THE DYING BELIEVER TO HIS SOUL. Deathless principle, arise; Shudder not to pass the stream: See the haven full in view! See, they throng the blissful shore. Miscellaneous. MEN ANSWERABLE FOR THEIR BELIEF AND OPINIONS. The last number of "Littell's Museum of Foreign Literature, Science and Art," contains the "British Critic's" Review of "Dr Chalmers' Bridgewater Treatise." This is a very able article, and we have been tempted to make several extracts from it. We must, however, for the present, content ourselves with the following. We are happy to see that there is one piece of most egregious absurdity and dishonesty, which Dr. Chalmers has taken in hand, and fairly shaken to pieces. Nothing is more common than to hear the gentlemen of "liberal ideas" proclaiming that our belief is wholly independent of our will; and nothing can possibly be better adapted than this notable aphorism for the convenience of those great men, who are impatient of the house of bondage; namely, the precinct of certain ancient, but very incommodious opinions. These opinionssay they may, perhaps, be very just; but if a man finds himself unable to adopt them, how is he to help himself? His persuasions are utterly beyond his own control; how, therefore, can it ever be supposed that they will enter into the account which he has to render as a moral agent? And how beautifully is the problem of our moral probation simplified, by the rejection of this most untractable and most perplexing element? Unfortunately, however, for the glorious liberty of these children of light, there is one momentous consideration, which, somehow or other, they have chanced to overlook. It may be true that our belief is frequently beyond the actual power of the will. But who shall venture to affirm that belief is beyond the jurisdiction of the will? It happens, too often, that our passions and our conduct are beyond the power of conscience; but our passions and our conduct assuredly are not beyond the jurisdiction of conscience. "If conscience" -says Butler-" had power, as it has right, it would govern the world." In like manner, where the will has been enfeebled or depraved, it may have but little influence in the formation of sound opinions. But how does it follow from this, that the will has no legitimate authority or influence in the matter? We have no doubt whatever, that any man, who has long been the slave of a licentious imagination, or a wayward understanding, is as much disqualified for the office of sound intellectual judgment, as a man who has long been in fetters is disqualified for natural freedom of motion. But what could be more ridiculous than to hear one of Jack Falstaff's ragged knaves, "that marched wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves on," laughing at the rest of the king's subjects, for the ludicrous and undignified suppleness of their muscles? The truth of the matter is, that these choice spirits, who despise the herd of mankind for their flexible acquiescence in established notions, are themselves, very frequently, in a state of pitiable restraint and servitude. Perhaps they know it not; but they are, nevertheless, the slaves of passion, or the dupes of prejudice, or the victims of mental effeminacy and indolence; and this, too, while they are scornfully curling their lip at the servility of their fellow creatures. And the way in which their slavery hath come upon them, is no other than this; that, by long disuse, their will has lost one of its most legitimate prerogatives, its control over the attention, -its power to fix their thoughts intently upon the evidence which lies within their reach. When this power is gone, what is the man but a slave?—a slave, that has abjured the dominion of his lawful governor, only to be enthralled to many masters, and, possibly, to a succession of masters. That this is so, is made abundantly manifest by Dr. Chalmers: "Attention" he says-" is the looking organ of the mind,—the link of connexion between man's moral nature and his intellectual nature, -the messenger, as it were, by which the interchange between these two departments is carried on,-a messenger, too, at the bidding of the will, which saith to it, at one time, go, and it goeth-at another time, come, and it cometh-and, again, do this, and it doeth it. It is thus that man becomes directly responsible for the conclusions of his understanding: for these conclusions depend altogether, not on the evidence which exists, but on that portion of the evidence which is attended to. He is not to be reckoned with, either for the lack or the sufficiency of the existent evidence; but he might most justly be reckoned with for the lack or sufficiency of his attention. It is not for him to create the light of day; but it is for him to open and present his eye to all its manifestations. Neither is it for him to fetch down to earth the light from the upper Sanctuary. But if it indeed be true that light hath come from thence into the world, then it is for him to guide the eye of the understanding towards it." And the philosophy of the whole matter is summed up in the words of Uncreated Wisdom. He that searches into the will of God, with a desire and a resolution to do it, shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God. It is idle, then, to talk of belief as something entirely independent of the will; almost as idle as it would be to talk of the conduct as something independent of the conscience. It may indeed happen, and it perpetually does happen, that