he can distinguish those feelings from the feelings of his own mind. Have they such a peculiarity, such a mystery about them that he can place his finger on them and say to himself, These came from God? Do they stand apart in an awful sanctity in his internal emotions, and with a calm holiness view his mind as angelic spirits may gaze on the troubled scenes of this earth? To these questions we firmly believe he must reply in the negative. We dare not limit the intercourse of spirits. Nay, we dare not affirm of our own mind, that certain thoughts and feelings existing in it did not come from a superior Power. But we deny that men can identify particular thoughts and sensations as coming from God. To be sure the Apostles could do so; and we presume not to declare it impossible that God should choose to inspire a person even at this day. Yet we need not speak of the entire improbability of such a thing. A pious man indeed would naturally attribute his pious thoughts and feelings to God; but he would do this in the same sense in which he attributes to Him "every good and perfect gift." The mind, the thinking being, comes from God, and of course all thought and feeling has its primary source in his nature. But to attribute a certain set of feelings to Him, as the special and direct effusion of his spirit, is more than all this. We are not justified in specially referring to God certain sentiments we may have in the course of our religious experience, because they have something of novelty and strangeness about them. When we are under strong religious excitement it is natural and consonant to the nature of our minds, that we should experience a depth of humiliation, repentance, adoration or love, to which, in other circumstances, we have been unaccustomed. Besides, we often experience feelings as novel and strange on being newly situated as to other relations which have little connexion with the relation of our religious character. And, if we should follow the rule against which we contend, how large a share of those emotions which have made up the life of our hearts, should we invest with the mystery of a celestial origin. There may and there do result most deadly consequences from ascribing, at the mere suggestion of a superstitious fancy, certain mental experiences to the action of special grace. When a religious process goes on in the mind with - great strength and rapidity, there is often a wild rush and extravagance of feeling, a rousing of the stronger passions, a lashing of the great deep of the soul into fury, which brings a man under the action of most powerful incentives, and prepares him for the most decided courses of conduct. Whatever motive may for the time gain the ascendency, bears his mind before it like a feather on the breeze. Suppose, while in this condition, he fixes upon certain motives and feelings, and resolves upon it that they have come from God, and this is doubtless often done, what an unspeakable sanctity must be thrown over these feelings and motives! What a blind and adoring obedience would be rendered to them! How would they be followed to the ends of the earth and to the gates of Death! A most dreadful and unholy power may thus be sanctified as the " power of God unto salvation," may be permitted to hold a stern, unresisted sway over the mind, and to break forth to the desolation of the lives and hearts of others. We read in the history of the Abbot of St. Cyran, whom the Jansenists regarded almost as an oracle, that "he had no doubts but that he was an instrument by whom the divine Being operates and works! and that he held generally that a pious man should follow the impulses of his mind, suspending all exercise of his judgment. And the opinion," continues our author, "was most deeply fixed in the minds of all the Jansenists that God himself acts and operates on the mind, and reveals to it his pleasure when all movements of the understanding and the will are restrained and hushed. Hence whatever thoughts, opinions, or purposes, occur to them, in that state of quietude, they unhesitatingly regard as oracular manifestations and instructions from God."* How many there are living at this moment, who, in respect to themselves, go to the full length of the Jansenist creed on this point. One of our own intimate acquaintances a few years since had an experience which may be brought to justify this remark. He felt his mind very much excited and quickened in the action of its powers. It ran through long and complicated processes of thought, like the electric fluid on crooked wires, and could master some of the most difficult problems in a moment of time. He was strongly per * See Murdock's Mosheim, Vol. III. pp. 383, 384, note. suaded that he was under the special influence of the Holy Spirit. But after his restoration from this mental illness, he had quite as strong a persuasion that his belief about the Holy Spirit was entirely without proper foundation. We account for the wild extravagance of his first belief by the erroneous character of his religious views, especially the error of supposing that he could distinguish the operations of the Spirit from those of his own mind. The Spirit of Mystery has another mode of manifestation which is the last we shall mention. Sometimes it pervades the general cast and air of a minister's preaching. This kind of mystery will be a marked quality of the instructions and exhortations of some pulpits, while its appearance in others is quite infrequent. Some seem to think it their duty to consider Religion, as a general subject, as much in the light of mystery, and to speak of it as mysteriously as possible. It is to them a vast temple darkened with solemn. obscurity, where every object shows dimly and every sound is uncertain, and in which they are to exercise a veneration the more awful and sacred because some of the things they revere are but half revealed, and others are entirely unknown and must have a fancied greatness thrown about them by the