"Similar remarks are especially applicable to the Divine government of the human world. Notwithstanding every human being, and the whole race as one grand Man, was designed to reflect the image of the Creator, human nature in its present state is undeniably more or less depraved, selfish, and inharmonious, and hence is not receptive of the Divine influence in its pure and harmonious state. The Divine spiritual influence therefore, coming directly and immediately into the human world without the medium of a perfect human personage to harmoniously reflect, truly define, and correctly apply, its principles, would necessarily take a form of manifestation. more or less characterized by the imperfections of degenerate humanity as its receptacle—in the same way as the Divine operative influence, flowing into animal or still lower creations, takes a form of manifestation peculiar to these creations. On this principle, and this principle alone, it is conceived, we may account for the imperfection of the impressions which the Divine inspiration gave to Moses, and David, and the prophets, and the imperfections of the code of ethics, principles of government, and policy in respect to other nations, which grew out of these impressions; for all these were evidently imperfect when judged by a Christian standard.* Still, by means of such

* If our author means, as he may, that Moses and the prophets were instruments only for the preliminary, and thence imperfect, dispensations of God to the Hebrew and Jewish people, he is right; but if he means, as his language might imply more or less, that the inspired servants of those times only wrote as they could receive into their own imperfect mental organisms, and hence were the medium of errors and falsities, we shall have to demur. This would be to overlook the fact which we believe to be essential to the understanding of the whole subject of Divine inspiration; viz., that the self-hood of the writers was in such cases so entirely taken away, or subdued by a Divine power, that they could be made to write, and did write, not altogether what flowed into their understandings, for they had no interior, spiritual understanding, but what was dictated to them by the Divine Spirit, and what they were moved to write with a more or less strong afflatus, and some conviction of its truth and importance. They also wrote automatically, and sometimes the very words were dictated into their ears. They understood in general enough to know that what they wrote was a message from the Lord, but they could not understand its systematic, internal meaning, in all its relations to the glorification of the Lord's Humanity on earth, and

inflowings as the psychical and mental constitutions of these mediums rendered possible, God, without immediately obliterating existing evil, pressed these evils into the service of ultimate good; and by arraying one nation against another, subjecting some to utter extermination, humbling others by long disciplinary chastisements, etc., so directed the general course of human events as to provide for the influx of more and more light, and for the final coming of Him who was emphatically 'the Light of the world.' And now that that Light has come, a similar course of indirect Divine providences is continued with reference to nations and individuals, evidently with the view to the ultimate bringing of all under the full influence of its lifegiving beams, and to the establishment of that Divine Kingdom in the world which shall break to pieces and consume all other Kingdoms, and stand forever.'

"But if in this disjointed and degenerate state of the human faculties, God can discharge the highest functions of his Divine Government only by bringing the appropriate forces of one human faculty, one person, one society, or one nation, to bear upon another, it is equally true that in the perfect man, God rules directly, personally, and absolutely as God, in all his harmonially consociated affectional, moral, and intellectual attributes, in the same way as he rules mechanical, chemical, or vegeta

the consequent Regeneration of man. The internal sense is most perfect; at least as perfect as any thing of the kind can be, when rendered into writing; and both the principles of the Jewish code and government, and their policy in respect to other nations, were so directed and overruled of God in his wonderful providence, as to represent, by correspondence, spiritual things concerning the church and heaven. It was, therefore, Christian truth, concealed in the letter of the Old Testament, but perfectly harmonizing in its internal sense with all that exists in the New, and all that is now revealed for the New Jerusalem. To be sure, we have fuller revealings now, but Moses and the prophets were true as far as they went. They were imperfect only in the sense of short-coming, and in not fully understanding their own message. The great distinction, indeed, to be made in this matter of the Bible writers, is between the inspiration of the writer, and the inspiration of the thing written; the former being frequently very dark, and the latter all-illumined. We have thought proper to say thus much, merely to guard against misapprehension, at the same time knowing our author so well as that he himself would probably assent to the generality of the truth here expressed.

tive Force, in different departments of nature without. Nay, in such a being, as the ultimate and harmonious embodiment of all the principles of his Love and Wisdom, God absolutely dwells, in his integral and personal capacity, as in a temple; and therefore such a being is God, in his focalized capacity, as adapted to a direct conjunction with humanity. All that authentic history informs us of the character, actions, and teachings of Jesus, goes to justify the belief that he was such a divinely human and humanly divine personage.

