work spiritual healing and cleansing in the subject, while no efficacy whatever attends the application of water by any other hands even as the waters of Jordan were made to cure Naaman's leprosy by a seven times immersion, when the waters of Abana and Pharphar would have been applied utterly in vain. The ordinance, in all cases, is to be interpreted as an arbitrary arrangement, made efficacious supernaturally by the sovereign appointment of God, like the clay which Jesus made, and with which he anointed the blind man's eyes; and all is made to depend upon the divinely authorized official administration, while in all other cases the ceremony is left in its own unmeaning worthlessness. Adaptations and tendencies in the ceremony itself, are not at all to be regarded as any reason for the observance; but all rests upon the sovereign constitution of God, who has promised the grace in no other manner than through this appointed channel. We must come to gospel-ordinances, administered by such as have apostolic authority in direct succession, that thereby we may get gospel-grace, or be left utterly to uncovenanted mercy.

Now, that this is not the principle by which a divinely constituted ritual is to be explained, is quite manifest from this that God requires the right heart, and the exercise of the spiritual grace, as the condition for coming to his ordinances. The ceremony is to be observed with gracious affections already in exercise, and not at all that thereby we may first attain them. Christians are first supposed to be, and then the ordinances are instituted for their benefit; and not that the ceremony is first, and then that the sinner coming to it is thereby made a spiritual Christian. The ordinance, like the institution of the Sabbath, is made for man, and not man for it. The baptism of infants is no exception to this; for the application of the ordinance to the infant, is wholly conditioned upon the supposed faith and obedience of the parents, as already in gracious exercise. Nor is this ordinance, as thus administered on the ground of the parents' faith, to be supposed as, arbitrarily and supernaturally, working any grace

in the heart of the child. Its great design is effected in throwing a moral influence upon the parents, which is to be blest by the Holy Spirit in the religious instruction and discipline of the child; and also upon the child in subsequent life, by impressing upon the conscience the solemn fact, that as his birthright, the seal of the covenant, and the mark of the Lord Jesus Christ is upon him, which he must ratify or reject by his own act, and upon his own responsibility. The rite of ordination, moreover, must find the subject already qualified; and must be administered as the public sign and manifestation that he has so been found; and not at all, that as one unqualified, his ordination is about to make him so. His preparation and authority cometh not down through any official genealogy, but when found already endowed by God with the requisite talent and grace, the imposition of the hands of the Presbytery is publicly to indicate this fact, and to stand, ever after, as the authorized and accredited signal for his reception as such by the church of God. "The power of the keys," and "the gift by prophecy," are no opus operatum-a work wrought into a man, by the ceremony of his ordination. This notion of the constituted efficacy of mere ceremonial observances, is the very essence of all superstition. It is as really involved in the act of presenting the subject at the baptismal font, or that of coming to the Lord's table and partaking of the sacramental bread and wine, to be arbitrarily sanctified by this ceremonial observance, as is the act of the Romanist who crosses himself with holy water, and tells his beads to the virgin and the saints; or that of the African, who hangs his charmed fetisch about his neck; or even that of the Asiatic, who nails his prayers to a windmill, that they may be kept going before his god, day and night.

The true principle which gives consistency and system to all the facts in the ritual of religion, is this: the ceremony is a divinely appointed symbol, for presenting and enforcing some spiritual truth. God designs by it to teach man, and thus rationally to move him in the way of holiness and obedience, as a free, responsible being, by appropriate moral influence.

The grace is secured, through the operation of the Holy Spirit, in making the truth, which the symbol presents, effectual; as in the case of all truth applied to the heart and conscience, whether preached to the ear, or read from the sacred page. Every fact, of both the Old and New Testament Ritual, will be effectually concluded by this principle. There is ever some important truth contained in and conveyed by the symbol. It is an outward sign of some inward spiritual grace, or privilege, or duty; and the manner of its application, in the ceremonial administration, is to give to this truth its own peculiar impressiveness and force, other, and often perhaps higher, than that which the written or the spoken word would convey. But in all cases the end is to be gained only as the truth is apprehended, received, loved, and obeyed, under the gracious and special work of the Holy Spirit.

