Some of the Prmciples accorcling to evhicic tieis we/rlcl  managed,
contrasted with the G'~0vcrnmc2zt Qf God, and the Priwzciplcs
can”/n‘bitccZ_fb24" m(m’s gzaiclavzcc in the Bible.

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“ PREFACE.

 

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INCORRECT representations, in regard to performances of this nature, often
do more harm than the needless publication of tliemfwl a What has been said
of this address is a sufficient apology (were any such needed, after the kind
request of the committee) for letting it be printed. b

Some passages have been added, which were not delivered, and some
paragraphs and sentences have been altered in tlieir construction. A
reason for this can »‘ea§i1y be admitted, in the haste with which the ad-
dress was necessarily prepared.

 

Maxie

is W
betroitg“ ?§l‘Cile. A A M

»...,.

" M

BUT We know ourselves least; more outward shows!

Our nliindz-3 so store,
That our souls, no more than our eyes, disclose
But 1‘.br111 and color. Only he, who knows

Iiixnsolf, knows more.

Domm.

 

Bm-1oLo1;}1orofi)ro, 0 Man! What thou art, and Whereunto thou art called :
oven to ho a .n1i.ghty prince amongst the c1'oatu.1'os of God, and to bear rule
in tho I)1?OVi11(:(3fl.T10 l'1a,s:Lsaeig11o<.1 thee, to discern the motions of thine own
heart, and to 135101-(1 over the suggo:st;io11s of thine own 11atu1*a1 spirit. Not
to 1i.«3ton to the council of the flesh, nor conspire with the serpent aga.inst
thy (l?roa.to1' ; butt 1:) thy heart free and faithful to thy God: so mayest
thou, with innocent <1 u11b1z:tmah1o11oss, soo all the motions of‘ 1i.fo,and
hoax: rulw , .11 God over the whole creation committed to thee. This shall
be thy as disc: and harmless sport on earth, till God shall transplant thee to
a I'1igl1o1* cou;tlttio1'1 of 1'1app;iness in heaven. %

* ‘7 V I-IENRY Nfoms. .Dr;fcncc of the Moral Cctbalct.

  
 
 

 Mmr,that1ovotI1oi1* vices, say that tolling the truth bluntly, doeth more
I;;,ar.tn tllttll goocfl, a.nc1 filloth tho world with ovil, and s-::otto1;h men by tho
omo. Mon liext not to ho (1iS1'.111‘b0(1 in thei.r sins 5 and wlmn one oaitli boldly,
T/tzm. (1.7-If t’/to arvzmz, '.iTl0fr1 say that such an one laokoth in charity, and

.h ouglxt to ho salxut up as at trouble.-r of the peace, when as it is nothing but

thoir sins that do trouble the peace. In all tlxis they are as wide of the
mark, as those who aflirnx that preacl1i11g of Grod’s word is the cause of
rebellion; liké that old man, who would have Tontordon Steeple the cause
of Goodwin sands. For tI1i‘o, I roxnornher an argumcmt of1VIastor Moro’s,
and will tell you a merry toy. Master More was once sent in commission
into Kent, to help to try out, if it might be, wlmt was the cause of Goodwin

oands and the shelf’ that stopped up Sandwich haven. Thither ooxpeth

 

- Steeple was in building, there was no manner of s

4

Master More, and calleth the country before him, such as were thought to
be men of’ experience, and men that could, of likelihood, best certify him of
that matter concerning the stopping of Sandwich haven. Among others,
came in before him an old man, with a white head,and one that was thought
to be little less than an hundred years old. Wlien Master More saw this
aged man, he thought it expedient to hear him say his mind in this matter,
for, being so old a man, it was likely that he knew most of" any man in that
presence and company. So Master More called this old aged man unto
him, and said, Father, tell me, if‘ ye can, what is“the cause of this great
rising of the sands and shelves here about this haven,‘~the which stop it up,
so that no ships can arrive here ? Ye are the eldest malr that I can espy in
all this company, so that if any man can tell any pause of it, ye, of likeli-
hood can say most of it, V.  at leastwise, more than anyman here assembled.
Yea, forsooth, good mas,  uoth this old man, for I a1n well nigh an hun-
dred years old, and no ma here in this company, any thing nearunto my
age. Well then, quoth Master More, how say you in this matter? ‘What

   

think ye to be the cause of these slielves and flats that step up Sandwich, »

haven? Forsooth, sir, quoth he, I am an old man; I think that Tenterden

Steeple is the cause of Goodwin sands; , for I am an old man, sir, quoth he, ,1 p
,and I may remember the building of‘ Tenterden Steeple, and I may remem- I I  it

fore that Tenterden
g of any flats or
sands that stopped the haven, and tlierefore, I think that Tenterden Steeple
is the cause of the destroying and decay of Sandwicli haven ‘ d so to
my purpose, preacliing of God’s Word is the cause of rebellion Tenteru
den Steeple was the cause that Sandwich haven is decay
my purpose, telling men plainly of their ,sinis,,fi“s” the caused
world, as Temterden .Steep1e.wt2vas the cause of Goodwin sands; I I , .

ber when there was no Steeple at all there. And‘

   

  

 flicewstory out of Bistro? ifLa'rIMn1t.  V

, ‘ i ‘ .~ ‘ H : , \ ‘\ ,
, u 4.   F,   .r ,~ -4? 

 

 _ 

 

ADDRESS.

---o--—-

WORLDLY PRINCIPLES AND MAXIMS, As THEY APPEAR IN
THE LIGHT or DIVINE TRUTH.

Tiurrrts even of universal interest, Mr. Coleridge has re-
marked, are often considered as so true as to lose all their
energy, and lie becl--ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side
by side with the most despised and exploded errors. This
is the case with the truth that the world belongs to God. It
does belong to him, and he has a right to rriakelwhiat use of
it he pleases. Its inhabitants lrelorig to him, and ougl1t‘to

be living continually to his glory ;, for him, W110” created and
supports, not for themselves, the created and§,,iUsuppo1'ted. A
God’s world, it is very rnanifeset, ouglit to have ‘(ilotl,?sli111age‘

and superscription upon it; holiness to the Lord should be » 
written on every part of it, and in the character and pursuits‘, it i l, .
of all its inhabitants 5 it is injustice towards God, to use‘any.”. i ii 4

thing that belongs to him for any other p1.11*pose than his own
service. In all our occupations, in all the business for the

prosecution of which we meet together in this wo1'ld,.i7t“"is"e iy \
our duty to be living solely for God. It is equally manifest " 

that men act as if neither themselves nor the world they in-
habit belonged to the Creator. They do practically exclude

him from his own empire, and have filled the world with »
pursuits and principles abhorrent to his nature. They act as t ’

if they were their own masters, created solely to please them-u

6

selves; they forget God and his claims, and are unwilling to
have their obligations of obedience, gratitude, and self-~con~
secration to him, their duty of Z27-sing to his glory, urged upon
them.

They have, in reality, transferred their allegiance to

another master, who is well known to be God’s malignant
enemy; and tl1is transfer is so universal, and men do obey
that unholy master so faithfully, follow him so closely, and
manage their affairs according to his rnaxims, that the phrase
God of flzis world means universally, not Jehovah, its only
rightful Lord, but, our Lorcl’s arch—enemy, the Prince of
Darkness. The government of this world is with Satan,
and for this reason the friendship of the world is declared to
be enmity against God. We do not mean that Satan’s is the
world’s overruling providence; that is God’s, and We shall
presently remarlsz upon it ; we mean that men live according
to $atan’s principles ; he is the sdgyir-it that now ruleth in the
childrerz of drisobedrienceg and the children of disobedience
are by hundreds of millions the majority among the inhabi--_-r
tents of this world. i

It has been true in all time, that not many rich, not many
noble, not many mighty, have humbled themselves at the foot
of the Cross 3:, though there have been illustrious exceptions ;
and, in very many instances, those who have given them-2
selves to the Lord, have afterwards become eminentrmot only
for piety, but for learning. The illustrious exceptions are
too often spoken of, even by Christians, as if they conferred
an honor upon Christianity. Thus, We often hear Sir
Isaac N ewton referred to in such a manner, that a being lg-,3
norant of man’s depraved and ruined condition, and of the
nature of the provision made for his recovery in the gospel,
instead of regarding Nevvton’s religious belief as the only
element of true greatness in his character, its only preserving
element, the element, without which he would. have been fit
only for perdition, would be very likely to conceive of Chris-
tianitzy as some despised and feeble thing, which the philosopher

O

"7

had generously condescentled to take under his patronage,
and give to it the sanction of his great philosophic name I
Newton, we hope, was a Christian; we have the fullest
conviction that Robert Boyle was 5 but generally the learned
of this world have cared nothing about God. They have
always considered it one mark of a strong mind to be desti-
tute of religion, and piety has been with them the subject of
contempt. They have loved the praise of men more than
the praise of God. With all their boasted strength of mind,
they have exhibited such pitiable vvealmess and want of moral
courage, that by any personal recognition of the precious-
ness of Jesus, or any manifestation of attachment to him, or
any thing like contrition and tenderness of conscience in the
sight of God, they would have been nshnmetl and mortified
in the presence of their fellow-—sinners.. Their motives in the
acquisition and use of lmowleclge have been supremely
selfish. Instead Cdlilltlsludylllg the works of God and the history
of man with a view to the glory of the great Creator, they
have done it with a view only to their own glory. They
have gathered their acquisitions, made advances in the arts
and discoveries in science, have labored and studied, and
Written and published, fo1'tl1c1nselves and their own gratifica-
tion, without any thought whatever in regartfl to their depen-
dence upon God, or the inost distant recogni.tion of their ob-—
ligation to live to his glory; or,.vvl:utt is still worse, with pur-
poses of guilty ambition, openly and violently opposed to
God. We have only to take a list of the great men and
great authors of any age or nation, and we had in their char-
acters, with few O'X‘.C01)tl0I1S, the love of human applause for
the ruling passion, and in their works the product of selfish
motives setting the intellect in motion. Even the motives
that produced the ParadisegLost, brought to the bar of the
gospel, Wltazfsoieeer ye do, do all to the glory of God, were
sinful motives. Sublime as is Milt;on’s own account of his
feelings in regard to that poem, and his promise of it to the
English nationvycars before he had commenced it,therett is

8

in that whole passage a selfish longing for immortality of per» ~

sonal glory on earth, such as the gospel does utterly con-
demn, and such as, placed beside the exhibition of motive
in the eleventh and twelfth chapters of Paul’s second epistle
to the Corinthians, or the third chapter of his epistle to the
Philippians, sinks into meanness. If new the motives of
John Milton in the production of that noble poem will not
stand the test of purity in God’s word, much less will the
motives of such men as Scott, Southey, Thomson, Franklin,
Mackintosh, or any men of genius, not disciples of Christ.
Milton called ambition the last infirmity of noble minds 5 he
had better have designated it as the wickedness of the devil,
the first sin that entered heaven, the grand sin that loses
heaven, the foundation and source of all other evils. It is
not infirmity, it is guilt.

God’s brightest glory is his moral glory. The glory of
his natural perfections derives its 13eculi*a§if,,b1‘ightness from
union with tliosemoral perfections that belong to him as the
moral Governor of the universe. And it is the great glory
of God as a moral Governor, that, on a scale as bread as the
universe, and yet as minute as the infinitely diversified pur-
suits, thoughts, and interests, of men, he isworking good out
of evil, dealing with his "enemies as free agents, giving“ fair

  and full scope to the energies of evil, but in the exercise of

moral means thwarting and preventing them, and,demonstrat-
ing to the universe how superior is moral power in the hands
of moral goodness. Itis in this way, and in no other, that
God is now governing the rebellious mind, and destroying the
malignant works of the great fallen archangel, the prince of
the devils. He does it by moral means 5 and to do it thus,
demanded nothing less than the awful scene on Calvary;
to govern that mighty mind as a free spiritual being, and not
merely by omnipotent restraint, to destroy his works, over»
come his power, and circumvent his wiles by moral means,
the only means by which God will ever govern, and to bring
back, redeem, and keep a revolted world in holiness, required

9

the whole array of the divine attributes exhibited in the
atonement by the sufferings and death of Christ, and all the
overwhelming pressure of motives drawn from that display.
If God governed by mere omnipotence, there ‘would no
longer be in reality a moral universe, nor any occasion for the

display of all these attributes that now shine so brightly, is-

finite wisdom, justice, mercy, holiness, love, that blend in
harmony, and for us mortals, are all sweetly attempered to
our gaze in the glorious atonement and countenance of Jesus.
To keep the universe of mind in harmony by moral means
is a glory worthy of Jehovah. The vvork of kindling suns
and systems to wheel and gravitate amidst immensity, must
be consideriad trifling in comparison with the Work of lighting
up immortal minds, and letting them go invested with all the
fearful powers and responsibilities of free agency, and then so
surrounding them by moral influences, in conjunction with
physical omnipotence, that never they shall cross the path
assigned them, and so binding the good in heaven, and the
penitent among the depraved on earth, in moral gravitation
to Jesus, the moral Sun of the universe, that forever here-
after, in an eternal heavenly system of “orders bright,” be-
neath the eye of God, they shall roll in undiminished light
and splendor, never to be attracted from their orbits by all
hcll’s power, confirmed in their obedience even by hell’s
rebellion, free as the Being that made them, resounding forth
his praises, and 1'ejoicing in the sacred influences, by Which,
out of the treasures of infinite vvisdorn and love, he binds
them to himself. ‘ b t

It is equally by moral means, in ornnipotencecombined
with omniscience and infinite goodness, that God restrains
and governs his rebellious subjects, the disciples and fol-

  lowers of Satan on earth. He puts no coercion upon them ;
but yet he causes the wrath of man to praise him, restraining

the remainder of wrath,’ he makes the very selfishness of
men instrurnental in producing good, and overrales for the

accomplishmentiof his own purposes their most ainbitious

2 V

10

movements and designs. Though the absence of a holy mo-
tive is sin to the individual, even in actions that result in good,
the evil effectlof his selfishness is often restricted to his own
bosom; what is unmingled evil to himself, because of his
own depravity, becomes unrningled good to others. In this
way even the means by which a man may be instrumental in
leading others to heaven, may become to himself the succes-
fsive steps to perdition. In God’s overruling providence,
‘there is hourly change of evil into good, alteration rich and
-strange indeed. God does not permit the wickedness in
man’s bosom to be only wickedness in action; wlrat a world
this would be, if he did! Men sow the world with hemlock,
but when it comes up, you not unfrequently find sweet and
precious fruit hanging on every bough. t Thus, the poem,

that grew out of a burning ambition, God may make the

means of feeding and invigorating the intellect of thousands
of good men. Nay, the "very sermon, composed, perhaps,

and preached, under the influence of selfish motives, he may
“use as the instrument in the conversion of many. The most

malignant labors of -his declared enemies he may take as the
rough machinery for hoisting into tlieir places the stones and
the frameworls: of a grand moral fabric. This may be seen
to have been the result with all the labored attacks o.f infidels
against the revelation and plans of God, they having led to
the prosecution of religious investigations, and the exhibition
of religious principles, in a manner that would not otherwise
have been demanded, and before the notice of many, whose
attention would not otherwise have been drawn that way.
It is suflicient to name Ca1npbell.’s Essay on Miracles as
growing out of Hurne’s attack, Watsoi1’s excellent books
suggested by the infidelity of Paine and Gibbon, and .l3utler’s
.A1\TlLLOGY, a fabric of moral grandeur, which the objections
of infidels contributed to rear.

