the Spirit that he is slain. As he that offends in one point is guilty of all, so he that truly yields in one gives up all. Vague and half-concealed expressions of doctrine are, therefore, as the scabbard without the blade.

With no clearly-defined notion of the doctrines, and so no ability to appreciate them, or susceptibility to feel their power, as "the power of God unto salvation," what way is open for one to become a child of God?. Of course we concede the possibility of salvation where there is gross ignorance of essential doctrines. But it would be abnormal, and only through the copiousness of a grace that sometimes overflows its channel. Possibly a man grossly ignorant of the laws of navigation, and of the lights and charts of the coast, might run a vessel uninjured from Bangor to New York, but shippers would not patronize, or insurance companies protect, such enterprises, on the success of one. There may be a good life, where the heart is creedless or heretical, but it is not legitimate. It is only a happy casualty. It is a life, too, that has in it none of the essential elements of reproduction. It is not a "tree yielding fruit after its kind whose seed is in itself."

And as the fact of experience in the church, we find that frequently conversion stands connected with a change of faith in some article of the creed, and God is found admitting persons to his family, as sons and daughters, at the very time of their consenting cordially to the principles of his family government. And when the conversion is not attended with any change of doctrinal view, it is always attended with a change of feeling toward the doctrines. And the elucidation and pressure of those doctrines seemed to have been all of human agency that was concerned in the conversion.

Our discussion of doctrinal preaching, as contrasted with what is popularly called "practical," furnishes a solution of two anomalous phenomena that have appeared in the church within a few years.

It has been a matter of surprise to many, and specially to the older membership in our churches, that in the multitude of conversions in latter years there have been so few cases of deep, pungent, and thorough conviction. Their memories go back to days when men waged war with the leading doctrines

of grace, and struggled intensely with God, and finally gave up from very exhaustion. exhaustion. And when truly submissive and regenerate, it was with distinct perceptions of truth, and with a cordial acceptance of doctrines once hated, and with a vigor of young life.

In late revivals we have seen but little of this. Men have not so contended with God. The controversies are milder, and the settlement of them appears more in the nature of a truce, treaty, or compromise. As the conflict was not so sharp the submission has not been so deep, even if total. The change from foe to friend has not been so obvious and marked. We have missed what the old divines and good biographers speak of as "the law work."

The explanation of this difference between ancient and modern conversions is found mostly in the character of the means used now and then to bring men from the power of Satan unto God. By the law is the knowledge of sin. But the law has not been preached so much. The doctrines of depravity, regeneration by God only, and only in whom he will, the justice of God as vindicated and satisfied in a vicarious atonement, and in the everlasting punishment of those who ultimately despise it, have generally had no such complete and distinct and abundant utterance, as they had thirty and fifty years ago.

A dim outline of truth necessarily furnishes a dim perception of it, a feeble struggle and conviction under it, and a quiet, unmarked conversion. It seems more a conversion of policy than of heart. The pulse of the new life beats feebly, because the generating instrumentality— the Word, was itself but feebly furnished and used. Men skilled to play on the feelings have succeeded in raising them to an unwonted height, and on this flood tide persons have been carried over into the kingdom.

It is not impossible to conceive of a new creation in the adult heart where the means themselves are so superficial, and the passage from the old to the new is so comparatively casy. But in such case we must not be surprised at feeble and dwarfed results.

The means most abundant, and apparently most successful, in the last great national revival, were prayer-meetings. The services in them were brief, varied and exciting. The narrow

limits of time, and the number of speakers, forbade any great amount of doctrinal instruction. The addresses were hortatory, abrupt and compact. The meetings were not so much for instructing as for exciting, nor were the feeling and excitement. too great, if they had been suitably balanced by doctrinal truths. And, moreover, many of these meetings were "Union Meetings," from which, of necessity and courtesy, several of the leading doctrines, and those specially serviceable in the revivals of Edwards's day were excluded.

Had the doctrines been suppressed in the preaching of that Master in Israel, which we consent to exclude in our theory of "Union Prayer Meetings," he would have had scanty material for a "Narrative of Surprising Conversions." The power of his sermons lay much in a cluster of doctrines that a later and "improved" theology does not make very conspicuous in the pulpit or pew.

Feeble doctrines must be followed by feeble conversions, if any follow. The utterances of the children will be faint and stammering, and "half in the speech of Ashdod."

