in those views of God's dealings and dispositions towards us, and of our consequent duties towards him, which constitute, I imagine, the essence of the Gospel Revelation. Now, what I want is, to abstract from what is commonly called doctrine every thing which is not of this kind; and secondly, for what is of this kind, to present it only so far forth as it is so, dropping all deductions which we conceive may be drawn from it, regarded as a naked truth, but which cannot be drawn from it, when regarded as a Divine practical lesson.

For instance, it is common to derive from our Lord's words to Nicodemus, "Except a man be born of water," &c., an universal proposition, "No being can be saved ordinarily without baptism;" and then to prove the fitness of baptizing infants, for this reason, as necessary out of charity to them; whereas our Lord's words are surely only for those who can understand them. Take any person with the use of his faculties, and therefore the consciousness of sin in his own heart, and say to him, that "Except he be born again," &c., and then you apply Christ's word in its true meaning, to arouse men's consciences, and make them see that their evil and corrupt nature can of itself end only in evil. But when we apply it universally as an abstract truth, and form conclusions from it, those conclusions are frequently either uncharitable or superstitious, or both. It was uncharitable when men argued, though correctly enough as to logic, that, if no man could be saved without baptism, all the heathen must have perished; and it was uncharitable and superstitious too, to argue, as Cranmer, that unbaptized infants must perish; but that, if baptized, they were instantly safe. Now, I hold it to be a most certain rule of interpreting Scripture, that it never speaks of persons, when there is a physical impossibility of its speaking to them; but, so soon as the mind opens and understands the word, then the word belongs to it, and then the truth is his in all its fulness; that "except he be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." So the heathen who died before the

word was spoken, and in whose land it has never been preached, are dead to the word,-it concerns not them at all; but the moment it can reach them, then it is theirs and for them and we are bound to spread it, not from general considerations of their fate without it, but because Christ has commanded us to spread it, and because we see that Christianity has the promise of both worlds, raising men's nature, and fitting them for communion with God hereafter,-revealing Him in His Son. Now, apply this rule to all the Scriptures, and ask at every passage, not "What follows from this as a general truth?”—but "What is the exact lesson or impression which it was intended to convey?—what faults was it designed to correct?-what good feelings to encourage?" Our Lord says, "God is a Spirit: " now if we make conclusions from this metaphysically, we may, for aught I know, run into all kinds of extravagance, because we neither know what God is, nor what Spirit is; but if we take our Lord's conclusion, "Therefore we should worship Him in spirit and in truth;" i. e., not with outward forms, and still less, with evil passions and practices, then it is full of truth, and wisdom, and goodness. I have filled my paper, and yet perhaps have not fully developed my meaning; but you will connect it perhaps with my dislike of Articles, because their truth is always expressed abstractedly and theoretically, and my preference of a Liturgy as a bond of union, because there it assumes a practical shape, as it is meant in Scripture to be taken.

L. TO HIS SISTER, LADY CAVAN,

(In answer to a question on Dr. Whately's "Thoughts on the Sabbath.")

Rugby, June 11, 1833.

My own notions about the matter would take up rather too much room, I fear, to come in at the end of my paper. But my conclusion is, that, whilst St. Paul on the one hand would have been utterly shocked, could he

