Forensic debates are superior to all other exercises, when properly conducted. The speaker should speak only from his own convictions, he should make ample preparation in the thought, and then yield himself to the interest and ardor of discussion. Such exercises may give birth to oratory; they certainly will prepare the way. Here mind comes in conflict with mind, and the studied gesture and artificial tone are forgotten. The arts and tricks of a spurious oratory could not be made to appear more despicable than by introducing them into the forum.

In forming the orator, however, the principal discipline relates to the thoughts and feelings. Oratory is composed of the tones which thought and feeling inspire, and the thought and feeling contain the only true measure of the oratory. The loftier thought, the nobler and more glowing feeling of one mind will mark the superiority of his oratory, if he speak inartificially. But still the humbler thought, and the less soaring passion of another, will have its measure of oratory.

Whilst, therefore, all that direct attention should be paid to oratory which has been remarked above, let it be remembered that the finished and disciplined intellect, the purified and exalted heart, and a thorough acquaintance with language, form its springs. One of the strongest objections against popular elocution is, that it deludes its pupils into the belief that they have become orators by the cultivation of the voice, while as yet its fountains have not been opened in the soul. Oratory is not an accomplishment of the schoolboy, but the attribute of a ripened and godlike mind.

As a specimen of oratory, let us take the oratory of Lord Bacon, as described by Ben Jonson: "There happened in my time one noble speaker who was full of gravity in his speaking. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more mightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of its own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him without loss. He commanded when he spoke, and had his judges angry or pleased at his devotion. The fear of every man that heard him was, that he should make an end."

There is but one thing more that we shall mention as a part of this discipline and preparation for oratory. It is this, to enter into the world neither as an isolated nor as a selfish being, but with all the generous sympathies of humanity, feeling that the great interests of the world are common interests in which all must bear a part. These interests are expressed by a few words, but how vast their relations! Art, science, law, politics, and religion. He that will enter the world to prosecute these in truth and righteousness, must think, and feel, and speak; and then thought will be the birth of wisdom, and feeling will be the soul of speech, and such speech will be oratory.

To conclude, all that can be done for oratory in education is merely preparatory. We might as well try to make poets as to make orators. We may prescribe fitting and genial studies and exercises, but the orator, as well as the poet, can alone make himself, or must be made by an inspiration from heaven.

ARTICLE VII.

REVIEW OF FINNEY'S THEOLOGY.

By REV. GEORge Duffield, D. D., Detroit, Michigan.

Lectures on Systematic Theology, embracing Lectures on Moral Government, 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.

[Continued from p. 452.]

SANCTIFICATION.

"Some theologians," says our author, "have made justification a condition of sanctification instead of making sanctification a condition of justification. But this, we shall see, is an erroneous view of the subject. The mistake is founded in a misapprehension of the nature both of justification and of sanctification. They make sanctification to consist in something else than in the will's entire subjection or consecration to God; and justification they regard as a forensic transaction, conditionated on the first act of faith in Christ. Whole-hearted obedience to God, or entire conformity to his law, they regard as a very rare, and many of them, as an impractical attainment in this life. Hence they conditionate justification upon simple faith, not regarding faith as at all implying present conformity of heart to the law of God. It would seem, from the very use of language, that they lay very little stress upon personal holiness, as a condition of acceptance with God."" If our author means, as it would seem he does from his use of language, to insinuate or charge that the theologians he refers to are not careful and zealous to inculcate the necessity of holiness, Sys. Theol. III. p. 106.

and its reality as an indispensable evidence of a justified state, or that their teaching and preaching do not secure conscientious and devoted lives of new obedience, he insinuates and charges what he cannot prove. The piety and morality of the men he thus reproaches, and of their churches generally, will not lose anything in comparison with those that affiliate and sympathize with him and his school. The odium theologicum is a very weak argument, and what we would not expect from one who claims to be perfect. The above extract does express the truth, that the theologians referred to deny sanctification to be the condition of justification. But our author uses it with evident intent to be understood, that they who deny and oppose the doctrine of entire sanctification as he teaches it, are, to some degree, indifferent, or at least far less concerned about holiness of heart and life, and the obligation to maintain it, than he and his school are. For he says "that it is Antinomianism," and that "a denial of (his) doctrine prepares the minds of ministers to temporize and wink at great iniquity in their churches." This is grievous slander. We will not return the compliment as broadly as it has been given, but must remark that so far as our observation has gone, we have witnessed so much manœuvring and deception, and such developments of rampant censoriousness, spiritual pride, self-conceit and lying slander, in connexion with this doctrine, on the part of its advocates, that we should be on our guard, and put no confidence in the man or the church, that professes "entire sanctification," as taught by our author and his school. Nor are we at all surprised that it should be so. For, having affirmed of themselves what is false before God, the power of perceiving truth has, as its legitimate punishment, been so far impaired, that they now cease to be aware when they depart from truth before men.

