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and they are the very things which appeal with most of commanding force to the conscience. Philosophy may construct a compact and beautiful argument for eternal decrees, proving, to a demonstration, that God could not govern the world without them. But a man accepts the doctrine, not because it approves itself to the speculative understanding, but because, far beyond and above the speculative understanding, it commands the conscience, and, through the conscience, the will and the affections, by the mighty power of the Holy Ghost. And this is precisely the amount of the pretended agreement between Platonism and Calvinism, the pagan philosophy and the teachings of the Bible.

No man, inspired or uninspired, ever exceeded Paul in dialectic skill, in the love of its exercise, or in the power to crush his subtle adversaries by their own weapons. Yet see how habitually he drives his argument right through all such artillery, and home to the conscience, as knowing that the spiking of every gun, and the destruction of every battery amounts to little so long as that stronghold is unassailed. What a clarion ring of celestial warfare is there in his grand response to the Greek philosophers: "Not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God." (2 Cor. iv. 2.) So in the presence of the Roman governor he "reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come." Every word was a bolt aimed directly at the conscience of Felix; hence he stood pale and trembling. At Thessalonica, too, when he would convict the Jews of the guilt of Christ's death, for three successive Sabbath days he "discoursed to them (dieλéyero) out of the Scriptures," — their own," opening and alleging that Jesus," the man whom they had killed," was the Christ," the anointed of God, the promised to their fathers, and hope of their nation. But most striking of all, when he has declared, as a matter of pure revelation, God's absolute sovereignty in the future and eternal destiny of men, even to the hardening of whom he will; and the speculative understanding, as counsel for the proud heart, starts up with its cavil of God's injustice and man's irresponsibility, he dashes all to the ground by one tremendous thunder-peal to

the conscience; "Nay, but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?" (Rom. ix. 20.)

It is not alone in relation to such points as the origin of sin, decrees, and reprobation, that the speculative understanding stumbles in its arrogant and vain questionings. There is not a single point of Christian doctrine which it cannot perplex and has not perplexed in the same way; - perplexed, not as regards the conscience, but itself.

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Even granting, however, that it were true that what the speculative understanding can question the speculative understanding can answer, all this is clearly aside of the end in view. Still another question arises, and it is, whether such answer of the speculative understanding is God's answer; whether it is the answer to the conscience, and tends to conviction of sin and conversion of the soul to God. The obvious and inevitable reply, as we judge, is a direct and emphatic No. It is the precise contrary to all this; it is in the direction of ministering to the pride of reason;—a ministration how necessarily weakening to the action of conscience, any man can easily see. is a point to be well considered. The speculative understanding is not moral, in any sense or degree, but purely intellectual. Conscience, on the contrary, is moral; this is its peculiar characteristic and distinction. Whenever conscience comes into court, it is always to adjudicate in matters of right and wrong. This is no disparagement to the other faculties, they are there too, perception, memory, understanding, reason, — but only as servitors and secretaries, to turn over the files, hunt up testimony, and keep the records. Conscience is ultimate and supreme. Just as soon, therefore, as any matter is submitted to the speculative understanding it is taken clean out of the court of conscience at once. Conscience may put off its robes and retire. Its voice is no longer heard.

Nor is it to be supposed that any advantage would result even though the decision of the speculative understanding were always coincident with that of the conscience; since it is the exclusive prerogative of conscience to decide on every question of right and wrong, without such aid. To appeal a case, therefore, from the court of conscience to that of the speculative understanding, or to claim that the understanding is to be even

advisory in the matter, is to degrade the conscience, and so inevitably to impair the force of its decisions. Moreover, if the decision of the conscience may be held in abeyance while we run off to that other court with reference to one point about which a doubt has been raised, so, equally with reference to any and every other; and just so long as there is any uncertainty as to whether this subtle and special-pleading faculty has reached the end of its objections, the authority of conscience is held in suspense; God's voice is not heard; his law is bound. Another hydra, whose heads will grow a great deal faster than you can cut them off.

Again, when it is considered that the speculative understanding usually puts in its plea and its query, not as an honest inquirer, desirous simply to know the truth and obey it, but rather with a view to parry the approach of an unwelcome conviction; to throw up earthworks, behind which the conscience, already partially disturbed and active, may hide itself from God's shafts, the argument acquires cumulative force. When God commands a guilty man to repent or perish, is he in doubt whether he ought to repent, until he has overhauled the question of Adam's sin, or God's connection with the fact of that sin and his own; or the character and measure of his ability in the whole matter? No such thing. The case against him is clear to a demonstration, - clear to the extent of his utter confusion; and he knows it only too well, and feels it all too deeply. His hesitation, therefore, for a single moment, is daring resistance to God, a wilful obstinacy in the wrong, a shameful trifling with his own eternal interests.

