abounding in the work of the Lord." We are accustomed to believe and teach that this is not the condition prerequisite, but the cause necessary and efficient to secure this result. Without the Spirit's aid we can do nothing, and shall certainly stumble and fall. Bat so far from the sinner's commencing by his freewill, the Spirit begins the work of bringing him to God; and when by regeneration, he becomes "His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God had before ordained that we should walk in them, "He does not abandon His work and leave man to his own free will to work and keep himself, but exercises His powerful and sanctifying watch and care to keep him through faith unto everlasting life. Paul's teaching on this point was directly the reverse of our author's. He gives the Spirit of God precedence in the work of salvation, and makes the permanency of the relation into which the regenerated sinner is brought to Jesus Christ, and established as a child of God under His fatherly watch, and care, and discipline, motives for his zealous, prayerful, and persevering efforts to increase and abound more and more in the fruits of holiness, "Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." Equally strong, and opposed to our author, is Peter's testimony on this subject. He blesses the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to His abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed IN THE LAST TIME, wherein ye greatly rejoice, though NOW, for a season, (if need be), ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations, THAT the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise, and honor, and glory, AT the appearing of Jesus Christ." No language can be more explicit and pointed, to express the blessed truth, that salvation from beginning to end, is the work of God. The fact is, He renews the sinner's mind and heart as He brings him to exercise faith in a once crucified, but risen Saviour, and that He keeps him, through the exercise of faith, continually persevering and maturing for the glorious consummation of his state and perfection of his being and glory, at the second coming of Jesus Christ. The Spirit is the author of regeneration the Spirit is the author of our sanctification: the Spirit is the author of our perseverance; the Spirit is the author of our triumph, and the consummation of our glory. The free will of man is not left to its own absolute unaided spontaneities, but is influenced, determined, renewed, and established by the Spirit's agency in the choice of Christ and cordial obedience to Eph. 2: 10. 'Phil. 1: 6.

' II. 266.

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I. Pet. 1: 3-8.

God. Glory be to God for " the exceeding riches of His grace in his kindness to us through Christ Jesus." Our author's system and philosophy invert the whole order of the causes of salvation, and making the Spirit of God but the subsidiary of man's freewill, give Him the second place. According to him, man's free will converts itself; sanctifies itself; perfects itself; and keeps itself; and even uses God, and grasps his energies, and clothes itself with His almighty and infinite attributes! "When a soul can be found who thoroughly knows, and has embraced and appropriated Christ, he is a host of himself. That is, he has appropriated the attributes of Christ to himself, and his influence is felt in heaven, earth, and hell." We make all due allowance here for rashness and extravagance of diction, and yet it is in perfect keeping with our author's philosophy of the freedom of the will. There is no security whatever in any change of heart experienced, for the regenerate man's "entire sanctification," or establishment in a permanent state of holy obedience, or for his final salvation. By yielding to temptation and relapsing into sin, he falls into death again, legally and morally, and needs just as much to be born again the second and third time, and no one can tell how many times, before, if ever he gets into the kingdom of heaven. Such are the legitimate results of his attempt to engraft his philosophy on the Calvinistic faith, which, most inconsistently, he professes yet to maintain. We should respect both himself and his theology vastly more, if he would come out at once, openly and fully, and place himself on Arminian or Pelagian ground, to one or other of which his philosophy, and his exalting of the power of free will, inevitably must lead him and his followers.

If we may judge of the tendency of any system by the developments of sentiment and practise among those who adopt itwhich according to our Saviour's rule, viz., " by their fruits shall ye know them," we are bound to do-we shall be at no loss to give the author his true place. The doctrines of God's sovereign election unto everlasting life, of the efficacious influence and agency of the Spirit of God to renew, sanctify, and render meet for it, those whom He did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son," and of the final perseverance of the saints, are as openly and avowedly opposed and slandered by teachers emanating from our author's school, as ever they were by those who repudiated altogether the Calvinistic faith. Arminius, himself had many redeeming features in his system, and never went to the extent in error to which Episcopius, Grotius, Limborch, Vossius, Casaubon, Le Clerc, and their followers have gone. He retained much more of the semblance and spirit of the gospel, than does our author's system; and we confidently anticipate a wide-spread and fatal defection from the truth, as it is in Jesus, 1 Eph. 2: 7. 2 III. 263.

3 Rom. 8: 29.

at no distant day, through its influence. Facilis descensus averni. Sed revocare gradum-hic labor hoc opus. We fear that all attempts to counteract its fatal influence will prove too late and ineffectual. The churches and ministry had need awaken to a sense of the danger. Its practical results already display themselves to some extent, and they commend it no more to us, than do its theological features.

