A sentiment natural to the human mind, leads it to entertain and to dwell with pleasure upon the belief of the stability and permanence of the material world. Whether we view the multiform ranks of organized and animated beings which cover the earth, or examine the occult processes of nature, or look upwards, and contemplate distant worlds, the regularity with which the great machine of the visible creation effects its revolutions inspires a deep emotion of delight. This feeling brings with it involuntarily the supposition of extended duration; nor is it without extreme difficulty that we can separate the idea of so vast a combination of causes and effects, moving forward with unfailing precision, from the thought, if not of eternity, yet of unnumbered ages gone by, and yet to come. While these natural impressions occupy the mind, a strange revulsion of feeling takes place, if suddenly it be recollected that the massy pillars of creation, with its towering superstructure, and its high-wrought embellishments, and its innumerable tenants, are absolutely Reason as well as faith justifies this doctrine, and demands that we deny independency to whatever is created; devoutly confessing that God is "all in all." In him by whom they were formed, "all things consist:" in him all "live and move and have their being." He is the author and giver of life; and in the strictest sense it may be affirmed that every day is a day of creation, not less than that on which "the morning stars" uttered their earliest shout of joyous wonder: every moment during the lapse of ages, the word of power is pronounced from the height of the Eternal Throne—"Let there be light" and life. This belief constitutes the basement-principle of all religion, and is the sentiment from which piety must take its spring. The notion of independency and of eternity, suggested by the regular movements of nature, are thus thrown off from the surface of the visible world, and go to enhance our impressions of the glories of him who alone is eternal, unchangeable and independent. But it is certain that the conditions of existence, not less than its matter and form, are from God. In truth, the notions of being, and of well-being, are not to be distinguished in reference to the divine But if this efflux of the divine nature belongs to the original constitution of intelligent beings, and is the permanent and only source of all goodness and felicity, it must be intimately fitted to the movements of mind, and must harmonize perfectly with its mechanism; just as perfectly as the creative influence Whatever is vigorous and healthful in the one kind of existence, or holy and happy in the other, is of God, whose power and goodness are, throughout the universe, the natural, not the supernatural cause of whatever is not evil. It were then a strange supposition to imagine that this impartation of virtue and happiness may be perceptible to the subject of it, like the access of a foreign and extraordinary influence; or that while the creative agency is altogether undistinguishable amid the movements of animal and intellectual life, the spiritual agency which conveys the warmth and activity of virtue to the soul, is otherwise than inscrutable in its mode of operation. As the one kind of divine energy does not display its presence by convulsive or capricious irregularities, but by the unnoticed vigor and promptitude of the functions of life; so the other energy cannot, without irreverence, be thought of as making itself felt by prÆter-natural impulses, or sensible shocks upon the intellectual system; but must rather be imagined as an equable pulse of life, throbbing from within, and diffusing softness, sensibility and force through the soul. It is indeed true that if death or torpor has long held the moral powers in a state of suspended action, the returning principle of life, while working its way in contrariety to such a derangement of the system, may make itself felt otherwise than where no similar obstruction has to be overcome; yet will it only be perceived by its collision with the evils that have Nevertheless, from the accidents of the position in which we are placed, the divine influence may appear under an aspect immensely unlike that in which we should view it if our prospect of the intelligent universe were more extended than it is. Thus the sad tenant of a dungeon, who has spent the days of many years alive in the darkness of the tomb, thinks far otherwise of the light of the sun, as he watches the pencil ray that traverses his prison wall, than those do who walk abroad amid the splendors of the summer's noon. Or we may imagine a world of once animated beings to be lying in the coldness and corruption of death, and we may suppose that the creative power returns and reanimates some among the dead, restoring them instantaneously to the warmth, and vigor, and enjoyments of life. The spectator of this partial resurrection, who had long contemplated nothing but the dismal stillness and corruption of the universal death, might, in his glad amazement, forget that the death of so many, not the life of the few, is anomalous, and strange, and