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weapon can penetrate, wrapped in a covering which no hand can remove. The Spirit of God which alone gives efficacy to any means, operates through the medium of truth; but by them the force of truth is evaded, and its direct application turned aside. The longer, therefore, self delusion is practised, and the appeals and searching messages of the gospel are reristed, the greater the danger that the Spirit will be grieved, and the individuals given up to obduracy and blindness.

2. Another source of fear, that those who are in the visible church will never truly turn to God, is found in the alarming truth, that the perversion of serious and solemn things has a tendency to produce peculiar hardness of heart and searedness of conscience.

A professor of religion, to be at all consistent, to hold a respectable standing among his fellow Christians, must daily engage in the performance of many holy duties. He must use the language of prayer. He must worship where Gabriel bows. He must meet the eye of God. He must speak unto the great King. He must read his word; attend upon the sacraments, and become conversant with scenes of awful interest. All this will exert an ameliorating influence upon a sanctified heart, and produce the happiest impression upon a pious mind. But no such results will follow where all is carnal and dead. The spirituality and the interest of the duties serve only to increase the insensibility of the conscience, and the sacredness of the subjects discussed and listened to, destroys the excitability of moral feeling. By becoming familiar with awful truths and hypocritically going through with solemn duties, the tenderness and

purity of the soul are sullied and lost; religion is reduced to a cold and spiritless set of forms and ob

servances.

3. Nor is this all. God is particularly offended with insincerity in the performance of religious duties. He "abhors the sacrifice where not the heart is found." There are frequent and unequivocal indications in the Bible of his displeasure against hollowness in Christian profession. The religion of the gospel is a spiritual religion. God is a spirit, and they that worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth. He requireth truth in the inward parts. Where sincere and supreme love doth not reign, he will not accept the offering. His eye penetrates every fold of insincerity that covers, every unreal appendage that setts off, the performance of duty. How great the hazard then of provoking him to say, as in the case of his ancient people, To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? The new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with: it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting: and when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers I will not hear.

I will only add, in the conclusion, if there are any in the visible church, in greater danger than others, they are those who are so little acquainted and impressed with the deceitfulness of the heart, and are so little alarmed at the idea of deception, as not to feel deep solicitude, and to institute the most faithful self-examination, and to endeavour if possible to gain some new evidence of a vital union to the Lord Jesus Christ.

M. M.

ON THE NATURE OF PROVIDENCE.

I STRUCK a young sapling with my axe it was parted: the top fell on the ground to perish, while the trunk and root still remained in their place to vegetate. The tree was parted this event took place in the creation of God, and under his superintending providence. The question is raised, whether the providence of God, in regard to this event, was mediate, or immediate. Was the tree parted by the axe and the axe wielded by me, so that the providence which rendered sure my volition, rendered sure, through these mediate causes, the parting of the tree or was the tree parted by the immediate efficiency of the Creator; my arm and the axe wielded by his immediate efficiency? They who maintain that providence is immediate, affirm the latter; they who maintain that it is mediate, affirm the former. Which are in the right ?

The tree was parted by the immediate agency of God: What is this? I can resolve it into nothing else, consistently with the notion of immediate agency in all things, than this; that God, at the instant before the parting of the tree, created it whole; at the instant of its parting, created it in two parts ; and then created the two parts in two places, as many times as the two parts changed their relative positions in the fall of the top to the ground. He created it in two parts, instead of continuing to create it whole this is his immediate agency in its parting. But how was the axe wielded by his immediate agency? That was constantly created in all the positions it occupied ; an instant before the parting of the tree, by the side of the tree; at the parting, between the two parts of the tree. I say nothing of the motion of my arm, for that is to be explained in the same way. My volition; that was immediately created, and just before these

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changes in the successive creations of the axe, in the successive creations of the tree.*

On the other hand, when the tree is said to be parted by means, it is meant that the application of the axe was a physical force, which of itself was sufficient to part the tree! so of the application of the arm to the axe, and that my volition was a cause sufficient to account for the motion of my arm; and that my existence, with that superintending providence which offered the inducement, was sufficient to account for my volition. Here is casuality and power in created things: on the other view there is none.

I think both views are rendered sufficiently clear for examining the question; which view is correct?

