and needed some qualification. Liturgies may be well preparedand need not necessarily be the production of one insensible to the strong emotions of piety. Let credit be given for this acknowledgement. As to the other part of this fourth objection, it is so uncharitable a libel on thousands and tens of thousands in Europe, England and America, that I wish to have nothing to do with it-and therefore prefer submitting it to an arbitration of seven creditable and orthodox men, of whom I will take the liberty of choosing the following three, viz: Zuingle, Luther and Calvin; three may be chosen by the objectors, and the six select an umpire. Before such a tribunal the point at issue may be left without an argument. In addition to the above two other objections are given, the one on the ground that Liturgies cannot be adapted to seasons of emergency, and the other on the ground that every pious Minister must consider it a grievance to be hampered by the prayers of men who lived hundreds of years ago, and of whose piety he knows nothing &c. These have in effect been answered already, and so need occupy no further space. In conclusion I cannot forbear thinking that their logic must indeed be lame in the feet, who must grasp such crutches to support it. And still more, how painful is the evident want of upright Christian candor betrayed in objections like those stated! The writer of them could hardly fail to see and feel their pitiful weakness. And yet he was willing, in order to strengthen the prejudices of others, or his own, to palm them off, on as many as may not be able at once to detect their fallacy, as good substantial reasons against the use of Liturgies! Is this consistent with christian honesty? Is it consistent with the spirit of earnest religious inquiry now abroad in the world? What can be gained by such theological card-shuffling? Even if it do silence for the moment rising fears in anxious godly souls, (like oil the troubled spring), what good will be effected in the end? Is it thus the children should be fed at the Shepherd's hands? If not then why when they ask for a fish, give them a serpent? Or when they entreat an egg, give them a scorpion? Or when they beg for bread, hand them a stone? Oh! for christian candor and honesty in these discussions upon the most momentous topics that can engage the head or heart of an inquiring Church! If Liturgies are evil and unscriptural, let us have, not cunning appeals to stupid prejudices for it, but good, sound reasons in proof thereof. If they are evil and pernicious, and our modern Presbyterian Brethren are right in their opposition, then let them be at once banished, nevermore to be recalled. But if they are not, and Presbyterianism has erred in opposing them, why let us have an open, and manly confession of the error. What is Presbyterianism, or Prelacy, what is Lutheranism, or the Reform, what is any thing under the sun, in contrast with the truth! Let us then have the confession though some Church. dignity should thereby be compromised. The honor of the Truth is after all of infinitely more moment, than that of Puritan Presbyterianism! Neither has this latter any where claimed infallibility!. Easton, Pa. J. H. A. B. HYMN. Fleeting, fleeting, ah, how fleeting O'er the living, by the dead, Wearied never, hasting ever, Time pursues his silent tread. Still retreating-still retreating, Through the years which God hath given, Pausing never, passing ever, Like the drifting clouds of heaven. Parting, meeting-parting, meeting! Fitful tides the heart doth know, Springs of joy and wells of wo, Failing never, mingling ever One their current as they flow! THEE entreating-THEE entreating, Hear, oh, LORD, we now implore! Pillsburg, December, 1849. R. P. N. FAITH, REVERENCE AND FREEDOM. A Baccalaureate Address to the Graduating Class in Marshall College, Sept. 12, 1849. YOUNG GENTLEMEN.-Your academical career is ended. À long course of study indeed, as well as a long course of action, should your lives be spared, still lies before you in the new stadium you are now called to enter, to whose claims and responsi bilities we trust you may all be found faithful. But the days of your College life, forming the period of general discipline and training for all the literary professions, the most interesting part of his existence to the reminiscence of the scholar, are at length all numbered and complete. You have taken your first degree in the liberal arts, and with the solemnities of this day commence your proper citizenship in the great republic of letters, under sacred pledge to your alma mater, and this witnessing cloud of friends now present, that you will not disgrace in time to come such truly honorable distinction. In compliance with long established venerable usage, I improve the opportunity of the parting moment to which we have now come, while your feet still linger by the threshold of relations here made to cease forever, and our hand is extended in the office of its last benediction and farewell, in my own name and in the name of all your teachers here present, to speak a few words of final counsel and advice; which we beg you to carry along with you, as the legacy of our affectionate regard, into the hard and difficult world, on whose stepmotherly bosom you are hereafter to be cast. We cannot pretend of course, at such a time, to say all that our hearts might prompt, or the nature of the occasion suggest. We must prefer what is general to that which is particular, and even in such form we may not pretend to cover the whole field of practical wisdom and duty. Enough that we try to fix upon your thoughts a few primary and central interests of morality, that may be felt to commend themselves to regard as specially needful for the mission of life at the present time, without account of much besides that might be worthy of presentation. in the some general view. Let me hold up here then to your earnest consideration three grand objects especially, to which we have endeavored to have regard in the conduct of your education thus far, and of which you are bound never to lose sight in the activity of your whole subsequent lives, Faith, Reverence and Freedom. Our parting counsel, at present, gathers itself up into this threefold interest. Cultivate faith in the existence of 7* VOL. II.