plicable on the supposition that this doctrine is not true. There is a man who has always lived under the influence of visible christianity; and yet, until he is fifty years of age, he is regardless of its claims upon his heart and life. He is intelligent, and yet proud of his own goodness and virtue. He reads the commandments, and yet he is profane; he sees God's goodness and mercy, and yet is rebellious and impenitent, "treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath." But suddenly his thought is arrested and fixed upon higher interests and destinies; and at length his whole current of being is changed. Henceforth his life is the opposite of all it has ever been, and he dies resting on the bosom of Christ. Do you say this is a single case and may be accounted for on special grounds? I reply, the world is full of them; and the picture I have drawn is tame compared with the reality. Now, how will the infidel explain all this? If it can be shown that one instance of the kind has ever been known, it will sufficiently establish the doctrine; and the man who rejects it is bound to believe far more than he who receives it, as the operation of the power of God in turning the current of man's natural will, and subduing all his warring and turbulent passions to the control of righteousness. He may say, as many do, this doctrine is all a "myth," and exists only in crazy and heated brains. But what avails all this? A myth is something to be believed; and myths that should be adequate to all such results as I have alluded to, would require far greater credulity than the doctrine just as received by the Christian world. It is somewhat convenient, when facing a great truth that presses hard upon a man's understanding, and yet offends his natural inclinations, it is sometimes convenient for him to thrust it aside as a myth or the device of a wicked priesthood. And this is often done. But the doctrines of Christ will not be disposed of by any such slightof-hand. They have existed too long in the world, and have too tenacious a hold of human consciences to admit of any such annihilation. Men may take this doctrine of the spiritual birth, and putting it into the crucible of philosophy, may refine it by the most intense and glowing heat; but it will come out like the holy trio from the furnace, untouched by the fires. They may take it through their sentimentalizing process until they reduce it to a mere sentiment; but it will reappear to human consciousness the same as Jesus declared to Nicodemus-" Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." And so long as the world stands, it will demand an explanation. The Christian says, it is that change in the soul, wrought by divine power, by which it is turned from sin to holiness, and "from the power of Satan unto God." What does he say of it who rejects this view? And if he attributes it to human power, his position is unsupported by facts or analogy; if he shall ascribe it to philosophy, the difficulty is rather increased than diminished: Such "professing themselves to be wise become fools-they walk in darkness-all the foundations of the earth are out of course." 2. The rejection of the atonement will leave one in increased difficulties. It must be borne in mind that I am now speaking with reference to those who profess to receive the Scriptures as a divine revelation. The Christian has no difficulty respecting the doctrine of atonement. However much his mind may be troubled in investigating some other doctrines of his faith, he has no trouble with this his cardinal truth. He believes that by sin man has alienated himself from his Maker, and can in no way heal the breach he has voluntarily made in the holy law of God, or render satisfaction for the offence he has given to divine justice. He believes that God has sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, who, by his death, has made atonement for sin; and God now accepts all who renounce their sins, and come, through Christ, to him. The believer receives the plain unvarished statement of the Scriptures with reference to the doctrine of atonement, that, sinners as we are, "In Christ we have not only deliverance from wrath, but a divine righteousness wrought out for us. Having no good works of our own, by believing we take to ourselves the work of God, his own fulfilment of his own law, a righteousness which shall last for ever, when all the visible heavens shall be swept away, and the earth shall sink amidst the ascending and brightening changes of creation."* Now, what will he do who rejects this Scripture doctrine? Here this book is full of it! and he who has read it without a theory to support, and yet has failed to see the doctrine of vicarious atonement, displays an almost incredible amount of blindness or carelessness. It is the professed object of the Scriptures to reveal Christ as the great atoning sacrifice. And if this be denied, upon what principle are we to explain the numerous passages in the Old Testament, and the Pauline and other epistles, minutely describing and defining it? Even most bitter opponents of the doctrine admit that it cannot be expunged from Paul's writings without affecting their quality. But then they avoid all difficulty by denying the divine authority of all those parts of Scripture which affirm the doctrine. Most of these writers are shrewd enough to see that if they receive the Scriptures, and deny atonement, they impose new burdens upon their credulity, and pierce themselves through with many fresh difficulties. Men are everywhere, and under all circumstances, conscious of their need of atonement. Why does the victim's blood spirt from beneath the ponderous wheels of Juggernaut? Why do the cries of the suffering mendicant of thirty years rend the air of India? Why does the devotee of Brahma or Vishnu tear and cut his quivering flesh? All this means something. We say that it is evidence of the felt neces * Douglass' Truths of Religion. sity of atonement pressing upon the sinful heart, and accusing conscience of man, in every age and clime, since the forfeit ure of Paradise. What says the Infidel? He must believe it all a delusion or a farce. I leave him to settle the matter as best he may. One thing however, I think he must admit, that men are not very apt to groan under such intolerable burdens, self-imposed, nor do penance where no guilt has been incurred to be washed away. 3. The rejection of the doctrine of future punishment imposes a double tax upon human credulity. This is a doctrine pervading the very texture of Scripture, and, as I have said with reference to the atonement, most of those who reject future punishment deny the validity of inspiration. Theodore Parker, whose authority as a scholar and infidel, stands above suspicion, says, "I am willing to admit that Jesus taught the doctrine of future and eternal punishment for the incorrigible sinner; " but, he adds, like a consistent man, "Jesus did not always teach truly." But he who denies the doctrine in