matters of religion was vindicated by the Reformation as the peculiar birth-right and privilege of man. The Bible was to be read by every man in his own language and in his own household, of which he was to be the king and the priest. Nobody was to interfere between him and his God. So far, so good; the Reformation, in this respect, was the medium of great good. It emancipated the human intellect from a grievous bondage; it allowed it to respire in regions in which it had never before breathed. It brought out the Word of God buried in the dust of ages, and opened its divine pages to the public mind. But no sooner was this law of the Reformation proclaimed, than a new luminary was exhibited in the Protestant world; it was not the sun of truth and of love, but the meteor of Solifidianism,-of Faith Alone. To this standard all Protestants should come; and by this light every eye should see; and before this Dagon-like image every knee should bow. Notwithstanding the declaration, that every man should have, in all freedom, the use of his own private judgment in matters of religion, yet the Augsburgh Confession of Faith soon appeared, and every Protestant was compelled to bow to its decrees, and its dogmas. If he used his own private judgment, with the Bible before him, in opposition to these dogmas, he was either suspended from his office, or banished from his country. The understanding was to be kept bound in obedience to faith, to a faith not such as the Word of God requires,-an enlightened faith "which worketh by love"-but to the faith as enjoined and imposed by the Augsburgh Confession, and the Formula Concordia,-a faith alone not working by love. Here is an awful collision in which the Protestant Church stood with itself. It carried in its bosom the germs of its own dissolution. It consequently never had any cohesive power, no more than the image seen by Daniel, "whose feet were partly of iron and partly of clay." It was easy to predict that such an image could not stand. But beside this great inconsistency and incohesiveness, the Protestant Church bore, in its constitution, all the corrupt seeds of the root from which it sprang; the Reformation did not plant the root of Jesse, which should be as an ensign for the people ;"-it did not take the Lord in his Divine Humanity, in whom dwelleth all the 66 fulness of the Godhead bodily," as the basis and the precious corner-stone of its constitution, and as the crown and glory of its structure; but it sprung from the " root of rottenness," and decay and dissolution were written on its crumbling ramparts. Was it likely that in such a church, its own children could long remain united and at peace? No sooner did the external pressure of persecution from the old enemy without spend all its active force in the thirty years' war,

than shortly after external peace was established, strife and dissension burst out with all fury from within, and exhibited, as much as their enemies could wish, the fruits of "faith alone" as the root which its founders had planted. These fruits are aptly represented by the conduct of Cain, when he slew his brother.

Now whence does all this confusion arise? And how should it come to pass, that the Protestant, with the Bible in his hand, should be thus in strife and collision with his neighbour in the essential points of their common faith? The Word is the source of all religious knowledge, and the great medium of all charity, love, and genuine friendship to mankind. This is universally admitted by all who accept it as the Word of God, and who believe in its dictates as the words of eternal life. How then should all this come to pass? Strange, indeed, must it be considered, that that which is the source of union and peace should be regarded as the cause of contention and strife. The cause is not in the Bible; but must be found in the ignorance under which the minds of nearly all men labour, as to the proper knowledge of what the Bible really is. Its nature is not known; nor is it consequently seen in what its divinity consists. Its true mode of interpretation is, of course, also unknown; and as a consequence, the channels of its pure and sacred waters cannot be opened. The well of Jacob is amongst us, but its mouth is stopped up. Hence the parties now contending in Germany exclaim, Eine klare Einsicht in das Wesen der Bibel thut unserer Zeit vor Allem Noth,”—(“A clear insight into the nature of the Bible is above all things necessary for the present time.") This is true; and until the true nature of the Word is seen, no progress towards unity and concord in the church can be commenced.

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Now, at the time of the Reformation, human reason was in some measure emancipated; some of its chains were struck off; its hands and its feet were unbound, but a yoke still oppressed and galled its neck. The activities of thought found greater play, and readier egress in freedom of speech and of writing. Human reason became self-active, and its thoughts were its own. These activities of the new-born rational life were chiefly directed to things theological, and the Bible became the great object of rational investigation. This was certainly a new era opened in the mental world, and all arts and sciences began to flourish with greater power and luxuriance than ever. To aid this new movement typography was invented, and the printing press began its mighty works; and the career which the rational mind had commenced received a constantly propelling impulse, like the steam-power operating on the piston of the locomotive. But where was the guide to control

and direct this power, the power of rational activity? This guide was wanting. It may be said by some that reason is its own guide; and that it repudiates every other. Prior to the Reformation the church had been the guide, and "hear the church," was the command which reason had to obey. The decisions of the church were clothed with infallibility, and no discussion was permitted to arise. Now, without reason man is incapable of receiving truth; and his rational mind is formed for the reception of truth in all its degrees,-natural, spiritual, and divine. It is by this faculty that he is immortal, and that he is an image of his Maker; it is to the rational mind that revealed truth is primarily and expressly addressed; this mind has, consequently, eyes to see the truth, ears to hear it, and a heart to love it. But what is the relation which reason sustains to Revelation? Let us endeavour to solve this question, as necessary to the understanding of our subject.

