that feelings and the operation of the Spirit are the same? And does he mean to say that the promises and testimony of God are the divine influence by which the heart of a sinner is regenerated? However, we are not sure whether he believes that the term regeneration in scripture is intended to designate a change of heart, but the new economy only." I say, I am pleased at some of his inqui, ries, for there are a goodly number that contend that a man cannot believe even if he wish to believe. I do not know whether Christianos is one of them or not. I am inclined to think, from circumstances, he is. All of them must feel this back-handed blow, which often the knuckles hurts'more than the open hand. The objection I have to the Editor's remarks is this: I do not think I have any where imputed ignorance to Christianos. It was not intentionally done, though I confess I was astonished at his communication, that is, the spirit of it. I expected better things from him. Another remark of the Editor's, he has made an extract from a communication I made him some time past, and thinks there is a contradiction. Now I was opposing the errors of others; and when I asserted my views, I expressly said, 'I must contend that, under the superintending hand of him who is the author of our religion, every man CAN, if he WILL, believe and obey the gospel; and to all such is the promise upon being immersed into the name of Jesus of Nazareth for remission of sins." "You shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit," says Peter.

Can you discover any contradiction in the extract and the forego. ing sentence. The extract reads thus, "Do not think that I deny that a gracions interposition of mercy is necessary to give efficiency to the means provided for us. I am only opposing the manner of teaching unbelievers to look for that about which they can know nothing until they come to Christ. We are not authorized to inform them that they are to wait until this divine interposition in their behalf is exercised before they believe and obey." In this the Editor says, I "will find Christianos and himself to agree, we doubt not;" yet contends that I deny that in the above quotation, or extract. Is there no gracious interposition of mercy flowing to the human family from under the superintending hand of him who is the author of our religion? Is there no power in his hand to give efficacy to the means provided for us? I feel a little surprized that my views are so overlooked. However, I am pleased to find such able friends agree with me. I do not remember your views delivered at the Bowling Green on Rom. viii. 26, 27,* except you said the spirit therein spoken of was the christian's spirit, and not the Spirit of God. Some of those who are perfect say that you perverted the word of God, and they want no fellowship with you, nor any man that agrees with you in your views. They contend that it is the Spirit of God. I am pleased to see the Editor of the Herald caution them not to be too hasty in forcing their opinions upon every man that does not agree with them. I should like to see the questions I put to them scripturally answered. I think the shrewd Editor felt some difficulty in doing so-more than those gentlemen whose perfect opinions are made a bond of union. I dislike this loving a man for his opinions, because he thinks as I do. It is nothing more than the love of self; and what

*See Millennial Harbinger, No. 3.

is that but idolatry! The friends of the ancient order of things will have to suffer much from the persecuting clergy. They stir up the people, and cause their minds to be evil affected against the truths that are now brought to light through the T. M. H.

press.

[The preceding letter was not written for the public eye; but I have often felt that more of the unction of christianity appears in those private communications than in those designed for public inspection. In writing for the public, too often a regard to style or manner extinguishes the syirit which warms and cheers. The feelings of the heart, rather than the dictates of the understanding, are regarded in those communications intended for a friend.

With regard to the immersing on a profession of faith, rather than on a declaration of experience, much has been said in the previous volumes of this work. The more I witness the tendency of the former, the more I admire the wisdom of God in contrast with the expedients of men. All have to admit that the Apostles immersed on a mere profession of the faith. They expected a change of heart to result from obedience, rather than from continuing in disobedience. The moderns look for a change of heart to be effected while in a state of disobedience. We know, indeed, that a change of heart does always precede obedience; but not such a change of heart as many are required to profess. No intelligent and sincere confessor of Jesus at immersion but has felt a change of heart which he declares in the very act of submission to the authority of Jesus Christ. He declares repentance, and a confidence in Jesus, and a determination to obey him in all the fruits of reformation, in the very presentation of himself for immersion. This is clearly and explicitly declared in the very proposition which he makes in soliciting immersion. Such a change of heart must precede im. mersion in the very nature of things. Of this the word of God is the incorruptible seed. Hence that change of heart declared in immersion leads to all that holiness of love, to all that purity of heart which is the perfection of christianity. This, obedience to the gospel perfects. To require this before immersion, is to re. quire a sick person to be healthy before he takes medicine-a filthy person to be clean before he is washed-a person perishing with hunger to be filled before he eats.

