Pulpit, and the Theological School. The scourges of Providence, in the wars following the French Revolution, soon drove men to straits, where it was felt that Materialism could not satisfy the soul's cravings, and that Society needed Providence as a refuge and a ruler. Men looked again to a shelved Bible, a forgotten Heaven, and an exiled Redeemer. Scholars like Stolberg, Schle gel and Novalis sought, in the Romish church, truths that Rationalism had overlaid in the Protestant communion. It was like Naomi, agoing down, when famine reigned in Judah, to seek bread in the land of Moab. But in the Protestant churches of Germany evangelical truth was recovered, apart from all such changes of Romish proselytism: and in those Protestant churches, the gospel has had, in men recently dead or yet living, some of its ablest modern apologists.

In the last great commotion of European commonwealths, the Pantheistic and Socialistic elements, in German literature, seemed to prove their own flagrant incompetency for the crisis they had invoked. The nation, in just dread of such leaders, shrank from ameliorations and emancipations they might else have welcomed. Having ruined the cause of political freedom at home, some of these errorists, having migrated to our shores, insist on recasting the liberties we have retained, on the model of those which they wrecked abroad, by our surrender of the Sabbath, and the Bible, and the Christian ministry, that we may accept Spinoza as our prophet, and Pantheism as our creed. We know not that Evangelical Protestantism has shown itself, in any measure, behind Catholicism, in resisting such crusaders.

In Germany itself Romanism, quite recently, has done much to provoke and feed Skepticism. The exhibitors of the Holy Coat of Christ at Trèves, called out the German Catholic movement, one mainly and essentially Rationalistic and Socialistic. Promising much, this new body accomplished little; unless it were the unintended demonstration, that Romish extravagances of superstition may provoke as fierce an onset on all Christian verity and life, as ever grew out of a debased Protestantism. In France the nominal return of a people, wearied and scarred with the results of Materialism, to the forms of the Catholic church, has not renewed, in the higher philosophers or men of science, any measure of religious principle and devouter feeling, at all equivalent to that found in the same class of thinkers and investigators in Protestant Britain. If Protestantism be the true parent of Infidelity, how is this singular and incontrovertible fact to be accounted for?

Our last and hurried reference shall be to the relative merits and achievements of Protestantism and Romanism in counteracting Skep ticism. Let it be remembered how early Protestantism appeared in that field of Christian evidences in the person of one of the most illustrious heroes and statesmen of the old French Huguenots, Du Plessis Mornay. Later, Grotius of Holland, and Abbadie, the French Protestant, did

eminent service. Did Huet, the learned Catholic Bishop of Avranches, in the same field, or did Fénélon, surpass them? And for the decision of this question, turn to the great collections of works on Christian Evidences, edited by French Catholic scholars, the earlier by Genoude, the later and larger by Migne. It will be seen, that a very considerable proportion of the most able and effective treatises, in both these Catholic compilations, are by Protestant authors. Genoude, at first a publicist, and in his later years an ecclesiastic, of acknowledged talent and weight, remarks frankly, that no nation has produced a larger amount of able reasoning against infidelity than the English: and observes, that it may be because Protestants make their faith to lean so much upon reason. Butler, Bentley, Lardner, Halyburton, Lyttleton, Paley, Chalmers, Jenyns, Watson, and Wilson, where are they surpassed with the exception of Pascal? And how much in Blaise Pascal was intensely Protestant? When he said-as from his private notes, for the first time but recently published, it appears that he did say-referring to the condemnation of his letters at Rome: "If my letters be condemned at ROME, they are not condemned in HEAVEN," was it not, in effect, to renounce trust in the Vatican as the seat of Infallibility, and to deny the Pontiff as Vicegerent of the King of Heaven? Was there no echo of Wittenberg and of Geneva, in the heart that poured out from its profoundest musings, the unmatched "Thoughts on Religion?"

