netized is necessary to the completion of the process, as well as the full determination of their will towards its accomplishment: and certain actions of the hands appear to be a very important adjuvant to the perfect formation of magnetic somnambulism.

During the magnetic orgasm there occurs a highly excited and disturbed action of the brain.

Hence the preceding and accompanying phenomena of this state are purely physical, and result from the operation of brain upon brain.

Doubtless the production of mag. netic phenomena is greatly assisted by the powerful impression upon the mind: but they can never be fully manifested without the intervention of the material organ: and therefore they may safely be referred to a physical, not a spiritual agency. During the continuance of magnetic somnambulism, there occurs (so it is alleged) a power of predicting certain physical future events; an impression very analogous to the function of second sight, or even to presentiment, &c.

Thus, the effects produced by a known physical condition, are similar to those for which a spiritual and supernatural agency has been claimed: if it be granted to the one, it cannot be withheld from the other; and if it be denied to one, it must be so to both.

And since, in one instance, it has been clearly traced to a physical origin, there is good ground for believing the same origin for the similar condition.

In all these, and analogous states, the imagination has a wonderful influence in occasioning that peculiar excitement of the brain which is favourable to the production of such mental manifestations: especially to all the undefined creations of fear; and, above all, to the belief in apparitions.

This excited state of the imagination produces a susceptibility to morbid brainular action, and is in itself a frequent cause of dreaming;

because it constitutes the precise state of peculiar adaptation to erroneous and spectral impressions.

Visions during trances, or prolonged slumbers, where they are not the offspring of imposture or self-delusion, can only be ascribed to a peculiar morbid action of the brain.

These visions will be characterized by the predominance of the essential attributes of the physical temperamant of the individual, according as this may have been simply sanguineous, or melancholic, or choleric, or phlegmatic; or as these simpler states may have been more or less combined in the same character.

These facts shew that a morbid condition of the brain will occasion the creation of unreal images; and that their influence upon the manifestations of mind is very extensive and mischievous.

In what consists this peculiar morbid condition of the brain, we know not; because we are unacquainted with the mode of its healthy action, and therefore cannot ascertain the deviations from its perfect functions.

But the same truth will apply to all the organic functions of the body. This only do we certainly know, that all these functions will be disturbed by any cause which prevents the quiet calm of the organ.

And if so, may not the same cause, that is, organic irritation, disturb the function of the brain, in its most complex office; namely, that of manifesting the powers and attainments of the mind ?

All histories of apparitions, &c. rest on a basis of human testimony, rather than on any process of reasoning: and facts are alleged in support of supernatural visitations; these facts forming the evidence of so many persons of assumed health of body and soundness of mind.

But in some instances this supernatural influence, which was fully believed to exist in an earlier state of society, and which then was not

wanting in facts for its support, has utterly vanished before the "morning air" of education, science, and religion.

If so, doubt is thrown on human testimony; and we are constrained to believe that these histories have been fabricated by the designing, or that their authors have been self-deceived: and if we adopt the latter and more pleasing alter native, what is so likely to have occasioned such delusion, with rightly intentioned individuals, as a peculiar state of brainular irritation, giving rise to spectral appearances?

Dreams are sometimes supposed to have been commissioned by Divine Providence, for the discovery of crime; a revelation having been thus made to some individuals of circumstances which have led to the detection of the criminal; and this is made to rest upon the justice of the Almighty, whose vengeance pursues the wicked, and suffereth not a murderer to live. But God is merciful as well as just, and rejoices to extend the day of grace: he willeth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should turn unto him and live.

Moreover, the present life is not the day of judgment or of retribution, but of proffered pardon in Christ Jesus. This is not that approaching period, when the Divine justice will be fully displayed: there is now an inequality in the lot of the righteous and the wicked, which will only be rendered right at the last great day of account; so that it is not inconsistent with the dealings of Providence, that the wicked should escape punishment in the present life.

Moreover, it has happened, that the innocent have suffered, instead of the really guilty, in consequence of error arising from a judgment formed upon circumstantial evidence another proof, that errors are permitted here, in order that we may cast our eyes forward, for the full display of God's perfect and impartial justice.

On the contrary supposition, the perfect holiness of Jehovah would be impugned by the present escape of the actual perpetrator of crime, and by the destruction of the inno

cent.

Besides, this result of discovery is by no means invariable; and if it be neither necessary nor undeviating, we may well question the existence of any special interference of Providence in order to its being obtained, since these would be qualities of such providential agency.

