sal; and of course there can be no degrees in moral worth, or in guilt. If two men have each received the same injury, and each by an act of will directed the attention of the mind to the injury and him who committed it, then they are equally guilty for their feelings of hatred, however much those feelings may differ in strength. There can be no difference of degree in the moral demerit of their emotions, although the one should hate his adversary enough to work him some slight injury in return, and the other hate him so much that nothing less than the murder of his victim will satisfy his thirst for vengeance. The two men were equally voluntary in bringing their minds under the circumstances which awaken their emotions, and must of necessity, according to Mr. Finney's canon of morality, be equally guilty.

There is indeed another class of passages in Mr. Finney's writings, in which he brings forward a further criterion of morality. He says, "When the will is decided by the voice of conscience, or a regard to right, its decisions are virtuous." The change of preference, or the decision of the will, which takes place in regeneration, must be made, "because to act thus is right." The will must decide "to obey God, to serve him, to honour him, and promote his glory, because it is reasonable, and right, and just." "It is the rightness of the duty that must influence the mind if it would act virtuously." And again, "When a man is fully determined to obey God, because it is right that he should obey God, I call that principle." In these passages, and there are many more like them, he seems to resolve all virtue into rectitude. It is evident why he does so, for he is thus enabled to require a mental decision, an act of the mind, in relation to the rectitude of any emotion or action, in order to constitute it virtuous; and thus defend his position that morality can attach only to acts. He has here fallen into the mistake, however, of making the invariable quality of an action the motive to its performance. It is true that all virtuous actions are right, but it does not follow from this that their rectitude must be the motive to the performance of them. If this be so, then the child, who in all things honours his parent, does not act virtuously unless each act of obedience is preceded by a mental decision that it is right for him to obey. Mr. Finney desired to take ground which would enable him to deny that there is anything of the nature of holiness in the Christian's emotions of love to God, when prompted by his disposition to love him; but he has evidently assumed an untenable position.

We could easily bring forward more errors into which he has been betrayed in carrying out his false doctrine, that morality can be predicated only of acts. But we have surely presented enough. And this exposure renders it unnecessary that we should repeat what have been so often produced and never refuted, the positive arguments for believing that our dispositions, or states of heart, including the original disposition by which we are biassed to evil, possess a moral character, and are the proximate sources of all the

good and evil in our conduct. Some of Mr. Finney's pretended arguments against this opinion we have not answered, simply because they are so puerile, that, though we made the effort, we could not condescend to notice them. All of them that had the least plausibility we have shown to be without any real force. And if any man can reject this opinion on account of the difficulties with which it is still encumbered, and adopt the monstrosities connected with Mr. Finney's rival doctrine, we must think that he strains at a gnat and swallows a camel.

As might have been expected from what has already been said, Mr. Finney denies that there is any such thing as natural depravity. His views on this subject are easily exhibited. We might describe them all, indeed, in a single phrase, by saying, that they are neither more nor less than the old Pelagian notions. "This state of mind," he says, describing the commencement of sin in a child, "is entirely the result of temptation to selfishness, arising out of the circumstances under which the child comes into being." "If it be asked how it happens that children universally adopt the principle of selfishness, unless their nature is sinful? I answer, that they adopt this principle of self-gratification, or selfishness, because they possess human nature, and come into being under the peculiar circumstances in which all the children of Adam are born since the fall." "The cause of outbreaking sin is not to be found in a sinful constitution or nature, but in a wrong original choice." "The only sense in which sin is natural to man is, that it is natural for the mind to be influenced in its individual exercises by a supreme preference or choice of any object." On reading this last extraordinary declaration, the text of an inspired apostle came to mind, in which he assures us, that we are "by nature children of wrath.” If both those declarations be true, we have the curious result that we are children of wrath, not because we are sinners, but because we are so made as to be influenced by a supreme choice! But texts of Scripture are as nothing in Mr. Finney's way. He makes them mean more or less, stretches or curtails them, just as occasion requires. His system is a perfect Procrustean bed, to which the Bible, no less than all things else, must be fitted. An illustration of this is found in his manner of dealing with the passage, "I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." This text would seem, at first sight, to present a very serious obstacle to his views. And what does he do with it? He first gravely proves that it does not mean "the substance of a conceived fœtus is sin!" He then jumps to the conclusion, "All that can be possibly meant by this and similar passages is, that we were always sinners from the commencement of our moral existence, from the earliest moment of the exercise of moral agency." That is, when David and the other sacred writers make these strong assertions, they only mean to inform us, that the moment we adopt the principle of supreme selfishness as our rule of action, we do wrong; or, in other words, that just as soon as we begin to sin, we sin! May we not

