and miserable state in which we were Kiving; and this he has done in the way of his own appointment, by the wash ing of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost. If, then, we be par takers of this salvation, we have received that new birth of the Spirit of which baptism is the sacramental sign. Our hearts have been purified from their habitual pollutions; and the love and dominion of sin have been taken away. We have been renewed in the spirit of our minds: we have been in some faint degree transformed, by the influence of the Holy Spirit, into the Divine image: and all the gifts and graces of that Spirit, which are necessary for the support of the Christian life or the ornament of the Christian profession, are thus shed upon us by the Father. So that this is a change, not of state only, but of nature-an entire alteration in the prevailing habits and tendencies of the soul.-We have seen the Apostle's account of our natural condition; of our folly, our disobedience, our earthly affections. The renewed man is and must be the reverse of all this: his principles, his desires and affections, his views, and practice, and character, have all been changed. "But on what ground, and by what means,are these benefits vouchsafed to us? How is it that man, with such corruption of nature and such depravity of mind, can thus become the favoured object of spiritual blessings? How can the perfections of a holy God admit of it? The Apostle informs us: All this is through Jesus Christ our Saviour.' It is only by his merits and mediation that we have the privilege even of access to the Father. He is our Sacrifice, our High Priest, our prevailing Intercessor: in his name alone, and in reliance upon him, the penitent sinner comes to the Fountain of Mercy, and obtains the blessings of salvation." Dealtry, pp.6-8. With the above mentioned exception, which can only have proceeded from inadvertence, we cordially recommend this sermon to the attention of our readers. It is another, and certainly a very powerful, attempt to stand between the more violent combatants on either side, and to expostulate with each of them on their mutual errors. And though we may, perhaps, be compelled to hear from certain controversialists the cry, which has often been raised against ourselves, that this “trumpet gives an uncertain sound," we shall only reply, that it is evidently not a trumpet designed to make men "prepare for the battle," but rather to sooth their angry pas. sions, to reconcile their differences, to harmonize their hearts, and to press upon them the solemn monition of our Lord, "They that take the sword shall perish by the sword." Happy are those who shall live to see every Christian warrior sheathe his angry weapon; or rather beat it into a ploughshare, to turn up the hitherto barren and unvisited tracts of idolatry, with a view to cast into that neglected soil the seed of an eternal and immeasurable harvest. A New View of Society; or, Essays on the Formation of the Human Character, preparatory to the Development of a Plan for gradually ameliorating the Condition of Mankind. By ROBERT OWEN. Third Edition. London: Longman. 8vo. pp. 184. FEW things could have surprized us more than the circumstance, that, for a time, the schemes of Mr. Owen of Lanark should have found numerous admirers and partizans in this country. With astonishment we beheld some of our daily journalists -some even of those who profess to be most zealously attached to our institutions both civil and ecclesiastical-warmly espousing his cause, and devoting their columns to the propagation and defence of his system;-a system, which is avowedly directed to the removal of the very foundation on which those institutions rest. They may, perhaps, plead in their excuse, that Mr. Owen had not explained himself on this point until a very recent period. This excuse, however, will scarcely avail them; for a great part of the work which stands at the head of this article has been before the public for five years, and the whole of it for a year and a half. Even in that work they might have seen his determined hostility to the religion of Jesus Christ: for even there he attempts to trace all the evils which afflict society, to the malign influence of its doctrines, and the rigorous observance of its sabbaths. Mr. Owen, indeed, predicted, with no small degree of confidence, that the fascinations of his system would be such as to compel the most hardened opposers to enlist under his banner; and we must confess that when we saw how extensively he was supported and eulogized, we began to fear that we had been precipitate in venturing to deride this prediction as wild and enthusiastic. Pens which, on other occasions, had been effectually wielded to vindicate the established order of things from the rude attacks of innovators, were seen, for a time, strangely concurring with their political oponents to recommend to the public regard the thorough paced innovator of Lanark Mills. Nor was this all. Public meetings were called, in order to discuss, in the face of day, the propriety of adopt ing a scheme, for ameliorating the condition of society, which involv. ed the condemnation, not of the national creed merely, but of the revealed Word of God itself, as an imposture and a nuisance: and these meetings, we grieve to say, were attended by some men of consideration in society. The conduct pursued in this instance docs appear to us most extraordinary Could it have been believed that the same men who condemu Voltaire, Condorcet, and Paine, should have been found recommending the projects of Robert Owen? that some, who cannot even now speak without horror of the anti Christian decrees of the French Convention, should be, brought, by some wonderful revolution of feeling, to listen with favour to a man whose views and purposes are founded on the same b broad principle-the falsehood of Scripture? In thus charging Mr. Owen's system with the guilt of those anti-Christian decrees, we do not build our charge on any obscure, however significant, intimation of his opinions which may be conveyed in hints and sneers, as when he speaks of the laws and works of nature as the "true revelation " which is to supersede "the uncertain legends of the days of dark and gross ignorance," and which is to unite the world, now divided and distracted by the errors of prevailing creeds, in a sincere and cordial union and co-operation for every wise and good purpose," We proceed on