Now this is the great glory of God 5 it is just analogous
to the way he works in creation; only, as he built the uni»-
verse out of nothing, he isbuilding a universe of moral beauty

‘‘’‘“',f,

11

out of Worse than nothing, the violence and wiekeclness of
his enemies. He is bitiding the Very elements of moral de-
formity, to he the servitors of his own {great will, gathet;'ing

the poisonous exhalations that rise and dance and glimmer

over the stagnant marshes of human depravity, and collecting
from them the materials of unconsuming beacon lights, to be
hung up radiant through the world. It is no praise, surely, to
the beings whose very selfishness or infidelity is thus made in
God’s overruling providence, the means of promoting his own
designs. If a murderer fires a pistol at his neighbor, and the
ball, missing its intended victim, enters the next house, and
there destroys a servant, who intended that night to have
murdered and robbed his master, though good in this case
results from the firing of that pistol, it does not remove the
guilt of murder from him who fired it, whose intention, far
from preventing crime, was that of committing it. Or, if a
man walking by the sea-shore on the island of Jamaica to
kill a brace of Wild fowl for his dinner, shoots unintentionally
a noted pirate lurlzing amotig the rocks, the goodness of the
deed done is not to be attributed surely to him whosewhole
object was the gratification of his own appetite. And yet
men are perpetually praising themselves and their fellow-be-
itmgs for the good! result of deeds perfortned out of pure self-
ishness. i 

It is very g;l.o1'iotzs to witness G~od’s 0VG1‘1‘l..1llDg providetiice
in motion amidst this world of his enemies. The arigels
probably have the enjoyment of this spectacle in far greater
perfection of grandeur than we do; they see more of G'rod’s
plans, can take in a vastly more comprehensive view, and are
not dimmed in their moral vision by the mists of sin. Our
remaining sins, even if we, love God, cast a great mist be-
fore our vision; yet we can see muieh, and, if we look with
the eyeof faith, continual exhibitions of this. glory. The
enemies of religion probably felt. much satisfaction in wreak-
ing their malice upon poor John Bunyan, in his irnprison-
ment, whenthey were only, ‘under God, placing him in 3.

12

situation where he might have leisure to compose the Pile
grim’s Progress. If they had not put him in prison, his
sanctified genius would have poured itself out through the
country in mere temporary preaching to the people of that age,
instead of being preserved for all future generations in that
Wonderful book. “ Be of good cheer, brother,” said Latimer
to his companion, when tied to the stake, “ we shall this day
kindle such a torch in England, as, I trust in God, shall
never be extinguished.” It was the enemies of truth who
kindled that torch; not linovving that in burning the r11arty1's
they were accelerating the downfall of the man of sin. So
the persecution that drove the holy puritans to this country
was but a moral tempest which God made use of, as he does
of earthqualtes, and storms, and pestilences in the physical
world, for the ertecution of his own great purposes. God is
a great moral architect; What are his enemies doing in
their short—sighted wiclteclness, but just busily providing his
materials 3‘ ‘

These exhibitions of God’s providential greatness, may be

t read not only in the history of that people, before whose pro-

gress God went in a pillar of , cloud by day, and of fire by
night, but faith can read tl1em in the history of every people
since. What is all history, rightly interpreted, but an eXl1i-
bition of God’s glory in the moral government of his rebel»-
lious subjects? It exhibits his enemies in all the unrestrained
freedom of their free will, while rebellious against him, yet
in reality accomplishing his designs, by the infinite wisdom
and benevolence united with physical omnipotence, with
which he goes before and surrounds them, and throws in a
check here, a restraint there, and a counteracting motive or
moral influence wherever it is needed, causing tempest to
meet tempest, and eventto counteract event, and thus" mak-
ing the very irregularities )and perversities of the free will,
even in collected multitudes, to chime in with, and contribute

to, or at least not disturb, theharmonious, thoughcomplicated

movements of the whole moral” system. The history of Eng-

13

land, as rapidly sketched by Cowper’s instructive genius dis»-
plays the favor of a merciful and moral Governor, contending
in a bounty more profuse than that poured out upon the
Hebrews with a rebellion and wickedness perverse as
theirs. The same lessons which that Poet has so sublimely
taught in the language of “ Expostulation,” might be learned
from a similar review of the history and crimes of our own
favored country, in connection with God’s moral dealings to
us. The severity of rebuke in that poem belongs not merely
to Etigland; and its lessons too are ours.

Know then, that heavenly wisdom on this ball,
Creates, gives birth to, gu.:icles, consurnnnates all;
That, while laborious and qniclvtllouglited man
Snuflis up the praise of what he seems to plan,
He first conceives, then perfects his design,

As a rnere instrument in hands divine.

Blind to the werlrings of that secret; Power,
That balances the wings of every hour,

The busy trifler dreams liiniself alone,

Fratnes many a purpose, and God works his own.
States thrive or wither, as moons wax and Wane,
Even as His will, and His decree ordain.

"While honor, virtue, piety, bear sway,

They ‘flourish, and as these decline, decay.

In just rcsentinent of his inj 1.‘Ll.‘(3(l. laws,

I:-Ie pours contempt en tl:ie1n, and on their cause;
fdtrilies the romglr tliread ctlr" error riglit athwart
The web of every sclicrne they have at heart;
.l3i(ls Lrcttcnness invade arid l.;rri.n.g; to dust,

'.l.‘he pillars of support; in which they trust;

And do his errand. rd" cl.i.sigira;i,c:<;i and shame,

On the chiei’ sti*c1'ig;1;li t‘tI‘l(;l glcry of the ii'a.me.

There  iictliiiig‘ which God cannot bend to his own pur-
poses 3 nothing which he will not overrule for the happiness
of those who love him. Even their own wickedness he
uses for the correction of his children, and causes their
backslidings to reprove them. And God can use any thing,
even the iniquity of his enemies, for his own glory. Hence
Dr. Beecher’s characteristic retnarlt, which some, who notice
it, may be able to refer to the occasion on which it was

14

made, “That he should think the devil would get tired of

exciting divisions in churches; for he always made two out
of one.” It is grand truth, which Milton has put into the
mouth of those infernal spirits, under the cope of hell, both
while rolling in the fiery gulf confounded, and? afterwards in
more deliberate council in Pandemonium.

But What if he, our Conqueror (whom. I now
Of force believe Almiglgity, since no less

Than such, could have o’erpovvered such force as ours)
Have left us this our spirit and strengtli entire,
Strongly to suffer and support our pains,

That we may so suflice his vengeful ire,

Or do him mightier service as his thralls

By right of war, whate’er his business be,
Here inthe” heart of hell to work in fire,

Or do his errands in the gloomy deep 1

-5-(- if '36 -16 if '34- -it

* ii * ~~ "* He, from Heavens height,
All these, our motions vain, sees and derides
N 01; more Almighty to resist our might,
Than wise to frustrate all our plots and wiles.

Undoubtedly, the wicked there, as in this world, are re-
strained and overruled by God, and made to accornplisli any
errand that he sees fit, either in fire or in frost. And there
or here God can clearly, in all things, display hisown glory.
This is the one element, we may suppose, in the misery of the
devil, to find that all his devilish engines, as fast as he invents
them, recoil upon himself. There is no disappointment in
this world so much like the feelings of the devil, as the re»
coil of disappointed malice on itself 5 that which takes place
when the machinations of envy do only result in the purer
exaltation of the individual envied, slandered and opposed.
And thus, to bad beings, the glory with which God has filled
the universe, and the povverwith which he uses all things in
it for the exhibitionof his own glory, is What they are pained
tobehold. And to all this glory the unregenerate heart is
voluntarily blinded, andtakesrrefuge in a gloomy, chilling

15

forgetfulness of God, and practical scepticism, that shrouds
creation in clarkness.

Yet there is no darkness, no chance, no uncertainty.
There is not a mote in the atmosphere, not a particle glancing
in the sunbearns, not a drop in the darkest caverns of ocean,
nor a shell, nor a seaweed, nor a movement in all creation,
animate or inanimate, which God may not use for the prose»
cution of some great moral design. And all things are full
of meaninox The very hairs of our heads are all numbered;
not a sparrow falls to the ground without God’s notice ; every
ray of light is pointed by him 5 every flash of lightning darts
from the bosom of the cloud under his inspection ; not even
the shaking of the countless leaves in a mighty forest, when
the wind sweeps over its masses of foliage, or the falling of
those leaves, wltien they strcw the ground in autumn, is out of
the influence of his all-pervading agency. There is nothing
left to chance 3 there is no such thing as chance; it is an in-
finite absurdity. The hand that hung the planets in their
places, shapes every cloud in the shy, and draws the lines on
every .tlower-leaf that grows, and curls the breaking top of
every green wave in the ocean, and gives its minute organ-
isation to every indiviclual of the millions of microscopic
insects that, invisible to l;:tunnan sight, play their gambols in
every liquid drop. Does it pain the mind to think of such
an infinite and ceaselessly esterted inspection? And well it
may; there  no part or dtisplay of ‘(3‘rod’s infinity that any
finite being can co1*nprel1end 5 all his attributes in turn would
pain the soul that shoulrl presumptuously attempt to compre;~
hand them 5 and God’s omniscient, omnipresent, overruling
agency, though it is no eflbrt to him, but a mere essential per-
fection and never-ceasing operation of his being, is beyond
our ability to follow, even in a single element of creation,
nay, in the smallest solitary particle of water. “Are we
struck with admiration,” asks a great Poet and philosopher,
“ at beholding the cope of heaven imaged in a dew-drop?
The least of the animalcule, to which that‘ drop would be an

16

iacean, contains in itself an infinite problem, of which God
omnipresent is the only solution. The slave of custom is
roused by the rare and the accidental alone 3 but the axioms
of the unthinking, are, to the philosopher,tthe deepest prob-
lerns, as being the nearest to the mysterious root, and partak-
ing at once of its darkness and its pregnancy.”*

Nature is but a name for an effect,

"Whose cause is God. He feeds the sacred fire,
By which the mighty process is inaintained,
‘Who sleeps not, is not weary 5 in whose siglit
Slow-circling ages are as transient; days ;
Whose Work is without labor; whose designs
N o flaw deforms, no diliiculty tliwartswg

And whose beneficence no charge exhausts.

One Spirit--His,

Wl1O wore the platted thorns with bleeding brows,
Rules universal nature. N of. a flower,
But shows some touch in freckle, freak, or stain,
Of his unrivalled pencil. He inspires
Their balmy odors, and imparts their hues.

V »:e as -29 at -.~:-  -x-
Happy, who Walks with hinri ! "Wl.1orn, what he finds
Of flavor or of scent in fruit or flower,
Or what he views of’ beautiful or grand
In nature, from the broad majestic oak
To the green blade, that twinkles in the sun,
Prompts with rernernbrance of a present God. i
His presence, who made all so fair, perceived,
-Makes all still fairer. As with him no scene , y ,
Is dreary, so with him all seasons please.-—-Task, Book 6.

To a religious mind, there is, indeed, no such thing as
the Course of Nat'ure; it is God. The spin rises and sets,
storms gather and burst, all the operations of nature go on
in unfailing regularity, not because God has appointed its
course, and left it to the laws fixed for its control, but be»-
cause his own omnipresent and watchful agency is perpet-
ually exerted. No more is the moral world, or the course of
events in the progress of individuals, or nations, left to itself, \

9* Statesinarfs Manual, page 67.

W    
. V I V _ _ ,  Q \ u v_ lliail
or to chance, or to what would put all things in a *"Worse

chaos than even chance itself, the blind, perverted, unre.
strained passions, wiclteclness and self-will of man“. Gyroid
overrules it all; God’s agency is present through it all;

lGod’s benevolence shall be accomplished by it all; G‘irod’s,...;,'*t
‘wisdom is here, to bend and control it all in subservience to?

his own grand moral designs. There is notliiiig in all 
secretest movements of all the rnyriads of accountable beings,
which he does not see to and overrule. In this world of
‘creatures, who have broken loose from his allegiance, and
linked themselves in with the ragged and malicious phalanx
of the friends of God’s great adversary, there is no thouggl1t,
or word, or plan, or resolve, or el'l'ort of theirs, which he
does not, in perfect harmony with their own free agency, en-
circle and control. His bright purposes of love and mercy,
shine like a perpetual rainbow amidst the storms and conliuw
sion kept up by the blind irnpiety of men, and he goes on,
Wo1'l«ring his Wondrous will, ericoinpassirig the boasted Wisdom
and free will of man, with a mightier wisdom, and an infinity
of moral c:tpcclie1;1ts, by which he tnaltes tliie warring; events,
'Wl'1l.(3l1 his enernies seem to produce for their own short-—
siglnccl schemes, the servitors to do his own bidding, and
result in the lzirigltter e:s~:hihition of his own perlections, and
tlie establisltnnent of the moral laws and sanctions of his
universe. Well iniglit the ;g1'C€1t inspirecl Poet of Israel say,
in regard to the infinite folly of the banded enemies of
Jeliovah, .I:lc that? sittteth in the heavens .9”/will laugh; the
.flZ7ri'igItzy slzalll /was Merit in (Jar-ision !

Such is God’s overruling providence. It is not the doc»
trine of philosophical necessity, a belief inywhich made Dr.
Priestly and others look upon the miseries and iniquities of
1;he World, and lie down to die, with such philosopliical in-—
di1‘l‘erence. A holy confidence in God’s pervading agency
is not fatalism. It ought not to abate our indignation at sin,
nor our sorrow at beholding the inhabitants of this world
under its influence, nor our efforts to give to religion its

3

18

appropriate power, in the various pursuits and business of
oi.11' temporal existence. Piety, and not selfishness, ought
alsivays to direct knowledge, and govern it, and use it for the
 gldiiylof God; so long as it does not, so long as men, who

éjti this world acquire knowledge, live for themselves and not

W01‘ God, his kingdom has not come, and piety possesses not
its legitimate influence. V
i Knowledge is power. It is so in this world, and therefore,
since the majority of men of knowledge have been destitute
of the love of God, the world has been governed principally
by God’s enemies. But, mere knowledge, in a perfect
world, would not be power. It will not be so in the eternal
World, other than power of suffering, unless it be allied with
holiness. VViSClOl"l'1 is power, but mere lmowleclge is not
power. The distinction between knowledge and wisdom is
beautifully drawn by that beloved Christian Poet, already
quoted, whose Task, with the Paradise Lost, ought to be
read at least once a year, by every individual who has it in
his power.»

Iiiiowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,
Have ofttimes no connection. Ktiowledgetlwells
In heads replete with i3l101_1gl1l;S of other men; A
'\Visdo1n, in minds attentive to their‘ own.
Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass,

The mere materials Witlr which wisclom builds,
Till smoothed, and squared, and fittedmto its place,
Does but encumber what it seems to enrich.
Knowledge is proud that he has learned: so much,
Wisdom is humble, that he lmovvs no more.

In the Bible, from which holy book Cowper drew the
spirit of his poetry, this distinction is carried still higher, and
,made more spiritually distinct. There the fear of the Lord
is the heginrzirzg of wisdom, and a good urzderstarzcling have

all they who heap his commcmclments. And certainly it must ‘

be so. The man who is acquainted with God, and com-
munes with him in prayer,and with God’s intellect in the
prayerful study of the Scriptures, must be immeasurably

19

superior to him who does not. H E(ll1’1U1'.1Cl Burke were
now upon. etirtlt, the man who possessed the privilege of
being the gliithiliztr l;iri.em:l even of tlfiet lioll,o\v—1‘1"1tu:1 would have
his ovvn heart henelittecl, atitl his intellect expzmded and
filled with wisdom by the E1Cq'.1E1‘l1.]l€1l”1C(3. If this he the case
in the oommtmioti of finite ericl imperfect minds, how incon-
ceivably more glorious is the cornmL1niot1 of the created
soul with its Creator! He who loves God, heholcls know-
ledge in its suhlimest, even its moral aspect anal signifiezt--
tion; he is like the angel stancling in the sun, and light is
above him, and mrouracl him, al”1CllJGl10{lll1 him. God is light,
and~as we ‘£l[)p1‘OllCll near to him, we are coming to a region
of 'LU"]Cl0L1Cl(3(,l, yea, l.l‘lSLll:llL‘1‘Ell)l0 splendor.

Ll'):“u'l§. with exeessifvo. l.t>1rig'l,1i; liie slairlzs 1l.]v)]_')(Li!i‘l.l‘,
Aml (il:.1l7.‘”/Qlfl ]T*lT(:t-,u,vr::>1'i, t.lm.t. l,t»1:.i,g;l,il.<.,2sL .~.:e;r;:,}V»li.i,n11,,
A‘p’p1'c)t1.ol1 not, h'u1; with l.)Ol.ll 'Wl1“lg:~3 veil tlioii‘ sigltitx.

Tlrcit being who wztlks witlri (Bod in pt'tfly01‘, draws wisdom
fl1".l([l kuotvloclge l'ro1111  csileur il,'(..)l;ll”1t1Itl1], while he who neglects
God, wl:.ittteve1° zippe.1'c::’nt; 't,if<.;;2z1.s1t11,'os of lmciwleclgo he II.h'.1.y' lmve
g‘dl’.l,lCl'O(,l,  only (.illI)1i)ll'lg in its mxfu.fltfly oml sin—-(..lelile<,l streams.
Cc)1':1‘1p:1re«;l wi1,l.t tloxo C311risti::m, he i like :1 1"n:‘m groliin in t1.
1'110l.1l"lt:Il.l1‘1 of sztntl for :1. grain oi‘ goild dust, wil;1ile,t;he otltier is
Wl1ill{l,lTlg'.l,l'], E). vztlloy oi.‘ di,:.,1.mo:m,ls. Tile light of ltihiotvletlge
that comes from (filml,  the only light 1;l.').{1l1 rivet", .:ontrihutes
to the soul’s spi1'.i,u.m.'l li,,l?”o,1,l1o only 1'ehewiog and pLtt'i:iyi11g
llgl'lt, am] that mutt who tvzjtllts with God in secret, is the only
creature of true diguit:y“.. ‘

lNOVGil‘ll1€?:l(3S.‘?$, if more lmowl zclgo  power in this world,
tlien etiglit Christians to he its rxxasters. They ought not to
unde1'valuo it, but to a.oquire it, airicl, t1:1l.{ll"1g it from the hands
of those who do not love God, breathe into it the breath of
life, pericatttite it vvitlt holiness, and use it for the glory of
God encl the whole worlcl’s good, instead of the glory of

, self and the whole vvorld’s evil. This ought to he the case

with every element of power; he one element ought to he

20

left at the command of God’s enemies. The undervaluing
of human knowledge is therefore wrong, wrong exceeclingly.
Knowledge ought to be gained, taste ought to be cultivated,
the imagination invigorated, and poetry made the common
element of the soul, because the Christian of knowledge,
taste, imagination, refinement, and poetic feeling, has a power
over his fellow-i-beings that no other individuals can have. He
has access to the secret springs of the human soul; he can
wind his way into the heart of depravity, and place God’s
own truth even there where it is hated, when another Chris-
tian of equally benevolent desires, but not possessing the
command of these avenues, would utterly fail. Wihati
mingled mistalte and guilt, therefore, is the crusade that
sometimes has been raised even among the professed disci-«
ples of the Saviour, against polite literature, poetry, wo1'l<:S.
of imagination, and refinement of taste. If Christians really
wished this world to continue under the power of the great
adversary of God to the end of time, there could scarcely
be a better way devised for the eittension and establishment
of his empire, than the relinquishment to him of all the
finer faculties and sensibilities of our nature to work upon.
Undoubtedly, the hand of the Devil is in this 5 it is he who
has helped to spread this delusion, and made Christians
almost  as if taste, imagination, poetry, refinement, were
a sin. Thus he has contrived to have his own way strewed
with flowers, the Lord’s way with prejudices. Many who
sincerely love the Redeemer, care no more about poetry,
painting, music, or any of the fine arts, than they do for
theatres and ball-rooms; and, in fact, they almost put these
things into the same class. “Behold!” a great American
Poet and prose writer has beautifully said,* “ out of a pesti-—
lential congregation of vapors, what glories has God spread
over the S].{iGJ1S!* And yet, there are persons,‘ who, if they
could have hadtthe making of the world, and have carried

 R. H. D.AN.A~~

21

out into creation the principles they apply toimen, instead of
a sky piled up with clouds of dazzling whiteness, and a sun
setting in gorgeous yet solemn pomp, from one end of the
heavens even unto the other they would have had one dull,
heavy cope, of cold, melancholy blue.” The truth is, though
the unregenerate are guilty, and without excuse in undervalu-«
ing What Christians love, Christians are also without excuse
in undervaluing that knowledge, taste, and refinement, which
cultivated minds hold dear. ‘

Some men go so far as really to believe, that when the
millennium comes, there will be no such thing as poetry or
painting, or any thing of this nature. To beings constituted»
as we are, such a millennium would be dull, to say the least.
Truth is, there is no faculty or sensibility of the soul, which
will not he b1'otigl1t into fuller development and exercise
then, than it is now. The fine arts will then he purified
from sin 5 such a desecration of them to the service of
unholy passion as now ofl’ends the eye of Christian purity,*
will not then be endured; they will be elevated from their
(l.eg1*atlation, and used for the promotion of God’s glory.
This will be one of the "greatest triumphs of the millennium,
that things which now, on account of man’s depravity, or
because o_l'tl"1cir connection with it, are really sinful, will then
be rendered holy, and turned ‘lrorn the service of Satan to

the service of Ciccl. Then, genius will he sanctified, and

God will direct its operations ; and Wlren he creates a mind
like Scott’s or ]}3yr'o1:1’s, that mind, still shining perhaps in
the sphere of taste and imagination, will shine in that sphere
to the glory of God, and the benefit of man’s spiritual nature.
It will no longer revolve, as in the former of these cases, for
the more self-attracted gaze of the world’s admiration, or the
mere amusement and intellectual benefit of man, to the utter
forgetfulness of God, and consequent injury of man’s spirit-
ual nature ; nor will it be seen, as in the latter case, plunging

'“ Note A.

22

into sensuality, debasing the powers of genius, and in utter
contempt and defiance of God, spending its imbruted strength
in reiterated appeals to the passions in man’s brute nature.

We may see the guilt of undervaluing the means of influ-
ence we have enumerated, and carelessly leaving them to the
hands of those that are enemies to the Cross of Christ, in the
fact, that it is by a form of religion denying its power, and
appealing, instead thereof, to principles of taste and senti--
mentality, that the sect of Unitarianisrn has been enabled to
flourish. This religion makes no appeal to man’s true
spiritual nature and condition, but, entering into a friendly
alliance with worldly pleasures and gaieties, and putting the
false gloss of taste and refinement even over man’s depravity,
commends itself powerfully to the vvorldly, thoughtless, and
impenitent ; it is a religion, according to their own corn»
rnendation of it, which suits the hearts of men ; a religion,
Whiclt the heart, forgetful of its God and eager to escape the
consciousness of guilt, welcomes. Whatever could walten up
the dread conviction of sin and ruin, and put the lost soul
upon thoughts of fleeing to the Cross for refuge from the
Wrath to come, is avoided; and, (in the language of Mr.
Dana, to whose review of the Natural History of Enthusiasm
we would refer our readers, on this important subject,*) “ a
sort of atmospheric divinity breathes around us like a balmy
day, and, like a Claude sky and light, wraps heaven and
earth in soft transparent folds. A matvkish love takes place
of the wise and just benevolence of God, and our Creator
and final Judge is fairly idealized and sentimentalized out of
his own creation, providence, and rule.” It is not wonderful
that this system, pleasing to the taste, lulling to the conscience,
and landing the refinement and purity of man’s nature, should
be resorted to by many, and should seem to them the Very
perfection of intellectual and sentimental beauty.

Now we strenuously contend that it is the duty of true

””“ Spirit of the Pilgrims for May, 1830, Vol. 3, page 261.

Christianity to show that genuine refinement of intellect, the
true principles of taste, and actual power of the imagination,
cannot subsist in connectioniwith such a miserable superficial
shadow as this system. The connection is not legitimate;
though the Arch—-deceiver himself appear like an angel of
light, the appearance is stolen; it does not grow out of his
own nature, does not belong to him, is not his own proper
shape. Apply the truth, let but lthuriel touch him lightly,
and

Up he starts,
Discovered and surprised,

returnetl of force to his own l.ikeness. Ifisittiiiitie this system,
and you iincl there are no PIRIN(1‘-I1*’l7..ES in it; it is a system of
1f10gZll;l.O1‘1S in 1‘erg:tt'tl to the most iinomcntous truths and prin-
ciples ever revealed to ;man’s expectant soul. iobert l"lall’s
exhibitions of the moral _protlig;;i.es that disfigttxt'c it, are power-—
ful and true: “Whatever is most sweet and attractive in
religion, whatever of the ,<2;rancleLu' that elevates, or the
solemnity that awes the rnincl, is inscparably connected with
those truths it is the avowetl object of that system to subvert;
and since it is not what we deny, but what we believe, that
nourishes piety, no wonder it lt:11”1f:‘tIilSl‘l(3S under so 1"neag1'e
and scanty a diet. Tl.it=: littlencss tlljltl poverty‘ of the Socinian
system ultimately ensures its 11.e§glect, because it makes no
provision for that :appetite for the imnicnse and niagtiificent,
which the contetnplzttioiit of nature inspires and g1*tttiIies, and
vvhiclt even reason itself prompts us to anticipate in a :revela-
tion from the Eternal Mit1t.1.””"‘

I“lall’s views of the intellectual poverty and degradation of

this system are especially applicable to the vanity of its pre-
tensions in this country, in arrogating to itself the possession
of peculiar taste and intellectual refinement. In these
respects, as in others, it is inevitably superficial. The

 I-IA1:.L’s Complete Works, Vol. 3, page 29. See also Note 13.

‘E24

true grounds of intellectual power and refinement rest upon
the recognition of the great fundamental truths in regard to
God and man, disclosed in God’s revealed word ; and
whoever denies these truths has thrown himself off from
all principles, in a dark, unbottomed, infinite abyss. The
principles and powers of taste and imagination have their
foundation in the spiritual part of man’s being, and their
grand scope of operation amidst the glories and incompre-I
ihensibilities of God’s character, and the awful and splendid
spiritual realities, which God’s word, rightly interpreted, un-
veils to us. How then can they exist along with a system
which keeps studiously out of View man’s spiritual nature and
destiny, strips religion of its power over the conscience, turns
the Bible into a tissue of unmeanitig metaphors, destroys its
authority as a revelation, rejects all that is mysterious, and
proudly pretends to measure and comprehend the thoughts
of the Almighty? Such a system is a gross injury and insult
"even to rnan’s intellectual nature; it is perdition to his
spiritual. It is utterly superficial, containing nothing that
can by any possibility "go down into the depths of man’s
being, or rouse that unfathomable ocean. Confine the
soul to such a system? It is worse than shutting up the
body in the dungeons of an inquisition! It would be death
to a truly great mind. It would be like taking a proud
American Eagle, whose existence and dominion are in glori-
ous regions of the atmosphere, who has sailed and wheeled
in its daring flight where no created thing else could follow,
and whose delight it was to breast the tempest, and even
with the tempest’s speed to rush through the thunder-cloud;
it would be like shutting up that proud imperial bird to drdop
and beat its wings, and gaze upon its own feathers in a nar-
row miserable cage.

