In the Bible, Moses prays, I beseech thee show me thy glory; and he meant by the word "glory" precisely what Plato was feeling after when he exhorts us to ascend from beauty in stars, streams, flowers and characters, to the boundless ocean of beauty, which sparkles only in the ideal world. Symposium,

xxix, p. 211.

Dr. Burton was a bold thinker, though his boldness was tempered with that reverence which becomes a wise theologian. The two qualities were happily blended in his mind, like the tardiness and speed in the morning light. He was not afraid to declare his opinion on the most critical points. Thus man, in his system, though he has a full power to execute his reigning affection, has no power to alter it. He introduces an invincible necessity into human actions; yet a necessity of a very peculiar kind. The will has no power over the ruling passion, and the ruling passion must govern the conduct.

We would tender the question to our careful readers, whether the Pelagian distinction of a necessity "in sensu composito," and "sensu diviso," does not lose its value in theological controversy from the reasoning of this system? We hardly dare to determine ourselves. But his boldest sentiment is where he agrees with the Epicureans and frees their system from the charge of selfishness by his modifications. It has always seemed to us, in reading the discussion between Torquatus and his opponents in Cicero's first book, De Finibus, that the issue is very unfairly stated, and our sympathy has always leaned to the Epicurean side. The Epicureans said that virtue becomes an airy name, if it does not produce pleasure; and they insisted that Stoics were deceived by the splendor of the name, when they said that virtue was the chief good and made it its own reward. Now it has always seemed to us that benevolence could have no way of showing its own nature if it could not impart happiness. It would be a musician with no instrument to play on; no strings to sound its melody; no object to aim at, and no good to do. For let us suppose that God himself was governing a universe of intellects without one sensation, incapable of happiness or misery. Where would be His moral government? And where

his power? The meanest worm that crawls at his footstool might defy his criminations. He could reward no one; he could punish no one; and it does not follow, because virtue to exist must have power over the sensations, that the system that teaches it must necessarily be selfish. For whose happiness does the good man design, his own or another's? A good man has the design and longs for the power to make others happy, and if no such work were to be done, virtue would be an empty name. Thus, as the fragrant pond lily grows up in the black water from the blacker mud beneath it, and scents the air and its breathers with its fragrance, so the purest virtue may grow up from our sensual natures, and no one can think as a sage who does not feel as a man. But let us hear Dr. Burton :*

"Some have supposed and professed to believe, that holiness is an absolute good, and of course the highest good of the universe. If it be an absolute good, it is the highest good. And as this position is believed by many, it is necessary to say something to evince that it is an error.

"I will suppose a society of beings, each of whom is perfectly holy; yet happiness is a feeling they have never experienced, and never will. Is their holiness any benefit to them? If they were divested of holiness, in case pain were not to be the consequence, would their condition be rendered worse? No; for their condition is precisely the same. For, whether they are holy or not holy, they have existence without feeling either pleasure or pain. Some may say this is not a supposable case, because holiness and happiness are distinct things. As they are not the same, but objects of separate distinct consideration, we may suppose one to exist without the other. Furthermore, holiness and happiness are not inseparably connected. Perfectly holy beings may suffer pain, as was in fact the case with our Saviour, who was perfectly holy. The above supposition is, therefore, admissible, and clearly shows that holiness in the universe without happiness, would never be esteemed as a valuable property or benefit. And this makes it evident that holiness is not an absolute good.

“Again, suppose a moral agent to continue in existence without experiencing any pleasure or pain, yet capable of improvements in many branches of science. I ask, could he ever have any idea of good and evil? Could you communicate to him an idea of pain or pleasure? No: if he were born blind you could as easily give him an idea of light and colors. To have an idea of pleasure and pain, a person must be the subject of them. And without an idea of pleasure and pain, the words good and evil would be perfectly unintelligible to him. You. might tell him that holiness is a good, and sin an evil, but he would not appre

It must be confessed that the Epicurean system was selfish; it omits the distinction which Burton here makes.

hend the meaning of the terms good and evil. This I think every one must grant. This proves that holiness is not an absolute, but a relative good. Indeed, without happiness, why not as well to be without holiness, as to have it; to be stones as men? Of what value is a universe, however holy, if there be no happiness? But I need not spend time in showing that holiness is not an absolute good. This is so evident that every one must be convinced of it, who is not under an undue bias in favor of some beloved system.

"From what has been said, it is evident that happiness is an absolute good, and the only absolute good; and that the highest possible sum of happiness is the greatest good of the universe." Burton's Essays, pp. 148, 149.

The design of this article is not to give a full view of Dr. Burton's system. We hope our readers will carefully read the work, and learn his sentiments from his own simple and perspicuous pages. We have not given even a full outline; we confess we have written as if we were confident our readers would peruse his book, and from our article have the sagacity, which the naturalist exercises on the fossil skeleton, to restore the lost limbs which have perished by time.

