treat you, brethren, to cease from these abstruse admixtures, and confine yourselves to whatever is plain, practical, and salutary to the interests of piety and salvation. 66 'Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just,' whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.""

SECTION VII.

Resting our understanding of the statements of the Bible, not upon philological investigation, but upon our sense of what would be adapted to subserve

the best results.

We have already observed, that while revelation in some points, receives collateral support from nature, in others, it is thrown wholly upon its own resources. This is the case, not only with those more sublime truths, which relate to the origin, progress and final consummation of the Mediatorial reign, but also, with the less important question, concerning the adorning of visible rites in which the church is to invest herself. Few points have been more prolific in debate than this; none at this moment does more to separate between very friends; and we fear it will be the last controversy of which we shall be able to effect an adjustment.

Adhering to our determination not to espouse the cause of any particular sect, our remarks must be general, and bear alike upon each; though we hope they may not prove wholly useless. How far our thoughts upon the degree of uniformity which the gospel is adapted to produce, may have a bearing upon this subject, we do not pretend to judge. That

we are all wrong, in many things attending the progress of this controversy, we have not the least doubt. And if we were to put on sackcloth, and cast dust upon our heads for the sins we have committed in it, we should make a much greater advance towards union, than by the endless multiplication of our controversial literature. But, so intent are all sides, upon a victory by storm, that they cannot wait for their mutual prejudices to die away, before they renew the assault; and thus, while each triumphs in his own estimation, each is whetted to the unceasing war. ing one of those wars, in which there is neither conquest nor defeat, therefore, we see no hope of a termination, so long as prosecuted on the principles which now govern us.

Be

As the external adorning of religion, has ever been deemed by our heavenly Father, an object worthy of special enactment and provision, it is certainly deserving of a most prayerful and disspassionate attention, on the part of his people. It has pleased him to invest his worship, in each of the dispensations, with a visible garb, adapted to leave an impression of greater or less vividness upon the bodily senses. Under the Hebrew Theocracy, it left no sense unassailed; but made its appeals to the soul, through all its avenues of communication with the material universe. ing can be conceived more imposing, that the rites through which, from an infant of eight days old, to the latest period of his expiring life, the lineal descendant of Abraham was conducted in worshipping the Creator. Borne to the temple on the arms of his parents, at the earliest period of his recollection, and there made familiar with scenes, which no man could witness without being overcome,

"As with an object that excels the sense,"

Noth

the impression ever after remained among the choicest recollections of his halcyon years.

Nothing can be conceived more imposing than the rites of the temple worship. Sublimities producing fear, by all that is profound and terrible in invisible power, were about equally blended with beauty and loveliness; that the suppliants, while won by the attractions of the scene, might be awed into humility, contrition, and adoration. The different orders of priests ministering before the Lord in their splendid livery; the victims burning upon the altar, from which savory vapor floated upon the breezes, skirting the brow of the neighboring mountains with beautiful festoons gilded often, no doubt, by the sun's rays; the sound of the golden bells connected with the high priests robes, as he entered the holy of holies, with the halfuttered, and half-suppressed ejaculations of ten thousand hearts, pleading with God that their offering might be accepted, and their sins forgiven; the perfume from the altar of incense, and the golden censers of the priests impregnating the air far and near with delicious odors; in addition to the vast concourse made up of all the males of the nation, filling the courts of the temple and extending far off in the distance, like a forest of moving trees-Oh, such were the outlines of grandeur and beauty which marked a scene that was yearly repeated before the admiring and enraptured view of God's ancient people. And it was a scene of which their memory and imagination took an impression that no change of succeeding years could efface. The Jew, though dying on foreign shores, amid adverse fortunes and profane associates, would wipe the clammy sweat from his feverish temples, turn his face towards Jerusalem, pour out his expiring prayer, and shed a tear at the remembrance of its solemn feast-days. How worthy of a divine original, was this shadowy adorning of religion in a shadowy dispensation!

As this visible apparatus, however, was merely a type of good things to come, and not the very image

of the things, it was laid aside upon the introduction of a better day. Nothing of it is transferred into the gospel dispensation, lest, as when an opaque, intercepts the line of vision between us and a luminous body, it should bring an eclipse upon the full orbed splendors of the Sun of righteousness. The visible drapery in which the gospel invests herself, is more simple and less encumbered. She relies less upon factitious embellishment in making her conquests, than upon her native grace and loveliness. Hers are charms, not adapted to glitter in the saloons of a palace merely, but equally in the cottages of the poor and the lowly. They are charms that strike home to the moral sense, with more directness and power, because less encumbered by visible drapery. The few and simple rites of the New Testament, are less adapted to sensible effect, than to that silent thoughtfulness of the mind, when most retired from the external scene of things, and most at liberty to collect within itself the materials of reflection. Instead of producing their effect by overwhelming the senses, they do it by suggesting trains of pious thought, connected with the suffering, death, and resurrection of Him, who is the soul and substance of every christian emotion.

They are memorials left in our hands by an elder Brother, who has passed into the heavens, and who has said "as often as ye do this, do it in rememberance of me." And like the plain and unvalued ring that glitters on the finger of love and friendship, they derive their value wholly from being the gift of Him who is far away. Such are all the external adornings, of which the church can boast. Their value depends upon their being, as far as our physical condition will conveniently admit, the identical gifts of our Lord and Master. Other rings, though made of the choicest materials, and glittering with diamonds of the first water, and though in shapes less cumbrous

and more fashionable, cannot please affection, half as well as the identical ring that came from him, of whom it is perhaps the chief memorial. So, nothing can please piety, as well as the very rites by which our Saviour directed us to remember himself.

But how are we to ascertain with precision what these rites are? We conceive that this can be done only by an appeal to the language in which they are described. In this view, all the sects would probably agree, though there would doubtless be a difference of opinion among them, concerning whose cause it would most favor. With this latter question our work has no concern, except to observe, that should all the sects come to the rites of recorded christianity, they would each gain what they now have not, as well as lose a portion of what they have; but how great or how little would be this gain or loss, in particular cases, it falls not within our province to determine.

We conceive that our ceremonial dissensions arise, to a great extent, from a species of philosophizing, of which all parties are more or less guilty. We are apt to rely upon the a priori conception in our own minds, of what would be proper and befitting, more than upon the meaning of the words, in which the primitive rites of the church are described. In this way, either the spirit, the form, or the intention of sacred institutions, fails of answering to the inspired model. One party boasts of having secured with exactitude the form, and this very boast, with the feelings which dictate it, is an evidence that much of the spirit of the thing has evaporated from their decoction. Having abandoned the kernel, they have embarked in a senseless war about the shell. Another class having secured, in their estimation, if not in reality, the spirit of sacred institutions, give themselves little concern whether the form be this, or that, or none at all. Thus, they are arrayed against each