the words of an apostle, "partakers of the Divine Nature." It is not a mere form of words that we use, when we say that men are children of God. There is a glorious significance in the words. They mean that mind is the offspring of mind, and that the parentage of the children may be traced by the lineaments of the Father, that he reproduced his image in them, by giving them a portion of his uncreated reason.

This original inspiration is not to be regarded as the only, or the greatest revelation. It is no more than the condition by which other revelations are possible. It is the faculty without which we could not be religious beings, worshipping the Great Spirit, and looking for the blessedness of an unseen and far off spiritual future. This is the interior light by which. the soul sees its invisible objects of faith, hope, and love. Without it, we should grope blindly in a universe filled and rejoicing with manifestations of God's presence and glory, and `all would be cold, dark, and chaotic, as our own minds.

It may be necessary to repeat distinctly, that this universal light or Divine Word, which God has imparted to all moral beings, is not religion; but the foundation, the possibility of religion. It is the power of discerning and choosing between good and evil; and of receiving with intelligence, and faith, and love, and obedience, such further revelations of truth and duty, as the Father is pleased to make. This finite portion of the divine reason is infallible within its own finite sphere of activity. It will never mislead us if we follow it steadily. It is not our reason or your reason, not human reason even, of which we speak; but the universal reason, or "Word which in the beginning was with God and was God; " and which is communicated with measure, and limit, to all finite minds. It is the light of the universe by which spiritual realities are discernible. If we walk in this light, we obey the law of the mind, and the law of God, not a law of our choice and making.

It may be asked, then, whence come error and sin, if God has written an infallible rule of right on every human soul? The question is pertinent, and must be answered. "The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not." It falls among the mists of earthly passion, and is seen only in dim and disastrous eclipse. Error and sin spring not from the universal reason, but from our individual personality, -the freedom of our will, from that internal force, by

which God has made us capable of controlling our thoughts, and directing our activity. The divine element is not the whole of humanity. There is a part which is of the earth, earthy. We have passions and desires which hinder the operation of the higher reason, and set at nought our moral intuitions. Within the ordained sphere of our activity, we are as free as the God who made us. We can follow a perverse will and do wrong; and we do it. But we do not approve it; we put in some plea for ourselves at the bar of conscience. We are free to shut our eyes upon the light and "walk in darkness, because our deeds are evil." We may obey self-love, more than reason; we may love a flattering error, more than a stern and heart-searching truth; we may prefer gain to godliness, and sensual pleasure to immortal good; we may care more for earth than for heaven, and the infinite well-being of our souls.

All this we may do by the free force of a will which refuses the universal reason its rightful supremacy. And hence come the manifold forms of sin and error, which hide and disfigure the divine image, by which we are marked as God's children. There is often a fierce struggle between the earthly and divine elements of which we are compounded. "The law in the members wars against the law of the mind." This personal force, this freedom of will opposing itself desperately against the teaching of God, will account for all human misdoing.

Nor have we said any thing inconsistent with the assertion that the divine reason, originally communicated to us, is infallible within the natural sphere of its judgments. We may disregard it, its voice may be stifled, and its decisions disturbed by the agitation and uproar of fierce passions, and clamorous inrerests. But such is the condition of all spiritual power and excellence; they can be obtained only through the strife of antagonist principles. There is a warfare within; we are made for spiritual conflict; great is the joy, and glorious the crown of victory.

We cannot close this article, without noticing the very important bearing of the principle we have endeavored to illustrate upon the evidence of the Christian Revelation. Spiritual truths are spiritually discerned. There must be something within us by which we may apprehend and measure what comes from without. No new truth can take its place

in the mind, unless it approves itself to something already there, and makes harmony with it. The Christian revelation could never have been made to men, had not men been “ preconfigured to its influence." Every teaching of a higher wisdom, every hitherto unknown or unfelt spiritual truth, would come to us in vain, unless it found answering sympathies within, and some affinity with our previous thoughts and affections.