"It should be observed, that a perfectly pure and sinless intelligence, such as is here conceived, must, as viewed in a human aspect, stand at the very apex of visible creation, or at that point in a grand seven-fold circle of existence at which endings merge into beginnings. Hence, the Divine Soul, focalizing in all its harmoniously combined principles, in such a being, would maintain the same relations to inferior physical constitutions, and to all outer physical substances which lie within its sphere, as the Divine Being in his whole infinitude. sustains to the physical universe as a whole. Hence the Divinity, in this focalized capacity, would maintain toward all things within its sphere, the relations of a New Beginning Principle; and if God in his infinitude, as the Beginning Principle of the universe as a whole, could, from his free volition, make and unmake laws to govern the present system of things, then God, in the condescended form of his personal Being as manifested through a suitable human organism at the end of the old and the beginning of a new creation, may, in equal consistency with the rules of Divine order, establish new laws, or rather enact immensely higher degrees of old ones, as relating to such existences within his sphere as need such interference. There is nothing irrational in the supposition, therefore, that the Divinely human, or humanly Divine Principle (which are one and the same), could, by volition through the outer organism which served as its medium, concentrate its vital energies upon the diseased bodies of men, and even the inorganic elements of the outer world, and produce such effects as are commonly designated by the word 'miraculous,' and that, too, simply according to that higher degree of laws specifically adapted to such operations, and unfolded for such specific purposes. Such would be instances of the highest manifestations of indirect providence.

"But if God dwells and rules, with a perfect and harmonious display of all the principles of his nature as God, in a

being such as we have supposed, then it follows that the more any man is like such a being, the more fully God 'works within him, to will and to do according to his own pleasure,' the more he is under the direct operation of the highest order of Divine Providences, the more he is raised, as it were, above the sphere of mere material things and their laws, and the more he becomes a medium through which the Divine Being, in his affectional, intellectual, and volitional nature as such, acts upon beings and conditions below him, to bring them up to the true standard of healthfulness, harmony, and perfection! And when all human beings shall be fully united to God-shall fully 'dwell in Him, and He in them,' then all human beings, with their outer conditions, and even the whole physical world, divinely acted upon through their mediation, will undoubtedly be spiritualized, and elevated one Discrete Degree, and peace and plenty, and that universal harmony and love, which may be considered as the uncontaminated and unperverted outflowings from the Divine Fountain of Infinite Harmony and Love, will take the place of the corroding selfishness, the distracting animosities, and the physical, as well as moral, diseases and sufferings which now roll their desolating waves over the earth." M. & M. pp. 250-256.

The main drift of the foregoing extract we believe to be correct. Some allowance should be made for the stand-point from which the author writes, and for the minds which he seeks to reach and influence. Indeed, it is professedly given as "a rational deduction of philosophy, aside from the teachings of Scripture." And as its aim is to reach and convince such minds as demand the philosophy, and for the want of which cannot believe in the Scripture, we consider it able and illustrative.

We must here conclude what we have to say of direct and indirect providences. We have already referred to such providences as are brought about in roundabout ways, by complicated connections of many incidents and many persons; indeed, of almost every providence it may be said thus much; for what a train of connection is that which begins in God, and extends through all time, involving all persons, and stretching to eter

nity! There are no accidents, in the common acceptation of the term; there are no little things; each occurrence is as the grain of sand which makes part of the mountain; each movement a part of the whole movement; and in much mercy is the connection hidden from our eyes. For, if we could see only a small part of the infinite dependences of things, we should not only interfere with the Divine Providence by our own rebellious wills, resisting the unappreciated good, and demurring at the way in which we are led, but we could not even stir in the smallest act, without being overwhelmed with such a sense of responsibility as would be paralyzing and fearful. How terrible and overwhelming would it be, could man see how his every act was the initiatory to a universe! And yet that connection exists, and, directly or indirectly, every individual is involved, in the smallest thought, feeling, and action, in infinite and eternal consequences! The prayer should ever "Lead me in a plain path, because of

be with the Psalmist

mine enemies."