No. IV.

WITH no design to exaggerate or colour too highly, I have, in the preceding numbers, given a sketch of the incessant strain of preaching pursued in many congregations of this city. I have not misrepresented, neither have I withheld the truth. As I said, I have no controversy with any man: and am willing to give full credit to the learning and talents of many who teach these doctrines. Indeed, I have a charitable hope that some of them imagine they are labouring in the cause of truth. But truth will one day instruct them that, as "they have sown the wind they shall reap the whirlwind."

I will not undertake to say that all the vices of the city are chargeable to the account of their errors; far from it; but I will. undertake to say that their doctrines are calculated, and tend, to drive men to scepticism, deism, atheism, libertinism; nay, to madness. The rash and unwary man that enters their assembly is amazed to hear his assent challenged to propositions from which his understanding revolts with horror: assertions are arrogantly, as it were, crammed down his throat, which insult his He is told he can do nothing, yet threatened with endless perdition for his neglect. He is condemned for a sin he never committed; commanded to do what he is told he cannot do ; and exhorted to believe in a Saviour who never died for him.

reason.

The muddiness, the confusion, the arrogance with which these sentiments are hurled forth in a storm of popular eloquence, or shall I say vociferation, precludes all possibility of conviction. One man sits and hears it with that kind of stupid amazement with which we hear a hail storm rattling upon the roof, and thunder rolling over our heads, till he is stunned into a kind of thoughtless reverie, and gathers as much from it as Cushi did from the defeat of Absalom: "I saw a great tumult, my lord, O king, but knew not what it was." Another hears it with contempt and secret indignation, and as he retires, musing, says to himself, "Are these the boasted principles and doctrines of religion, said to be so luminous, so simple, so rational, so intelligible, so convincing?" But these teachers will tell him, for his consola

tion, "No wonder you don't understand these truths, for they are evangelical truths, and you are a natural man; therefore, you cannot understand them." Wretched subterfuge! As wise and as profound as if a man should say to me that "two and two are fifteen, and it is only because you want mathematical skill that you can't perceive it." Alas! what huge masses of flummery, falsehood, false doctrine; what immense cargoes of wood, hay, and stubble, the lumber and trash of speculation and fanaticism, are vended as evangelical truth, which the natural man cannot understand!

These teachers are often heard to bewail the departure of Boston from the faith, and I will not deny that there is much, very much, in Boston, to be lamented, on the ground of the decay of morals and sound principles; but this I say and predict, as the fate of this city, should the masses of people increase, who are the followers, catechumens, admirers, and hearers of these teachers, and I perceive the ichneumon of ambition to have smitten these gentlemen with fangs of no ordinary venom, for they aim to be the head and not the tail, the following consequences may be expected:

1. The strain of preaching will abound more with empty declamation, and less with good sense: for, even now, every young man that issues from their school "out Herods Herod :" bold assertions will take the place of arguments; and authority that of evidence: confusion and obscurity will be gazed at, with awful solemnity, as the profound of heavenly wisdom, and a set of cant phrases consecrated as the true language of Zion.

2. The churches, even the special flock of these teachers—the most pious and discriminating among them, will not be instructed, indoctrinated, or well informed, for they will not have the means of information, being taught to regard sound reasoning as worldly wisdom, just distinctions as metaphysical poison, and the dogmas of their teachers as spiritual truth.

3. The great mass of their congregations will throng their churches from Sabbath to Sabbath, with a perfectly vacant curiosity, some to hear eloquence, as they go to hear Cooper at the theatre, not caring what he says: some to see fashions-to meet company-very innocently believing, because so taught,

that religion is a matter nowise connected with man's intellectual and moral powers, they will hear with calm indifference every thing as it comes; the anomalous monsters of the doctrine will float through their imaginations as things of course, or as an April shadow over a hill: the awful themes of guilt, sin, and damnation reverberate from their ears as from the cold and deaf walls; and if they take the least notice of what is said, it will be only to say, "Very well, I can't help it."

4. From these immense beds of mental inaction, and moral deformity, will spring a race of "serpents," which empty decla mation cannot frighten, and a reason totally blind cannot pursue or parry. In a city like this, there are great numbers of youth of elevated minds, quick conceptions, strong passions, and liberal education. They know that reason was not given to man to be trammeled with absurdities, and trampled in the dust. They will turn indignant from these "strange doctrines, and will prefer rather to follow the light of nature:" or, perhaps, they will say, "If these doctrines be true, my condition cannot be worse than it is; and, at any rate, I cannot make it any better by my exertions. Let me then enjoy pleasure while I can."

