceive the loveliness of a character, and not be enamored with it. Now had he said that a person may, in some sense, perceive, or know, or understand his duty, and neither lik