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final extinction. At Jerusalem, in answer to the inquiry: How can the city obtain a supply of fuel; there is no forest timber in all the land, no coal or peat? the missionaries resident there replied: "There is no lack of fuel. The city is abundantly supplied from the roots of olive-trees, which are grubbed up and brought to market, as from an exhaustless storehouse; the supply always equaling the demand." This single fact presents the past productiveness of the land in striking contrast with its present destitution.

But desolate though this good land may be, even in her desolation she remains an undeniable witness still of the truthfulness of all that the sacred historians, prophets, and poets have said and sung of her goodly mountains, her charming landscapes, her exuberant soil, and matchless productions.

The glory has indeed departed from this holy land, but it is holy still, hallowed by the presence of godly men, — patriarchs prophets, apostles, martyrs enshrined in her tombs; thrice hallowed by the foot-prints of the Son of Man; thrice hallowed by his heavenly words and works, by the tears, the blood he shed for our redemption. Palestina, Judea, that holy land! her tragic history, the sorrowful catastrophes of her wondrous story, the holy memories and sacred associations that throng around her still, in the sear and yellow leaf of age, - these all lend a strange charm to her faded features, which smile in desolate beauty on her rugged hills, and sink in sad repose on her silent, deserted plains.

Blest land of Judea thrice hallowed of song,
Where the holiest of memories, pilgrim-like, throng
In the shade of thy palms, on the shores of thy sea,
On the hills of thy beauty,—my heart is with thee.

ARTICLE V.

IS THEOLOGY AN IMPROVABLE SCIENCE?

BY REV. LEONARD WITHINGTON, D.D., newburyport, Mass.

Equidem non inficior (qua sumus ignorantia circumsepti) quin plurima nobis implicita nunc sint, et etiam sint futura, donec deposita carnis mole propius ad Dei praesentiam accesserimus: in quibus ipsis nihil magis expedias quam judicium suspendere, animum autem offirmare ad tenendam cum Ecclesiâ unitatem.

CALVIN, INST., Lib. III. Chap. 11. Sect. 3.

THIS is a question which no man likes to answer promptly without knowing who the inquirer is. If it were put to a clergymen in New England by a rigid Scotch Calvinist, a follower of John Knox, he would probably answer intrepidly in the affirmative, and feel no hesitation as to consequences; but if it were put to him by a disciple of Theodore Parker, he might say: "No; I want no improvements which deny the materials and destroy the ground on which we must build." Yet the question is an absolute one. Theology either has reached its perfection and is incapable of further advancement, or it is still capable of amendment and shining with a clear light on a believing world. The argument which some bring to prove that it is incapable of advancement is not valid; namely, that it is founded on a divine revelation it came in its origin perfect from the hand of its author; because we may say the same of creation and its laws - they have been all before us since man has been a spectator to their operations, and yet how slow have we been in finding out what seems so obvious when once found! When Papal delusion reigned over Christendom, the Bible was the same and was still in existence; yet we speak of Luther and the Reformers as great enlighteners of the world. The simplicity of truth is often the last thing that purblind mortals are fated to find.

The great secret is to find a medium, to improve for the future, and not destroy the past or present. It is one of the infelicities held out by such a glowing writer as Dr. Channing, that just in proportion as he awakens confidence in future discoveries, he pours distrust on all our present speculations and attainments.

The question, then, is, what is improvement? What is that which mends without destroying? If we saw a partially-lighted church for an evening service, we should conclude that its condition was not to be mended by pouring a flood of redundant light from a thousand chandeliers and gas-lamps, which would only oppress the eye and create confusion; but the object would be to carry the original glimmer to a permanent brightness; so in theology, we shall never cease in this world to see through a glass darkly, but we may polish the glass, and explain the enigmas as far as our faith may rest on certainty.

