Poole, Le Clerc, and Rosenmüller, to substantiate more or less of his views on this subject. He accounts for the age of the antediluvians as being necessary to people the earth, from the slowness of increase in the inhabitants, there being but few births during a great number of years. It will be seen, that there is enough of heresy in these opinions, if they had come from certain quarters, to have doomed them to merciless rebuke or unmingled scorn. Indeed, as it is, they receive both, as quotations in the volume itself show. When shall we learn by our own sufferings to be charitable toward others?

Such is Dr. Smith's History of the Creation and Deluge. That he has laid down some correct principles of interpretation, and put a fair show of probability upon it, is quite evident. There is one more method of reconciling the apparent discrepancies between the Mosaic account and geology, which we have reserved till the close, though in the volume before us it is hinted at before the learned author proposes his own theory. He quotes the Rev. Baden Powell as standing sponsor for it. It is, as Mr. Powell states it, that the account of the creation was not intended for an historical narrative; and if the representation cannot have been designed for literal history, it only remains to regard it as having been intended for the better enforcement of its objects in the language of figure and poetry; and to allow that the manner in which the Deity was pleased to reveal himself to the Jews as accomplishing the work of creation was (like many other points of this dispensation) veiled in the guise of apologue and parable; and that only a more striking representation of the greatness and majesty of the Divine power and creative wisdom was intended, by embodying the expression of them in the language of dramatic action." Dr. Smith sees in this a "mythic hypothesis, which the German antisupernaturalists generally hold." He is frightened, of course. It is monstrous heresy to suppose, that this account is not designed to state philosophically and literally the mode of creation, if the supposition savors of German origin. And yet it is no heresy to suppose, that the whole account of the creation of the six days refers to a little spot of land in Western Asia; and that the heavenly bodies were not made on the fourth day, as declared, but only appeared, and that there is no account of the creation of "timber-trees," and "insects, and animalcula." Truly, there is some meaning in our Saviour's allusion to the "mote and beam."

But it is time that our remarks were closed. It is conceded, on all hands, that it was no part of Moses' design to write a philosophical, literal account of the creation. Then it is all a matter of taste what form that account should appear in. Any form that it may assume does not destroy the fact. The account would of course be given so as to produce the most effect upon the minds addressed. Such would be the design. And the sublime and graphic account, that is recorded in Genesis, was calculated to produce this effect upon the minds of those who read it. The origin of this account is not so clear. There are but three methods of accounting for it. It was revealed directly to the mind of Moses, or it had been revealed to the minds of some one or more, who preceded him, or it was the product of some mind, either Moses' or some of his predecessors, without any divine authority. The first of these hypotheses Dr. Smith does not believe, for he considers the first chapter of Genesis as a compilation. He must, of course, embrace the second, since the third would destroy the supernatural character of the document. But here an open question meets him. Did Moses intend to have this history understood as being of divine origin, or did he only collect what he found in being relating to the creation and deluge, and prefix it to his account of the origin of his nation, beginning with Abraham? Here is a previous question to be settled, which Dr. Smith has not touched. If Moses had no intention of giving to this history a divine sanction, then all anxiety about any apparent discrepancies between it and geology would be entirely gratuitous. We do not say, that he does not sanction the account; but we ask for proof that he does. We ask, where is the evidence, that these were not such views on the subjects, as had been handed down from time immemorial, and were embodied by him merely to give fulness to his family history? For ourselves, we find no difficulty, taking Dr. Smith's principles of interpretation, before quoted, in making geological facts harmonize with this account. And we do not see the discrepancies between the account contained in the first and second chapters, which some have supposed to exist. But we have no space to go into this subject. It is one of too much magnitude to be condensed into the closing paragraphs of an article in a Review.

R. P. S.

ART. V.- Letters to the Rev. Professor Stuart, comprising Remarks on his Essay on Sin. BY DANIEL DANA, D. D.

SOME brief notice of this work was taken in one of our former numbers.* It is not our purpose to investigate, in detail, the merits of the controversy; but only to offer a few thoughts on certain parts and points of Dr. Dana's correspondence, in connexion with the general subject.

I. Dr. Dana, we think, commits a great mistake in distinguishing two essentially different kinds of sin; "the vitium, and the peccatum;" the original, and the actual; the constitutional, and the voluntary. These are two things, so heaven-wide apart, that we know not on what principle of generalization they can be brought together, and made but one. The pretended vitium is a constituent principle of man's nature; the work of his Creator; a thing of which he became possessed involuntarily, and without his knowledge. Can things so distinct as the work of God and the work of man be of the same responsible character? Is a creature responsible for what the author of his being put within him, and made him to be? Is a man the subject of blame for having a colored skin, a dull perception, a feeble imagination, or a sensitive state of nerves? These are not his own work; he had no agency in their construction. Voluntary action, in contravention of the dictates of knowledge and conscience, is altogether a different thing. "To him who knoweth to do good, but committeth wrong, to him it is sin." This is the apostle's doctrine; and the dictate of man's moral

nature.

