ous causes, are they by multitudes! by others how exquisitely enjoyed, how perfectly comprehended!

To understand and know the beauty and grandeur of nature, the glorious works of art, the delicate play of the human affections, there must a corresponding susceptibility, a pre-adaptation in the disposition; and not only so, there must be in the soul something of the same. What an exquisite illustration of this subject, is that passage in PLOTINUS, if it be not rather and more properly a positive affirmation, in direct application to the Divine, the Holy, of the same truth we are endeavouring to illustrate; taking BEAUTY to mean the one and absolute Beauty and Good. Speaking "to those to whose imagination it has never been presented, how beautiful is the countenance of justice and wisdom," he says, "for in order to direct the view aright, it behooves that the beholder should have made himself congenerous and similar to the object beheld. Never could the eye have beheld the sun, had not its own essence been soliform, (or preconformed to the light by a kindred essence,) neither can a soul not beautiful, attain to an intuition of Beauty."

*

Every subject has then its appropriate evidence, its organ and conditions of knowledge. Now, there are many truths of spiritual religion which can no more be learned by speculation, or any exertion of the mere thinking faculties, than they can be learned by the sight or the touch. We might as rationally sit down to an arithmetical calculation in order to ascertain the colour of a rose, as to think of gaining an insight into the intimacies of Christian truth-regeneration -the indwelling of the Spirit of God in the human spiritunion with Christ, and other spiritual truths, by the speculative intellect. These are mysteries which pass all such understanding. Were our intellectual faculties a thousand fold enlarged, we could never thus gain a knowledge of them. We must have the inward life and reality of them in our hearts. These high spiritual truths rest on a kind of evidence, as essentially different from that of the speculative intellect, as that of the senses. They are truths for which no outward demonstration can be brought. They are their own evidence; and yet only so to him in whose spiritual being they are a living reality. And such an one has no doubt. Retiring within himself, he may defy the cavils of the skep

*See COLERIDGE, Biog. Lit. Vol. I. p. 75, from whom I have taken the translation with a slight alteration.

tic, and the sneers of the scorner. He is in a higher region, a purer atmosphere; they are below and in the darkness. He has himself been in the same darkness; he has come out into the light, and he both knows the light, and their darkness. He knows that he is, and must be, unintelligible to them. He knows that he can negatively convict them-if they were not predetermined against it-of the insufficiency of their objections; though still to apprehend the deep darkness wherein they dwell, they must first see the light. But a positive insight, it is not his to give, any more than for the artist to give his positive perception of the beauty of the creations of art, to the rude clown in whom the sense and faculty of ideal beauty should be wanting or undeveloped, and who should therefore disbelieve and sneer. They can attain it only when they come on to his ground, when they come into the life and light in which he dwells. Meantime, he knows that for them to bring these truths before the tribunal of the earthly understanding, is as absurd as to apply the sense of smelling to the measurement of a mountain, or the doctrines of geometry to ascertain the nature of friendship. He knows that if they could see the truth as it is, they would blush at the ignorance and shallowness of their present spirit, as something far more contemptible, than what they now so scornfully baptize as fanaticism and foolishness in him.

The teachings of the Gospel concerning the Life of God in the soul through Christ, can, therefore, be understood and known only when the soul is renewed to this divine life; and this comes only of faith. Thus speaks the noble St. ANSELM, in that passage chosen by the profound SCHLEIERMACHER as the motto of his great work on theology: “I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order that I may understand. For he who has not believed cannot have experienced, and he who has not experienced, cannot understand."* This doubtless sounds strange and foreign to the habits of many a mind, and therefore mystical and absurd.

But it ought not to require a paraphrase or a justification. It is the same in spirit with the direction of Christ : "Do the will of my Father, and ye shall know of the doctrine." It comes to the same thing with that other beautiful direction of Christ; "Ye must become as little children, if

Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam. Nam qui non crediderit, non experietur, et qui non expertus fuerit, non intelliget.

ye would enter the kingdom of heaven." If this direction were but complied with, how soon would the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven be unfolded and felt in their truth and power and glory. When we think of the simplicity, beauty, fitness and certainty of this way, can we but be sad to think how many vainly set out to enter the kingdom of heaven by "climbing up some other way," more self-pleasing to the pride of the fallen soul?

The arrogance of speculation in divine things is rebuked by the seekers of the truth of Nature. "It is fit and necessary," says Lord Bacon, in the introduction to his book on the Interpretation of Nature," "in the very front and beginning of this work, without hesitation or reservation to be professed, that it is no less true in this human kingdom of knowledge, than in God's kingdom of heaven, that no man shall enter into it except he first become as a little child." Happily the world have believed Bacon, and nobody thinks of gaining a knowledge of nature except by EXPERIMENT; but how many believe not Jesus Christ, nor seek to enter into the knowledge of the kingdom of heaven, by the inward EXPERIMENT proper to that kingdom, by an actual trial of the Gospel, by a full turning of the heart and will to God.