Finally, dreaming may be almost always, if not always, accounted for on other principles, less liable to objection, and particularly upon primary or sympathetic irritation of the brain, arising from organic disturbance of some one of the viscera of the body; or from moral causes operating immediately or intermediately upon the mental organ, the brain. This has been exemplified in the narrative of the discovery of the murder of Maria Martin by William Corder.

Besides, it is really a greater instance of providential wisdom and care, when events are brought about by the agency of ordinary means concurring to an end, rather than by any special interference with God's established order of nature.

(To be concluded in the next Number.)

QUERY ON OUR LORD'S BAPTISM.

Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer.

Sr. Matthew tells us, that when Jesus came to John to be baptized, "John forbade him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?" (Matt.iii. 14.) thereby, intimating some acquaintance with the character and dignity of Him who stood before him. But we are informed by St. John (chap. i. vers. 31 and 33), that the Baptist knew not our Lord until the rite was performed, when the descent of the Holy Spirit, in the form of a

dove, convinced him that the person in his presence was He who baptized with the Holy Ghost." Besides this apparent difficulty, the latter passage, literally understood, conveys an idea very improbable, that John, though related to Jesus, had lived for so many years without knowing who he was, notwithstanding the inspiration he had himself received, and the supernatural acquaintance possessed by his own mother on this subject.

I have long sought for an explanation of this apparent difficulty, but have never found one; and shall be much obliged if yourself, or one of your correspondents will furnish me with a solution.

QUÆRENS.

*** As Quærens applies to us, as well as our correspondents, we refer him to the commentators on the passage for several solutions, either of which would be sufficient to rescue the sacred text from the charge of contradiction. We also respectfully recommend several of our younger readers, who have requested a solution of supposed difficulties which have occurred to them in their reading, to adopt the same method, or to apply to some sound biblical scholar, assured that the ingenuity of the present age is not likely to discover any apparent difficulty which has not been discovered and canvassed before; and in most cases sufficient replies are extant. We are, however, always greatly obliged to mature theological students who will afford our readers their thoughts upon such difficulties, aud clear up any obscure passage of holy writ, by the aid of new researches.

(p. 275), I perceive an important defect in his argument. He tells us that Bishop Horsley fails in establishing the existence of a double sense of prophecy, that " he has misunderstood the point of debate, or unconsciously shifted his ground in the course of his argument." These expressions applied to such a powerful and close reasoner as Horsley somewhat surprised me; and my curiosity was further excited by the proof adduced. The bishop, your correspondent asserts, brings forward "the conquests of Alexander, and the incursions of the Scythians into the possessions of Shem," as accomplishments of the curse pronounced on Canaan. As the bishop is not in the habit of writing absurdly, I turned to his sermons, confident that his meaning must be mistaken. I was delighted with the four consecutive discourses on this subject, which commence his second volume; and I earnestly recommend them to the attentive perusal of J. B. M. Your correspondent has not only united the accomplishment of the curse on Canaan with Canaan with the prediction respecting Japhet, but on that confusion has grounded his discomfiture of the bishop's argument. These, he argues, are gradual, not double fulfilments. "The question

of a double sense," he says, "is totally distinct from this. A pre diction may extend through a long course of years, and point out a succession of events, all tending to one point, all centered in one purpose. But the question is, whether a prophecy fulfilled in one sense looks forward to another accomplishment in a sense entirely new.” These are the words of your correspondentthese also are the views of the

PHECY.

Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer.

WITHOUT presuming to give an opinion on the question which your correspondent J. B. M. discusses

and to answer this very question in the affirmative, he adduces, not the curse on Canaan, but the blessing on Japhet. Alexander's overthrow of the Persian monarchy, the Roman conquests in the East, the Tartar conquests in Asia, he stiles,

in perfect conformity with your correspondent's theory, "an accomplishment of the patriarch's prophetic benediction." He then proceeds to comply with J. B. M.'s reasonable requirement, by adducing as a second fulfilment, the modern peace. able settlement of European nations in the East; and, in conformity with his own excellent axiom, that "the Scripture prophecies all terminate in one great object, the complete establishment of the Messiah's kingdom," he brings forward a third sense, that "the idolatrous nations of Japhet's line should worship the God of Shem, in Shem's tabernacles -in the modes of worship prescribed by revealed religion."

Undoubtedly this last explanation has less resemblance to, and no more connexion with, the events to which the preceding fulfilments are referred, than the slaughter of the innocents with the circumstances of Nebuzaradan's invasion (or as I have been accustomed to call it Nebuchadnezzar's), which your correspondent introduces to illustrate his meaning. My conclusion, therefore, is in direct opposition to his own, that "Bishop Horsley has brought forward another accomplishment, in a sense entirely new, of a prophecy already fulfilled in one

have unintentionally nullified one of the most direct declarations in the New Testament of the Divinity of our blessed Saviour: I allude to Rom. ix. 5, which, in Dr. Shuttleworth's version, runs thus: "Whose are the fathers, men favoured by God, and from whose lineage according to the flesh has sprung Christ himself, God ruling over all, blessed for ever and ever. Amen."