Even so does that superficial system contract and imprison
the soul. It must always be thus, where there are such radi--
cal errors in regard to God and man. It is impossible that
intellectual power should be great, or thought deep, Where

25

thereiis such gross neglect of man’s spiritual nature, and sueh
perversion of God’s attributes and word. You might as well
expect the great African desert to be converted into an olive
garden ; you might as well look for fields of wheat or beds
of roses in the northern icebergs. Neither the missionary
spirit in piety, nor a kindred spirit in intellect can live in the
atmosphere of modern Unitarianism; a man could as soon
breathe in a room where all the oxygen had been abstracted
from the air. There are plain reasons for this; its views,
botl1 of God and man, are such, that with them a missionary
spirit is superfluous, and such, that an intellectual spirit of
originality and profound investigation would inevitably detect
their falsehood and reject them with indignation ; for man is
elevated, God is degraded, sin is deprived of its malignity.
‘With these views that system dare not grapple with I’RIN-~
GiI"Ll:Jt3 3 they would be its shipwreck : it cannot go beneath
the surface, the moment it does, it strikes, and is shattered,
on some of those great reefs of thought, that lie deep in the
foundations of man’s mysterious nature, and over which the
ocean of his spiritual being thunders eternally. It must avoid
rn.1Nc1.;e1:.ns, or at once it comes in contact with some denied
truths of God’s word; it must 2.‘/ze7't_:for'e be superficial, in
order to exist. Its gross and wilful errors in reg'ard to tnan’s
moral heing are palsying in their influence over his intellec-
tual. being; “ for in the moral heing,” (it is one of Cole-
ridge’s p:rofoun.cl ret‘lections,) “ lies the source of the intel-
lectual. The first step to knowletlge, or rather the previous
condition of all insight into truth, is to dare to commune with
our very and permanent self.” This the Unitarians dare not
do 5 if they did, they would at oncebe convicted of guilt, and
meet an unavoidable refutation of their own system. “It
is VVarburton’s remarlc,” Coleridge continues, “that of
all literary exercitations, whether designed for the use
or entertainment of the world, there are none of so
much importance, or so immediately our concern, as
those which let us into the knowledge of our own nature.
4 V

26

Others may exercise the understanding or amuse the imagi-
nation; but these only can improve the heart and form the
human mind to wisdom.”*

Now this system, with all its literary exercitations, far il'Ol.’I1
letting us into the knowleclge of our own nature, aims both
to keep us in ignorance of that nature, and to give us wrong
views of it. Here then, in regard to the very groundwork
and previous condition of all insight into truth, it is inevitably
and thoroughly superficial. We might add to this that a
habit of mind, such as the painful and laborious e:flbi't of
Unitarianism to evade and explain away the Holy Scriptures
and discredit their authority tends to foster, is in itself em-
inently inconsistent with free and vigorous thought. Indeed,
a vigorous mind could scarcely pursue a train of thought in
any direction, without coming full upon some grand principle,
from whose radiant light this system of negations, with its
whole statement of reasons for not believing, flees away, dis-
comfited and atlriglited. It is a system that, not satisfied
with deceiving the heart, and excluding from the soul all
knowledge of our “ very and permanent self,” makes a
coward and an habitual sophist even of the intellect, which
then only can remain at ease in the midsttof such gross error,
when “ covered round and comfortable in the wrap--rascal of
self-hypocrisy ” and sophistry.-l‘

In the light of these tre1;,,ijm,,s it is easy to see why, in all the
Socinian literature, though its pretensions are great, and sup--
ported in this country by the fostering care of the oldest and
richest University in the United States, there is nothing but

   

superficiality. There is not, either in this country or in

England. Here we shall be pointed to such names as those
of Priestly, Belsham, and Channing; nor would any one
deny that the first of these was a man of much mental activity
and ingenuity, and the last a man distinguished by line words,
elegance of style, and lofty sentimentalism, especially when he
speaks of glorious godlike human nature. At the same time

_,.

*‘-‘ The Friend, page 94. i ‘r Note C.

‘327

it is neither novelty nor arrogance to say that they are each
superficial in his own sphere, and both superficial in theology.
What are they by the side of John Howe, Ralph Cudworth,
John Foster, or Dr. Chalmers, or others whom wernight
name in our own land, of evidently far greater depth and
originality of mind either than the Birmirigliaiii Philosopher,
or the “ splendid writer and high-souled man,”* who stands
at the head of Unitarianism in this country? They are
dwarfed in the comparison, and their works appear like huts
at the base of ancient temples, built of the scattered frag--
ments of decay. Surely, there is more deep thought in a
solitary leaf of one of John I~Iowe’s sermons, than in all Dr.
Priestly’s, Belsham’s, and Channing’s works put together,
adding even Miss ,l\/Iartineau’s to the collection. Such men
as John Howe aclmowledgecl the malignity of sin, with hum»-
bling Views of their own depravity and ignorance, and ador-
ing views of the incomprehensible greatness and infinite
holiness of God ; they held communion with the intellect of
God, and bowed in adoration and love before the triiglitiest
GXl”1ll)ltlO11 of that intellect, in the plan of Redemption by the
Cross of Jesus Christ. Such men as “that splendid writer
and lyiigh-souled man,” will tell you of man’s innocent frailties
and 1'1]<'.l.f«.:‘3“YllfiCE31Tl,lL virtues, of G;od’s inclnlgent tenderness to sin,
of man’s purity of soul, of the i1npe1'l"ect;io'n of the Scriptures,
the hlessetlness of communion  J he book of nature, and
the all-sufliieiency of human reason; and they even dare to
name that Cnoss as the central gallows of the universe ! l 
The Cnntrnnn Gnmrsows ! Let it stand! Behold, ye
despisers, and wonder, ~ and perish. It makes Hell tremble,
it fills Heaven and Earth with praise, and the Universe with
God’s glory! Its voice is unmingled mercy to the penitent ;
love of infinite degree; for there was but one word for us,
and that word LOST, if it had not been erected. O the

  

"“ This expression is from “ one of themselves, a prophet of‘ their own.”
, It is a way they have of speaking of each other.
"l Note D.

28

mercy that it speaks !, Behold the Lamb of God, who talcctla
away the sin of the worlcl .’ What wonder, that in Heaven
they sing thatanthern, VVo1=t:rn;v IS THE .L_A.Mn '.I‘I-[AT was
SLAIN I The Cnoss I blessed, precious memorial I

’Twas there my Lord was crucified,
’Tvvas there my Saviour for me died.
His Cross shall make me strong within,
IT sramrs AN INFAMY on sm.

We may be permitted here to make an additional reinarh
in regard to Dr. Priestly’s character, as affording a fair speci-
men of the influence of Unitarianism, and the sort of minds
for which it is calculated. A critical examination of tlie_-;?
vvorlis of Dr. Priestly would not, we believe, induce any one
to dissent widely from the opinion, which even in the Chris-—
tian Examiner is stated as the one universally entertained in
regard to him 5 that he was “ a reckless free—thinls:er, a ready
but careless and inaccurate writer, meddling with every thing,
but understanding nothing thoroughly, and chiefly 1'ernarkable
for his wild theories and startling innovations.” The posi-
tive good sentiments he may have advanced are very few in
comparison with the powerful infidelity with which his Works
are saturated; but taking them all into view, with all the
sweetness of his domestic character, they still form no sort
of evasion from the ch: ‘of superficiality. Norinan was
ever more ingenuous in speaking of himselli and his opinions,
than Dr. Priestly, though, as he did not understand his own
moral character, he could not be expected to give the right
view of it to others. His acknovvledgments in the prefaces
to some of his own works would be sufhcient to sustain the
epithet superficial, without anyreference to the Works them»-
selves. Of the History of Early Opinions, a work that of
all others would require time, patience, accuracy and pro-
foundness in original investigation, he says with amusing sim-
plicity that he had “taken a good deal of pains to read, at
least to look carefully through, many of the most capital
works of the ancient Christian writers, in order to form just

 

 

29

ideas of their general principles and trains of thinking, and
to collect such passages as might occur for his purpose:”’
and he observes, as a sort of apology for his hasty second-
hand investigations, that “ to have compiled such a work as
this from original authorities only, without the aid of modern
writers, would be more than any one man could execute in
the course of a long life.” This was one of the great faults
of Dr. Priestly, his desire to do in a hurry, what, thoroughly
done, would cost years of labor.

Had there not been a great defect, both in his mind and
heart, he would not have defended the doctrines of materi-~
alisrn and philosophical necessity, or fatalisrn, in moral and
intellectual philosophy, nor, at so late a period, the doctrine
of phlogiston in chernistry, nor would he have written such a
;l'arrago as the History of the Corruptious of Christianity,
opened and continued with the avowal of his own disbelief in
the inspiration of the evangelists and apostles. Accordingly
there was such a defect, and it was what made him a Unite»
rian, and carried him on perpetually veering from error to er-
ror; itwas the want qfflgtticl-£9rz.g, flxecl, clearly d:i.9ccrnecl]_9rt'n-—
ciplcs, either in l:1eart or in intellect, in morals or in mind. 

his course through life, his mind seems to us like a vessel, loose ,

in a hroad and Wl1”1tllt’1f>‘ river, with all sail set, but no ruddeir.
The vessel could not advance tar, without striking on some
concealed rock or p1*ojecting hart , the consequence might
he, that the force of the current and the wind together‘ would
swing her 1‘C)L’l1T",1(.l from the impetlinnent, to go stern foremost
With the stream, (the Wind filling her sails as well in this di-~
motion as any,) till the next concussion with another rock or
an island might turn her again in another movement, thus to
continue her course, if she did not come entirely aground,
now sideways, new stern foremost, and now in her proper
position. Thus Dr. Pris-stly’s mind seems to have moved.
He set sail fair, but without a rudder ; he came upon Lard-
ner’s Letters on‘ the Logos, and this, not the examination of
the Scriptures, turned him into Socinianistn; he came upon
the theory of materialism, and straightway denied the exist-~

 

30

ence of the soul; he strucl: next upon Hartley’s Observa-
tions, and here his mind swung round into fatalism, and in
this channel of error went stern foremost through life; and
that immortal spirit passed into eternity with a blind and
dreadful indifference to the future, and a denial of all repent-
ance for the past, the necessary result of his combined fatal-—
ism and materialism.

In regard to his philosophical discoveries, especially the
great ones in Pneumatic chemistry, to which, and to his
amenity of manners, his evenness of temper, and his scep-
ticism in theology, his reputation as a philosopher must be
mainly attributed, he himself acknowledges that he did not
discover, but happened on them, while pursuing other things.
“ Few persons, I believe, have met with so much uiierrpectetl
good success as myself, in the course of my philosophical
pur-suits.. My narrative will show, that the first hints of

almost every thing that I have discovered of much impor-~

tance have occurred to me in this manner. In looking For
one thing, I liéive generally found another, and sometimes a
thing of much more value than that of which I was in quest.”
This feature in his mindwas widely difi'erentf1'o1n the patient
investigation, the thoughtful reasoning, and the cautious com-
parison and induction, in the exercise of which Sir Humphrey
Davy was led to the gas——-lamp, and Sir Isaac Newton to the
law of gravitation. Tl P two pliilosophers were not pl‘1i-
losophers by accident or amusement, nor were their discove-
ries accidental. They were the result, with Newton espe-—
cially, of a patience, profoundness, and accuracy, in investi-
gation and meditation, by which, neither in philosophy nor in
theology, was Dr. Priestly characterized. True science is
meditative; Priestly was not. In theology and moral _phi-
losophy he was, without controversy, rash, superficial, and an
infidel. It was not the position of a philosopher, that “ In
regard to Christ we may believe any thing emcept that he is
dz'm’ne.,” ,As has been admirably said in regard to Dr.

 

eChanning,i the course he took in religion showed how the

fozmdationsof his mind were laid. It showed that he was

31

thrown ofl” from all fundamental principles; this characteristic
of the System of N egations he displayed to the full; “ I do
not know,” said he, “ when my creed will be _fia:ed.” Along
with fundamental principles, Unitarianism cannot live; the
same obliquity, therefore, of mind and heart, which makes a
man a Unitarian, will, as a general result, make him super-—
ficial in all things.""

The consideration of the neglect of taste and refinement
by one party, and the exclusive devotion to them by the
other, to the exclusion of truth and spirituality, is a point of
immense importance. It were well for those who love the
Saviour, to assert his supremacy over the imagination, and
that there is no true intellectual glory, but what is accom--
panied with an aciltnowletlgtnent of his divinity, and baptized
with his love. It were well for the people to ask if they are
willing to accept and support a literature, which carries in
itself the elements of decay and spiritual ruin. And it may
be well. to take into serious consideration the " truth, that the
hriglitest era of the English intellect, was that in which the

minds and hearts of the scholars of England were imbued l

and {filled froin infancy with the evangelical system of divine
trutl.1;, with deep reverence for the Bible, and adoring views
of the great one doctrine lJ1‘01.1g;l.1tlO View in it, the atonement
hy the S’ll'flil31‘l,lfl‘{'__f',S and death of Jesus Christ_:, and that; her
intellectual vigor‘ tl'ien began to when men of this
noble statnp were succeeded by sceptical moralists and
ratiionalists, of much the same influence as the preachers of
modern Socinianisrn. Do we wish for a literature of fire
and power, con'ipass and depth of thought, and deep spi:r-
ituality, rousing and sustaining man’s best energies, a literature
that shall roll down like a sea of glory over all successive
ages, ‘beating men, as with an irresistible impulse, on its
bosotntovvards heaven, and encircling and steeping our very
political institutions in the preserving energy of the gospel?’
Over such a literature the Lamb that was slain must rule.
t‘ Note E.

 

332

Due Spirit must pervade it, His, “ who wore the plotted crown
vwitk bleeding brows.” On the other hand, are we willing
to poison the present. age with a literature wedded to seep-
ticism, and to send down to futurity, in the same form, the
elements of a “ potential infidelity,” that will drive the Bible
from its authority as the regent of men’s consciences, pro--
claim the innocence of unbelief, deny both the existence of
human depravity, and its provided remedy in the gospel, and
make men, by whole generations, fit only for perdition, and
that, in proportion as it extends, will sap the foundations of
all good government, throw the people loose from all princi—-
ples, and prepare the republic in this country for another
reign of terror, the counterpart of revolutionary 13‘1*ance?
Let the principles prevail which reject the Deity of Christ,
and the atonement by his sutierings and death; let the prin-
ciples prevail that are linked with Unitarianism, (say 1't1'il1Gt‘
the principle of antagonism to all principles,) and the foun-
dation for such a literature is laid already.*

Christia.n—ity ought to prevent it 5 and as one great means
of preventing it, there is another triumph, which piety ought;
to have achieved : the poets should have been holy men, and
the poetry of this world, invested with the sanctity of a better
world, should have fired rnen’s imaginations with bright
perspective views of the glories of the CELESTIAL CITY‘,
inquiring, '

Wliat; stately buildings durst so far extend

Their lofty towers into the starry sphere,
And what unknowen nation there empeopled Were.