The whole Mosaic ritual held thus all its facts in this comprehensive principle, and was thereby "a schoolmaster to bring to Christ." It shadowed forth, in its symbols, the grand truths of the spiritual kingdom of Christ. The Epistle to the Hebrews may be considered as the statement in language of those great truths, which the Mosaic ritual embodied in symbols. The new dispensation has also its two main sacramental ordinances, which, in their simplicity and unostentatious beauty, embody in symbolic application all the peculiar truths of the Gospel Plan of Redemption. Baptism teaches all that belongs to depravity, and the necessity of regeneration and sanctification by the Holy Spirit. The Lord's Supper teaches all that belongs to the pardon and justification of the sinner before God. These ordinances, and all the services of the divinely established ritual are to be observed; not that they may awaken emotions, which shall be mistaken for religious affections; not that they may merely make constitutional feelings auxiliary to devotion; not at all as working themselves, by a divine constitution, any spiritual grace in the heart; but solely as a peculiar means, appointed and employed by God, for manifesting and applying spiritual truth to the minds of men, which is to work its end only by 31

THIRD SERIES, VOL. I. NO. III.

being intelligently, prayerfully, and piously received, obeyed, and loved, under the accompanying agency of the Holy Spirit. In this principle only, shall we be competent to include all the facts of a religious ritual in a consistent, scientific system. In this principle, the ritual of religion will stand out complete and intelligible, working its grand issues in the great plan of salvation, rationally and consistently, without ostentation, delusion, or superstition.

II. THE DOCTRINAL IN RELIGION includes all those leading truths of the Christian system, which by eminence have been called "the Doctrines of the Gospel;" or, as sometimes more discriminately, perhaps, termed, "the Doctrines of Grace." They include all the great facts of the entire plan of Redemption. Facts are things made; and these truths of Redemption are in this sense facts, that they are what God has constituted and appointed, as the permanent and only elements in his plan of a gracious administration. They are, moreover, in this view, facts, as given to us through his own agency in his inspired Revelation. While we embrace in this, the leading truths of the Christian scheme only, yet will those imply the great truths which are taught by nature, and apprehended by reason, concerning the being and the attributes of God, and the administration of a providential and moral government; and also will presuppose the facts involved in the fall of man, his entire depravity, his helplessness and hopelessness, if left to his own resources. With the recognition of such a God as moral governor, and of such sinners as moral subjects of his government, then the doctrines, peculiar to the Christian religion, are those great truths and leading facts, which God has wrought into his plan for recovering such sinners to holiness and heaven. Their combination in the Christian system must not only be harmonious among themselves, but must also harmonize with those truths presupposed by them, viz. the being and government of God, and the sin, ruin,. and still perpetual obligation and accountability of man.

And now, as in all cases these separate facts are to be found and collected, yet will the aggregate as brought together

constitute, not science, but the materials out of which science may be educed. Except as the principle is apprehended, within which all may be reduced to order and unity, there is nothing intelligible as a plan or system of salvation, and thus no theological science. With no principle, the facts can have no systematic combination; and with an erroneous principle, the attempted combination must be faulty, and even the facts themselves will be very liable to misapprehension or perversion. All thus depends upon the principle by which we arrange and combine our facts into a system of doctrinal theology. In its own being the plan of Redemption is doubtless coherent, consistent, and in unity; but if, in our study of this system, we apply faulty principles of combination, there will be, for some doctrines, no place at all found, and others will be forced out of shape and crushed into wrong positions.

But, notwithstanding the multiplicity of conflicting doctrinal theories, it is not a hopeless task to find, nor having found, to vindicate the true system. Let there be in this the same careful induction of facts within their laws as in the world of nature, and the true system must thus, ultimately, be developed, and it will vindicate its truth in the light of its own completeness and self-consistency. It will commend itself to all intelligent apprehension, just as the true system of astronomy does, or any completed system of natural philosophy. The facts will be so fully comprehended by, and so precisely combined in, the true principle, that no faulty system can abide enlightened comparison with it. Nor is there any hope of abolishing the conflicting systems of doctrinal divinity, in any other manner than by subjecting them, all to the rigid tests of the inductive method of philosophizing; gathering facts, and combining them in order under their laws. In this light, theological controversy becomes a dignified contest, on the high and broad ground of comprehensive principle; and not the petty skirmishes, and passionate partisan conflicts, of sectarianism, dogmatism, or bigotry. When entire systems are arrayed in conflict, through their constituent