contrary to the order of nature. The miracle, if so he will term it, is nothing more—nothing else, The language of Scripture, when it asserts the momentous doctrine of the renovation of the soul by the immediate agency of the Spirit of God, employs figurative terms which, while they give the utmost possible force to the truth so conveyed, indicate clearly the congruity of the change so effected with the original construction of human nature. The return to virtue and happiness is termed a resurrection to life; or it is a new birth; or it is the opening of the eyes of the blind, or the unstopping the ears of the deaf; or it is the springing up of a fountain of purity; or it is a gale of heaven, neither seen nor known but by its effects; or it is the growth and fructification of the grain; or it is the abode of a guest in the home of a friend, or the residence of the Deity in his temple. Each of these emblems, and all others used in the Scriptures in reference to the same subject, combines the double idea of a change—great, definite, and absolute—and of a change from disorder, corruption, derangement, But a doctrine of divine influence like this, though so full of promise and of comfort to the aspirant after true virtue, offers nothing to those who desire transitory excitements, and who look for visible displays of supernatural power; and therefore it does not satisfy the religious enthusiast. Not content to be the recipient of an invigorating and purifying emanation, which, unseen and unperceived, elevates the debased affections, and fixes them on the Supreme Excellence; nor satisfied to know that, under this healing influence, the inveteracy of evil dispositions is broken up, and a real advance made in virtue, he asks some sensible evidence of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and would fain so dissect his own consciousness as to bring the presence of the Divine agent under palpable examination. Or he seeks for some such extraordinary turbulence of emotion as may seem unquestionably to surpass the powers and A delusive notion of this kind at once diverts attention from the cultivation and practice of the virtues, and becomes a fermenting principle of frothy agitations, that either work themselves off in the sourness of an uncharitable temper, or are followed by physical melancholies; or perhaps by such a relaxation of the moral sentiments as leaves the heart exposed to the seductions of vicious pleasure. Thus the religious life, instead of being a sunshine of augmenting peace and hope, is made up of an alternation of ecstasies and despondencies; or worse, of devotional fervors and of sensual indulgences. The same error naturally brings with it a habit of referring to other, and to much less satisfactory tests of Christian character than the influence of religion upon the temper and conduct. So it happens that practical morality, from being slighted as the only valid credential of profession, comes, too often, to be thought of as something which, though it may be well in its way, is a separable adjunct of true piety. The rate of general feeling that exists at any time in a community measures the height to which the exorbitances of enthusiasm may attain; thus in times of peculiar excitement a perverted notion of If it be true that the agency of the Holy Spirit in renovating the heart is perfectly congruous with the natural movements of the mind, both in its animal and intellectual constitution, it is implied that whatever natural means of suasion, or of rational conviction, are proper to rectify the motives of mankind, will be employed as concomitant, or second causes of the change. These exterior and ordinary means of amendment are, in fact, only certain parts of the entire machinery of human nature; nor can it be believed that its Author holds in light esteem his own wisdom of contrivance; or is at any time obliged to break up or to contemn the mechanism which he has pronounced to be "very good." That there actually exists no such intention and no such necessity, is declared by the very mode and form of revealed religion; for this revelation consists of the common materials of moral influence—argument, history, poetry, eloquence. The same divine authentication of the natural modes of influence, is contained in the establishment of the Christian ministry, and in the warrant given to parental instruction. These institutions concur to proclaim the No one can doubt the possibility, abstractedly, of the immediate agency of the Omnipotent Spirit of Grace, without the intervention of means; nor does any one doubt the power of God to support human life without aliment; for "man liveth not by bread alone." But in neither case does he adopt this mode of independent operation: on the contrary, the Divine conduct, wherever we can trace it, is seen to approve much more the settled arrangements of wisdom, than the bare exertions of power. The treasures of that wisdom are surely never exhausted, nor can a case arise in which an immediate effort of Omnipotence becomes necessary merely to supply the lack of instruments. Nor does the vindication of the honors of Sovereign