his whole nature feels it, and will be the sufferer for years.

My youth was maturing under the same instructions. Religion, which as a subject of thought often engaged my attention, and as a subject of feeling, deeply interested my heart, was a mystery to me. It was the fundamental article of my belief that I could not become religious, until I was made so by an extraneous, and special operation. Still I earnestly longed for the 'one thing needful.' I can but allude to the irrepressible desire, the cravings of my heart, for a full participation in the religious feeling. But the influences of my creed came over my spirit like an autumnal frost, and sealed up the fountains of emotion. Abused nature did not always remain silent under her injuries. She poured her complaints into my ear with a voice that I should not have disregarded. But the prejudice of education rendered these monitions powerless on my reason, and convictions. I supposed myself totally depraved; and thus was my earlier youth passed without being permitted to indulge in its proper religious sensibilities.

The works of God were all perverted to me. They were dispossessed of their highest, their religious beauty. When I fished by the river-side, when I rambled in the woods, when my fancy led me to a favorite hill-top that overhangs as lovely a landscape as our continent embraces, I thought this world was beautiful, I thought it beneficent in its uses, I felt that there was a unison between the scene around me and my own heart. But then I knew that my own nature was cursed, and that the earth had been cursed, and I supposed that this harmony was depraved, or at least that there was nothing desirable

about it, and I did not allow myself to cherish it as much as I wished, nor with that delight which it has since afforded me. I used to repine, almost, that I had not lived with Adam in Paradise, when the earth was really beautiful, and man's nature could properly sympathize with its charms. I used to hope that I might live to see the millenium, when this double curse would be removed, and men would be restored to the true enjoyment of nature. I looked up to the stars at night. I supposed that they had not been cursed. While my imagination would be revelling in the idea of their number and distances, my heart would throw itself abroad, and mingle somewhat in spirituality with the Infinite God who made them; I felt something of humility, something of adoration, something of love; - but I had not been converted. Of course my feelings were not religion. There could be no right harmony between my heart and the unsullied glories of God's handy-work which thronged the firma

ment.

The Bible had no promises for me, no consolations which I could appropriate. Its light, which sometimes beamed in upon my mind, went speedily out in the darkness of my creed.

At length a Revival came, that long wished for occurrence. Into its scenes of stirring interest and solemn devotion I entered, with that enthusiasm which the subject was adapted to enlist, and which my own nature prompted. I found that which I sought. I was happy · in the free exercise of a new heart, and was satisfied in my election being secured.

Choosing the ministry as my profession for life, I was naturally led to examine the theory of my creed more VOL. XI. NO. 128.

1*

thoroughly, and to observe its practical exhibitions with greater attention. As habits of reflection increased, the grounds of my own religious character and feelings would become a subject of close and frequent analysis.

I had long felt, what indeed is apparent to every one, that there were inconsistencies in our public religious instructions. These began to unfold themselves in a more full light. In one part of a sermon the sinner would be told to be active in the work of his salvation, and in another part he would hear it most explicitly avowed that he could do nothing. He would also be exhorted to be engaged for his salvation, and at the same time be told that his every act and thought were rebellion against God, until the Holy Spirit should convert him. He would be entreated in the language of Scripture to all his heart, and yet be made to believe that in his very constitution, the innermost seat of his affections, he hated God, with a fixed, natural hatred. Election would be preached; and men would writhe under the doctrine → this would be laid to the charge of their implacable hostility to all truth. The preacher in his morning discourse, would prove that men naturally hate every thing good. In the afternoon he would present in the most impassioned language, the love of God and of Christ as a motive to induce sinners to exercise their love.

love God with

These are specimens of what appeared to be inconsistencies. The list might be continued much farther.

The practical effects of such a system of belief and preaching were, in many instances, but too apparent. I have seen doubt brooding over the soul, with all its harassments, disquietudes, and gloom. I have seen anxiety intense, troubled, hopeless, pouring itself out in tears and

sighs. I have seen despair with its darker horrors, settling upon the countenance, paralizing the heart, and spreading its midnight hues over life itself. I have seen men hastening from the family altar to the church, from the familiar friend to the pastor; but obtaining no relief; with natures crushed, and souls sickened, they have gone into life, hopeless men, coldly sceptical, to religious sensibility as lifeless as a rock. I have seen better results than these, and I have seen worse. I do not undertake to describe all that may be witnessed. My notice was directed to a single point, that these unhappy results were experienced in the case of many who really wished to become religious. But their creed interposed a barrier, which their nature, already weakened by the discipline of its instruction, could not surmount. To see men of clear intellect, of warm affections, and high resolves, thus thrown back from the attainment of their great end, viz. a religious character, by a creed the professed object of which was their salvation, was a strange inconsistency that I could not reconcile. It did not satisfy me to be told that it was owing to their depravity; that they were unwilling to submit to the humbling doctrines of the cross. For I heard it from their own lips that they were willing to be anything, to do anything, if they could only become the children of God And their night-watchings, and fastings by day; their secret praying, so importunate as often to break out in tones that filled the air around, and pierced every heart; their constant attendance on meetings; their fixed and agonized attention to the preacher's words; spoke a language of sincerity and earnestness, which it was painful to hear, and which the heart of man could not contradict.

I need not go on with this detail. I was led seriously to question if the theory of human nature, as held by the orthodox, was true. The argument, a priori, from the wisdom and benevolence of God, 1 found adverse to the popular creed. The thought is appalling, that the Deity should have created man, the being that stands out from matter and the brute, the being of free agency, and lofty aspirings, the being for whom this vast earth, with all its things, animate and inanimate, was made, and whom it serves, the being whom God himself links with himself in his great and benevolent designs of Providence and moral government, that he should have created such a being to hate him; that he should have created him in the exercise of his noblest faculty, the purest, the choicest, the most valued part of his nature, the power of love and hate, to love only the bad and hateful, and hate only the good and lovely.

I looked into my Bible. On its first page was written, ' and God made man in his own image.' I found the same repeated through a history of four thousand years, and when the inspired record was being made up, and finally fixed for coming generations. St. James repeats the same glorious doctrine, Men" are made after the similitude of God." I found too at Sinai when the Infinite God made known his will to man, and nature from her depths and from her stillness broke forth, in sublime and solemn attestation that it was all truth, that there was no error, no delusion, no chicanery, when impressions were made on the universal mind of man which no change of place, no lapse of ages, could erase; that to the assembled hosts of Israel, to men, women, and children, to the righteous and the wicked; the great, the simple, the