They have generally been wicked men, and their works
unsanctifying and demoralizing in their tendency. When
some great poetic genius shall have been baptized with the
influences of the Holy Spirit, some rnind akin to Shakspeare’s
for the greatness and universality of its power, then will it be
seen and known what wonders of regenerating mercy poetry

"" Note F,

38

can accotnplish for the world. Of all the mind’s faculties,

imagination is the most sublime. When a holy appeal shall
be made to the soul, through its medium, by a company of
truly religious Poets, we doubt not the result will be mighty.
It must be so, for it will be an appeal to man’s spiritual
powers and longings, rousing them up and setting them at
motion amidst the dread and grand realities of the spiritual

“world, and not calling him, with the rnawltish sentimentality

of Unitarianism, to worship nature, and behold the dignity,
perfectibility, and innocent aspirations, of his own defiled
soul. It will be an appeal, rousing up the soul by presenting
God its Creator, God manifest in the flesh, God coming near
to the soul’s dim apprehensions, and in infinite eondescension
to rnan’s weakness and inability to support the vision of One
dwelling in light inaccessible and full of glory, putting on the
veil of man’s nature, and thus unveiling to him the light of
the knowledge of that glory as it shines in the face of Jesus
Christ.

When the imagination wanders arnid these solemn mys-
teries of grandeur in the being and plans and operations of
God, then is that noble faculty employed upon the subjects
for which it was intended, and amidst realities for the pur-
pose of mingling with Wllich imagination was created in the
soul. The poetry of devotion is the noblest of all poetry,
and therefore it is the rarest: it requires not only exalted
genius, but deep piety. Yet it ought to be the common
element of the soul, as common as the air that we breathe.
And such poetry as a great portion of all that has been
written, ought to be felt universally as an insult to nian’s
spiritual being, and expelled with simultaneous indignation
from existence. There will come a time, we fully believe,
when poetry will be almost exclusively employed amidst the
glories of revelation, and in prefigurings of that glory, still
greater, that is yet to be revealed. What is all the glory
even of God’s own works, to the infinite grandeur of the
discoveries in his word ! It is veiled behind the splendor of

5

34

the cross of Christ, even as the pale starlight dies from the
vision before the rising sun.

The same influence that ought to have made piety the
handmaid of devotion, ought also to have blessed the world
with the gift of a religious philosophy. The study of ethics
ought to have been the study of God, and metaphysics, in-
stead of being consigned to the care of infidelity, ought to
have shone with the steady radiance of light reflected from
the Bible. In all our systems of philosophy, the spiritual
nature of man should have been fully recognized, and ex-
hibited as infinitely superior to his mere intellectual nature.
Philosophy should have shown the manner in which his
spiritual wants and instincts look to, and are intended for, a
spiritual world, and how the mysteries of that world are
imaged in the depths of the soul, and have power over it,
such power, that even the rage of passion will be hushed in
their presence, as the madman quails before the eye of his
keeper."“ Conducted as they have been, the tendency of
metaphysical speculations has been so material, so sceptical,
so destructive to all man’s spiritual sensibilities, that Burke
declared that nothing can be conceived more hard than the
heart of a thorough bred metaphysician. This is the legiti-
mate consequence of studying man’s character and constitu-
tion as if he were a mere material tiring, a machine, whose
soul, or moving principle, is so dependent on the flesh and
bones, that the whole together makes a grand subject for
physiological investigation, to be examined much in the same
way in which you would galvanize a dead frog, or dissect a
Chinese puzzle, or analyze a bit of ore.

Philosophy ought to have considered man, in his relation
to God, as a creature not of time and sense and understand»-
ing merely, but of eternity and reason, a being of ideas and
living principles, containing within himself the axioms on
which his relations with the external world rest, and on which

* See Wordswortl1’s Ode on intimations of immortality from recollections
of early childhood.

35
he must rest in his own examination of that world. It were
unworthy and degrading to suppose that God should have
made an existence of such preciousness and dignity as the
imperishable human soul, dependent for its knowledge, nay

for its Very ideas, on the perishing objects of sense around

it : a mere empty chamber, which the external light, admitted
through the shutters of the senses, must fill with ivnages in-
stead of ideas, and then the whole employment of the soul
shall consist in combining those images, even as an infant
does its toys, and sitting down to reflect upon them! How
the soul, the tabttlct men, could ever in this way attain the
ideas of God, eternity, or immortality, it would have puzzled
Aquinas himself to determine. Surely, it is a miserable
View of the whole subject, and nothing but Locl<1:e’s great
name, and the concurring circumstances, that tended to give
him an influence in the schools almost as despotic as that of
Aristotle, could have imprisoned the general mind so long in
that system: a system sceptical in its tendencies, and of a
most suspicious aspect, were it only that a sect, whose specu-~
lotions abjure all principles, has much to say in praise of the
principles of its author.

With a perversity of intellect, the counterpart of that moral
insanity which prefers the world to God, men have exatn-
ined the soul, and we may add, Gocl its Creator, through the
world, through experiment, instead of examining the world
in the light. of God and of the soul’s nature. This is nothing
better than irreligion 3 and we fully believe that this miserable
system of philosophy may be traced to man’s_depravity, to
his i1"1V@t@’l‘flt(3 disposition to think upon and live for, not the
living soul, and God its Creator, and eternity its spiritual
abode, hut his external self, the shadow of his permanent
self, and the transitory world that encloses him around, and
offers its allurements to his senses. The common metaphys-
ics afford thus a striking proof of man’s fallen condition, his
tendency to begin with outward things, and think them of the
most importance, and live for them, instead of living inwardly



and for God. Oh the degradation of a philosophy that
comes in aid of this depravity, and binds man down to sense,
and makes God’s image in the soul, the dependent slave of
God’s material creation! A philosophy, that, denying the
doctrine of innate ideas, denies also all spiritual mysteries, and
leaves the soul not much better than the inner walls of the
Bastile, on which its various inmates have been for ages
scrawling their charcoal inscriptions of darkness, insanity,
guilt, lamentation, and wo.

Had philosophers been Christians, and man in the habit
of beholding; and living for God, this result could not have
taken place. What Christian does not feel that in commun-
iiig with God and heavenly spiritual things, the soul is in her
proper element and employment, not looking outward, not
regarding sense, or the senses, or the sciences, or any com-
bination of sensible things or properties, or any manifestation
of the nature of the soul through them; but in the presence
of pure ideas, her own natural home, in abstraction from the
world, retiring inwards, contemplative, meditative, serene?
If this employment had been, as it ought, her beloved one,
if she had not been averse from it, and dead in trespasses
and sins, it would now be seen and felt that man’s soul is a
thing of light, not obscurity, a clear and serene monarch
among a world of comparatively dark and unsubstantial
shades. Psychological science, instead of being in the rear,
would be in the advance of all other sciences. Men would be
profound mental philosophers much more abundantly than
they are now proficients in external knowledge.

“ In religion there is no abstraction.” Every thing is en»-
ergized with spiritual life. Man becomes a living soul, not a
mere intellect. Philosophy becomes psychology, the philosow
phy of the soul, not mere mental philosophy. a Our philosophy
is all Nousology, not Psychology, the philosoplty of the
mtderstcnzciing, not of the soul, and “all alike preassumes,
with Mr. Locke, that the mind contains only the reliques of
the senses, and therefore proceeds with him to explain the

3"”

substance from the shadow, the voice from the echo.”*“
There are subjects on which mental philosophy has scarcely
yet touched, of more importance than all her other specula-
tions put together. The nature of sin, and its influence on
the spiritual being, is one of these subjects. To reason con-
cerning man’s nature, without taking into view the truth that
his relation to God is that of moral depravity to infinite holi-
ness, is just as unphilosophical as it would be to reason con»-
cerning the attractive power of the heavenly bodies over sub»
stances on the surface of the earth, without taking into view
that attraction of these substances towards the earth, which
occasions their gravity. What work would such reasoning
make in natural philosophy! And yet it is upon just such
incorrect and partial premises, that men set out in their com~
placent speculations on the nature and dignity of man. To
adopt the language of natural philosophy, man ought to grav-
itate towards his Maker, but a wilful moral gravitation of
sefishness writes LOST upon his soul, and draws him to per-
dition, as certainly as the attraction of gravitation propels
matter to the centre of the earth. Now is it not a grand ab-
surdity to enter on the science of metaphysics, without taking
into View this astounding moral fact? Ahsurdity or not, it is
iniquity, and tends, along with all other inventions of man, to
Inalte him forget his moral ruin and need of a Saviour, and
attempt to build up science and his own being on other prin-
ciples than those revealed in God’s word. How long shall
it thus he 1'’ How long shall metaphysical and moral philoso-
phy he divorced from religion, and possess nothing but a
gross, sceptical, petrifying tendency over men’s minds Pt

Who can deny the truth of Mr. Coleridge’s remark,
“ That the principles of taste, morals, and religion, taught in
our most popular compendia of moral and political philosc-
phy, natural theology, evidences of Christianity, &zc., are

false, in_jurious, and debasing.”i- They regard mania his

"* Aids to Reflection, page 394. “l Aids to Reflection, page 393.

38

relation to this world only, and as a mere creature of the
understanding, and might have been formed just as they are
if man were in reality only a higher sort of brute 3 they do
but make him a more refined animal. It would have been
deemed almost insanity or fanaticism, hitherto, to have writ-
ten a book of moral and mental philosophy on spiritual prin-
ciples, the principles of the Bible, exhibiting God, and the
grandeur and responsibility of man’s being in relation to God
and the Saviour. But what is man’s mere understanding
compared with his spiritual powers, and what are all our
nicely arranged and methodical analyses of the ‘faculties of
the mind, the mere A, B, C, and grammatical skeleton of
metaphysics, compared with one profound remark on the in-
ward being, or one glimpse of the nature of the soul as look-
ing towards eternity, and created for a world and scenery of
spirits E’

The very monkey, who looked belulml the glass, to find
the substance of the reflection, exliibited a worthier curiosity,
than those who are content to be put oil" with such a mere
enumeration of the human faculties. We need it philosophy
that looks behind the glass ; a philosophy that recognizes in
the answering reflection which the human soul makes to the
presented spiritual realities of revelation, not the superficiality
of a mere physical reflection, but the reality of a counter
spiritual world ; a philosophy, that, not content to stop, and
gaze, and examine the embroidered curtain of man’s exter-
nal nature, lifts it up at once, and sets us in illimitable depths.
Mental philosophy has yet been merely occupied in watching
the waves of being, as they break and die on the shore of man’s
sensible and temporal existence, and in picking up, here and
there, a shell thrown upon the beach, that, put to the ear, re-
peats in mimic murmurs the resounding roar of the unfathomed
and unexplored ocean. Even so do some of the mysterious
phenomena, that philosophers have found, even amidst their
external speculations, tell to the listening soul of mysteries
and solemn music inthe depths that threw them up. But

5'39

philosophy has never sailed out over that ocean, or gone
down into its depths. It is all before her, unadventured,
deep, boundless, mysterious, sublime !*

On any subject that involves principles connected with

rnan’s spiritual nature, we plunge into darkness just in pro- ~

portion as we neglect the Bible, that storehouse of all spiritual
principles, that statesmarfis surest manual, as Well as Chris»
tian’s guide. And what great subjects are there, which do
not involve such principles, or are not affected by man’s
alienation from his Maker? The same remarks, though not
to so great an extent, which are applicable to moral science,
might be made in regard to history, politics, education, law,
and the physical sciences. They have all been managed as
if the ground they occupy were out of the legitimate province
of Gro<l’s inspection, and consecrated to the genius of univer-
sal scepticism. It would seem as if religion had nothing to
do with them, nor they with religion. They are a sort of
infidel farnily by themselves, where God is scarcely rnen-«-
tioned, or G-od’s authority acknowledgecl, or God’s superin-~
tending providence recognized. Where is the history that
brings us near to God; where the system of politics or politi-
cal economy, that points us to him, and developes at worls:
in this world the great principles of his own moral govern-
ment? Where is the system of education that prepares the
soul for God, teaches it to look habitually beyond second
causes, and to feel that nothing has any value except so far
as God can be seen and glorified in it, and that all temporal
eraistence and its objects are the mere material steps, by
which the regenerated soul may ascend through the great
atonement and mediation of Jesus, to an existence of spiritual
glory in the heavenly world? Where is the system of law,
Where the assembly of lawyers, in the midst of which you
would naturally think of God, the source and sanction of all
law, or Where the Bible, God’s great lt1W-l)OOl{ for the uni-

it Note 

4:0

verse, is reverentially and prayerfully studied, and the princiw
ples of eternal justice, as they shine in the incarnation and
propitiatory death of the great Son of God, are traced out
and exhibited in their demanded application and operation in
all the affairs of mortals P And where are the scientific vol-
umes, in which the soul is made to feel that every thing has
a moral aspect, and that God is the author of all science, and
that the soul’s object in the study of his works should be the
discovery and exhibition of him the Creator? The sciences
in most cases exclude God from notice, and are pursued
without any reference to him whatever, or to man’s nature as
a spiritual being 3 and this is undoubtedly the reason why the
study of the physical sciences begets such a tendency to ma-
terialism, and why so many scientific men have been nothing
more or less, than conceited, scientific infidels.

i What else than such a dreadful result can be expected
from the habitual forgetfulness of God and the worship of
man’s intellectual being, the closing of the eye upon God,
and opening it only on his WO1‘l{S, the shutting up of the soul’s
vision among physical things and speculations, without any
reference to, or consideration of, their spiritual meaning, and
the habit of regarding God himself, even in speculation, as
nothing more than a great omniscient geometrician, a being
Without any moral qualities or feelings. It is melancholy
proof of man’s fallen nature, that he can endure such an un——
natural divorce between his intellectual and his spiritual be-
ing, and such an idolatrous reverence for his own physical
and intellectual powers, and such bondage to his five senses,
and such fearful alienation from his God. It is a humiliating
sightlto behold the great company of philosophers praising
themselves, and praising each other, and praising their own

intellectual glory, and praising the power of steam, and the

glory of steam--engines, and praising the dignity and per»
fectibility of human nature, and, with a mawkish, lisping
aflectation of lofty sentiment and taste, congratulating each
other on the pure and holy aspirations of the soul, yet all this

A4

:1 ]

while groping in a spiritual rnidniglit, ignorant of God, and
opposed to his whole character as he himself has exhibited
it in the ]3ible.”“

Piety ought to have moulded and energized the niaxims
and proverbs of society, but it has not. The world is full of
proverbs, but they all have a Worldly meaning; there are
many sententious rnaxims, but they are all of a mere earthly
prudence, not more elevated than the Sagacity of an elephant,
or the instinctive principles according to which the beaver
builds his darn. Of this nature are most even of Dr.
Fr'at1ltlit1’s writings, and the speculations of Paley, and the
principles developed in Miss Edgworth’s works. The Poor
1‘iicl1a1'cl, and I’aley’s Moral Philosophy, and Miss Edg-
wortl1’s Moral Tales, fascinating as they are, and Defoe’s
History of Colonel Jack, are only full of the same mere
temporal sagacity, of which the rna.xirns and proverbs of life
are the small coin. And those who thinls: of meeting rnan’s
spiritual wants and guiding the world to goodness and happi-
ness in this way, while tliey neglect God’s Bible and the
cross of Christ, and man’s spiritual destiny in its light, are
just like men who should go about at noontlay hanging up in
all the corners of the streets, and to all the lamp-posts by
the side-Wallis, a multitude of farthing candles, and miserable
x'usl1—lights, as signs for the people to direct their attention
and guide tlfltill‘ steps. Wliztt need we such winlting tapers
as these, when we have the glorious sun shining in the
heaven of God’s word above us, and with such a power of
light, as, to any man who looks at it, absolutely puts out the
pale rush-liglits of tnorality, that a selfishheart, regardless of
God,kind1es and applauds? To neglect God’s word and
God’s glory, and wallt in the light of our own pretended reason
and for the gratification of our own selfishness, is a course
that God has condemned, and that, if we persist in it, must
end in ruin. Yet a great part of men’s education is to Show
how they may collect dollars and cents, and if it were not

* Note H.