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well say, that he has a marvellous faculty for making a text mean anything, or nothing, as suits his purpose? Another illustration of this is furnished by his interpretation of the text, "The carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." The carnal mind, he says, means a minding of the flesh, a voluntary action of the mind, a choice that is supremely selfish. While men act upon the principle of supreme selfishness, obedience is impossible. This, he says, is the reason why the carnal mind, or the minding of the flesh, is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Wonderful discovery! So the apostle, in this passage, meant nothing more than the stale truism, that a man cannot be sinful and holy at the same time,-that he cannot, in the same act, transgress the law and render obedience to it.

Pelagians have always found a difficulty in reconciling their theory with the salvation of infants by the grace of Jesus Christ. Pelagius himself was sorely pressed on this point. Infants are in no way answerable for the sin of Adam, or otherwise evilly affected by it than that it brings them into circumstances of temptation, and they have no sin of nature; how then can they be subjects of pardon? What interest can they have in the atonement of the Saviour? Let us see how Mr. Finney disposes of this difficulty. "Had it not been for the contemplated atonement, Adam and Eve would have been sent to hell at once, and never have had any posterity. The race could never have existed. . . . Now every infant owes its very existence to the grace of God in Jesus Christ; and if it dies previous to actual transgression, it is just as absolutely indebted to Christ for eternal life as if it had been the greatest sinner on earth." We have no words to express our aversion to this egregious trifling with sacred subjects. The Bible teaches us that all of our race who are saved are redeemed from sin; that they are saved, not born, by virtue of the atonement of Jesus Christ. And when we ask Mr. Finney how this can be reconciled with his theory that there is nothing connected with infants that can be atoned for, he very gravely tells us that they owe their BIRTH to the grace of God!

He does not tell us why he baptizes infants. We do not know, indeed, whether he ever administers this ordinance to children previous to the supposed commencement of moral action. Certainly, upon his principles, it could have no meaning. He rejects, with utter scorn and ridicule, the idea that in regeneration and sanctification there takes place anything that can be properly symbolized by "the washing off of some defilement." The water of baptism then, to whomsoever this rite be applied, cannot have any emblematical meaning; and the apostle committed a rhetorical error, to say the least of it, when he wrote, "But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified." But with what propriety this ordinance can be administered to children, who, having never actually transgressed, are not sinners, who are just what they ought to be,

we cannot conceive. Surely consistency requires Mr. Finney to assign to infant baptism a place among those hated abominations, upon which he so much dwells, that the "traditions of the elders” have introduced into the church.

We shall not undertake to show in detail the inadequacy of Mr. Finney's theory to account for the sin there is in the world. This has often been done. And it still remains perfectly inexplicable why, if men come into the world with just such a nature as they ought to have, prone no more to evil than to good, and are surrounded at the same time with "infinite motives" to holiness, and "circumstances" that tempt them to sin, that they should all, with one accord, obey the force of the finite circumstances rather than the infinite motives. If this be the state of the case, we might naturally expect all mankind to become holy, excepting here and there some luckless one, who, not having sufficient skill so to manage the attention of his mind as to keep before it the infinite motives to holiness, would fall into sin. Here too we might ask, what has become of the doctrine that God has done all that he could to prevent the present degree of sin? If he can so influence some men, after their hearts are set in them to do evil, that they shall become holy, could he not have induced them, at the first, to choose holiness instead of sin?