A just philosophy, very obviously, cannot make two radically different kinds of sin; the one immanent, and the other processive; the one wholly subjective and uncontrolable, the other objective and optional. If blame be justly predicable of the one, it is not to be truly predicated of the other, and of both. So judged the abettors of the "taste-scheme," which, to a considerable extent, flourished some thirty and forty years ago. They accounted all sin as existing in "the vitium." This was the core of their theory; the nucleus of their system. With them, action was not a responsible thing; it had no moral

* See Christian Examiner, No. 95.

character. The acts of the will were as non-moral as those of the intellect, and as those of the bodily organs. The sin was in the vitium of the constitution, and it being there, they saw the impropriety of placing it anywhere else. They avoided the inconsistency of making two totally different kinds of moral evil. But though, in this point, they had a consistent theory, yet this theory being untrue, they were often easily embarrassed. When pressed with such questions as the following; "Here are two men of the same mental temperament; the one has committed a horrid murder, but the other has never thought of perpetrating such a deed, having never been tempted to it. Are these two men equally guilty? The answer was; They are both guilty of murder, but the sin of him, who has perpetrated the deed, is more aggravated than that of the other.' But what do you mean by aggravation? It is a fuller manifestation; it is sin more acted out.' In what consisted the first sin? In the vitium of Adam's heart.' Did this come upon him previously to his forbidden act, or subsequently to it? It came upon him as the penalty of his eating the forbidden fruit.' Was Adam a sinner before he became the subject of the vitium? No; he could not be a sinner until he had a wicked nature.' Was Adam holy, when he 'plucked and ate the fruit of that forbidden tree'? 'Yes; he must have been holy until he became the subject of spiritual death, the vitium, which was the penalty denounced in the threatening.' Was the act of Adam's disobedience a holy act, or a sinful act? It could not be a holy act, because it was forbidden of God; nor could it have been a sinful act, because it proceeded from a holy nature. It was, therefore, neither holy nor sinful. You may call it an indiscretion; a mistake; an imprudence; or what you please.' Was it a moral act? No; there are no such things as moral acts. There are moral beings, but not moral actions. It is much more proper to call men moral beings, than to call them moral agents. Lit tle children are not moral agents, yet they are moral beings. Nor, perhaps, is the case much different, in regard to the adult and mature portion of mankind.' But how could Adam's sinless act justly incur so dreadful a punishment? Such was the pleasure of God. The vitium, perhaps, was more a consequence than a punishment.'

The fact is here palpable, that the theory which refers all responsibleness and guilt to "the vitium" of human nature, was found to be most perplexing and absurd. Nor is that theory

less untenable, which refers one half of it to the same source. In one point, we fully coincide with the "taste-men;" if we refer any, we will refer the whole; if we do not refer the whole, we will refer none. Consistency very sternly demands this. The neglect of strictly observing this distinction has done much disservice to the cause of truth. It has created a cloud and a fog for the resort and escape of some controversialists, who, otherwise, would have been confessedly routed, disarmed, and obliged to surrender. A remarkable case of this description occurred among us twenty years ago, in the controversy so ably conducted between the Abbot Professor at Andover, and the Hollis Professor at Cambridge. The former very dexterously availed himself of the advantage of being, one part of the time, on the ground of the "taste-scheme," and the other part of the time on that of the "exercise-scheme." When one foundation was sinking, he would stealthily change his position to the other. When the latter was, in its turn, giving way under him, he would leap back to the former. Had he kept himself, as consistency and truth required, to one foundation, either to "the vitium," or to the "peccatum," his discomfiture must have been apparent and acknowledged. And if the coming to the understanding of the truth had been the Doctor's only object, as, doubtless, he thought it was, it had been happy and honorable for him to have admitted that he had found himself on the wrong side. The admission of truth, under every circumstance, is an honor and a happiness. Let the highway, in which truth is sought, be dispossessed of all its hiding-places and coverts from detection, and every one who strives in this stadium open his whole bosom and heart, unmailed and naked, to the influences of the light that may act upon him. It is by making false distinctions where, there should be none; and by making none where distinctions should be made; it is by calling the same things by different names, and different things by the same name, that error manage to hold its ill-gained sway, and thus to become the most indomitable conservative in the world.

The "taste-men," however, were no fools, but, in their day, the best theological philosophers in our country. They recognised but one kind of sin. This was a just and an important principle. They misplaced the thing by reasoning lineally too far. As there is, manifestly, no sin, strictly speaking, in external action, because it proceeds from motive in the mind, so, said they, there can be no sin in an act of the will, for this proceeds as