minds it is with pain unutterable that we are compelled in so short a time to submit to a change like this. The contrast is overwhelming. Truly while men slept, an enemy hath sown tares; and where to the evil will grow it is impossible to predict. Strange that so soon we should have the same evils to encounter which President Edwards spent his whole life in resisting, and over which he and his followers have once been so signally triumphant. To whom is the change and the strife to be attributed? A tremendous responsibility has been incurred. Will it be pretended that the blame belongs to those who have been alarmed for the preservation of those doctrines on which they ground their hopes of heaven, whose truth they have tested not only in revivals of religion, but their own experience as Christians, and which they continue to preach as they always have done? Yes, these are the men upon whom the utmost effort has been made to fasten the odium of all the change and all the dissension. We hear it said by grave divines that our differences after all are only verbal: that if we could understand one another, our varieties would be found only shades of the same thing, and that even now we are as much united as we have been for the last forty years.

There are no words with which sentiments like these, especially from persons of character and professed piety, may be suitably deplored; for it is confidently to be presumed that no person of candor and intelligence, acquainted with the facts and circumstances attending the subject, can entertain, in behalf of such declarations any honorable opinion. This is a topic too painful to dwell upon, and here we find the deepest cut of all. That we were once united beyond all other example of ministers and churches over the same extent of population is abundantly evident in the quotations which have already been given from reported accounts of revivals. The ample announcements, which these extracts present of the doctrines inculcated, are free,cordial and uniform, an accredited testimony to the genuineness of the work and its utility in promoting that religion, which was the common bond of the denomination, and basis of all our fellowship and harmony. Men openly proclaimed their doctrinal views with a frankness and sincerity that showed them not to be afraid of one another. There was no disagreement, no discrepancy of views which caused the smallest jar in all our borders. The Arminian sects rejected the doctrinal peculiarities of our denomination,

as they claimed, on principle, with more or less aversion; though the more pious and candid always agreed with us in almost every thing when we spoke in chosen symbols, and avoided those Calvinistic terms against which they had imbibed an unhappy prejudice. But infidels, worldlings and skeptics of every sort have ever held these doctrines in perfect hostility. Little did we think that so soon we should be called upon to defend the hard doctrines of our creed against the exceptions of any considerable class in the ranks of our own ministry and members. But do our new divinity brethren say they agree with us? Then whence has originated the strife? And who have taken pains to establish a difference if they have not? Besides, if the difference in their view amounts to nothing material, the prosecution of the debate, when they see how unpleasant their views are to others and how much evil is likely to result from the controversy, must be from a mere wantonness of disposition, only for the sake of strife and contention. A man has a perfect right to adopt new views on the subject of gospel theology as well as any other, but he has no right to procure himself a place under hire as a teacher of religion in a particular denomination, when he knows that he holds and is about to teach sentiments subversive of the well ascertained creed of the sect which he promises to serve and not destroy. Again, if a minister, after settlement, should change his views on any important subject, he is acting on the ground of a personal right. His responsibility to God is so great, that to blame him for such a change would be like blaming him for testimony given under oath in a court of justice without the power of impeachment. But if there be no reason in all this why he should be blamed, there is an ample reason why he should be removed, and why, if a good man, he might himself desire to leave. But how does our condition now compare with what it once was? We have revivals of religion now as well as formerly. But they are to a great extent discredited, and commonly furnish no pledge of doctrinal purity. They seem prevailingly too much like the work of man; they have lost the public confidence and appear to be quite another sort of movement from what they once were. The gospel shorn of its divinity produces corresponding revivals. The friends of genuine religion mourn in secret places, and infidelity triumphs. If unbelievers are less violent in their opposition, it is because they are less