question and yet acknowledges the Bible as God's word, must tell us (1,) Why God should ever permit so many passages in his word which at least seem to speak of the punishment of the wicked after the close of this life? He must tell us why God ever speaks of the vindication of his justice upon the heads of the finally impenitent? He must, of course, believe that all these are random passages, and mean less than nothing-apparently allowed merely for the annoyance of sinful and rebellious man. (2.) He must tell us why the analogy appears so striking between the present economy of divine government and the doctrine he rejects-Why does God punish at all? Why compel his creatures to suffer the most excruciating tortures in this life, poverty, sickness, oppression and death? How does this consist with his paternal character? Am I told that only those suffer who sin, and their suffering is proportioned to their crime? Then why, I ask, such marked inequality in the divine dealings? We often see those whose lives are most corrupt, passing the most unstricken through life, while the virtuous and good are the victims of affliction and wrong. On the ground of infidelity I must inquire, where all these wrongs shall be rectified, and justice meted out? (3.) Why all these spoken and unspoken fears of that myste rious "something after death?" Why do men trouble themselves about that which has no foundation? If there be no ground for fear, why is the preacher ever accused of appealing to the fears of his hearers, and why are these appeals ever effectual in arousing fear? Why does hell sound so unpleasantly if there be no hell? Intelligent men are not often terrified by fancies or fantacies. Now the rejector of this doctrine must crucify his understanding before he can explain away the announcements of Scripture, and his credulity must be sufficiently expansive to affirm that the great portion of the human race have been, and are still laboring under a kind of mental hallucination, and that hell exists only in the brains of fools or madmen. I think I have shown that Infidelity is more credulous than Christianity. In coming to this conclusion, I am not conscious of having been designedly unfair, or of having used specious methods of reasoning. In concluding, I remark, (1,) He who demolishes the whole or any part of the Christian faith, ought to anticipate and provide against the results of his act. It is comparatively an easy thing to pull down a fair structure, but not so easy to construct one. It is no great work to take away life, but who can give it? Well hath the master poet reasoned in the person of the Moor, as he with light in hand stands debating the murder of his wife, "Put out the light, and then put out the light, I can again thy former light restore Should I repent me; But once put out thine, Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature, I know not where's the Promethean heat That can thy light relume. When I have plucked thy rose It needs must wither."* You can crush the life out of the little insect that crawls at your feet; but only God can raise it to life again. So you can sweep away the precious doctrines of religion and laugh their author to scorn, but "what will you do in the end thereof?" If you demolish who will reconstruct? If you kill, who will make alive? And if Christ fails you, who will come to your rescue from irretrievable ruin? (2.) He who rejects the Christian religion ought to substitute something better in its place. I have said before that infidelity, so far as it has any system, is a system of negations. It denies every thing and establishes nothing. I think this is undeniably the prevailing characteristic of all forms of unbelief. Now I ask, is it wise-is it benevolent or merciful to reject the creed of Christendom and give no reasonable and satisfying substitute in its place? Is he a wise man who destroys all his means of defence and protection in the midst of enemies, with no hope of securing the use of others more potent and effectual? Who will say it? But what less than this does he do, who demolishes the defences of Christian faith, and takes the leap of death in the dark. It is easy to talk lightly of religion and its hopes when in the gala day of life. I know that strong-minded men and trifling youth Othello, act v. s. 2. can flippantly dispense a joke upon piety, and use the flexibilities of speech in contemning its author. But I have yet to learn that the presence and supports of faith in Christ can be lightly dispensed with in the room where the mortal is lost in the immortal, and the temporal vanishes away before the eternal. That is generally a place where the honesty and sincerity of men appear. There unbelief will not answer. The soul demands something positive and sure. If any of my hearers are disposed to risk an exit from this scene of things, resting upon an apology for the Christian religion, I wish here faithfully to caution them against venturing their souls at the judgment-seat with a less perfect covering than the Righteousness of the Lamb of God who came to seek and to save that which was lost. DOCTRINE THE BASIS OF PRACTICE. THE present age is said to be eminently practical, discarding theory and speculation, and estimating everything according to its utility. This doubtless is a characteristic of a desirable nature. But as it regards religion, may not a mistake be apprehended in respect to utility, that of following what is only imagined to be practical, and losing sight of the importance of what is doctrinal and fundamental to all duty;-that in an excited attention to schemes and measures and results, the teachers of religion should become diminutive in their knowledge of "the faithful word?" The religion of Christ is, indeed, and ought to be a practical thing; and all christians must be practical men. But if things are considered as practical according to their power to produce effects, what is so practical, what has ever exerted such influence on the human mind, or effected such changes and movements in the moral world, as "the doctrines of grace?" These doctrines are the grand secret of all the energy of the christian faith. They cannot be dispensed with; they cannot be neglected or obscured; they cannot be made to occupy a secondary place in the minds of men, without detriment and ultimate extinction to every religious interest. They must be the light of all measures, the soul of all preaching, the stimulus and guide of all zeal, the antidote to all confusion and wild disorder, the stability and growth of all piety. It be possible to discuss the doctrinal truths of the Gospel too exclusively, or too abstractly, but it is impossible to over-estimate their practical importance. The efficiency of the pulpit must ever depend under God upon its faithful exhibition of these truths. Those pulpits which disown, obscure, or long disuse them, will always witness an unsound and declining state of religion. Preach the preceptive part of religion ever so abundantly |