I cannot disguise from myself that there appears a broad inconsistency

in this.

It may be said, and perhaps has been, that it was not to satisfy his own mind, but to have light imparted to the minds of his disciples, that John deputed two of them on this inquiry. But, the answer of Jesus to it, commencing with "Go and tell John," does not seem to recognize this intention of the Baptist, and I trust that some of your Correspondents will think the subject worthy of, and attempt, a more pertinent elu. cidation.

SIR,

IN

BREVIS.

N the very ingenious sermon lately published by our excellent friend Mr. Gilchrist, the situation of the Hottentot is placed in the middle of a scale, whose extremities are bounded by the highest and lowest orders of finite intelligence. It may amuse some of your readers to see the difference between the conceptions of a metaphysician and a mathematician on this subject. Had I wished to endeavour to make a scale of this kind intelligible to the general reader, I should have desired him to conceive a line some millions of miles in length, the lowest inch of which should be divided by my friend Lowrie into the smallest parts he could make visible to the eye, assisted by glasses, and in the lowest division thus made I should place the Hottentot. This is not a new idea just started upon the occa sion, as in the year 1799 I expressed something similar to it in the second part of my Algebra, which I closed with the following reflection.

"The investigation of the properties of equations is endless. It is

thoroughly understood, and the next class excels them as much as they do us. How great then must be that Being to whom the thoughts of all these orders of beings are known at a moment's glance, and how insignificant, in the eye of reason, are those nations which lay down rules for thought, and persecute for opinions!"

Supposing the Hottentot to have been properly placed by me in the scale of intelligence, where are we to place a Newton, a Locke, a Hobbes, a Milton, a Shakespeare?

SIR,

IT

W. FREND.

T has been a subject of surprise with me, that in this age, when houses for worship and exhortation spring up in every part of our country, with a rapidity unknown to our forefathers, that your Miscellany has not noticed the different forms that have been used, what forms are cheapest, what forms are most ornamental, in what form the speaker can be heard easiest, in fact, what form answers the purpose best: yet these are not matters of a minor importance, nor is the subject one of which a new congregation is likely to be a judge. When Dissenters first emerged from their mother church they only wanted shelter from the inclemency of the climate, but this is no reason why, in the present state of society, they should neglect convenience, economy or ornament, combined with plain simplicity. This evidently is wanted. I pray some person to supply the defect.

SIR,

J. O. H.

Bristol, August 12, 1819.

There is no limit to the number of modes of each form. There is no limit to the number of forms. There is no limit to the number of orders. There is no limit to the number of classes. Each mode has its peculiar

curve.

The lives of men of the first talents have been employed upon a single curve, and there are not names given to a hundred species of curves. By the class of intelligent beings next in rank above man, all these equations and all these curves are perhaps

transcribed the Lecture which I referred to in my last communication, [p. 420,] on Divine Influences and Conversion. If I had time, I would endeavour to abridge it; but in present circumstances it is impossible. As the subject is one of great importance, I willingly hope that your readers will pardon the length of the communication. I take for granted you will think it necessary to divide it into two or three portions at least. This I must leave absolutely to you; but I may be permitted to suggest to

time of need; that if we acknowledge God in all our ways he will direct our steps; and, in short, that as the earthly parent, though imperfect and ignorant, knows how to give good gifts unto his children, much more will our Father who is in heaven, give a holy spirit, his sanctifying influence, or a holy disposition, to those who ask him.

If it were not true that God influences the hearts of those who seek him, then the prayer of Peter, that the God of all grace would make the believers perfect, establish, strengthen, settle them, the prayer of Paul, that God would sanctify them wholly, that he would comfort their hearts, and establish them in every good word and work, the prayer of Christ, "Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are," and, in short, the prayers of saints, in all ages, for spiritual blessings for themselves or others, have all been founded in delusion.

But it is no delusion. Nature might not afford us solid conclusions on this subject; but revelation does; and if the heart has been subjected to its inspiring principles, and the soul devoted to the service of God, its experience almost universally is, that from heartfelt and solemn intercourse with the Father of spirits, strength and wisdom and peace are derived, such as uo earthly source could yield, and which proves that his sacred influences will not be withheld, when sought with perseverance and faith and sincerity.