-NO. I. the invisible and eternal; cherish reverence for the absolute and universal; seek the true freedom of the spirit in its own sphere of necessary self-moving law. Only so can you be true to yourselves. Only so can you hope to be either truly useful or truly honorable, in your generation. Cultivate, earnestly and constantly, the power of FAITH. Man carries in his constitution the life of two worlds. Under one aspect he belongs to the system of Nature, as it stands revealed to sense in the forms of space and time. The organism of nature completes itself in him, as its proper consummation and head. In this view, he is comprehended in its economy, and dependent perpetually upon its power. By his senses and appetites he is bound to it, through the whole course of his history, as the necessary ground and substratum of his very being. He is the child and creature of the earth, linked in close sympathy with its universal life, from the cradle to the grave. However far his nature may rise towards heaven, it is a column still which can never make its escape in full from the material basis in which it starts; it can never so effloresce into the form of spirit, as to lose all connection with the root that underlies it in the form of flesh and sense. But this is only one side of our constitution. Under another aspect, Man belongs, by original and native right, to a higher order of existence, the purely spiritual world, as it lies beyond nature altogether, and includes in itself laws and powers to which mere nature can never ascend. He is made in the image of God; which implies the light of selfknowledge and the power of free will, something wholly independent of the world in every lower form, in virtue of which only he is qualified to be its centre and head. The life of man in this form is a new power or force brought into the bosom of nature, which can never be resolved into its previous action, and which is required accordingly to unfold and complete itself as its own product. Reason and Will spring not from the world of sense, but from a higher sphere of existence, which sense has no power of itself to apprehend or penetrate. At the same time, they are so wedded to matter and sense in our human constitution, that they cannot unfold themselves at all without this union. The case requires accordingly, not only that the spiritual principle should be autonomic, the spring and the law at once of its own action, but also that it should in this character lay hold of the material principle, the conditional basis and inseparable adjunct of its own life, in such a way that this may be converted throughout into a passive organ simply for its service and use. The harmony and perfection of our existence demand, not the destruction of nature within us, nor yet a violent divorce of the spirit from its conjugal claims, but the unity of a true marriage, in which the spirit shall be supreme and nature appear as a willing and loving handmaid by its side. This is the true conception of human life, this is the great problem of virtue and religion which every man is called to fulfil, in his particular time and place. To do so effectually, it is plain that he must stand in living earnest connection and communion with the spiritual world, from which his own spirit springs, and in virtue of whose resources only it can have either vocation or power to assert the supremacy of which we now speak. This communication with the spiritual world is accomplished by faith; which is simply the capacity or organ our nature carries in itself as spirit for perceiving and apprehending spiritual things, the realities of a higher world, as sense is the organ through which we stand in union with things seen and temporal. It forms emphatically thus the bond that joins us, in a real and living way, with the pleroma of life in God; and it is easy to see, how immeasurably needful it is that it should be always at hand as an open channel, through which fresh supplies of light and strength from that buondless fountain may be poured into our souls, to fit them for the work and conflict to which they are called. Faith is at once a source of enlargement and strength for the human spirit, by the very posture into which this is brought by its means. Every thing is strong, in union only with the general ground of its being, and such union is necessary to make it complete in its own separate position. So reason and will in man come to their full force, only as they are brought to fall back consciously and freely upon their own proper foundation in God. Faith serves thus to bring its possessor subjectively into the full use of his spiritual nature, under the most favorable form. To be under the power of mere sense, to be thrown upon the course of this world naturally considered as the end and whole meaning of life, is to be at the same time necessarily more or less impotent and unfree. Faith brings with it the feeling of health, the sense of order, the consciousness of strength. It is more in this respect than all opportunity and education besides; for it goes. to the inmost core of our being, and makes room for it to pour forth, from the deepest fountain of its vitality, the full force of its own contents. It forms the true completion of our human state, its climax and crown, its only normal habit, in comparison with which every other condition is to be regarded as defective |