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felt so universally in witnessing theatrical representations, is never so intense and eager as when tragedy is performed; and many games, whose fascination seems to be irresistible, have the effect of absorbing those occupied in them so completely, as to occasion a deathlike stillness and solemnity. Books are sources of much enjoyment to large classes of mankind. But are we gay, when our attention is chained by some delightful author, and our hearts surrendered to his power? The enjoyment is rich, and never satiates; it is purely mental pleasure, and yet affords a transport which flows from no other gratifications. Yet surely there is no little seriousness implied in the application of thought and confinement of attention, which such reading supposes. Again, we experience a very high degree of the purest enjoyment, when we witness or hear some deeds of exalted goodness: but these are not moments of gaiety. A vast quantity of human enjoyment is drawn from the works of God: but on all those occasions, in which we taste this class of pleasures with keenest relish, we are as far from gaiety, as when we are engaged in prayer. The thoughts, when fixed in contemplation of the grandeur and beauty of natural scenery, acquire a seriousness approaching to melancholy. We gaze with ever increasing delight, but of a kind so allied to sadness, that persons who have recently sustained calamity, find no violent transition necessary to share in it, and often seem to be the more susceptible of it from that very circumstance.

One might go on through the whole circle of human enjoyments, and find that the highest, purest and best of them, all partake of the character of those which flow from religion, and have no more of the temper of gaiety

than they. The pleasures which are adapted most to the nature of man, as an intellectual and moral being, are not the light and superficial. Frivolity does not indicate the happiest state of which our minds are capable. Yet are not the joys of piety inconsistent with a proper degree of relish for those which are of a lower kind. Religion is far from being an enemy to innocent mirth and cheerfulness. It forbids not our participation in any of the satisfactions, for which God's goodness has furnished us with the means and the capacity. To the senses, as to the soul, it gives all the liberty which is compatible with the high purposes of our existence, and with true enjoyment. But its own peculiar pleasures are infinitely superior to the rest. To have tasted them, is to have known the highest delights to which our natures can attain. And these pleasures, unlike all others, never satiate, and never fail. The oftener we partake, the more is the relish for them increased. Not confined to any period or any condition of human life, they may be carried with us through the whole of our pilgrimage, and cheer us at its close. Nay more, they are here but begun to be enjoyed. They mingle with the last emotions of the departing spirit, and swell into rapture, increasing, as the ascending mind draws nearer and nearer the celestial choir and catches the melody of the angelic song.

One cause of the mistaken separation of piety and enjoyment, may be our having witnessed cases, in which religion appeared to convert its subject into a gloomy and miserable being. But we are to remember here, that the fault, in such instances, does not lie with religion itself, but in the false notions entertained of its nature and requirements. There may have been, in such persons, a

predisposition to gloom and melancholy, which would have made them equally as unhappy if they had been less religious; or they may have lived in neglect of God, till some heavy judgment came to break up their lethargy, and then God entered their minds for the first time in connexion with the most mournful thoughts; so that, long after the cause which produced it had passed away, this sadness and gloom remained, and in company with newly adopted religious views. In the largest number of cases of religious melancholy, the cause is to be found in false notions of the character of God, and of his will concerning his creatures. No one, who rightly apprehends the perfections of his Creator, or has been taught the truth as it is in Jesus, with any tolerable degree of correctness, can nourish a gloomy spirit by his piety. If there be a sovereign antidote to despondency, it is furnished by religion. That alone explains to us the mysteries of our being, and gives us a clue to guide the anxious and bewildered mind to a proper understanding of itself, and a quiet resignation to its lot. That alone affords to hope a basis, which cannot be shaken, and cannot be undermined.

But even allowing the most that is possible that some minds, of peculiar susceptibility, are made less cheerful, or even unhappy, by embracing religion. For one such instance, there are a hundred, who are infinitely more wretched for the want of it.. Not to piety are the discontents, the murmurings and envyings, the griping cares and gloomy disappointments, which are most fruitful sources of misery, to be traced. On the contrary, the darkest shades ever thrown over human life, by mistaken notions of religious duty, are not to be compared to those which

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are gathered by avarice, and hatred, and lust of sinful pleasures. More sensualists and worldlings have been driven by despair to suicide, than fanaticism, in its wildest delirium, ever counted among its victims.

Say not that the possession of piety is the prelude to the loss of happiness. Ask the traveller, who has seen mankind in all varieties of character and condition; ask the philosophical observer of human nature, who is accustomed to trace effects to their causes, and to search out the springs of conduct; ask the politician, whose business it is to understand our social condition, and provide for its evils; ask the wise men, of all classes, and all ages; ask the good men, who bless the world; ask the bad men, who are its curse; and, with one united testimony, they will bear witness to the fact, that the portion of our race exhibiting most signs of contentment, is that which bears the most evidences of religion.

A FALLACY EXPOSED.

Ir is with great reason contended that the theory of a double nature in Christ, implies a contradiction. For it makes the same being, at the same time, finite, and not finite. To this there is always one answer on the other side. "We may as well say of Christ, he is both God and man; as of man, he is both mortal and immortal." The fallacy lies here. The terms in the one case are not opposites; in the other they are so. opposed to immortal, in this use of the words. But God is opposed to man. The two natures cannot exist together, because that which the one implies is directly opposite to what the other implies.

Mortal is not

Man is mortal. Man is immortal. In the first proposition we affirm only, that man's present life has an end. In the second, do we affirm that man's present existence will not terminate? Surely not. We only affirm that he has another life, after this has terminated. Mortal and immortal are not then contradictory. Immortal does not signify "not mortal." It does not mean that man shall not die at all; but that he shall live again, though, being mortal, he must die once. He is both mortal and immortal. But if we were to say, he is mortal, and he is not mortal, using mortal each time in the same sense, we should do just what the Trinitarian does, when he says Christ was God and man,-assert a contradiction.

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Finite and infinite are opposites. There is no sense of infinite which is not contradictory of finite, but there is a sense of "immortal" which does not contradict " mortal;" and that is the only one in which we ever use the word. To affirm that Christ is God, is to affirm that he is an infinite being. To say of Christ, he is man, is to he is a finite being, that is, a being not infinite. Both he cannot be. Man may be mortal and immortal, because mortal means nothing which immortal excludes or denies. But Christ cannot be infinite and finite, because the two terms are not compatible-the one excludes and denies what the other implies. Immortal does not signify "not mortal," that is, "never to die," in this use of it; it only means, that having died, man shall rise again—that he has another interminable life-not that the present life shall not terminate. But the words God and man cannot be thus understood. They apply in no such manner as this. They are not compatible, like mortal and immortal, but incompatible, so that what is God cannot for that

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