On either view, it is obvious, that if we spoke of the providence of God, truth would require us to say that God parted the tree: and also, if the parting of it occasioned any injury or benefit to any one, to say that God did the evil, or that God did the good. If God were

to inspire any one to speak of his providence in this instance, the prophet must use this same lan

*The notion of immediate efficiency as maintained by Malebranche, in his "La Recherche de la Verite," I know, is somewhat different from this definition. Yet as it involves the absence of all casuality in created things, and refers every change to the direct efficiency of the Deity, on created things, I see not why the theory, pushed to its legitimate results, comes not to the above given view. If what is called external things are mere occasions on which the Deity gives efficiently to the mind, its perceptions and volitions, and if these perceptions and volitions, thus given, are the mere occasions on which he efficiently gives to matter its motions, where I ask, does any occasion exist for the Deity efficiently to operate, but in the direct result of an immediate preceding efficient operation of his own? Must not the things themselves therefore as well as the changes in them, be the products of immediate creative efficiency? At least, the theory is pushed to these legitimate results of it by theologians at the present day.

guage; God parted the tree; God did the evil; God did the good. Were the prophet to say this, and were he to call on the person who experienced this evil or good, to shew corresponding submission or gratitude, all would apply to a providence that is mediate. We could infer nothing from his language respecting the question: which view is correct?

The question still returns: which view is correct? No one infers any thing else than a mediate providence from his observation of facts. Mechanical power in the axe parted the tree: muscular strength wielded the axe. This is plain and intelligible: and the conviction of it always arises on observing the facts. God created the tree whole at one instant: at the next he created it in two parts: no one ever comes to this conclusion, by observing a tree when it falls under the axe: it must result from a process of abstract reasoning.

The process of reasoning relied on for the conclusion that providence is immediate, is defective. God created all things, is the premise: therefore it is concluded, acts of constant creation account for all changes. God immediately created iron therefore he immediately created the axe : does this follow? The advocate of a mediate providence constructs as good a syllogism, and one that is more consistent with observation, when he says God created all things originally, and upholds them, with their various powers; these established powers, together with his interpositions, account for the changes.*

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*I will quote, for your readers, a passage from Brown on the philosophy of the Human Mind, who has most ably confuted the theory of Malebranche.

"That the Deity, in this sense, as the Creator of the world,and willer of all those great ends, which the laws of the universe accomplish,-is the author of the

The inspiration of the prophets was an act of immediate providence. God produced in their minds immediately the perception and belief of certain truths. This implies that his common providence, in this respect, is mediate. How else shall we make this distinction? God creates immediately the perception and belief of a certain truth in the prophet: he creates as immediately, the advocate of an immediate providence says, the perception and belief of a certain proposition, in me which, I ask then, is the revelation? Some people think and believe very differently from the prophets whose thoughts are most immediately derived from the Fountain of knowledge?

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The Holy Spirit excites to all holy desires, by his influences. The advocate of immediate providence asserts, that all desires holy or unholy, are immediately created of God. What room, then, is there for the peculiar influences of the Spirit in regard to those which are holy? A mediate providence accounts for the occasion: an immediate one, excludes it altogether. Which view of providence is correct?

Our fathers believed in a mediate providence and they are not to be despised, either for their talents, their piety, or their diligent study of divine truth. "God in his ordinary providence maketh use of means, yet is free to work without, above, and against them at pleasure." "By his providence, he ordereth [all things] to fall out according to the

physical changes which take place in it, is then most true, as it is most true also that the same Power, who gave the universe its laws, can, for the particular purposes of his providence, vary these at pleasure. But there is no reason to suppose that the objects which he has made surely for some ends, have, as made by him, no efficacy, no power of being instrumental to his own great purpose merely because whatever power they can be supposed to have, must have been derived from the Fountain of all power."Lect. xxx.

nature of the second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently." According to their view, the blow of the axe parted the tree by mechanical force, "necessarily ;" the contraction of the muscle of the arm that wielded it was caused by a choice of the mind, "freely;" and the volition itself took place in consequence of my power of choice and the inducements which surrounded me at the time, "contingently."

An immediate providence resolves all the changes transpiring into one simple cause, the continued creating agency of God. Acts of creation are repeated, in regard to each minutest thing in the whole universe, at every infinitessimal of time. But is the universe thus constantly twinkling in and out of existence? Or, does the continued existence of a thing resolve itself necessarily into more than one original act giving it existence? Does not the iron composing the axe exist with its properties in consequence of the original act of creation ?

