logical system, called Orthodoxy, undisturbed by Protestantism, is most complete and symmetrical. Could the existence of an inspired Church be proved, not conjecturally but demonstrably, as the nature of the subject requires, it would be impossible to shake it. But the study of the New Testament, provided the student does not take the Church conclusions for granted, or conceive it to be his bounden duty to arrive at them, must readily show what I have before asserted that neither Jesus nor his apostles intended to establish any system of abstract doctrines or ceremonies whatever. The character of the Christ's preaching, as we have it in the Gospels, is destructive of Judaism directly and of Heathenism by inference; that of Paul, destructive both of Judaism and Heathenism in the same breath. Paul, carried on by circumstances, shows an incipient tendency to be constructive and positive. The Gospels show nothing of this kind. That those vague notions of a Church, which appear in the Gospels, do not proceed from Jesus, is proved by the fact that he did not provide any means to incorporate his followers except mutual love, a slight foundation indeed for a Church. There is no provision for the existence of sacred Books; all that is said about Peter and the Keys has the stamp of a later age, and is so indistinct, that it would do little honour to the discrimination of the founder, if he had intended any thing like the ambitious establishments which have assumed the name of Churches of Christ.

"I will grant as much as possible to the defenders of the authenticity of the Gospels: I will acknowledge that what is alleged against that authenticity does not rise above conjecture. But premising that the authenticity would not prove the inspiration of those writings, I ask, have the arguments any higher character than probability in regard to authenticity? Can anything but hypothetical fitness be pleaded for inspiration? Now, the orthodox probabilities have very high probabilities against them; the hypothesis is all conjectural. And is it upon such grounds that Heaven can have demanded an absolute certainty of belief in the authenticity and divine authority of the whole Bible? The demand would be monstrous. Belief, according to the immutable laws of the human mind, cannot be stronger than its grounds: God, who gave such laws to our souls, could not make it a moral duty for man to act against them.

"This immense disproportion between the historical and critical proofs of the divine origin of the Scriptures, and the absolute certainty with which the acceptance of them as unquestionable oracles in Doctrine, and infallible testimonies in History, is demanded, must be felt by all who have reflected upon the laws of credibility, and are not blinded by superstition. The strange school of Divinity, which has recently appeared at Oxford, has no other origin but the dissatisfaction of its founders, in regard to the external evidences of what, according to my judgment, is improperly called Christianity. Determined

by their WILL, and by their perception of the moral attractions of the Spirit of the Gospel, which they have not learnt to perceive independently of the Church machinery of direct revelation, proved by miracles, and, aware that the common grounds of their faith were sinking under the pressure of enlightened reasoning and correct information, they have fallen back upon the Church for support. I will not stop to show how vain that attempt is, especially with persons who will not acknowledge Rome as the determining mark of that Church which they seek. Their Church is absolutely a non-descript: it cannot be found by any mark whatever; and, in fact, it means only

THEMSELVES.

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Having thus explicitly asserted that true Christianity cannot demand an unhesitating reception of the Bible as an oracle authorized by God, I am bound to state my notion of TRUE Christianity, and the reasons why I still call myself a Christian.

"There can be but one true religion,* consisting in that state of mind and that external conduct which arise from the original and unchangeable relations between God and his rational creature Man.

In

*"Religion, subjectively considered, is the acknowledgment of all our duties as divine commands.-In this definition no positive assertions are made part of religion. It is enough that speculatively the existence of the Supreme Cause of things be assumed problematically. Practically, however, we have a perfect idea of God, as of that Being whom our conscience commands us to obey; though we have no argumentative means of demonstrating the existence of God theoretically.— Extract of a Note, and part of the Text, in Kant's Religion in der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, p. 184."

this sense, I believe that Christianity is as old as the Creation.' It would require immense labour to trace, in the ancient religions of Asia, the various forms in which this true religion of nature, this religion of which the seeds are inseparable from the human mind, appeared more or less developed at various stages of civilization. A moderate learning in the right direction, however, is sufficient to discover in the ancient religions of India, Egypt and Persia, that figurative language which represents the eternal wisdom of God as his Reason or Word; that Reason, by which he manifests himself in the universe, and especially within our minds; that Word, which expresses the Deity throughout the unlimited ocean of Existence. These two terms, the sense of which is most happily combined in the Greek Logos, contain a most appropriate symbol of all which the human mind can know of God. It is a vain attempt to seek for knowledge of the Deity anywhere but within ourselves. To define God is to deny him; for definition is limitation, and He is unlimited. Useless or worse than useless are all the arguments of Natural Theology, unless we have previously found the proof of the being of God in our own souls. The idea of the eternal and unlimited Spirit must proceed from the consciousness of the temporal and limited spirit. We know ourselves as this limited spirit, and we are conscious that we have not made ourselves to exist : another spirit must consequently exist, from whom the nature and limitation of our own depend. The

limited proves the unlimited; else what could have set the limits? This greatest of all truths requires but a small degree of reflection, just an incipient development of the power which enables the human mind to look into itself, to raise the notion of a Deity within the conscious breast. A much higher refinement is certainly necessary to avoid that vastly extended anthropomorphism, that conception of God as a Man, which, unconsciously to themselves, most Christians derive from the unphilosophical theology which lies at the foundation of their Creeds and Catechisms. Whoever owes the first notion of God to the notion of what are called his Works; whoever conceives God's universe as the result of contrivance, has the image of a Man for his God; he is a mental idolater. It is true that we cannot conceive what appears to us a complicated result, but as the result of contrivance; yet to transfer this our mental law of conception to the nature of God himself is to deny his Godhead. Contrivance implies resistance, and limited as well as gradually exerted power: such ideas are contradictory of God. But to proceed:

"The only method to avoid erecting a mental idol for our God, is that of exclusively seeking him within our mind. To us 'God is a Spirit,' only when we find him in our own spirit. The ideas of life, activity, thought, and goodness, have their primitive source within us. The pure in heart of all ages, of all civilized nations, have been aware, practically at least, of this truth. Hence the undeniable fact, that the