Belshamn, or any of those who subscribe to his strange dogmas, had minds open to conviction, we should recommend to them the perusal of this part at least of the Lectures of Mr. Heber. They would there find it proved with great compass of learning, and great clearness and strength of argument, that the Scriptures most manifestly speak of the Christian Comforter as a person and as a Divine person; that they have been uniformly so understood by the main body of Christian believers from the very age of the apostles in a constant succession to the present time; and that the notion, which is often brought forward by our opponents, of the belief of the Holy Spirit having crept into the Christian church from the dogmas of Platonism, is at once futile and extravagant. Among other points of view, in which Mr. Heber considers the subject, he exhibits, in the following forcible manner, the absurdity of supposing that the orthodox doctrines of Christianity were introduced into the church at a period subsequent to its first institution.

'If the orthodox opinions arose in the Church from any teaching but that of the Apostles themselves, there must, doubtless, have been a time at which they were unknown. And on whatever pretence and by whatever artifice their introduction was effected, its author, whether reformer or innovator, could not, we may be sure, have produced so great a change, without a painful struggle against previous opinion, and a display of talents of some kind or other which must have insured him the veneration of his followers.

The name of reformer or restorer, in the general estimation of mankind, is little less illustrious than that of first discoverer. Luther, we know, as well as Melancthon and Calvin, professed to teach no novelties; but to inculcate a return to the primitive models of doctrine and faith and worship. Manes and Mohammed revived, as they pretended, the original tenets of the Messiah; yet when will these men or the changes which they effected pass away from the memory of the world? Had such a revolution as our antagonists suppose taken place in the Christian Church during the first century of its existence, would not the volume of Eusebius have teemed with its details, and would not the teacher by whose agency it was accomplished have assumed a scarcely less lofty rank in the estimation of his followers than Peter or James or John?

'Such a teacher as is here supposed would have been honoured by Trinitarians as the second founder of Christianity; as the reviver of a Church oppressed by Jewish prejudice; as the comforter and purifier of the afflicted household of Jesus. His patient journeys from Syria to Spain, and from Alexandria to Lyons, while disseminating the revived opinion; his arduous disputes with the patrons of established prejudice; his fearless indifference under the anathemas of the impious, and the holy zeal which mocked the arts of Ebionite blandishment; all of which the Arians (if their sect had triumphed) would have related of their supposed reformer; all would have swelled, beyond a doubt, the

annals

annals of religious controversy, and have remained as a sacred legacy to the gratitude and imitation of succeeding Trinitarians.

'But for this elder and greater Athanasius we search the page of his tory in vain. Of such a convulsion no traces are found in the writings of the earliest Fathers. They, like ourselves, treat every opinion but their own as an impious and daring novelty; and acknowledge no other founder or renovator of the faith than that omniscient Spirit who separated Barnabas and Paul to the work of converting the Gentiles.

Nor will it be said by those who are even moderately acquainted with the ordinary progress of opinion, that a change so considerable could have been effected in night and silence; that "the corruption was so gradual that its original author is unknown; that the venom devoured the vitals of religion, before those outward symptoms were displayed which would have produced, at first, a prompt and efficacious remedy."

"The time is too short, the years too few, the body too extensive, for an imperceptible cause to produce effects so portentous. The corrup tion of a single Church might have been effected in a few years of neglect and ignorance; but to pervert the whole empire of Christ with one universal contagion, must have required the lapse of more than a single century. The transition which is rapid must be painful; and whatever is painful will neither pass unobserved nor be speedily consigned to oblivion. If such a change as this has not been noticed by contemporary writers, we may be sure that it never took place at all.'—pp. 150-153.

Having discussed the personality and divinity of the Holy Spirit, our author enters on the inquiry-whether He was promised, in the passage of John xvi. 7, which he assumes as his text, as a peculiar comforter to the Apostles, or to the universal church of Christ.

