selves, will perhaps cross their course, and turn the current of public thinking into other channels still; and then they, from being the denouncers, will become the denounced.

No one can imagine the evil that would follow from having all christians fall at once into these new modifications of thought or plans of acting. It would be like throwing all the blood of the human body into one limb. We know of no system which has sprung from the peculiarities of one or two powerful minds, of sufficient breadth and scope to take in all the interests of the spiritual kingdom. If therefore, they were to command the energies of all, other departments of labor would be adandoned, equally, and perhaps much more necessary, to the salvation of the world, than this one can be supposed to be.

Now, in regard to those who think it not their duty to fall in with any new plan, we have this caution to append-be sure and pass it silently by. If it be a good plan and a part of God's own means of virtue to man, it would be a serious thing for you to oppose it and thus be found fighting against God. And if it be a bad plan, the greater the ferment in regard to it which you produce in the public mind, the more evil you will give it the power of doing. The principle now abroad that the way to put down a thing is to say all the evil of it we possibly can, from the pulpit, the press and by more private means, is founded in ignorance of our own natures and of the plainest dictates of experience. We are so constituted that the very fact of a general assault upon any form of belief or practice, turns our sympathies in that direction, and ten to one if they do not become enlisted in favor of the object assailed. This seldom fails to be the result, if we find upon examination that all the evils alledged of it,(and we never undertake to destroy even the worst things by running them down without being betrayed into more or less exaggeration,) are not

founded in fact. Not only so, every measure of this kind gives publicity to the object assailed, brings its claims to view, and so, in more ways than one, promotes what we would annihilate. We think we may challenge the world to show an instance in which what we assert has not been found to be true in fact.

I know that this denunciatory course is thought to find an apology in the preaching of Christ and his apostles. And it is true that the severe things which our Saviour on some occasions said of the rulers and leading sects of his own nation, might be thought to countenance such an idea. But did he say these things for the purpose of effecting their destruction by means of an indignant public sentiment? Nothing can be more foreign from the truth. On the contrary he instructed the multitude saying, "The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses seat: all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say and do not.” And the apostles furnish us not a single example of attempting to overthrow an evil by denouncing it, and in this way operating upon public senti

ment.

So far as adhering faithfully and uniformily to the preaching of Christ and him crucified was striking at the evils of the world, they dealt against them powerful and often repeated blows. But this was their only weapon of universal warfare upon evil. They never in a single instance laid it aside to commence a denunciatory attack upon the existing forms of wickedness.

And did we adhere to their course in this respect, we should not only save ourselves from innumerable and most disgraceful conflicts, but we should have a much more powerful means of gaining the end we profess to seek, than any other which can be employed. Some such considerations would foreclose, we

imagine, not a few of the most unhappy feelings and measures which christians now cherish and adopt in relation to each other, and would turn to account, according to God's own plan, all peculiarities of constitutional character in advancing his cause, instead of making them, as at present, the means of universal blight and disaster.

SECTION II.

Gospel not adapted to produce a uniformity of opinion and judgment.

The gospel may and does often produce such a degree of uniformity as to foreclose all disputatious feeling and conduct. And this was what the apostle intended when he besought his brethren to be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. Not that he expected among them an absolute uniformity of opinion any more than he anticipated an identity of physical conformation; but he looked for such a degree of uniformity and such a spirit of mutual concession in things upon which they might differ, as would lead them to mind and speak the same things.

There are some subjects that do not admit an exercise of judgment or the formation of an opinion. Of this description are mere matters, first of intuition -second, of sensation-and third, of supernatural revelation.

That we exist, that the whole of a thing is greater than a part, that an object cannot be and not be at the same time, that we did not create ourselves, and all similar truths do not admit of an exercise of judgment or the formation of an opinion; for they are known by intuition. In other words, we being as

we are and points of this nature such as they are, our perception of them must necessarily be what it is. And if the perceptions which any two persons have of such matters be different, there is no method by which they could make them similar. Whereas it is necessary to an opinion or judgment that it relate to something which does not strike the mind upon a first view; it is the result at which we arrive by means of a process of reasoning. And of course, by comparing our ideas with those of another person and learning from him our mistakes, or by running over the process a second time in order to detect its errors, we may arrive at a different conclusion and so change our opinion. But there is no way of doing this in regard to the facts of intuition.

The same may be said of mere matters of sensation. There is no method by which the simple impressions which we recieve from the optic, olfactory, gustatory, or other organs of sensation can be made different from what they seem. If these impressions in any individual do not accord with nature nor agree with what they are in other individuals, he has no means of effecting such accordance and agreement. Where is no chance for an intermediate process of reasoning, therefore, and no power of making the first impression of the mind different from what it is, there is no room to form a judgment or opinion.

In like manner, what is purely a matter of supernatural revelation leaves no room for such an intermediate process of reasoning; because the revelation being our only means of knowledge on the subject, there is nothing else with which to compare it, in order to modify or correct our impression concerning it. That there is a mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, that all men became sinners through the sin of one man, that Christ bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we must be born again, that the bodies of all men will be raised from the

grave, and many similar facts are so entirely dependent upon the testimony of the Scriptures, that, on the part of those who admit them to be a revelation from God, there is no room left for forming an opinion or judgment whether they are so or not.

The only opportunity for the exercise of judgment concerning the facts of revelation respects one or the other of two questions, first, whether the Scriptures are a revelation from God, and second, whether the facts which they actually state be thus or otherwise. In settling the claims of the Scriptures to Divine inspiration, and in philological inquiries after the precise truths which they design to communicate, a field is open for such a process of reasoning as is necessary to the formation of a judgment and opinion. But admitting the Scriptures to be a revelation from God, then, what they actually teach should be ranked among the simple elements of our knowledge as much as intuitive truths or the impressions upon our senses. They are both and all alike, not the result of investigation, except so far as may be necessary to the understanding of language, not the products of reasoning, but the primitive materials with which the Creator has mercifully invested us, and out of which the mind must rear the sublime fabric of its knowledge.

Who has the means of saying that the character of God, the way of salvation by Christ, a future life, or any other matter purely of revelation, is different from what it is represented on the face of Scripture ? Do not these things stand in this respect upon the same basis with the facts of intuition or of sensation? Who is able to penetrate the deep mysteries of the Infinite Mind, so as to obtain other materials in judging of them, than those which are already revealed? Can we seize an angel's pinion, explore the regions which he has traversed, or contemplate the wonders which have astonished his vision ? Can we draw aside the