both the will and the conscience exercise their authority but languidly and irregularly. But in proportion as this is so, man falls beneath the dignity, aye, and beneath the freedom of his nature: for he is then transferred from a rightful government to the capricious tyranny of usurpers. The precise extent of the abuse, and the exact degree of guilt which may attach to it, in each particular case, is a matter of course too deep for mortal inquisition. This must be left to Him who searcheth the thoughts of our hearts. All that we contend for is, that there is herein a responsibility which man cannot abjure; and if he attempts to abjure it, he attempts to absolve himself from one of the conditions of his being. By his opinions (as well as by his actions and his words) shall he be justified, and by his opinions shall he be condemned. CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. The article, of which the following is a translation, appears in the Archives du Christianisme of the 9th Nov. last, under the title of ETUDES CHRETIENNES-Christian Studies. The editor of this excellent religious journal, says in a note, "It is an experience which a Christian imparts to his brethren. It is not an article of doctrine, but a history of his impressions, which he offers to our readers." This article has been read by us with much interest, and we hope not without some profit. It appears to manifest a deep knowledge of experimental piety; and it is with unfeigned pleasure we find that such views and feelings have an existence and a currency among our Christian brethren in Francenotwithstanding the Popery, Infidelity, and Unitarianism, which are still prevalent in that country. We are not prepared to say that we entirely approve of every expression contained in this article; or of the representation of the uniformity which the pious author seems to intimate will be found, in the method of the Lord's dealing with his people, in the process of their sanctification-That dealing we believe is exceedingly various. Yet the writer's experience is, we doubt not, that which many a practical Christian, and, we trust, a number of our readers, will recognise, as, in a great measure, the counterpart of their own. A NARRATIVE. After long reflection, and a very attentive examination of the evidences of the Christian religion, the individual who writes this narrative, embraced the promises of the gospel. He was decidedly a Christian in intellect, and sometimes he seemed to himself to be so in heart. He felt himself longing after Jesus Christ; the world, without Jesus Christ, appeared to him a desert, and death a bottomless abyss; every thing, in society and in life, appeared to him false and deceptive, except as connected with the relation established by the Redeemer between God and the creature, and between man and man. He could no longer see in those devoted to the world, any thing but wretched wanderers; and their condition sometimes excited in him the most sensible pity. He could have no satisfaction without seeing Jesus Christ known, adored, and served; and he joyfully devoted himself to the propagation of Christian truth. I will say nothing in this place of the defects of his faith and his life; this does not fall in with my design. At a particular time, his mind took a powerful turn towards painful and humiliating recollections. He saw, in a new light, old sins, over which so many others had passed, that his memory could not advert to them all. He called into lively remembrance, the time when the belief of gratuitous salvation penetrated his very soul; and that this belief then appeared to him most necessary-to him, beset by so many recollections, full of remorse. That omnipotent mercy which annulled, by a single act, all those enormous iniquities, without leaving a single one to remain standing to his charge, had seemed to him most admirable; he viewed it as his encouraging duty, simply to receive this inconceivable mercy, not to dispute with it—not to seek to be more just than God. He, at that time, repressed, as an evil suggestion, every internal motion whose tendency was to fashion again, out of the man of grace, the old man of the law. In a word, he then took his resolution to rely on grace-solely and completely on grace. And when, from time to time, the remembrance of his aggravated sins was productive of remorse, he sought to drown them in the abyss of mercy; where, according to his conviction, all the sins of his past life were irrevocably plunged. Nevertheless, he had remarked with a degree of surprise, but without giving it due attention, that these recollections of his sins produced in him a sort of inquietude, very much like that which worldly men experience, in the view of their transgressions, without a remedy and without a Saviour an inquietude which subsisted, by a strange contradiction, in direct opposition to the fullest conviction of the mercy of God; in direct opposition even to a thoroughly reasoned system, by which he was persuaded that nothing is more necessary for man, nothing more worthy of God, nothing more favourable to the cultivation of holiness, than the plan of mercy accomplished by Jesus Christ. But on the late occasion referred to, the inexorable challenges of the soul by the soul itself, became more distinct; the recollection of his sins presented them to him with a deformity he had never seen in them before; he was astonished, as one that has made a new discovery; the texture of his whole life was laid open to his inspection; he saw his nature entirely penetrated by, entirely steeped in, entirely made up of iniquities; and those words of Hamlet came into his mind, "I have more sins ready to be committed than I have reflection to think of, imagination to give them form, or time to perpetrate them." Then, with more force than ever, sin, with its natural echo, condemnation, sounded in his ears, with confused but terrible menaces; and without indulging a doubt of the mercy of God, through the perfect satisfaction offered by Jesus Christ, he felt the terrors of judgment-in a word, it seemed as if, though God had pardoned him, he could not pardon himself.