Our first business is to obtain a tact, or previous percep-> tion of what our cause needs, and what are the feasible passages to better light. We should say to ourselves, here is a defect, and here is an innovation which may supply it. As the gardener before he prunes his trees carefully surveys the branches and selects the dead or redundant limbs for his saw, so we should weigh the importance of the previous work. A vast deal of real ingenuity has been wasted on impractical attempts. Some parts of theology present at a glance difficulties which it is desirable to remove if it were possible; but our instinctive forecast and the whole tenor of church history shows that they are difficulties which always must meet a finite mind. All those questions which arise from comparing divine infinitude with human finites must ever remain unfolded, and a well-constituted mind naturally shrinks from them. The only thing you can say about them is: "there they are, in all their darkness and all their immensity, and all we can do is to discover the causes of their darkness, and draw the limit of our powers in respect to them." What does the reader think of the three following

quotations (let him compare them together), and which of the men has uttered the fairest truth?

"Though they are all, all honorable men,"

which of them awakens the deepest recognition in your soul? Governor Everett, in an address at Amherst a few years since, says: "Who does not in these choice and blessed moments, in which the world and its interests are forgotten, and the spirit retires into the inmost sanctuary of its own meditations, and there, unconscious of anything but itself and the infinite perfection of which it is the earthly type, kindling the flames of thought on the altar of prayer; who does not feel in moments like these, as if it must at last be given to man to fathom the great secret of his own being, to solve the mighty problem

Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate.'"

So far the sanguine statesman; Dr. Channing coincides: "This great subject has indeed baffled as yet the deepest thinkers, and seems now to be consigned, with other sublime topics, under the sweeping denomination of metaphysics, to general neglect. But let it not be given up in despair. The time is coming when the human intellect is to start into new fields, and to view itself and its Creator and the universe from new positions; and we trust that the darkness which has long hung over our moral nature will be gradually dispersed. This attribute of free-agency, through which an intelligent being is strictly and properly a cause, an agent, an originator of moral good and evil, and not a mere machine, determined by outward influences, or by a secret yet resistless efficiency of God, which virtually makes him the author and scle author of all human actions, - this moral freedom, which is the best image of the creative energy of the Deity, seems to us the noblest object of philosophical investigation. However questioned and darkened by a host of metaphyscians, it is recognized by the common consciousness of every human being. It is the ground of responsibility, the fountain of moral feeling. It is involved

in all moral judgments and affections, and thus gives to social life its whole interest, while it is the chief tie between the soul and its Creator. The fact that philosophers have attempted to discard free-agency from their explanation of moral phenomena, and to subject all human action to necessity, to mechanical causes, or other extraneous influences, is proof enough that the science of the mind has as yet penetrated little beneath the surface; that the depths of the soul are still unexplored." Archbishop Leighton strikes a different note: "One thing we may confidently assert, that all those things which the great Creator produces in different periods of time were perfectly known to him from eternity; and everything that happens throughout the several ages of the world proceeds in the same order and in the same precise manner that the eternal mind first intended it should. All that acknowledge God to be the author of this wonderful fabric, and all the things in it, which succeed one another in their turn, cannot possibly doubt that he has brought, and continues to bring, them all about according to that most perfect pattern subsisting in his eternal councils; and those things which we call casual are all unalterably fixed and determined by him. For according to that of the philoso pher, where there is most wisdom there is the least chance, and therefore surely where there is infinite wisdom there is nothing left to chance at all.

"These things we are warranted and safe to believe; but what perverseness, or rather madness, is it to break into the sacred repositories of Heaven, and to pretend to accommodate those secrets of the divine kingdom to the measures and methods of our weak capacities. To say the truth, I acknowledge that I am astonished and greatly at a loss when I hear learned men and professors of theology talk. ing presumptuously about the order of divine decrees, and when I read such things in their works. Paul, considering

1 Channing's Review of Milton. When a writer throws out such splendid anticipations, is he not bound to give us some little clue to the solution he teaches us to expect?

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