ments of a high Christian Civilization, as incalculable as it is important. From the first institution of the priestly office among the Jews, there has been no human agency on the earth equal to that of the evangelical ministry. A few spirits, it is true, emerging out of revolutions and nurtured in storms, have seemed, for a time, to possess and exert more power. But it has been only for a time. They quickly went down with the subsidence of the elements, which, in the waxing of the tide, had swept them up to their high places. And even while their dominion and might remained, their rule seemed to be the result of a fortuity of advantages rather than of a personal efficiency, of an accumulation of ignorant physical force, rather than of an inherent Omnipotence.

Besides the regular ministry, there is another army of laborers, of clerical character, of equal, or even greater influence, to be also chiefly furnished by Colleges. They are the projectors, the agents, and the advocates of numerous benevolent enterprises. They pass over the land like angels of light: they visit every nook and corner, cabin and village and city. In various modes they publish Christianity. They wake up its spirit: they apply its power: they carry abroad the whole encyclopedia of moral remedies they set in operation the active system of practical religious instrumentalities. These self-sacrificing men, pioneers of Christian Civilization, church recruiting officers, Jerusalem's city-watch, are wide awake, when others are asleep; are pushing the work of salvation, while others are waiting for a current and a tide to move them forward. These revolving and itinerant lights, these movers of the under currents of religious action, these file leaders of reformation, are an efficient, indispensable adjunct to the general power of the pulpit, and therefore to its special efficiency in behalf of a Christian Civilization.

The pulpit, therefore, (and I name it filled
With solemn awe, that bids me well beware
With what intent I touch that holy thing,)

The pulpit, in the sober use

Of its legitimate, peculiar power,

Must stand acknowledged, while the world shall stand,

The most important and effectual guard,

Support and ornament of virtue's cause.

There stands the messenger of truth: there stands

The Legate of the skies! His theme divine,

His office sacred, his credentials clear:

By him the violated law speaks out

Its thunders: and by him in strains as sweet
As angels use, the Gospel whispers peace.
He stablishes the strong, restores the weak,
Reclaims the wanderer, binds the broken heart,
And around himself in panoply complete
Of heavenly temper, furnishes with arms,
Bright as his own, and trains by every rule
Of holy discipline, to glorious war,

The sacramental host of God's elect!

The entire action and accomplishment of a ministry from the Colleges, endued with an elevated piety and a high intelligence befitting the holy calling, no mind but that of the Omniscient One can comprehend. The influence which this sacred profession when full, may exert in favor of a Christian Civilization, must be, both in respect to quality and quantity, all that the most intelligent benevolence can desire.

These three services for the West, the creation of eminent scholarship, the improvement and extension of primary education, the establishment of a superior and Christian Civilization, constitute the grand design and effort of Western Colleges. The population of the Valley of the Mississippi consists of ten millions, of which two millions are between the ages of 5 and 15. The fulfilment, therefore, on the part of these institutions, of their large, noble purpose, in respect to superior scholarship, popular instruction, and the amelioration of society, would even, at the present time, swell into an accomplishment worthy the efforts of the most distinguished and philanthropic minds. But these Colleges have a work to do, possessing a magnificence and importance greatly surpassing this. It is the fulfilment of the same purpose, the introduction into the whole country of high intelligence, excellent primary schools, and the best Civilization, when our entire people instead of 10, shall have grown to 20,000,000, 40,000,000, 80,000,000, and our present 2,000,000 of children shall have become 4, 8, 16,000,000. These last number 80,000,000 of population in the whole, and 16,000,000 for our schools, this wide West will contain within 60 years! As these multitudes are to dwell on a soil, whose productiveness has never yet been overstated, and is not elsewhere upon the earth surpassed, they will eventually possess sources of wealth and aggrandizement, which will turn hither the eyes of other nations, as well as concentrate here the grand vitalities and developments and energies. of our own country. In arming this immense and growing population, therefore, with superior intelligence and a pure Christianity, Western Colleges will have subjected to their influence materials and elements of incalculable capabilities, and assisted to establish a power, such as has rarely risen up in our world. Their mission is a great and a holy one! The actual sum and value of their beneficial influence upon the susceptible millions settled, settling, and hereafter to be settled here, are too vast to be estimated and set down in specific statement. Who can foot up the amounts and measures of light and heat and air and electricity, of alkalies and acids, and oils and nutritious earths, which are employed in the evolution and uprearing of the whole, gorgeous, luxuriant, immense vegetation, living and growing, in summer months, on the face of this broad Valley? Arithmetic is baffled: conjecture is confounded! These incalculable and almost illimitable ingre

dients and agencies are a fit and fair image to us of the elements and influences which Western Colleges are to aid in furnishing to the multitudes of intelligences, which shall struggle and grow, and thrill and rise and labor, upon this vast intellectual and moral theatre. It were better that our lakes were emptied into the sea, our railroads torn up, our rivers and canals left dry, our prairies turned to sterility, our bland clime changed into Northern rigors, than that our Colleges should be either extinguished or neglected. Our beautiful land, reposing between grand mountain ranges, would become as the valley of the shadow of death! The adversary would spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things. The Lord cover her with a cloud; in his anger cast down to the earth her beauty, and make her altars desolate.

Western Institutions of learning should enlarge and enrich themselves, for influence and accomplishment, with an energy and enthusiasm commensurate with the greatness and value of the service allotted to them. The West should cherish liberally her Colleges, as noble sources of her life, her honor, her usefulness. May she ever have those which are worthy of her confidence and her love!