'But this inquiry,' he says, 'need not detain us long; since the same Divine Teacher by whom the promise of a Paraclete was given, has promised also that he should remain for ever with those who were to be the objects of his care. But this expression, "for ever," is not personally applicable to the immediate hearers of Christ, and that the promise cannot therefore be confined to them, is apparent from the very fact of 'their mortality. For the words of our Saviour do not, it may be observed, imply that the continuance of the Comforter with them was to be to the end of their lives. If this had been the case, we might reasonably have doubted whether succeeding generations were included in But it was not 66 the promised benefit. till death," nor always," nor continually," that the Paraclete was to abide with those to whom he was promised. It was for ever," eternally," or, "to the end of the world,” siç ròv aiwva, and it answered in purport to the remarkable expression whereby, after his resurrection from the dead, and immediately before his return to heaven, our Lord assured them of the perpetual continuance of his own protecting care. But an eternal guardianship and comfort can only be exercised on an eternal subject. It is

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therefore

therefore as a collective body, and as an endless succession of individuals, that the Church of Christ received the promise here recorded; and it will follow that it was communicated to the Apostles, not as its exclusive inheritors, but as the representatives of all who in after ages, by their means, should believe on the Son of God.'—p. 228.

In the latter part of the fourth lecture, our author digresses into an inquiry concerning the part which the Holy Spirit had sustained in the scheme of God's providence, as previously displayed in the patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations. His discussion is learned; but many readers will be inclined to consider it of too abstruse and mystical a character, and as scarcely tending to any important elucidation of the Holy Scripture.

Mr. Heber proceeds in the last four lectures to consider the office of the Christian Paraclete, and the nature and measure of those benefits which the faithful disciples of their Lord derive from His powerful assistance. It must be quite superfluous for us to mention, even for the benefit of those readers who are most uninformed in matters of theology, that, respecting the nature, the mode, and the degree, of the operation of the Holy Spirit on the minds of Christians, the controversial discussions in the church have been various and extensive, and that from mistaken ideas on this subject the wildest tenets of delirious enthusiasm which have prevailed in Christendom, have been derived. Mr. Heber presents the subject to us in the most sober and correct point of view. His opinions are equally removed from those who attribute too much, and from those who attribute too little to spiritual influence; from those who deny the doctrine altogether, or maintain it in such a form as to amount to an actual denial of it, and from those who expect from the Holy Spirit on every ordinary occasion perceptible impulses, sudden conversions, and sensible illuminations. merous passages occur in this part of the Lectures, in which the ordinary influence of the Spirit on the minds of Christians is pointed out with equal force, and elegance of language. We give the following passage as a specimen.

Nu

By its agency on the natural faculties of the soul, that influence, indeed, supplies us with recollections ever seasonable to support or to subdue our weak or rebellious nature; it hallows our thoughts by attracting them to hallowed objects; it strengthens our virtuous resolutions by renewing on our mind those impressions which gave them birth; it elevates our courage and humbles our pride by suggesting to our recollection, at once, our illustrious destiny and the weakness of our unassisted nature.

By itself it teaches nothing, but without its aid all human doctrine is but vain. It is this which gives life and strength to every religious truth which we hear; this which imprints on our soul and recals to our

attention

attention those sacred principles to which our reason has already assented. Distinct from conscience, but the vital spark by which our natural conscience is sanctified, it both enables us to choose the paths of life, and to persist in those paths when chosen: and, though, like the free and viewless air, it is only by its effects that we discern it, it is the principle of our moral as the air of our natural health; the soul of our soul, and the Schekina of our bodily temple!

But, by itself it teaches nothing. It prepares our hearts, indeed, for the word of life, and it engrafts the word in our hearts thus opened; but that living word and whatever else of knowledge we receive must be drawn from external sources. "Faith," we are told, 66 must come by hearing, and hearing by the word of God;" nor can we hear "without the voice of a preacher."

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The inspiration (as we have already defined it) of religious perception and memory, God's ordinary grace, induces the soul to behold the truth of those doctrines which external opportunities of knowledge offer to her understanding; it preserves and refreshes in her memory those principles of action, of which we have already perceived the force; it is the blessing of God and his pervading energy, which prospers to our salvation what we learn, and what we have learned: but when we pass beyond these limits, we invade the regions of miracle and prophecy; and it is no less inaccurate to suppose, that in the ordinary course of things we receive a new idea from the grace of God, than it would be to maintain that all our knowledge is derived from the lamp which lights our study.

