produced by the truths contained in it in common with the liberal system, and in spite of the errors it embraces, and not by them. Does the truth, then, mingled with absurdity and falsehood, produce better effects than the truth simple and undefiled, as in the liberal system it is claimed to be? If it is the truth, held in common by the evangelical and liberal systems, which produces these good effects, why does not the liberal system alone produce the same effects? Allow me to suggest another solution. The evangelical system requires a stricter morality, enforced by more powerful motives. It adopts as its rule, the moral law unmitigated; and its sanctions, of eternal life and eternal death;-a law, which the opposite system regards as too strict, and as set aside or mitigated in accommodation to human frailty; and whose sanctions are regarded as nothing;-or as a salutary temporary discipline;-or as annihilation;-or as a matter of entire uncertainty. Now is it strange, that lax requisitions, and feeble, uncertain sanctions do not produce the strict and vigorous morality of the law of God. What would human laws avail, should expositors and judges say, 'Men are too wicked to allow of our interpreting the laws strictly; they must not be understood to mean exactly what they say, or to threaten exactly what they speak; perfect honesty, or truth, or purity, is not to be expected; a little fraud, and theft, and perjury, and violence, they allow, in accommodation to human weakness; and threaten the greater crimes with no punishment, or only a beneficial temporary discipline, or exile from the state, or-we know not what?'

Again, the evangelical system produces the best attendance on the public worship of God, and, of course, if the moral tendency of each were the same, that would produce the strictest and most general morality, which commanded, most extensively and deeply, the attention of men. That the doctrines of the evangelical system do this, is claimed as true by Witherspoon, in his day, in Scotland; and by Overton, as true in England; and is admitted by English Unitarian writ

ers, and denied by no one. It is also recently admitted in this country, as a matter of notoriety "which none will question." It is accounted for, it must be acknowledged, in a way not favorable to the moral tendency of evangelical sentiments. It is on the ground of the intolerable strictness of liberal preaching; so strict and terrifying, that few, besides the more pious and exemplary, can abide it. The whole pleasure-loving, voluptuous and dissipated community being driven, panic-struck by Unitarian denunciation, to the horns of the altar in evangelical churches; where, by "smooth preaching," and the hope of impunity in sin, their fears may be allayed, and their consciences quieted.*

The faith delivered to the saints produced revivals of religion. The preaching of it was attended with sudden anxieties, and deep convictions of sin, and sudden joy in believing, followed by reformation and a holy life. Nor was this the effect of miracles, or itself a miraculous event, in the common acceptation of the term. Miracles merely, produced no such effects. It was under the preaching of the word, that men were pricked in their hearts, and cried out, "Men and brethren, what shall we do to be saved?" And it was by the moral transformation which attended the apostolic answer to this question, and not by the power of miracles, that the Gospel defied opposition, and spread during the first three hundred years. There was no resisting it. Conviction attended the word, and a joyful obedience to the faith followed. The very chiefs of opposition exchanged their weapons of annoyance for the shield of faith, and the sword of the Spirit. And do not the same convictions of sin attend the preaching of the evangelical system; and does it not extend its victories in the same manner? By argument, merely, we convince few, and reclaim none. But there is an efficacy in evangelical preaching on the conscience and on the heart, against. which neither learning, nor talents, nor prejudice, nor wrath itself, afford effectual protection. Multitudes who virulently * See a pamphlet entitled "Smooth Preaching," written by a Unitarian.

hated, and verily thought that they ought to oppose evangelical doctrines and revivals of religion, have been convinced of their mistake and their sin; and have embraced, joyfully, the doctrines which they reviled. Many who preach the liberal system can bear witness, that they have lost, in this way, again and again, the very pillars of their societies. Defections of the same kind are frequent still, and clothe evangelical doctrines and revivals of religion with a terrifying power.

