"Now I apprehend that man everywhere has the consciousness of sin. The tradition of a primitive fall is nearly if not quite universal. No man feels that he stands in his proper relation to God. Every one feels that he has sinned. against God, and has fallen from his primitive innocence, and lost the divine favor. Now this is not a state in which a man is willing to live; for say what we will, man has a conscience, and one that makes itself heard, too; at least, sometimes. Nothing is so painful to man, so insupportable, as the consciousness that he is a sinner. Let me but feel that I have held fast to my integrity, that I have walked ever by the law of God, and have nothing wherewith to reproach myself, and I can smile even at the stake. But when once I am obliged to confess to myself that I am a sinner, and can no longer look upon myself but with a sort of loathing, I am miserable indeed. I already feel the tortures of the damned; the flames of hell are already burning within me, and 1 have not one drop of water with which to cool my parched tongue. I cannot live in this state.

"But this is only half of the evil. Sin makes me a coward. Adam, after his transgression, comes not forth to meet his God, but seeks to conceal himself among the trees. When I have the consciousness of sin, I am afraid to meet God. I think he must be angry with me. I have a fearful looking for of wrath and indignation. God is my enemy and he can crush me. My own heart condemns me, and God is greater than my heart.

"As a sinner I need two things; first, that which shall wash out my sins, save me from the tortures of a guilty conscience, and make me holy; and second, that which shall restore me to the favor of God which I feel I must have lost, save me from his wrath, and make him again my friend. Now here are two deep wants of the human soul to be met. They are universal wants as I learn from the fact that men in all ages and countries of the world, in all times and places, have sought to provide for them. Sometimes by sacrifices and offerings, and sometimes by self-inflicted penance, lacerations of the body, the sacrifice of the objects dearest to the affections, or by voluntary submission to poverty and want. The rites and ceremonies and disciplines of all religions have this end in view. The Jewish economy was, to a great extent, proposed as a means of saving the soul from sin and reconciling it to God. To this end were its fasts, its ablutions, oblations, and sacrifices.

"But the blood of bulls, of rams and he-goats, cannot wash away guilt and atone for sin. The injunctions of the Jewish law were inadequate. By the deeds which that law enjoined no flesh could be justified. Those deeds could not purge the conscience and make the comers thereunto perfect. Christianity proposes itself as the sovereign remedy. It offers us the atonement. But what according to Christianity is the atonement? Through all religions you find runs the idea of sacrifice. Man has never felt it possible to atone for sin and gain the favor of God without a sacrifice. But the sacrifices enjoined by all religions previous to Christianity were insufficient, and could not secure the justification, much less the sanctification of the sinner. The sacrifice Christianity enjoins is therefore different in kind from that enjoined by any other religion. What it is may be inferred from a passage in the prophet Micah: 'Wherewith shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good. And what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? A just God can accept only the just, and to be reconciled to God we must come into harmony with him, possess in ourselves a godly spirit or disposition. The real sacrifice then enjoined by Christianity is a self-sacrifice. We are to present ourselves to God a living sacrifice. The literal death of Jesus, viewed as detached from its connexions and moral influence, does not either save us from our own guilt, or bring us into union with God. This the church has always asserted, in asserting that in order to effect our salvation there must be a practical application of the atonement. The individual must become really and personally holy, and then, and not till then, will God accept him, and blot out the remembrance of his transgression. This is the real Christian doctrine of atonement stated in its philosophical nakedness.

"But if you go back to the age in which the Gospel was first promulgated, you will readily perceive that the doctrine in this naked form could not have met its wants, nor in fact can it meet the want of the great majority of our own generation. The mass could not so refine upon the matter, nor appreciate a doctrine apparently so dry and abstract. Here

they were, tortured with guilt and trembling before a stern and inexorable Judge. What should they do? Assure us, say they, that God will pardon us. Mercy, mercy, we want mercy. Do you doubt? Behold then the cross. See there, nailed to the accursed tree, the Son of God. If God has not refused to give you up his only begotten and wellbeloved Son to die for you, shall he refuse to pardon you? Behold his infinite compassion for sinners, and dare trust his mercy.

"Go again with the doctrine of the atonement in its philosophic formula to the northern barbarians who overran the Roman empire, and talk to them of the necessity of personal holiness, and of being godlike in their dispositions; of the importance of self-sacrifice, and walking according to the rules of right reason, and what impression will you make? The spiritual nature in them is unawakened; they live in the senses and not in the spirit. Would you humanize them and purify and exalt their sentiments, you must have something to strike their imaginations, and touch their sensibility. Point your ruthless barbarian, on whose heart mercy has never gleamed, to the cross: let him see there a bleeding and agonizing God, a God dying that man might live, and his rough soul is touched, and tears stream down his weather-beaten cheeks. What a sinner am I, that I have caused God to come down and die on the cross that I might live!