We would simply say, that his scheme is a return to the old theology of the Puritans, somewhat modified by his peculiar psychology.

But, II, Let us inquire what probably suggested his system. It was no doubt the turn that theological speculation was taking in his day among his contemporaries; for, though he never once mentions the names of Edwards, Hopkins, West, Crane or Spring; and never assumes the least port of a controversialist, it is evident he intended to ascend to some fundamental principles, which by obvious deduction should sweep away all the errors, then impeding the progress of religious knowledge. No doubt the maxim occurred to him, in order to know God, we must know man; for man was made in the image of God, and is the best revelation of his wisdom presented to our tangible notice. Now the tendency of his day was to excessive analysis. Theologians were always cutting up, splitting hairs; they dissected the carcass of human nature until we lost sight of its first form. Everything in the material and moral world first meets us as a whole; a house, an apple, a tree, an affection, a thought, a virtue, or a sin. But it is very vulgar to stop at wholes. Any fool can do that.

The first names are given to wholes; and perhaps there are no clearer words in all languages. Art and science proceed to dissecting. To have the least pretensions to lettered sagacity, we must penetrate beyond the surface. Now we have not a word to say against analytic skill, provided that in seeking the absolute it pauses at the intelligible. In Dr. Burton's day there was a great disposition to refine on our conceptions and to split them up, until every moral conclusion seemed valuable just in proportion as it retired from common sense. Dr. Emmons embraced the exercise scheme: that is, that the soul was a chain of exercises. He seemed to agree with Hume, that experience was the only source of our knowledge; and that the soul was a succession of impressions; the continuity of its existence was lost in its incidental operations. The mind was a suspended chain; each link held to one above it, but united only by adjacency and affinity; and every exercise was completely holy or completely sinful, and man derived his compound character from vibrating between the one and the other. Sands made the mountains; rain-drops the ocean. All tended to the incidental; nothing seemed to reveal the permanent. The will itself was known by its separate choices, and any permanent passion to move the will was ignored. The will was the responsible power; there all merit and culpability concentred. The will was such an important power that it must be free. Dr. Emmons taught that a sinner had "as much power to repent as to eat his breakfast;" one of the very expressions which he used. Dr. Spring, of Newburyport, in his Disquisition, gives two explanations of what be intends by natural power; one of them is as follows: "For natural inability consists in being unable to do a thing when we can not do it if we will, because of some impeding defect or obstacle that is extrinsic to the will." This is, indeed, rather an account of inability than of power; but according to it, natural power must be ability to do a thing if we will. Dr. Crane says: "All the invitations of the gospel evidently suppose that sinners can, if they will, obey all the divine commands." Again, speaking of sinners, he says: "They are naturally as able to make themselves new hearts as they are to

perform any service." Dr. Emmons says, in his second sermon on Eph. ii, 12, 13: "They are as able to work out their own salvation as to perform the common actions of life." These similitudes of Scripture plainly suppose that every sinner is able to embrace the gospel as a thirsty man is to drink water, or a hungry man is to eat the most delicious food. While these good men were thus reeling off these bold paradoxies, one wishes to ask them these two questions: "Venerable instructors: Do you suppose that any impenitent sinner, since the days of Adam, ever did this great deed? And, did you do it yourselves when you first embraced the gospel ?" And then one wants to point them to a passage in Calvin's Institutes, Lib. II, chap. 7, sec. 5: "Impossibile appello quod nec fecit unquam ne in posterum sit, Dei ordinatione ac de-. creto impedetur. Si ab ultima memoria repetamus, neminem sanctorum extitise dico qui corpore mortis circumdatus ad eum dilectionis scopum pertigerit ut ex tota corde, ex tota mente, ex tota anima, ex tota potentia Deum amaret; neminem rursum qui non concupiscentia laborarit." "I call that impossible which never was done, and never will be done, and is hindered by the very ordinance of God; and again I say, if we go back to the earliest record, there never was a saint, who had perfect charity, and was not tainted by concupiscence." Certainly, the stern old Reformer had some reason for his language. And which is a common assembly most likely to pervert, the new or the old terminology? "No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him!"

And yet, with all this almightiness imputed to the human will, by a strange contradiction, there was a wonderful tendency to a certain sublime pantheism. God was the only agent in the universe; he hardens Pharaoh's heart by a positive, irrepressible act; he governs the heart of every sinner in all his moral and physical actions. There was a tendency to regard the physical creation, with all its hosts of rivers, seas and stars, as but a development of God. There was a kind of pious Spinozism widely prevalent; and we remember distinctly an address of Dr. Samuel Spring, at Andover, in which he told the students that it was true, in an