the original fall of man. Eve did not believe the Tempter, any more than God's word, till she perceived that "the fruit was good for food."

So again, when infidels ask, how prayer can really influence the course of God's providence, or how everlasting punishment consists with God's infinite mercy, they rationalize.

The same spirit shows itself in the restlessness of others to decide how the sun was stopped at Joshua's word, how the manna was provided, and the like; forgetting what our Saviour suggests to the Sadducees,-"the power of God."

Rationalism then in fact is a forgetfulness of God's power, disbelief of the existence of a First Cause sufficient to account for any events or facts, however marvellous or extraordinary, and a consequent measuring of the credibility of things, not by the power and other attributes of God, but by our own knowledge; a limiting the possible to the actual, and denying the indefinite range of God's operations beyond our means of apprehending them. Mr. Hume openly avows this principle, declaring it to be unphilosophical to suppose that Almighty God can do any thing, but what we see he does. And, though we may not profess it, we too often, it is to be feared, act upon it at the present day. Instead of looking out of ourselves, and trying to catch glimpses of God's workings, from any quarter,-throwing ourselves forward upon Him and waiting on Him, we sit at home bringing everything to ourselves, enthroning ourselves as the centre of all things, and refusing to believe anything that does not force itself upon our minds as true. Our private judgment is made every thing to us,-is contemplated, recognized, and referred to as the arbiter of all questions, and as independent of everything external to us. Nothing is considered to have an existence except so far forth as our minds discern it. The notion of half views and partial knowledge, of guesses, surmises, hopes and fears, of truths faintly apprehended and not understood, of isolated facts in the great scheme of providence, in a word, of Mystery, is discarded. Hence a distinction is drawn between what is called Objective and Subjective Truth, and Religion is said to consist in a reception of the latter. By Objective Truth is meant the Religious System considered as existing in itself, external to this or that particular mind: by Subjective, is meant that which each mind receives in particular, and considers to be such. To believe in Objective Truth is to throw ourselves forward upon that which we have but partially mastered or made Subjective; to embrace, maintain, and use general propositions which are greater than our own capacity, as if we were contemplating what is real and independent of human judgment. Such a belief seems to the Rationalist superstitious and unmeaning, and he consequently confines faith to the province of Subjective Truth, or to the recep

tion of doctrine, as, and so far as it is met and apprehended by the mind, which will be differently in different persons, in the shape of orthodoxy in one, heterodoxy in another; that is, he professes to believe in that which he opines, and he avoids the apparent extravagance of such an avowal by maintaining that the moral trial involved in faith does not lie in the submission of the reason to external truths partially disclosed, but in that candid pursuit of truth which ensures the eventual adoption of that opinion on the subject, which is best for us, most natural according to the constitution of our minds, and so divinely intended. In short he owns that faith, viewed with reference to its objects, is never more than an opinion, and is pleasing to God, not as an active principle apprehending different doctrines, but as a result and fruit, and therefore an evidence of past diligence, independent inquiry, dispassionateness, and the like. Rationalism takes the words of Scripture as signs of Ideas; Faith, of Things or Realities.

For an illustration of Faith, considered as the reaching forth after and embracing what is beyond the mind, or Objective, we may refer to St. Paul's description of it in the ancient Saints; "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth;" or to St. Peter's; "Of which salvation the Prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them, did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, the glory that should follow; unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by them that have evangelized you.' Here the faith of the ancient Saints is described as employed, not on truths so far as mastered by the mind, but truths beyond it, and even to the end withheld from its clear apprehension.

On the other hand, if we would know to what a temper of mind the Rationalistic Theory of Subjective Truth really tends, we may study the following passage from a popular review. It will be found to make use of the wonders of nature, not as "declaring the glory of God, and showing His handywork," but in order to exalt and deify the wisdom of man. almost avowed infidelity contained in it, I do not speak.

Of the

"For the civil and political historian the past alone has existence, the present he rarely apprehends, the future never. To the historian of science it is permitted, however, to penetrate the depths of past and future with equal clearness and certainty; facts to come are to him as present, and not unfrequently more assured than facts which are past. Although this clear perception of causes and consequences characterizes the whole domain of physical science, and clothes the natural philosopher with powers denied to the political and moral

inquirer, yet foreknowledge is eminently the privilege of the astronomer. Nature has raised the curtain of futurity, and displayed before him the succession of her decrees, so far as they affect the physical uni. verse, for countless ages to come; and the revelations of which she has made him the instrument, are supported and verified by a neverceasing train of predictions fulfilled. He [the astronomer] " shows us the things which will be hereafter;" not obscurely shadowed out in figures and in parables, as must necessarily be the case with other revelations, but attended with the most minute precision of time, place, and circumstance. He converts the hours as they roll into an ever-present miracle, in attestation of those laws which the Creator through him has unfolded; the sun cannot rise, the moon cannot wane, a star cannot twinkle in the firmament without bearing testi. mony to the truth of his [the astronomer's] prophetic records. It has pleased the "Lord and Governor" of the world, in his inscrutable wisdom, to baffle our inquiries into the nature and proximate cause of that wonderful faculty of intellect-that image of his own essence which he has conferred upon us, &c. &c. . . . . . But how nobly is the darkness which envelopes metaphysical inquiries compensated by the flood of light which is shed upon the physical creation! There all is harmony, and order, and majesty, and beauty. From the chaos of social and political phenomena exhibited in human records, phe. nomena unconnected to our imperfect vision by any discoverable law, a war of passions and prejudices governed by no apparent purpose, tending to no apparent end, and setting all intelligible order at defi ance, how soothing and yet how elevating it is to turn to the splendid spectacle which offers itself to the habitual contemplation of the astronomer! How favourable to the development of all the best and highest feelings of the soul are such objects! The only passion they inspire being the love of truth, and the chiefest pleasure of their votaries arising from excursions through the imposing scenery of the universe, scenery on a scale of grandeur and magnificence compared with which whatever we are accustomed to call sublimity on our planet, dwindles into ridiculous insignificancy. Most justly has it been said, that nature has implanted in our bosoms a craving after the discovery of truth, and assuredly that glorious instinct is never more irresistibly awakened than when our notice is directed to what is going on in the heavens, &c.

