feet. The fact that mind has been made with a capacity to believe, proves that man is made to trust, to receive the testimony of others, to believe in things beyond the range of his own experience or observation. Who would have emigrated to America if the testimony of Columbus had not been believed relative to the discovery of it? How could the Greenlander know that snow never falls in tropical regions if he did not either go to see or believe the testimony of others? The largest part of our knowledge comes to us by faith. Who would take the trouble and expense of visiting continents, seas, rivers, and mountains, before he would believe in their existence ? Who would ever examine every tree, plant, animal, and stone, before he would believe that any such existed? How many would know anything about astronomy if we had to believe none of its facts until we learned how to measure the distances and magnitudes of the stars and to count the rotations of the sun and earth? What could we know of the actions of the mighty dead in history without faith? One generation has to believe in what another generation said and did. The fact that we refuse to believe proves the capacity to believe. But this capacity belongs exclusively to mind. Who ever thought of lecturing a dog, or a horse, or a tree, or a plant, to believe? But who has not tried to induce others to believe? Prejudice, passion, and self-interest may hinder a man from believing a particular truth, but his not believing is not because he cannot, but because he will not.

7. Worship is a distinctive element of mind. The tendency to, and the capacity for, worship is as universal in its development as man. Worship runs coeval with man. Wherever you find human beings you find the apparatus of worship-altars, sacrifices, temples, priests. The simple elements of worship are praise, adoration, homage, trust. Mind only can develop such elements. What homage, praise, adoration, or gratitude can senseless, unconscious matter render unto its Maker. But spirit can contemplate his wisdom, goodness, and power, as seen in creation. Spirit can know, believe, love, and praise the eternal, intelligent first Cause. Mind can send forth streams of holy gratitude for favours received; it can praise the wonders of love as seen in the cross; it can feel the preciousness of pardoning mercy; it can employ its noblest powers in the spread of truth.

8. Reflection, or the power to recall thought, is a distinct element of mind. Mind can look back on the past, think of the present, and contemplate the future. It can turn on itself, and study its own nature. It never loses what it once clearly conceives. It retains all. It occasionally forgets; but the slightest hint, or incident, or resemblance, brings the matter up as clear to the mind as when it first occurred. It can derive the sweetest pleasures from

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mediation on its own thoughts. It can be shut out from intercourse with society, with nature, and with art; but in its solitariness it can roam in fancy over the most enchanting scenes of the past, the present, and the future. It is a kingdom in itself, and can raise the most gorgeous structure of thought from the facts of its own experience. It can rise from the particular to the general, or it can infer the particular from the general.

9. Oneness is a distinctive element of mind. Mind is indivisable. It cannot be analyzed into separate substances; it is one, and undivided. It has no length, breadth, height, nor depth, like matter. It is a simple, spiritual substance. Vegetables, stones, water, and air, are compounds, mixtures of various elements. Take away any of their component parts, and they cease to be what they are. Take oxygen from the air, and it becomes a destroyer instead of a sustainer of life. Separate the latent heat from water, and it will become a solid. But what can we separate from mind that can at all affect its nature? It can give out its thoughts, its joys, and sorrows, and remain the same. Bodily the man does not remain the same for twenty-four hours. He is constantly throwing off to, and receiving additions from, other substances. Every seven years he receives a new body; but his mind remains the same in substance. He may have altered his opinions, improved his knowledge, increased his happiness, changed his moral character; but he is not conscious of any change in the nature of his mind. His self, the real man, has remained the same. His personality is something that cannot be divided, nor changed from one substance into another.

10. Progress, or a strong, restless instinct for new acquirements. There is no pinacle in science nor improvement in art that stays the mind in its onward flight. Upward and onward are its watchwords. It is ever on the wing to solve some new problem, to discover the nature and operation of some new law in nature, or to taste the felicity of some new enjoyment. Hence, the restless desire in all classes for amusement, for novels, for tales of wonder, for splendid exhibitions, and for the wonderful events if the newsmonger. However marvellous the records of the newspaper are to-day, the desire for something more novel is ready for to-morrow. Nothing satisfies this element of mind. Pushed on with this restless desire, the mind is ever advancing either in the good or the bad, in the path of truth or the path of error. Guided aright, there is no limit to its progress; new attainments whet its appetite for more, and every advancing step imparts additional impetus for something higher and greater. This element strikes terror into the heart of the tyrant and buoys up with hope the heart of the reformer.

11. Immortality is a distinctive element of mind. The desire to live for ever is common to man; it is one of the strongest in

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stincts of mind. The idea of immortality fired the minds of the most illustrious men of the ancient world. Poets, orators, historians, moralists, philosophers, and legislators of the olden time believed that death would waft their spirits to realms of bliss. Whence springs this pleasing hope, this fond desire, this longing after immortality? or whence this secret dread and inward horror of falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul back on herself, and startles at the thought of destruction? Hence the reason why the mind, surrounded with the sweetest enjoyments and brightest prospects, feels uneasy and unsatisfied, and its hopes and desires. overstep the bounds of time and delight to roam onward in the endless tract of eternity.

A. McK.

ART. IV. ELEMENTARY THEOLOGY.*

No. I.

REVELATION.