4.3

that man’s selfishness may be more gratified by a more GK—-
tended scope of investigation, we are persuaded that the only
sciences ever studied, would have been included in Bools:-
keeping and the Rule of Three.

Among the maxims by which this world is governed, the
principle of expediency is one of such vast extent and vari-
ous application, that it may be well to spend a moment in
its examination, taking Christianity and not selfishness for
our rule. It is not in favor of any argument that it is applied
solely or chiefly in a bad cause. But this is the case with
the argumentfrom expediency. It is always the pillar on
which oppressors, and tyrants and selfish governments lean.
It is the vanguard in the army of iniquitous measures and
practices, under whose protection, when they begin to suffer
a rent, the retreat may be covered, and rendered orderly
and slow, and time given for a regiment here and there to
throw themselves into some impregnable citadel, where a
position can be maintained, till the rented army may regain
strength, and once more, in a new disguise, overrun the coun-
try. It is the support of every public nuisance, and the one
argument against all public reform. It defers an intended
reformation to the last possible moment of procrastination,
and when the evil can no longer be endured in its luxuriance,
expediency takes away all energy from the reforming princi-
ple, and prevents its thorough operation, pruning a few of the
branches, but leaving the tree in the ground. Expediency
avoids the reform, but adopts its name, and cherishes the
evil, by giving it a more plausible shape. For illustration of
this truth, look at the history of the English house of com-
mons, and at all. the attempts to economize in the government
of Great Britain. Look at the situation of the kingdom
when Burke delivered his celebrated speech on economical
reform, and look at it now. “Nothing, you know,” said
Burke in that masterly speech, “is more common, than for
men to wish and call loudly, too, for a reformation, who,
when it arrives, do by no means like the severity of its

43

aspect. Refbrmation is one of those pieces which must be
put at some distance, in order to please. Its greatest favorers
love it better in the abstract than in the substance. When
any old prejudice of their own, or any interest that they value
is touched, they become scrupulous, they become captions,
and every man has his separate exception. Some pluck out
the black hairs, some the gray; one point must be given up
to one, another point must be yielded to another; nothing is
suffered to prevail upon its own principle; the whole is so
frittered down and disjointed, that scarcely a trace of the origi-
nal scheme remains. Thus, between the resistance of power
and the unsystematical process of popularity, the undertakers
and the undertalting are both exposed, and the poor reformer
is hissed ofl’ the stage, both by friends and foes.”*

This would have been the case with the temperance ref'or-
mation if the principle of expediency had prevailed. That
principle would have prevented all societies on the plan of
total abstinence. The principle of expediency would have
prevented the resolution passed by such an overwhelming
majority in the great national temperance convention, de-
claring all trafiic in ardent spirit an immorality. Expediency
argued strongly against it; the world, he said, was not pre-
pared for it, it was taking too bold a stand; ministers, he
said, would not know what to do with their church members
that kept dram-«shops, or their deacons, that kept distilleries;
and the whole country, he said, would be put into a ferment,
and there would be a great reaction, and by such imprudence
and rashness, they would do the temperance cause a great
deal more harm than good. In this way good Mr. EXpe.di-r
ency argued, and very stoutly and obstinately, but he could
not prevail. In this way he is going about now, and arguing
in this region. He enjoins upon youto be exceeding cautious,
lest in descanting on a public vice, you trouble some great
criminal. . He tells you, you must never say, Thou art the
man. He warns you against personalities, bids you beware

* Bur1:e’e Works, Vol. II. page 139.

44.4

of the ninth commandment, and tells you that you ouglit to
treat with the greatest tenderness and delicacy, those respect--

able and honest individuals rnost unfortunately ove:rtal<:en by

this sudden bound of public opinion, in their immoral pursuits
and practices.

There is a pitiful, snealting set "of adherents, that have
adopted expediency for their master and guide. These
men always appear after any unanimous expression of the
feelings of justice and stern Virtue, to iterate their tliireadbare
commonplaces about candor, forbearance, and the danger of
going too far. There was such a set starting into motion,

when good men were tnalting energetic eflbt'ts in behalf of“

the persecuted and outraged Cheroltees. They came before
the public with pitiable, hypocritical wlpiinings about caution,
sobriety, prudence, the danger of too inuoh eszoiteinent, and
all the despicable cant of a. party, that have not moral courage
enough to rebuke crime in any shape. They would Illlllfl
persuade you that it is cruelty to the oppressors, ardently to
defend the oppressed. They are like the gulls t;lf1a1; Sl{l11‘1 the
surface of an exhausted river. "While the tide of generous
feeling was in, you would have t1".1ouglit there were no such
creatures in erszistenceg the rnoment it has .retirec:l, they
scream over the shallows, and lay their spawn in the rnud.
The followers of exzpediency Watch the tide of popular l'eel-
ing, and are sure never to be found but wliere a favorable
tide would carry them; they dare not be at sea in a storm,
and when the signs of" a tempest appear in the horizon, you
may see their small craft darting with all possible rapic;lity“,
into every creel»: and haven.

The temperance reformation is followed and attended hy
a goodly train of men of expediency. They have much to

say against the abstract vice of drunl«:enness, sotnetliiiig to

say against the drunltards, but not one word against the
drunltard--rnaliers ; nay, with the most commendable tender»-

ness, they would guard against any thing that might injure

the feelings or rouse the prejudices of that honorable race,

 5

distillers, wholesale dealers, and retailers. We have had an
instance of this ltind very recently. In a speech otherwise
excellent, we were cautioned forsooth, in regard to the very‘
authors of the whole evil of intemperance, the manufacturers
and venders of ardent spirit, against the danger of causing
such persons, through a mistaken pride of character, to be-
come enemies to the cause I99 And who, we may ask, in
the name of all common sense, are enemies already to the
cause of temperance, if it be not distillers and dram-sellers?
Wliat enemies has the tenfiperance reformation to contend
with, if it be not these? It was a wise caution, surely;
since, if there be any distiller or dram—seller in this place or
region, who is not now an enemy to the cause of temperance,
that unknovvn a_ppcndage to his character or occupation,
Whatever it be, Wlllclfl could constitute him an enemy, must
be sot‘netl1ingi,' horrible and unheard of. It was tlierefore a
well-timed caution to see to it that we commit not that dread--
ful Wl(Z’.l{€3Cl11€¢SS oil‘ turning any distiller or dram-seller into an
enemy to the cause cl" temperance. Let us beware, my
beloved friends, how we bring upon ourselves such guilt.
.l:l"101'](3)O_l‘ the pleasantest childrcn’s books that was ever
pul;)lisl:1ec;l,the ].Tlvc1‘1i1r1gs at l:5l_or.ne, we remember a chapter
entitled 51"’/zirzgs by 2f/zcir rig’/z,t mmzes. A precious collection
of modern misnontiers, might be gathered under this title.
“Rutn-sliops and ruin, dra.m.-seller's and drunkards,” says
Mr. St1l‘gGl1t in his admirable address, (and he should have
added distillcrs,) “ are so cszceecliingly common, we have be-
come so perfectly l'::u‘11ili::u'ized, to the consequences of their
existence, in the :forms of pauperism and crime, disease and
death, that we are scarcely prepared to think and speak as
freely and forcibly as itldeserves, offan occupation which
is often conducted in so very genteel a manner, and which is
suffiared under the sanction of positive law. But it is my
duty in this place and upon the present occasion, to deliver

"" Speech of the honorable 13}. Everett, at the nieeting of the Salem Yottng
Men’s Temperance Society.

46

my opinions in the fear of God, and in the confidence of truth,
and not to suppress a jot or a tittle of their force, lest they
may rufile the equanimity of one man, or cross the pre-
possessions of another. Let me say, then, with a solernnity
becoming the occasion, that I can perceive no difi"erence
between the murder of a fellow-creature on a heath, by a
highway robber, and the murder of a human being by a
dram-seller, who knows the character of the poison he adrniu-—
isters, and its probable efi"ects, and who witnesses the increas-
ing activity and virulence of the’ poison from day to day,
until he learns, at last, that his miserable victim is no more.”
In regard to the expediency or propriety of an apology for
the drunkard-«makers, we know it ought not to be made. It
is not an excusable evil, either the distilling, or wholesale
dealing, or retailing, of this element of perdition. Suppose
that, by some unimaginable insanity in the public mind, the
cholera itself, a pestilence not half so dreadful or injurious
in its prevalence, as the vice of intemperance, should be
surrounded with all the allurernents, and temptations, and
seductive circumstances, that lead the drunkard to his cups;
and suppose that an individual should thenceforth establish
and open a manufactory of this disease, and have his vats for
its distillation, and his hegsheads for its exportation, and his
merchants to receive and distribute it, wholesale and retail;
how long would it be before our authorities would have this
destroyer of his fellowm-beings shut up in prison? Now, is
the distiller of rum, involving, in its manufacture and dis»-
tribution, such an incalculable amount of misery, such in-
evitable ruin and death, temporal and eternal, to multitudes
of his fellow--creatures, any less guilty, or less injurious,
as a member of society, than this supposed distiller of the
cholera? We believe there is not a man who can point out
the difference. The wholesale manufacturers and dealers in
this poison, are the poisoners general of the community 3; and
neither expediency, nor any other considerations of the kind,
should keep us, as men, as citizens, or as ministers of the

47

gospel, from uttering the whole truth in regard to this in-
iquity. As men, we should feel for the happiness of our
fellow»-men ; as citizens, we should stand up in protection of
the outraged community; as ministers, we should remember
God’s own words, W0 unto him that giveth his neighbor
drink, that puttest thy hozftle to him, and min/test him
drunken.

On every side, we behold misery abounding in this world,
and misery prepared for another, by those of our felloW—-
beings, who, under various names, are engaged in the manu—-
facture and distribution of ardent spirit. And now, when we
use in regard to them the language of truth, which, in such a
case, can neither be the language of tenderness, or delicacy,
are we to be charged with converting these drunl<.ard-makers
into enemies to the cause of temperance P Who ever heard
of such a thing? We call them to renounce their accursed
occupations. We beseech them utterly to have done with
a traflic, which is unmingled misery to others, and which, in
regard to themselves, though it brings money to the purse,
brings ruin to the soul. We will hail them as themost
valuable seals to the blesseduess of the temperance reforma-

tion, il’ they will only fall into its ranks. We will applaud .

their renunciation of a gainful, though iniquitous traflic, as a
blessed sacrifice for conscience’ sake, if they will only make
that renunciation, before public opinion actually compels
them. At all events, we will call things by their right names,

and state things in the coloring of truth; and so we would,

were there as many distillers and drarn--sellers around us, as
there are “ tiles on the roofs of the houses.” Nay, the
greater the number, the more earnest ought to be the attack.

As to the wisdom of keeping back any part of the truth on
this subject, it is the wisdom of moral cowardice. We need
not expect to do any thing for the real advancement of this,
or any other reformation, unless we take the lead of public
sentiment, and go on continually, farther than public senti-«
ment hasyet advanced. What great reformer ever yet ap-

4+8

peared, who did not have to go so far in advance of his own
age, as to be almost lost sight of ; striding so far before, as
Coleridge has somewhere nobly said of Milton, as to dwarf
himself in the distance; and so in the face of all its
prejudices, that they have raised the universal shout of
ignorance and passion against him, and have always said
that he was destroying his own cause, by his own rashness
and want of ecr_pedien.cy? Wlien the “ apostle of temper-
ance” began his work, his first sermon, it was remarked in
his favor, at the late great temperance convention, almost
hurled him from his pulpit; and if, as he went from one end
of the land to the other, he had acted on the proposed maxim
of tenderness, delicacy, and expediency, instead of harrowing
up the soul, and setting men’s minds on fire with his power-
ful exhibitions of the evil, he would have done nothing; he
might have raised no opposition, but he would have put men
to sleep.

To the end of the world, perhaps, there will be tempo-
rizing Christians, and men of expediency. Nevertheless,
it is a principle that Christians ought to abhor. It is a
great enemy to the Magdalen reform. All reformations,
indeed, and all reformers, have had to contend with it.
Luther fought hard against it. The philanthropist McDowall
finds it his one grand enemy in New York. It has kept the
seventh commandment almost utterlyiout of view, in all its
bearings, and has let men go on in the commission of this
enormous wicl«:edness, till custom has given to the sin of
licentiousness the power of a prescriptive right; and he who
meddles with it, is not only considered indelicate, but almost
unjust. The habits of nations, against which neither the
pressnor the pulpit have lifted a warning voice, have strip-
ped this unclean iniquity of its disgusting, abhorrent features,
and arrayed it in the guise of an innocent, necessary free-
dom. What vice is there, which expediency has not, in some

way or other, dressed up, if notin the garb of a virtue,,at,

least in the guise of a pretended necessary and unavoidable

49

evil? Nevertheless, The Lord lmoweth how to reserve the‘
u7y"ztst unto the day of judgment‘ to be _punished ; but chiefly
them that walk after the flesh in the lust of unclecmness.

Expediency has had much to do with slavery. It is the
one obstacle to its abolition, all the world over. Christianity
ought to have abolished and annihilated it long since. It
ought to have proclaimed, in a voice loud enough to be
heard from the shore of the Eastern Atlantic, to the shore of
the Western Pacific, that the air which encircles and blesses
these United States, shall be breathed only by freemen, that
the moment a slave touches the soil, he shall be free. But
expediency, and not Christianity, has prevailed.- And even
now, in the heart of New England, what occurrences are
taking place, and what disgraceful laws are enacting in the
midst of us !

