SECTION I. Attempts to reconcile the facts of the Bible among themselves. The portions of universal truth which God has subjected to human inspection, or which are capable of being compressed within the grasp of our minds, are too limited and detached to admit of our tracing out their harmonious connection among themselves. The attempt to do it would be as fruitless as that of a school boy to discover, by walking through a splendid factory, the mutual play of every wheel and cog and band and other implement of the complicated machinery by which cotton is reared into a fabric for human use. Yea, no comparison of this kind can meet the case in hand. For, when immensity is the laboratory, and the suns, planets and satellites of innumerable systems make up the visible machinery, which is operated upon by spiritual natures "The least of whom could wield these elements who are too mighty to be conceived, and too remote But with all the circumstances which now limit our research and fetter our aspiring knowledge, how much reason have even our Newtons to exclaim from the sublimity of their elevation, "we have been mere children gathering pebbles upon the shore of the vast ocean of knowledge." The truths which the wisest of us have gleaned from this illimitable field exist in fragments and parcels, which we are no more able to trace out in their connections, than we are to grasp the mighty whole. Why these truths should be thus and so, or how they are linked among themselves, is a vast profound in whose attenuated atmosphere our cumbrous means of knowledge will not a moment sustain our flight. We cannot proceed an inch towards the solution of these inquiries. As Lord Bacon observes, "The subtlety of nature far exceeds that of sense and understanding, so that our researches at every point leave much more unknown, and the conjectures which we are so apt to form about the unknown part, doubtless appear to those qualified to judge of it as a species of madness.* Now, these remarks are as true in their applicacation to what God has condescended to make known to us by express revelation, as to any other department of knowledge. It is presumptuous in the highest degree to attempt a reconciliation of the separate facts of revelation among themselves; for they are of such a nature that there is an inherent impossibility that minds constituted as ours are, should be able to discover the links which unite them into one harmonious and perfect whole. Before this can be done, God must so alter the model of our being, that we may be able to take in a much wider range of conceptions. As an illustration of these remarks, take the two facts, both of which are repeatedly stated in the Scriptures, that the death of Christ, as to its time, manner, means of accomplishment, and all attending circumstances occurred in accordance with the previous determination and express decree of God; and yet, that those who were concerned in putting him to death were in all respects as criminal as if no such * Novum Orgamum. 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 pósitions, 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. these men of God now regard the portion of their life which they spent in this war with each other? How do 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 |