* Sin, at that moment, was exhibited to his mind as a continued act, and as an integral part of his being-inseparable from that being. Himself, in all the emphasis the term can receive, was the entire of what he had been during . . .. years of his existence; the entire of his past life, which was so incorporated with him as not to be detached; This, and what follows, reminds us of what we have heard told of the eminently pious and distinguished JOHN LIVINGSTON, of Scotland. The anecdote is, that on a review of his religious exercises, he thought he had never had that pungent sense of the evil and awful desert of sin, which he thought desirable; and in consequence of this, he earnestly prayed that God would give him to see and feel the guilt and desert of sin, more sensibly than he had ever yet experienced. His prayer was answered beyond his expectations, or his wishes. For two or three days-if we rightly recollecthe had such perceptions of the awful guilt and desert of his sins, as filled him with a horror and remorse that all but overwhelmed him. He said he should never repeat such a prayer, as that which was thus answered.-ED. CH. Adv. and he could not conceive of himself as separable from his sin, more than of the soul as separable from the body, or extension from matter, or form from sensible objects. He could not rid himself of it, he could not strip it off, it was a complete whole, making up the history of himself, as he appeared before God. And yet no distinct idea of punishment presented itself to his mind; no view of futurity beyond the tomb opened on his mental vision; he scarcely looked in that direction at all; his feeling of punishment was internal; he experienced as by anticipation something of the gnawings "of the worm that never dies." In one word (for why should I strive to express it better?) it was as if, though assured of the pardon of God, he could not pardon himself. In the midst of these strange commotions of the soul, his conviction of every truth of Christianity remained the same, and all the indistinct objections which sometimes occurred could not weaken his faith; and he therefore believed that he ought not to regard the mental exercise described above, as a temptation from beneath, but as an admonition from on high. He had no difficulty to grant from the very first, that the state of his mind was full of contradiction; that the call and promises of grace received from his terrors, however involuntary, a formal contradiction; and that for the time being, consistency no longer existed in his thoughts and feelings, and that it behooved him to consider how, with God's assistance, it might be re-established. He afterward considered, that in the work of redemption, whether we view it on the cross, from which it derives its power, or in conversion, which shows its development, there are two constituent elements, which are indissoluble, and each of which has an equal demand to be satisfied. As the image of the old man, Christ was crucified on Calvary; as the image of the new man, he gloriously ascended to heaven; but it was necessary to die, in order to rise to glory. Conversion is the reproduction, in succession, of these two states. The convert is first crucified in his heart, and afterwards glorified in his heart. In the same heart, by a change of region, so to speak, he finds hell and heaven; but he cannot enter the region of heaven, without having tasted of hell. My meaning is, he must first have tasted the unmingled bitterness of justice, in order to relish afterward all the sweetness of mercy. There can be no true foretaste of the latter, without some knowledge of the former. God might, without doubt, have so ordered, that, struck with the charms of his love, drawn irresistibly by the attractions of his promises, you might have passed, with scarcely an intervening step, under the complete reign of grace. It may be, that for certain reasons known to his wisdom-perhaps for the best interest of your soul and of his government-he may have dealt with you in this manner. But it is necessary that, sooner or later, you return to the wilderness, to finish the period of your trial-suspended, perhaps, at the beginning of your Christian course. There is no other way into the kingdom of incorruptible justice. If you have not been sufficiently affected with sorrow for your sins, if you have not been duly alarmed on account of them, if you have not had a sufficient sense of their greatness-a greatness measured by the love to which they have been opposed-all this must be gone over again and repeated. So long as "all that is just has not been accomplished," expect to see your sins continually rising up before you; expect-you who have been pardoned, you who have been redeemed-to pass through something like the agonies of condemnation. The work of redemption would not be as |