"The world by wisdom knew not God."-1 Cor. i. 21.

IN a few observations, intended mainly as introductory to this series of works, we wish to explain what we believe to be the legitimate province of Natural Reason in the investigation of revealed truth. We feel the more impelled to this perhaps otherwise unnecessary taskleast in the views we may advance on experimental religion, we shall be suspected of abrogating entirely the exercise of the intellectual faculties in the study and experience of God's truth, thus turning away from a most important instrument which He has given us for the purpose of weighing and sifting the evidence of its validity.

The two extremes towards which writers on

Christianity have verged, have been, the opponents of the system on the one hand, discanting upon the power and sufficiency of reason, as though all the light which we possess of the invisible world and its sublime realities, were owing to its discoveries, and to no other source: and on the other, the advocates of the system, abdicating almost entirely the employment of our mental faculties-setting aside the use of reason, assigning to it no office, and awarding to it no distinction. Both, we believe to be in error; each extreme of opinion untenable. The one,

in elevating reason too high, the other, in depressing it too low. The one, in investing us with the prerogative of GOD, the other, in robbing us of the dignity of man. We feel it important then briefly and in simple terms, to state what province should be assigned to human reason in prosecuting our researches in revealed and experimental truth. And that the reader may have the subject clearly before him, we shall first show what is not, and then what is, the proper use of reason in matters of religious faith.

First, it is not the province of human reason to discover spiritual truth. This far transcends

the power of the highest created reason, unenlightened by the Spirit of GOD. We do not say that the mind taught of GoD, can discover nothing of the glory of His character, the excellence and loveliness of Jesus, and the spirituality and fitness of His truth. By no means would we assert this. The mind Divinely illuminated can penetrate deeply into the vast domain of faith, and discover the glories there revealed. But without this teaching, aside from this Divine illumination, it cannot advance a step. All is dark, all mysterious. And just what the telescope is to the eye of the astronomer, as when with a glance, he sweeps the firmament of nature in search of new and undiscovered worlds, faith is to the eye of reason as it ranges the firmament of revelation in search of the glorious truths of GOD. But unenlightened by the Holy Spirit, it can discover nothing. Take, for example, the existence, perfections, and moral government of Jehovah, what can human reason discover here? What light can it throw upon the fundamental article of our belief,-the being of GOD? Our senses may assure us that we exist. That we form but a moiety of human existence is equally

certain. That we have existed but a short time, memory testifies;-and that we are not selfcreated, but that there must be a First Cause from which all creation originated, is all that we can deduce from these obvious facts. This is the utmost limit to the discoveries of reason. "Who is this First Cause ?" "What is He ?" "Where is He?" "In what relation does He stand to me?" "How may I propitiate His regard, and be admitted to communion with Him?" are momentous questions on which reason may conjecture, but on which it can pronounce with no authority.

Let the reader glance but for a moment at the results to which reason has come in its investigation of religious truth. What are they? where is the evidence of its mighty powers ? where is the scribe? where is the philosopher? where is the disputer of this world? let them produce the amount of their researches. What discoveries have they made of GOD? what light have they reflected upon His moral attributes? How far have they penetrated into the dark and deep abyss of futurity, demonstrating with certainty whether there be any state after this, and

if there be, what that state is? How have they accounted for the existence of moral evil? and what balm have they proposed for the mitigation of all its entailed miseries? And how have they solved the problem, that God can be a just God-just to His law, just to Himself, and yet be the justifier of the ungodly? We ask, and are referred to tradition, while that tradition is derived, we are all assured, from the fountain of divine revelation.

That this is not mere assertion, unsustained by evidence, let us show. No fact is more certain, then that, all the knowledge which the ancient philosophers had of morals and of God, was traditionary; revelation being the source of that tradition. We may enquire in the language of Turtullian, "which of the poets, which of the sophists was there, who did not drink of the prophet's fountain?" To this they came wearied with their own fruitless researches, and panting for some better guide than reason. Here they drank, Ovid from Moses, and Virgil from Isaiah Another of the Fathers styles Plato the Hebrew Philosopher, while a third asserts that, from the Hebrew writings, he derived his pious conceptions