contained in one section, entitled, "The Baptism of the Christian Life." Mr. Stovel does not attempt to disprove any of the principles of criticism advanced in the work he condemns, nor does he show that in any case they have been misapplied. He exposes no fallacy, but confines himself to what logicians call the reductio ad absurdum, a mode of reasoning which does not always evince the absurdity of him against whom it is used. He represents Mr. Godwin as bringing together passages in which the words purify, sanctify, and make perfect, occur, and treating them as the translation of one word, in order to prove that ẞanrí means to purify. Any who have read the book, or the articles referred to, will know that the meaning of the word is not sought in this way; but by an investigation of every passage in the Scriptures mentioning any baptism, or supposed to refer to any, and by an examination of the subject, context, and scope, of each text separately. The collection of passages to which Mr. S. alludes appears to be intended, not to show the meaning of the word, but the accordance of the translation given, with other statements of Scripture. If our Lord declared, that he sanctified himself, that his people might be sanctified,-if he was made perfect through suffering,-if the mind in which he suffered is that which his followers should imitate, as they suffering cease from sin, we do not see why he may not have referred to his sufferings as an official purification, whereby, as our great Highpriest, he was separated manifestly from all evil. Mr. Godwin had expressly stated that such an official purification was what he supposed to be meant. Yet, Mr. Stovel charges him with the dreadful and blasphemous inference, that the sufferings of Christ were a purification of himself personally from sin. So because Mr. Godwin, following the language of Scripture, has spoken of Christians as suffering with Christ, and as receiving some purification from their sufferings, Mr. Stovel accuses him of teaching that the sufferings of Christians, like those of Christ himself, are an expiatory sacrifice. Nothing could be farther from the truth. St. Paul taught that Christians suffer with Christ in order that they may be glorified with him; and that sufferings are appointed for us by God, in order that we may be partakers of his holiness.t The next passage on which Mr. Stovel comments, is one on which much stress is often laid in the defence of believers' baptism. 'He who believes and is baptized shall be saved.' This Mr. Godwin represents to mean, he who believes the Gospel, and is purified thereby, will be saved. Mr. S. remarks, If this be admitted, then no one has a right to hope for salvation till he is purified,—that is to say, till he is in heaven, and yet, the apostle Paul says, 'we are

* John xvii. 19; Heb. ii. 10; 1 Pet. iv. 1. † Rom. viii. 17; Heb. xii. 10. VOL. II.

D

saved by hope.' Now we submit that there is a little difference between being saved, and having the hope of salvation. The declaration of St. Paul is that " we are saved in hope:' our salvation is not, according to the apostle, what we see and possess, but what we hope, and with patience wait for.* In another part of the same epistle it is said, now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.' It is therefore evident that St. Paul did not think that a believer was saved when baptized by water.

Mr. Godwin had ventured to observe, in considering the commission, that dipping or immersing into the name of God, was a phrase not sanctioned by Scripture, of course excluding all reference to the passage whose meaning was to be determined. On this Mr. S. indignantly exclaims, 'Is not the very expression, immersing them into the name of the Father, &c. before him, in the very passage which he is forcing from sacredness to absurdity?' Certainly the verse thus translated is in the Bible, but we think no one should be condemned who, in investigating the sense of a passage, does not regard Mr. Stovel's authority as quite decisive. He asks, Can man purify man? We may inquire,—if one man can make another the disciple of Christ? The same answer will suffice for both questions. We need not go through the remaining misrepresentations and fallacies. Mr. Stovel argues that, if men are to be at all purified for Christ's service on earth, and his presence in heaven, by truth, duty, trial, and hope,-then the blood of Christ does not cleanse from all sin, and men are not sanctified by the Holy Spirit. These are the terrible conclusions,' which, Mr. S. says, may be deduced from Mr. Godwin's work. He, however, omits to show that the Scriptures do not teach the doctrines from which he deduces these conclusions.

We do not know that we have passed over anything of importance in Mr. Stovel's arguments. Of mis-statements, injurious insinuations, &c. &c. we have left abundant materials for Dr. Halley, if he should feel disposed, or required, to meet a controversialist so heedless and uncourteous. If we could have thought that, in discharging the duties of our office, we had merely to provide for the entertainment and instruction of our readers, we should have been spared the disagreeable task we have had to perform. But we feel required to act in some measure as the police of literature, and must, therefore, occasionally submit to the labour of exposing arrogant pretensions, uncharitable insinuations, and the other indecencies and wrongs whereby literature is disgraced, and religion dishonoured. The circumstances under which Mr. Stovel's work is published, may be some apology for our assigning an importance to it, which we can in no other way justify.

* Rom viii. 24. + Rom. xiii. 11.

[I.

LIFE IN DEATH.

A SHORT time since, I casually read an essay on the 'Revelation of a Future State,' by the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Whately. The merited celebrity of this prelate gives force and currency to any speculations which he commits to the press, and renders a cautious perusal of them requisite, lest his name and high reputation should preponderate over the strength of his reasonings. If I do not mistake the character of Dr. Whately, he desires no regard to be paid to his writings but that which arises from a conviction of their truth and cogency. With this impression, I mean freely to controvert some of the positions of the essay just mentioned: and that I may not, in any degree, misrepresent the statement on which I am about to remark, I shall set down the words in which it is made.

