If he happens

good sense and conscience of its possessor. to be destitute of both, he is odious for his want of integrity and contemptible for his weakness. Without practical good sense, intellectual men are like promising children; they acquire knowledge without power to arrange or use it, and it becomes like green wood heaped upon a fire, which extinguishes the flame it was meant to feed. If they acquire knowledge, without that sense of duty which makes them feel responsible for all their attainments, they may as well remain unenlightened; it is even better to sit in darkness, than to use the lamp to our feet to guide us in the way of death. How little intellect without practical sagacity and. moral principle profits its possessor, we see in the profligacy of many literary men. We do not refer to the base hirelings, who represent cut-throats as gentlemen, and pickpockets as men of honor; but among those highly gifted with original talent, the rarest gift of God, there have been some who have used all their power to turn vice into virtue and glory into shame. When we consider the beauty and power of their writings, the page shines with more than the brightness of the sun; when we regard its moral tendency, it seems set on fire of hell. We should detest them for their abuse of splendid powers, did we not pity them as we behold their miserable shipwreck of their own peace and glory.

Intellectual men who have had religious feelings without practical wisdom, have done no service to religion. Their constant attempts to do good are sure to fail; because they make their calculations without regard to human nature. They do not reflect, that it is not enough to present any great enterprise of benevolence to men. They expect to find a thousand hands and hearts ready to engage in it at once; but they find that, before any thing can be done, numberless obstacles must be removed; the selfish must be warmed into generosity, a change which in them seems strange and unnatural as a change of expression on the face of the dead; the indifferent must be called away from their follies, though it is as hard as to catch and confine the feather that dances in the gale; avarice must unclench its grasp, though its fingers are grown to its gold; doubts must be satisfied; objections answered; wanton opposition put down. Long before he can accomplish this, the enthusiast despairs, because, when he began, he knew not what is in man; he who did

know what is in man, foresaw that his religion would prevail at last, though not till ages after he had suffered and died; and with this joy before him, he patiently endured the cross.

This is the reason why intellectual men, who wish to reform the religious faith or feeling of a community, are so apt to despair. They see some wretched fanatic step before them, and work up a whole people into frenzy by the force of an eloquence which makes them blush for him and his hearers; and they say that there is nothing for them to do, if such men can excite and impress the world. They do not reflect what it is that gives the fanatic his power. It is the prevailing want of knowledge, which enables him to produce great effects almost without exertion. The community believe that long prayers, which our Saviour thought a sign of hypocrisy, are the very soul of devotion; the community believe that the solemn countenance and gloomy manner, which our Saviour prohibited in his disciples, are the true religious expression: he takes advantage of this prejudice, and impresses them with a high opinion of his own sanctity by his long prayers, his repulsive manner, and by frowning defiance on all pleasures except such as he wishes to enjoy. The mere statement of the way in which such men produce their effects, shows that they use means which men of better minds and feelings could never stoop to employ. The intellectual man should remember that their ambition differs from his own; he is for building up, they for pulling down; it takes many able hands to build the edifice which one villain can destroy, and he should remember that it naturally attracts less attention when it stands in its beauty, than when its fires light up the skies.

If we ask what the religious character is without the practical or intellectual, we can easily learn from our own observation; we see thousands who mean well, and really wish to know what they must do to be saved, who go to interpreters instead of Scripture. Those blind guides tell them, not what they must do, but what they must believe; they hear so much said of faith and believing, so much said against those who believe wrong and so little against those who do wrong, that they feel at last as if it were of little importance to perform the duties, if they only believe the doctrines of religion. But if they are not quite satisfied with this; if they are perplexed with the thought that God shall render

to every man according to his deeds; if they determine to apply their faith to practice, what shall they do? The doctrine of the Trinity is set before them as the chief cornerstone of religion. Imagine an attempt to apply the doctrine of the Trinity to practice! If the least practical doctrines are the most important, evidently, practice must be lightly esteemed. Now if, in any way or degree, we release men from the obligation to do their duty; if we allow that it is not important, or that other things are more important, then duty never will be done.

And the religious without the intellectual character has always led to excesses, excesses which have brought reproach on the very name of Christianity. Those who wish to be religious without using their minds, in other words, to be religious without trouble or exertion, not only discard reason, but cry out against it. All religion, they say, comes from inspiration; so it does, and both the mind, and the truth which came to enlighten it, are the inspiration of the Almighty. It is shameful in Christians to allow themselves to libel and blaspheme the mind. Take any other subject, and such a course would be one they would never dream of adopting; they bring all their powers to bear on other interests, while they feel bound to be as weak and senseless as possible on approaching the subject of religion. They are told to render a reasonable service; what is that but a service which their reason approves? Their opinions and ideas of duty must be either reasonable or unreasonable; if they will not allow reason to examine them, they cannot call them reasonable; in truth, all are unreasonable which reason has not approved. Christianity advances no sentiment, recommends no course, enjoins no duty, which reason does not approve.