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Here desire after Truth is considered as irreconcileable with acquiescence in doubt. Now if we do not believe in a First Cause, then indeed we know nothing except so far as we know it clearly, consistency and harmony being the necessary evidence of reality; and so we may reasonably regard doubt as an obstacle in the pursuit of Truth. But, on the other hand, if we assume the existence of an unseen Object of Faith, then we already possess the main truth, and may well be content even with half views as to His operations, for whatever we have is so much gain, and what we do not know does not in that case tend at all to invalidate what we do know.

A few words may be necessary to bring together what has been said. Rationalism then, viewed in its essential character, is a refusal to take for granted the existence of a First Cause, in religious inquiries, which it prosecutes as if commencing in utter ignorance on the subject. Hence it receives only so much as may be strictly drawn out to the satisfaction of the reason, advancing onwards in belief according to the range of the proof; it limits Truth to our comprehension of it, or subjects it to the mind, and admits it only so far as it is subjected. Hence again it considers faith to have reference to a thing or system, far more than to an agent, for an agent may be supposed as acting in unknown ways, whereas a system cannot be supposed to have existence beyond what is ascertained of it. Hence moreover it makes the credibility of any alleged truth to lie solely in its capability of coalescing and combining with what is already known.

Mr. Hume, as has been observed, avowed the principle of Rationalism in its extent of Atheism. The writers, I shall have to notice, have religious sensibilities, and are far less clear-sighted. Yet even Mr. Erskine maintains or assumes that the main object of Christian faith is, not Almighty God, but a certain work or course of things which He has accomplished; as will be manifest to any reader either of His Essay on Internal Evidence, or on Faith. He says, for instance, in the latter of these works,

"I may understand many things which I do not believe; but I can. not believe any thing which I do not understand, unless it be some. thing addressed merely to my senses, and not to my thinking faculty. A man may with great propriety say, I understand the Cartesian System of Vortices, though I do not believe in it. But it is absolutely impossible for him to believe in that system without knowing what it is. A man may believe in the ability of a maker of a system without understanding it; but he cannot believe in the system itself" without understanding it. Now there is a meaning in the Gospel, and there is declared in it the system of God's dealings with men. This meaning, and this system, must be understood before we can believe the Gospel. We are not called on to believe the Bible merely that we may give a proof of our willingness to submit in all things to God's authority, but that we may be influenced by the object of our belief, &c."

Every word of this extract tells in illustration of what has been drawn out above. And it is cited here merely in illustration; what judgment is to be formed of it shall be determined in its place. To resume the thread of our discussion.

We shall now perhaps be prepared to understand a very characteristic word, familiarly used by Mr. Erskine among others to designate his view of the Gospel dispensation. It is said to be a Manifestation, as if the system presented to us were such as we could trace and connect into one whole, complete and definite. Let me use this word "Manifestation," as a token of the philoso

phy under review; and let me contrast it with the word "Mystery," which on the other hand may be regarded as the badge or emblem of orthodoxy. Revelation considered as a Manifestation, is a doctrine variously received by various minds, but nothing more to each than that which it appears to be. Considered as a Mystery, it is a doctrine enunciated by inspiration, in human language, as the only possible medium of it, and suitably according to the capacity of language; a doctrine lying hid in language, to be received in that language from the first by every mind, whatever be its separate power of understanding; entered into more or less by this or that mind, as it may be; and admitting of being apprehended more and more perfectly according to the diligence of the person receiving it. It is one and the same, independent and real, of depth unfathomable, and illimitable in its extent.

This is a fit place to make some remarks on the Scripture sense of the word Mystery. It may seem a contradiction in terms to call a Revelation a Mystery; but is not the book of the Revelation of St. John as great a mystery from beginning to end as the most abstruse doctrine the mind ever imagined? yet it is even called a revelation. How is this? The answer is simple. No revelation can be complete and systematic, from the weakness of the human intellect; so far as it is not such, it is mysterious. When nothing is revealed, nothing is known, and there is nothing to contemplate or marvel at; but when something is revealed and only something, for all cannot be, there are forthwith difficulties and perplexities. A Revelation is religious doctrine viewed on its illuminated side; a Mystery is the self-same doctrine viewed on the side unilluminated. Thus Religious Truth is neither light nor darkness, but both together; it is like the dim view of a country seen in the twilight, with forms half extricated from the darkness, with broken lines, and isolated masses. Revelation, in this way of considering it, is not a revealed system, but consists of a number of detached and incomplete truths belonging to a vast system unrevealed, of doctrines and injunctions mysteriously connected together, that is connected by unknown media, and bearing upon unknown portions of the system. And in this sense we see the propriety of calling St. John's prophecies, though highly mysterious, yet a revelation.

And such seems to be the meaning of the word Mystery in Scripture, a point which is sometimes disputed. Campbell, in his work on the Gospels, maintains that the word means a secret, and that, whatever be the subject of it in the New Testament, it is always, when mentioned, associated with the notion of its being now revealed. Thus it is, in his view, a word belonging solely to the Law, which was a system of types and shadows, and is utterly foreign to the Gospel which has brought light instead of darkness. This sense might seem to be supported by our Lord's