Like that lamp, the grace of the Most High enables us to trace, in the oracles of salvation, the things which belong to our peace: like that lamp, it helps us to renew the decayed impression of knowledge long since obtained; and, without such heavenly aid, the unassisted soul would be as unequal to the pursuit or perception of her eternal interests, as the unassisted eye to read in darkness. But, whether by celestial or earthly light, we can only learn from that which is before us; and the one can no more be said to communicate a new revelation to our soul, than the other to place a fresh volume on our table.

'I do not say, that grace doth not possess an active power, which not only enables us to attend and recollect, but frequently compels our attention and recollection. Nor am I rash enough to deny, that God may, by any operation or any medium whatever, communicate to our souls, when he thinks proper, any imaginable, or, to us at present, unimaginable knowledge. But this may be without offence maintained, (and I am the more anxious to state it clearly, because it is this particular point on which enthusiasm is most frequently mistaken,) that it is by the illustration, not the revelation of truth, that God's Spirit ordinarily assists us; and that the latter is one of those cases of divine interference, of which neither the present age of Christianity, nor, perhaps, any preceding age since the time of the Apostles, affords us an authentic example.'-pp. 378-382.

Towards the close of his Lectures, Mr. Heber considers the influence which the Holy Spirit exerted on the minds of the sacred

penmen

penmen while they were employed in transmitting to future ages the records of eternal truth. He obviates the charge of obscurity in the sacred writings, which has on some occasions been dwelt upon with much exaggeration, to the implied impeachment of their divine origin, and concludes with the following striking pas

sage.

But, in the essentials of salvation, and to those who sincerely desire to be taught of God, are the Scriptures really obscure? Let those bear witness, whom, by these means alone, the Spirit of God has guided into all necessary truth! Let those bear witness who have fled from the perturbed streams of human controversy to this source of living water, whereof "if a man drink he shall never thirst again." Let the mighty army of the faithful bear witness, who, believing no less than they find, and desiring to believe no more, have worshipped in simplicity of heart, from the earliest ages of the Messiah's kingdom, the Father, the Son, and the comfortable Spirit of God! I do not, God forbid that I should in this place, and before so many of those who must hereafter unite their amplest stores both of classical and sacred learning in his cause from whom we have received all things!—I do not deny the efficacy, the propriety, the absolute necessity of offering our choicest gifts of every kind on the altar of that religion to whose ministry we are called, and of concentrating all the lights of history and science to the illustration of these wonderful testimonies. But, though, to illustrate and defend the faith, such aids are, doubtless, needful, the faith itself can spring from no other source than that volume which alone can make men wise to everlasting salvation, that engrafted word which, though the ignorant and unstable may wrest it to their own destruction, is, to those who receive it with meekness and with faith, the wisdom and the power of God.

By this book the Paraclete has guided the Church into whatever truths the Church of Christ has, at any time, believed or known; by this book, and the doctrine which it contains, he has convinced the world of sin, and justified the Son of Man from the malicious slanders of his enemies; by this book he consoles us for the absence of our Lord, and instructs us in things to come; by this he reigns; where this is found his kingdom reaches also; by this weapon, proceeding from the mouth of God, shall the enemies of his Christ be at length extirpated from the world; and by this, it may be thought, as by the rule of God's approbation, shall the secrets of all hearts be, finally, made known, in that day when "whosoever is not found written in the book of life, shall be cast into the lake of fire."

'Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the spiritual gift, seeing that we have not followed after cunningly devised fables, let us each in his station, abound in the labour of the Lord, diffusing as we may that saving knowledge, the possession of which alone could make it expedient for the disciples of Christ that their Master should depart and leave them; And let us pour forth, above all, our fervent prayers to that Almighty Spirit, who hath given us these holy records of his will, that, by his supporting grace, they may bring forth in us the