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ing subject, as the triangle does the equality of its angles to two right angles? Let us try the principle. Deny that there is any object perceived, and what then? We destroy the differentia, the characteristic of the fact of consciousness-it is no longer perception. It may be imagination; it may be fancy; it may be memory, but perception it is not. Or, in the other direction, if it does not imply the reality of the perceiving mind, then it is not phenomenal at all, but substantial a quod substat per se. We are conscious of it, however, as a transient phenomena of the consciousness, and not as a permanent substance.

But we have no intention to reveal secrets, or to build up a system. We write to call attention to the fact that no system. of philosophy has yet been produced, which at the same time satisfies the philosophical want of man, and leads to results that are not absurd and ruinous to the best interests of morals and religion. We know that our article will prove dry and uninteresting, quite possibly unintelligible to a large part of our readers; and we hereby promise them that we will not often, perhaps not again at all, try their patience in this way. But then we must have the benefit of the apology, that there are minds and, as we trust, among our readers-to whom such thoughts are the proper pabulum, to whom they are interesting, and not only so, but a matter of life and death.

As we said in the beginning of our article, these are problems that occur to some minds, and which for them must be solved. As will be readily seen, they lie deeper than any positive teaching can reach. The questions of philosophy to which we have referred, and some of which we have named, are to the positive dogmas of theology much the same as the common law is to the statute enactments; not, indeed, a source of jurisdiction and authority, but an instrument of interpretation and application, without which the ordinary processes of criminal and civil jurisdiction in our courts could not proceed for a single hour. And it would be both interesting and instructive to go through the history of the Church, and show how one and another of its doctrines has been, in its practical exhibition and application, while remaining the same in its dogmatic form, one thing or another, just according as the phi

losophy which was applied to its interpretation and enforcement has varied in its form and teaching. The Real Presence in the Eucharist, the doctrine of the Incarnation, Election, Regeneration, the nature and functions of the Church and Ritual, these are some of the subjects on which the views of philosophic minds will be influenced and determined by the philosophical notions which they apply to their interpretation. And it is a significant and impressive fact, that of all the philosophical minds which, within the last three centuries, have risen to the place of founders of schools, and given shape to the thoughts of a generation of followers, not one has been a good churchman, or at all sound in the faith. Locke was a Socinian, Kant, Fichte, Jacobi, Schelling, Hegel, Cousin, all, and many more that we might name, present instances in which men have been led off by their philosophy, and have led with them hundreds of disciples, into irreligion, or a form of relig ious faith which can hardly be considered as bringing one within the covenanted conditions of salvation. Is this to be always so? Is it an inevitable necessity? Or may we hope to see a philosophy which, keeping itself modestly within its proper sphere, shall satisfy the deepest wants of the reflective mind, while it also coincides, so far as it can go, with the doctrines of the Cross, and when it has reached the boundaries of its proper sphere, quietly, modestly, and reverently hand its pupils over to the Church for those higher teachings which the soul needs, but which the utmost resources of philosophy can never supply?

This question-who shall answer?

The Second Adam and the New Birth; or, The Doctrine of Baptism as contained in Holy Scripture. New York: Daniel Dana, Jr., 1857.

MANY books, perhaps most, have something remarkable in them: this is remarkable for saying great things in few words, and for concentrating a large fund of thought into a small space. It is merely a 12mo. of 109 pages: to buy it, takes but little money; to read it, but little time; yet in respect of

matter it is one of the most voluminous and far-reaching books we have fallen in with this many a day.

The plan of the work is, to set forth, in as plain terms as possible, the doctrine of the Initial Sacrament, and the position assigned to it by CHRIST and His Apostles; to examine the more prominent places of Scripture, which teach us any thing respecting it, and to vindicate their plain meaning from false interpretations; to consider, with reference to its bearings on Sacramental grace, the analogy of the two Adams, as implying the transmission of the nature of each respectively: and to sift the terms which the inspired writers use in addressing the Church, with the view of ascertaining in what state, whether of grace or otherwise, the persons spoken to are pre sumed to be.