One would think, if the inhabitants of a Christian land
like ours conclude on the whole, that it is GXp@(;li@1‘1l; to keep
more than two millions of people still longer in slavery, it
might also be admissible, if not GX'p(3Cll(311t, to instruct them,
at least teach them to read the holy name of a Saviour.
But no! Their souls must be kept in hondage and dark-—
ness, that the body may still be rnanaclcd with safety l Say
a word south of the Potomac, in presence of the people of

color, even on the liberty of holiness, speak of redemption

and emancipation. even by the Cross, and in all llls’Zt3lll1OOCl
you will have some inquisitor tn demand how you dare hold
such disorganizing, insurrectionary langttttge. And then will
talk high of their 1*igl1ts,, (their inalienable tights of inheri-
tance in the bodies and souls of their fellow-beings,) and
threaten to dissolve the Union, if they of the North dare to
meddle with them, or are net willing to let the subject of
entire abolition alone; Just as if this Union would be any
longer valuable, if it were cemented and to be held together
only at the price of the perpetuated curse and guilt of
slavery !

All this is because the purity and power of Christianity have

50

been paralyzed by the prevalence of the principle of expew
diency. This principle might be concisely defined thus:
it -is the sacrifice of Zc.9t~z'72g ]2rz"2zcz'ples to present ernermencies.
A time-serving policy is the bane of the modern church;
though indeed virtuous men have almost always been less
energetic in a good cause, than wicked men in a bad one.
“ Good works,” it is one of But-l<e’s finest remarks, “ are
commonly left in a rude, unfinished state, through the tame
circumspection, with whicl1 a timid prudence so frequently
enervates beneficence. But the works of malice and injus-
tice are quite in another style. They are finished with a
bold, masterly hand ; touched as they are with the spirit of
those vehement passions, that call forth all our energies
whenever we oppress and persecute.”* _

The principle of expediency has greatly shackled the
exertions which pious men have made for the clue observ—-
ance of the Christian Sabbath. That day is now, in many
places in Christian lands, turned into a mere engine of
Satan, an opportunity for the unrestrained pursuit of sin, a
day on which, there being an interval of rest from that
pressure of business, which smothered the passions during
the week, they burst forth into a flame; a riding day, a
day for emursions of pleasure, a perfect holiday of lust, a
day for gambling, and theatre~—going and licentiousness. In
this country, religion as yet possesses so little ruling energy,
that the profanation of the Sabbath continues legalized, and

‘commanded in the national statute book‘. What are the

obligations of the Sabbath, when they come across expe-
diency, human interest, or convenience? in such cases,

man is too proud to submit. Your reading-rooms must be

kept open, and the Sabbath violated in this needless Way,
and ‘you even think him who remonstrates, righteous over
much; your barbers must violate it, because your beards
trouble you‘; your milkmen must violate it, and rattle their

 Speech at Bristol, previous to the election.--Works, Vol. II. page 247,.

5l

carts through the street, and they have to come later on the
Sabbath morning than any other day in the week, because you
choose to keep a good portion of that morning as a season of
rest, and must not be disturbed in your hallowed repose 3 then
your butchers must violate it, and kill on the Sabbath, be-
cause you must have fresh meat on Monday; your printers
must violate it, to bring you the Sunday’s news at the Mon-
day’s breakfast 3 your farmers must violate it, and make hay
on the Sabbath, otherwise, a sudden shower might even cost
them the price of a whole Sunday’s preaching; your dis-
tillers must violate it, because it would not do to have the
sacred fires of their distilleries go out on the Sabbath, but in
these workshops of Satan, these alembics and cauldrons of
hell, the liquid fire, that is to be sluiced through the coun-
try, must be kept boiling, and the smoke of its torment as-
cending, not only from Monday morning till Saturday night,
but from Saturday night till Monday morning; then, your
post—~oflices must be opened on the Sabbath, and your post-
masters violate it, for you must have your letters 3 your stages
must be clriven, and your drivers violate it, for your letters
must be carried 3 your taverns must be made noisy and busy,
your mails circulated, and the impenitent and thoughtless fur-
nished with newspapers, business, and excitement, to while
away the time, and keep the unwelcome thoughts of eternity
from intruding on the soul——--and thus, from one end of the
land to the other, the whole vast machinery of this depart-

‘ ment of the government, and secular business of the nation,

with all its concomitant agitations, must be kept in just as
active operation as on any other day in the week! And all
this in contempt of God’s authority, simply because men’s
convenience, and appetite, and passions, demand it.

“It is not enough, in a situation of trust in the common-
wealth,” we quote, once more, the words of the ever to be
honored Edmund Burke, “that a man means well to his
country 3 it is not. enough, that, in his single person, he never
did an evil act, but always voted according to his conscience,

52

and even harangued against every design, which he ap.
prehended to be prejudicial to the interests of this country.
This innoxious and inefi"ectual character, that seems formed
upon a plan of apology and disculpation, falls miserably short
of the mark of public duty. That duty demands and re-»
quires t/tat what is right should not only he made known, but
nzacle prevalent; that what is evil should not only he do-—
teczfecl, but clefeoizfecl. When the public man omits to put
himself in a situation of doing his duty with effect, it is an
omission that frustrates the purposes of his trust almost as
much as if he had formally betrayed it. It is surely no very
rational account of a man’s life, that he has always acted
right, but has taken special care to act in such a manner,
that his endeavors could not possibly be productive of any
consequence?’ a ,
Let us test our Christian character by the wisdom in these
sentences. If the principles they contain are applicable to
the statesman, how much more to the Christian. Is it praise
to a Christian in this dying World to be a harmless, inofl"en~
sive, negative member of society? VVere the Christian
standard where it ought to be, to hear such a character would
be considered a reproach. We must have a piety, that, ac...
cording to But-ke’s principles, will not only make known, but
make prevalent, the right ; that will not only detect, but do».
fear.‘ the evil. I t i
i “ There are very honest men,” Mr. Dana remarks, “ who
are sometimes as much afraid of letting out a truth upon a
sinful world, as they would be of setting loose a wild beast.”*
And there is a world of meaning in the added observation
which this writer makes, that “ no truth can be fully brought
out, nor its virtue proved, till it has undergone every experi-
ment, to which perverted ingenuity can subject it, and every
modification, which the mistakes of its friends can give to it.
God is using this world as the great laboratory of his universe,

* Review or the Memoirs of‘ new Martyn. Spirit or the rtiglills,
Vol. IV. page  l

53

and every truth as well as every error, is undergoing; moral
processes enough to rnalte the most knowing chemist stare.
There will be dross enough; but when the work is done, and
the shop shut up, tlierewill be no more mistakes as to what
is dross and what pure gold. The metals that come out of
this fire, will have no baser mixture; it will all have been
srnelted out.”

We fully believe the time is coming, the day of true mil-
lennial glory, when it will be no longer the declaration of truth,
but error and eagpediency, that will expose man to the indigna-»
tion of his race. .It will not long be possible to hold rnen’s
minds in such bondage to clarkness, as to nialsze them believe
that selfishness is not guilt, that unbelief is innocent, that
oppression is ever necessary, or that moral error is not hate-~
ful deformity. The time is coming, when all things will so
shine in the 1igl.1t of the Bible, that HOLINESS TO '.1‘I-IE Loan
shall be written even on the bells of the horses.

The maxims of this world, and the principles according
to which it is managed, shall not much lO1'lg(-31" run counter to
the law of God. The experiment has been tried, and
found ruinous. Ruin after ruin lies scattered over the world.
Empire after empire, crash after crash, tumbles to the ground...

So it will be, till the nations learn that in God only is strength,...

individual or national. Put them rinjimr, 0 Loan; that the
nations may imow t/zemselves to be but men.’ Let every
Christian do his duty, and the nations will soon learn this...
Whoever has a part in bringgiiig forward this era of glory, if

his heart is in the work, shall have the privilege to look backs
upon it, and upon G~od’s overruling providence, from a post. it

of holy observation, amidst

the Sanotities of Heaven.

 

Note A, page 21.

‘Teens is, in the collection of paintings, this year, in the Athenseum Gal-
lery, one picture at least, which, however beautiful as a painting, ought
surely to have been excluded on account of its immoral tendency. We re-
fer to the picture by Vandycke, marked N o. 13. It is worse than aifectation
to pretend that such a picture is not grossly immoral : its subject alone
would make it so. The collection this year is of so great excellence, being
principally from the old masters, and there is truly so rnuch in it to purify
the heart, while it refines the taste, that every Christian must feel indignant
to find, close beside a painting by Titian of the entoinbrnent of‘ our Saviour,
Vandycke’s picture of the Garden of Love ! It is an insult, both to the
taste and Christian feeling of the spectator, to have admitted that painting.

« The subject is stated in the catalogue to have been “e:1;p:rcssecl with rlelz'cacy.”

Delicacy indeed! Can any thiiig redeem a licentious subject, exquisitely
painted, from its indelicacy and immorality?

Note B, page 23-.

The human intellect cannot bear up and be vigorous, under a denial of all
the grand truths of revelation. ‘Without any sneer, either intended or im~
plied, on the intellectual organization and abilities of Socinian divines, we
are sure that the Well known flatness of’ Unitarian preaching is easily ac-
counted for, when the grandeur of the truths they deny, leaving nothing
for the mind to rest upon but a stale residuum of sentimental Deism, is taken
into consideration. ‘When men go to the house of God on the Sabbath,
there is in the soul a consciousness which it cannot wholly shake off’, that it
isin the near presence of awful interests and startling truths. And when
presented, instead of these, with mere superficial essays of morality and
sentimentalism, whatever efforts the mind may make to reconcile itself to
the incongruity, a sense of degradation, emptiness and poverty, cannot but
force itself upon the soul. There is a consciousness of falling totally be-
neath the dignity and grandeur of the subject, a feeling of shame in the
presence of truths not acknowledged, an insuperable undercurrent of convic-

55

tion, that after all, however the worldly heart may love to be lulled, this
preaching is not what the soul of man demands.

Robert Hall has treated the system of Unitarianism with a just and terrible
severity; and the example of Hall, in his sermons on the Socinian contro-
versy, ought to make men ashamed of that false delicacy, which shrinks
back from the plain exposure of Unitarian infidelity in the pulpit. We
would earnestly call the attention of our readers to I-Iall’s lectures, es-
pecially the one on the spirit and tendency of Socinianism.* In this lecture,
Hall says,

“ We naturally remark the close aflinity between the Unitarian system
and Deism.-——-Deism, as distinguished from Atheism, embraces almost every
thing which the Unitarians profess to believe. The Deist professes to be-
lieve in a future state of rewards and punishments,-—-the Unitarian does no
more. The points in which they coincide are much more numerous, and
more important than those in which they differ.--It is the same soul which
animates the two systems, though residing in different bodies.-—-'I‘he Unita-
rian system appears to have little or no connection with the religion of the
heart.”

Note C, page 26.

“I fully coincide,” says Coleridge, (Friend, page '78,) “with Frederic H.
Jacobi, that the only true spirit of Zalemncc consists in our conscientious
toleration of each other’s intolcrartoc. Wliatever pretends to be more than
this, is either the unthinking cant of fashion, or the soul-palsying narcotic
of moral and religious indifference. According to my judgment, it is mere
ostentation, or a poor trick that hypocrisy plays with the cards of‘ nonsense,
when a man rnal-res protestation of‘ being perfectly tolerant in respect of all
principles, opinions, and persuasions, those alone excepted, which render
the holders intolerant.-—---As much as I love my fellow-men, so much and no
more will I be z'm:olerant of their heresies and unbelief; and I will honor and
hold i'orth the riglit hand of fellowship to every individual who is equally
intolerant of that which he conceives such in me.”

This definition of the true spirit of tolerance, would rather confound the
Unitarian exhibition of that text which they so much admire, and of which,
with their definition of it, they perhaps believe even in the plenary inspira-
tion; “Faith, Hope, Charity, and the greatest of these is Charity.” The
Unitarian idea of tolerance is utter indifference to all essential truth, and
indignation at the charge of fatal consequences on any system of error.

“ We have learned from you,” Coleridge says to the Unitarians, (States-
vman’s Manual, page 151---2,) “ whom.,---and we now wish to hear from
you—--what we are to believe. The answer is :-——- p

The actual occurrence of an extraordinary event, as recorded by the biog-
-raphers of Jesus, in confirmation of ‘doctrines, without the ]27'em'ous belief of

*Hal1’s complete works, Vol. III. pages 29-435.

as

which, no man would, or rather accordiiig to St. Paul’s declaration, could,
become a convert to Christianity; doctrines which it is certain that Christ’s
immediate disciples believed, not less confidently before they acknowledged
his mission, than they did afterwards»-Let’ it not be forgotten, that though
nothing can be easier than to understand a code of belief, four 4_“fi_ftlis.,,,of
which consists in avowals of disbelief, and the remainder in trutlis,1iiconcern—
ing which (in this icolintry at least) a man must have takeaz paivzs to learn to

‘c“7m”e any‘ doubt; yet it is by no means easy to reconcile this code of i i1ega-
‘tiviesi with the declarations of the Christian Scriptures. On the contrary, it
requires all the resources of verbal criticism, and all the perverse subtlety of
special pleading, to work out a plausible semblance of correspondency be-
‘tween them. It must, however, be conceded, that a man may consistently
spare himself the trouble of the attempt, and leave the New Testanient
unread, after he has once thoroughly persuaded himself that it can teach
him nothing of any real iniportance, that he does not already know.”

Note D, page 27.

May God have mercy on those, and bring them to a timely repentance,
who can thus treat the transcendent exhibition of his goodness in the sacri-
fice of hislilternal Son. Alas! what awful guilt is theirs ! Charity to such
error would indeed be wilful participation in sin.

We believe that no expressions used in the address will be tliouglit unv-
just, by those who are acquainted with the subject, and know the deleterious
influence which Unitarianism is exerting both on the mind and heart. As
taught in the pages of Dr. Channing, it breaks up the foundations of inor-
als and religion, changes the nature of sin, converts selfisliness into a virtue,
calls :m.an’s temporal pursuits aspirations after God, makes God but “ another
name for human intelligence raised above all error and imperfection ,”* makes
man a worshipper of self, releases him from the obligation even of a belief
in Christianity, destroys the authority of the Bible, shrouds 1nan’s future
destiny in darkness, removes the Mediator, and takes away the sanctions of
the divine law.

