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ANTECEDENT INBEING, INDEED.

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scriptural usage! as they are all now anathema ȧπò Christ, who do not obey the gospel, and for them in sympathy, we all, who love him, ought more intensely to feel; and then, I deem it, we should all the better know exactly what Paul meant in his tears of blood shed for his countrymen-especially in memory of his former self! But, my dear sir, forgive me for protracting the argument with you! I must say that your objection is not tenable, nor, for once, is its basis true; and I come to the result, that, te judice, my view is "the best every way" that Moses Stuart ever knew!

2. That seems very fair, and I will think of it.

1. I hope you will-on the principle, si quid novisti rectius istis, candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum.

Hereabout our collocution ended; and soon appeared his volume on the principle, illo in loco, of antecedent inbeing! Non invideo! miror magis.

That Paul should ever have had such a spasmodic rabies of transcendental rodomontade and stultiloquent benevolence* after his Christian regeneration, I hold to be, à priori, of all fantasms the wildest; transubstantiation and apostolical suc

cession themselves-almost-postponed to it. This is more probable, as it occurs after taking an oath of veracity, so solemn, beyond all common precedent, as to preclude all such frightful and impious extravagance, under the notion of oriental hyperbole and poetical impressiveness. By their fruits is a criterion of principles as well as persons, and it is one that utterly condemns the notion of Emmons. Is its fruit to holiness and edification in the gospel of Jesus Christ?

Besides, the case of Moses, Exod. 32 : 32, is not at all parallel. Emmons quotes it as one of his hobby texts, Blot my

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* A strange specimen of words, I own; but put for a stranger and a more uncouth specimen of thought, a rare and a perfectly abominable absurdity!

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PRACTICAL SENSE THE THING.

name out of the Book of life." This utterly alters the words and the sense. The Book of life of the Lamb had nothing to do with the argument. The expression is merely proverbial for "forget me;" or, as we say, such a one blots me from his book: meaning, I am not in his favor, as before. The answer of Moses plainly refers to the proffer of God to promote him, instead of them; which Moses, as the typical mediator interceding for them, personally declines—preferring, in that respect, comparatively, not to be remembered in his ways! 32 10. But they pervert one reciprocally to help the other, and thus fortify their most unedifying and anti-scriptural extravagance. In the mean time, it does immense damage to the souls of men, doing evil, and only evil, and that continually, under the sublimest assumptions of wisdom and holiness.

May I be permitted here a general reflection? Possibly it might, or might not, be readily conceded to a Christian pastor and a practical minister, who has seen some service in the Church of God. It is the constant and the paramount need of the principle and the influence, in large measure, of COMMON SENSE and PRACTICAL VIEWS, rather than a serene scholasticism, in the interpretation especially of the written oracles of God. Learning is great and good, and very desirable in its place and in its use-not out of its place or in its insidious abuse. Some men are so learned, so full of books, of theories, of rules and exceptions, of immense philology, of technology, of pneumatology, of psychology, of ontology, and all the ologies, with hypotheses and opinions of great men, that their common sense collapses in a foreign and an imposing presence; and their plethora of authorities and erudition, ut helluones librorum, prevents the action of their own judgment, and precludes a just originality of thought so that their opinion, if they have any that is their own, is a conglomerate of all their reading; as stationary as a weather-cock; as true as an old Turkish time-piece, made,

EMMONSISM DREARY AND COLD AS DEATH. 209

as we are truly informed, to announce twelve whenever the sultan was ready and in humor to give his fiat, for the resounding of the gong, as the signal, the oracle, the fact.

All the commoner theories on the passage in question are condemned by the rule of the fruits and common sense; so far are they from practical, natural, probable, useful, on the principles of the best biblical interpretation. They are vastly unprofitable, therefore, and even derogatory to the high and plenary inspiration of the written word. Yet what is more common or natural than for an honest Christian philanthropy, in persuading and beseeching men to be reconciled to God, to refer with humiliation to its own former experience; its recollection of its own confused madness in a previous state of alienation from the life of God? nor is it wonderful, if such an eloquence as Paul was wont to exemplify, in this or a similar relation, should teach the tremendous folly and the impious suicide of all the rebellious enemies of God, by citing and impressing his own example of astonishing anti-Christian zeal and desperation; characterizing it as if glorying in the destination it was inducing; as if acting with a direct aim to the consequence so real of his course; as if coveting the condition of being forever-anathema from Christ. Acts, 9, 1–4; 22: 4, 5; 26:9–11; i. Tim., 1: 12-17.

I subjoin the remark that Emmonsism is a dreary, an isolating, pre-eminently an unjoyous, and a comfortless system. The coldest and the most dissocial religionists I have ever known, preachers and people, in the ranks of the orthodox; the most incapable of private friendship, and the most destitute of the social and the domestic loves and sympathies, their humanities and their home-born affections all exsiccated, and precluded, and gone, I have seen, known, and marked, among this especial class, as properly of them. I could distinctly trace their frigidity, their rigidity, and their aridity to the system that formed their characters. It has

210 COMFORT AND JOY IN GOD ARE SANCTIONED.

almost ruined them for all amiableness and all usefulness. I could give instances and names.

Nor toward God did it seem, as I have often explored it in them, a particle better-they are not happy in God, they can not be. "IF I AM NOT SAVED, OTHERS WILL BE," is the genuine result-the whole of it. And is this the proper fruit of reading the scriptures? which were written for our LEARNING, that we, through patience and COMFORT OF THE SCRIPTURES, MIGHT HAVE HOPE. The fruit of the Spirit is ascertained to us in nine especial graces, of which the first three, and the substance of all the others, are, LOVE, JOY, PEACE. These are the elements of substantial and eternal happiness, as well as holiness.

A system that can not legitimately inspire happiness or make its disciples joyful in God, rejoicing in hope, is not the gospel. The most edifying and comforting book in the world is the Bible. Yes, for consolation and joy to the soul, there is nothing like it. It is incomparable every way; and no one should be content to lose so much direct and genuine happiness as he must who allows himself in the sin of ignorance, touching the matter and the manner of the Book of God. There is no proper substitute for it- —or if, gentle reader, you think you have found any, burn it, for your own better edification. Christianity longs for the proficiency of its friends in joy and goodness-that their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and to all riches of the full assurance of understanding—that every one of you do show the same diligence, to the full assurance of hope to the end—now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost-the God of patience and comfort-rejoice in the Lord always, and again, I say, rejoice—for the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but RIGHTEOUSNESS, AND PEACE, AND JOY IN THE HOLY GHOST.

But these exhilarating and jubilant affections are not at

LEARNING NOT IMPIOUS.

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all the fruit of his gelid metaphysics, or of the gasconading and the assumption of any of the schoolmen. Scholasticism, in some of its multifarious phases, affects supreme intelligence, and a perfect oraculous mastery in religion. Its idol is philosophy, assumed their own. We are warned to beware of its sway and its deceit.-Col. 2: 8-10. After all, it is literalizing and short-sighted. Its magic is contracted, its gyromancy contemptible. Learning has its highest function, as well as its purest nature and its richest honor, only as coincident with revelation, because taught by it and subordinate to it, in all its proper and its genuine manifestations.

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