habitual violation of the laws of Christ. He is obstinate in selfjustification. Others sympathize with him and take his part; prejudices are excited; parties are formed; a struggle for influence commences; and clamor, and wrath, and all the mischiefs that result from baleful passions, blown into angry commotion, ensue. Plainly, a church cannot prosper without discipline; and discipline it cannot maintain, when one half, or one third, of its members choose to have none.

To what purpose is it then to say, "Keep the door of the church wide open, and if unworthy men enter, cast them out?" At the best, I admit the impossibility of wholly excluding such men, for with all the vigilance of the Apostles, in their day, "False brethren crept in unawares." But it is easier to keep out ten such men, than to cast out one.

And as to the character of the church, and its sanctifying influence on the world, what is to be expected from a lax system of admission to membership? How is she to be the light of the world, when the light in herself is darkness? Her unconverted members are the elements of death in her bosom, even if they maintain a blameless exterior. But generally, they will not do this. Towards many of them, ungodly opposers of experimental piety will point the finger of reproach, and say, "There are your converts; as worldly, as proud, as light-minded, as indifferent to religion, as other people." What is the reply? Can the church contradict what she knows to be unquestionable facts? Will it do for her to say, "These men are doubtless false professors, and the peril be on themselves;-it is no concern of the church?" It will not do to say this. It is a solemn concern of the church to maintain its own holy character, as a community instituted by God to train men for heaven, and not for perdition. She is pledged to do this by most sacred vows; and the world holds her to that pledge; and God holds her to it. When Achan committed his trespass, secretly, the indictment of heaven was laid in against the whole religious community to which he belonged: "ISRAEL HATH SINNED." Divine wrath rested on the church as a body, for the transgression of a single member, till he was searched out and punished. Nor is it less true now, that the tolerated sin of one member is the sin of the church.

What then, if we heedlessly admit to our fellowship, and continue in it, unconverted men, what hope can we entertain that God will bless us? If any considerable proportion of our communicants should be of this character, what is to become of our genuine revivals. Let the Spirit of God be withdrawn from us, and leave us to fanatical excitements, and human contriv

ances to multiply nominal Christians, and then, indeed, we may have "human converts," and many accessions to the numbers of the church, but the glory of our Zion will be departed; and a few such seasons of ingathering in any church, will be sufficient to render it an utter desolation.

There are two other points which deserve more extended notice than I can give them under this head. One is the authority of Apostolic precedent, as alleged in favor of sudden. admissions to the church. Without spending time to controvert the premises often assumed, in regard to this matter, I will barely say, that, as to any number of individuals who have recently professed religion, let me be assured on divine authority, (as I am, for example, respecting the Pentecost converts,) that they believed," that "the Lord added them to the church," that they "continue in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship," and that "they shall be saved;" let me have this assurance, and I can have no apprehension that any mistake has been committed. But who will undertake to give me this assurance?

The other point respects the loud note of warning to Christians of this time, from a well known apostasy, which occurred in the New England churches, during the last century. By a gradual and silent progress, the spirit of vital godliness was supplanted in many of these churches; in pulpits which had been occupied by the Mathers and Shepards of former days, laxity of doctrine was introduced, the glory of the Gospel was obscured, the real divinity of the Saviour, and the special agency of the Spirit were kept out of sight, then called in question, then denied; till at length a regular, organized apostasy from the faith of the Gospel, threw off its disguise, and boldly unfurled the standard of error. This lamentable defection among the sons of the Pilgrims, which many generations cannot remedy, did not result from accident. Whence did it come? The answer deserves to be proclaimed with trumpet-tongue :-The Puritan churches slept, and the enemy sowed tares. Unconverted men, in great numbers, were admitted to their fellowship, hoping to become Christians. If I do not mistake the signs of the times, the danger of our churches now is, that unconverted men, in great numbers, will be admitted to their fellowship, hoping that they are Christians. Should this apprehension prove well grounded, another century will disclose the calamitous results. God grant that it may prove without foundation. It will be evident, I presume, that in the foregoing remarks, my eye has been fixed on the single danger of rash and premature admissions to the church. Justice to my own views,

however, require me to say, that there is an opposite danger to be guarded against, namely, too much delay in bringing hopeful converts to a public profession of religion. That this mistake has often been committed in our evangelical churches cannot be doubted. The consequences of this undue delay, are such as a judicious minister will most certainly perceive, at least after a few years of pastoral experience, and of careful attention to the spiritual state of individuals who need his special guidance. The most general usage of New England churches, (with many exceptions, of course, to meet peculiar cases,) I suppose has been to delay admission of candidates after hopeful conversion, from two months to six. Within the last fifteen years, probably the time has not generally exceeded from two to four months.

Did my limits allow, this would be a proper place to sketch out a plan for the systematic instruction and probation of recent converts, between the period of hope and profession ; a plan by which they might be kept in a state of trial and of progress, without the liability to be carried backward in their course, by adverse circumstances. Should it please God to continue the glorious effusions of his Spirit, by which our country has been so signally favored of late years, some system of this sort will probably be deemed indispensable in our churches. At this moment, I can only recommend to your careful examination, some very lucid and judicious remarks, which you will find under the head of "The Probationer's Class,"-Spirit of the Pilgrims, Vol. iv. p. 656.

