rent; as though a spiritual relation, acknowledged or violated, was the consequence of some physical act or condition. A forgetfulness of this always leads the mind into difficulty, and forces it to endless discussion, which yields nothing satisfactory. It brings up such questions as the following: "How can I repent before I believe, and how can I believe while impenitent? How can I pray before I have the aid of the Holy Spirit, and how can I have that aid before I pray for it? How can I be converted before I have done any thing towards my conversion, and how can I do any thing towards it, while I am unconverted and of course sinful?" Such questions can never be answered; "because they depend on the application of our notions of time to spiritual ideas. The difficulty would be more glaring, but exactly of the same kind, if the inquirer should ask for the length, or the breadth, or the weight of repentance. In answer to such questions you might say, figuratively, it must be long and broad enough to cover all your sins, and heavy enough to turn the scale against them; and possibly, such language might suggest useful thoughts to some hearer; but if taken as an exact and adequate expression of the spiritual idea, it must of necessity introduce confusion."*

It will be said, however, that many persons demand that the causes, and grounds, and reasons of the accusations and requisitions of the Bible should be stated to them, and will not be satisfied with the mere enunciation of spiritual truth. Very true. But where do they demand that the cause shall be pleaded? At the bar of their intellect; and they demand too that it shall be justified in the view of the intellect. Now this can never be done, because sin is not an intellectual aberration, nor is repentance an intellectual sorrow; and if spiritual truths cannot be admitted on the ground that they are certified by consciousness to the ending of strife, the case is hopeless. To assume any other ground, is to "darken counsel by words without knowledge." The philosophy of religion does indeed give conscience the ascendency in all her inquiries, and in all her decisions. She does so, because she knows that it is with the moral man, and not with the intellectual man, that she has mainly to do. The decisions of conscience, she takes to be final and imperative, jnst as in another department, the mathematics, philosophy takes the decisions of the intellect to be so.

* Vt. Chron. Aug. 3, 1832.

The manner in which M. Diodati philosophizes on religion, is worthy of more particular notice. He regards regeneration as "a fact, of which the Holy Spirit is the author; it is so asserted in the gospel, and without departing from that fixed position, he examines the fact, as a phenomenon." How the influence of the Holy Spirit is exerted he does not ask; why the fact is necessary, or whether it be, or be not, consistent with our ability, he does not inquire, but so it is.

The state of the fact, as it relates to the will, is presented in a verp happy manner. It is in the will, or by the will, that the "principle of activity," the "primordial element," becomes manifest. This is free and spontaneous, but is not the will itself; it is that without which the will is not attributable to any thing as existence. It is free and spontaneous, but not voluntary; that is, it is not free and spontaneous because it has or may have volition. Spontaneity, but not volition, belongs to the idea of the "principle of activity." But what is spontaneity? I will explain. I wish to think, and I think. But does it not happen sometimes, that I think without having wished to think? Take the thought unawares, without having wished to think, and you will find thought free and spontaneous, but without your volition. This is spontaneity. It is the function of the principle of thought to think; whether you will or not, thought is developed. Will not to think, if you please. It is not possible, the very attempt is a developement of thought. Thus thought is often spontaneous, in distinction from being voluntary.

Love also is spontaneous; but it is not the result of a volition. It is the "primordial element" coalescing in spirit with the loved object before the soul. No man loves by a volition to love; and no man possesses more delightful freedom, than in loving.

Now, in examining regeneration as a phenomenon, the fact of spontaneity, as distinct from volition, has not been so generally marked as it should have been, or the conception never would have entered any man's mind, that we could regenerate (to say nothing of the philological absurdity) ourselves by a volition, or a desperate effort at volition; or that regeneration was, in any sense, the act of one's own will. If it was, it would be will-full, full of the moi, the self, which is the seed-sin in the ground plot of human existence. The work before us does not, however, leave the matter at this point. It shows the province of the will in this phenomenon. The "principle of activity" is not manifest as moral, except in the will, and therefore it is to be

approached by us only in that power. "The education of the will is the perfection of our moral being." But the will itself, or the will as the self, the moi, is perverted and enfeebled. Where then shall be found that image, that prototype, which the "moral instinct," the conscience, demands? "In the will of God, the model and rule of the human will may be found." And seeking it any where else, or by any thing else, is seeking it as the moi dictates, which is only another form of sin; so that the will is directed at once to God, for its education. And what is God? God is Love. As seen in the face of Jesus Christ, God is LOVE. Thus the moi is brought, in the will, directly before the light and the life that is in Christ Jesus, which breaks forth in a whole atmosphere of love. If spontaneity takes place, and the soul coalesces with the love now manifest, it is regenerated into the possession of the love that is like God; and henceforth this becomes to it light, life, and guidance.