In discussing the arguments of ancient writers on the immortality of the soul, Dr. Whately thus writes: "To the Christian, indeed, all this doubt would be instantly removed, if he found that the immortality of the soul, as a disembodied spirit, were revealed to him in the word of God.' After a few lines he proceeds to say, In fact, however, no such doctrine is revealed to us; the Christian's hope, as founded on the promises contained in the Gospel, is the resurrection of the body. In a note (C) appended to the essay, we have the following words: As for the state of the soul in the interval between death and the general resurrection, the discussion is unnecessary, and perhaps unprofitable; had knowledge on this point been expedient for us, it would doubtless have been clearly revealed; as it is, we are lost in conjecture. For aught we know, the soul may remain combined with a portion of matter less than the ten thousandth part of the minutest particle that was ever perceived by our senses; since "great" and "small" are only relative. All we can be sure of is, that if the soul be wholly disengaged from matter, and yet shall enjoy consciousness and activity, it must be in some quite different manner from that in which we now enjoy them; if, on the other hand, the soul remains inert and unconscious, (as it does with respect to the seeing faculty, for instance, when the eyes are closed, or blinded,) till its re-union with matter, the moment of our sinking into this state of unconsciousness will appear to us to be instantly succeeded by that of our awaking from it, even though twenty centuries may have intervened: of which any one may convince himself by a few moments' reflection.' Essay I. first series, fourth edit.

From the opinions which are thus frankly asserted, I shall beg leave with equal frankness to dissent; as they agree neither with

my feelings, my theology, nor my philosophy. I am apprehensive I cannot do justice to my conceptions on these matters in a space so limited as that which a monthly miscellany can at once conveniently afford; I therefore propose to confine the present communication to the expression of my feelings and my theology; leaving it undetermined whether, for another number, I may solicit an insertion of what I know not how more briefly to characterise than by calling it my philosophy, though I am far from the presumption of styling myself a philosopher. Before I express the feelings which I have long entertained on the subject of the intermediate state, I will, with the utmost brevity, say what my notions are respecting the condition of the souls of Christians during the interval betwixt death and the general resurrection. My decided belief-founded, as I think, on the authority of revelation-is, that the consciousness and activity of the soul or spirit, the intellectual part of the human nature, are neither destroyed nor suspended by the death of the body. I do not undertake to determine whether the soul, after its separation from the gross body, with which it is at present associated, continues to exist, as a simple, immaterial substance, or is combined with some subtile, ethereal, material envelope, adapted to the mode of its existence, and the purposes it is destined to fulfil. All I contend for is, the uninterrupted life, intelligence, and vigour of the soul, with or without a junction with matter, of any degree of refinement.

After freeing myself, as I hope, from the liability of being misunderstood in relation to the object I have in view, I shall proceed to express the sentiments by which my heart is actuated, in considering the account which is suggested of the state of the soul, during the interval between death and the general resurrection, by the paragraphs that have now been cited from Dr. Whately's Essay. I cannot, without surprise, observe the easy indifference with which the possibly inert and unconscious state of the soul during many, though an indefinite number, of years, seems to be contemplated in the passages that have been quoted. In the memoir that was published in America, many years since, of Dr. Priestley, which I remember to have read, a similar philosophical and calm indifference is said to have been exercised by him; when at the point of death, he is reported to have represented himself as being about to sink into a profound sleep, from which he should not awake until the general resurrection. Nothing is more remote from my intention in this reference than to insinuate any resemblance between Dr. Whately and the determined, ardent assertor of materialism and Unitarian dogmas, beyond this one partial coincidence. In Dr. Whately I hail with the greatest satisfaction an enlightened, liberal, and intrepid champion of many essential articles of revealed truth; the firm and uncompromising antagonist of will-worship,

superstition, priestly assumptions, and semi-papistical traditions. I cannot, however, but express my opinion that the materialist theologian was, in this instance, more consistent than the eminent prelate, who appears to favour the theory of the immaterial substance of the soul. I shall have more to urge on this topic, if I should hereafter discuss what I have ventured to call my philosophy. At present, I beg to say that so many appalling circumstances gather around the severance of the bond by which the body and the soul are united, that I am extremely reluctant to be deprived of any alleviations of painful apprehension that will endure the test of a reasonable scrutiny into their truth and solidity. All that I am able to accumulate from every quarter, do not prove too many to assist me in my endeavours to divest death of its terrors. These terrors originate in many and very diversified causes, which work their effects as variously as the ever-changing feelings of a spirit embodied in flesh present occasion for. A contemplation of what may be the condition of a human spirit, when its relations with the mortal body which it inhabits in the present life shall cease, has for many years been exceedingly interesting to me, because I could not question with seriousness the conclusions which have appeared to me to establish the uninterrupted consciousness and activity of that part of my nature. Besides which, I may be allowed to say, the hope and prospect of surviving death, in a condition of superior felicity, the result of increased activity and ever-growing perfection, in an intimate converse with that exalted Redeemer, in whom all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily,' and an association with the spirits of just men made perfect,' never to end, offer so powerful an antidote to the dread of dissolution, as in the brighter moments of life to neutralise its virulence, and sometimes even to suggest the thought 'to depart and to be with Christ is far better.'

I am unable to sympathise with the complacency which seems to be felt by some men in the suspension of their mental faculties, during the dormant condition through long, though indefinable periods, which their theories constrain them to advocate. To be sure, if there be no evidence on which to found a different system, we must, as well as we are able, acquiesce in what is inevitable. According to any apprehensions, however, which I can form, nothing short of the certainty of a painful existence can be more distressing, than the prospect of what, in reality, amounts to annihilation. So nearly does a state of suspended thought and action approximate to the loss of existence, that no one can assign the difference; as we can form no conception of a substance from which is abstracted its distinguishing property. The notion of substance is nothing more than the aggregate of properties; and as thought and activity are the distinguishing properties of the