Some acquaintance with the practice of immersing on the ancient profession of faith and its tendencies, enables me to say that it proves its excellency and superiority by the greater holiness, spirituality, and heavenly-mindedness of the baptized, and by the fewness of the apostacies compared with those among them who have been immersed into their own experience.]-Ed. C. B.

Brother Hayden, Trumbull co. Ohio, under date of the 25th ult. concludes his letter with the following pleasing intelligence:-"The word of God has great success with us. The churches are growing in knowledge, spirituality, and numbers. New Churches are rising up in very many towns on the Reserve, where we are laboring."

{No. 12.

BETHANY, BROOKE CO. VA.
MONDAY, JULX 5, 1830.

{Vol. 7. }

"Style no man on earth your Father; for he alone is your father who "is in heaven; and all ye are brethren. Assume not the title of Rabbi; "for you have only one teacher. Neither assume the title of Leader; for "you have only one leader-the MESSIAH.'

Matt. xxiii. 8--10.

"Prove all things: hold fast that which is good.”

Paul the Apostle.

ESSAYS ON THE PATRIARCHAL, JEWISH, AND CHRISTIAN AGES-No. XVI.

CHRISTIAN AGE-No. II.

PAUL to the Galatians asserts one of the distinguishing features of the Christian Age to which we have formerly adverted. It is a characteristic of the Reign of Favor, to which much attention ought to be paid. When the people of God were minors, says he, we were kept in bondage under the elements of the world. As a son who is an heir, during his minority differs nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all, but is kept under tutors and stewards until the time fixed upon for manhood, or full age: even so we were treated under the law. But now, in the wisdom of our Heavenly Father, the fulness of time being come for the enlargement of the people of God, we are raised to the relation of sons of God. This is the new and high relation into which christianity elevates its subjects, the reason of which is suggested by the great Apostle to be this; that God made his Son a servant to buy off those who were held in bondage; that, as he became a servant, so we might be made sons. Hence, as our nature was adopted by God's Son, so the sons of men are adopted into the family of God.

As young men arrive at the full age of manhood they are emancipated from the government of mere precepts, and put under the government of principles. Here is the secret. The Jews were under a government of precepts-we are under a government of principles. Hence all was laid down to them in broad and plain commandments; and the book which contained their worship was a a ritual, a manual of religious and moral duties, accurately defined to the utmost conceivable minutia; insomuch that nothing was left to discretion-nothing to principle.

We have no

There is nothing like this in the New Institution. ritual, liturgy, nor manual. The New Constitution and Law of Love. does no more than institute the converting act, the Lord's supper, and the Lord's day. Immersion, or the converting act, by which persons are brought into the kingdom of principles and introduced into the rank of sons, is not so much an ordinance in the kingdom as that which brings us into it. The Lord's supper, a weekly commemora vol. vii.

23

tion of the great sacrifice, and the day of the resurrection of Jesus, though positive institutions are not presented to christians accompanied with directions for the mode of celebration, as were any of the former institutions under the Jewish Age. There were more directions about the celebration of the Passover and the observance of the Sabbath, than is to be found in the whole New Institution. Nay, indeed, there is nothing of that sort in the christian economy. No mode of eating the supper, no mode of observing the Lord's day is suggested in the apostolic writings. In this christians are left to the discretion of full grown men to the government of principle. Al things are to be done decently and in order; but the modes of decency and order in the celebration of these christian institutions are no where pointed out.

