motives exert no irresistible control over the mind. If they did, no motion could ever be presented to the mind without producing compulsive action, and the same motives would produce the same actions, and all men under the force of an invincible necessity, would act alike. But men, under the influence of the same motives, do not always act, and, when they do, do not always act alike. The doctrine, therefore, that motives are compulsory, is not true.

9. The highest degree of liberty is the power which every man possesses of voluntarily obeying those laws, which God has ordained for the promotion of his happiness and well being. What is lawful, he has a right to do; and what he has a right to do, is lawful; and what he has a right to do, he has power or liberty to do, and is commanded to do. Strictly speaking, he is not at liberty to do wrong. He is only at liberty to do what is right, reasonable, proper and fit to be done. If he does what is wrong, he violates right, tramples upon law, abuses his liberty, and does violence to his own nature, and the nature of things.

ART III.-LABOR.

The Obligations of the World to the Bible. By GARDINER SPRING, D. D., Pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church, in the City of New York. New York: Taylor & Dodd, 1839.

HUMANITY is susceptible to influences, and many have been the impulses upon it, both for weal and for woe. Poets have urged it on with song; kings have driven it forward with their sceptres; priests, with their religious rites. Literature, science, art, have imparted the power that was in them. The implements of war, and the implements of peace, the sword and the plough--have been felt, also. For humanity is a dull, indolent, but very improvable pupil, and the Great Teacher intends to display his exhaustless resour ces for his education and advancement. Man was not created in vain. The nature, character and glory of his Creator, are sufficient guarantee for the ultimate excellence of the mysterious creature. When he shall have reached the splendid goal, toward which he was started by infinite good

ness and wisdom, he will testify, that at no point on the line of existence would it have been perilous or inappropriate to say, "Let the will of the Lord be done!"

Man is advancing. A law in the very source of his being thrusts him onward; and the energies of heaven and earth give him no license for repose. A river is moved on by a silent, viewless, resistless agency; the sun-beams draw up certain particles, in vapory chariots to heaven; the earthy channel absorbs other particles, below; but the river still progresses with perpetual gliding on to its sure, inevitable destiny; such is man. On, on, on; it is the will of God, that he shall proceed, and that will cannot fail of its utter fulfilment. The path is filled with obstacles: but God is almighty. How can a man want for impulse? Can any one measure the resources of the INFINITE?

Among these, we reckon the Bible; an awful, magnificent, amazing agent; to which man, as Dr. Spring has ably set forth, is under numerous and great obligations. What this Book has done for the world, it is impossible for any one fully to sum up; and as to what it will yet accomplish, it is altogether useless and vain to predict. It is truth. That the truth ought to prevail, every conscience bears testimony. Oppose it as we may; fence it out with such fortifications as we can construct: but truth is in the citadel; conscience is already captured; and how can we make successful resistance? We must, and ought to be conquered. Error may deceive us long, and retain a throne usurped to our injury; but in the end, the moral Marathon will witness the overthrow and ruin of the tyrant's power.

Just views of Deity and of Humanity are at the foundation of all individual and social elevation. They are the basis of sound morals. They are the true spirit and vitality of the arts, the sciences, literature, and government. They are the only intellectual generators of human happiness, and the only intellectual guards of human interests. To know God, we must know man; and to know man we must know God; while to know God and man is to possess the real essence or germ of all desirable knowledge. But who can know God and man without the Bible?

It is interesting, to know that it is by this Bible, this earnest word-power, that the Almighty intends to govern mankind. "Non enim erubesco evangelium. Virtus enim Dei est in salutem omni credenti." Ad Romanos, I. 16.

After the apostacy of the antediluvians, after the deluge, and the subsequent spread of idolatry, this great energy of God's government was deposited with Abraham, whose descendants retained it among the hills of Palestine, while the rest of mankind were experimenting upon the efficacy and benefit of physical authority: relying upon armies and police, for the maintenance of social order, and the promotion of human welfare.

Man, being an intelligent creature, ought to approve the word-power plan, and disdain to be put down by mere physics, to the low level of brutes, or the still lower grade of machinery. He has been appointed the lord of the earth; the vicegerent of God; a divine dynasty founded by Jehovah, and holding the awful letters patent, "Crescite et multiplicamini, et replete terram, et subjicite eam, et dominamini piscibus maris, et volatilibus coli, et universis animantibus quæ moventur super terram :" Gen. I. 28. Man should then claim his divinely bestowed prerogatives and possess the wide empire for which he was created. Instead of this, he has become a subject: instead of governing, he is governed, and that by mere physical force.

