previous decree had existed; and who can explain the enigma? Who can solve the mystery of a man's accountability in doing that in view of which God created him and certainly knew he would accomplish long before he had existence? And yet all this is implied in Peter's charge against the Jews on the day of Pentecost. "Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain."

There are numerous facts in the Scripture, which are similar to the above, but which we need not delay to recapitulate. For us to waste our energies to explain how the sovereignty of God can consist with free moral agency, how we can be guilty in bringing to pass what he has purposed shall be done by our hands, or in settling any question of the kind, is to involve ourselves in inextricable perplexities, and to lay a foundation for endless disputes, since in making our way through regions where we have nothing to guide us, each will be apt to fall upon a track of thought diverse from all the rest. As the sailor who loses his reckoning amid the thick darkness of a midnight storm, so we, in exploring these abstruse regions, have nothing to guide our devious way, and hence are exposed to continual collisions among ourselves, and in the end to the wreck of reason and conscience and heaven and all, upon the dark coasts of doubt and infidelity.

Oh, could we read the fate of former adventurers in this region, we should doubtless find among them thousands, of the most flattering early promise, who have terminated their career in vice and atheism. After searching long for the grounds of harmony and coincidence between different revealed truths, they have at length discovered the impossibility of succeeding; but, alas, mistaking still the proper province of human knowledge, they have confounded that impossibility with the certainty that the Bible is

false, and so have snapped the cords by which it bound them to virtue, and like lions escaped from their cage, have gone to and fro seeking whom they might devour.

Öthers still, being less competent to judge of the difference between what they know and what cannot be known, have fallen into the supposition that they had discovered the secret connection and harmony of these irreconcilable truths, and thus, have given battle to those whose superior discernment qualified them for controverting their positions, and, under a pretence that christianity itself was equally concerned with themselves in the contest, have rallied all their forces only to make their defeat still more decisive and disgraceful.

And in addition to the former classes, there is another to whom christianity is too dear to be sacrificed on account of their inability to reconcile its seemingly adverse statements; and hence, the ill effects of attempting it, are confined chiefly to the time wasted upon that attempt, the distraction of mind which it occasions, and to its influence in diverting them from more important researches and more useful labors.

But the worst consequence of supposing it necessary to ascertain the grounds of harmony between the facts of religion, is its influence in incensing and perpetuating the spirit of controversy. It has led the advocates of opposing systems to harp upon the irreconcilable points which they are able to detect in each other. And the effect is always to embroil their feelings, and to throw them to still wider extremes. This was the case with Wesley and Toplady, both of whom, we may charitably hope, are now in heaven. Toplady published a work containing the prominent points of the Calvinistic system, and Wesley, merely by slight changes in the structure of its sentences, by carrying out its reasonings to what he con

ceived to be their legitimate results, by showing their discordance among themselves and with the general harmonies of truth, and their agreement with positions at which even Toplady would shudder, contrived to make the principles of the book appear utterly abhorrent to every reasonable and correct feeling. The consequence was a rejoinder from Toplady in a letter to Wesley, which betrays a biting sarcasm and bitterness of feeling, which make one blush to find among the records of good men. And to such an extent was this war carried that Mr. Toplady, upon learning on his death bed that Mr. Wesley and his friends had circulated a story that he had recanted the Calvinistic system, could not be satisfied to die till he had caused himself to be carried to his pulpit, where, in the presence of his people, he publicly exposed the fraud, and declared his dying confidence in the doctrines which he had preached. How do these men of God now regard the portion of their life which they spent in this war with each other?

Nothing is more common than such instances as these in the history of polemics, a species of warfare which has rent more heads and hearts, and sundered more kindred ties than almost any other. There are even up to this day, (though less numerous than former ly and chiefly confined to the lowest order of religionists) a class of preachers in nearly all the sects, who seldom enter the pulpit without dwelling largely upon the supposed contradictions in the sentiments of other denominations. Their heads have so little of the intellectual, and so much of the pugnacious development, that while they are mere pigmies in exhibiting thought, they are giants in hurling clubs. But the pertinacity with which these men charge certain opinions upon other sects, is fully equalled by the promptitude with which they repel the charge. Indeed, it is a curious fact, that little reliance can be placed upon the representation which the different

classes of religionists make concerning each other's faith. This is owing in part, no doubt, to the practice of ascribing to each other, not the positions merely which they profess to hold, but the contradictions which they are thought to involve, and the results to which they are supposed to give rise.

Now this whole course of procedure is unphilosophical, unfair, and tends to incense the worst passions without doing any good. If a system whose positions are above our ability to reconcile among themselves must fall to the ground, neither nature nor revelation can stand. They both contain many facts whose harmony we shall never see, till the light of a more brilliant world opens upon our vision.

We

should be cautious, therefore, not to array ourselves against positions merely on the ground of our inability to reconcile them with each other. We are unable to tell how Paul, after receiving an unconditional pledge from God that all on board the wrecked ship should be saved with himself, could afterwards say of those who were about to escape by the long-boat, "except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved." But shall we presume to make our limited perceptions the standard of all truth? Shall we fix our stakes and mark out the course of truth through regions which are not subjected to our sway? Shall we build dikes along the shores of the vast ocean of knowledge, and say to its proud surges, "hitherto shalt thou come but no further?" We may do it; but as soon as the swelling current receives new streams from the Infinite Fountain, our feeble barriers will give way, and truth spurning our puny efforts, will strike out its own channels, like the ocean wave.

That "rolled not back when Canute gave command."

Notwithstanding the proud pretension of sectarists that their system is perfectly clear and without irreconcilable points, to minds competent to judge they will all be found in this respect alike; inexplicable

things, if not springing from their inherent absurdities, must attach to them from the nature of the human understanding and from the limited materials of our knowledge. To have a system free from these we must have one destitute of truth.

SECTION II.

Modifying the facts of revelation by those of nature.

There seems to be with many a feeling of apprehension, that if they allow the Bible to speak just the meaning which its language conveys when interpreted according to the ordinary laws of language, it will bring itself under the reprobation of men of sense and science. They take the liberty, therefore, to model and prune and soften down its statements by means of the facts which they have derived from nature, history, science, and literature, or from other sources, in order to save its reputation with such men, or render it more palatable to themselves. They throw its teachings into the crucible with those notions, which they have obtained from sources wholly independent of its pages, of what it would be proper for the Holy Ghost to teach, and the compounded result they would fain pass off as the real meaning of the inspired pages. Whereas it would be just as philosophical to correct the errors of taste by means of sight, or of hearing by means of smell, as to judge of a revelation when it is proved to be such, by our other means of knowledge. For what is purely a matter of revelation depends upon evidence as independent of all other data of reasoning, as the impressions of one sense are independent of those of another.

It is true that revelation on some points aims simply