We cannot pass from this part of our subject without developing one of the many singular results afforded by the comparison of different parts of Mr. Finney's writings. The one we are now about to present is so very peculiar that we solicit for it special attention. He rejects the common doctrine of depravity, because it makes man a sinner by necessity-it makes God the author of sin-it is a constitutional or physical depravity, and leads to physical regeneration, &c. He frequently blows off the superfluous excitement produced in his mind by this view of depravity, in sentences like the following: "That God has made men sinners, incapable of serving him-suspended their salvation upon impossible conditions-made it indispensable that they should have a physical regeneration, and then damns them for being sinners, and for not complying with these impossible conditions-monstrous ! blasphemous! Believe this who can!" Now let us see how he gets rid of this physical necessity, which he falsely but uniformly charges upon the common opinions respecting depravity. According to his theory, the cause of men becoming sinners is to be found in their possessing human nature, and coming into being under circumstances of temptation-in the adaptation between certain motives which tempt to undue self-gratification, and the innocent constitutional propensities of human nature. But in one of his lectures, where he is endeavouring to persuade his hearers to use the appropriate means for promoting a revival, and presenting on that account such truths and in such forms as seem to him most stirring, he says: "Probably the law connecting cause and effect is more undeviating in spiritual than in natural things, and so there

are fewer exceptions, as I have before said. The paramount importance of spiritual things makes it reasonable that it should be so." In the use of means for promoting revivals, he says again: "The effect is more certain to follow," than in the use of means to raise a crop of grain. Now, upon his system, the efficiency of all means for promoting revivals may be traced up ultimately to the tendency of eternal motives to influence the mind. We have here, then, the position, distinctly involved, that motives, when properly presented, when so presented as to produce their appropriate effect, operate by a surer law than any of the physical laws of matter. The effect of the proper presentation of a motive to the mind is more certain, and of course more inevitable, than that the blade of wheat should spring from the planted seed, or a heavy body fall to the ground. Now he will not deny that the motives to sin, which meet man soon after his entrance into the world, are thus adequately presented; for the sad proof of it is found in the uniform production of their effect. That effect must of course be inevitable, beyond any idea of necessity that we can form from the operation of physical laws.

From the parts of his scheme already presented, our readers will be able to anticipate Mr. Finney's theory of regeneration. The change which takes place in regeneration he, of course, represents as a change in the mind's method of acting. As it originally chose sin instead of holiness, so a new habit consists in choosing holiness instead of sin. The idea that there is imparted to the heart a new relish for spiritual objects, or that any new principle is implanted, he rejects; to teach this, he says, is to teach a physical religion, which has been the great source of infidelity in the church. "It is true," he says, "the constitution of the mind must be suited to the nature of the outward influence or motive; and there must be such an adaptation of the mind to the motive, and of the motive to the mind, as is calculated to produce any desired action of the mind. But it is absurd to say that this constitutional adaptation must be a holy principle, or taste, or craving after obedience to God. All holiness in God, angels, or men, must be voluntary, or it is not holiness. To call anything that is a part of the mind or body, holy-to speak of a holy substance, unless in a figurative sense, is to talk nonsense.' We remark here, in passing, that this is the uniform style in which Mr. Finney caricatures the opinions from which he dissents. From one form of statement he habitually passes to another, as completely synonymous, which has not the remotest resemblance to it. He assumes here that a principle, or taste, cannot be voluntary, whereas it cannot but be voluntary, in the only sense in which voluntariness is essential to moral character; and also that it must be a substance, or form a part of the mind or body-an assumption than which nothing can be more groundless and absurd. He adds, "The necessary adaptation of the outward motive to the mind, and the mind to the motive, lies in the powers of moral agency, which every

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