evidence which is still more palpable, and which leaves. no doubt on the mind as to the real tendency of the system. " "The doctrines," says Mr. Owen, "which have been taught to every known sect, combined with the external circumstances by which they have been surrounded, have been directly calcu lated, and could not fail, to produce the characters which have existed. And the doctrines in which the inhabitants "The of the world are now instructed, combined with the external circumstances by which they are surrounded, form the characters which at present pervade society." Nay, still further: doctrines which have been, and now are taught throughout the world, must necessarily create and perpetuate, and they do create and perpetuate, a total want of mental charity among men. They also generate superstition, bigotry, hypocrisy, hatred, revenge, wars, and all their evil consequences." pp. 106, 107. Mr. Owen, it will be observed, makes here no exception in favour of Christianity itself as exhibited and of any form under which it is protaught in the Bible, nor in favour fessed. It is proscribed, in common with the ferocious and intolerant dogmas of Islamism, and the Hindoo, as the parent and nurse impure and sanguinary faith of the the growth of every kindly affec of every crime, and as hostile to tion. We call on the admirers of Mr. Owen's plans to point out, in the pages of the infidel writers, a paragraph which marks a more rooted dislike to Christianity than that which we have just quoted, or one which contains a more gross misrepresentation of its nature and tendency. Mr. Owen, indeed, avoids the coarseness and ribaldry of many of his predecessors: but in one respect, he seems to us to have attained a guilty pre-eminence above them all; we mean, in the magnitude and indiscriminating generality of the calumnies he has uttered against religion and its ministers. At the very outset of his "New View of Society," Mr. Owen divides the British population into two classes: First, "The poor and uneducated profligate among the working classes, who are now trained to commit crimes, for the commission of which they are afterwards punished." Second," The remaining mass," "who are now instructed to believe, or at least to acknowledge, that certain principles are unerringly true, and to act as though they were grossly false." (p. 16.) Who the persons are who train the uneducated poor to commit crimes, and who instruct the rest of the community to acknowledge certain principles to be unerringly true, and yet to act as though they were grossly false, our author does not, indeed, distinctly specify: he leaves this to be inferred. But to those who read Mr. Owen's pages with attention, the inference will not be remote or difficult. Before we proceed, however, we would take occasion to remark on the unfairness practised by Mr. Owen throughout the whole of this discussion, in avoiding all distinctness of specification with respect to the particular objects of his accusations. While no doubt can remain in the mind of the reader as to what those objects really are, it looks as if the writer intended at some future time to avail himself of the convenient ambiguities of his language to escape from the conclu sions which seem inevitably to fol low from his line of argument. But to proceed: "How much longer,” asks Mr. Owen indignantly, "shall we continue to allow generation after generation to be taught crime from their infancy?" (p. 39.) Does Mr. Owen mean that the constituted instructors of the community, the clergy and the schoolmasters of the land, actually teach the individuals committed to their charge to be proficients in crime? He either means this, or he means nothing. Now let Mr. Owen name the clergyman or the schoolmaster who thus teaches crime to his flock or to his pupils. Let him point out, amid the multitude of sermons with which the press has teemed during the last century, a single sermon in which the commission of crime is taught; or let him point out a single elementary book of instruction in which criminal practices are inculcated; and we will admit that he does not merit the denomination of slanderer, in the extensive sense in which we should otherwise feel disposed to apply it. He will at least have one solitary fact on which to ground his sweeping anathema against all the Christian instructors in the land. "Investigate and compare," says Mr. Owen, "the principles in which mankind have hitherto been instructed.”— "They betray absurdity, folly, and weakness: hence the infinity of jarring opinions, dissensions, and miseries, which have hitherto prevailed." "They are all, without an exception, inconsistent with the works of nature; that is, with the facts which exist around us. Those systems, therefore, must have contained some fundamental errors; and it is utterly impossible for man to become rational, or enjoy the happiness which he is capable of attaining, until those errors are EXPOSED and ANNIHILATED." p. 105. We again would ask Mr. Owen whether he does not mean to include the principles of Christianity, as now taught in this country-that is to say, the principles of the Bible-among those errors which hinder men from becoming rational and happy, and which, therefore, wretchedness, this most lamentable of all errors, this scourge of the human race, be publicly exposed," (p. 108,) aye, and "annihilated" must be exposed and annihilated? That, at least, he has those principles in his eye, may be certainly inferred from the description he attempts to give of the systems which he is bent on demolishing. "For it has been, and is," he tells us, "a fundamental principle in every system hitherto taught, with exceptions more nominal than real, that man will possess merit, and receive eternal reward, by believing the doctrines of that peculiar system; that he will be eternally punished if he disbelieves them; that all those innume rable individuals who, through time, have been taught to believe other than the tenets of this system, must be doomed to eternal misery." It must be admitted, indeed, that this is a very distorted view of Christianity and yet it is precisely such a view as infidels have been accustomed to give; as those gave who were banded to "crush the Wretch;" and as a determined enemy might be expected to give ;-a view, however, as calumnious as any other representation we have noticed. But we are, perhaps, too lenient to Mr. Owen in assuming that he merely includes Christianity among