as carnal in infience and false in principle. In the monstrous philosophy which prevails, the simple predisposition of men to use their reason is adjudged the clearest proof, not only that they are not religious, but that they are incapable of becoming so, until they have rectified an error which originated with God, in conferring our primitive endowments: so that this great business of belief and devotion is based upon the ostensible negation of our nature.

And yet, this negation is never complete. Whatever miracle is needful to achieve conversion, it is never a miracle which fully accomplishes its work. The supernatural does not fully triumph over the natural; for after all the resources which have been so successfully applied, this enslavement of the understanding is not so thorough as to be wholly divested of the leaven of a rebellion which must generate dissatisfaction now, and, if the philosophy be true, inevitably lead to damnation in the end.

Christianity, as inculcated by Christ, and enforced by the Apostles, must have been a very simple, an essentially rational system. We do not now go to original records and facts. We

put our appeal in another direction. Christianity as now taught is not only not such a system, but all pretence of this kind is expressly and authoritatively disclaimed. What then is the Christianity of to-day? Whence did it come? Men tell us with immovable gravity that they teach the truths Christ taught, and that we must receive them or inherit an immortality of ill. What, then, are those truths? Suppose you seek for them under the general form of Calvinism, or the rival form of Arminianism. Could a reasonable man look grave, save through grief at the Father's dishonor, when told that one or the other of these schemes were the original Christianity? And, in mercy, which of them is so distinguished? for, you will observe, that these schemes are antagonistic in point of fact and in point of principle. The substantiation of the claims of one is consequently the rejection of the claims of the other. In favor of which, then, shall the decision of truth be given? I declare to you, that as to the result, it matters nothing, for if one or the other is Christianity, then it is a Christianity without Christ; and in its embrace we may well say, as the tearful Mary said at the grave of her Master

They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him."

It may be regarded as noteworthy, that whenever the friends of these schemes set forth their rival merits, and attempt to justify their respective claims to the original teaching of Jesus, they directly violate the fundamental condition upon which their acceptance with a third party is made to depend. They thus commit their systems to the pleasant work of self-repudiation. ' But, as often as they may be virtually disproved by their friends, in the labor of identifying them with ' Christianity, they are not the less urgent in their pretensions. Whence, then, did they come this Calvinism, now so flexible in its awful certainties this Arminianism, so inflexible in its awful uncertainties?

Speaking of them as systems simply, we are content to connect them with a general historical reference; and we say that there is not an important doctrine presented by either, whose history, as such, may not be readily traced to an age later than that of Jesus. Whatever they really possess of Christianity, is in no way peculiar to them, but is what they hold in common with

most or all other Christian theories. Whatever they possess in doctrine which is distinctive, has been brought into the fold and baptized as Christian, since the Apostolic era. The history of the Church is, in a large measure, the history of the process of paganizing the kingdom of God. The corruptions which the candor of history indicates, as having been engrafted upon the simplicity of the Gospel, constitute "the body and being" of these systems. If it be not so, then either historical evidence becomes a standing cheat, or Christianity an unauthenticated tradition.

It is to be observed, that these distinguishing doctrines not only possess the peculiar and positive merit of being unreasonable, so much so that the mind can acceptably receive them only through supernatural interposition, but that they also possess the merit of an irreconcilable hostility of the instincts, the wants of our affectional nature. They spread themselves over the entire field of thought and devotion. -over the whole moral character of God, the work and mission of Jesus, the duties, the hopes, and the destiny of men; and the mind is everywhere tortured by

their crudities, and the heart scourged to wretchedness by their oppressions. Take, for instance, the doctrine of the Trinity. Now, although we may concede that the heart may freely and spontaneously love a Triune God, a being of whom it is impossible to have any just natural conceptions, yet it still remains difficult to discover how that heart can render the obedience required, while it escapes the imputation and the peril of idolatry. On the one hand, there is the distinct command to worship one God; on the other, there is the supposed obligation to worship three Gods as one, and one as three, each of whom is supreme, and all of whom united are no more than supreme. In this multiplication of deities, there is a proportionate distraction of the heart in the disposal of its affections; and the homage must be rendered under the apprehension that conformity to the command may be accounted scorn of the creed, or that conformity to the creed may be idolatrous before God, and on either hand there is hell.

Bewildering as is this doctrine to the intellect. and the heart, it perhaps less endangers the sincerity of devotion than that of Vicarious Atone