Ordinary religion can boast of no higher source than education, custom, secular interest, human observations and reasonings, or at most a desire to satisfy the cravings of the natural conscience. In many cases, several, or perhaps all, of these causes may concur to its production. Man and the exercise of mere human faculties thus giving birth to it, a probability that they may be right, mingled with much uncertainty, is the highest point which those possessed of it can reach. For such persons to be absolutely certain of the correctness of their religious sentiments, is an utter impossibility: absolute and infallible certainty in regard to divine things, being the result of divine testimony entering the conscience as such, and of this cause alone.

Scepticism is thus, Mr. Barclay saw, far from being confined to the irreligious merely. Nay, that species of it which obtains among the religious classes of the community is, of the two, decidedly its more dangerous form. Under the pretence of upholding divine truth, this traitorous principle is doing all that it can to sap and undermine it.-To attack and oppose scepticism, especially when assuming the garb and language of piety, and thereby to put the ignorant and the unwary on their guard against it, was the grand object of the author in the composition of the following pages.

Admirably has he succeeded in demolishing what is commonly denominated natural religion. This is one of those idols which the apparently pious, and the openly profane,-which the Unitarian and the Calvinist,curiously but consistently enough, have concurred in setting up. "God hath means of revealing himself to the conscience, over and above his written word," say

they. "Of these means he hath in every age availed himself. Heathens, thereby, have been brought to the knowledge of his character. Nay, were it not for the existence of those natural notices of himself wherewith he hath stored abundantly the mind of man, to what," triumphantly exclaim they, "could he address, upon what could he fasten, an express revelation of himself?" To Mr. Barclay's inimitable method of dealing with this sophism, which is a virtual attack on the necessity, nature, and efficacy of revelation, I refer the reader. Nothing can be conceived more pointed, complete, and satisfactory, than his exposure of Clarke's celebrated à priori demonstration. Even Lord Brougham's, contained in his recent work, is tame compared with it.*

But the great excellence of the following treatise, as well as of Mr. Barclay's other works, is its thorough refutation of that all-pervading, mind-harassing, sceptical principle, the existence of doubts and fears respecting their future state in the breasts of believers. "One who credits the divine testimony concerning Christ Jesus may often be very uncertain, and consequently may be filled with much anxiety and many fearful forebodings, as to what shall be his own personal state and circumstances hereafter. Indeed, such fears, so far from being injurious and therefore undesirable, are exceedingly salutary, as tending to promote watchfulness and humility; and fall to be ranked among the best evidences of his spiritual state which a child of God can possess." Such is the language of the most serious and popular of our religious

* See his Lordship's late work on Natural Theology.

hierarchy. Mr. Barclay, as the champion of divine truth, at once and boldly proclaims himself to be at issue with them. Every part of their statement he impugns, and cuts down with the sword of the Spirit. To believe and to doubt are, he shews, states of mind as opposite as light and darkness. For a man to doubt respecting his state before God, when he has nothing but human testimony or human reasonings to rely on, or when he is seeking for the grounds of a hope of eternal life in himself, is all very natural. And so far from wishing to hear from the lips of any man, while in such a state, the language of confidence and assured hope respecting futurity, Mr. Barclay deprecates his use of it with the utmost abhorrence. What our author says, and what he proves with irresistible force of evidence from scripture, is, that a man who doubts concerning his state in the sight of God, is not a Christian. Such a one is still in darkness. He has never yet had divine testimony carried home to his conscience by the Spirit as what it actually is; and, consequently, there does not exist in him that principle from which alone absolute and infallible certainty can flow. A believer, on the contrary, is light in the Lord. Having had the eyes of his understanding opened from above, to behold the truth of divine testimony in itself, that is, as it shines by its own glorious intrinsic evidence, he has had the righteousness of Christ revealed to him as his own, and is enabled thereby to see himself saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation. The import of divine revelation is now apprehended by him to be, not a command or series of commands urging him to do any thing in order to his being saved, but a

The

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proclamation to him that he is saved, in virtue of the complete salvation which the Lord himself hath wrought out. "It is finished," is introduced into his conscience with divine power; superseding at once, and for ever, all works acts and efforts of his own. same word which reveals to him that he inherits death, as the wages of sin, by virtue of his connection with Adam-reveals to him likewise his inheritance of eternal life, as the gift of God to him, through Jesus Christ his Lord. Both statements, as resting upon same infallible authority and as opened up to his mind by the same divine and irresistible evidence, he equally and certainly believes. All his previous scepticism, whether religious or irreligious, is henceforward at an end. God now to him is love. Not that God hath undergone any change; but that his own mind is changed, by its having been enlightened and enabled to behold God as what He is, ever hath been, and ever will be. God is love: and to him is manifested to be so in the light of the fact, of having sent his Son into the world; that he, seeing that fact to be true, might live thereby. 1 John iv. 8. 9. In the believer's conscience there is now perfect peace, even the peace of God which passeth all natural understanding; and as this peace has been produced by the testimony of the Spirit revealing to him what God is, and as God ever continues the same and ever continues to reveal himself as the same, of course this peace remains in his conscience for ever.-As to doubting and fearing with respect to God's love to us personally, it is shewn by Mr. Barclay to be the result, not of humility, but of devilish pride: being neither more nor less than the

creature presuming to set up its own wisdom in opposition to the wisdom of the Creator; and refusing to be comforted until, in express contradiction to what God hath declared, it shall have discovered in its own human righteousness, that which shall be able to satisfy the infinite demands of divine law! In a word, it is the creature venturing to give the lie to the Creator, by going about to establish its own righteousness, in spite of God's affirmation that this is impossible, and that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth!-How different from this spurious humility, the humility of the gospel, as it is delineated by Mr. Barclay himself in one of his fervent and eminently spiritual hymns:

'Tis not, humility, thy task,

To weave a thin excuse,

And then for worthiness to ask,

That thou mayest grace abuse.

Thy office, O humility,

Is frankly to receive,

What frankly cometh from on high,

And God the glory give. *

Our author's system, as developed in the following sheets and indeed in every one of his works, is thus, that all knowledge of God's character and ways is exclusively the result of that revelation which he hath been pleased to give concerning Himself, and which we find contained in the Holy Scriptures; and that the necessary effect of this revelation being carried home to the conscience of any one by God himself is faith, or absolute and infallible certainty of the truth of what

* No. LXI. of the Spiritual Songs, edition, 1766.