Mohammedan, and Christian, have taken their

stand.

Picked passages may thus be made to furnish all that is wanted to warrant the rancour and presumption of the malign religionist. But how poorly will he defend himself when the great and unalterable principles of biblical religion are duly brought together, and are made to bear in harmony upon the heart! The effect then is altogether of an opposite kind; so much so, that even the enemies of the Gospel have been compelled to confess that our Bible is the fountain of compassion, the rule of benignity, and the very doctrine of meekness. That such is indeed the fact, may be sustained first in the mode of a comprehensive statement of principles; and then in the method of a careful induction of specific instances. The importance of the subject will justify our pursuing, for a while, both these lines of proof.

We have then to make good, first on general grounds, the affirmation that the Religion of the Bible is not of fanatical tendency.

When the delusions of a depraved self-esteem are thoroughly dispelled, so that moral and spiritual objects affect, as they ought, the conscience of a man, then, what before acted as the excitement of spurious zeal, or as the occasion of malevolence, takes salutary possession of the mind, and produces the mild fruits of piety and charity.

Thus, for example, if the awful justice of God be truly understood as the necessary condition of that purity which is essential to the Divine Nature, and as a mode only of Sovereign Benevolence, then an inference from this truth comes home with weight upon the personal consciousness of guilt; and he who thus sees his own peril in the light of the divine justice, is thenceforth mainly occupied with those emotions of shame and fear, which are proper to a culprit. The wish to make a vindictive application of the same truth to others (though it be applicable) is forgotten, or becomes abhorrent to the soul. This surely is not a mere refinement, or an evasion of the difficulty. If the fearful retributive energy of the Divine Character be a truth, and a prime truth of Scripture, upon whom does it bear?Upon all transgressors, without exception, and therefore upon each singly." But I am such," says the now convicted man, "and to me God is terrible, inasmuch as He has the power and the determination to punish sin." The entire current of ideas is in this manner turned, when once a belief of personal danger has been thoroughly awakened; and so it happens that the man who, yesterday, was hurling thunderbolts at his fellows, and exulting in the displays of divine displeasure, may now be seen prostrate, as in the dust, and unmindful of every thing but his own peril. Nothing more is needed to bring about so great a change, but that the

Divine attributes should be truly understood in the relation they bear to personal responsibility.

Pursuing the same path, we come to the second excitement of religious malevolence, as before enumerated; that is to say-The universal corruption of human nature, and the actual guilt of all men. But is it true that this pravity is of a spiritual kind, and does it affect the depth of the human heart? Then—a spiritual knowledge of the doctrine implies a vivid and expanded CONSCIOUSNESS of the fact, as the moral condition of the individual. To an enlightened conscience this personal knowledge of the evil bias of the heart, is nothing less than an interpretation, viva voce, of the Scripture doctrine of the corruption of human nature. Mankind at large is spiritually abominable in no other sense than that in which "I am so;" and a close and serious familiarity with the subject seldom fails to impart to each mind an impression, as if the corruption of the individual heart were more deep and deplorable than that of others. "If other men are objects of the divine displacency -I much more;" such, whether in fact true or not, is the language (in very many cases) of genuine contrition. But this introversion of feeling places the dogma altogether on another footing than it might before have occupied. Will there remain in a bosom that entertains these emotions of shame and compunction

any residue of arrogance or of malice towards the mass of mankind, because sharers in the same depravity? Surely not. On the contrary, a tender sympathy, a patient forbearance, and the liveliest zeal of benevolence are found to consist with the feeling of personal humiliation.-The fanatic, with his misanthropy and his scorn, is quite shut out.-He-infatuated man-knows nothing of himself, and therefore has no indulgence for others. Let the doctrine of the corruption of human nature be expounded as it may, or even in some sense exaggerated, it will remain innoxious, so long as it thoroughly penetrates the soul that receives it; the principle becomes poisonous, only when thrown out and suffused.

The constituent motives of genuine contrition seal the exclusion of arrogance from the heart of the penitent, even when a hope of the special favour of God is entertained with the utmost distinctness. If it be true, as the Scriptures affirm, that this favour towards individuals is absolutely free-if it comes irrespectively of original merit, and if the continuance of the temper of humiliation is the fixed condition upon which a consciousness of it is granted to the believer, then nothing can be felt, in looking at home, but simple gratitude; and no emotion indulged, in looking abroad, but the desire that others should partake of boons of which all have equal need, and of which none can claim to be worthy.

The lurking notion on which the fanatic builds his self-gratulations, when he glances at the herd of men, is that they are, by the stern law of some intrinsic disqualification, for ever excluded from the hope of participating in the divine favour. His arrogance is of a patrician sort; and he would fain persuade himself that an eternal impossibility bars the access of others to the narrow ground he occupies. But the CHRISTIAN-taught from the Bible, learns a lesson the very reverse of this.-Commissioned and enjoined, as he is, to invite " ALL MEN, every where to repent and believe the Gospel," exclusiveness of feeling is denied him; nor can he harbour that grudging of grace, which distinguishes the fanatic. Are the blessings of Christianity actually enjoyed only by few? alas, but the Christian (by plain inference from his principles) is taught to impute it to himself and his associates, as a fault that such is the fact. Far from thinking himself entitled to rest inertly upon the sunny spot of Heavenly favour where he reclines, he knows himself to be bound to take no ease until his neighbournay until all men obtain a share in his privilege. If, at a first glance, it might seem that the peculiarity of the Gospel gives sanction to fanatical presumption, we can no longer think so when we recollect the solemn responsibility laid upon all Christians to propagate their faith by the mild methods of instruction. How is

Yes