both the necessity and the possibility of miracles, because, forsooth, their own minds readily apprehend and receive without miracles, truths which are alledged to have been originally communicated to man through miraculous testimony. They reflect not, that those miracles which they deride have been the instruments of elevating them to that lofty stand-point, from which they presume to look with contempt on the superstitions and credulity of past ages.

It follows, therefore, that miracles will come to an end, when their necessity ceases to exist;—i. e. when all the great truths, which man needs to know are safely lodged within the human mind, and when our race has reached such a stage of development, that these truths will be securely held within the grasp of reason. Such, we conceive, has been the attitude of the human race since the time of Jesus and His apostles.

ARTICLE IV.

[In giving place to the following interesting review, we by no means intend to endorse the peculiar views of Madam Guyon or of her admirers, on certain doctrines involved in her experience, and seemingly taught in her writings. The characteristics of this work, the auspices under which it is introduced to the public, and the signs and tendencies of the age, warrant the belief, that it is destined to exert no little influence on the piety and character of the Christian church, for good or for evil, at no distant day. There stand connected with it subjects of vast and vital importance, which must be met—which are forced upon the attention and anxious inquiry of those who are praying for the regeneration of our world, in new aspects and relations, by every evolution of the great wheel of Providence. There is much in these volumes to interest, to instruct, to incite to holy living, with no little that may mislead and injure certain minds. They need criticism, kind, yet searching and faithful, Whether our reviewer is not too sparing our readers must judge. It is not our object at present to affirm the right or wrong of his views, but simply to present them to the reader.—Ed.]

LIFE AND WRITINGS OF MADAME GUYON.

By Rev. Henry T. Cheever, New York.

Life and Religious Opinions and Experience of Madame De La Mothe Guyon: Together with some account of the Personal History and Religious Opinions of Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambray. By Thomas C. Upham, Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy in Bowdoin College. In two vols. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1847: pp. 380 and 431.

These volumes make their appearance as the legitimate de

mand and offspring of the times, because there is arising in the religious mind of evangelical Christendom generally, a strong desire to know more of that form of holiness, or phase of religious experience, which was defended and exemplified with so much benignity, and illustrated by the radiance of so pure and useful a life as that of Madame Guyon. The thanks of the church are due to Professor Upham, for putting fairly within its reach, in other volumes by way of discussion and evolution, and in these by correspondence and exemplification, the most orderly and philosophical development of what he is pleased to call the Principles of Interior Life and the Life of Faith, which the world has perhaps ever yet known.

These Principles are by no means the natural cause of, or identical with, Antinomian Perfectionism; although we are well aware that the wide-spread but erroneous imputation of their consanguinity is a mill-stone which many, ignorantly perhaps, would like to hang upon the neck of truth, in order to drown it and its adherents in the depths of the sea. This, however, need not prevent one's attempting what we are impelled to as a simple offering of gratitude, juvenca votiva, for the benefit derived from the recent perusal of these volumes; which, though like every human work, they be far from perfect, or the character they exhibit a faultless one, we can on the whole heartily commend, and, as the Italians say, con amore, that is, with the earnest and particular good-will which we dare say many others will feel who shall be attracted to read the same.

Nor is this work only to be read, but it should be re-read and studied for two reasons, either as containing a fund of practical truth not found in "such a questionable shape," in our common theological and religious writings; which it is highly important, therefore, for the public teacher and private Christian to be in possession of, or it is to be most carefully examined and subjected to unequivocal tests, as containing subtle and recondite but attractive errors, that, in their inculcation, will be widely disastrous to the church and to the highest interests of humanity as involved in the church. In either view it is of very great consequence that the important truths wrapped up in Mysticism, Quietism, Pure Love, or Perfectionism so called, should be carefully unfolded, and the fossil remains and leaves of error taken away that have been laid between and around them, like the larminæ of strange matter often found interposed between geological strata.

It is but fair that the church should be having all the benefit both of the new light and the old light that has been struck out of the Rock of Truth, by the flint of experience upon religious doctrines and duties. Nor need we be frightened by the old bugbear howl of heresy from looking into quarters that seem suspicious in our search after truth. Nor because a doc

trine has gathered the damp moss of age and become a little musty, are we therefore to reject it, any more than we are another, simply because it looks novel, uncouth and raw. Nor because a good truth has got a bad name by having been sometimes in bad company are we therefore to be afraid of espousing it, any more than we are to be slavishly prone to adopt another truth merely on the ground of its having illustrious defenders. The proverb has a slavish and ill grace that says, "I would rather be wrong with a Prince or a Solomon, than right with a peasant or a fool." Yet such is practically the servile unreflecting deference to authorities, even in theology, that there are many who will not even give a hearing to truth, unless it come under the auspices of some acknowledged leader of a religious school, or nestling under the wing of one of the great champions of orthodoxy, or in the shade of some clarum et venerabile nomen of antiquity.

But the words of the satirist hold good, and they constitute a good motto for independent minds.

The truth is truth, though private men declare it,

And falsehood's falsehood, though a council swear it.