We think that the man of God, the perfect man, is one who unites within himself the practical, intellectual, and religious character. All these were assembled in Jesus Christ. How thoroughly practical he was in all his intercourse with men! what caution in his actions! what sagacity in his words! How nobly intellectual he was in all his instructions! they came from him with a depth and fullness, we may say an overflow of meaning, which is found in no other wisdom. How fervently devout he was! how cheerful, social, and engaging was his religion! who ever saw any thing cold, enthusiastic, or repelling in the example of the Son of God? We look to

the history of one of his noblest followers, to show that the same traits of mind and character are assembled in his best disciples. Newton was practical, intellectual, and religious, and therefore excellent and great.

It is inspiring to remember that such men as Newton were Christians, and that they held all the discoveries of science as nothing compared with Christian truth. We do not want their authority to strengthen our confidence in the evidence of our faith, though it is certainly gratifying to know that men, unrivalled for sagacity, believed in it with all their hearts; we would use their authority for another purpose,to show, that, in conscientious men, intellectual improvement will increase their excellence and devotion. There are those who would persuade us that the ignorant are the most singlehearted, who persist, against all evidence, in maintaining the absurd, Arcadian fiction, that unenlightened men are most likely to excel in piety and virtue. The least reference to historical fact or experience destroys these idle imaginations, and shows that ignorance and corruption go hand in hand, as in the days when the prophets accounted for the guilt of their countrymen by saying, 'Israel doth not know.' The people of Hindostan are perpetually quoted as examples of this fine simplicity, and we are told that they would be injured rather than improved by the introduction of Christianity; while at the same time impartial witnesses agree in declaring, that they are familiar, not perhaps with the vices of civilized life, but with gross and enormous corruption of every kind and degree. It is easy to show that ignorance is the parent of corruption; but can we infer that every advance in intellectual improvement will add something to the religion of a welldirected mind? Can we extend the inference yet further and say, that, other things being equal, the most enlarged, improved, and powerful minds will be most likely to excel in the peculiar virtues of Christianity? Examples like that of Newton show that we may; there is reason to believe that such men tower as high above the common standard of virtue as above the ordinary level of mental improvement; and were it only to convince men of this animating truth, it is well to keep them before the public eye, and to point them out where they shine as stars in the firmament for ever.

We would produce these examples for another purpose also; to show that they paid the most unbounded reverence

to the word of God; that Locke returned from his investigations of mind, Milton from his divine visions, and Newton from his triumphal march of discovery, and, in the moments of their highest glory, read the Scriptures with more interest than any thing beside, regarding them, not merely as sources of consolation in adversity, not as suggestions of duty only, but as fountains of light, where not only the loftiest human minds, but the highest archangels, might draw new revelations of nature and of God for ever. The Scriptures are not often regarded thus there are many who never read them with interest, and some who do not read them at all; many of those who do read them, do it as a matter of duty, and all the while it seems to them the same thing which they were familiar with years ago. But we venture to assure them that such men as Newton found new suggestions starting up in their minds every time they read: passages which they thought themselves familiar with, words which it seemed impossible to make clearer, were continually awakening new trains of thought, and pouring light on new disclosures of truth; they saw that the inspiration of God, like the heavens, contained wonders and glories which did not flash all at once upon the eye, and that a field of action was there opened to the soul in which it might range for ever without travelling it through. To us, this seems the most striking evidence of the divinity of Christian truth. If this religion was the work of man, who were the men whose written wisdom was so exalted above that of Newton, that he and other sages of equal glory pondered it with distant and awful dread? Could such power have been found in the humble fishermen of Galilee? had they, of themselves, an intellectual power to prepare a registry of truth, to which these men, but little lower than the angels, bent the knee in reverence, - which they could read again and again with wonder and delight? And who is there too high or too humble to draw instruction from that word, which they regarded as the noblest work of God?

The manner in which these great men held and treasured their favorite views of religion, may give much instruction to those who are disposed to receive it. They were men of ardent tempers, and likely as any other to grow warm in defence of their religious opinions; but though they were forced into controversy on various subjects, they were never vio