and asserts that our present existence is a second one, graciously granted for our restoration, under a remedial and redemptive dispensation! The matured divine may exclaim, "Faugh! we have had enough; put by your pen, close your review." And were he our only reader, we should at once obey him. But we assume that the majority of our readers are young divines, anxious to sound the depths of theologic truth; and as we were once young ourselves, and would have been grateful for such a help as we of the AMBASSADOR are aiming to afford,-we will continue to dip our pen in the sable fluid to gratify and instruct our younger brother. Well, then, what about the conflict of ages?

Our author says, and says truly, that the subject of depravity has been the great conflict of thinking minds from the earliest age, and forms yet the chief divisional line in the Church of Christ. The oldest, and by far the largest school of divines, is composed of those who hold to the entire corruption of man's moral nature anterior to action, a corruption with no mixture of good, and which infallibly tends to the practice of moral evil only. And yet, as our author justly says, this school teaches that God still holds man responsible for his actions, and will undoubtedly punish him in the next world for the evil deeds he commits in this. Then we are presented with the reasonings and conclusions of the opponents of this scheme; reasonings and conclusions every way calculated to excite the horror of the unfledged student, or of him who does not look into the subject. Thus exhibited in the light of the atoning scheme of Jesus Christ, we have no hesitation whatever in presenting the "old school" view in its plainest garb. "It teaches that in consequence of Adam's sin, in eating the forbidden fruit, God brings into life all his posterity with a nature wholly corrupt, so that they are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all that is spiritually good, and wholly inclined to all evil, and that continually. It teaches that all mankind, having fallen in Adam, are under God's wrath and curse, and so made liable to all miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell for ever."

This is a correct exposition, so far as it goes, of the belief of the old or high Calvinian school; but the reader will observe that this is given in an abstract form, altogether apart from the remedial scheme contained in the redemption wrought out by Jesus. To this we shall return by and bye.

Our author next gives us the view of what he calls the new school of theology; a view much less severe, but in his opinion no less difficult. This view is in substance as follows: It discards the imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity. It also denies the existence in man of a nature in the strict sense sinful and deserving of punishment anterior to knowledge and voluntary

action; and teaches that all sin and holiness consists in voluntary action. As a natural result, its advocates also deny the doctrine of the absolute and entire inability of a sinner to do the duties required of him by God. The inability asserted in the Scriptures they hold to be, according to just laws of interpretation, merely a fixed unwillingness to comply with the will of God, which is not inconsistent with a real and proper ability to obey, but derives its character of inexcusable guilt from the existence of such an ability. The author gives us also the Unitarian view, as propounded but afterwards abandoned by the illustrious Channing.

It

"It is an entire recoil from the old school theology to the other extreme." teaches that man, as he comes from the hands of his Creator, is holy, just, and good, but becomes corrupt, and commits evil through the force of example. This view was long held and cherished by Channing and his followers; but our author says this renowned philanthropist was compelled to abandon, or to greatly modify it, because of the force of experience-an experience which saw nothing but evil in the human race until arrested by the power of the Christian system, a fact which scarcely could exist if man was everywhere born with a good nature; for certainly somewhere man would escape the corruptions of society, and go out of this life as he came into it, pure and good. Such, too, is our verdict. If it is a fact that our race at birth is morally perfect, then the corruption of man's nature is an accident, an accident which, notwithstanding the manifold perils which render it evitable, some would be fortunate enough to escape, just as some soldiers in battle escape while others fall at their side. But, alas! we see none so fortunate. We have never come in contact with any who had no moral defect; we have heard and read of none exempt from a disposition to go astray.

But not only does our author dissent in toto from this theory; he dissents likewise from the other views. From that of the new school he entirely dissents; from that of the old in part. The weakened, deteriorated nature said by the former school to be our inheritance fails, our author believes, to account for the terrible depravity of action which everywhere marks the life of man; whilst its very existence in creatures who took no part at all in the transaction which is said to have occasioned it, is at variance with the "sense of honour and right" which, as will be seen shortly, our author regards with so much favour. With some of the teachings of the old school he quarrels; in its descriptions of the extent and variance of depravity, he entirely coincides: it suits his purpose so to do; for it is not his aim to deny its existence, but simply the account which that school gives of its origin.

The question now arises, Why does he quarrel with that particular? Is not the Bible account of the origin of depravity intelligible enough? In the view of Dr. Beecher it is incompatible

with the character of God. Thus, when our author, and those who reason with him, miss their way, they set up the idol reason as the standard of appeal, and the premises which it invents are made the basis of deduction. Against this practice we raise our voice. It is the primeval cause of all the scepticism and unbelief in the world. The Bible, and the Bible alone, is the standard of appeal; and its propositions, statements, and facts are the only legitimate basis of deduction in matters of religion. Admit it to be the word of God, and to its teachings, brought out by proper laws of exegesis, we must bow; prove it to be a forgery, and then, but not till then, we will hearken to reason as an authority in religion.

Now Dr. Beecher starts off with this proposition: our sense of honour and right is the tribunal to which God appeals in his dealings with his creatures, and especially with new created-minds. It is this sense of honour and right which, he says, is at the bottom of all repentance and obedience toward God in the human race. If man could not be made to feel that God is doing right in requiring obedience to his laws, and in punishing disobedience, then he could not be made to feel penitence for his wrongs, nor could he acquiesce in God's awards of punishment. He would be a rebel, and a just one to all eternity.

