danger. There is always danger in cutting loose from our old fastenings, and going forth upon an unknown sea, while as yet unskilled in navigation. There is always danger, that when we doubt the truth of the creed in which we have been reared, we shall make our doubt an excuse for disregarding all moral restraints, and for the indulgence of all our baser propensities; there is also danger that we shall be too hasty, and rush too precipitately from mere doubt to dogmatic infidelity; nevertheless, the hazard here implied we must run, unless we would be forever in leading-strings.

"Doubt itself has no necessary connexion with infidelity, or the rejection of Christianity. We can never attain to a rational faith in Christianity without passing through the wilderness of doubt; but the natural result of doubt would be conviction, not disbelief; that is, where it runs a free course. But unhappily it is not suffered to run this free course. It is almost always obstructed. Nearly the whole Christian world condemns it, pronounces it a sin, the effect of a depraved heart or a lawless will,-unchurches, anathematizes the trembling doubter, and assures him, that if he continues to doubt he shall be damned not only here but hereafter.

"From this fact results one of two consequences. If the want to account to one's self for one's faith, and to see clearly the grounds of its truth, be but moderate, the doubter stifles his doubts, sinks back under the dominion of authority and tradition, assents to whatever the church enjoins, and remains henceforth destitute of all real spiritual life, a dead weight on the cause of Christ, and a disgrace to humanity. Such, I fear, are at the present moment, a majority of the members of our churches. These are they who are loudest against the infidel, and the most ready to anathematize all freedom of mind. Poor creatures! having no reason themselves to give for the faith they avow, they fancy none can be given. On the other hand, if the want of which I speak be very urgent, that is, if the philosophical element of our nature be very strong and active, the obstacles which our doubts encounter, enrage us, make us mad at the church for its unreasonableness, and drive us into infidelity I think your own experience will bear me out in what I say.

"When you first asked yourself why you believed Christianity, nothing was further from your thoughts than its rejection. You were young, you had not, and you could not have had, at that age, the necessary acquaintance either with

human nature or the Gospel, to be able to assign rational grounds for believing Christianity. You doubted, because you wanted evidence to convince, and that evidence you were not then in a state to receive. If your Christian friends had encouraged you to doubt, told you that it was your duty to doubt till you should attain to rational conviction; if they had exhorted you to push your investigations into all subjects, sacred or profane, and bid you abide by the result of your investigations, be that result what it might, you would never have ranked yourself among unbelievers, but would have long ere this attained to a well-grounded faith in God, Christ, and immortality.

"But your friends I will venture to say were not wise enough for this. They told you these doubts were sinful, were from the devil, and you must stifle them. They undertook to frighten you. They talked to you of death and the judgment, told you long raw-head-and-bloody-bones stories about the death-bed, of noted unbelievers, and with cant and rigmarole, if not direct abuse and denunciation, sought to win you back to the church. Poor fools! They took the very course to make you disgusted with religion and ambitious to become an infidel. Firmly as I believe in God, Christ, and immortality, I confess, I rarely meet with a work written in defence of Christianity, that does not stir the devil in me, and make me ready to renew the old war of the Titans upon the gods. If the gods cannot employ more respectable advocates than they have hitherto done, I think it were no mean honor to be sent to hell for giving judg ment against them. Happily, however, we are not dependent on their hired advocates, nor the witnesses they summon. Let God alone, and he will plead his own cause, and for witnesses, we have a witness within worth all others.

"But this by the way. The philosophical element in you was strong and active. You must have a reason for the faith you avowed. That element the church disowned and would not suffer you to obey. But the infidel owned it and bid you obey it. You sided then with the infidel against the church, that you might be free to philosophize; in other words, that you might be at liberty to exercise your mind freely upon all subjects you should judge worthy of your examination. You became an infidel for the same reason that Luther became a Protestant. Luther became a Protestant not because he objected to the creed of the Catholic church, but because he would not submit to the authority

of the pope. So you rejected Christianity not because you had found its doctrines untrue, but because the church in its name asserted an authority over your faith which you deemed unwarrantable and mischievous."

"But I think my inquiries proved that the supernatural pretensions of Christianity were unfounded."

"I care nothing for your inquiries,-asking your pardon, sir; for they came afterwards. The reasons you may have alleged for disbelieving Christianity were not the reasons which induced you to disbelieve it; but, reasons which you raked together afterwards to justify your disbelief."

"But this philosophical element of which you speak, do you mean to assert that it is a Christian element?" "Of course I do."

CHAPTER XVII.-RATIONALISM.