We would not deny to living Romanists, like Wiseman and Maret, the honor of their efficient labors in the defense of the Gospel. But the ablest of all the modern defenders, among Romanists, of Christianity against Skepticism, was the great Abbe La Mennais, for power of thought and splendor of diction, compared by them to Bossuet. As in a former century, the great Catholic scholar, Huet, had sought, by showing the weakness of Human Reason, to drive men over to the authority of the Infallible Church, so, but with more energy of intellect, and with more beauty and wealth of language did he. It was, we think, with both, a false and untenable ground. The church is, after all, but Human Authority. Scripture, in the exposition of Evangelical Protestants, asks men to rely, directly and personally, under the personal guidance of the Holy Spirit, in the exercise of their own best reason and inmost conscience, on a Personal, Faithful, and Omnipresent God. It is Divine Authority, accessible to every penitent and devout inquirer. Ask my faith in an Omnipresent CHRIST. I see the right of the claim. Ask my faith in a Church, which, though visible, is neither omnipresent nor Divine and you ask my reliance on Human Authority. The foundation is inherently unsound. It gave way beneath that great writer, La Mennais himself. His old age was Rationalistic and Skeptical-more Pantheistic, we fear, than Christian. His first writings tinged with superstition, in his deference to the Vatican, and his last with Skepticism -they were but bifurcations of the same error-an undue reliance on

Human Authority,—in the first instance, as incorporated in the Church; in the last instance, as individualized in the solitary student.

So in the great movement, welling out from the great English University of Oxford, a similar parallel divergence was exhibited. The loftiest intellect among the leaders of it, John H. Newman, on the current of Human Authority-the authority of the early fathers of the Church, developing in them and from out them-was swept into the Roman communion. His own brother, Francis W. Newman, upon another branch of the same stream, another bough of the same crotch-holding also the power of Human Authority, but in the shape of the reason developing out of the individual man—finds his way forth into the boldest, blankest Rationalism, denying the perfection of the moral character even of Jesus. In the same movement, another pair of brothers illustrated the same forkings of the road of Human Authority. Froude, whose diary, published after his death, was the first bold proclamation of the Romeward longings of the Oxford Tractarians, has left a brother who has turned along the same pathway into the other bifurcation; and Human Authority, in the shape of the individual reason, makes this latter brother intensely skeptical. The Absolute Reason of the Pantheist, and the Absolute Church of the Ultramontane Romanist, are, after all, sustained on the same common trunk of Human Authority. It is easy to migrate, with La Mennais, from Romanism to Rationalism. So had Gibbon done, and so Bayle, long before. Or, on the other hand, a man begins to credit the Church rather than the Head of the Church, and soon he believes in the melting blood of Saint Januarius, the migrating house of Loretto, and the Holy Coat of Trèves, as well as in the Gospels or the Sacraments. And so a man who indulged but lately in vaunts of skepticism may become, by no very tedious process, a devotee of the winking Madonna, like the Abbe Ratisbon. He who doubted of God may come to adore the bread wafer. An implicit faith in Voltaire may be changed, as easily as the garment of a by-gone fashion, for a faith as implicit in the Vatican. What, then, are our auguries? They are simply these: JESUS CHRIST, the very God incarnate in our human nature, YET LIVES, Ruler of the centuries, nations, and schools, and Head over all things to His own spiritual Church. Our faith is not in the Church, but in Him, its Life, its Light, its Might-ever present, almighty, and unchanging. This Christ will outlive the Superstitions that would cover Him over, and the Skepticism that would fain thrust Him out. Just as His prophet Isaiah will, in his writings, survive all the Rabbinic commentaries that overlay the seer, and all the Rationalistic interpreters that would wash out his visions; so the Great Redeemer, Isaiah's theme and Lord, will outlast the Decretals that supplant, and the oracles of Reason that contradict Him.

