mental endowments of the perfect and complete man would find occasion to exhibit themselves be fewer or far more numerous, -it is enough for our purpose to have shown that the cultivating agency of mind upon mind was not wanting in the state supposed.

Now having given such specimens of the instruments of culture, which we have found in our re-visited Eden, it remains to show the relation of the culture produced by them to religion. Here let us be distinctly understood, as by no means supposing that man, even in his most perfect state, was meant to be independent of spiritual strength originally furnished and constantly supplied from a source out of and above himself— above Nature. In other words, the essential power and life of religion must then, as now, have been a supernatural and peculiarly divine principle. With that supernatural principle, therefore, we do not for a moment bring any earthly and subordinate agencies into competition or comparison. We cannot be understood to confound them. What we claim is, that in the perfect state of man, the agencies derived from Nature, and those sent down from above Nature, may and must have co-operated, each according to their kind and degree, to the same end. We have shown it to be incredible, that any of the powers and influences set about man could have been meant to be idle- much less to be at war with his best good. On the other hand, upon our own ground, they could not (the special divine principle being wanting) make him properly religious. But what then? Could they not, without detraction from the proper office of the supernatural gift, be desirable conditions to its manifesting itself in all its beauty and power? Is not the bodily strength better exhibited by having its full complement of organs? Or is it indeed to be just as well perceived and measured where there are no arms and feet, or but one of each? So with the principle of religion. Is it not perfectly evident, that the more aspects in which it can make itself seen the more powerful and cultivated the faculties which are sanctified by it, the more perfect and complete the man in his mere humanity-the more does the principle of religion prove and glorify itself? Now the cultivating agencies, in their subordinate station, all operate, most evidently, to make the mere humanity of man (so to speak) more complete. So it must have been in Paradise; for there those agencies were pure and unalloyed, and always acted in direct co-operation with the religious principle. It cannot, indeed, be so now; for the most powerful instrument of all — the influence of mind upon

mind is alas! far from being always uncorrupt. But as in the perfect state—according to what we have seen the means of culture all tended, without alloy or impediment, to exalt and complete the manhood of man, so it is to be believed, without doubt, that they were most important conditions for the full manifestation of the supernatural power of religion.

If we have detained our readers somewhat long in the pleasant spot of our ideal visit, we still trust to be indulged, if it shall have cleared the way to the application we wish to make of the principles there disclosed, to the state of man under the Gospel. We proceed now to establish a like relation of the subordinate means of culture to the Christian religion to religion as applied to the fallen and outcast condition of the once denizen of Paradise.

Our first argument is presumptive. If religion in its end and operation is still the same, then it is to be presumed that it still retains (in some modified form, at least) its former relation to the other subordinate instruments of culture. It is indeed to be presumed, that as religion itself in a fallen and corrupt nature must exhibit itself under many obstacles and with many imperfections, so cultivation, being addressed to the same nature, and -as to its means—partly proceeding from it, must be imperfect in its results, to a still higher degree. Now that religion does still continue to be the same in its end and in the character of its operation, we hold to be clear. The change produced in man by his fall was not a re-modelling of his whole organization, but a withdrawing of the divine spiritual principle from its proper organ, with its consequences." There was no need, therefore, of any further change in religion than to adapt it to the change in man. Hence the result of the divine interference, upon the fall, was-speaking briefly and generally a provision for the recovery of the lost spiritual principle.† When recovered by the individual, the co-operation of the agents of culture with that principle must go on, obviously, though with manifold hinderances and imperfections, as before. There comes, indeed, a new and too frequent case the action of those agencies by themselves, with such imperfect and insufficient result as they can so produce. They can still do much to develop and cultivate the

* See the excellent Note of Leonard Woods, Jun., in his Translation of Knapp's Theology, Vol. 2. pp. 57-62.

+ We speak, of course, of the result alone, not of the Work of Christ by which it was produced, nor of the Faith by which it may be appropriated. - The "Living Temple" of Howe presents (if we remember rightly) the same idea very beautifully, and carries it out into proper fulness of detail.

NO. VII.-VOL. IV.

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mere manhood of man, in all its earthly relations, and that as a fit and most desirable preparation for religion wheresoever it may supervene, derived from its divine source. They can still repair and beautify the deserted temple against the timeif it ever come-when the Divine Image, its true and proper Beauty, shall be restored to its place. On the other hand, if this be not so, then the Creator became the enemy of man, and turned against him, for his spiritual injury, those very influences that were at first meant for his positive good, most of which all, at least, that proceed from Nature are unchanged. And this horrid supposition must be reconciled with the immeasurable benevolence of God to man, as shown in the fact and in the means and circumstances of his Redemption.