Our author assumes that there is, and can be, no other effectual provision made for the holiness of men, but that which makes sanctification the condition of justification. This is the common assumption of all unsanctified minds; and it operates powerfully and extensively to keep men from trusting in Jesus Christ, and looking confidently for the grace of God unto eternal life. We do indeed, in common with the theologians whom our author condemns and traduces, deny that sanctification is the condition of justification, in the ordinary acceptation of the term "condition," nor do we think it either necessary or efficacious to secure holiness of heart and life, to assume and teach that it is. On the contrary, we have found and believe that this very idea, the precedence of holiness as a condition of justification, operates as an efficient barrier in the way of the sinner's being brought to Christ, and powerfully, in some who think they have come to Him, to secure the developments of spiritual pride, or self-righ

teousness, or censoriousness. The theologians condemned by our author, and the Confession of Faith so bitterly denounced by him, are very careful to teach that, coincident with justification, and by the very actings of the faith that justifies, the Spirit of God regenerates, and ever thereafter sanctifies. While they discard works or deeds of law, as the precedent condition of justification, they as positively affirm, that the faith which justifies is not mere science like the faith of devils, but such a realizing apprehension and belief of the great facts testified by Jesus Christ, concerning Himself, His Father, and the way of justification through him, as will bring the motive influence that may be drawn from the excellence, grace, and love of God in Christ, to bear upon the mind and heart, in determining to and promoting holiness. Its natural and certain tendency in this way, they plainly and pointedly urge from the Word of God, as it "works by love, purifies the heart, and overcomes the world." Appropriate fruits or good works, prove the genuineness of faith and the fact of justification, which is very different from their being the precedent condition. Our author either confounds or identifies these things, and in the boldest manner so perfectly inverts the order of God's operations in the justification and salvation of men, as to make them justify themselves, always and only in so far as they become and keep themselves perfectly holy. "The Bible everywhere represents justified persons as sanctified, and always expressly or impliedly conditionates justification upon sanctification. 1 Cor. 6: 11: And such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God."

We have here both the author's view plainly stated, and his attempt as a biblical expositor, to prove it. Because the apostle, in his detail of facts, evidencing the great change wrought in the character and state of the converts at Corinth, puts sanctification before justification, therefore he infers that the former is the condition of the latter! The apostle, designing to contrast their present and former character and state, most naturally begins with the developments in their actions and habits which give evidence of their state, and thus traces them to their proper source. A different design would have suggested a different course. Designing to prove the fact of a man's being in a living state, we should naturally say he moves, walks, thinks, and lives, placing the cause last. So regeneration and sanctification are stated first as the consequents or accompaniments and proofs of justification. We apply his mode of reasoning, and prove from the apostle the very reverse of our author's inference. "God has chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit, and belief of the truth."" Does sanctification of the Spirit precede faith as its con1Sys. Div. III. p. 107.

2 II. Thess. 2; 13.

dition? So Peter writes, "Elect through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling unto the blood of Christ." Does sanctification precede obedience, and do both precede the application of Christ's atonement as the condition? Our author's inference is a perfect non-sequitur; nor can he find a fitter specimen to his purpose, although he says that the passage in Corinthians is "but a specimen of the manner in which justified persons are spoken of in the Bible." As little to his purpose is his next quotation, from Rom. 6: 1, which does indeed prove that "they only are justified who walk after the Spirit." But this walking after the Spirit is the immediate, certain result, and necessary evidence, not the condition of justification. He confounds regeneration with sanctification, not, however, as the cause with its effect, the one being characteristically different from the other; but makes them to differ, only as a higher and a lower state. For, in reply to the anticipated objection, that the Scriptures speak of sanctification as a thing that comes after regeneration, and to be sought and arrived at, by the Christian, he affirms, that the word is used in a "higher sense," to denote "a state of being settled, established in faith, rooted and grounded in love, being so confirmed in the faith and obedience of the gospel, as to hold on in the way of life steadfastly, immovably, always abounding in the work of the Lord."

In his third volume our author has laid out all his force on this subject, which, as it is the peculiarity of his school, he makes “a fundamental question in theology."

He has transformed, by his philosophy, the meaning of language, with which the ears of Christians have been long familiar and wrought confusion only. Holiness, sanctification and obedience, have all their place in his nomenclature, and are retained still as technics; but they mean not in his lips what they have done among evangelical Christians. Along with them he has introduced others, which, according to his system are the synonymes of these, but have become the preferred phrases, and, with some boasters of perfection, the merest cantings-such as "entire sanctification," "entire obedience," "entire consecration of will," "of heart," "of life to God," "full-hearted consecration," "sincerity," "honesty of intention," "moral perfection." These are all used as convertible terms for "holiness," and holiness as another phrase for perfect sinlessness. They all serve the purposes of logical subtlety, by which to reach a conclusion uniformly Îy aimed at. It is both painful and alarming to see what a troop of expressions he marshals around him, and how by his philosophy they become the merest engines of sophistry, by which to give scope and power to error. Already have we met with some of his disciples, who have played most skilfully with them,