Grace need any such interpositions; for the absolute necessity of an efficient power above that which resides in the natural means of suasion is abundantly proved, on the one hand, by the frequent inefficacy of these means, when employed under the most favorable circumstances; and on the other, by the efficacy, as frequent, of means apparently inadequate to the production of the happy changes which result from them. No persuasion or instruction, we are assured, can of itself, in any one instance, avail to penetrate the deathlike indifference of the human mind towards spiritual objects; but when once this torpor is removed by inscrutable grace, then the very feeblest and most inadequate means are sufficient for effecting the renovation of the heart. A single phrase, speaking of judgment to come, lisped by a child, has proved itself of power to awaken the soul from the slumber of the sensual life, if, when the sound falls on the ear, the spirit has been quickened from above. In such a case it were an error to affirm that the change of character was effected independently of external means; for though they were disguised under a semblance of extreme feebleness, and were such as might be easily overlooked or forgotten, they had in themselves the substantial powers of the highest eloquence; and what might have been added to the momentous truth, so feebly announced, would have been little more than embellishment; like the embroideries and embossments of the warrior's garniture, which add nothing to the vigor of his arm. Two causes seem to have operated in maintaining the notion that divine influence is often dissociated from concurrent means of suasion; the first Another capital perversion remains to complete the enthusiastic abuse of the doctrine of divine influence; and this is the supposition that those heavenly communications to the soul which form a permanent constituent of the Christian dispensation, are not always confined to the matter or to the rule of Scripture, and that the favored subject of this teaching, at least when he has made considerable advances in the divine life, is led on a higher path of instruction, where the written revelation of the will of God may be neglected or scorned. This bold delusion assumes two forms: the first is that of the tranquil contemplatist, the whole of whose religion is inarticulate and vague, and who neglects or rejects the Scripture, not so much because he is averse to its truths, as because the mistiness of his The other form of this delusion should excite pity rather than provoke rebuke; and calls for the skill of the physician, more than for the instructions of the theologian. The limits of insanity have not yet been ascertained; perhaps it has none; and certainly there are facts that favor the belief that the interval between common weakness of judgment and outrageous madness is filled up by an insensible gradation of absurdity, nowhere admitting of a line of absolute separation. Where, for example, shall we pause, and separate the sane from the insane, among those who believe themselves to be favored perpetually with special, particular, and ultra-scriptural revelations from heaven? The most modest enthusiast of this class, and the most daring visionary, stand together on the same ground of outlawry from common sense and scriptural authority; and though their several offences against truth and sobriety may be of greater or less amount, they must both be dealt with on the same principle; for both have alike excluded themselves from the benefit of appeal to the only authorities known among the sane part of mankind, namely, reason and Scripture: those who It would manifestly be better that men should be left to the darkness and wanderings of unassisted reason, than that they should receive the immediate instructions of heaven, unless they possess at the same time a public and fixed rule to which all such supernatural instructions are to be conformed, and by which they are to be discriminated; for the errors of reason, how great soever they may be, carry with them no weight of divine authority; but if the doctrine of divine communications be admitted, and admitted without reference to a public and permanent standard of truth, then every extravagance of impiety may claim a heavenly origin; and who shall venture to rebuke even the most pestilent error; for how shall the reprover assure himself that he is not fighting against God? It has already been affirmed that enthusiasm, far from being necessarily or invariably connected with fervor or feeling, is often seen to exist, in its wildest excesses, conjoined with the most frigid style of religious sentiment. Thus, for example, the three egregious perversions of the doctrine of divine influence, which have been described in the preceding pages, are maintained, and have been professed and defended during several generations, by a sect remarkable, if not for the chilliness, at least for the stillness of its piety, and its contempt of the natural expressions of devotional feeling; and even for a peculiar shrewdness of good sense in matters of worldly interest. But the incongruities of human |