have foreseen that eighteen hundred years after Christianity had been in the world, such an institution as the Sabbath would have been still needed; yet, seeing that it is still needed, the obligation of the old commandment is still binding in the spirit of it: that is, that we should use one day in seven, as a sort of especial reminder of our duties, and a relieving ourselves from the overpressure of worldly things, which daily life brings with it. But our Sunday is the beginning of the week, not the end-a day of preparation and strengthening for the week to come, and not of rest for the past; and in this sense the old Christians kept it, because it was the day on which God began his work of creation; so little did they think that they had any thing to do with the old Jewish Sabbath. You will see, also, by our common Catechism, that "the duty towards God," which is expressly given as a summary of the four first commandments to us, as Christians, says not one word about the Sabbath, but simply about loving God, worshipping him, and serving him truly all the days of our life. It is not that we may pick and choose what commandments we like to obey, but, as all the commandments have no force upon us as such,—that is, as positive and literal commands addressed to ourselves,-it is only a question how far each commandment is applicable to us,that is, how far we are in the same circumstances with those to whom it was given. Now, in respect to the great moral commands of worshipping and honouring God, honouring parents, abstaining from murder, &c., -as these are equally applicable to all times and all states of society, they are equally binding upon all men, not as having been some of the commandments given to the Jews, but as being part of God's eternal and universal law, for all His reasonable creatures to obey. And here, no doubt, there is a serious responsibility for every one to determine how far what he reads in the Bible concerns himself; and no. doubt, also, that, if a man chooses to cheat his conscience in such a matter, he might do it easily; but the responsi

VOL. I.

Y

bility is one which he cannot get rid of, because we see that parts of the Bible are not addressed directly to us; and thus we must decide what is addressed to us and what is not; and if we decide dishonestly, for the sake of inindulging any evil inclination, we do but double our guilt.a

LI. TO MR. SERGEANT COLERIDGE.

Rugby, June 12, 1833.

Our Westmoreland house is rising from its foundations, and I hope rearing itself tolerably “in auras æthereas." It looks right into the bosom of Fairfield,—a noble mountain, which sends down two long arms into the valley, and keeps the clouds reposing between them, while he looks down on them composedly with his quiet brow; and the Rotha," purior electro," winds round our fields, just under the house. Behind, we run up to the top of Loughrigg, and we have a mountain pasture, in a basin on the summit of the ridge, the very image of those "Saltus" on Citharon, where Edipus was found by the Corinthian shepherd. The Wordsworths' friendship, for so I may call it, is certainly one of the greatest delights of Fox How,—the name of my xpiov,-and their kindness in arranging every thing in our absence has been very great. Mean time, till our own house is ready, which cannot be till next summer, we have taken a furnished house, at the head of Grasmere, on a little shoulder of the mountain of Silver How, between the lake on one side, and Easedale, the most delicious of vales, on the other.

The principle here laid down, is given more at length in the Essay on the Right Interpretation of Scripture, at the end of the second volume of his Sermons; and also in the Sermon on the Lord's Day, in the third volume.

LII. TO A PUPIL,

(Who had written, with much anxiety, to know whether he had offended him, as he had thought his manner changed towards him.)

Grasmere, July 15, 1833. The other part of your letter at once gratified and pained me. I was not aware of any thing in my manner to you that could imply disapprobation; and certainly it was not intended to do so. Yet it is true that I had observed, with some pain, what seemed to me indications of a want of enthusiasm, in the good sense of the word, of a moral sense and feeling corresponding to what I knew was your intellectual activity. I did not observe any thing amounting to a sneering spirit; but there seemed to me a coldness on religious matters, which made me fear lest it should change to sneering, as your understanding became more vigorous: for this is the natural fault of the undue predominance of the mere intellect, unaccompanied by a corresponding growth and liveliness of the moral affections, particularly that of admiration and love of moral excellence, just as superstition arises, where it is honest, from the undue predominance of the affections, without the strengthening power of the intellect advancing in proportion. This was the whole amount of my feeling with respect to you, and which has nothing to do with your conduct in school matters. I should have taken an opportunity of speaking to you about the state of your mind, had you not led me now to mention it. Possibly my impression may be wrong, and indeed it has been created by very trifling circumstances; but I am always keenly alive, on this point, to the slightest indications, because it is the besetting danger of an active mind-a much more serious one, I think, than the temptation to mere personal vanity.

I must again say, most expressly, that I observed nothing more, than an apparent want of lively moral susceptibility. Your answers on religious subjects were always serious and sensible, and seemed to me quite sincere; I only feared that they proceeded, perhaps too exclusively, from an in