other prevailing systems, in the various denunciations which he utters against their nature and effects. May we not safely affirm that it is the primary object of his hostility? He professes to medicate for the moral and political disorders of Great Britain; but he finds him self opposed in his beneficent views by the malignity of the existing system of religion, the fruitful source, as he alleges, of all these disorders. Can any desire, or any purpose, be more natural than that such a monstrous evil should be swept away root and branch? If we saw the matter with Mr. Owen's eyes, we should, of course, be as eager for this happy consummation as he is himself: we should, unquestionably, say with him, "Let this source of too. Mr. Owen, however, affects great moderation in his proceedings. Doubtless, with a view of conciliating the clergy, he would declare, as a preliminary step, that no individual of the present generation should be deprived of the emolument which he now receives, or which has been officially or legally promised to him. The next step, indeed, seems rather a wide stretch of power: we remember nothing analogous to it, since the days of Louis XIV., except in the memorable annals of the French Convention. Mr. Owen's "next step in national reform" would be "to withdraw from the national church those tenets which constitute its weakness and create its danger." Yet still, to prevent the evils of a premature change, he would retain the established forms; for these, he says, "may effect most valuable purposes." purposes." This is in the true spirit of Voltaire and his followers. It is also, we must say, a little Jesuitical in its principle; although the Jesuits, perhaps, would have been cautious enough to conceal their purpose till they had been sure of their blow. But what are the "tenets" which Mr. Owen, in the plenitude of his power and infallibility, would "withdraw from the national church?" "To render it truly a national church," he replies, "all tests, as they are called, that is, declarations of belief in which all," (if all, of course Deists and Atheists), "cannot conscientiously join, should be withdrawn." And to this proposal he gravely subjoins the following remark: "This alteration"-(this trivial change in Mr. Owen's opinion-this denuding the church of every thing having the slightest relation to Christianity)" would tend more, perhaps, than any other which can be devised, to give stability both to the national church and to the state; and a conduct thus rational would at once terminate all the theological differences which now confound the intellects of men, and dis seminate universal discord."!! p. 137. Can it be that the man who had openly circulated such ravings as these, should have been the idol, for months after they were published, of many of the journals of this country; and that persons of sense and respectability should meet at his summons to discuss such propositions? But we resume the specification of Mr. Owen's calumnies against religion and religious instruction. He describes "the matter of instruction now given in some of our boasted new systems for the instruction of the poor," to be "almost as wretched as any which can be devised. In proof of this," he says, "enter any one of the schools denominated national; request the master to shew the acquirements of the children. These are called out, and he asks them theological questions, to which men of the most profound erudition cannot make a rational reply. The children, however, readily answer, as they had been previously instructed; for memory, in this mockery of learning, is all that is required. Thus the child whose natural faculty of comparing ideas, or whose rational powers shall be soonest destroyed, if at the same time he possess a memory to retain incongruities without connexion, will become what is termed the first scholar in the class; and three-fourths of the time which ought to be devoted to the acquirement of useful instruction, will be really occupied in DESTROYING the mental powers of the children." p. 155. In other words, the Bible and Church Catechism, taught in the national schools, contain incongruities without connection; and the religious instruction there given, of which these are the basis, destroys the rational powers of the children, and inflicts, as he afterwards states, on their very countenances, "the evident expression of mental injury." p. 155. The establishment of Dr. Bell's system, Mr. Owen further tells us, was a deliberate plan on the part of the dignitaries of the church and their adherents "to ward off a little longer the yet dreaded period of a change from ignorance to reason, from misery to happiness." They saw, it seems, that such a change "would effectually and rapidly undermine the errors not only of their own but of every other ecclesiastical establishment.” To the same motives on the part of the Scotch clergy he would attribute, we presume, their maintenance of the existing national system of education in that country. But all such bigotted and exclusive systems must, according to Mr. Owen, be swept away. The knowledge which his principles impart will eradicate every particle of " from falsehood and deception the instructions which the old force upon the young*,” and “will, without the shadow of doubt, destroy all the errors which are attached to the various systems." p. 161. It is impossible for any rational being to read these extracts, and yet to doubt whether Mr. Owen's plans do not involve the complete annihilation of the Christian system, as absolutely essential to their complete development and success. If further proof of this point were requisite, it could easily be furnished. We will content ourselves with adverting to one other circumstance, which, had nothing else been said on the subject by Mr. Owen, would to us have been conclusive. We allude to his vebement attack upon the doctrine of human responsibility-a doctrine. which lies at the very root of the Christian system. "That man is accountable for all his sentiments and habits, and consequently merits reward for some, and punishment for others," he represents as " a funda. mental error of the highest possible magnitude" for "the will of man has no power whatever over his opinions; he must, and ever did, and ever will, believe what has been, is, or may be, It would seem as if even the re- " straints of parental authority in child-, hood were too harsh to be endured in Mr. Owen's Utopia. |