In God's having reserved to our own times the key to the hieroglyphics of the land of the Nile, and of the arrow-headed inscriptions of Bab

ylon and Nineveh, has he not been keeping back to the needful hour, as it were, a whole shelf of the library of Scripture evidences? Has he not similar designs for each new outbreak of the old abysses of unbelief in the human heart? Man excogitates new cavils, and recasts into new missiles the old spent bombs of an exploded philosophy. But God's truth and cause tower serenely on, adequate and ready to repel, with ever-growing strength, the renewed onset. God's providence is interpaging, with each new scrawling of unbelief, some new leaf of testimony. It is our personal privilege-our personal duty-our interest, and our security, and our glory, to become for ourselves, individually, the converts and epistles of this Unchanging Saviour, and of his Unwearying Spirit. Nought else will save the world-nought else will save our own souls. Then, "TAUGHT OF THE LORD," we shall be, like the old Immortal Legion, fit, not only to stand in the evil day, but to roll back, in our wedge-like position, the bands of a credulous apostacy, that believe every thing, and the bands of an Infidel apostacy, that believe nothing. To their common ground of error, the paramount claims of Human Authority-in the school or in the Vatican, or in the isolated consciousness— let us oppose, undauntedly, the more scriptural and the more rational position, the Need and Force of Divine Authority, individually consulted in the open Scripture, individually invoked in the Descending Spirit, individually experienced in the regenerate heart. "LET GOD BE TRUE AND EVERY MAN A LIAR!" The wedge, thus resting on the immutability and veracity of God, shall not be broken. From its serried flanks shall recede, baffled and discomfited, on either hand, the throngs of the Traditionist and the Rationalist. The generations pass, and their philosophies and their celebrities drop with them; but the faith of the churches, God-warranted, soars above those changes, indefectible, immutable, and invincible. "THE GRASS WITHERETH, AND THE FLOWER FADETH. SURELY THE PEOPLE IS GRASS. BUT THE WORD of our GOD

SHALL STAND FOREVER."

DISCOURSE XIX.

ALBERT BARNES.

THE remark that God never endows a man with the gift of doing more than one thing well, receives a striking refutation in the history of Mr. Barnes. It were difficult to determine whether he excels as preacher or expositor-whether he is more the plodding student or the pulpit orator-the successful pastor of a particular flock, or the theological writer and commentator for the people. Of his adaptedness for the one position, a pastorate of more than a quarter of a century with a large and influential church, is a sufficient evidence, and that he is not less skillful as the annotator and biblical critic, is evinced by the wide and increasing circulation of his "Notes" and publications of various kinds.

Mr. Barnes, like most men of mark, had his origin in humble life. He was born the son of a tanner, in the township of Rome, New York, December 1st, 1798; and in early life assisted his father at his trade, and at the same time, by application to reading and study, laid the basis of a solid education. It was not until he had reached the age of twenty-two years, that he was led to a saving knowledge of Christ, when he united with the church in his native village. This was the same year (1820) that he graduated at Hamilton College, having pursued his studies there only in connection with the senior class. In November of that year he entered the Theological Seminary at Princeton, where, after a three years' course, he spent another year as resident graduate. He was licensed to preach, in April, 1824, and on the twenty-fifth day of the following February, ordained and installed as pastor of the Presbyterian church, Morristown, New Jersey. His ministry in this place, which was one of zeal and efficiency, continued for five years; when he accepted, much against the wishes of his people, a call from the First Presbyterian church in Philadelphia, and entered upon the duties of his new field, June 25th, 1830; a position which he continues to fill to this day.

Mr. Barnes has, thus far, led a life of active and laborious toil. The labor which he has performed a large part of it in the early morn, while other men are asleep -would seem to be enough to crush any constitution but one of iron. It is not strange that for a while, of late years, he was deprived of all use of his eyes, and in other respects almost unfitted for service. His Commentaries alone, in some sixteen or eighteen volumes, are a monument of unremitting industry. It must be peculiarly gratifying to their author to witness the general favor with which they have been and are received. It is stated that not less than twenty-eight thousand volumes of the "Notes" were printed in the year ending with December, 1856; at which time it was estimated that the circulation had reached, in the aggregate, nearly four hundred thousand copies. Some of them have been translated into several languages.