Sometimes the Apostles notice glaring aberrations from this order and decency, and this is the reason of those remarks which we find in the epistles noticing any egregious departure from that order and decency which become the elevated rank and dignity of sons of God. But even then no code of laws, no enumeration of ceremonies, no forms of observance are suggested. There is nothing in the christian economy of the nature of ceremony-nothing for the sake of form. There is a principle in every thing instituted. And all the principles of obedience, all the principles of action, how numerous soever we may suppose them, are reducible to one great principle, sometimes called the new commandment. Now, says Paul, "the end or object of the commandment is love out of a pure heart, out of a good conscience, and from faith unfeigned." The Christian Institution creates in the heart of man this love. It gives it birth and being. It is a love of a higher order, of a sublimer genius, than any former age or economy could produce. The love for God which Judaism implanted and matured, was love for a benefactor, a preserver, or, if you please, a Creator; but love for a Redeemer, for a Saviour, is of a loftier birth and character. Love for one that has redeemed from everlasting death, who bestows immortality, is a love which none could feel who did not understand the doctrine of life and immortality.

The dominion of love is the dominion of favor, and its service the easiest conceivable. Hence the liberty and perfect freedom felt in slavery to Jesus Christ. All who serve any favorite principle feel themselves free. The man who toils harder than any menial bondman ever did, provided he toil in the service of some grateful principle, (avarice, or ambition, for example,) he feels perfect liberty. Liberty is all in the mind. Hence the slaves of Jesus, or the slaves of love, are the veriest freemen in the world. This is the grandeur of the christian scheme, that it sets men in love with such principles and such a person; that makes virtue and goodness almost as necessary as the Pagans' fate, and yet as free and easy as the action of the heart or the labor of the lungs.

There is no serving from memory in the service of love. The Jews required a good memory rather than a good judgment. Children act from memory before they act from judgment. Hence the memory is strong and the judgment weak in youth. In manhood the judg ment is strong and the memory becomes weaker. In the religious

minority of the world the religious acted from memory rather than from judgment or pure principle. Let no man infer that I exclude principle from the saints of former ages, in the vulgar acceptation of that term. I mean no such thing. But the principles of christianity, the principles of action which the love of God developed in the mission of Jesus, and the glory to be revealed in us at the resurrection, are so transcendant as to eclypse every thing like principle flowing from love or gratitude to a creator, or benefactor, or guardian as the God of Israel was revealed to the Jews. Their outward services, their yoke of bondage, the elements of the world under which they groaned, are clear monuments of the slavery of the letter, and of the want of what we here call principles. I said, the service of love is not the service of memory. Love is a master whose power is felt without recollection. Omnipresent and omnipotent too in moral influence. It is the moral principle of gravity in the moral universe, and, like the physical attraction, controls every thing.

The christian scheme is the wisdom and power of God in producing this principle. When created its aliment is the will of God. On the sincere milk of the word it feeds. This nourishes and strengthens it. To its government the new man is subjected. Hence the obedience of faith is also the obedience of love. There requires no precepts nor commands, with a penalty, other than that the enjoyment of this love of God and his favor necessarily requires conformity. Hence all the exhortations to religious and moral observances are drawn from the love of God to us.

This is the great principle of the New Institution; although the two great commandments of the law required the love of the whole heart to God and benevolence equal to self-love, it did not afford the strength nor the motive to call them forth. Hence it was a condemnatory precept, rather than a quickening principle. But now the love of God, shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit, excites to an activity, and imparts an energy which the law could not de.

But that which calls for our notice here, is that God now dealeth with us as sons, and not as servants--not as sons who are minors, but as sons who are of full age. Hence the suggestions in the form of general principles in preference to a ritual prescribing every act in mode and form to perfect exactitude as under the law.

There was another consideration in the law requiring an exactness in the forms of worship, which does not exist under the Reign of Favor. The genius of the Jewish Age was figurative, prophetic, or symbolical. Many of the observances of that economy were types or figures of the good things which we enjoy; and that there might be. a true representation of these things for the confirmation of the faith, and enlargement of the views of those who are now called into the kingdom, it behoved that nothing should be left to the discretion of man. Every thing must be done according to the pattern exhibited in the law. So that when these two considerations are duly regarded, we shall find two good reasons why the christian economy should differ so materially from the Jewish. The former was delivered to persons retained in the condition of minors, and it always treated them as such. The latter is addressed to persons in the rank of sons who have passed their minority, and it treats them as such.