Is he not competent to his high destiny? To be sure, when considered as a mere corporiety, the birds are fleeter, the beasts are stronger, and the oceans are too deep for him to traverse: nature may well rebel against him; for as a corporeal being, he is unworthy the reins of dominion. But, when his mind comes before our inspection, here, at once, we see his manifest, indisputable superiority: in this is the essence of his royalty: this it is that boldly proclaims him "every inch a king." Now what is bird, or beast, or ocean, or anything, to this wondrous intelligence! More brilliant than the sun; swifter than the light; stronger than the tempest; where is its competitor? What might, or glory, or excellence, in all the vast varieties of nature, can compare at all with this magnificent mind?

Mind, then, is the true greatness, excellence, and glory of man. To obscure his mind is to dim his brilliancy; to subdue his mind is to overcome his strength. What is the real energy of the terrible cannon? The powder with which it is charged. As a cannon without powder, so is man without mind. How becoming, then, that God, who knows what is in man, should connect him with his awful throne by a ligature suitable to his nature! The word-power

penetrates to the mind: it does not pause in the ear, and propose but a corporeal influence: it advances to the interior energy, and touches the mysterious and mighty spring of man's entire being. Surely, there is no plan so suitable as this; and yet, man has not adopted it; does not approve of it; for the great mass is unreasonable, and too indolent to inquire into, and demand the inheritance to which man is born and adapted.

There seems to be a dreaming idea of sovereignty among us; but it amounts to nothing further than suffering a few of our fellow sovereigns to put themselves in the place of God, and us in the places of the birds, beasts, and fishes. For man can find nothing in the magna charta, that authorizes him to reign over man. God is the only sovereign of man; and man is the sovereign of the inferior creation. He, then, who is sovereign over man, has usurped the preroga tive of God; and he who suffers man to reign over him, has descended to the compeerage of brutes and vegetation.

It need not be pleaded, that this arrangement was supralapsarian only, and not designed for sinful, fallen man. For, when Jehovah instituted a visible developement of his efficient word-power, in the Mosaic economy, he made no king; but retained the sovereignty himself, and when any needed the aid of his Word, he was to come and inquire, that he might know, and act accordingly. It was only when the Jews had become too indolent and stupid to appreciate the dignity of their system, and had claimed to have a king, that God suffered them to have an opportunity to prove to themselves and to mankind, the meanness, and the misery of physical sovereignty.

With equal propriety do we reject the assertion, that this notion of man's unlawful sovereignty over his fellow man is countenanced by the Gospel Dispensation. For, the gospel makes each of its subjects responsible directly to God, in preference to all human authority; "Obedire oportet Deo magis quam hominibus;" Acta, v. 29: and it announces the Saints, as the appointed judges, or sovereigns of the world: "An nescitis quoniam sancti de hoc mundo judicabunt?" Ad Corinth, Prim. vi. 2. What is this but redemption, salvation, restoration to our despised dignity and sovereignty? A saint is but a restored man; a sinner converted from the error of his ways; and the gospel accomplishes its

great work by making us saints, that we may return to our sovereignty.

Sunken as we are in sensuality, we are not so fast asleep that we cannot have some drowsy perception of the gulf that yawns between the mental and the physical, the wise and the foolish, the intellectual and the sensual, the good and the bad. The great objection to Christianity, after all, is the fact that so many Christians are not what Christianity requires them to be. A fair investigation will admit, that to cease to do evil and learn to do well, are the gospel's fundamental laws and to this no sect of Christians, no matter how fiercely contending for some point esteemed of great importance, can object. No infidel can object. All must allow, that this is the real excellence of religion, and that such a consummation is devoutly to be wished. And if many Christians lose sight of this great design of the gospel, the fault is their own; and cannot justly be changed to Christianity. But, let this high and holy design be accomplished! What then? God alone will be the sovereign of man. He will need no other. He will have no other. To be a king, and to be a subject, in the present sense of such conditions, will be equal crimes.

The unwillingness of men to think themselves out of the existing embarrassments, renders the progress of the wordpower slow, and scarcely perceptible. The hour hand of the clock cannot be seen to move in the act, but only in the result. So upon this great dial plate, the world, the index which declares the motion of the Sun of Righteousness, announces but the result, and that by a shadow. Still the horologe is intelligible. The shadow does move. The progress is ascertainable.

The

For look, now, at the facts. The great Assyrian Power was generated and in the place of God, but it has passed away. Babylon, Media, Persia, Egypt, Greece and Rome; where are those great energies that seemed to spread so rapidly over the earth, while God's word-power appeared likely to be stifled by each of them? They are gone. word-power, this day, stands upon their moss-grown, corroding sepulchres, conscious of immortality and omnipotence; and extending its influences through a wider empire, than they ever possessed. God is great. The word-power is, at this moment, pushing its beneficent conquests in every quarter of the globe.