is both genuine in kind, and exalted in degree, may very speedily relapse into sin, yea, into aggravated sin, which brings sorrow upon himself, and scandal upon his sacred profession; but although this may come after such enjoyment, it can never come out of it; for the gifts of God in Jesus Christ are moral attractions, not repellencies. Their native tendency is to draw the soul upwards to a higher elevation on the scale of holiness, and those impressions which have not this tendency, however vivid, or felicitous, or striking in the mode of their production, although they have come from the words of Scripture, fairly quoted, and correctly interpreted, are, after all, to be disregarded. Much more are they to be disregarded, when they proceed from a manifest abuse of Scripture; for it would be impious to suppose, that when the Spirit of God speaks to man through the medium of revelation, he can do so in any other way than by using his own words, in his own meaning. He cannot pervert the oracle which he has dictated, nor can a perversion of it on the part of man, however plausible or well-intentioned, be sanctioned by his influence. In the ordinary course of his gracious operation, he makes a progressive use of the gospel of his grace, and in dealing with man by means of it, he treats him as a reasonable being, causing him to feel the power of the truth, not by entrancing him in visions and ecstacies, but by bringing him to the sober and regulated use of his understanding and his heart. Nor has any man, whatever be his standing in the church, or in the estimate of the Christian brotherhood, a right to suppose, that the secret of a happy destiny is revealed to him, except in so

In

far as the moral elements of such a destiny in holiness, and righteousness, and love, are realized within him. We are far from insinuating, that those floods of joy which are sometimes poured upon the hearts of the godly, and fill them with a momentary rapture, are altogether imaginary, or furnish no evidence that the man whom they visit is born of the Spirit. To speak thus would be to offend, and most justly to offend, the generation of the faithful, as well as to utter impiety against the God of heaven; for in these visitations, rare and intermitting though they be, we see the most signal foretastes of celestial felicity, which can possibly be arrived at beneath the sun. themselves, however, they are no evidence. Apart from the principle of abiding piety, and steadily progressive holiness, of which, when genuine, they are at once the produce and the index, the man who pretends to them is greatly to be suspected; and yet it too often happens, that a fondness to talk about religious ecstacies, or an eagerness to cherish the memory of them, or a restless impatience of their absence, or a proneness to convert them into tests of character, takes hold of the mind of many a professor, and occupies his daily thoughts at the expense of turning him away from those immediate exercises which lead, circuitously it may be, but securely, to the enjoyment of solid delight, in all its purity and permanence. It ought not to be forgotten, that the Christian must come near to his God, not by a transient impulse of feeling, but by the regular growth of his renovated character, in order to detain upon his spirit the tranquillity, or to fill it with the satisfaction which his religion is fitted to impart; and to

seek to procure these in any other way, is to pass

from the region of sober thought into that of gross enthusiasm, and thus to involve the whole exercsie in confusion and perplexity. There may be seasons of uncommon enjoyment, especially with the youthful and zealous, where the process of sanctification is but in its commencement; and when these are granted, let them be cherished with all humility and gratitude; but let them never be looked upon as the only sure signs of true religion, nor ever put in the place of the clearer and steadier indications of what a man really is in the sight of God.

On a review of these remarks, it seems necessary to say, that they are by no means intended to interfere with the diversities of constitutional temperament, which distinguish men from each other. The man who is cool in his natural temperament, will also be cool in his Christianity; and the man who is distinguished for sensibility, or sprightliness, or ardour, will usually exhibit these elements of character in a Christianized form, during all the stages of his preparation for heaven. Indeed, he must do so; for Christianity, so far as we know, is not commissioned to produce any change upon the sensibilities of our nature, beyond what is necessary to counteract the effects of sin. Nor is it desirable that the case should be otherwise; for were the diversities referred to entirely abolished, the many utilities of which they are every day productive, behooved to disappear along with them. There is an obvious charm in such diversities; and the wish to see them abolished, may contemplate more than is likely to be arrived at, even in a state of perfection; for there seems no extrava

gance in supposing, that those constitutional peculiarities, whether of intellect or affection, which are now so much vitiated and overdriven in the servitude of sin, may yet contribute very powerfully to enrich and enliven the fellowship of the saints, and to accentuate the song of their combined adoration, after sin is put away, and the redemption of the whole man carried up to its consummation. But, allowing

to them, in the present state, all reasonable latitude, it must still be contended, that as every man has affections, the exercise of which he owes to God in the solemnities of religion; and as these affections, whatever be their diversity, are so much himself, that the withholding of them is equivalent to the withholding of himself from God; so the sin of thus withholding them, or of perversity in the management of them, either by shortcoming or excess, is not palliated by this concession, but still rests upon his head. The great matter for consideration is, that to have no heart at all for religion, or to have a heart which involves its sacred principles in the wildest or silliest absurdity, is not a thing to which any man is bound down by the law of his creation, but a thing to which he has bound himself down by "the law of sin and death which is in his members;" and for the existence of it, therefore, as a delinquency chargeable on him, no created ingenuity can furnish a pleadable apology.

A portraiture of the Works of PRESIDENT EDWARDS, is happily not called for on the present occasion, and ought never to be attempted by ordinary minds. Their place is assigned to them by the con

current suffrage of all competent judges; and to say, that in power of metaphysical thinking, scarcely less accurate than it is profound; digested into practical uses, with amazing perspicuity; overawed by a high veneration for the authority of revealed truth; adorned by a candour in controversy, the most dignified and manly; and imbued with a piety which, for vigour, elevation, and fervour, befitted the mind from which they came ;—to say, that in these things they are equalled by few, and excelled by none, is not to give a decision, but feebly to reiterate the sentence which has already been often pronounced, and to which the pious and penetrating in subsequent ages, as they rise into eminence in the science of theology, are successively appending their confir

mation.

The fact, that this Treatise was written by Edwards, is sufficient to commend it to those who are acquainted with his philosophical acumen, as displayed in his other works; and if the subject do not offend them, they are likely to grant it an eager perusal. It is the subject itself, however, as dissected by the hand of this great moral anatomist, on which the interest of the reader should be chiefly concentrated and if the things already glanced at, be indeed operating very perniciously each in its own way; nay, if the whole combined, taken in connection with similar deformities, which could easily be specified, makes out a very serious charge against the present generation of Christian professors, we do not know of another treatise within the whole range of practical theology, which is better fitted to do it away than the one before us. Some of the evils hinted