work to do for their recovery; we must unceremoniously plunge after them, and pluck them as brands from the burning; -not so much by logic as by moral influences and direct labors.

With higher minds, however, infidelity has its varied and somewhat contrasted epochs; and never did it present more remarkable features than at present.

The earliest aspect of skepticism, as we see it in Spinoza and Lord Herbert, was metaphysical doubt, acute, cool, but somewhat respectful. It had no power to reach the common mind. Its next aspect was that of intellectual hostility and deliberate contempt of at least the historical and dogmatic claims of Christianity. Hobbes, Bolingbroke, Gibbon, and Hume, represent this period of its history. It subsequently appears under a still more decided phase. It becomes practically hostile; it uses another class of weapons, satire, ribaldry, blasphemy-it would debauch the public mind, and thereby alienate it from the practical restraints of Christianity. Voltaire and the Encyclopædists are examples. Rousseau, if more respectful to the practical code of the gospel in his writings, was, in his life and spirit, as hostile to it as any of them. Like the great hierarch of German literature and German infidelity, Goethe, he knew the higher experimental theology of Christianity, and seemed always troubled in conscience when he trenched, with profane speculations, on that sacred ground, or suggested anything against the practical requirements of the system; but his life was a continued outrage of Christian morals. The skepticism of his Emilius is beautified by the most eloquent eulogies on Christ and his teachings, ever recorded; and the burning pages of his "Nouvelle Heloise" present the ablest dissertations yet given to the world on some points of Christian morals; as, for example, the two letters against dueling, and against the domestic infidelities, which may be said not only to have been fashionable but common, if not universal, in France at that

Goethe, in Wilhelm Meister, introduces, by a Moravian character, the most "evangelical" views of personal religion, (he was educated in childhood among Moravians;) and Rousseau represents the heroine of his great romance as experiencing in the chapel, at the time of her dreaded wedding, a change which the warmest-hearted Methodist would approve as a genuine "conversion."

day. But if he qualified his theoretical teachings of infidelity, he taught it in the intensest sentimentality, and practically libeled all morality.

Paine became the representative of this degenerate school in our own country. Jefferson was not much behind him. Franklin, with his philosophic temper and New-England training, lingered yet in the diminishing ranks of the preceding philosophical school.

The fact that this form of infidelity had the opportunity of a practical exemplification in the French revolution, was its defeat-it showed its legitimate tendencies, and the world was shocked, was stunned. A reaction was inevitable. Skeptics, whether honestly or otherwise such, have since seen that a new route must be taken,

that the old one cannot possibly be right, however logically legitimate, and our modern unbelief is, with some marked exceptions, as remarkable for its pretensions in favor of moral progress as the preceding school was for its audacious demoralization. The difference is a notable one, and it is all-important that we should recognize it; for precisely here are we to find the successful mode of treating the evil. It has its theory, to be sure,-its learning and speculative pretensions, led on, commandingly, in Germany by Rationalism, and headed by the extreme school of the Tubingen theologians; in France by the literati generally, headed by the extreme Positivists; in England by Newman, Carlyle, Miss Martineau, and the Westminster Reviewers; and in this country by Parker, Emerson, and their wide-spread disciples, but its main force lies in what may be called its moral sentimentalism, rather than in its logic. It is the most extraordinary simulation of the spirit and practical ideas of Christianity that could be attempted. We would speak respectfully, and of the system rather than its individual representatives. We cannot withhold the avowal, that we believe many of them to be sincere and good men, so far as the latter word includes not the divine virtue of a divine religion. Many of them have shown a profound, an agonizing earnestness; and amid the horrors of doubt have called for help or hope from any source. Alas! that they have not more effectually looked unto Him from whom alone cometh our help. Who have claimed more of our sympathy than John

heavens, and this desolate period became the epoch of nearly all the modern enterprises of Protestantism. Methodism, Calvinistic and Arminian, had their birth in it. The Bible Society sprung up from it. Tract Societies, with their continually multiplying machinery; Sunday schools, the most capable auxiliary of modern Christianity; missions even, for they had hardly become a distinct feature of the Protestant Church before; and, chief perhaps among them all, a lay ministry that great experiment which we have recently discussed-date from these despondent times.

Let us not fear, then. These contrasts of opinion seem to be oscillations of the moral world, which, overruled by the divine hand, have their law of reaction; the hands of the clock of destiny move on, the hour of sun-rise comes inevitably, though it may be "darkest just before the dawn."