Reason is either active or passive. It is active, when in all freedom it uses its own powers, thinks, judges, and draws conclusions for itself. It is passive, when it does not thus act, but suffers itself to be acted upon by others, and is led whithersoever they please. It can at once be seen that the former is the proper state to which every man should attain, otherwise he can never be an intelligent being; and when he thus acts in dependence on the Lord's Providence, and guided by His truth, he is taught of the Lord, and eventually led into all truth; whereas when reason is passive, and does not employ its inherent powers as of itself, but allows those powers to be acted upon and guided solely by authority or persuasion from without, it can never be developed and brought into states of intelligence and wisdom. But reason may be active two ways; either affirmatively in the cause of truth, or negatively against it. If affirmatively active in reference to the Word of God, it will in humility commence its investigations from the two great commanding principles on which all the law and the prophets hang ;"—the love of God above all things, and the love of our neighbour. Guided by these two great principles, human reason, affirmatively active, will be gradually led into all those things which depend thereon. The entire universe of truth will gradually open to the view; new beauties in the celestial scenery will be daily disclosed to the mind. We commence not only from the á priori, but from the primo, and all the posteriora will be opened and presented to the contemplation,-as the cities and villages, the vineyards and corn fields of Judah could be seen from mount Sion.

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But if reason is negatively active in respect to the Divine Word, it cannot come even into the portico of the temple of wisdom; it remains

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without. The way to the Paradise of God is effectually guarded by a flaming sword" against its intrusion. Governed by a negative, or beginning from the merely sensual principle, and from its gross apprehensions of truth, it doubts and disputes all things; it takes nothing as granted. It begins with the á posteriori, and it is impossible to proceed to the priora and to the primus from such a beginning. It is as impossible for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, as for such a man to enter into the kingdom of truth. Now this negative activity of reason is mere rationalism, which, although it may acquire many earthly treasures of knowledge, cannot go beyond the mere province of nature; and it delights to make all things square with its own rational concep tions; other things it considers either as myths, or discards as visionary and fanatical. The spiritual it nauseates. To think of a spiritual world, and of the objects therein, although plainly revealed in the Word, as being realities more substantial than the things of earth, is irrational and absurd. Such vagaries may do for Schwärmer,-for infatuated fanatics, but never for rational men. The idol of rationalism is literary fame. The pride of self-delivered intelligence is the prompting motive. The worldly glory hence resulting is its reward.

But if reason be passive, what is the result? Mental torpidity and spiritual paralysis. The Romish Church, by making reason in its members entirely passive, has but too well succeeded in producing this awfully torpid and paralysed state in the minds of the people; and the consequence is, that every species of error has usurped the place of truth. Bigotry and superstition have triumphed; and persecution has kindled the faggot and erected the gibbet. Lay reason asleep and the mind can be gulled with any twaddle and trash, provided it be pronounced with authority. It can be led to believe that a poor mortal of earth can be the head of the church, the vicar of Christ, the absolver from sin; whose frown closes heaven and opens hell to those who disobey his mandates and his bulls, &c. &c. The Reformation endeavoured to cast off this yoke from the neck of humanity, and to break the rod of the oppressor. It partially succeeded; but Lutheranism is now about to be engulphed in the tomb of rationalism and deism. The hic jacet is already inscribed, and the stone is about to be placed on the mouth of the grave.

About the middle of the last century a bold and an independent thinker arose, whose name was Semler. Having received his appointment as Professor of Theology at Halle, the city where rationalism has now come forth in its full development, he soon began to examine the

foundations on which creeds and symbols are based;-yea, he went further, and presumed to examine the grounds on which Revelation itself is presented to the acceptance of man. The door of scepticism in theology was now unbarred, and dogmatism began to tremble. This door was soon opened, and ever since, the University of Halle, one of the principal seats of Protestantism in Germany, has erected the standard of rationalism. The contest is marked by the words forming the title of one of the works heading this paper-" Ob Schrift? Ob Geist?" 'Whether Scripture, or Reason be our guide?" Whether reason is not the test by which Scripture must be tried, and the shrine before which it must bow? The seed sown by Semler is now bearing its fruit. Within these last twelve months rationalism has unfurled its standard to the nations of Christendom. Wislicenus, a clergyman at Halle, has come fully out with a determination to carry into its consequences and results the activities of rational investigation. It is now no longer the question:-Whether Scripture or Reason be our guide? the latter has triumphed. Wislicenus, in consequence of his bold declarations in respect to the Scriptures, and the theology of the Augsburgh Confession, and of the Formula Concordiæ, has been accused of heterodoxy, and threatened by the ecclesiastical authority with deposition from office. He was called upon to retrace his steps into the pale of orthodoxy, and to abandon the ground he had taken. This he refused to do; but in a discourse delivered at Magdeburg, and in another at Wittenberg, he endeavoured to confirm his position; upon which he was called upon to secede of his own accord from the Lutheran Church, and to form a separate community. He replied that as Christ endeavoured to effect a reform within the Jewish Church, rather than separate himself from it; and as Luther attempted to reform the Romish Church, rather than abandon it to its errors; so he and his Protestant friends would labour in developing the Protestant principles commenced by Luther; for in this age of superior rational development, the time has come when views, both of the Bible and of its theology, can be entertained, far more congenial to reason, as now cultivated and enlightened by superior science and literature, than when the Augsburgh Confession of Faith was established. The declaration to this effect of one man, however celebrated, would have but little weight with the community at large; but when at a numerous public meeting of clergy and laity, held at Cothen, in Upper Saxony, on the 15th of May last, the following questions were unanimously affirmed, and adopted as so many resolutions in support of the conduct of Wislicenus, the movement assumes all the