Affectionately yours, &c.

E. PORTER.

Walterboro', S C., Jan. 1833.

THE CRUCIFIXION.

NO. III.

THE BLOODY SWEAT.

Before we proceed to describe the scene at Gethsemane, it may be proper to premise a few observations on the statement that Christ perspired, " as it were, great drops of blood." Clotzius supposes, that because the visit of the angel to Christ is recorded before the appearance of the bloody sweat upon him, the former event was the cause of the latter, and of course pre

ceded it. He would therefore paraphrase Luke xxii. 43, 44, thus: "There appeared unto Christ an angel strengthening him, and the sudden tide of joy which was raised in him by the angel, so quickened the circulation in his system, that he actually perspired blood." But although the perspiration is noticed subsequently to the angelic visit, no one can doubt that it occurred previously, and occurred on account of sorrow instead of joy. Commentators almost unanimously assign the perspiration to the time immediately after the Saviour's third prayer, and before his third walk to the disciples.

There has been much angry debate (strange, indeed, it is, that the thought of Gethsemane does not repress the least emotion of anger,) on the nature of the sweat which Luke records. The discussion seems to have resulted in the following conclusions.

First. Luke did not design to represent the perspiration as miraculous. He wished to show the extent of Christ's agony, how severe, how powerful it was, and to what consequences it led. It agitated his system so much as to make him perspire large drops. Now the perspiration could be no measure or sign of his grief, if it were not caused by it entirely. To introduce a miracle as its cause, proves the efficacy of the miracle, but hides the operation of the grief. We must therefore conclude, that Luke designed to represent the perspiration as a natural consequence of extreme mental anguish. It has been very common, however, for readers of the Bible, when perplexed with the phenomenon, to refer it to some super-human agency, and thus to annihilate its meaning, as a measure of Christ's

woe.

Secondly. Blood may exude through the pores of the skin according to known physiological laws. The great question in debate is, did Christ perspire blood? And we have seen, that if such a perspiration, on natural principles, is impossible, it cannot be supposed to have occurred. It is evident that the phenomenon takes place in certain kinds of bodily disorder. Diodorus Siculus, L. xvii. p. 560, mentions a species of serpent, by whose bite is caused the most painful death, and also before death "a flow of sweat like blood." Other writers mention another serpent, called the Hæmorrhois, whose bite will cause a sweat of blood.* Aristotle, in Chap. xix. Book 3 of his Animal History says, "If the blood is too thin, and is diluted by impure ingredients, it may lose itself, and make the invalid sweat with a bloody sweat." Actuarius, Book i. Chap. 10, re

Poole's Synopsis, Vol. iv. pp. 1111, 1112, and Dr. Gill on the New Testament, Vol. i. p. 735.

lates an account of a young man, through whose skin drops of blood were perspired, in consequence of the heat of the sun and of a laborious journey. Zacutus Lusitanus, a Jewish physician of the seventeenth century, mentions " a robust, well educated man who was attacked with a fever in the blood, and was cured on the 5th, 6th, or 7th day of the fever by a sanguinary perspiration." A multitude of instances similar to these are recorded by Dr. Thomas Bartholin, a Danish physician of the seventeenth century, who occupied, with splendid success, the anatomical and mathematical professorships at Copenhagen, and published many valuable works on anatomy and medicine. In his Hypomnemater de Cruce Christi, pp. 184-196, he strenuously argues that bloody perspirations are common phenomena, in bodies laboring under particular diseases. Sagittarius, Wedel, Richter, and Eschenbach have collected instances of the phenomenon; Good, in his Study of Medicine, Schomel, in the Dictionaire de Medicine, (Art. Sueur,) and the British Encyclopedists have alluded to it as actual and frequent. It is not pretended that half of the instances on record are worthy of credit; the imaginary is intermingled with the real; still there is no more doubt among our enlightened physicians concerning the reality of diseases which cause blood to exude, than of those which cause it to inflame.

Bartholin thus explains the principle on which blood is perspired from the system. "Sometimes the pores of the body are so expanded that a liquid may rush through them as through an open gate. They are thus expanded by heat, either exter-" nal or internal. The reception of inflammable spirits, and the heat of the sun or a fire are well known to open the pores. When, therefore, the veins and arteries are thin, and especially when lax at their mouths; when the blood is improperly diluted, and at the same time excited by heat, it finds easy egress." "Fernelius, a celebrated physician, records an emission of blood from the extremities of the veins when not heated. Book vi. Chap. 4." Since medical science has become more exact, physicians have ascribed this sanguinary emission to a cause like that of the hemorrhage at the lungs, stomach, nose, etc. The blood is inflamed or otherwise disordered, the capillary vessels are weakened, by an excitement of the system the blood is sent through the arteries with so great force that the capillary vessels are unable to convey it to the veins; they therefore discharge it, and then, in connection with common perspiration, it oozes through the skin.

If, then, it can be proved, that the blood and capillary vessels in the Saviour's body were diseased in the specific way