Christianity is a necessity of man's nature. His moral instincts, amid whatever perversion, recognize it, and, sooner or later, silence his fallacious reasonings. There is none of the dictates of natural conscience which does not coincide with it; there is none of the natural affections or charities of human life that is not kindred to it; no national virtue or honor that does not borrow dignity from it; no interest of the public welfare that does not find support in it. These are its grand argumentation. These guarantee its safety. The changing winds may ruffle the surface of the waters; but they cannot reverse the tides, for these come of universal and inviolable laws. The occasional outbreaks of erroneous opinions, under the agency of anomalous minds, cannot disturb permanently the aggregate mind of a people; the excitement of novelty, however violent at first, sooner or later exhausts itself, and the common mind, regulated by its old common sense, subsides into its old channels, and moves on steadily as aforetime. And here is the inevitable safety of the truth; the inevitable despair of error.

With such views, we can afford to take another item of advice which the present phase of infidelity justifies, viz. :-that it should be treated with more amenity than has been usual in former conflicts with it. The best way to treat an offensive or a ferocious animal- -a skunk or a hyena

is to shoot him without mercy. The enormous infidelity of the latter part of the last century could be denounced without courtesy. It could not comprehend the courtesies which pertain to all other intellectual combats. Its very dialect was made up of ribaldry and blasphemy. It reveled in immorality; but it is otherwise with the skepticism of our day, as we have said. The latter, among its representatives at least, is comparatively pure; it attempts to retain the morals, and not only the morals but something of the ideal, the spirit of Christianity, while it casts away its doctrines and authority. We go further, and venture even the remark (not acceptable, we know, to many) that this is done with sincerity-that it is not an artifice.

We doubt not even that in some ingenuous minds the infidelity of the times is adopted with a sense of self-denialwith even an anguish of regret that the vision of Christianity, with its blessed hopes, fades away before the gaze of the disturbed, and, in many cases, as we think, the morbid mind. Such certainly was the case of Sterling and Marguerite Fuller. This opinion does not vindicate them from personal responsibility; it leaves open the question how far such minds may have occasioned their inability to believe-but it vindicates the treatment we ask for them. Denunciation, crimination is not the speech of religion for such cases, if indeed it is for any. We must not only meet them with the language of courtesy, but even with tenderness and sympathy. That state of doubt, which at some time or other almost every earnest mind encounters-throughwhich, indeed, almost every Christian mind struggled at first into the light—has, in fact, received in our present infidelity an open expression, a definite form. This is its characteristic peculiarity, and it calls for a peculiar treatment—a treatment not unlike that which we would extend to a mind which, awakened with religious concern, is nevertheless beclouded with religious doubts.

We trust we shall not be misunderstood here. We speak of infidelity as now represented in our literature, in the persons of its leading characters above named, and in the intelligent circles of social life, where all of us so ordinarily meet it. Its tendency must inevitably be downward; it cannot but become, sooner or

later, virulent and blasphemous; it has already such examples, and its popular effect, especially among our foreign population, is already openly demoralizing; but this is not yet its general character.

Again, the most important means of defeating the infidelity of the day is, we think, to meet fairly its challenge of competition in the practical reforms of the age. It has taken a route in this respect which is quite in contrast if not with the theory, at least with the practical endeavors of the infidelity of any other age. It would not only imitate the spirit of Christianity, but it would imitate and even transcend its practical philanthropy. Its most formidable reproach against the Church is, that the latter is behind the reforms of the age. The charge is fallacious, as we believe, and yet there is truth enough in it to give it plausibility and effect. It could be easily shown that nearly every important reformatory movement of the day has originated, directly or indirectly, in the influence of the Christian Church; but it can, at the same time, be too easily shown that not a tithe of her energy is yet put forth in these reforms-that most flagitious wrongs, public and social, prevail within the shadow of her temples, wrongs which ought to be annihilated by her very glance; -that especially in the higher places of her power, her verdict on public questions, involving moral wrong, is not as unambiguous and emphatic as it ought to be. Let her reform in these respects. She will incur new hostilities by so doing; but she will also redouble her energiesshe will concentrate all generous sympathies and heroic souls around her, and confound and silence her gainsayers. We have discussed this subject quite in detail in one of our former articles, and need not here enlarge upon it; but we would emphasize it as the great condition of the safety of the Church, especially in a country like this, where the voluntary patronage of the people must sustain it. We believe the Christianity of the times is shorn of its rightful power-of the very locks of its strength-by its lack of courage to take its rightful position on public questions, especially in this country. It is competent, as we once before said, to give a verdict, which shall be decisive to the popular opinion, on nearly every question involving moral relations that comes up in the public mind. It ought

to give it. It is afraid to do so, lest it should compromise itself with public prejudices. This would doubtless be the result, but it should struggle through that result, until it could reach its legitimate position, and compel the public mind fully to concede it. Nothing, we believe, would be more practicable to it, and nothing could secure it, at last, more public respect and moral power. We are making progress in this direction; let us hope for the future.

