is designed to be trained to knowledge, virtue, and happiness. The idea of God must be acquired, no less than a notion of the various substances we handle, or qualities we approve or dislike. Until we have learned that God is, and what he is, love is out of the question. And who will say it is possible that this should be an early acquisition who will say it is a proof of depravity, that loving the good beings whom we already know, we do not love God while we are ignorant of his existence and attributes?

It is certain that our earliest moral exercises have no relation to God primarily, but to his creatures, to whose care he entrusts us at birth, and whose kindness is understood and felt very soon afterward. That is, we love first what we know first. And this is no more an evidence that our affections are perverse at the beginning, than the fact that we learn the taste of the nourishment offered to our senses before we can distinguish the features of the parent who yields it, is a proof that our senses are perverted; or than the fact, that our senses are developed before our reason, is a mark of native irrationality.

But the principle assumed by our author goes too far to prove anything he wishes. If the circumstance he supposes, that the love of the creature precedes the love of God, and by preceding it is for a time the stronger affection necessarily, shows that there is nothing in our constitution of which the result is the love of God; then-the fact that the crude and false notions of childhood precede and are long paramount to more correct reason, prove that a correct understanding is not the result of anything in our constitution.

It is asking too much, to require a positively religious character at the beginning, of a being sent into life with

no knowledge of God or duty, and by necessity laid under the absolute control of the senses so long, that he begins to learn what he must know before he can love or obey a spiritual being, with a habit opposed to the means by which such knowledge is alone to be acquired. We mean, that the demand is too great as respects the evidence of the fact that there is something in the human constitution, of which religion is the result. All our other affections are of slow growth, maturing as the mind matures. The mind while developing cannot have a fixed character any further than the developement has proceeded. We love as we discover the objects to be loved, and have had the opportunity of being impressed by them. A child has no taste for what men most prefer, because it understands only as a child. If properly educated it acquires the taste. A love of learning, patriotism, and all the higher affections, whose objects and nature lie out of the range of mere sensation, must of necessity be subsequent to the attachments of sense. It is as common we think to find a religious education resulting in a religious character so far as it has proceeded, as it is to find learning and skill the consequence of a similar training. Nor are the difficulties in the way of religious nurture, any greater in comparison with the object in view, than those which hinder the suc cess of schooling in any branch of knowledge, or training to any art. The mind is no more averse to impressions in favor of duty than to impressions of any other sort, taking into consideration the nature of the subject for which we seek to create a predilection.

We suppose it is not denied that the Creator designed man, when he gave him life, for a religious being, just as he designed him for a rational being, or a social being.

VOL. I.-NO. V.

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Now in these latter cases we cannot doubt that there is something in the human constitution, of which the habits of a rational and social being are the result. Shall we presume less then of the religious habits? Did God give man a constitution in all respects adapted to the results he wished, except in the point of religion, for which mainly he was created? Have we a constitution, of which reason, social affections, and everything else we ever attain are the results, and is that constitution destitute of all the sources of religious character? Did God make us for religion with a constitution from which religion could not spring?

scan.

Human character is ascertained by actions we can Apart from these, nothing is known to one man, of what pertains to another man's good or bad qualities. The fact that mankind are religious, a portion of the race at least, is granted. The fact that a portion of the race are vicious is granted. Now if you trace the latter to the human constitution, and say that vice is the result of something in our constitution, why can we not trace the former just in the same way, to constitution, and declare there is something in our constitution of which religion is the result? It is absurd to deny that a property of our nature is, the origin of both, a property no more evil than good. God made us so, gave us such a constitution, that vice or virtue, religion or irreligion might be the result. As a matter of experience, we find sometimes one, and sometimes the other, or a mixture of both, to be the actual result. There is as truly a constitution from which good may issue, as a constitution from which sin may issue, a nature that fits us for religious action, as a nature for that which is not religious.

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All who admit that the present life is a probation, must grant that antecedent to this probation, the results of trial have no being in the subject to be proved; for if they had, if man were at birth already positively religious, had an actual character of virtue in hand, where is the ground for trying whether he will gain such a character. or not? If you say, man is depraved in his nature, because he has not always a religious character, even from childhood, then you make probation a nullity. Or if you say that, provided man were not depraved, he would begin his probation under the influence of religion, you are placing the result before the process, the end before the means. Was it under the influence of religion, that Adam yielded to the temptation first presented? If not, then this theory of depravity drops. He was not na

tively depraved, since God declared his work good. Yet his moral exercises began no better, at most, than our

own.

Dr Beecher's first source of proof is derived from experience. He turns to his audience, and inquires. "have religious affections found a place in your hearts from your earliest years? Do you believe that you are religious, and that you have been from the beginning?" But is this the way to prove his point? Because men

are now of any character supposable, it does not follow that there is nothing in the human constitution of which a different character is not the natural result. As to the earliest affections, they were matters of experience, when we could not judge of their character, and memory is not to be relied upon, to settle the question what they were. We doubt not, however, there are, and have ever been not a few, whose religious affections were unfolded as

early as their objects became known, and a direction was given toward them by the means requisite. How much earlier ought they to be? And again we must say, that to require in every case positively religious qualities at the beginning, as a proof that men have a constitution of which religion is the proper result, is to demand the result of a process before the process itself has been gone through, or even commenced, which is unreasonable enough.

Our author dwells upon the idea, that religion is itself a change, and not sin. But it is certain that sin is a change in every instance, if by that term we mean a perversion and deterioration of our nature, and not a change of a positively virtuous character, for one that is vicious. Character at birth we have none. Neither does a single act result in a character. Sin, as a character, is brought about by many and violent conflicts with conscience and reason. No man becomes at once corrupt. And so far as corrupt at all, he has become so, by changing a state of innocence, for one of repeatedly increasing and often aggravated guilt. Sin is the result of bad training. Religion of good training. But in the latter case the change is from innocence, the moral blank, to the acquisition of positive virtues; or else from a positively bad character which had succeeded to infant innocence, in which case, it proves only that whereas the man had corrupted himself, he is now reformed."Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye cannot enter the kingdom." This change is turning back to what we once were, for all were once little children. It is a change to the purity of an innocent nature. Our Saviour had other thoughts then of the