alism, and transcendentalism, no doubt a great deal; but is not the faith required. The command is not to believe that the Bible is an authentic record of the revelation, but to believe the truths revealed, not the Bible, but what the Bible, rightly interpreted, teaches. The truths revealed are the object, or, as the theologians say, objectum materiale of faith; and these evidently are not believed, unless the Bible be believed in its genuine sense, even assuming the Bible to contain them all.

We insist on this point, because it is one on which there are frequent and dangerous mistakes. The matter of faith is these revealed truths, which are fixed and unalterable, universal and eternal, and which must be carefully distinguished from our notions or apprehensions of them, which are dependent on our mental states or conditions, and change and fluctuate as we ourselves change or fluctuate. These notions are not the matter of faith, and to hold fast these is quite another thing from holding fast the truths themselves. If these notions, which are our interpretations or constructions of the truth, were the faith required, the faith would be one thing with one man, another thing with another, and one thing with the same man yesterday, another to-day, and perhaps still another to-morrow. The true faith is an undoubting belief of the TRUTH, not what a man honestly thinks to be the truth, but what really is truth; or otherwise men could be saved under any form of faith, and under one form of faith as well as another, so far as faith is requisite to salvation, for there is probably no form of error which has not its honest adherents. Sincerity in the belief of error cannot be the substitute for Christian faith; for we have found that the faith which is the condition sine qua non of salvation is belief of truth and not falsehood, and of that very truth which Jesus Christ revealed. But this truth we do not believe, unless it lie in our interpretation as it lay in the mind of Jesus Christ himself. If it do not so lie, then we misinterpret it, and the misinterpretation of truth is not truth, and to believe this misinterpretation is to believe not the truth, but something else. If, then, we do not believe the revelation made in the Scriptures, in its genuine sense, in the sense intended by Almighty God, we do not believe the revelation at all.

Now, it is necessary not only that we seize, without any mistake, this genuine sense, but that we be infallibly certain that we have seized it, and not another sense. Even admitting that with nothing but private reason we could hit upon the genuine sense of Scripture, it would avail us nothing, unless we had

this infallible certainty; because without this infallible certainty we could not have faith. Will any man pretend that it is possible by private reason alone to be infallibly certain that we have the genuine sense of the Scriptures? We may, perhaps, feel certain; but this feeling certain is not faith. Faith is a firm, unwavering, and unwaverable conviction of the understanding, as well as a cheerful assent of the will, resulting from the presence of full and infallible evidence. The mere feeling is worth nothing. Every enthusiast, every fanatic, has the feeling; but he who has nothing else is a mere reed shaken with the wind, or a wild beast let loose in society, as unacceptable to God as unprofitable to himself or dangerous to his associates. It is not this Almighty God demands of us, and it is not for the want of this that he places us under condemnation and suffers his wrath to abide upon us. No; we must have certainty, an intellectual certainty, certainty which the mind can grasp, and its hold of which all the craftiness of subtle sophists, all the allurements of the world, all the temptations of the flesh, and all the assaults of hell, cannot induce it for one moment to relax. We must have a faith which can be proof against all trials, come they from what quarter they may; for our life is a warfare, an incessant warfare, and there come to all of us moments when nothing but a firm, fixed, and unalterable faith can sustain us, moments when feeling, when the dearest affections of the heart, when all that can powerfully affect us as creatures of time and sense, conspire against us, and we must stand up against them and even against ourselves. O, in these terrible moments, in the sacred name of Christian charity, mock us not with a faith that melts away into mere feeling, and vanishes in mere caprice!

Now, it needs no words to prove that a faith which is not grounded on the word of God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived, will not answer our wants, will not be proof against the many "fiery trials" to which it must needs in this world be subjected. But we have no such faith merely because we have the Bible in our possession, nor because the Bible contains the word of God, nor because we read and study it and believe that we believe it. We have such a faith only on condition of knowing infallibly that what we take to be the meaning of the Bible is God's meaning; for the faith is belief of the truth as it is in Jesus, not as it may be in us. We ask again, Can private reason give us this certainty?

This is a serious question, and one which the Protestant must

answer, before he can have any solid reason for his faith. It will not do to call upon us to prove the negative; for, even if we could not prove that it is impossible from the Bible and private reason to become infallibly certain of the genuine sense of the word of God, it would not follow that we can from them obtain the infallible certainty without which there is no faith, and, if no faith, no salvation. He who affirms the proposition must prove it, not for the sake of meeting the logical conditions of his opponent's argument, for that is an affair of small moment; but for himself, for his own mind, to have in himself and for himself a well grounded faith. Now, how will he prove this proposition, that from the Bible and private reason alone he can ascertain the genuine sense of the word of God, and know infallibly that he has that sense?