It is from the want of the moral requisites of which we have been speaking, that we must explain the deep disgust and hatred of many a worldly mind, proud, shrewd, but superficial, towards the scriptural truths concerning the Fall, the deep corruption, and entire helplessness of human nature without Christ. So likewise, Theanthropy-"God manifest in the flesh," Redemption, Regeneration, Grace and the Holy Spirit, the Divine Life, Union with Christ,-all the fundamental and peculiar ideas of Christianity, excite contempt with such minds, as significant only of what is poor and drivelling in intellect, foolish and fanatic in opinion. To secure the respect of such, the Gospel must be explained away into mere moral ideas. All the interiour truths of Christianity, and the living analogies by which they are expressed, must be vacated of their meaning, by substituting in their place more familiar conceptions, which are, in reality, merely general deistical notions.

Deeply to be deplored is it, that Christian writers should ever compromise the Gospel by yielding any thing to such a spirit; just as if they felt a misgiving, lest the scriptural exVOL. I.

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pressions of divine truth were justly exposed to the scorn of the sensual worldling, or the arrogant skeptic; just as if the language of the New Testament were really too mystical, and must be translated into a lower dialect, a more common and intelligible phraseology. Nothing is gained, and much is surrendered, by such a course. You can never in this way render the Gospel acceptable to such a mind, without stripping it of its true life and power. The secret of his disgust lies too deep to be thus easily removed. It consists in a positive moral aversion to the truth, which no mode of explaining it can obviate, unless by removing the "offence of the cross," it destroy the essence of the Gospel.

Rather, therefore, tell such an one, that in his present position, with his present disposition, he is not competent to decide on these truths, certainly not to reject them as false and irrational. The element of connexion with them is not in his mind. He has not complied with the indispensable conditions of insight. Tell him in the language of the noble PASCAL, "that divine truths are infinitely above nature. God alone can connect them with the soul. It is His ordination that they should enter from the heart into the mind, and not from the mind into the heart. Hence, while in order to love human things they must be known, we must love divine things in order to be able to know them."* Tell him, in the words of ST. AUGUSTINE, so to receive the Gospel, that he may deserve to understand it. Tell him, in the words of CHRIST, that he must become as a little child, or he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Tell him, that Christianity offers itself as a remedy for a helpless state of spiritual darkness and corruption; in this sense it must be received and tried, or it can never be known and judged. Show him, that it sufficiently commends itself to this trustful trial; that he will see this, if with earnest prayer for illuminating grace, he searches within himself to discern his need, and with a candid mind looks to the disclosures of the Gospel, as the proffer of what he needs. Then let him turn with his whole heart, in lowliness and obedience, to Christ as his REDEEMER; and he will find the fulfilling of the promise of Christianity, and the meaning and reality of its

*Les verités divines sont infiniment au dessus de la Nature. Dieu seul pent les mettre dans l'ame. Il a voulu qu'elles entrent du coeur dans l'esprit, et non pas de l'esprit dans le coeur. Par cette raison, s'il faut connoitre les choses humaines pour pouvoir les aimer, il faut aimer les choses divines pour pouvoir les connoitre.

truth, in the new life, freedom, and peace of his soul. He will then discern the truths of Redemption, Grace, and the Holy Spirit, to be the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation; though beyond reason to discover, yet when revealed, most congruous to it; sublime in idea; beautiful to the imagination; glorious in reality; and fitted to the deep helplessness, and the infinite wants of fallen man.

But this subject ought not to be dismissed without adverting, on the other hand, to a fact, which it behooves all to be solemnly aware of, that the most evangelical formulas may be notionally adopted, the scriptural language of the highest spiritual truths may be as familiar in men's mouths, as "household words," without necessarily implying any thing of the life and love of divine things in the soul, and of course without implying any true and living knowledge of the things themselves. Education, habit, party spirit, a variety of causes, may contribute to this outward and lifeless holding of the "form of sound words," where they are not held "in spirit and in truth." The works of Blacklock, the celebrated blind poet, are full of images, and allusions drawn from the world of vision, and as correctly drawn as though he had possessed the faculty of sight. Thus may it be with those who are still blind to "the things of the Spirit." The logical relations of divine truth may also be discerned, and the doctrines of religion may be connected into a systematic unity; yet still, as COLERIDGE says concerning philosophy, where the philosophic organ is wanting, it will be but " mere play of words and notions, like a theory of music to the deaf, or like the geometry of light to the blind. The connexion of the parts and their logical dependences, may be seen and remembered; but the whole is groundless and hollow, unsustained by living contact, unaccompanied by any realizing intuition."

Hypocrisy, or fanaticism, are not necessarily connected with such cases; but they are often found together; and the latter cannot long exist without corrupting even the pure form of truth. The fungous products of pride and of a heated fancy, will spring up and overlay the hollow surface. It cannot be doubted, by one who knows human nature, and is observant of facts, that in many of our REVIVALS OF RELIGION, SO called, where the imagination and sensibilities are powerfully addressed, and the principle of sympathy, or involuntary imitation, strongly excited, multitudes are brought