This, however, does not decide the question. All this may be true, (and true it undoubtedly is,) and yet we may be unable to say to what extent, and in what precise manner, God affords his divine influence. "A part of his ways" he permits us to observe, and to discern their design and tendency, in order to cherish faith in his constant providence, and in the wisdom and goodness that presides over all; but he still leaves clouds and darkness around his dispensations, to impress our hearts with reverence and submissive trust. And what is true respecting the Divine dealings in general, is true also in this particular. We cannot doubt his constant agency, his constant influence; but in what

way he exercises them is involved in obscurity: perhaps we cannot fully comprehend it; and whenever engaged in investigating the subject, let not its difficulties produce doubt, but let us rejoice in the possession of that revealed light, which may check our wanderings, and guide us safely to the possession of God's gracious aid and blessing.

Like many other doctrinal topics, it would be unnecessary to enter upon it, were not such unfounded and baneful ideas entertained respecting it. Baneful indeed they are, because they lead men to entertain visionary ideas of being the special favourites of heaven, when the genuine fruits of the spirit are wanting; or to sink into the gloom of despair, if not into debasing carelessness in the great work of duty, since they conclude that they are the objects of Divine wrath, and cannot be saved: because they lead men to expect some easier and shorter way to heaven, than that which the gospel points out, when it teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live a sober, righteous and godly life: because they lead men to place religion in frames and feelings, rather than in the subjection of the heart and life to the spirit and precepts of Christ: because they check the exercise of Christian charity, by representing the most habitual piety, the most disinterested benevolence, the most watchful self-denial, the most active love and obedience to Christ, as insufficient for the Divine favour, if not begun by a certain sudden change, or attended with an inward assurance of peace and pardon. I do not mean that any one man, or any one sect, entertaius all these unfounded notions; but those who know the present state of the religious world, will not readily charge me with a misrepresentation of prevailing opinions.

Now I think that many erroneous ideas respecting the nature and degree of divine influence, would be removed, if the scripturalist would observe the following simple principles:

1. Many passages, in which the operations of the Divine Spirit are referred to in the New Testament, exclusively relate to the age of miracles; that period in which to promote the reception and diffusion of the gospel, supernatural powers and su

pernatural knowledge were communicated by Christ to the apostles, and through them to many of their fellowchristians If, because Christ declared to his apostles that the spirit of truth should guide them into all truth, (i. e. all gospel truth,) we infer that his sincere disciples, in the present day, will, in like manner, by supernatural influence, be led into all truth, we must upon the same principles of interpretation, and not more in opposition to fact and experience, maintain, that the believers of the present day shall speak with new tongues, shall take up serpents or drink poisons unhurt, or cure the sick by laying on them their hands.

2. Many passages in which the Spirit, or even the Spirit of God or the Holy Spirit, is spoken of, have no direct reference to the ordinary or extraordinary operations of divine agency, further than is included in the general principle, that every good gift and every perfect cometh down from the Father of lights. This is the case in a variety of instances, where the word stands for the spiritual part of our nature, in opposition to the flesh, i. e. the animal appetites and passions; or for that holy mind or godly disposition, which is produced by the sanctifying principle of the gospel. And to the same head may be referred those passages in which spirit is used to denote the internal dispositions, in opposition to the external services of devotion; as in that expression of the apostle's (1 Cor. xiv. 15): "I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also."

3. Many expressions occur, particularly in the Old Testament, implying the influence or agency of God, where yet its operation is, in part at least, through the common operations of his providence. For instance, when Jehovah, speaking by the prophet Ezekiel, (xxxvi. 24-27,) declares to the house of Israel, that he would restore them to their own land, and cleanse them from their idols, and give them a new heart and a new spirit, and remove the heart of stone, and give them a heart of flesh, and put his spirit within them, and cause them to walk in his statutes; can

there be a doubt that he refers, in part at least, to the natural influence of that sore chastisement which they experienced in the seventy years' captivity, and to the effects produced by the customary operations of his providence on the hearts and consciences of men? There is nothing in the sacred history to authorize the belief that the people of Israel underwent any sudden and miraculous change; or that, as individuals, they were preserved from gross vices, though they never again fell into idolatry. Once

more

4. That peculiar agency or influence of God, distinct from miraculous power and knowledge, which is sometimes denoted by the Spirit, or the Spirit of God, is never represented as overpowering in its operation, or as superseding our own exertions and watchfulness. If any expressions, separate from their connexion, appear to speak a different language, in justice to the sacred writers, in justice to religion, let them be interpreted in consistency with those plainer and continually occurring precepts and declarations, in which the Christian is required to strive to enter in at the strait gate, to do the will of his Father who is in heaven, to present his body a living sacrifice, to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, to walk in the spirit, to put on the whole armour of God, to purify himself from all defilement of flesh and spirit, to be sober and watch unto prayer, to set his affections on things above, to put on bowels of mercy, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, &c., to press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, and, to sum up the whole, to work out his own salvation with fear and trembling.