imagination. Thus do men worship dark feelings, which from their own hearts cluster about their own ignorance. Thus the reverence that would rise to its nobler and its only worthy objects rests upon earth, pours itself out before gloomy imaginings, and adores "the creature more than the Creator. How distressing must it be to a person seeking spiritual guidance, to hear the preacher discourse on what would seem, from the strong interest he takes in the subject, to be a matter of vital concern, so as not to be understood. Such a preacher seems to have so great a distrust of human nature, as to be unwilling to address it at all. We are all in darkness and trouble to hear him most earnestly beseeching us to do what he cannot tell us, labor earnestly as he may. He does not present us with mysterious expositions of intellectual points of belief, nor does he mysteriously exhibit the mode of spiritual operations, but he describes in the spirit of mystery the dispositions we must cherish and the duties we must perform. The subjects, in the treatment of which this spirit especially appears, generally relate to what are called the "terrors of the Lord." We trust our - readers will perceive what we mean. It is impossible to give a very definite delineation of that quality in preaching of which we speak; but we doubt not very many have had an experience in relation to this matter which so well corresponds to the idea of our description as to leave them at no loss in regard to it. Now we ask, Is it merciful,— is it right, to cry out to a man that he is in danger of being crushed under the wheel of some dreadful calamity, and, in telling him how to escape, fail to give him the slightest assistance? 66 Suppose, during some conflagration, a person should suddenly awake and find himself in the upper room of a house surrounded by blazing and crackling timbers. In trembling helplessness he shows himself, from some high projection yet untouched by the fire, to those assembled for the purpose of its extinction. A voice rises above the din of the crowd and the roaring of the flames, assuring him that there is one last forlorn hope of escape, one way of communication with the ground not yet cut off by the devouring element. This way is described, yet so as not to be understood. A thousand voices echo the word, Escape Escape!" yet still he stands as if charmed by the serpents of fire about him into motionless despair. Gladly, almost fiercely would he dart through any passage-way that would lead him to safety. But no such way reveals itself to his straining eyes. His ear and mind labor to catch the meaning of the direction given him, but grasp it not; all hope dies in his breast, and he already feels his flesh palpitate and wither under the tongues of flame that are darting towards him. Of what avail has been the vague cry of safety from below? What relief is afforded to his last moments of agony by his own groaning exclamation, "I might have been saved"? — This is imagination, it may be said; but we would ask, Has it not a strict application to fact in the subject of which we treat ? - We tremble to think how deadly an influence the mode of preaching of which we speak, must have upon common minds. How must they be tortured and broken and enslaved by it! What a surrender must they make of their freedom and birthright! How must they content themselves with a mere passive obedience, and admit the "right divine" of spiritual kings to reign over their consciences and lives! How must it tend to give them mean, abject, and disgusting views of themselves! And doubtless one great object of such preaching is, that the creature may be covered with the dust of humiliation before the exalted majesty of the Creator. It is forgotten that there is a sense to the word humiliation which removes it the farthest possible from the true meaning of humility. We are told that we must glorify the holiness of God by our own contrasted guilt and shame. Of course, holding such views as we do, the first thought that would come into our mind in answer to this would be to ask, Is there this boundless separation between man and his Maker? Has the child been torn away from the arms of its Parent and hurried a measureless distance from his mercy? and must miracles bear the passive object of their power through that distance into those arms? Look at the doctrine in its naked and open character, and then ask if men speak of what is real, when they speak of this contrast of Infinite Holiness and entire Depravity. But letting this pass, we must express our deep surprise that any mortal imagination could have fancied that such a contrast glorifies the perfection of God. Do angels and arch-angels thus illustrate his glory? Do sun, moon, and stars tell of the adorable splendor and purity of his character by blackness and darkness? Do they speak of the eternal principles of his nature and of his dominion, by rushing with mad disorder, and in lawless courses, through the heavens, because there is space for irregularity? What is the glory which archangels pay to God? They glorify him in developing their own glorious capacities for excellence, and thus coming to a nearer imitation of and resemblance to Him. How do the heavens show forth his praise? By reflecting as a stainless mirror the bright image of his perf ction. Alas! that man, of all things else, should think of glorifying God in the way of contrast. But it is said we benefit ourself by this prostration, and humiliation, and self-reproach. This idea carried to the extreme to which it is carried, unqualified and unrestrained by other principles, is untrue in theory. The course it would justily, has no tendency to our benefit. But what is the practical result? If we are unfit for good conduct, absolutely unable to do any thing well, how natural that we should make no effort after virtue. We undertake nothing to which we are in our own convictions entirely inadequate. All action presupposes motive, and motive implies an internal feel |