remembers, compares, judges. The moral nature embraces his feelings or affections, of which are love, generosity, meekness, condescension, courage, fidelity, gentleness, &c. It is in respect to these two natures that man is created in the Divine image. For God has revealed himself as a Being who sees, remembers, and judges; who is possessed of generosity, faithfulness, condescension, love. It is, then, to regulate these natures, and through them the corporeal or animal, that we are provided with the written law of God-prescribing what lessons we should learn, what knowledge we should seek, what noble and virtuous principles we should foster; what objects we should love, in order to render us as happy as the capacity of our nature will admit. Not only the law, then, but all the penalties designed to secure it from violation, proceed from the same source-the benevolence or philanthropy of God. He hates, denounces, and punishes sin, the transgression of this law, because he loves man, and would preserve him from self-destruction. Nay, in willing our sanctification in body, soul, and spirit; in desiring that all our powers and faculties be subordinated to unerring principles of rectitude adapted to our nature and condition, he wills our highest happiness.

According to our present organization, then, sin has a natural tendency to produce misery. But, as I before intimated, we cannot by our reasonings acquire a true knowledge of its nature. Would we know what it is, we must be acquainted with what it does; as we recognize, by its effects, the lightning which has rifted the tall cedar or the knotted oak. Verbal explanations and definitions can only refer us to the thing itself, and this we discover, alas! only by its fatal effects. If a man put his hand into the fire, he disregards indeed the laws of his animal frame; but we see and understand the nature of the act by its unhappy consequences. Sin then, in fact, is fear, pain, sorrow, and anguish, revenge, ignorance, idolatry, hatred, murder, death. * * It is the catalogue of all the woes of mortality. The history of all the misfortunes of the human race forms but a chapter of the history of sin. Its briars and thistles grow in every soil. It arms every rose with thorns, and poisons every cup of happiness. It directs the blow of the assassin, and excites animosity between those who are connected by the nearest earthly ties. It whets the glittering sword of the warrior and burnishes the spear. It arms the Persian chariot with scythes, and points the barbed arrow of the Scythian, and covers the earth with ruin and desolation. Nor need we wonder at the magnitude of its effects, when we remember that it employs the mighty powers and energies of humanity for their accomplishment. How stupendous must those capacities and faculties be, which can perform such things when perverted

and misapplied! Sin has directed man's hand against his own bosem. It has put out his eyes, as the Philistines did those of Sampson, so that his heaven-born strength is employed against himself-and he dies amidst the ruin which he has made. R. R.

AFTER a long silence I again resume the pen to address you. Of the facts connected with my bereavement you have been duly informed; but the mercy and consolation mingled with my affliction you can never know, until you leave the gloomy vale of scepticism. Indeed, it seems to me that the death of my beloved wife would have been altogether insupportable to me, without the hope of meeting her again in a world of bliss.

What thought so gloomy as "death an eternal sleep"? What so forbidding as that man shall perish like the beasts? How vastly preferable is the most corrupted form of true religion to absolute unbelief. How forcible the words of Napoleon, which he uttered towards the close of his life. He says, "In the absence of religion, I can discover no inducement to be virtuous: I desire to live and die in mine. Nothing is more painful to me than the hideous spectacle of an old man dying like a dog." When our friends, amiable, lovely, refined, and intelligent are taken from us, how blissful the assurance that they still live; that they are only removed from one sphere of action to another more enlarged and exalted. When I think of the brilliant intellect and the beaming eye of my beloved ALICIA, how could I bear the thought that they should be forever "dark in death"? You will impute nothing more to me than conjugal weakness, if I apply to her words applied to one of her sex who perished in the snowy mountains of Switzerland:

"She seem'd a form of life and light;

That, ssen, became a part of sight;

And rose where'er he turn'd his eye,

The morning star of memory!"

And can such a one have sunk into an eternal oblivion? Heaven forbid! It cannot be!

But I am again admonished that this is not argument. I will, therefore, turn to your objections. You say you "believe all religionists agree in ascribing to the Creator omniscience and omnipotence, as well as infinite wisdom and goodness; yet an enemy comes in to thwart his designs:" and you ask, "Did he do this with, or without, the knowledge and consent of the Creator?" The whole difficulty here arises from not attending to a distinction which Sceptics as well as

Christians admit: "There is a universe of matter, and a universe of mind;" and there are the laws of matter, and the laws of mind. They are entirely distinct. The universe of matter was designed to be controlled by power; but the universe of mind, by authority. The power of the Creator is irresistible; but not so with his authority. The weakest mind can resist his moral power, or authority. The omnipotence of the Creator can doubtless crush or annihilate every thing it could create. "He can create, and he destroy." But "there are no fetters for the mind." It can only be governed or controlled by motive. Here I would be emphatic; and though it were at the hazard of differing from the whole world, I would assert that mind can only be governed by motive. But authority is based upon power, and is always felt in proportion to the convictions of the power of the lawgiver. The authority of a monarch is proportioned to the resources of his power. The conqueror unsheathes his sword and vanquishes nations by his power, in order that he may establish his authority; but what conqueror would feel himself honored by the submission of subjects, if every act of obedience was extorted by the sword and the spear?

You ask, "Where this enemy came from?" I ask in turn, Whence came the furious and traitorous Arnold, leading a foreign foe to desolate the plains of New Jersey? He came from the ranks of the republican army, where he had been a brave and victorious leader. But motive changed his mind. The application is easy.