By pursuing this line of thought somewhat farther than our limits will allow, we shall arrive at a philosophy of revealed religion, by which we may know that the mission of Christ was divine, and his doctrine true. We may know it, because we see not only the handiwork of God in his miracles; but the mind of God in his teaching. All he taught was in perfect harmony with the Word which reveals itself in the moral nature of " every man that cometh into the world." It was holy, divine, Godlike. "They who do his will, shall know of the doctrine, that it is of God." They know it by their living experience and consciousness. They enter into the feelings of the loved disciple, when he declared, "We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Yes, full of grace and truth! For they discerned the moral features of the Divinity. In that meek and suffering man, they saw the most luminous manifestation of the Father's moral perfections. All who loved the truth, owned his divine authority. Every true man becomes subject to him as a spiritual king whose reign is over the heart and mind. There is internal evidence of his heavenly mission which cannot be gainsayed. In receiving Christ as our master and teacher, we yield to a twofold authority; first, to the unwritten Word which God originally imparted to every rational soul; and next, to the same Word, uttered in more distinct and audible tones by his perfect representative. These two modes of revelation mutually confirm each other. Every truth which approves itself to our hearts, claims our faith, and binds us to our duty by the authority of this twofold revelation. The spiritual faculty within bears witness to the truth revealed from without. God speaks to us in manifold voices of wisdom and warning; and his universal reason within us, if we reverently listen, will echo these voices with convincing power.

C. S.

OF

ART. V.-THE DOCTRINE OF THE UNIFORMITY CAUSATION NOT INCOMPATIBLE WITH A BELIEF IN MIRACLES.

In a note to a discourse on miracles, inserted in the Christian Examiner, for September 1836, reference is made to an essay, published some years since, on "The Fundamental Principle of all Evidence and Expectation;"-a paper written by a Mr. Bailey of Sheffield, England, and published in connexion with essays on "The Pursuit of Truth," and "The Progress of Knowledge." It is of this essay, and its bearing on miracles, that we wish to speak,

The essay is written with great clearness, and makes what is commonly a dark subject beam with light; but the writer stops short of the application of his argument to the credibility of miracles, just short of it, leaving us to grope for the truth on that point, not only in the same shadows as before, but under the belief that we still see as clearly, as when he made our path plain. The result has been that many have been satisfied by his essay, that no evidence can prove a miracle, though he neither, in terms, says this, nor lays down principles that fairly lead to such a conclusion. Whether Mr. Bailey disbelieves Christianity, and framed his argument with a view to act upon the faith of others, we have no means of knowing; but certain it is, that it has so acted, and shaken the trust of not a few, not by its logic, but by leaving the subject at that point where we are led to apply its logic illogically. Even in the note referred to, the essay is spoken of as intended to prove the impossibility of miracles, though the word "miracle" is not used by the writer at all.

The main idea of the essay is, that we instinctively, and always believe, that like causes will produce like effects: this, it is argued, is always assumed in our reasonings, both on physical and moral subjects. When we doubt what may be the result of any act, it is not because we doubt that the same results will follow from those causes which we see at work, that have followed them heretofore, but it is because we think other causes may be operating upon the subject-matter.

And this belief is not the result of argument, it precedes, and is the ground of argument; nor is it the result of experience; experience we go to, to learn what the effect is which

follows any cause, but our faith, that this will always follow, is as firm, if we learn it from the experience of an hour, as if we spent a life-time in learning it.

This belief applies both to the future and the past. But we must discriminate clearly; the belief spoken of, does not teach that because the sun has risen and set regularly, as far as our experience and all history tells us, therefore, it always has done, and will do so; but it teaches that the causes which now produce the phenomena of morning and evening, always have produced them when in operation, and always will produce them so long as they continue to operate. But as there is nothing which prevents our believing these causes, (that is, the motion of the earth, &c.,) to be the results of other causes, so we may believe that there was a time when the sun did not rise or set. On the same ground, the instinctive belief referred to does not forbid our faith in the creation of the world, though another article of instinctive faith, to wit, that every effect must have a cause, leads us, and has led all men, to refer its creation to a preexistent Being.

This principle, that like effects will produce like causes, is also, as our author argues, the basis of evidence. We learn from experience, that, as men are made, they speak the truth, unless led by habit, temptation, or other cause to lie; we find those most trustworthy, who state facts to their own injury, but for the good of others, whose characters are high, whose conduct is fair and frank, and who lay themselves open to detection, if they misstate; these and various other marks of good witnesses we learn from experience; but having learnt them, apply them, under our instinctive belief as to causation, to all cases. But it is clear, that as regards the causes which will act upon any human mind, we must be much in the dark, and though our faith in the results of those causes, which we see at work, will not be shaken, yet there is always a chance that other and stronger causes are acting which will neutralize those that are visible. If, then, at any time, testimony is brought forward to prove some new phenomenon at variance with all previous experience, we have first to ask, whether it seeks to prove that a cause has produced an effect, different from that hitherto produced; if it does, we must logically, reject the proof, for it would destroy itself; and, in point of fact, we should reject it, because such is our instinct. But it