low and unsatisfactory kind, and besides wound the conscience and injure the mind. However, being the only objects with which his mind is conversant, habit and a slight degree of gratification make him attached to them. But on directing his attention to religion and becoming acquainted with a new class of objects, such as conscience, virtue, piety, God, and spiritual things, he finds that these too have their pleasures, he becomes attached to them and they destroy his relish for the other class of objects, and wean him from them.

Thus it is that the man's habits of action become entirely changed, his feelings and affections. His character is changed, and he is born into the kingdom of God. But there is no change of nature, no irresistible action of God upon his soul. It is the result of his own free agency. But it may be asked, do you exclude divine influence? We answer, no. But "the Spirit helpeth our infirmities" does not originate or perform our actions. God gives "the holy Spirit to them that ask him," but not in order to cause them to ask him.

Here then is the distinction the neglect of which has been the source of so much mistake. Regeneration is a voluntary change of moral action, not a change of nature. That theory which would make it a change of nature would make man not a free agent either before or after regeneration. Before, he has not the power to do good, and afterwards, as this doctrine is always connected with that of the saints' perseverance, he "is kept by the power of

God unto salvation." Now he can be literally so kept only by destroying his free agency. So before regeneration he is prevented by God, through his own nature, from doing good; and after regeneration, he is prevented from doing evil by the same power, by a change of his nature, or an interference with his will. He is therefore not a free agent in either case.

But the theory of regeneration consisting in an instantaneous and entire change of nature seems in sad contradiction to facts. How happens it that the regenerated sin at all? If before regeneration every act was sinful because it proceeded from a sinful nature, so after regeneration, by which the nature is made holy, every act ought to be holy, according to the nature from which it proceeds. But this is not the case. Those who are thought regenerate still continue to sin. The capacity to sin is not taken away, nor the inclination. To what then does that holiness of nature amount which still leaves the capacity and the inclination to sin and occasional indulgence? What more can the unregenerate man have than the capacity and the inclination to sin and occasional indulgence? There is no difference of nature between them. The only possible difference is that one yields to temptation more frequently than the other. And to what does this amount? To different habits of moral action. The only diffe rence between them is different degrees of virtue and vice, of holiness and sin. But, it is said, up

to the point of regeneration the unregenerate can

do nothing good, are incapable of virtue. I answer, this bears the same marks of extravagance with the assertion that the regenerate man cannot sin. And as one is not true, the other being based on the same hypothesis, is just as likely to be false. This point is imaginary. There is every gradation of character, from the highest to the lowest. There is no such great chasm at any particular line. All the regeneration which facts and the experience of life exhibit to us, is that of more good actions and less sins than before, and that is a change of moral action, not of moral nature.

But, it may be said, a man must be something or nothing, regenerate or unregenerate, a saint or a sinner, in a state of perdition or salvation. I answer that this representation arises from gross ideas and false conceptions and analogies. It arises from urging the figure of birth in a point where it was not intended to apply, and from supposing future happiness or misery is to arise from place, not moral condition. Let us bring these conceptions to the test of the word of God. He that "is born of God sinneth not." That is true to the letter. But who arrives at such a degree of perfection as this in the present world? Then no one is fully born in a spiritual sense till he arrives at the perfection of heaven. Regeneration then, instead of being momentary, embraces the whole Christian course from the beginning to the end.

But what change in the moral nature of man keeps him from sinning, according to this system,

after regeneration? It must be a change of some or all the powers concerned in moral action. These are the understanding and moral sense, the passions and appetites, and the will. We have already demonstrated that the will cannot be immediately touched without destroying moral action. The appetites and passions cannot, without destroying temptation, and of course moral probation. There remain then only the understanding and the moral sense. And these are the very powers which need not miraculous interference. They are the very powers which man can cultivate and strengthen to any extent by his own moral actions, and for the cultivation and improvement of which there are provided means as boundless as the universe, and as rich as the unsearchable and inexhaustible stores of divine revelation, and accessible as the everlasting fountain of devotion springing up perpetually in the soul.

We conclude therefore that the soul is active, not passive, in the process of spiritual renovation, in being born into the kingdom of heaven.

LECTURE XI

WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY.

"For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth."

Romans, i. 16.

WHAT is Christianity? This is the question which I propose this evening to discuss. I am not unaware of the difficulty of defining so wide and general a subject, or compressing that definition into a single discourse. I am not unaware likewise of the great variety of answers which might be given to this question, all equally true according to the view taken of it, and the purpose for which it is considered. The answer we shall attempt to give it will be with reference to this point,-its power over the minds, hearts, and lives of men. What in it are the sources of its moral and spiritual power? Its effect upon mankind was at once great and signal. It immediately formed a community of a character more pure and exalted than the world had ever known. And from that day to this, those who have enjoyed its influence have been distinguished from the rest of the world by a marked superiority of moral, social, and intellectual condition. An effect has been produced.