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only to have avoided intercourse with general society, but also to have considered himself in some degree as unqualified for it. Undoubtedly his heart was full of love towards "being in general;" but a perusal of his life will show, that this love was not manifested tovards individuals out of the circle of his personal friends, by any trong interest in society at large. And in correspondence with his, his works do not show an acquaintance with men. With the general features of the human mind, he was intimately acquainted. He knew man in the abstract, and he reasons upon some of the aculties of our nature, with surpassing strength and clearness. He knew man as sinner or a saint; and he describes him as the one or the other with great exactness, in the more prominent traits of his character. The truth seems to be, that as subjects of hought, God and his moral government, his plan of redemption by esus Christ, and man as a voluntary and accountable being destined o happiness or misery, so absorbed his powerful mind, that he felt o disposition to descend to the varieties of individual character. At least, he does not show that minute acquaintance with those arieties which some other great men have manifested in their ritings. And though we are professed admirers of his genius nd moral excellence, we have often regretted, that he did not hare in such opportunities for observing the varieties of chaacter, as those which were enjoyed by Barrow and Berkeley. Had he occasionally stooped froin his contemplations, to hold onverse with more of his brethren of the great human famy, he would have accommodated the truths which he discovered, ore persuasively to their hearts.

A retired theologian may have fastened his mind on some truth ke this, "the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately icked," and may insist on it in his reasonings with great ingenuity nd force, and yet, if he happens to go abroad into society, may be ne dupe of the first man he meets. Like some others, he may e inclined to worship the "idols of the den," and to seek for uth in the "lesser world and not in the greater and common one." le may be very ingenious in reasoning from the objects of his own onsciousness and experience, or from the abstract principles of heology; but in the one case he may be told, that it is dangerus to take the "a priori road," and in the other, that his conciousness and experience are not the measure of the intellect and aoral feelings of others.

We admit, that the writer who describes his own experience and he objects of his own consciousness, will often by so doing waken ome of those feelings of our common nature, in the heart of many eaders. This was the secret of the success of that class of poets, vho have been styled the "Egotistical school." Going on the round that face answereth to face in water, so the heart of man VOL. V.

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to man," they painted their own feelings with great distinctness and strength of coloring, and thus found their way to the hearts of others.

So in religious experience, some eminent christians have in their diaries, or their letters to friends, or their sermons, or their published works, unfolded their own hearts in the description of the graces of holiness, or of their trials and temptations; and have thus afforded consolation and encouragement to other christians, especially if they belonged to the same section of the church, and were conversant with the same doctrines. But the difficulty is, that the christian and the infidel have so little in common, that if the christian minister attempts to reason from his own consciousness, in order to convince an unbeliever of his error, he will do it to little purpose. Neither abstract principles, nor his own experience, will answer any very good end. He must by actual intercourse with men, have enjoyed the advantage of making external observations; and then will he understand what are the prejudices and prepossessions, the associations and the dulness which exist among even baptised infidels. And from pursuing a different course, and trusting to the power of christjan truth, as they feel it operating on their own hearts, to the neglect of this course of observation, some preachers, and able ones, have addressed men who are shrewd, worldly, and sceptical, only to provoke a smile at their ignorance of mankind.

We are strengthened in our opinion on this subject, by calling to mind the astonishing knowledge of human nature displayed by the great founder of the christian system, and by the great apostle to the gentiles. The arguments which they use are always exactly adapted to the very men to whom they are addressed. The one with the different sects of the Jews, and the other in his intercourse with the inhabitants of different cities among the nations which he visited, always seemed perfectly to understand the men they had to deal with. Hence it was, that they were able either to convince their opponents, or at least put them to silence.

While we would thus insist upon a thorough knowledge of men, as a necessary pre-requisite for successful argumentation with intelligent unbelievers, we at the same time would guard ourselves against running into the opposite extreme, of neglecting the study of the general principles of theology, and the duty of self-examination in retirement. We are well aware that among the present race of ministers, there are in these bustling times those who are conversant only with particulars, with the doings at anniversary celebrations, and with private history. We do not dwell at any length upon the deficiences of men of this class, because they will not be very apt to undertake to write a work on the evidences of christianity. This would require study, an employment to which

they are not especially addicted. They neglect books as the others do men.

Now the man who would undertake to write a work, or to preach sermons, to convince intelligent unbelievers, ought to be deeply versed in both theological learning, and the knowledge of mankind. He should have attentively studied the great book of human nature, not merely as theologians are apt to do, to learn what relations the several faculties of man have to each other, or to duty and accountableness, but to see the actual workings of the mind. He should at the hazard of being considered "a gluttonous man, and a wine-bibber, and a friend of publicans and sinners," place himself on free and familiar terms with sceptical men, gain their confidence, and then learn what are the true causes which operate to prevent them from receiving the truth. He need not be afraid lest by associating with them occasionally, he shall incur the censure bestowed on the man who countenances their opinions and practices. He need not, from the fear that he shall lose their respect by familiarity with them, adopt the sentiment of the Roman Emperor, "Ex longinquo major reverentia ;" for if he is acquainted with theology as a public teacher ought to be, and if his heart is governed by right motives, he may be sure that neither the cause of truth nor his own respectability will suffer.