All

"Philosophy has a place in the history of mankind, and must therefore result from a want inherent in our nature. Men do not philosophize through mere caprice, but in obedience to an indestructible law of human nature. men feel more or less strongly the want of comprehending, accounting for, and verifying their beliefs. This want is what I term the philosophical element of human nature.

"Christianity is the name I give to the law of man's perfection. The design of Jesus was to make us perfect men. He did not propose to perfect us by changing our natures, converting us into a different sort of being; but by developing our nature, by calling forth in their legitimate order and stimulating to their highest activity all the faculties with which we were originally endowed by our Creator. If the religious and ethical system he has proposed to this end, be narrower than human nature, if it leave out of its account any one element of that nature, it cannot secure the perfection contemplated. Could it then be proved that Christianity neglects or prohibits the exercise of the philosophical element, I would discard it as quick as if it neglected the religious element, properly so called.

"Christianity addresses itself to me as a being endowed with reason. It presupposes me capable of knowing and comprehending. It makes its appeal not to my senses, but to my reason. If then it should begin by denying my right to exercise my reason, which is virtually denying reason itself, it would leave no reason to respond to its appeal. It is reason that must pronounce upon its truth or falsity;

but if we deny both the right and the competency of reason to do this, we can never have any grounds for believing Christianity true or false, consequently no reason whatever for feeling ourselves obliged to obey it. Religion can dispense with reason, no better than philosophy can, for reason is its only interpreter and voucher."

"The Bible, I have supposed, commands us not to reason, but to believe, and assures us that we shall be damned if we do not."

"The Bible never threatens damnation as the punishment of disbelief, as such. But in relation to the language of the Bible on this and many other topics, there is, I apprehend, some slight mistake. Before you can rightly interpret the Bible you must take its author's point of sight. You, as well as many Christians, give to nature a causative power, an independent activity. If you believed in God, you would never think of ascribing to his agency what you could trace to the operation of what you term natural laws. In fact the Christian world is at present prone to restrict the sphere of the divine activity, and to introduce the Deus ex machina only when the powers of nature prove to be inadequate.

The laws

"But this is all wrong. Nature has no independent activity, no causality of its own. God is the only independent existence, and he is the cause of all causes. of nature are his will. Truth is not one thing and God another; right is not one thing and God another. You admit that you ought to believe the truth, and to do what is right. Then you admit, if you understand yourself, that you are bound to believe what God commands, and to do what he ordains. To say a thing is commanded by God, is precisely the same thing it is to say that it is true, it is right. God commands it; the right enjoins it; it is right; are merely three different modes of expressing one and the same thing.

"Now the authors of the Bible always take this view, and regard God as the absolute sovereign of the universe, whose will is law, consequently they promulgate all particular truths in the form of commands. God commands us to do this, not to do that; ordains, that do this and ye shall live, do that and ye shall die. Now this form of speaking is strictly just, and implies no more restriction on mental freedom than does the more common form of saying, this is true, and therefore ought to be believed; this is right, and therefore

ought to be done. God is everlasting and immutable right, eternal and unalterable truth. His words then are in the highest and strictest sense commands. He who utters a truth promulgates a command of God; he who points out a right or a duty declares a law of God, and has a right to say, thus God wills, thus saith the Lord. Be sure that what you utter is true, is right, and you are authorized to proclaim it as the command of God, and to demand in the name of God obedience. The Bible-writers then, make no war upon the rights of the mind, when they utter the truths they behold in the form of commands. All truth is authoritative,-a divine command, and whoso rebels against it, rebels against his legitimate sovereign."

"But does the Bible do what you seem to imply? Does it never proclaim any thing but the truth?"

"That is, are its words, the words of God; are its commands always the commands of truth? That is a subject for the human mind to determine. So far as it speaks truth, I contend it has the right to say, 'thus saith the Lord,' 'so God commands.' Our business is to ascertain what it really promulgates as the commands of God, and then if what it promulgates be really the commands of God, that is,

true."

"But are you at liberty to make both of these inquiries? Will Christianity suffer you to do it?"

"If it would not, I would not suffer myself to be one of its advocates. I have no confidence in any system of faith or of morals that shrinks from investigation. Not truth, but falsehood shuns the light."

"But we are told that the Bible is the word of God, and therefore we must receive it blindly, implicitly."

"I rarely ask what I am told; I ask what is true. Be it that I am told that the Bible is the word of God, just so far as I find it true, I will admit it to be the word of God, but no further."

"Do you discriminate? The Bible is a whole, and as a whole is to be taken or rejected. They say we must believe what is in the Bible, because it is in the Bible, not because independently of the Bible, we have ascertained it to be

"They say! No more of that. I believe a proposition because I discover, or fancy I discover it to be true, not because I find it in one book or another; and I obey a com