If ever a system of dialectics was eminently adapted to stultify the intellect, and to sear the conscience, we think it is precisely that which has received the favor of our author, and is so pertinaciously advocated and propagated by him. The spirit appropriate and peculiar to his philosophico-theological system, may commend itself to those who are fond of what is coarse and severe, and who account these things plainness and faithfulness, but cannot fail to offend the meek and gentle, as well as persons of refinement and delicacy. Its introduction and indulgence in the pulpit, have degraded it, and done more than all its enemies had accomplished, to bring contempt upon the ministry of reconciliation. We write with real pain and deep sorrow of heart; but cannot withhold the expression of our sober conviction, that seeking immediate effect, and mistaking mere dramatic power for the power of the truth, through its influence a very serious deterioration, in the style of preaching, has been produced, which has brought the pulpit, to some extent, to the level of the stage, and engendered that mercenary spirit in many churches which prompts them to "hire" ministers for times and occasions. A flippant air and irreverent manner of speaking on sacred things, by ministers of the gospel, prepare the way for profanity on the part of those whose minds are not affected by the fear of God. Abounding in anecdote, the familiar use of the dialogue and other dramatic methods for the exhibition and illustration of truth, relieve from the necessity of careful thought, and by the aid and power of the imagination, give impulse to passion. Pride, arrogance, extravagance, and self-conceit are incident to its developments. Censoriousness and denunciation, with all the disputes and divisions, suspicions and schisms, ever sure to follow in their wake, find abundant aliment in the style and manner of applying its principles of casuistry, for the analysis of character. In reverence toward God in prayer, and the absence of all that courtesy toward man, and the winning tenderness of that sympathy and charity which the gospel so much commends, betray themselves in the style and manner of expression.

We deprecate the influence and spirit of this system, and think they have long since been well described by the great New England Patriarch, whose home is in the West, and who yet lingers on the shores of mortality to bless the churches with his cheering voice, as a spirit of spiritual pride, censoriousness, and insubordi nation to the order of the gospel. Our author's attempt to develop

a system of philosophy and theology in which it has found its permanent lodgment, and through which it has made its prurient developments, has contributed not only to increase the prejudices against evangelical religion in the minds of persons of taste and education, and to drive them off to other denominations where they will not be offended by rudeness and vulgarity in the pulpit, but to repel even the friends of the pure, unadulterated truth of the gospel. The very names of revivals and spiritual religion, as well as the religious profession of multitudes, have been rendered a taunt and a reproach. We attribute the present dearth of Divine influences, and the absence of the true spirit of revival, to the influence of this man-exalting and God-dishonoring philosophy, which has attempted to naturalize religion, if we may so speak, denied the very office and grieved the blessed Spirit of God. Its prevalence will prove but the pioneer of a mere natural religion to foster Deism, Unitarianism, and Infidelity.

ARTICLE VI.

THE PREACHING OF JONAH.

By the REV. GEORGE SHEPARD, D.D., Professor at Bangor.

THE Saviour speaks, in one place, of the preaching of Jonah. From this it appears that Jonah was a preacher. From the little specimen we have of his preaching, and its effects, we wish we knew more of him in this calling. We know very little; still we may, perhaps, derive some benefit from the brief notices of his character, and the dim intimations of his labors.

Respecting his early history, his education, and training, we are very much in the dark. He was the son of Amittai-was a Gallilean, and prophecied in the reign of Jeroboam II., king of Israel. He was sent of the Lord to Ninevah, to cry against it, because its wickedness had come up before the Lord. Ninevah, without doubt, was then in its glory; an exceeding great city of three days journey-nearly sixty miles in circumference. The prophet did not, at first, proceed in obedience to the injunction he had received, but foolishly attempted to flee from the presence of the Lord. He took ship to Tarshish; but the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. The prophet, as the cause of the trouble, was cast into the sea, and swallowed by a monster of the deep, which God had prepared for the purpose, and thus became a type of Christ, who was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The prophet, when thrown upon the land, proTHIRD SERIES, VOL. V. No. 1.

9

ceeded to discharge the duties of his commission. He went and preached the preaching God bid him; he began to enter into the city a day's journey, and said-" yet forty days and Ninevah shall be overthrown."

In regard to the character of the preacher, we may glean something. He does not seem to have been wanting in courage, physical or moral. Though he had received a perilous commissionto go, an unguarded stranger, into the midst of a great city, and denounce its speedy and utter overthrow, yet he did not falter on this account-did not flee because he feared the consequences to himself, of delivering such a message; but because he thought the Lord might repent him of the evil, and in view of the reformation of the people, spare the devoted city; and, in that case, he would be found a false prophet.

The prophet seems to have been greatly wanting in that compassionate feeling that true benevolence, which rejoices in the deliverance, and the highest welfare of others. There appears in him a sort of vindictive spirit, insisting that the ruin he had denounced, should be, to the letter, executed. He placed himself in a sightly position, that he might witness that sublime stroke of the Divine justice, which should sweep to destruction all the dwellers in the vast city before him.

And here his petulance comes out. He was greatly displeased; was positively angry; not with his brother, and without a cause, but with his Maker, and for a cause which should have filled his soul with adoration and thankfulness. The prophet, to say the least, was greatly wanting in social amiableness; he seems to have been peevish and sullen; a man of few words, and not all those uttered advisedly.

Much appears in his history, and the development of his character which is inconsistent with true religion. We must believe, however, that he was a good man with many infirmities. He was probably in a back-slidden state: the fact of his attempting to flee from the presence of the Lord, and of his stupidly sleeping in circumstances which constrained even his pagan companions to pray, indicates that he was in such a state. Traits of the good man appear in his prompt confession, his readiness to be sacrificed for the good of the whole, his prayer and ascription of praise from the depth of his trouble.

When we come to the preaching of Jonah, we find that there was very little of it; more probably than is recorded; but we have doubtless the substance of it. It was brief, abrupt, sententious, and repetitious. It was altogether in keeping with the morose and taciturn prophet; his iterated cry was,-"Yet forty days and Ninevah shall be overthrown."

The message was one of unmixed, unmitigated severity. It was simple denunciation-a declaration of the Divine purpose to