oppressed by the doctrines and uncompromising claims of the gospel. The opposition of men to the truth is turned into personal dislike towards certain preachers, who are reputed to hold peculiar sentiments, unsocial and absurd, and whom there has been the utmost effort on the part of ministers and church-members to load with discredit. Is there no evidence that our revivals for the most part have become superficial, a thing of blind excitement, and may not soon to a fearful extent be discountenanced by sober men and laid aside. entirely, if they do not prove the utter overthrow of religion itself? They give us no report such as the foregoing extracts furnish of the opposition of men to the doctrines of grace, as the mark of a genuine work; of the conversion of men to the love of those truths which once they hated, or the effects of such doctrines any way. And why? what is the reason except, that these doctrines are not urged, or if otherwise, that they are received with so much abatement as utterly to fail of the influence which once they exerted of bringing down high looks and breaking the heart in pieces? Alas, "when the foundations fail what shall the righteous do?" And what avails it if our new divinity brethren should say, even without any intention of insulting our feelings, 'go to work, preach the doctrines, promote revivals and do good as you have done and welcome; we will not hinder you, and you would be much better employed than in contending with But the time for such a service of God and the church is past. The appeal may seem plausible to many, but really it is like the demand of brick to the full measure without furnishing straw. They should not reproach us with contention when they disagreed with us before we disagreed with them, and when they have continued the strife to the subverting, as we have supposed, of all that is genuine in religious experience, without any claim on their part of suggesting an improvement essential to salvation. But so it is, in any such controversy, the innocent must bear in a great measure, if not altogether, the burden of the ill-deserving. The ministry having contended, whatever be the reason, the people were all alike broken away from our influence, and no man of the profession can do as once he could. Hardly any thing destroys religion and its influence like ministerial dissensions, and therefore they should be avoided as far as possible. If the ministry contend about three points, it will be natural to expect that the people will renounce their opinions and set up for themselves in regard to ten.

us.'

It is always hard contending with the human heart, and enforcing the doctrines of that gospel which is every where spoken against. But with us the truth is loaded with a burden not its own. For when men hear the trying and uncomfortable doctrines they refer the inconvenience of their feelings to the circumstance that they belong to another school of religious doctrine, which is honored by respectable names, rather than any hostility of heart to God and his gospel. Thus the influence of truth is cashiered by being left to fight for definitions,' or considered as occupying a debatable territory. If men have a plausible pretext for evading it we know how apt they are to improve it to their everlasting ruin.

It is said that the new divinity has had a rapid spread, and it is said with truth. But is this any evidence of its gospel soundness? The avowed object of its advocates is to render the doctrines plainer to men of taste and sense; to take away the discouraging features, the inconsistencies and absurdities of the old fashioned system. Yes, and every sinner has got the idea that it is an easier way to heaven. But is this any evidence of its truth? Will it not be well to preach the preaching that God has bidden us, rather than that which man's wisdom teaches, and take heed in our philosophic speculations that we do not overlook the Bible, that we do not remove the offence of the cross, and that we weigh well the value of the wheat when compared with the chaff? But our condition is deplorable, it calls upon all who love the doctrines of the gospel in their purity, to consider what course the times demand, and with promptness and patience pursue it. If the ark of true religion be not in danger, then many of the wisest and best men in the land. have lost that honesty and perception for which they have hitherto been distinguished. But the subject is altogether too serious for the indulgence of a spirit of hostility and crimination. Those who have done wrong concerning an interest so sacred, stand or fall to their own Master, and have assumed a responsibility that better entitles them to pity than resentment. But what shall become of these institutions of our fathers; what shall become of us and our children! Blessed be God, the cause is his, and in him we may hope and confide unto the end. A CONNECTICUT PASTOR.

ERRATA-On page 470, 20th line from the top it should read "they left them to form their own opinions of their piety," instead of they never left," &c. Also, on p. 472, 5th line from bottom, it should read, “as to be willing that God should bestow it on them or not, just as he in his wisdom should see best."

ART. III.-ORIGIN OF FALSE NOTIONS RESPECTING GOD.

By Rev. Richard W. Dickinson, New York.

THAT diversity which is found among the human species, resulting from the varying influences of climate, education and pursuit, on their modes of thought and feeling, might lead an inquirer to anticipate some diversity in their theistical views. But it will be perceived on research, that the being of a God is hardly more extensively admitted, than his nature and attributes are variously regarded by his rational creaThere is no light in which the Supreme Being can be viewed, whether it be honorable to his name or degrading to his perfections, in which he is not acknowledged and worshipped by some members of the human race. From every corner of the earth, man may look out upon the heavens and bow down before the Great Invisible; but their views of him are as various, if not fantastic, as the colors which in endless and indescribable combinations light and shade the firmament.

Among the erroneous notions which have been entertained of God, to our mind it appears the most remarkable that man should have thought God altogether such an one as himself. Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself, said God to the ancient Israelites by the lips of their poet king; and if, notwithstanding their religious advantages such an opinion prevailed to any extent among that favored nation, much more may we expect to discover the same sentiment among the several nations of the heathen world. Accordingly, the farther our researches extend, the more minute and various are the obtruding evidences that man is apt to think God like unto himself. The notion is discovered no less really in the refined speculations of philosophic Greece, than obviously in the degrading superstitions of barbaric hordes. If the savage never had a conception of any God but what was corporeal, the greatest of heathen philosophers, alike with the pundits of India, regarded God as the soul of the world. If the most benighted of our race believed their gods to be of the human form, though of a nature more excellent than man; the most improved by mere civili