ARGUMENTS FOR YOUNG DISCIPLES.-No. II.

FAITH, HOPE, LOVE.

ADMIT, says an objector, that your first argument is Sound; yet may it not still be true, that faith is of different sorts, or possessed of different natures ?

If, then, there be human and divine faith, as respects subject, object, and author, there is human and divine hope and love, as respects subject, object, and author. As respects the person or subject of faith, if he be human, his faith, hope, love, must be human, or they cannot benefit him; unless man can be advantaged by angelic faith, hope, and love. A faith that is not human, as respects its subject, can save no But if human apply to the object, or thing believed, or to the author or person who produces it, then such a human faith pertains to human affairs, and must be confined to the present state. And if divine apply to the object or thing believed, or to the author or person who produces it, then such a divine faith leads to divine things, and produces divine effects upon the subject of it.

man.

If faith mean more or less than the belief of testimony, then hope and love must mean more or less than hope and love; and who but the Pope can tell how much more or less than the common acceptation is implied in the faith, hope, and love of the New Testament ?

Thus you will send the patrons of mystic faith to the Pope for their illumination, and oblige them to sit at his feet for their edification in the Christian faith.

"Now," says Paul, "abide faith, hope, love; these three." They are not one, but three. And as they yet abide with us we must treat them with equal courtesy and respect. If we mystify faith, we must mystify her two sisters; and if we give one of them two or seven natures we must be as liberal to the other two, for they are all of one family. We regard them all as spiritual, holy, heavenly, and divine, when they have spiritual, holy, heavenly, and divine objects in contemplation; but we regard them as a natural, common, and carnal sisterhood, when they have natural, common, and carnal objects in admiration.

Your second argument with the mystics, then, is thisGentlemen, if you mystify one term or principle you must mystify every other principle and term in the apostle's

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ARGUMENTS FOR YOUNG DISCIPLES.-NO. 11.

doctrine; and who can tell where and when this mystification shall cease? The Pope? Then protest no more.

NOTE ON HOPE.

"Hope that is seen is not hope; for what a man sees why does he yet hope for."-Paul. This affirms hope to be of the same meaning in Paul's vocabulary as it was in the common dictionaries of that age. So we contend that if any word in the New Testament is to be inquired after, it must be sought for in the dictionary.

Common usage deposes as follows: He that desires, and he that expects, and he that hopes, are not always the same person. A desires what he cannot always expect; B expects what he does not always desire; but C desires what he expects, and expects what he desires, and therefore C is said to hope; for when we hope for that which we expect, but see not, then we do with patience wait for it. This is hope, and neither faith nor love.

NOTE ON LOVE.

Love can be better felt than expressed. There is no controversy about the meaning of this word. We have, however, burthened it with epithets. We have natural love and spiritual love, or, we have carnal love and Christian love. But love is affection mingled with admiration. We have admiration without affection; but we cannot have affection without some degree of admiration. The object characterizes the affection. If a father love a child, it is parental love; if a child love a father, it is filial affection; if a husband love his wife, it is conjugal love; and if a Christian love a Christian, it is Christian love.

Love for Jesus is not the love of an idea, but the love of a person whom we admire with all affection and delight. It is best defined by keeping his commandments. How any

one can love Jesus Christ and not keep his commandments, is too difficult for us to imagine. He himself nakes the keeping of his commandments the only correct definition of love to him. Of faith, hope, and love, these are rather the definitions than illustrations. But when any one says to you, that the term faith represents a mystic idea, then tell him that he must also affirm that the terms hope and love, and every other term, represents a mystic idea; and that thus we have no revelation from God at all.

A. C.

RESPONSIBILITY.-No. VI.

CONCEIVING that we have now taken possession of strong vantage ground, and occupy a fortified position, we are willing to listen to the roar of artillery on every side, and to return the fire in steady and persevering volumes. But what is the design of that half metaphysical half voluptuous group, who are rushing to the encounter in such valiant style? They state that it is their design to reform society, and they are led on by that distinguished philosopher, whose abstract power was first awakened by scalding his throat with hot flummery. Reform society! How can they reform society if they cannot revolutionize nature and regenerate necessity? It appears from the statements of these men, that nature has lost her eyesight through age, infirmities, and elemental warfare. But they have prepared a marvellous eye-salve to give her second sight. They have distilled the elixir of youth and immortality, to pour a tide of fresh life into her withered veins, that she may shake off the frost of antiquity, wipe the dust of ages from her eyelids, and stand forth in the bloom of her primeval, virginal beauty! Necessity; the black shadow; the huge shapeless phantom; the grim relentless idol of bewildered brains; the monstrous, inexorable blind divinity, to whom sophists raise so many high altars and burn so much strange, unhallowed fire-must be imprisoned in his own dungeon, and bound with his own massy chains, until-until he consents to repeal all the old statutes in the ancient book of fate, to nullify the iron decrees of his unregenerate days, and roll his headlong tide into another channel. Well, when all this transpires we certainly must hail the auspicious day; but most assuredly if these men succeed in this great work, they will crush their own theory into hopeless ruin; they will be the greatest champions of free agency that ever necessity generated; they will give the brightest illustration of human liberty that ever dawned upon the world.

