has ever pleased the imagination of men, I know, to dream of a primeval golden age of the world; and in the same manner, to dream of a primitive golden age of the Church. But I believe in neither. The primitive churches, from the moment when the sacred mission was ended, construed the doctrine according to their light, and without a miracle, must have done so. And their light was small. You have only to read the history of those churches or the books of their clergy, to know it. Such extravagances, dreamings, fooleries, are there in the writings of many of the early fathers, that if any man were to publish the same things now, he would be thought fitter for a mad house than a chair of instruction. What I say is, that christian truth took the fate of all truth. It must have done so, without a miracle; and I do not know, that any body pretends that there was any miracle wrought to prevent it. And what was that fate - what the natural course of things? Why, that all the prevalent speculations and philosophies of the day, should rush in, and mix themselves up with it. Platonism gave it a Trinity; the prevailing fatalism, a decree of election and reprobation; Manicheism, a doctrine of total depravity; and Judaism and Paganism together, the popular dogma of the atonement. Not that I deny that there is some truth to be held in all these forms of There is a truth in that primitive, baptismal creed — of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. There is an eternal counsel of God to be believed in, and a deep depravity of man and a redeeming work of Christ. What

error.

I

say is, that error naturally mixed itself up with all this truth, and that the truth has ever since been passing through a slow process of purgation. If this is not admitted, what, I pray, is meant by the progress of the

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world? What is meant by a boasted Reformation? What by a Reformed Dutch Church, and a Seceder's Church of Scotland, and a Protestant Church of England, and by all the forms of dissent from them? But it is admitted by every intelligent member of each of these Churches. Certainly all Christians admit it. The very history, at least, of all the Protestant churches is a full admission of it. It was natural, then, it was unavoidable, that the christian system should be disfigured. It is a fact; it is admitted to be a fact.

There has no more

truth, than any other

been an interposition to save this truth from perversion. It did not consist with the wisdom of Divine Providence so to interpose. You might as justly single out one river, and say that while all others had been tinged by the soils and ores they had flowed through, this has remained as untouched and pure as the fountain from which it sprung. It would be a miraculous river certainly; and nobody claims such preservation for Christianity.

Thus, then, I think is revealed religion to be received — with a fair and fearless question as to what it is - with a care to distinguish between the disfigurement of the system, and the true form. I am not urging upon any man my own construction; though I value it more than life. And when it is well known, that Locke and Newton and Milton held this construction, besides many able men in England; that the leading persons in the Reformed French Churches in Paris; that the largest portion of the German clergy, the most learned in the world, doubtless, though exhibiting some extravagances-from which however many are returning; that more than a thousand churches of simple and unlearned Christians in this coun

try, commonly called Christians-to say nothing of our own smaller body of avowed Unitarians - have adopted the same view of Christianity, I think I may, with no want of modesty, say that it is entitled to some consideration. But I am not now urging my own construction. I am rather urging that every man should have his own independent construction, so far as he is qualified to form an opinion; that he should see at least that this is a matter to be construed —a matter for investigation — and that he is not to take Christianity, just as it may any where chance to be offered to him in a mass, and to say this is too monstrous for belief. Thus summarily to reject or to disparage Christianity is, in the circumstances, a folly which nobody would ever think of committing on any other subject. Reason itself has been as much abused as religion.

When I hear a man say that there are so many opinions about Christianity that he cannot believe any of them or more particularly, that Moses told a great many strange stories, or that he cannot believe half of what Paul said, I think that a life of study on these subjects warrants me in saying, that I wish he better understood them. You see, I trust, that with me, this is no Sectarian feeling. Nay, it is something far deeper. When I perceive the inexpressible value of a revealed religion; when I look at the Old Testament, and see that it is the most majestic book of all antiquity; when I look into the New, and see there a doctrine and example, a life and death such as the world never saw elsewhere- see the hand of God opening the gate of hope and of heaven to sinful and suffering man ; it fills me with concern and pain, to think that some overspreading, earthly clouds, should hide all this wonder VOL. XVI.-No. 182. 3*

while, in calm uniformity as if it did not mind me, and as if its Author did not regard the dread warfare that is going on within me. The universe lies around me, like a bright sea of boundless fluctuations studded with starry isles indeed, but swept by clouds of obscurity and whither it is tending and where it is bearing me, I know not. I feel at times as if I were wrapped with an infinite envelopment of mystery; and I ask, with almost heart-breaking desire, for some voice to come forth from the great realm of silence, and speak to me. "Oh! that the great Being who made the universe, would for once touch, as no hand but his can touch, the springs of this all-encompassing mysterious ORDER, and say to me, in the sublime pause - in the cleft of these dread mountain heights of the universe. - say to me, I love thee; I will care for thee; I will save thee; I will bear thee beyond the world-barrier, the rent vail of death and the sealed tomb, away, away—to blessed regions, on high there to live forever!"

I say,

It has COME! to my faith, that very word has come, in the mission of Christ. I will say no more. 1 will not mock conviction with arguments to prove the value of such an interposition. I will only say, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy, hath begotten us again to a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead; to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away!"

We have undertaken in the foregoing pages to set forth the character and define the boundaries respectively, of Natural and Revealed Religion. The rejection of the

miracles, the rejection of every thing supernatural in religion, clearly places a man on the first ground. I am not anxious to determine by what name he shall be called; whether or not he shall be called a Christian. I am more concerned, for my own sake, to understand the principle of the thing. If any one holds that Jesus Christ has communicated nothing but what was already known by intuition or consciousness; if he maintains also that Christ has added no sanction to religious truth or virtue, but that which every good man's life lends to it; then, certainly, in his system, the phrase, Revealed Religion, is a phrase without meaning. He may say, indeed, and I suppose he will say, that Christianity is not a revealed religion; that there is nothing supernatural in it or about it; that such, at least, is his construction of the system; and that standing upon this ground he has the best possible right to be called a Christian. Again I say, that I care not to dispute about names; but certainly this constructionist must see, that he stands upon the ground of natural religion. He holds indeed that Christianity itself is nothing but a system of natural religion.

The question on this point, I have attempted, under the head of revealed religion, briefly to discuss. I have contended for miraculous interposition, as the professed and manifest peculiarity of the christian religion—not the whole and entire substance of it, but the peculiarity of it. I have maintained that there is here, a manifestation from God, which cannot be explained by any known facts of nature or humanity; that from beyond the reach of the known and visible - from the infinite bosom of mystery, a hand hath been stretched forth, and hath written characters on the great chart of the world; and that of these

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