It has also been a matter of surprise, that with the vast additions to the Evangelical Church, as the fruit of the late revival, so little working strength has been added. Probably never, in the same space of time, have so many assumed the vows of the church. Yet, drawing illustration of one point from only one source, the treasuries of our national and state benevolent societies have shown but faint evidence of this great revival, and unusual enlargement of the catalogue of the church.

Why is this? Our discussion explains it. A conversion through the feelings and emotions is not so radical and so total as a conversion through the doctrines, and one's creed and principles. The emotional conversion works on the surface of the man; the depths remain unmoved. It does not extend thoroughly to his shop and farm and office and profession, to his mortgages and stocks. They are not converted. There is not vitality and compass enough in the work to extend to them. A feeble conviction, and feeble conversion through the feelings, produce a feeble Christian. Not coming into the kingdom through a belief of all the truth, there is not the abundant material of truths with which to constitute a symmetrical and

strong new man. He is rather an emotional Christian. The various winds of doctrine sway him. He is wanting in stability, and is a man of moods and tenses. And his donations are affected and reduced by this type of his piety, for the gifts of feeling are but a small per cent. of the gifts of principle. As a man with no creed can have no Christian character, so the less the creed the fewer the Christian graces and forces. A minimum creed produces a miniuum piety.

ARTICLE II.

SCHEFFER'S TEMPTATION OF JESUS.

OUR purpose is not exegetical, but artistic. We have before us Ary Scheffer's picture of this scene on the desert mountaintop an admirable subject for his strong and severe handling. No artist has exhibited a finer power of compassing great results with the simplest means. There is no crowding of the canvas with subordinate details for the sake of livelier impressions. These devices of inferior genius he austerely refuses; resting his success, in rendering his own profoundly spiritual conception visible to those who have eyes to see it, through what looks at first almost like a poverty of inventive skill, but grows upon our faithful study all the more for the very beauty of its unambitious purity. Like the Dante and Beatrice, the Temptation gains rather than loses under the engraver's hand; for Scheffer derived no assistance from coloring. He either contemned or but feebly felt the witchery of an art which, under the management of so many great masters of the pallet, has achieved such brilliant effects. He seems all but a cynic in this matter. It looks like a wilful fling at the colorists a taunt at their tricks of the trade to hang a brick-red or dull yellow drapery over the shoulders of his travellers through the Elysian fields, or even yet higher representatives of the invisible worlds. We much prefer this artist's productions, so far as we have yet seen them, in the steel or mezzotint copy. This is certainly a compliment

to the ideal and intellectual power of them, if given at the expense of his supercilious brush. It is more than most even of the nobility of that profession could safely sacrifice, thus to discard the most popular appliance of its triumphs.

As in the better known scene from the "Divina Commedia," there are but two figures in the Temptation. The rocky peak of a mountain shoots up far into the thin air, giving a sense of great elevation above the surrounding country. This rarefaction of the atmosphere is skilfully managed to increase the feeling of height and completest solitude. The jagged summit reminds one who has ever climbed these altitudes of their verdureless, cold repulsiveness. Sublimity at the cost of utter desolation is purchased too dearly, whether on mountain-tops. or elsewhere. Satan, in the form of a rather old man (but not decrepit), shows at once his more than mortal make by a pair of dusky pinions thrown backward in repose, and a pair of feet. also which clutch the rock with a sort of vulture hold; otherwise he does not reveal the fiend obtrusively. And these indications of his devilhood are carefully restrained from exciting either a ludicrous or disgusting sensation. He is not the Satan of vulgar caricature; nor is he the dapper Asmodeus of the novelists; nor yet the archangelic Lucifer of Milton's stately epic; nor again, the quiet, gentlemanly person of the "Paradise Regained,"

"Not rustic, as before, but seemlier clad,
As one in city, or court, or palace bred."

Whatever else you feel in his presence, a sentiment of respect and of pity both attest the truthfulness of the conception of this strange and awful being, to whom one would wish no nearer or more real approach.

He is, at this moment, using his utmost persuasion to gain the eye of Christ and to catch his ear, as he points in earnest gesture to the far-lying kingdoms of the regions beneath and the glory of them-no part of which, however, is visible except in dim, suggestive touches, with the passionate proposal, "all shall be thine, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." He is seeking to arouse within Christ's bosom the ambition of a Messiah-conqueror and emperor; to spur him to make good