The faith delivered to the saints was efficacious in the sudden reformation of those who had been long under the dominion of vicious habits. The apostle enumerates the habits of crime which prevailed among Pagans; and then, writing to the church of Corinth, says, " And such were some of you." But, while the liberal system despairs, professedly, of any sudden reformation from vicious habits, as against the established laws of the moral world; and is unable to produce an instance in which a vicious person has been reformed by abandoning the evangelical, and adopting the liberal system; and while reformation from vicious habits is a rare event, if it exist at all, under liberal preaching; it is a frequent event for profligates, on abandoning their confidence in the liberal system and adopting the evangelical, to manifest a most salutary and abiding change of character and conduct. In almost all the revivals of religion which are now prevailing in our land, there are some to whom it may be said, "And such were some of you, but ye are washed," &c. Dr. Chalmers, who preached the liberal system twelve years, and after this the evangelical, says, "And here I cannot but record the effect of an actual, though undesigned, experiment, which I prosecuted for upwards of twelve years, among you. For the greater part of that time, I could expatiate on the meanness of dishonesty, on the villany of falsehood, on the despicable arts of calumny; in a word, upon all those deformities of character, which awaken the natural indignation of the human heart against the pests and

the disturbers of human society. Even at this time, I certainly did press the reformations of honor, and truth, and integrity, among my people; but I never once heard of any such reformations having been effected amongst them. If there was any thing at all brought about in this way, it was more than ever I got any account of. I am not sensible that all the vehemence with which I urged the virtues and the proprieties of social life, had the weight of a feather on the moral habits of my parishioners. And it was not till I got impressed by the utter alienation of the heart, in all its desires and affections, from God; it was not till reconciliation to him became the distinct and the prominent object of my ministerial exertions; it was not till I took the scriptural way of laying the method of reconciliation before them; it was not till the free offer of forgiveness through the blood of Christ was urged upon their acceptance; and the Holy Spirit, given through the channel of Christ's mediatorship to all who ask him, was set before them as the unceasing object of their dependence and their prayers; it was not, in one word, till the contemplations of my people were turned to these great and essential elements in the business of a soul providing for its interest with God, and the concerns of its eternity; that I ever heard of any of those subordinate reformations which I aforetime made the earnest and the zealous, but I am afraid, at the same time, the ultimate object of my earlier ministrations."*

The faith delivered to the saints produced a spirit of missions. On the day of Pentecost the number of disciples was one hundred and twenty. And on that day the scales of Jewish prejudice fell from their eyes; and the spirit of missions descended upon their hearts; and, in three hundred. years, without colleges, or theological seminaries, or the press, or governmental aid, but in opposition to its dire hostility, they evangelized the world. And are not the great move

* Chalmers' Farewell Discourse addressed to his parishioners of Kilmany, in his series of Discourses, pp. 110, 111, 112.

ments now making to evangelize the world, conducted chiefly under the auspices, and by the charities of those, who adopt substantially the evangelical system? Are not all the denominations in the world, who believe in the Divinity of Christ and his atonement, in the depravity of man and his need of a moral renovation by the Spirit, and in the doctrine of justification by faith, and future eternal punishment, more or less engaged in the work of missions? And is there, in the wide world, a denomination which rejects these doctrines, that is thus engaged? And is this system, which does nothing to evangelize the world, the Gospel; and that, which Idoes all that is done in accordance with the efforts of the primitive church, not the Gospel?

The faith delivered to the saints produced a piety of great solemnity, and ardor, and decision. It was a piety which took delight in the public worship of God, and in frequent private association for religious conference and prayer; a piety, which included a deep solicitude, and made vigorous exertions for the conversion of sinners, and experienced peculiar joy in the event; a piety, which espoused openly the cause of Christ, encountered obloquy and the loss of all things, and stood undaunted in the face of danger, and produced joy unspeakable in the hour of death. And is not this, precisely, the same cast of piety which the evangelical system does, and which the liberal system does not, produce? Is not the deeply serious cast of the one regarded as constituting the evangelical a gloomy religion; and the lighter cast of the other, as giving to it vastly the preference on the score of cheerfulness? Is not the ardor of the one stigmatized as enthusiasm; and the cool, deliberate, intellectual cast of the other regarded as giving to it the enviable pre-eminence of a rational religion? Does not the one delight in, and the other deprecate, frequent voluntary associations for religious conference and prayer? Does not the one ridicule the supposed work of sudden conversion by the Spirit of God, and the other hold it in the highest estimation?