The author appears to be fully ripe in his theme: he writes as one who has subdued his mind to the very form and quality of his matter; who has walked round his subject again and again, weighed it repeatedly in all its proofs and bearings, and worked his thoughts clear of everything like speculative or logical bewitchment or fascination respecting it. All this is evident enough, we think, in the serene calmness and candour with which he handles the question, as if he were thoroughly at home in all its branches; and in his singular freedom from partial and onesided views, and from all narrow and extreme opinions. It is indeed manifest that the results of many years of careful study and meditation have been boiled down into these few pages. The writer's vision takes in the whole compass of Scripture teaching on the subject, and his analysis of all the main texts bearing upon it directly or remotely, is indeed masterly both in its severity of process and in its sobriety of conclusion. We cannot discover, we can scarce imagine, any reason why candid and sober men of all parties. in the Church should not cordially welcome this little work as a standard exposition of the doctrine which it discusses.

The author does indeed hold what is called the Sacramental Principle, as a part of Christian doctrine; but he holds it as a sturdy and uncompromising Protestant: by which we mean that he nowhere regards it as the basis or germ of a system, and therefore never pushes it so as to interfere at all with any

thing else; he restrains and tempers it into perfect coherence and congruity with all the other parts, so that there is no drawing away from the symmetry and proportion of the Faith. And, instead of assuming the objections, which good men have urged against that principle, to be wholly groundless, and so undertaking to outface them by verbal or logical stress, he rather takes for granted that those objections have been provoked by some excess or distortion in the matter, and therefore endeavours so to order and adjust his statement as to obviate them; as though he cared much more to learn from the opponents than to impeach their conduct. Accordingly, the doctrine of Sacramental grace, as here delivered, leaves nothing, so far as we can perceive, that the staunchest preachers of conversion, or of justification by faith, should need to oppose; unless they insist on doing what this writer studiously refrains from, namely, making one part of the Gospel the basis or germ of a system, and forcing out its logical consequences so as to extinguish or paralyze the other parts.

It is hardly possible to put the author's argument, or any portion of it, into other words, or into a smaller space, than he has given it in; and if, in what we attempt of this sort, there should be any matter that stands in controversy between the fair and moderate men of different sides in the Church, we beg that the blame may be laid at our door, not the author's.

Christianity is partly natural, and partly supernatural: its sphere of operation includes the whole moral and rational furniture of the soul, but it strikes out beyond this into the secrets of spiritual life and being. The natural part is in its grounds and reasons intelligible, and open to the scrutiny of human thought; it works by the ordinary rules of cause and effect, and therefore its workings may be reduced within the terms. of logical statement; it may be used as the material of scientific analysis and reproduction; the powers of deduction, inference, and all the methods of dialectical argument may make themselves at home in it. The supernatural part is mysterious and inscrutable to us; its processes transcend our powers; it operates in ways past our finding out; its means and ends are linked together, not by any inherent or natural efficacy, but by positive Divine appointment; so that its laws and methods of working cannot be grasped by our faculties of thought.

Now, of this supernatural part, the two sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper are the proper organs and embodi ments. Through them the spiritual efficacies of Christianity have an anchorage, as it were, in our moral, rational, and physical being. Moreover, they symbolize and represent the objectiveness of our salvation; they enshrine the vital and vivific energy of the Gospel as an external source of life to us, and serve as standing proofs and reminders that CHRIST came, not merely to work a development of our nature, but to clothe it with a supernatural endowment; thereby knitting the human and perishable up into a participation of the imperishable and Divine. As such, they are nowise amenable to the ordinary rules and methods of argument; in reference to the common modes and forms of thought, they are strictly exceptional; scientific analysis and reproduction, and all the processes of inference and deduction have no business to meddle with them to draw out any chain of logical consequences from them, is a perversion and abuse, as much so as it would be to turn the metaphors of poetry into logical premises: in short, they stand entirely by themselves, as something alte gether peculiar and unique, to be taken, held, and used precisely as they were given, neither merging any other principles in them, nor drawing any ulterior conclusions from them.

Our author regards infant-baptism as implying the doctrine of Sacramental grace, since, in such an application, the Sacrament can have no intelligible purpose or meaning on any other ground. And it has long been our settled conviction, that of those who reject that doctrine the Baptists alone have rightly appreciated the issue, or kept up any sort of intelligence between their principle and their practice. They have seen that, unless baptism be an operative means of grace, the baptizing of unconscious infants must be an arbitrary, and not a rational, procedure. And the growing disuse of infant-baptism in fact, by divers religious bodies who profess to retain it in form, as appears by a recent showing of statistics, yields stubborn proof that such is the case. Their principle is but drawing their practice after it: what they began by regarding as merely an inoperative form, they naturally end by disregarding altogether: because they held to the baptism of

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