In the work before us, the author shows that he is intimately acquainted with human nature, and particularly with the various workings of unbelief in the heart of the infidel. He seems to have been accustomed to look at the various lights and shadows in the characters of men; instead of being satisfied, as some are, with bare generalities. Had he been a mere theologian, he could never have written these discourses. He seems to have collected by observation, a great variety of valuable facts in the mental history of unbelievers, and to have composed these discourses while those facts were in view. Hence it is, that he can "hold the mirror up to nature, show virtue its own form, scorn its own image," so distinctly that unbelievers of every cast can each see his own shape and color. He does not indeed enter into a minute relation of what he has seen with his own eyes. He is not a story-teller. But having the power of generalization, he presents the results not as common place remarks, but in all the freshness of original investigation and discovery. His thoughts are connected together by some luminous general principle running through them. They are not scattered pearls. They are presented in orderly arrangement like gems on a thread of gold.

Another characteristic of these Sermons, is, that the argumentation is of a kind that is adapted to produce conviction.

We have read works which were written to prove that a revelation from God is desirable and necessary, and that therefore it may

with him like a prize-fighter in a bear garden. But even if you succeed, by raising a strong popular feeling against him, and thus force him to silence, have you convinced him? Mere human power, let it be exerted in what way it will, whether by inflicting evil on the person or the reputation, is totally unable to obtain the assent of the mind to the truth of any doctrine. This assent can be obtained only on the perception of the truth of such a doctrine. As long, therefore, as you trust to any thing else to produce conviction, and not to that sort of evidence which is adapted to the mind of your antagonist, you labor to no purpose, so far as he is concerned.

We have said, that the author of these Sermons has employed in them a kind of argumentation that is adapted to produce conviction. He avoids, for the most part, the errors which we have noticed. He makes but little use of a priori reasoning; he says very little about the external evidences; he neither exhausts his strength upon unimportant points, nor descends to the use of furious declamation, against the motives of infidels, and the tendency of their principles. His great excellence as a reasoner consists in this, that he looks at infidelity in the very shape which it now wears; and then selects his argument to meet it in that very shape. He gives us very little of the history of infidelity. He says, if we remember right, nothing of Hobbs and Shaftsbury, Tindal and Morgan, and little of Bolingbroke and Hume, and of the mode in which they may be met. He just describes the infidelity of the present age, and plies it with the appropriate arguments. The merit of the reasoning consists in the correctness of the observations which he has made of the present character of infidelity, and then in the application of the appropriate truths. We can easily believe, that another kind of reasoning would have pleased some minds better. Lord Bacon remarks that “anticipations always have a much greater power to entrap the assent, than interpretations; because, being collected from a few familiar particulars, they immediately strike the mind, and fill the imagination; whereas interpretations being separately collected from very various and from very distant things, cannot suddenly affect the mind." If Dr. Thompson had gone through a course of mere common place reasoning, adorning it with the associations of his fine mind; especially if he had dealt somewhat in startling paradoxes, ultimately cleared up by some definition of his terms; and more especially, if he had given his sentences a syllogistic form, and introduced a goodly number of conditional, adversative, and illative conjunctions, such as if, but, and therefore; he might have seemed to some, to reason more powerfully than he now does. But he had to do with men who had been trained to inductive reasoning, or as Lord Bacon calls it, interpretations, and who

would not be satisfied with what he calls anticipations, or hasty conclusions. He might have rung in their ears the language of denunciation, and they would have laughed like Leviathan at the shaking of the spear, and called for proof. He might have amused them with buffoonry and vulgarisms, like some popular preachers, who shall be nameless, and they would still have called for proof. He might have tried upon them the power of all the machinery of a camp meeting, and they would still have called for proof. And so he gave them proof, in language befitting the preacher, the pulpit, and the auditors, dignified, yet earnest, pungent, and yet decorous.

The infidelity of the present age is not so much distinguished for its opposition to christianity as a whole, as to particular doctrines. The warfare which it wages, somewhat resembles Capt. Bobadil's method of defeating an army. It endeavors to destroy the christian system in detail. It comes in the guise of a friend, into the christian camp, and even uses the arms which it finds there, against the true and loyal servants of Christ. It employs certain doctrines which it finds in the bible, against other doctrines which it hates. Thus, some endeavor to destroy the credibility of the endless punishment of the wicked. Some oppose the divinity and some the humanity of the Savior; or they deny the doctrine of the atonement, or of justification by faith; or they would desecrate the sabbath, or annihilate the church as a distinct class in the community; or they ridicule the duties of devotion, and indeed all the peculiar duties of the gospel. Humility they would represent as meanness of spirit, and obedience to the last injunction of Jesus, as a kind of Quixotism. All this and more, they will do, though they claim for themselves the name of christian. They would thus blot out one by one from the christian system, each glorious truth, and leave to us naught but the dark and cheerless waste of naturalism. The time was, when the legions of infidelty, clad in the panoply of a false philosophy, exultingly raised the war-cry, as they rushed into the open field, against "the host of God's elect." But now, they choose to fight under cover, and rely more upon sappers and miners, than upon the prowess and skill of their champions. And their numbers have become astonishingly increased. We are aware, too, that the church generally by means of voluntary associations and the press, has put on a greater show of strength; and actually exerts a greater amount of concentrated efficiency, than it did forty years ago. Indeed, if you will listen to the speeches delivered on some anniversary occasions, you would almost feel that the great victory over the foes of unbelief and irreligion, is already won, and that the speakers had come together, not to "animate the battle, but to chant the triumph." The managers and agents of these several associations, very natu

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