This is stating the fact as it occurs. No one, in examining his own religious experience, finds that by an effort at willing, he becomes a new man. But every one has found that he is freely and delightfully drawn to God, as Charnock often illustrates it, like the iron to the magnet, by a sweet, kind, coalescing influence. The will has its duty for which it knows itself to be responsible, and that is, to keep spiritual and eternal things before the mind, especially the revelation of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The conscience, as an abiding testimony for God, pronounces imperatively, that the will ought to do this, that it is held responsible for this. And if done, whose conscience will permit him to doubt of the result? Whose conscience can doubt of the result? Whoever did thus employ his will, and failed to find the law of life opening in his soul, and expanding itself through the inner man? Not one; no, not one!

We shall, however, deceive ourselves, if we suppose that the ministry will promote regeneration, by preaching upon spontaneity. That would be as foreign to the purpose, as to preach upon volition, independent holiness, or free agency. Love must be preached, not spontaneity or volition; love, not a lecture about love as an affection, but by presenting for our contemplation the object to be loved, in the form love has assumed. In a word, by preaching Jesus Christ as the way in which God's love is commended to us. For the soul to keep before itself the eternal sun of love, the will must ever keep Jesus Christ before the mind, as God manifest in the flesh. Herein may spiritual truths VOL. III. No. 10.

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be seen; and herein will their power to draw, to subdue, to elevate the soul, be manifest. It was because this form of manifestation is so essential to a right knowledge of them, that the apostles so continually preached Jesus Christ. In him these truths might be seen, and without him they could not be understood. "In him was life, and the life was the light of men." By suffering itself to be drawn away from this position, to consider regeneration as a volition, or a something the nature of which was comprehensible by examining the operation of our minds, the ministry has lost in spirituality, and the church has been fed, not so much with the "bread of life which came down from heaven," as with the husks, which a heartless intellect has provided. The complaint already heard, with more or less distinctness, from almost all parts of the land, in relation to the thousands lately united to the churches, is, that there is great want of spirituality and doctrinal knowledge. Not knowledge of doctrines, in the shape of propositions and larger catechisms, for that has been felt to be, in some respects, an injury; but a knowledge of the integral elements of the christian life, that in which hope stands, in which faith grows and extends itself, and in which charity is the all pervading element and the fore-tokening evidence of the blessedness that is to come. The causes of these complaints are manifest to an attentive observer, who has been at any pains to inform himself respecting the peculiar shape in which the ministry has presented divine truth, and the very singular speculations that have, to a considerable extent, been indulged, and the still more surprising short-sightedness, which has led so many to count on immediate and astounding effects, as the criterion of truth and usefulness. The remedy for these and many other evils, will be found when "vain speculations" shall be abandoned, and the ministry, like strong-minded and simple-hearted believers, shall give their powers to the illustration and enforcement of "Christ crucified," as the great fact of the gospel, designed by Him, who "knew what was in man," to be the regenerating and conservative principle of our race.

ART. III. SKETCHES OF IDUMEA AND ITS PRESENT

INHABITANTS.

From the Travels of Burckhardt and Legh.

With an Historical Introduction.

By the Editor.

FIRST ARTICLE.

I. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.'

The land of Idumea, or of Edom, which is so often mentioned in the Scriptures as the country of the descendants of Esau, has been until recently so imperfectly known, that even its situation and boundaries have usually been laid down, upon the best maps, a hundred miles or more out of their true position. The region was first visited in modern times by Burckhardt, and afterwards by Mr Legh and his companions; and it is supposed that the remarkable results of their researches, presented in connexion with what is known of the country from ancient sources, cannot but be acceptable to the biblical student, as a contribution for illustrating an interesting and hitherto obscure

1 The works consulted in the preparation of this Introduction, are principally the following:

RELANDI Palaestina, passim. This is still the store-house for every thing which relates to the classical illustration of sacred geography. CELLARII Notitiae Orbis Antiqui, ed. Schwartz, Lips. 1732. Tom. II. p. 577 sq.

EUSEBII Onomasticon, etc. ed. Clericus, Amstel. 1704. fol..

W. A. BACHIENE, Historische und Geographische Beschreibung von Palästina. Aus dem Hollandischen. Cleve u. Leipz. 1766. Theil I. Bd. 2. § 234. p. 48 sq.

GESENIUS, Commentar über Jesaia, zu c. 16: 1. c. 34, 35.

ROSENMUELLER, Handbuch der biblischen Alterthumskunde. Biblische Geographie, Bd. III. p. 65 sq. Leipz. 1828. This is on the whole the most satisfactory account of Idumea, though far from complete.

MANNERT, Geographie der Griechen und Römer. Th. VI. Bd. I. Arabien etc. 2ter Auflage, Leipz. 1831. p. 129 sq. 143.

Other writers occasionally consulted, are referred to in the notes; as also the sources examined, like Josephus, etc.