Meanwhile we have no hope for the reformatory efforts of infidelity. It may be sincere, but it is neither wise nor efficacious. It perverts and defeats whatever it attempts. We have recommended in this article a courteous treatment toward it, and feel that at this point we need to remind ourselves of the fact; for it is difficult to speak of what is farcical and contemptible without contemptuous language. What has been more preposterous, and, were it not for the serious consequences, more ridiculous, than the reformatory movements of the infidels of this country? The anti-Bible, the Women's Rights, the anti-Slavery, and antiGallows Conventions, which by their extravagant proceedings, their eccentric characters-bearded men and “Bloomer” women their exhibition of all anomalous minds and anomalous opinions, have kept the scoffers of the land in a roar for the last ten years. What have they done except to bring contempt upon great truths, and to retard the genuine men, who, under the formidable burden of this contempt, have been laboring for the needed reforms of the day? What has even the most serious experiment of these pseudo reformers accomplished-Socialism-what but a series of failures? And then look at the humiliating scientific pretensions which characterize most of them, the gospel of the "great Harmonia," Mesmerism, Phrenology, Communism, Spirit Rapping, &c.,-some of them germinal truths, it may be, but abused with fantastic applications, which fill our hospitals with the insane, fill the pockets of charlatans with ill-gotten gains, and, worse than all-worse than anything else that they could perpetrate-render ridiculous before the public mind great questions which relate to the most urgent wants, the deepest sufferings of humanity.

"Better such efforts, with even such

results, than indifference," is often replied; and this reply the Church is to meet-there is too much edge upon it to turn it aside by an evasion. We must take the standard of reform from the hands of those who abuse it, and bear it onward ourselves, so much in the van as to leave them out of sight. There is no great evil in Christendom for which the Church should not feel itself, in a sense, responsible-there is none that it should not attack bravely. Let it break the restrictions that a false public opinion, and a weak concession from itself, has imposed upon it; let it stand forth upon the sublime platform of its divine constitution and universal moral authority, and here let it open its batteries against all wrong, whether in high places or in low places. There only should it stand-there infallibly would it be invincible and sublime before all eyes.

Again, and in order to this, the spiritual life of the Church must be more fully restored. We have said, in another article, that the ideal-the moral code even of Christianity-would be impracticable without the special doctrines of grace which distinguish the system; that the morality of the Sermon on the Mount would be a mockery of human infirmity, were it not for the doctrine of Regeneration. The real power and safety of the Church must come from its inward life. Less of sectarian zeal, less even of dogmatic rigor, and more of personal religious life, is what we need. Personal piety-personal sanctity-fervent in the pew, the vestry meeting and the closet, yet not there alone-but going about, as in the person of Christ, "doing good;" bearing around its brow the halo of divine light, undimmed amid the moral miasma and mists of the world-into the workshop, the mart, the exchange, the social assembly-this is the most needed, and, alas! the most rare demonstration of Christianity.

One overwhelming and conclusive proof of our faith infidelity has to concede. No thoughtful unbeliever will hesitate to admit that if Christendom lived fully up to the morality of the Decalogue, the piety of the Sermon on the Mount, and the devotion of the Lord's Prayer, it would reach all practicable moral perfection-that (admitting the paradox, for illustration,) if the Christian Church had not the true

religion, and the true were now, for the first time, revealed, the latter could not possibly be better than the former, were the Church fully up to the conditions mentioned. What is this but a virtual concession, that Christianity is the true religion itself? The fact is hypothetically granted, then; what need we further but to give it practical reality in the actual life of the Church?

This, we repeat, is the needed demonstration of our faith. It would operate two ways: first, the increase of spiritual purity and energy in the Church would stimulate all its practical movements, and thus give it that predominance in the reforms of the day, which we have urged; secondly, it would demonstrate the divine virtue, that is, the truth of Christianity, by exemplifying it.

This, then, should be the great movement of modern Christianity-the resuscitation of its original, its spiritual life. Its pulpits and all its other organs should subordinate every other question to this. Questions of ecclesiastical economy, sectarian tenets, even the reformatory duties above discussed, all should be surmounted by the more momentous aim of the universal resuscitation of the Church. We are already tending to it, and have been, since the great reaction above described; but the idea needs to be brought out more definitely it should rise so ostensibly before the contemplation of Protestant Christendom, that-like the sun, when, after hours of but partial distinctness, it emerges from the mists-its light shall break upon and cover all surrounding sights.

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A difficulty besets us just here, of which we are painfully conscious, a very simple and yet very formidable one, viz.: that the obvious truthfulness of these last views will impair if not destroy their importance. They are truisms, and therefore, alas, become powerless common-places! Were you to propose some elaborately contrived and expensive mode of counteracting the infidelity of the times, it would probably be studied and discussed, and if it were evident that it must be successful, it could hardly fail to be adopted. But here is an obvious, all-comprehensive remedy; yet how far is it heeded?

We are the more urgent with the above opinions, from the conviction that the usual defences of Christianity are some