We hold it just as possible now as ever, for new ideas to be started in theology, and original views of religious experience; and that, too, away from the schools, and without the cognizance of the Rabbis. It is as true at this day as it was in the time of the noble Puritan who said it, "the Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of His holy Word ;" and a truth is no more a truth nor any better, for being born into the world by the aid of doctors and midwives, than if brought forth alone, and left so long to get its growth in the wild woods, that it has become shaggy.

It is these plebeian-born notions, in the hairy strength and rude dressings of nature, untrammeled by the schools, that have come up out of the wilderness from age to age and broke prison, for the human mind chained by the dogmas of false priests and philosophers, and started it on its grand cycles of improvement. The ideas that have revolutionized the church and world, have generally originated in the cells of obscure enthusiasts, or the necessity-sharpened wits of hard-pushed sons of labor, not in the cushioned and ottomaned studies of prime-ministers and Prelates, or Professors in Divinity schools. And Coleridge says, "It would not be difficult, by an unbroken chain of historic facts, to demonstrate that the most important changes in the commercial relations of the world had their origin id the closets and lonely walks of uninterested theorists;—that the mighty epochs of commerce, that have changed the face of empires; nay, the most important of those discoveries and improvements in the mechanic

1 Statesman's Manual, p. 19.

arts, which have numerically increased our population beyond what the wisest statesmen of Elizabeth's reign deemed possible, and again doubled this population virtually; had their origin not in the cabinets of statesmen, or in the practical insight of men of business, but in the closets of uninterested theorists, in the visions of recluse genius."

So it is with those ideas of fraternity, association, and organization of labor, that are now agitating France and all Europe, and that are yet to be more thoroughly but peacefully discussed in the United States. They did not spring from the schools of philosophy, neither were they first believed in and thrust out upon their mission, by the chief priests and rulers. But it was in knots and clubs of common men and despised bands of associationists, whose rallying words are "Organization of Labor," "Liberty with and through Order," that their life began. In like manner the views of religious experience, and the Life of Faith, and sanctification by faith, which are now, or should be, under discussion in the church, although as old, if they be true, as the Word of God, and properly originating there, yet did by no means commence in Divinity schools and under the auspices of Doctors, but in the thoughts and experience of common men and women meditating upon the Word and following the clue of their own fervent desires and realizings. It was not within the walls of renowned Oxfords and Sorbonnes, and the Harvards, that they first sprang to lite, although, to be sure, they have gone there to be matured and reduced to system. Have they not rather begun, like almost every thing good in the world, with "not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble," but in the conscious wants, and longings, and fulfilled aspirations of every day Christians. It is a very true remark that we have somewhere met with, that it seems to be a law of Providence that in society knowledge descends, but faith ascends, and is it not indeed so, as matter of fact, derivable from history? While science, doubts, opinions, all ideas of the mere understanding, gravitate from the few to the many, on the other hand, affections, convictions, truths of the conscience and heart, the sentiments and principles of liberty, rise from the many to the few. Truths so derived from the many or the experienced among the many, having been first subjectively realized in the spirit's life of an individual or a community of individuals, are always mighty. And they are contagious, too, they spread, they contain what Lord Bacon calls an endless faculty of semination. Such truths become dear as life to a man; he will die for them, and he propagates them with an earnestness and enthusiasm, a self-impressing energy, that always puts life into and kindles others, and they again set fire to others, till the flame at length widens and rises like a conflagration through autumnal woods. So may it be, so will it be,

with all the truth in these volumes, that is Heaven-approved and consonant with the nature and wants of regenerated humanity.

But

It is very natural to remark at the outset that this book will affect different minds quite differently, according as they be of the sentimental and romantic cast, or of the discriminative reasoning kind, or of the merely impulsive sort, or the noble few that are steadily hungering and thirsting after righteousness, and calmly availing themselves of every avenue, and hint, and help to personal holiness. Some, doubtless, will derive great benefit from its perusal; others, it may be, injury. The pastor, we think, may learn from it that there are heights of Christian experience to which he ought to be leading the way for his people, that are very seldom climbed. Ministers in America are very good for bringing sinners to Christ, for clearing the way of obstructions to the atoning Saviour, and urging repentance, submission, and justifying faith; none, perhaps, are better. there we too commonly leave the church, or Christians once housed in it. Generally speaking, we give them little help afterward, but let them grope their way on alone, if they can, into green pastures of Christian experience and beside still waters, and up the sides of the Delectable Mountains, sometimes, alas, into dry places, seeking rest but finding none, and cavernous dark mountains of sin. But this ought not so to be. Our ministries ought to be more edifying as well as awakening. They ought to result not merely in periodical conquests from the world, but in a richer experience and a riper holiness to the church. And for this there must be, on the part of the leaders of God's elect, a more intimate acquaintance with Christ as a sanctifying Saviour, a fuller appreciation of His power by faith, as the soul's wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, so that they could say subjectively with the apostle, For the Life was manifested, and we have known it, and bear witness, and show unto you, that Eternal Life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us. We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen of the good word of God, and the powers of the world to

come.

It is, however, by no means dignified or a duty when a man has, suddenly or after long study and prayer, obtained some, to him, new and very precious subjective view of religious truth, forthwith to blazon it to the world as a great discovery, and at once organize it into a system or an ism, as if the church had never been in possession of it before. It were certainly better, and more like the modesty of true genius,

"Baptized in the pure fountain of Eternal Love."