Is not this a deviation from the Authorized Version of too much moment to be introduced in silence? The language appears to me of equivocal import, and approximating too closely to the Unitarian version; and as this will be far from the wish of the respected translator, I trust that, in the event of a second edition, the passage will be placed beyond the possibility of such perversion.

I may perhaps be excused, if on so important a subject I append an extract from Archbishop Magee's Discourses on the Atonement, in reference to the passage in question. "Michaelis," says the learned prelate, "does not hesitate to assert in terms the most unqualified, that

Paul here delivers the same doctrine of the Divinity of Christ, which is elsewhere unquestionably maintained in the New Testament.' Dr. Doddridge, in his comment on the place, describes it as a memorable text, containing a proof of Christ's proper Deity, which the opposers of that doctrine have never been able, nor will ever be able, to answer.' The learned continuators of Poole's Annotations affirm this to be the fullest place to express the TWO NATURES that are in the person of our Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was God as well as Man.' Storr says of this passage,

that it attributes the Divine nature to Christ in terms the most unequivocal.' Both Grotius and Rosenmuller observe, upon the words Tо kaта σapka, that St. Paul meant to point out that he here spoke of our Lord, 'not according to the Divine, but according to the human

nature which existed in him.' Whitby, in his comment upon this verse, expressly asserts, that 'FROM THE BEGINNING, these words have been used by the Fathers, as an argument of Christ's Divinity.' And, in truth, there is perhaps no single text in the whole of the New Testament in which the Divinity and the two-fold nature of our Lord are laid down more unequivocally, and more indisputably as to the wording of the original, than they are in this."

L. G.

FAMILY SERMONS.-No. CCLXI.

Heb. xiii. 1.-Let brotherly love

continue.

WE often hear the inquiry, What are the doctrines of the Gospel? and a most important inquiry it is: for what can be of greater moment than to learn what our Creator has revealed to us; in what relationship we stand towards him; how we may enjoy his favour; what he says of us; what he commands us; what he has done for us; especially all that relates to the redemption of our fallen race through Jesus Christ, his beloved Son, and our pardon and justification through that meritorious sacrifice, freely by faith, with the sanctification of our souls by the indwelling of his Holy Spirit, and the hopes of eternal glory in the world to come. But important as are the doctrines of the Gospel, it is not enough to ask, What must we believe? we must also inquire, What is the spirit of the Gospel, and how must we live? The heart must be influenced as well as the understanding. It is not sufficient to know the will of God, we must also love it; our Saviour must be our pattern as well as our sacrifice; and to copy his blessed example, to live like him in meekness, lowliness, and self-denial, in love to God and to man for God's sake, must be our constant effort and unceasing prayer. This love is the very spirit of the CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 335.

Gospel; but it is a spirit which we are too apt to forget. It is far more easy to attend Divine worship, to take up a form of religion, to be zealous for a system of doctrines, and even to be active in many schemes of seeming charity, than really to live in a spirit of Christian love. Yet this spirit is a distinguishing mark of the truth of our union to Christ, and without it we are none of his. If there be any one of our fellow-creatures, even one who had greatly injured us, to whom we would deliberately act otherwise than in that temper which the Gospel requires, we should be destitute of that powerful evidence of our being true disciples of Christ, which flows from our resembling in spirit our Divine Master, who gave his life for an ungrateful world, and prayed for those who spitefully entreated him, and put him to death.

But it is not so much the general duty of love to our fellow-creatures which we are now to consider; as one particular portion of that love, one section as it were of the second table of the law, which is comprised in the apostolic precept," Love the brotherhood." It is commanded, "Do good unto all men ;" but it is added, "especially unto them which are of the household of faith;" or, in the words of our text, "Let brotherly love continue." In discoursing upon this apostolic command, we shall first shew what the Apostle intends by brotherly love; and, secondly, the importance of his exhortation to maintain it.

First, then, what is brotherly love? There is, as we have seen, a duty of sympathy and affection which we owe to all our fellowcreatures; a general tie of human nature which binds us to all mankind. All were made by the same hand, all are partakers of the same fallen nature, all are placed in the same scene of trial, all are interested in the same redemption, all are hastening to the same eternal world; and our gracious Creator, who makes his sun to shine alike upon the evil 4 R