nue of the soul; it has its blessings for every variety of mind. He that wants hope, he that wants motive, he that wants solace, may find it there. There the intellect may meet with truths greater than its philosophy, yet pervading all philosophy, as God pervades the universe. The memory may store itself with wisdom, and discover that to retrace the history of men is to take a retrospect of Providence. The imagination may find an infinite futurity, so certain as to stimulate its activity, so mysterious as to require it a futurity over which its creative powers may brood, and bid the hills and the waters of a glorious abode arise, and plant in its Paradise the lost and loved, and bathe its scenes in the tinted light of an ineffable beauty. The affections may learn where to lean for an unbroken rest; how to become peaceful without being chilled; how to glow with intensity without risk of anguish or necessity of decline. Search human nature where you will, and something will be found suited to it in the gospel. In other words, the gospel is adapted to the spiritual wants of man.

And hence, if there be in the Christian world any system of doctrine which is identical with Christianity-if, amid the confusion of wrangling tongues, the original words of truth and grace may any where be heard—if, throughout our multiplying sects, there be any faith in which the true gospel lives, that faith must contain the same adaptation to the wants of the human mind which exists in the gospel. And all other forms of faith, in proportion as they diverge from the pure gospel, must manifest this adaptation in a less and less degree; so that we may measure their approximation to the truth by their accordance with human nature, and their tendency to minVOL. XI. NO. 130.

1*

ister to its wants. And if, in comparing two modes of faith, we find that the one unnerves our moral powers, while the other braces them for conflict; that the one adds to our human troubles new and bitter solicitudes, while the other soothes to peace every suffering but that of sin; that the one shrouds the grave in more dreadful mystery, while the other makes it to all the needful passage to perfect life; that the one demands the extinction of an intellect that cannot be quenched, while the other opens to it new employment and boundless prospects; that the one assigns to all the good, in the mass, one and the same immutable reward, and to all the bad, in the mass, one and the same immutable punishment; while the other promises an infinite gradation of happiness, and so provides for human progressiveness; then are we furnished with a strong presumption that the former is a departure from the mind of Christ, the latter at least an approximation to it.

Now it has been said that a rational faith is at variance with the spiritual requirements of man; that it is incapable of creating holiness or imparting peace, or inspiring a living hope of heaven; that it is deficient in the very first requisites of all religion, and leaves in dreary desolation those departments of the soul which religion should refresh and enrich; that it provides no armor against the temptations, no reviving voice amid the despondency, no solace for the tears, no staff at the close of this life, and no shelter from the woes of another. This is a heavy charge; but we trust it may be shown that we are under no such infatuation; that we love our faith because it is all that our spiritual nature wants; that it warms, and expands our noblest capacities; that it is a faithful guide to the everlasting home of the soul.

fills,

Let us, however, distinctly understand what is meant by the spiritual wants of man. What is it reasonable to

expect that religion should do for us? We reply, first, man is an afflicted being and requires consolation. When the cloud is over him, its shade seems to brood over the whole creation, and he needs some revelation of light beyond; amid the storm that makes wreck of hope and comfort, he needs assurance of something more stable and serene. Among his trials we may reckon it one, that he is a mortal being, incapable of being satisfied with his mortality; for ever stretching forwards towards a futurity which is abruptly closed upon his sight; lingering in the warm precincts of a life from which he is torn by the cold violence of dissolution; and he needs bright views into the future, notices of living scenes beyond the land of silence, promises of employment and emotion commensurate with his high capacities. Secondly, man is a moral being, exposed to temptation and liable to sin, yet capable of infinite progress, and requires motives; he wants not simply the theoretical knowledge of good and evil, but practical wisdom to choose the one, and avoid the other; substantial checks upon his misdirected impulses, and effective encouragement to his nobler but repressed affections. He needs invitations to moral renovation and assurances of pardon for the past. His more aspiring energies often prove a feeble match for the thousand forces that draw him to the earth; when he has fallen, unless he has fallen for ever, he needs an uplifting hand; his dissipated strength must be re-gathered; his languishing penitence looks for some light of promise. To this, which seems to comprise all requisitions of nature, others would add that man is an accursed being,

and required a substitute. We admit no such want, and are not therefore bound to supply it. We see no traces of it in scripture, we feel no traces of it within us. We know of no curse in futurity, but such as may impend on each man's personal moral guilt; we know of none that may not be averted by personal moral reform; and dis cerning in our faith unequalled means of producing such reform, we deem it a faith mighty to save.

A rational faith supplies the consolations which man needs as an afflicted being. We know of nothing so likely to impart a genuine superiority to suffering as pure gospel views of Divine Providence. We totally reject the idea which men have found at the highest pinnacle of their presumption, that affliction is ever sent as a judg. ment for some unknown sin. If, indeed, the evils which men suffer are the obvious effect of their conduct, then we admit them to be of a penal character, inflicted, however, not in anger, but in love, not for the past aberation, but to guard against future guilt. He who sinks into poverty through profligacy, he who brings on disease by intemperance, he who loses his character in society by deceit, suffers the judgment of God; he is submitted to those distresses, which Heaven has linked to all that is wrong, to warn its children against its deceptive allureNeither our own afflictions, therefore, nor those of others, do we regard as evidences of God's displeasure, unless they are the natural fruits of sin. We do not think that one event is more providential than another, that any movement of creation has more design than another, that God is ever more immediately concerned in the production of one phenomenon than another. These views have given occasion to the charge of impiety, as if a

nients.

rational faith referred nothing to God, and made all things to be reducible to the cold, inflexible, unfeeling mechanism of matter. It is our firm belief that the majority of Christians, and especially the very persons who prefer this charge, trace far too little to God. They make his agency an occasional exception to the course of things. Most events are believed to take place without him, but now and then there is something which indicates the workings of his spirit, and is pronounced to be signally providential. Now we would go much further, and say that nothing can take place without God; that there is absolutely no power in the universe but his save that of the minds he has created; that nature is but his passive instrument, whose movements would be instantaneously arrested, were his living energy for one moment to retire. There is no exception, no distinction; no occurrence more merciful, more wise, than another. Though he ad heres with undeviating uniformity to his general plan, though he now never breaks through it into the singularities of miracle to wake us from our slumbers of insensi bility, yet every effect comprised within that plan is as distinctly designed by him, as if all his agency was directed to it alone. In every event there is all his wisdom and all his love; and every event is executed by the direct and immediate exercise of his power.

These principles have a direct tendency to lead us to God at all times. As all things are of him, and as he is love, all things must work together for good. This world is the perpetual theatre of his agency, and its darkness and its light are proportioned by him. The great object of his government we believe to be the formation of character; and whatever may purify the character, open the foun