These doctrines have already produced such reasonings, and such resolutions. They have already taken deep root, and shot up into an enormous growth; and while these teachers are looking abroad to other cities with proud comparison, and self-applauding pity, they have around them, and near them, in their congregations, I will not say in their churches, a myriad of unbelievers of their own forming. They are converts in terms, but infidels in fact. They assent with wonderful facility to all they hear. "O yes! it is all very true." But then, in the secret counsels of their own hearts, they are behind a screen at all points. They look on the deluge or the rainbow with equal eye. They hear the thunders of the law, or the accents of mercy, with equal feeling and temper. They are fortified with boldness, armed with pride, seasoned with selfishness. Talk to them about the guilt of sin; they throw it all back on Adam: about duty to God; they say, "I cannot perform it; and you teach me so. Allude to a Saviour, they reply, "Perhaps he did not die for me, and, if so, there is no provision, even if I should believe; besides, you al

low, and you teach, that I am under no obligation to believe, till the Saviour shows me that I am one of his. But if I am, in reality, one of his, he will, in his own time and way, show me that I am such. Therefore, I am at rest."

Streams of error, however specious, however popular, continually pouring through a mass of population, will produce effects. Like a river whose deep and rapid waters eat and undermine its banks, they threaten extensive and inevitable destruction. If the lapse of years shall not show, that the aggregate of people, who have steadily heard these doctrines, have become irreligious, profligate, and abandoned; if successive generations of youth who shall arise under such moral and intellectual culture, do not grow up progressively ignorant, dissolute, and profane, I shall rejoice to have it appear that my forebodings were groundless. But as I am fully aware that the divine blessing is necessary to render even the truth successful, I am equally sure that the God of truth does not crown with his blessing the ministration of error.

5. Religion itself, when it has the misfortune to spring up, or by any means be placed under this regimen, will not fail to wear an aspect sickly and repulsive: it is an exotic in these soils, and will resemble a fair plant brought from the genial climes of summer, to pine beneath the northern blast, or be smothered in the gaseous fumes of a hot-house. Error, even in the abstract doctrines and speculations of theology, exerts a direct influence on a man's conduct; and there are few common maxims more false or pernicious than that if a man acts right it is no matter what his speculative notions are. Show me a strenuous believer in the doctrine of original sin, as above stated, and I will show you a man who, generally speaking, feels no very acute sense of the demerit of sin. He views it as a kind of inevitable constitution of things, which must, indeed, be just, because God is just; he views it as a kind of grand mysterious artifice, to the bottom of which he cannot see; as a kind of technica theologica, which never did, and never will, give any human soul any very pungent feelings. When he contemplates Adam's act, he does not feel like the murderer, who, while he washes his hands, fancies he sees the crimson stain return. The idea of guilt transferred

does not wither and blast the soul of the criminal like that of actual transgression.

Again; the man who believes in a fafal natural incapacity to obey God, derived even from the first progenitor of men, must view it with the same tone of feeling as he views transferred guilt. He did not choose the condition in which to be born, and cannot feel himself in any way accountable for it. He may, indeed, consider it as a very bad condition, but then he had no hand in it, and can feel no blame for it, any more than a man can feel blameworthy because he was born in Europe and not in America. In a word, he views it in the same mysterious, the same technical light he does the doctrine before mentioned; and whatever he may pretend, his own heart will secretly say to him, "What I cannot do, I cannot, and why should I give myself unavailing trouble concerning it?"

Again; this Christian believes that Christ died for him, on which account, he thinks he loves him very much. Well, and what certain evidence of goodness is there in all this? "Do not even sinners love those that love them?" Is it a high evidence of a man's piety, that he feels grateful to any one who has done him a great favour?—Surely not. But to maintain their ground here, they are pushed forward to say that there is, in fact, no such thing as disinterested love. They even endeavour to throw ridicule upon the phrase, as without meaninga phrase as old as our language, and conveying an idea as old as religion itself. But, for this they have a very obvious motive; because it presents a sword, if I may so say, to the very bosom and heart of their scheme. But there is another term which worries them still more than this, and that is selfishness—they cannot bear it; they wince under it, and would fain endeavour to expunge that also from our language. To use a low comparison, it offends them as deeply as it did the tailor, in the old story, to hear the name of cracklouse. "So saying, thou reproachest us also." They seem to feel that their scheme is selfish one. And if, in fact, to make our own interest and happiness the highest and ruling motive of our conduct, may be termed selfishness, their scheme of religion is purely selfish.

And while 1 cast no personal reflections, I do not hesitate to