Will he prove this proposition from the Bible? He is bound by his own principles to do this; for this is his rule of faith, and his rule of faith should rest on Divine authority. But he admits no Divine authority but the Bible. Then he must prove it from the Bible, or admit that he has no sufficient authority for it. Can he prove it from the Bible? Not in express terms, for the Bible in express terms does not assert it, as is well known. It can be proved from the Bible only by means of certain passages which are assumed to imply it. But whether these do imply it or not depends on the interpretation we give them. It can be proved from Scripture, then, only by a resort to interpretation. But the interpretation demands the application, the use of the rule, as the condition of establishing it. But how determine that the interpretation which authorizes the rule is not itself a misinterpretation, especially since it is an interpretation which is disputed? Can the rule be proved from reason? Not from reason, as the faculty of intuition; because the fact, that from the Bible and private reason alone we can infallibly determine what it is that God has actually revealed, is evidently not intuitively certain. From reason, as the vis ratiocinativa? From what data shall we conclude to it? It may be said, that God is just, that he has made a revelation, commanded us to believe it, and made our belief of it the condition sine qua non of salvation; but that he would not be just in so doing, if this revelation were not infallibly ascertainable in its genuine sense by the prudent exercise of natural reason. Ascertainable by natural reason in one method or another, we grant; but by private reason and the Bible alone, we deny the consequence: for God may have made the revelation ascertainable only by a di

vinely commissioned and supernaturally guided and protected body of teachers, and the office of natural reason to be to judge of the credibility of this body of teachers. From the fact that the revelation is addressed to reasonable beings, and is to be believed by such, and therefore must be made intelligible, it does not necessarily follow that it must be intelligible from the Scriptures and private reason alone. For this would imply that the Scriptures were intended to be the medium and the only medium through which God makes his revelation to men; the very question in dispute.

Can it be proved as a matter of fact, from experience? We have before us the history of Protestant sects for the last three hundred years. A three hundred years' experience ought to suffice to demonstrate the possibility of their ascertaining the sense of God's word, if it be thus ascertainable. Yet Protestants during this long period have done little else than vary their interpretations, dispute, wrangle, divide, subdivide, and subsubdivide, on the question of what it is God has revealed. They are now split up into some five or six hundred sects. There is not a single doctrine in which they all agree; not a single doctrine has been asserted by one that has not been denied by another. The writer in the Examiner is a conscientious and devout Unitarian, and yet how large a portion of his Protestant brethren will not deem it an excess of courtesy on our part to treat him and his associates as Christian believers ? The Gospel according to the late Dr. Channing has very little affinity with the Gospel according to Dr. Beecher. Now, truth. is one, and can admit of but one true interpretation. Of these many hundred Protestant interpretations, only one at most can be the true interpretation; all the rest are false interpretations, and their adherents are no Christian believers. Can any Protestant say with infallible certainty that his interpretation is the true one? If not, how can he elicit an act of faith? If he cannot elicit an act of faith, how can he be a Christian?

The writer in the Examiner makes very light of these different interpretations of the word of God, and thinks difference of interpretation can do no great harm, because, in his judgment, over it all there may prevail a harmony of sentiment and a harmony of life." But he mistakes the end of unity of faith. Unity of faith is essential because truth is one, and there can be but one true faith, and without this true faith salvation is not possible, as before proved. Sine fide impossibile est placere Deo ; and this must needs be the true faith, not a false faith, which

in fact is no faith at all. Our Unitarian friend seems to imagine that what we are required to believe is, not the truth, but what we think to be the truth; that is, we are required to believe the truth not as it is in Jesus, but merely as it is in ourselves! Does he find any proof of this convenient doctrine in the Scriptures? Can he adduce a "Thus saith the Lord" for it? If not, according to his own principles, it rests only on human authority, on which he does not allow us to believe; for he makes it the duty of the believer to stand up firm against all human dictation in matters of belief. In this he is right, and we must have higher authority than even his, before we can consent to regard any man's constructions of the truth, unless we have infallible authority for believing them the true constructions, as the truth Almighty God commands us to believe, and for not believing which we must lie under his wrath and condemnation.

No argument can be drawn, it is evident, from experience, to prove that from the Bible and private reason alone we can determine with infallible certainty what is the revelation of God. So far as experience throws any light on the subject, it warrants the opposite conclusion, and makes it pretty nearly certain that without something else faith is out of the question. Protestants, in fact, have no faith; nay, so far from having any faith, nearly all of them deny its possibility, in the sense in which it is any thing more than a strong inward persuasion. They have, as we have seen, no authority from the Bible, from reason, or from experience, for their rule of faith; and they cannot be such poor logicians as to infer that they can have faith by virtue of a rule which is not authorized. This is, no doubt, a serious matter for them; for, ever must ring in their ears sine fide impossibile est placere Deo,- qui non crediderit condemnabitur. We must, then, either give up the possibility of faith, or seek some other than the Protestant answer to the question, Who or what is the witness to the fact of revelation?

3. The insufficiency of this answer has been felt even by Protestants themselves, and some of them have proposed a third answer, which we may denominate Private Illumination, because it is a revelation made for the special benefit of him who receives it, and not a revelation to be communicated by him for the faith or confirmation of the faith of others. It is contended for under various forms, but the more common form, and the one which principally concerns us in this discussion, is the Calvinistic, or what is usually denominated Christian Expe