"That the Christian doctrine of atonement might meet the wants of the human race, and be efficient in reconciling them to God, it was necessary that it should be presented in its symbolic form. It has been so presented, and well is it that it has been. Nevertheless, the church must suffer those of us who wish, to interpret the symbol. The death of Jesus is symbolic of the great fact, that sin is washed out and the atonement realized only by giving up ourselves to God, and by being ready, able, and willing to live and die for man as Jesus did. This great fact is what the church has always been striving after, and it has done it in the only way in which it has been able to do it. You must speak to men in their own language. You do not tell men the truth, when you undertake to tell it to them in a language of which they are ignorant.

"About the doctrine of regeneration, also, the Christian world has disputed. I conceive, however, that the matter may be easily settled. Pelagius recognised in man a certain

degree of ability to effect his own salvation. Saint Augustine denied human ability, and represented salvation as wholly of God.

"Now, on the one hand, man is unquestionably fallen, and has not the ability to recover himself. I am conscious that I am not sufficient to effect my own redemption. I feel the need of assistance. On the other hand, I am equally conscious that I possess some ability. I have two sources of recuperative energy, my reason and my will. My affections and tastes are corrupted, but I am still able to see the right and to will it. But this is not enough. Though I see the good, and resolve to pursue it, I am drawn by my lusts into sin. These are the facts of consciousness.

"Now what I want is, that my body should be brought into subjection to the law of my mind, that my affections and tastes should be so changed as to give me a relish for the food which endureth unto everlasting life. I may, as an unregenerate man, see the right, will it, and even do it, so far as its outward performance is concerned. But this is not enough. I must do it because I love it. God says, 'My son, give me thy heart.' I must delight in the law of the Lord, and find my meat and drink in doing his will. Now the change by which this effect is produced in me, is what I understand by regeneration. But this change I do not effect. It is effected by the Spirit of God. Yet not without my concurrence and cooperation. I am a complex being. On one side of my nature I am passive, and on the other I am active. In the fact of regeneration I both act and am acted upon. There is a concurrence of both powers,-the divine and the human. You may not be able to tell precisely where grace ends and human ability begins, but you must beware that you do not so interpret the one as to exclude the other.

"Other doctrines I would remark upon, but I have talked till I am tired. You will gather, from what I have said, my general views of Christian doctrines, and my method of investigating them. Beware of exclusiveness. Beware of denying. Seek always to comprehend. Know that the human mind never embraces unmixed falsehood, and cannot believe a pure absurdity. Range freely over all doctrines, analyze them all, and what you find in them which accords with human nature, as you find it in your own experience, or in the records of the race, hold fast and cherish, for it is the truth of God and profitable to man."

CHAPTER XXVII.-CONCLUSION.

I have now gone through with what I had to say respecting my intellectual struggles, in passing from infidelity to an unwavering belief in God and the supernatural origin of Christianity. I have detailed with some minuteness and with as much accuracy as I could, the various arguments and views by which my recovery was effected.

I have always felt myself greatly indebted to my friends, Mr. Howard and Mr. Morton, for the aid they afforded me. The one gave me an exemplification of Christianity in practical life, and won my love for it; the other showed me its foundation in my nature, and demonstrated its truth to my understanding. The more I pursued the course of reasoning Mr. Morton pointed out, the more clear and certain did the truth of Christianity appear to my mind; and I am now fully satisfied that every man who becomes acquainted with the laws of his own reason, and the wants of his own soul, must be convinced that the religion of Jesus is true and from God.

The effect of this change in my belief on the temper of my mind and my general disposition, I am satisfied has been salutary. I have had much to contend with since as well as before; the current of my life has never run smooth; I have ever been in a false position, and I have had trials the world has little suspected; but I have generally maintained a calm and equable frame of mind, and been able to bear my burdens without being overwhelmed. I have seen a Providence in all things, and have felt that all the events of this world, whether great or small, were under the control of a wise Governor, who would cause all things to work together for good. I have often had to stand alone, and to contend single-handed against my Christian brethren; but I have been sustained because I felt I was right, and that God would never abandon those who were faithful to conscience and duty. The heavens have often been obscured by thick clouds, and the light of day has been shut out; but I have never doubted that there were a bright sun and clear blue sky beyond.

As to the particular views which I have adopted, their general character may be gathered from the conversations of my friend and teacher Mr. Morton. I have not, however, adhered blindly to his opinions. In some respects I have modified them, and often I have chosen, where I adopted them, to express them in different terms. His great object