"Visions of glory spare our aching sight,

Ye unborn ages crowd not on the soul."

2. But we further object to these men that they have no right to take the words vice or virtue into their mouths, no authority to speak of disorder or reformation, because their

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theory throws down utterly the great wall of demarcation between sin and holiness, crime and rectitude. The essence of holiness consists in voluntary submission to divine law, in cheerful devotion to heavenly truth. The enlightened soul recognises the divinity of truth and goodness, and is tremblingly alive to the danger of violating its etherial purity; gives willing grateful homage to that divine Lawgiver, whose breath is truth and whose nature is love; is so impressed with the awful sanctity, the inviolate grandeur, the celestial loveliness of truth, virtue, and holiness, that in the language of the beatitudes, "She hungers and thirsts after righteousness. The full soul pours forth its plentitude in devotion to God and love to man. In prayer, praise, and heavenward aspiration, in works of mercy, love, and rectitude, and finds heaven begun upon earth, in the ministration of truth and the diffusion of goodness. But make this conduct as constrained as the revolution of a mill-wheel, the fall of a torrent over a declivity, or the ascent of bodies lighter than the atmosphere, and the icy theory immediately binds up in a hard black frost, the living fountain of inspiration. The charm of the moral landscape vanishes; the light wanes into dimness and obscurity; the gales of paradise no longer play over the scene in freshness, fragrance, and music; we cease to reverence greatness, or admire conscientiousness, or rejoice in goodness, or sympathize with love. Why this sudden palsy of all our emotions? Because cold material necessity with his gorgon head has looked over the scene, claimed the characters as his slaves, and petrified their life into stone. The subject may be widened by calling into the field of illustration, the vicious, who pollute themselves and demoralize others. What is sin? The transgression of law; revolt against the supremacy of God; rebellion against the power and prevalence of truth and love. But if those who prefer darkness to light on account of evil deeds are actually necessary slaves-if all their thoughts are involuntary and all their actions constrained, who shall brand them with guilt or impress them with accountability? And if they are not vicious, what is vice? Is it a floating visionary, impersonal thing, about which theologians have had a dreary trance, and on awakening have bodied the thing in humanity? Alas, it is the woe and desolation of our race; the plague spot in the universe of God; a stern, hideous, gigantic reality,

causing melancholy agony among high and holy intelligencies, and the fierce uncontrollable revelry of passionate joy among those that are condemned.

3. But responds one, So long as we inculcate the practise of virtue, what harm can we do by teaching irresponsibility? Much and deadly harm. The only kind of education worth the name, the only class of mental and moral culture which claims regard, is that which engravens accountability on the heart in indelible characters. The practical knowledge of the past, and the foreknown consequences in the future, are brought to bear with immense strength on the actions of the present. Man feels himself under the dominion of law, which by its uniform working and inviolate sanctions, bears evidence to the presence and moral government of God, and thus he has sublime motive-power impelling him onward to the attainment of strength of character. Such being the case, every sentiment which lowers the standard, or weakens the consciousness of responsibility, does something in destroying the moral power of the unhappy victim. It even takes away his intellectual dignity, for just in proportion as man forgets the connexion of the present with the future, does he approximate to those brutes that are incapable of mental expansion or moral progress. On the other hand, everything which deepens the conviction of accountability, lifts man higher and higher towards heaven and God; the range of his action is widened; the lustre of his agency is brightened; and his strength of endurance and action augments, until with the conscious power of a veteran warriour, he rejoices in all generous and godlike deeds. The man who dares to breath irresponsibility, has more than the guilt of him who brings famine and pestilence into a crowded empire, as the consequences are more disastrous both in degree and duration.

4. Another speculator exclaims in triumph, How can you maintain the responsibility of those who through the poverty and crimes of their connexions, are in the shades of gross ignorance? Easily. The golden law, the broad principle unfolded in the Oracles of God is, that responsibility is in proportion to light, that "Where much is given, much is required," and vice versa. This law is comprehensive enough to grasp all, and so equitable that it demands the reverence of every mind. But is it come to this, that in