BELIEVERS in the Divine existence are agreed as to the fact

that God has actually revealed himself through the medium of the intellectual and material universe. Christians, deists, and every other class of theistic believers, including even the pantheist, are at one on this point. The pantheist, it is true, denies the personality of God by confounding his existence with that of the universe; and it might therefore be thought that he is logically precluded from admitting the fact of a Divine revelation; but with happy inconsistency he is evermore speaking of the Divine manifestation, the evolution and display of absolute power, wisdom, and goodness in the universe, so that, with slight drawback, he might even be induced to accept and endorse the following language of the Bible respecting the revelation of God in nature:"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handy-work. The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead."

Now, the question at present to be discussed is, not whether God

Arrangements have been made to supply our readers with a series of Essays on all the more important branches of divine truth, logically arranged, and having special bearings upon the theological developments and discussions of the present day. Two of these essays may be expected in each number of the AMBASSADOR until the series be completed.-ED.

has actually revealed himself in the economy of nature, but, that being granted, whether it is sufficient for the requirements of man's spiritual being? To settle this question satisfactorily, so as to reach a truthful conclusion, we must be careful not to ascribe to nature what is due to other sources of illumination. In Christian countries nature seems to be much more richly fraught with spiritual truth and to unfold her lessons of Divine wisdom with much greater clearness and precision than in countries where Christianity is unknown. The natural religion taught in the writings of such men as Theodore Parker and Francis Newman, who may be regarded as the best representatives and expositors of modern deism, unfolds views of the Divine character and of the Divine government, of human duty and destiny, grand and beautiful to a high degree, fit indeed to be matched with the teachings of the best Christian writers on those subjects. But whence, it might be asked, have those men, and others of the same school, chiefly drawn the materials of their elevated spiritual teaching? Had they been nurtured in pagan or Mahomedan countries, even though they had acquired the intellectual dexterity and dialectical skill of the Indian Brahmins, could they on any grounds of natural probability have reached such views of spiritual truth as those developed in their writings? They deny the divine authority of the Bible, and aim to overthrow some of its most important principles; and yet it is patent to every one that they are indebted to that book more than to any other source for all that is specially commendable in their teaching. Not a page can be referred to without furnishing evidence how largely they have drawn upon that unacknowledged source. And even their style of writing is imbued with the spirit and cast in the mould of Bible phraseology, so as to create astonishment and provoke indignation, considering that the very weapons by which they seek to inflict mortal injury on the Bible are drawn from the Bible's own armoury. But of their indebtedness to the Christian Scriptures these men, and all of the same school, are, or affect to be, in happy ignorance. Nature is their teacher. At her shrine they offer worship. She is the oracle the only oracle-whose authority they acknowledge and whose utterances they interpret. And yet nothing is more certain than that, were it not for the assistance they derive from that book whose divine claims they set aside, their views of spiritual truth would be much more limited and meagre. It is not too much to say that the Bible is Nature's grand interpreter, developing from her pages profound and glorious meanings, which would else be inscrutable. The lessons of nature in all the higher branches of theology are written, as it were, with invisible ink; and it is only when the writing is exposed to the warmth of Bible influence that the meaning is developed and made decipherable. Or,

which amounts to the same thing, though the lessons be written clearly enough, man's organs of spiritual perception are so purblind as not to see them until anointed with the eyesalve of that teaching which the Bible alone can supply.

The enemies of the Bible as a divine revelation frequently refer in boastful tone to the writings of ancient Greek and Roman philosophers as affording evidence that without supernatural aids man may attain to a high state of spiritual illumination. And, indeed, it must be allowed that though those philosophers of the olden time failed to reach such clear and comprehensive views of divine truth as are to be found even in the writings of modern deists, for reasons easily guessed at, they certainly discuss some of the profoundest subjects connected with man's spiritual interests in a manner fitted to excite the highest admiration. Their disquisitions on the existence and attributes of God, on the nature, the duty, and the destiny of man, are equally remarkable for intellectual potency and for substantial truthfulness. But it may well be doubted whether their teachings on these high matters were the exclusive fruit of their own observation and reflection. It is more than probable that for much of the spiritual truth taught in their writings they were indebted to traditions which reached back through preceding generations to that main stream of supernatural revelation whence the Jews and other Semitic nations derived their religious beliefs. It is also certain that in their eager search for truth the Greek philosophers in particular were wont to visit Phonecia, Egypt, and other eastern countries occupied by the elder branches of the human race, expecting, and not in vain, that amongst them divine wisdom might be found in greatest plenitude and in purest form. It is, moreover, natural to think that in their wide dispersion amongst other nations the Jews would in various ways disseminate the principles of their sublime theology, and thereby contribute, though indirectly, to enrich the Greek and Roman philosophy. From these considerations it is manifestly unfair to make the writings of the ancient philosophers a means of determining whether the revelation of divine truth, furnished by nature, is sufficient to meet man's spiritual necessities.

To measure justly the capabilities of nature as a religious teacher, it would be necessary to see what nature actually does teach when men are cut off from all other sources of divine instruction. This point cannot indeed be fully tested, inasmuch as history furnishes no record of individuals or nations having been left entirely to the teaching of nature. Nor are any men to be found in that precise condition at the present day. But, to approximate as near to the required case as can be done, if we look at those tribes among whom religious traditions are all but obliterated and who appear to be deprived of all kinds of spiritual teaching save and except the