But we rely upon a more direct and conclusive argument. The principle for which we contend is involved in an admission almost universally made with respect to the chief religious agency under the Gospel. It is admitted, throughout nearly every respectable body of Christians, that the preachers of the Gospel should be educated men. Such is the professed doctrine, at least. Now what are the real grounds on which this true, wise, profitable, and ancient doctrine rests? False or insufficient reasons are, indeed, alleged at the present day, either in plain words or in still plainer practice. At all events, the favorite way of going by negatives, already reprobated, is here introduced. We must not "hire" an uneducated man because some of the educated and over-fastidious members of the congregation will withdraw or lower their subscriptions, or lest religion should be so represented as to give advantage to the mocker and the infidel. We have fancied, too, that in some cases we had traced a virtual admission of the doctrine to a singular working of sectarian feeling. Men of certain sects, for instance, the direct and inevitable tendency of whose mode of procedure is to destroy all cultivation, as if, indeed, it were their maxim that the whole tone of one's culture must be lowered, and his manhood degraded, before he could be made a Christian no sooner happen (for a wonder) to have a preacher of real or apparent learning, than they in some way do as much as to declare with very complacent distinctness: We have now, thank Heaven, a man who is as great a scholar as any in the aristocratic denominations!

Many more reasons, of the same negative character, are current enough; but we need not repeat them let us turn to the real and positive grounds on which the doctrine rests. It must be borne in mind, that education, in a wide and liberal sense, is what is required in the clergy, not merely theological educa

tion. Were it possible that the latter could be any thing like complete and masterly without the former, still it would not satisfy the requisition. In point of fact, however, nothing can be rarer than to find any thing like a free and scientific command of divinity in any one that has studied nothing else. No, the wisdom of the Church-based upon a sound knowledge of human nature and a long observation of causes and effectsdid not so early and so invariably require the clergy to be men of education merely to fit them out, on the smallest scale, with the tools of their trade: they were not meant to be mere grinders of homilies, or men that exert the power and influence of men in only one limited direction. Rather it was, that they might be representatives of the spirit and purposes of Christianity,-fit instruments to do that, in their particular sphere, which the Gospel aims to do, through the aggregate power of all its instruments, upon the whole body of society. We grant, indeed, that Christianity contemplates, in the first instance, the future happiness of the individual soul. But it aims at the happiness of all souls, and was meant to carry along with it the improvement of each subject of its influence in every respect, as we have, in fact, already explained. It results from this aim of Christianity with respect to individuals, that it contemplates likewise as a consequence of the attainment of its chief endthe improvement of all social life. All the occupations of men, -all the influences at work upon them, the press, education, social intercourse, amusements, it designs to correct, to elevate, and to sanctify. For certainly it is not the spirit of Christianity that could say, My office is simply to announce and enforce the conditions of salvation, and has nothing to do with the education of youth, or the occupations of the grown-up man. But the general effect of religion upon the mass of society is the result only of its effect upon individuals and the smaller bodies of men. Who is to be the agent of producing this effect? The Bible, and the activity and example of private Christians, may without doubt (and we are thankful that they may) do much ; but the wisdom of the Church has always considered that it was the special servant of Christ put over them, from whom the chief influence was to be expected. It is his station-and his station alone it is his relation to the society around him, that both authorizes and fits him to make himself felt in all these directions, In the great majority of cases, even in a population so generally enlightened as ours, few private Christians could be found capable of doing all that ought to be done, and their public and

prominent action in such things would not be tolerated. But station alone would not furnish a minister for the work; nor would knowledge, merely as giving him more furniture than others, a notion somewhat of the Romish complexion : - it is education, considered as imparting to the mind, along with knowledge, a higher tone, a more liberal spirit, wider and deeper views of truth, and as a result of the whole a certain power over less cultivated minds, of which neither the agent nor the subject may be conscious. The presence of such a minister, in his connexion with the various occupations of society, works like Truth cast it into the inert mass of a laggard generation; it may make no noise or bustle; but it makes itself felt gradually and silently, until the very spirit of the whole race is made anew by it.

Nor is it merely in what is done out of the Church, that a minister so cultivated works towards accomplishing the more enlarged purposes of Christianity. His pulpit instructions will all operate as most effective instruments of culture, while, most certainly, they need not lose any of their convincing, awakening, and persuasive power. There will ever be seen something in his style of thinking-such comprehensiveness in his views of truth- a progress so firm and free in his reasoning-a pervading, yet unconscious and unobtrusive, grace and beauty in the mere composition of the whole, that for the hearer to reproduce them, for year after year, in his own mind, must be better than to put himself to school under the ablest masters of rhetoric and logic. For is it possible that one can go through such work of reproduction, for any length of time, and in connexion with such subjects, without having his own mind disciplined and cultivated-without finding it assimilated to that of his teacher? And this effect may, from the nature of the case, be seen, in some degree at least, in those who have received no distinctively religious impressions from those discourses, as well as in those who are enabled to exhibit the cultivation received in its proper connexion with piety.

So important do we deem this view of the real objects contemplated in requiring complete education in the ministry, that we must go further in our reasoning, and inquire if our position is not supported by facts that may come under the observation of every reader. We can point out or recollect- and so, we think, every careful observer can-apposite instances, that illustrate our doctrine by their contrast with each other. On the one hand, we have seen a congregation gradually undergoing a