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If the views which have been presented are correct, they are of the last importance in their bearing upon the Christian pulpit. How shall the preacher order his ministry with reference to its great and divinely appointed end, the conversion and salvation of his hearers? There are men in every community and in every congregation who are ingenious in the way we have been considering. When pressed with arguments addressed to the conscience, they are ever ready to answer by suggestions of the speculative understanding. How shall the preacher treat such suggestions? Demonstrate, it may be, as a wise discretion shall dictate, that they are superficial and frivolous, — the stale

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and shop-worn stock in trade of sceptics in every age; or awful mysteries of God, before which a man should stand with uncovered head; and so, when alleged as objections, not less superficial and frivolous, as if a man should refuse to eat till he understands how bread is converted into blood. But mainly, reassert the prerogative of conscience, God's vicegerent in the breast, and demand implicit submission to its decisions. Insist on the completeness and sufficiency of arguments addressed to the conscience. Tell men, with all plainness, that the suggestions and questionings of the speculative understanding are the result, not of superior intelligence, a profound and philosophic habit of mind, or the caution of a wise and acute analyst in admitting conclusions in a matter of vast and eternal concernment; but of intellectual pride, vain conceit, and a heart in wicked rebellion against the authority of God. This is the plain truth, and shall the preacher of righteousness, God's ambassador to men in revolt, involve himself in a complicity with the wickedness, by helping men to cover it up? Helping men to cover it up! We will venture to assert that that is about the amount of all that was ever accomplished, or ever will be, to the end of the dispensation, by labored replies, with respectful air, to the perverse disputings of the speculative understanding. Did anybody ever hear of a single instance of genuine conversion, as the result of such a process? Or did anybody ever perceive that a man seemed a single hairbreadth nearer to repentance when his speculative objections had been answered, and he silenced?

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We incline strongly to the belief that most conversions take place at an earlier period than the speculative understanding comes fully into play; while authority is paramount, and truth is received traditionally, and the conscience is still quick and powerful, as compared with after years; that is to say, in childhood. This subject is one of very deep interest. If any of our readers wish to pursue it, they will find the whole matter treated with great ability in "THE CRUCIBLE; OR, TESTS OF A REGENERATE STATE;" by the Rev. J. A. Goodhue; a volume whose careful study would be most beneficial, as we conceive, to the whole religious community.

What if it be a mere passage at arms between a minister

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and an intelligent hearer; exciting mutual respect and admiration on the part of the preacher, that his hearer is so intellectual and philosophic, and, withal, so ready to listen to his reasonings; and, on the part of the hearer, that his minister is so appreciative, and so scholarly in replying to what he plumes himself on his cleverness in suggesting. How much good has been done, in that case, on one side or on the other? We greatly fear that the whole effect lies directly against the chances of that man's conversion. Indeed, it appears to us abundantly plain that the first step in the direction of his submission to God, must be of a widely different character. Nor are we at all sanguine as to the conversion, by any means, of men who have surrendered themselves to the perverse and tortuous guidance of the speculative understanding. It is a most dangerous experiment, or rather it seems to us to furnish strong presumptive evidence of having already passed the point beyond which God will seldom go to bring a man back. Even in such a case, however, preaching to the conscience is by no means in vain; since one part of the grand purpose for which the Christian ministry was instituted is, to restrain the wickedness of men whom God does not design to save; so that the world may be tolerable for the elect, and, lest, through the superabounding of iniquity, they should fall away. This binding of Satan is effected only by flashing God's naked truth into the conscience.

How directly, and with what a regal authority, the Bible brings the great facts of God and his law, sin and its condemnation, Christ and his redemption, death and the judgment, home to every man, of every race and nation, Jew or Gentile, Greek or Barbarian, wise or unwise. "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." "Now commandeth he all men everywhere to repent." "He that believeth shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned." In these brief pregnant sayings all is comprehended; and let it be considered whether, in the face of these grand and overwhelming appeals, all that the speculative understanding can suggest in a thousand years is not the most pitiful drivelling — “hollow poverty and emptiness."

How far we have drifted in this untoward direction is matter for grave inquiry. It is too early to have forgotten what was

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