tract it from the pure fountain of inspiration. We would speak with caution on this point; because where these diaries stand on broad ground, and are not used to gloze over the system to which those who penned them were attached, they are doubtless adapted to do great good. We have only to say, that there are important reasons, why they should not be allowed to supplant the devotional language to which God has affixed his own impress. The prominent reason for this is, that they are fallible productions, and cannot be as safely trusted. There are too many of them which abound in a sickly sentimentalism; besides being strongly tinctured with the workings of a nervous or hectic constitution. Those who read them may be seized with the pious desire of modeling their feelings on the same scale, when a difference of physical constitution might render it impossible. But, not duly considering this, they would probably reproach themselves for their apathy, and thus nourish in their hearts much causeless pain and grief. Few are able to distinguish between those feelings expressed in our biographies, which might be traced to the progress of insidious disease, and those which are purely the fruit of the pious affections. While we continue this reading to some extent, therefore, we ought to draw more largely upon the devotional language of Scripture.

It is with these, as with the promissory phenomena: we shall probably find in their application to the various states of religious experience, such as arise in times of spiritual elevation or depression,-of fear or confidence, of joy or grief,-of temptation, or deliverance, of repentance or pardon, of despondency or hope, the most convenient basis for their classification. What a rich collection of matter may we secure, by thus going through with all the inspirpassages that apply to those various states which arise, one after another, from the first pulsations of

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divine life in the soul, till its final consummation in heaven! What a rich abundance of spiritual food might we glean in this manner, adapted to all the cravings of pious desire, and every way suited to make christians grow up into Christ in all things.

We have a specimen of what might thus be done, in the devotional parts of some of the older prayer-books and formularies; in which not a few pious men, up to this day, breathe to heaven their desires. Could the sectarianism of these old decoctions be expunged, so that nothing should be left but their devotional arrangement of scriptural passages, they would be alike appropriate to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ, and would scatter unmixed blessings over the spiritual family. Even while compounded, as they now are, with human inventions and impure matter, they will probably long remain, like honey to bees, however mixed with dirt, a point of attraction to pious feeling; and their sweet odor will cause not a few truly devotional hearts to hover around. when will man cease to give currency to his own inventions by gilding them with God's truth? When will he cease to prop the structures which his own hands have reared, with the pillars of the spiritual kingdom?

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These hints at a plan of classification, crude and imperfect as they are in most of their features, may serve as an example of what might be done, to reduce the inspired phenomena, which are spread out before us like those of nature, according to no perceptible rules, to an order and arrangement, which would render their sense much easier of access and more available, than they can be in our present promiscuous mode of contemplating them. Let our theological investigations from the Sunday School scholar, up to the hoary divine, be conducted wholly on these principles, as they now are to some extent, and we might hope in time to throw ourselves beyond

the wake of most of those influences, by which our present controversies are incensed and perpetuated.

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Let our biblical literature, also, be thus constructed with reference to bringing the subject-matter of Scripture, as disconnected from foreign admixtures, into contact with the mind, on the plan of " comparing spiritual things with spiritual; and let all hands be employed in bringing to view, in a plain manner, the parts which should bear upon each in a judicious arrangement of topics, suited to cover the whole ground; and there is no conceiving the facilities for acquiring divine knowledge, which would in a few years spring up around us. It would be a great, and it might be a difficult work, but still it may be so completely accomplished, provided our hearts and our thinking be suitably weaned from the sources that corrupt our theology, and duly restricted to its only legitimate materials, as to make the sense of Scripture too lucid and too much a matter of common reflection to christians, to admit of any serious divergencies of sentiment among them. It is a work that must be done in parts and parcels, and must employ the careful, protracted, and devout researches not only of many minds, but of minds variously gifted and endowed. Books and teachers, by detailing the results of past discovery and placing the whole inspired subject-matter in the form suggested, may and ought to supersede the labor, on the part of the great mass of learners, of appealing directly to the sacred pages, and pushing their way through, on the strength of their own independent exertions. If it be so left, thousands will never attempt it, but will confine themselves to the ordinary course of cursory reading. The plan thus suggested has this to recommend it, if nothing else; that by confining us so exclusively to the inspired sense, it will secure us against those apprehensions, of misleading or being misled, which a tender conscience must always feel in the treatment of religious subjects.

SECTION V.

Manner of securing inspired thoughts-exemplification of the foregoing principles-their tendency to unite christians.

Barren and imperfect as the foregoing hints may appear, they show how small a portion of the whole field of theology is reached, by the subjects at issue between the Protestant sects. And what is a little curious, this portion is almost exclusively confined to those points concerning which we have no possible means of information, aside from the sense conveyed by the words of the revelation. The three personalities under which God displays himself; the existence and all the features of the plan of mercy; as to when it was devised, for whom intended, how it operates, what agents it calls into requisition, what obligations and duties it imposes, and what is to be its final consummation, together with other items of doctrinal truth which are equally inaccessible to our minds without the aid of revelation, constitute the area of our unavailing polemics. In regard to the preceptive phenomena, also, we are united till we come to external rites, or other duties alike dependant on the language of revelation; but upon these we have exhausted ages of debate. And whatever may be said of the indeterminateness of language, it is impossible to account for these unfortunate diversities of sentiment and practice, on any other principle, than that of the disturbing influence of foreign and irrelevant matter. If we were confined exclusively to the materials, upon which our knowledge of them is based, the portentous fires of controversy would go out for want of fuel to feed them.

It is in vain to plead the importance of these points

in the general scheme, as a justification for bestowing upon them an attention so exclusive; for, after conceding all that is demanded on this score, the question would then recur, whether these most important points, can be perceived in their real attitudes and bearings, without taking into account the whole system of truth of which they form parts? Suppose the slope of a mountain, or a craggy eminence, or a meandering stream were altogether the most important objects of a landscape; could a company of painters do justice to it, if their contention about the light in which to transfer these few objects upon their canvass, should lead them to employ their pencil upon them to the exclusion of every thing else? God has not opened upon us the inspired field of vision, that we may confine our attention to a few of its most important features; but that we may embrace all its lineaments in their due and just proportions.

Nor indeed can the truth be subserved even by taking in the whole, if we do it merely to sustain the favorite positions which we have set up in regard to its leading points. It is no uncommon thing for controvertists to distrain and warp every thing that they can collect, from the whole department of inspiration and from all other sources, so as to make it prop their theory upon a given point. That with them is the measure of all truth, and hence, the more ground they go over, the wider is their work of mutilation and havoc.

Those, therefore, who concur with us, will see the necessity of a simple and natural plan for classifying the matter of Scripture, to take the place of our bodies of divinity, our creeds, our organized modes of religious thinking, and every thing that in fact or in form lies at the basis of our present differences. Whatever of excellence these cherished notions and systems may embody, we shall find in the inspired sense, and their darker features and ingredients we