If these simple principles (in my apprehension indisputable) had been carefully maintained as the anchor of the soul, and the security of that hope which maketh not ashamed, the doctrines of limited and irresistible grace, and of final perseverance, on the one hand, or of supernatural conversion and assurance on the other, would never have gained ground in the Christian world.

But in relinquishing these opinions, because as unfounded in the Scriptures as they are injurious in Christian

practice, I give up nothing which is requisite to encourage the humble disciple of Jesus, and to urge him to work out his salvation with fear aud trembling. That the Father of our spirits does influence the human mind I cannot doubt. That he influences the heart in ways which we often cannot explain, and which it is not, perhaps, desirable that we should, in this imperfect state, be able clearly to understand, I gladly admit. But in receiving this as the encouraging and consoling doctrine of revelation, I cannot further admit, that he does give his spirit or influence, in any way that can supersede the necessity of using, faithfully and actively, the powers and faculties and opportunities which God hath granted to each of us to know and do his will.

1 am fully satisfied that he who formed man, and added to the wonderful fabric of the human body, the still more wonderful principle which we call mind, has provided means of influencing and aiding the being whom he designed for immortality. That all the powers of life and thought and affection, as well as the various powers of the inanimate creation, are only the operations of his spirit or agency, I think is a sound principle of philosophy; but I am not referring to the powers themselves, but to the direction of them, to the employment of them by man as a moral and accountable being. Now, desirous to refer all to God, as I believe the Scriptures do, (whether his agency be more secretly or more openly employed, whether through means, or without any intermediate agency,) I gladly extend the idea of divine influence to every means by which good desires, holy purposes, devout affections, pure and upright dispositions are produced and fostered in the human heart: I gladly extend the idea of divine aid to every means by which our heavenly Father fortifies the heart under temptation, supports it under affliction, cheers it in the discharge of duty, animates it for the greater trials of faith, and urges it on to activity and watchfulness in the divine life: I gladly extend the idea of divine guidance to every means by which the way of duty is cleared, by which divine truth enters and illumi. nates the heart, by which that wisdom

is communicated which is profitable to direct, by which that path is cleared which leads to life everlasting. And whether that influence, that aid, that guidance is communicated accord, ing to the obvious and customary dealings of his providence, or by immediate agency on the human heart, it is not less owing to the goodness and mercy of the Father of our spirits; it is not less from his haud that the blessing proceeds; it calls for uo less lively tribute of gratitude.

Every good and perfect gift, I desire gratefully to refer to him in whom we live and move and have our being, who knoweth every secret movement of the heart, whose agency continually operates in our various powers of body and of mind, without whom we are nothing, and can do nothing, by whose gracious goodness we are what we are, and upon whom we are every moment dependent.

I see and I desire gratefully to acknowledge, that he has, in various ways, made rich provision for the comfort, the direction, the strength, the spiritual welfare of those who humbly and earnestly and steadily seek his aid with full purpose of heart:

see, too, that he has provided for those who in the midst of light sit in darkness. In that principle which he hath implanted within us, often neglected, often disobeyed, but never entirely extinguished, which often has an unobserved influence in leading back the wanderer to the house of his Father, and which often is excited by causes which we cannot perhaps explain, to reuse the fears, and force to fly for security and for safety from impeuding ruin,-in the warning voice of his providence, which so often awakes our reasonable alarms, aud calls upon us to prepare to meet our God, since soon and suddenly we too may be called hence,in the more general impulses of both, fostering good desires, weakening the influence of the world, and often leading us onward when we ourselves do not perceive it,-in the merciful chastisement of affliction, — in the counsels, the discipline, the example of parents and friends,-in the instructions of his word, often received with thoughtlessness, often treated with neglect, brought to mind by the faith