But there is a doctrine at the foundation of your difficulty, which is held by Christians as well as Sceptics, that "mind may be renovated, governed, and controlled by anjirresistible influence." It appears to me superlatively absurd. The Creator exerted his power in the origination f the universe in order that he might govern it. The fact of creation gave him a right to govern; and his glory consists in a wise arrangement of motives, and not in the bare exercise of power. Suppose angels and men had been created incapable of sinning, what sort of beings must they have been? They must have been bound by the instinct of the brute, or the insensibility of a stone: and what honor could have resulted to the great Creator from the control of such a universe as that? We cannot at all conceive of the possibility of creating beings capable of knowing and enjoying their Creator, and yet the possible existence of moral evil excluded. In the mean time I wish you to understand that I shall not permit you to make objections the whole time. I will find every objection against the wisdom and goodness of the order of things in nature around us, which you can find against God's moral government set forth in the scriptures. I can object as speciously against the existence of natural poison, as you against moral poisons. What would you think of the wisdom of a father, who, for fear his children should pluck the deadly nightshade, or be bitten by the envenomed serpent, or fall into the fire, should bind them with chains and confine them in a dungeon? This would be to deprive them of all enjoyment for fear of harm. But parents think it better to hazard these evils than to fortify against them in this way. What would you think of the wisdom of the man who should proclaim to the world the necessity of extinguishing fire universally, because it was the source of immense evil? Now as you would answer these things, so would I answer your difficulties. The man who would exclude the

possibility of moral evil, would, at the same time, shut out every source of rational enjoyment. Thus, to use the language of our friend Campbell, "such a value did the Creator set upon rational liberty, that, rather than destroy it, he chose to hazard all the tremendous consequences of apostacy.

In my next I shall notice your objections to the scriptural plan of a Mediator.- -Your friend,

M. S. CLAPP.

CHRISTIAN UNION.

WHEN I took upon myself, in the absence of the Editor, to introduce this subject from the columns of the Union Herald into the pages of the Harbinger, it was not for the purpose of criticising, but from my cordial attachment to this deeply interesting and important subject; and because I believed it would appear so to the majority of our readers. Having, therefore, submitted it in the three preceding numbers, with a few remarks in the last; I now proceed to consider it anew, independent of all that has been said in the preceding extracts, with this only remark upon the whole, that no conscientious, honest, intelligent Christian can possibly read the said extracts, without being fully convinced of the heinous nature, ruinous effects, and tremendous consequences of the present corrupted and divided condition of the Cristian profession; and, of course, of the immediate, indispensable, and paramount duty of attempting a genuine scriptural reformation, that would re-exhibit, and restore to the world, pure, primitive, apostolic Christianity, in letter and spirit-in principle and practice. But now, in order to this, sti}} the grand question remains to be answered; viz. How is this to be attempted, that it may be successfully accomplished? Or, is the thing indeed possible?-To the latter we reply in the affirmative; for we have the prayer of Christ for it, John xvii. 20-23; and the promise of God, Isai. xi. 9., &c. And are we not all looking for a Millennium of universal peace and prosperity, in which truth shall universally triumph? These things being so, our grand concern and present duty is, to adopt the proper means for accomplishing this truly blissful and desirable object. Now, in order to the successful undertaking of any arduous enterprize, three things are indispensably necessary.-1st. That the undertakers be duly qualified. 2d. That they use the proper means. 3d. That they make the proper use of them.

Here, then, it may be asked: What are the necessary qualifications for this heavenly enterprize?

We would answer:-1st. A competent knowledge of the holy scriptures, with a deep-felt conviction of the deleterious nature and extent

of the evils to be obviated. 2d. A correspondent sorrow on account of their prevalence. 3d. An humble confidential reliance upon the divine assistance and efficiency for the desired success in the proper use of the divinely appointed means. Again, is it asked,—What are these? The answer is obvious.-The word of God and prayer. These are the mighty means which Heaven has appointed for the achievement of all divine conquests, in this present evil world.—The word of truth-the prayer of faith-these are are omnipotent. Of the former, the New Testament alone containing the divine exhibition of Christianity, for the salvation of a perishing world; to it, therefore, we must have direct and immediate recourse, as our only and proper directory of faith and practice. But, is it asked, for what special purpose should Unionists make this dernier appeal to the divine testimony? Is it to determine the respective claims of the sects,—of each in relation to its exclusive orthodoxy; and thus to settle the sectarian controversies of fifteen hundred years?-Surely not. Half a century would not suffice to make the experiment; much less could we reasonably expect to achieve in that space, what fifteen centuries had failed to accomplish. No-the proposed appeal must be for a quite different purpose: namely -to learn from the Book itself, the religion taught by the divinely commissioned Apostles of Jesus, its inspired authors:-and for this purpose to receive it out of their hands, as if immediately sent down from heaven; as if we had never seen it; or heard of it before; for, as such, we must be judged by it in the last day. "He that heareth you heareth me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me; and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me.-The word that I have spoken shall judge him in the last day; for I have not spoken of myself; but the Father who sent me gave me a commandment what I should speak." Luke x. 16.; John xii. 48. As such, then, we should advert to its contents, believe what it declares, and do what it enjoins. Thus will we speak and hear, believe and obey it;- -even it alone, and not a human explanation of it. But may we not be at a loss to understand it? How shall we do then? Ans. We must not admit this supposition. On the contrary, we must presume it is perfectly intelligible for the end for which it was given: see Isai. xxxv. 8., with 2‘Tim. iii. 15— 17. "A highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be calledThe way of Holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: (i. e. the timid, the blind, the lame, the deaf, the dumb, the very refuse of mankind;) the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein." "And, that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise to salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus: thoroughly furnished to all good