With much of this we have no fault to find. We admit that unless the sentence of death which God will pronounce upon all the finally impenitent shall be felt to be just and right the bitterness of punishment will not be experienced; but what then? Is the Bible therefore not the primary standard of appeal? Are we to put conscience first, and the Bible somewhere else, in the rank of authorities? Certainly not. There is nothing in the teachings either of the "old" or the "new school of theology" to forbid a primary appeal to the Word of God. Take the entire scope of that great standard of religious faith and practice, and we shall find even the declarations of the "old school" perfectly harmonious with that sense of right and honour which our author is so anxious to gratify. But his pet theory would not be maintained by such an admission. It is only by endeavouring to shew that all the theories hitherto propounded are incompatible with that sense that our author can prepare the way for the unfoldment of his own. Herein he errs. But of this anon. In the meantime let us ask, assuming that his proposition is sound, whether his scheme makes the subject any less difficult? He asserts our pre-existence in another world, and in another condition, and our individual revolt from God; and that, therefore, the depravity of our nature is the result of our own individual and deliberate act. But we are favoured, through the kindness and forbearance of God, with a trial in a state of probation and under a dispensation of aids and remedies, and as the sins we commit herein are owing to the de

pravity acquired in our previous life, and in spite of the aids and checks afforded in this, our condemnation hereafter, if condemned we should be, will be the result of our conduct from first to last, aggravated by the mercy we have abused in this life. We readily grant our author that his theory removes much that is difficult in the abstract doctrine of depravity, as held by all orthodox divines. But, alas! there is one very important item wanting in his scheme; we mean proof. Now Dr. Beecher admits he has no proof, such as we want. We want positive information that such is the history of our race, and this we have not. We admit that if the Bible had contained a history of our pre-existence and of our fall, our loyalty to inspiration would have induced our credence thereto, although one important item would have been lacking-namely, our recollection of our first life, and of our primal crime. Yet, in the absence of such recollections we would have given our unqualified adhesion to the statement, just as we give it to the Bible story of our fall in Adam; for we have long since learnt the happy art of believing what now is plainly taught in that grand old repository of emanations from the heart and mind of the Great Father. But the worthy doctor must pardon us if, in the absence of both, we treat his theory with profound contempt. May we not speak out when the book of God is silent, and ridicule that in our history of which we have no recollection? Did it not strike Dr. Beecher that had we lived and sinned in the capacity of an order of angels, we should have had some recollection of our elevated life, especially of the act by which we forfeited it? What do we recollect? Our memories reach no further back than to about the time we donned our first suit of corduroy, or the first penny we called our own, or, more likely still, the first grief we gave our earthly mother. Strange it is that, if this be the second edition of an intelligent responsible existence, we should have no recollections pertaining to the first. And it strikes us forcibly that the doctor's own position requires a recollection of our crime in that primal and previous existence to justify in our eyes the sufferings we endure in this life.

Look

The reader may be curious to know how Dr. Beecher disposes of the Scripture account of our fall and its results. It is but fair to say he does not pass it over: he meets it, confronts it; but as might be expected, he stays not to untie the knot, but with one desperate and bold action of the arm cuts it right in two. ing upon Romans v. 12-19, as the only Bible account of the origin of evil which stands in his way, he boldly says, "All the language in this passage, which is commonly understood to assert that the sin of Adam exerted a causative power upon the condition and character of his descendants, need not be understood to

denote real causation, but may, if any good reason calls for it, be held to denote only apparent causation, and that a good reason does call for this view; and moreover that such a sequence of apparent causation was established solely in order to make Adam a type of Christ. The passage, then, thus viewed, teaches that God was pleased to establish, immediately on the sin of Adam, and through that sin, the sequence of condemnation to natural death upon all men; a sequence linked to Adam's act by no causative power, but established solely as a type and illustration, both by similitude and antithesis, of the sequence of justification and life eternal from the obedience of Christ-a sequence in which there is a real and glorious causative power. The sequence of condemnation and death coming on all men through the sin of Adam was a merely typical sequence, established to illustrate a causative sequence of justification and spiritual life through Christ. This is the position which I lay down as the key of this whole passage." Enough has now been said to prove that the book before us is but one among the many proofs the world contains of the absurdities to which even a gifted mind will give utterance when it leaves the "sure word of prophecy" and wanders in the region of speculation. That the book is a proof of genius no one who has read it will hesitate to admit it exhibits a mind of vast capacity, of clear penetration, and of logical exactness. But it is a mind, which, in this instance at least, has left the fountain of living waters, to hew to itself a broken cistern, that can hold no water. For such a book there was certainly no need, much as Beecher says to the contrary. The theory even of the "old school of divines" is not incompatible with our innate "sense of right and honour." For assuming that we all partake of Adam's guilt and depravity, do not we partake of the fruits of redemption also? Granted that we inherit his sin, and that, therefore, we are cursed, do we not inherit the fruits of the second Adam's mediation, and thus become able to work out our own salvation? If through the sin of one man condemnation has passed upon all, the free gift has come upon all men unto justification of life through the obedience of one. No man comes into the world in the condition morally in which the fall left the human race. We are redeemed. If we, through no act of our own, possess a nature with the elements of evil incorporated therein, we possess also, through no merit of our own, elements, impulses, and powers which capacitate us for good, and which, when employed as they are intended, invest us with newness of life. No man is condemned because of the evil that is in him, nor simply for the moral evil he commits; but because he neglects or rejects the great salvation which is wrought out for him, and freely offered unto him. Redemption explains, rectifies and adjusts everything. "God is in