In all our observations in regard to power, we are brought to this conclusion; that the effect of it always remains, until it is destroyed by counteracting power. The axe once sharpened by me, continued so, till the accident which befel it, in striking upon a rock after it parted the tree. The body moved at A, passes through the line B, indef

* Confession of Faith of the Colony of Connecticut.

initely, until it is impeded by resisting power at C. Why shall we not say that the effect of creative power remains, until it is destroyed by annihilating power; or that what the Creator wills to be, continues to be, until he wills it not to be?

An act of creation repeated at each infinitessimal of time! What is this? From the moment I raised the axe till it parted the tree, a space of time elapsed, which like the line described by its motion, is infinitely divisible. But because you can divide time into portions, does it follow that substance itself requires a corresponding succession of creative efforts to give it prolonged existence? Why may not prolonged existence be the effect of the first creative effort? Has time itself any causality to destroy a substance, that it should occasion this new demand on omnipotence? These questions deserve deep pondering.

I ask the advocate of immediate efficiency, what exists? I believed that I wielded an are against the tree. But that belief was immediately created: but if the belief was directly infused by creating power, I have no evidence of the real existence of any substances which I call myself, the axe, the tree. There is nothing of which I am sure but the created belief. Nothing exists but certain mental perceptions. With one breath the material universe is swept away into a bare mental perception. Why not the being of God himself, by the same process? O. Fi

MISCELLANEOUS COMMUNICATIONS.

INFLUENCE OF NERVOUS DISORDERS UPON RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE.

THOUGH metaphysicians and physiologists may not be able to decide what particular bodily organ is the seat of the soul, yet all agree VOL. I.-No. IV.

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in admitting the existence of an intimate sympathy between the corporeal and intellectual powers. Nothing exhibits this mutual connection and dependence more clearly than disease. How soon is a vigorous frame broken down by the

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ravings of insanity, or the tumult of excited passions! And how often is the giant mind shorn of its strength, and reduced to the feebleness of infancy, through the influence of its disordered and enfeebled tenement! We know indeed, that there are instances in which this influence seems to be but partially felt. These cases, however, can be regarded only as the exceptions to a general law.

The nervous system is evidently the medium of communication between mind and matter. For no sensation can exist exist where the nerves are destroyed: and without sensation we could have no idea of external objects. Hence, then, we might conclude that in those bodily disorders in which the nerves are but slightly affected, the mind would retain its vigour : whereas those complaints whose origin or seat is in the nerves, must affect the mind in a correspondent degree. And these conclusions are confirmed by experience.

Now there is a class of maladies, very prevalent at this day, that are termed nervous diseases,* because their origin is either in the nervous system, or the nerves are powerfully affected. And so great is their influence upon the mind, that a majority of mankind, who have not studied their nature, or felt their power, regard them as mere mental weakness or aberration. To these disorders, to their effects upon the mind, we wish, in this place, to call the attention of the reader. Yet it is not the object of this paper to consider all their relations to mental operations, except so far as will illustrate this particular point,

*In strict medical language, we suppose apoplexy, palsy, epilepsy, &c. are called nervous diseases, but we use the term in its more popular sense to denote

those chronic complaints in which the nerves and the digestive organs are chiefly affected.

viz. the influence of nervous diseases upon religious experience.

We deem it necessary, however, for a reason to which we have alluded, to make some preliminary remarks, before entering directly upon this subject.

It is customary with very many in society, even of the intelligent and discerning, to treat nervous diseases as imaginary complaints, which are better cured by ridicule and severity, than by medical prescription. Perceiving that persons affected with these complaints are subject to great depression of spirits, and much disposed to regard their case as worse than it is; those who enjoy firm health, are led to impute all to imagination; and to say it is spleen, or hypochondriasis, or hysterics, or vapours; terms to which no very definite idea is attached. And in order to cure such complaints, these persons think it necessary only to divert the attention of the patient from himself, and convince him that he has no disorder upon him, and that he will be well enough, if he leaves off attention to diet and regimen, and eats, and drinks, and lives, like other folks. Others, who have seen somewhat more of nervous complaints, suppose that they indicate some slight derangement of the system, which needs only a little additional exercise to correct. But they have no idea that these complaints, like other disorders, have usually a regular course from one stage to another, until, if unchecked, they terminate in dissolution.

That such are the views of a large portion of mankind on this subject is undeniable. But are these views correct? We have no hesitation in stating decisively, that nervous diseases are as real as any other; that they are not merely mental hallucinations; but that the particular affections of the mind

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