“ That word hell,“ Dr. Channing says, “ which is used so seldom in the
sacred pages, which-, in a faithful translation, would not once occur in the
Writings of Paul, and Peter, and John, which we meet only in four or five
discourses of Jesus, and which all persons, acquainted with Jewish geogra-
phy, know to be a metaphor, a figure of speech, and not a literal expression,
this word, by a perverse and exaggerated use, has done unspeakable injury
to ChIistianity.”i _

Surely no one can thoughtfully peruse Dr. Channing’s writings, especially
the octave volume, without being convinced of their infidel tendency, and
Wearied with their superficial, puny sentirnentalism. Such ravings about
godlike human nature, blessings upon. human nature, halleluias of praise to
human nature, and “ turnings "to, human nature with intense sympathy and

* Discourses and ‘Miscellanies, page 461. ' 1' The same, page 443» 

57'

strong hope,” can be found in no other writer of the English language. On
his principles, man’s chief’ end is to glorify himself, the divinity of human
nature is a far more important theme than the divinity of Jesus Christ, and
God’s whole purpose in giving his beloved Son to die for the sins of the
world, Was not to save the lost, but to glorify human nature. The worship
of almost every other religion ever heard of, consists in glorifying its Deity,
Whatever that Deity may be. This is the only religion known, that makes,
its God a mere caterer for human glory. Monstrous deformity! Human

_ nature is divine already, and the whole object and importance of Christianity

is to make it more trauscendently glorious! God is to he loved, it might
be more proper to say, God is to be patronized, because he is fitted to glorify
the human mind, and is of a kindred nature and sympathies with man!
The whole system is one of guilty self-adoration, and degraded, superficial,
partial, injurious conceptions of God and the gospel. Paul is put between
Socrates and Alfred; a Worthy symbol of the place which this worshipper
of man’s nature would give to Christianity. To glorify God is of little
importance; to glorify the human mind is a great duty. Scarce a syllable
is said in the whole exhibition, on the duty of laboring for Christ, or seeking
God’s glory, or endeavoring to save immortal souls 5 the lofty mind, with
the 9'zL¢l£cIxnt sz'g7za.tm~cs of divinity upon it, scorns to be fettered down to such
bigoted fanatical employments; and religion is defined to consist in pure
hopes, lofty imaginings, high aspirations, and efforts to exalt and dignify
human nature.

Note E, page 31.

The history of Dr. I’riestly’s mind and heart is exceedingly solemn and
instructive. From his own accounts, it appears that he early resisted such
convictions of his guilt, and strivings of the Holy Spirit, as were perhaps
rarely resisted, and the individual ever after renewed unto repentance.
“ The weakness of my constitution,” he says, “ which often led me to think
that I should not he longdived, contributed to give rny mind a still more
serious turn ; and, having read many books of ca:ptricm-as, and in consequence
believing that a azcw—In3'rt/L produced by the immediate agency of the Spirit
of God was necessary to salvation, and not being able to satisfy myself that
I had experienced any thing of the kind, I an occasionally such distress of
mind as it is not in my power to describe, and which I still 1061: back upon with
horror. Notzoitltstarztling I had rtotlti-ng ivory material to 7~e_'proach myself with,
I often concluded that God had forsaken me, and that mine was like the
case of Francis Spira, to whom, as he imagined, repentance and salvation
were denied. In that state of mind, I remember reading the account of
the man in the iron cage, in the Pilgrim’s Progress, with the greatest per-
turbation.” _ I

We see here the pltilosopltic complacency with which, ,thus early, he
assured himself that he “had nothing very material to reproach himself
with,; Martial not that I said unto you, ye must be _bom again. Oh, if

.8

58

Dr. Priestly had but followed the course of the Pilgriin, and fled to the cross
of Jesus, instead of the gloomy insensibility of scepticism, for refuge, how
happy would it have been for him, and how many souls tliot have followed
him to ruin might have been reclaimed, with him, to everlasting life 1

The following extracts f1'01T11 the History of Early Opinions, will show the
infidelity and distortedness of mind, with which he set out in that Work.

“ Now, as it is not pretended tlntt there are any rnii-doles particularly
adapted to prove that Christ made and supports the World, I do not see that
we are 'zm(Zc9- any oi'ilz',gzzt-ion to believe it nwrcly because it was an opiazion hclcl
by an apostle.” .’ !

“ I iniglit have urged another kind of €L1‘g‘111T1G311l1 ogniiist both the divinity
and pre-existence of Christ, viz. frorn the doctrine of the rnziterizility of
n'1zt11, (! I) which I presume has been sufficiently proved in my disquisition
on nutter end sp.i.:rit. ll l1f.LVO there shown tha,t there is no more reason Why
3. man should be supposed to have 11.11 irnnutteriul principle within him, tl1.'~i11
tlliti; a. dog, :1 plzint, or {L 1r1.ng11et should lizjive one ; because in oil these cases
there is just the some dilliculty in i111:igi'1'ii1‘1g any connection between the
zaisilzlc vmztwr of which tlioy consist, and the 'i7mi.s-[lilo ]u,r2oevr.s* of which they
are possessed! I '“‘ "“ "“ 'l‘liis is :1. very short end plain 21.1-gtiiiioiit, perfectly
c(.'.I11S<Z)1'J.i1l1l; to all our reoson:i.ng in 1‘1)lJ1ll«Zl)S(.“_)_[)l'1y ! It is c:on.clusiVo (.lg'(l.lIl.‘5l} the
doctirine of (.1, slml, z:1.1:id C(Jr1'lS(f3(.1L‘l0il.1l1l y i.l.;1'i.l,l‘l.St the whole sy's1:o1'11 of p1'e-eX.~
istence. if l’eter, .l:.nnos, zind John, lied no pro—oxistont state, it Inlist be
contrary to all zt11.zilog;y to suppose .losus to lntve pre~exi.stod.” I 1

Such are the l<:rg.i.t.ii,l1':io,l;e ‘l:i.'ui.ts of U nitur.i:tn;ism, l.»o1;hi:i1 pliilosopliy and
religion. And yet this o"votvec’l, 11n'l.n;-liievor sot l;1i1i“1solJf' up to he on i.1np:1.1"t.iztl
liistoirinri of the oorruptions of Cii:ir.i.st‘iu.nityI and protii'1:1decl his system on
the world, just as all the advocates of’ U1‘1ll.1L17ltL11lSI'l1 do, as the vaunted
remedy for iniidelity ! I

And telling me, the sovoroigwst thing on earth
Wes purmuoeti for an inward bruise.

Note F, page 352.

It is such a. literature as this, that I*Izn'vzn'd University, under the pupiluge
of Unitoria,nis1n,,is now rozt1'i'mr. It will send out irmligiiant influences,
undermining the pillars of our support, and t

From their foundations loosening to and fro

the strong principles, on which alone rnen’s spiritual being; can rest in safety.
Hackney College, in England, established for the propagation of UnitztrizLn-
ism, poisoned multitudes with its infidel principles. “ Had that institution
continued,” observes Robert Ha.ll, “ it bid fair to become the most prolific
hot-bed of infidelity this country ever knew.” Unless the friends of even»-
gelicsl religion rouse and bestir themselves, Conibridge university big? fair

59

to become another mere Hackney college; a powerful hotbed of infidelity
it already  for the United States.

Mr. Schaufiier, (a beloved missionary of the American Board,) while he
was in this country, described, in an iriterestirng cornrnunication to the Spirit
of the Pilgrims, (Vol. III. page 58,) the influence of the system of Rational-
;lS11"l in Grerrnany, the twin-brother to Unitarianisrn in this country. Its
connnencing influence is thus depicted: “A most surprising barrenness
characterizes rnost even of the better Works, published from 1760 and down-
ward. The more they increased in number, and rose in character as com-
positions, the less they seemed to contain to lead the sinner to Christ, or to
animate and benefit the believer. Sermons, l1ymn«hool:s, prayer-hooks, and
other Works for public and private use, as clear as water, and as precise as
any proposiition in geornctry, as cold also as the one, and as unproductive of
rcli_gir)’x;x.s fircelixiig  the other, were daily pO111'll')g in upon the public, to
supplant those precious giuicles to heaven, which had so long‘ been instru-
rncnt:;1,l in l)lTl.,lil('l.l,Il.1g' up the church of Christ. Particularly striking is the
1.1noq1:1a.lled decoi'l.ti'al.i1t1«::s:=3 of many of 1;l1ese pul.)lications. [Henry VVare’s
l)O<f»li', on the for:nation o:f:' (§‘h1ri.s1;iar1 chairactc.-r, is probably a. good specimen]
lu v‘a.r.ious insta.nces, it was not only clt.i,;l;‘l?ic1.1l.t, but absolutely impossible,
i'a.irly to 1,rain'r1;xix.:'x,sl; the z.1.utl1.or, and convict. l1in'1 oi‘ uncln7ist.izu1 sen.timonts, so
'W(i‘*.ll .he l~;;new linmv to l.xide l1i1:nsoTlf'und.er a show of piety and orthodoxy.
And. yet, the ce.rta.in sill.-(:1; of these hooks was to divest a man, hefore he
was awa.re of’ it, of all 1>«:eltiet' in the liihle, as a 1'cvelatio11 froln God, and in
C3.l,nri:~;t, as a. ¢.'1i,v‘ine p¢.:-.:rso.r'x., a.;nd the ft<.4:«.l.4;;eornce1' o*lf'lostn1en..”

lt is .l.)r. (‘..lI,l1:n..x111i.11g; "who ll{l..‘Z-3 said, “ that _;e:r't1.i,r1.s  prepa.ring' for itself‘ it
st:-pufl«;-Jhre, wflnm it <'l.,i.s,jr:,»i.1i1s itsol.l;' zil-cmi the 'U:uiVc:-rsal l\ili11c .” lilmv much
:mm.'e, Wlluil 1. it <fl¢;2sp.i:+:«.:e:‘~.: aJm,’.l contoncfls :i1p;::n.i1"rst; the ormnipotence, Wisdom,
_'jiiI.“1.sl.iee, flmili,m::ss, ancfl m.orc_y' of that lV.’l.“iI1<;l, as c;-.:{li1i,l.».i1;<:;~.ci'l. in the cross of Jesus
(;}ln..1.'i:~:»‘1‘.! 'Tl.‘.l1e pointlr§ro1.:1s _jaws of that :;4<;:.{p1il(:l.11.'e are wide open, and hotll
Dr. (,..3olm.1‘1t1.1lug and. the (M1:inli»1“i(_'l;:;'<.3 1‘1_r1ivcrsi1;y, it’ they continue linked with
Uhita.ri.anisu1, nmst incVitabl_y descend. into it,

Note Gr, paged 39.

l,“o1,*1‘.l1o lZ)C}l'1()ll1lll’I|_£},‘fl)f psyclmlogfieal realities, it is almost a conclition, that
all sonsiolxlo c.»l)jo(::ts of l{11«:>tvl(2clg'ri be exelucled frorn the vision 5 just as a man
in the lm1.1;mn ofa well. ran see the stars, even at noonday. Now, if‘, instead
ot"vimv.in_<,__-; psyr;l1c.>lc)gic:t1 phenomena in the liglit p1'ocecdin,g'fro111tl1e soul
lncrsojl 1', we Vic-"w t]:u::m in an a.rtificia.l ligl1.t, reflected from external experi-
:xnor.1t;s and specula.t;ions, it is just as if we should go to see an exhibition of
plxanta.sn;1a,gori.a., and should carry lights in our hands for their inspection,
when the very condition of laelroldinrg them is, that we shut out external
ligli11;, and behold the images in the light shining from Witl1intl1etrans-
parenoy. ,

Is it not a.s1.c>11'isl1irig, that man should never yet have discovered that no
true psycliological system could possibly be formed, which. takes any other

60

views of’ man’s spiritual nature and condition, than those revealed in the
Bible 9

Note H, page 41.

Science and piety seem to have been united in an eminent manner, in the
life of I-Iorrox, a young Englisli astronomer, about the middle of the seven-
teenth century. The following deeply interesting account is given of his
observation of’ the transit of the planet Venus.

r i“ A phenomenon so rare, reqttiring at leastan approximate calculat:ion of
the time of its occurrence, and the assistance of sufiicient i1‘1strL11:r:x.e1i‘ts, was
observed by no huinan eye, froin the creation of the world to the ruiddle of
the isoventeenth century of the Christian era. I*lo1*1'ox,ayoung Iiutn. but
tWe11ty—one years of cg-e, 1‘GSicll1,1g in a remote district of the country, and

“almost deprived of the assistance of books and instrurnents, d.iscove1‘ed that

the imperfect tables of the planetary motions then in use, gave 1'eason to an-
ticipate a visible transit of the planets. His superior li11t')VVlLL‘(lgt*3i(E:1'1tt.l(>lt’3C1
him to compute more correctly the time at which it would take place ; and
he made his preparations, with all the anxiety, Wliicli so new and i1'npru:ta4nt
an observation. was calculated to ozxzcite in an axdeut inind. (T)1:1t,lio day
before the transit was expected, he l;>egzi11 to observe; and he ros1o:unc.-acl his

“labors on the rnorrow. But‘ the wry; 'la.o21:r, 'z.olz.c7t his ccJcru.lz.1.ltzCm2, Ml [(5712, 1:0 c;2:-

])cct the uzlsiblc cy;>])ectl7*(t1z.4:c of the ])lu,nct on the s'1m’s cliséiz, toss u.l.s-u it/to /1.cm.7' ((72-
pointetl for the y_m,bli1.: roars/u7..p 13/’ (31-01), on the 5'rLI:b(z.t7i day. ’I‘h.e delay of a 'llI:’VV
minutes rnigl‘1t deprive him. of the zrncans of ()l).‘:i(Z‘;i‘"Vlr1"lg,‘ the tra.ns.it. If its
very corninencemcnt. were not noticed, clouds n:ii.g;l:1.t ix1t;ei'vmn;»; the sun

was about to set; and tuearly a century and a halt" would Ol11l.]')s(‘t, l;><:,elfitu'o

another opportunity would occur. Jl/‘ctzeit'Iz.st(t9t¢laIv:1,g_;~ all t/Ms, .I‘Im~2'o:z; noise
“suspended his 0Z!3(3?'27(IJ;i()7t.S, (met twice 9'z;prz.£7-ccl to the /z.c*usc of Gen. VVh.en
hisduty was thus paid, and he r-otutrned to his cliarnber the second timc-.~., his
love of science was gra.tiiie<.1 with full success. His eyes were the first
which ever witnessed the plicnomenon that his sagacity had predictor. ."’ It
was in 1739, at Manchester, ion‘l3n_,{i;lz:t11d.

d “ Wliere shall we seek for a mind, so an.ir.eated at once with phil<:>scphical
inquiry and religious feeling? The 1"l'1iL1').1”1(?1' in which the astrotnminer: h.i:rn«
self refers to the observation of the transit, is truly sublime for its pious
simplicity. ‘ I observed it,’ says he, ‘from sunrise till nine o’cloolr., zigziiu a

“little before ten, and lastly at noon, and frorn one to two o’cloclt ; the west of

the day being devoted to Irighcr duties, wlaich mxigltt not be czcglcctczl for these
*pastimcs.”’ A A r