ARTICLE II.

REVIEW OF FINNEY'S THEOLOGY.

By Rev. GEORGE Duffield, D. D., Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Detroit, Mich.

Lectures on Systematic Theology, embracing Lectures on Moral Government, together with Atonement, Moral and Physical Depravity, Regeneration, Philosophical Theories, and Evidences of Regeneration. By REV. C. G. FINNEY, Professor of Theology in the Oberlin Collegiate Institute.

The proper office of philosophy is to explain facts. In matters of religion, its functions have sometimes been deemed both legitimate and necessary. Its influence and bearing upon the great cardinal doctrines of Revelation, as matter of history, is a subject of great interest. To examine and trace them, is an exercise attended with much profit. But it would require an entire life spent in study, by one of keen discrimination, and under circumstances propitious to investigation, to do the subject justice.

Amid the incessant cares and labors of active pastoral vocations, we feel almost afraid to make an effort for the purpose of exposing the difference between faith and philosophy. Yet is it essential to a faithful review of the two volumes already published, of the work whose title is given in the caption of this article.

In a former article, this subject has been adverted to, and a radical distinction has been taken between the facts revealed in the Bible as matters of faith, and the doctrines of Theology founded on or inferred from them. We have often wished, that some learned master Theologian, imbued with the spirit of faith, would unfold the manner in which metaphysical notions, definitions, and philosophical explanations, of the great cardinal facts of the gospel of the grace of God, have in different ages affected men's minds, in apprehending and exhibiting them. With the bearing of the Gnostic philosophy on Christianity, and its influence in the early ages of the Christian church, in developing the germs of popery, till expanded in the great anti-christian apostasy, those who have studied history and consulted the patristic writings cannot be ignorant. The controversies between Augustine and Pelagius, and between Calvinists and Armenians, furnish us striking illustrations of the manners in which the mind may be beguiled from the simplicity of faith. We fear that the author of the work on Systematic Theology, now under review, will be found, unintentionally and unconsciously to have "erred from the faith," through the influence of a favorite philosophy, assumed as his guide and infallible interpreter of the lively Oracles of God.

What that philosophy is, with its application to the great questions of the nature and foundation of moral obligation, has been unfolded, in a former article, to the reader's attention. Its Theological applications possess great importance, having been elaborated into a system of subtle and dangerous error, subversive of the gospel of our salvation, since that article was prepared. Another volume has been published by our author, in which those applications are more studiously and extensively made, and his Theological system worked into shape, by his philosophy of what our author has himself styled, "the dogma of a necessitated will; by assuming which," he says, "all the practical doctrines of Christianity have been embarrassed and perverted."

The doctrines which are to pass through the alembic of his philosophy, are moral depravity, ability and inability, justification before God, regeneration, santification, perfection and their cognate and correlate truths. Our decided conviction is, that our author, neither in his own mind, nor in his teachings, has drawn the line of distinction between what is revealed to us as matter of fact, upon the simple veracity and authority of God's word, and what is man's addition, made in the exercise of his own wisdom, by metaphysical and psychological assumptions

and definitions, or philosophical solutions of the mysteries of revelation. The reader will excuse us for adding somewhat on this point, inasmuch as it is necessary, alike to prevent ourselves from being misapprehended, and to correct what our author, in common with a large class of Theologians, seems to have assumed.

In the preface to his third volume, he says, "I have not yet been able to stereotype my theological views, and have ceased ever to expect to do so. The idea is preposterous. None but an Omniscient mind can continue to maintain a precise identity of views and opinions." True, most true, in so far as human reasonings and matters of mere opinion are concerned. How important, therefore, that, in the incessant fluctuations of the human mind, there should be found, in matters of eternal moment, some solid and immutable rock, on which we may cast anchor and feel safe! This we have alone in the Word of God, received as the rule and reason or foundation of faith.

The oracles of God, disclosing the "mystery of godliness," have been committed to "the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of truth"-not for her ministry exclusively, nor for her authoritative and infallible exposition-but for preservation, circulation, and the use of all her members. They are, like God Himself, eternal and immutable. Thence we derive the true knowledge of Himself, and of the way of salvation through Jesus Christ. From no other source can it originally be obtained by erring mortals. In this respect, the men of one age have no advantage over another. What God says to us in His Word, He has said to our fathers, and to the generations before us, from the days of the Apostles down through every age. The veriest child need not err here, in any essential matter. The great facts and mysteries of redemption are not communicated as abstractions, but as simple narrative. Abstractions may suit the philosopher; narrative is adapted to the child, whose faith is not so likely to err as are the reasonings of the philosopher. The philosopher must come down to the level of the child, and believe with the same simple docile confidence, in the unerring testimony of God, if he would enter the kingdom of Heaven."

Science and philosophy are not essential to the apprehension of truth by faith; nor are they its exponents. To affirm that they are, is to give vantage ground, which never should be yielded to Papists, Puseyites, High-Churchmen, rationalistic divines, and all who authoritatively prescribe their dogmas for our credence. For if these things are important and essential in the exposition of the Scriptures, and the common sense reader is to be led and instructed by them, in his knowledge of the mind and will of God, the argument certainly will lie greatly in favor of the Church

'Finney's Syst. Theol., Vol. III., p. iii.

2 Matt. xviii., 3.