other time. It was never on the stretch after visions of truth, that had been hitherto unperceived; nor was it easily taken with the gloss of freshly varnished opinions; nor was it suddenly fired with the temper of restless innovation. But at the same time, it was receptive of every real improvement, and ready to embrace cordially whatever showed itself to be good. Its smooth temper floated above the chafing and bitter sea of theological contentions. Its clear and quiet eye took note, from a high point, of those great social problems, for which so much remains to be done by the discernment of prudent hearts. I can see him, as his smiling forbearance by its very look put fanaticism and bigotry to shame. I can hear him, as in a single short but comprehensive sentence he has summed up the merits of a tedious dispute; or weighed the pregnant word of a true wisdom against the bulky follies of the world. So dispassionate was he, that it seemed to cost him no effort to be impartial or to be kind; and so penetrating, that nothing took him by surprise, and you could scarcely believe that any forms of thought lay wholly beyond the reach of his calculation.

Great is the value of such a man in visionary and quarrelsome and noisy days. The age might seem almost impoverished to a too fond and complaining fancy, now that such a spirit as I have depicted, with all that it might have accomplished were the activity and the date proportioned to the power, has gone out of it. But it has gone, and long since. The tongues of his friends have been prepared for several years to say this, and have been forbidden till now. He that drew so many toward the right by insensible cords, that ruled with a sweet controul by his intellectual and moral gifts,-has lain down with the simplest and obscurest of the children of men. The sod is the same over him, that covers the sottish, whom the highest virtue could not attract, and the abandoned, whom the divinest learning did nothing to reclaim. Who shall glory in the beauty that fades ;-in the strength that breaks;-in the knowledge that vanishes away;—in the capacities of the understanding, that are eclipsed as easily as they shine? Let us glory in nothing, and put our trust in nothing, that is marked with mortality; but build upon the endless soul, and look up to the Infinite God. "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of?"

"The sun knoweth his going down," says the text. He knoweth also his reappearing. We will not forget that the night of the grave is awaiting its day-break. Under our setting life the Gospel has written the inscription, "I shall rise again."

THE NEW CONTROVERSY CONCERNING MIRACLES.*

A SERIES of pamphlets has lately appeared, all of which bear upon a controversy, which, if for no other reason than the number of publications it has called forth, may be considered as the controversy of the day, or the year. Some of the readers of the Miscellany may have seen advertisements and extracts from the successive publications, without the time or the inclination to peruse them all. For such readers we will endeavour to give a brief sketch of the controversy, as far as regards the pamphlets we have enumerated below, without entering at length into the great subjects which they involve.

A new movement had for some time been creating a degree of interest in our little theological world, in which a new mode and use

1. A Discourse on the Latest Form of Infidelity; delivered at the request of the "Association of the Alumni of the Cambridge Theological School," on the 19th of July, 1839. With Notes. By Andrews Norton. Cambridge, John Owen, 1839. pp. 64, 8vo.

2.The Latest Form of Infidelity" Examined. A Letter to Mr. Andrews Norton, occasioned by his "Discourse &c." By an Alumnus of that School. Boston, James Munroe & Co., 1839. pp. 160, 8vo.

3. Remarks on a Pamphlet Entitled "The Latest Form of Infidelity Examined." By Andrews Norton. Cambridge, John Owen, 1839. pp. 72, 8vo. 4. Defence of "The Latest Form of Infidelity" Examined. A Second Letter to Mr. Andrews Norton, occasioned by his Defence of a Discourse &c. By George Ripley. Boston, Munroe & Co., 1840. pp. 85, 8vo.

5. Defence of "The Latest Form of Infidelity" Examined. A Third Letter to Mr. Andrews Norton, occasioned by his Defence &c. By George Ripley. Boston, Munroe & Co., 1840. pp. 154, 8vo.

6. Two Articles from the Princeton Review, concerning the Transcendental Philosophy of the Germans and of Cousin, and its Influence on Opinion in this country. Cambridge, J. Owen, 1840. pp. 100, 8vo.

7. The Church, the Pulpit, and the Gospel. A Discourse delivered at the Ordination of Rev. George E. Ellis, as Pastor of the Harvard Church in Charlestown, March 11, 1840. By Alexander Young, Minister of the Church on Church Green, Boston. Boston, Little & Brown, 1840. pp. 64, 8vo.

8. The Previous Question between Mr. Andrews Norton and his Alumni, moved and handled in a Letter to all those Gentlemen. By Levi Blodgett. Boston, Weeks, Jordan & Co., 1840. pp. 24, 8vo.

9. A Letter to Andrews Norton, On Miracles as the Foundation of Religious Faith. Boston, Weeks, Jordan & Co., 1840. pp. 52, 8vo.

of individual speculation had been brought to bear upon the evidences of Christianity. Mr. Norton had once or twice expressed himself strongly in opposition to the character and tendency of some opinions publicly advanced among us. As far as we ourselves were informed, it was to give an opportunity to this gentleman, who holds so honourable a place in our denomination, to express and maintain his well considered judgement upon the new movement, that he was invited to deliver the first address before a newly formed Association of the graduates of the Cambridge Theological School.

1. The occasion appropriately suggested Mr. Norton's subject. Fathers and brethren devoted to the study and the public exposition of Christianity were gathered after separation, in a spot consecrated in their memories. Reminded of early pursuits and friendships, of disappointed hopes and worldly trials, they cling to a cheerful faith. The value and the interests of their religion are the subjects of their thoughts, and the desire to be faithful to it, to comprehend it and to sustain it amidst the ferment of this revolutionary age, demands that a serious and thoughtful attention be given to its present aspect. The characteristics of the times and some prevalent opinions which are at war with a belief in Christianity are to be considered. By a belief in Christianity, says Mr. Norton, "we mean the belief that Christianity is a revelation by God of the truths of religion; and that the divine authority of him whom God commissioned to speak to us in his name was attested, in the only mode in which it could be, by miraculous displays of his power." An imperfect understanding of Christianity and its ancient and various corruptions have led to the present tendency of the age, which is to reject Christianity. Political com motions over the whole world contribute to this tendency. Established power is upheld by misrepresentations of Christianity; our country sympathises with Europe, and while we are flooded by light and pernicious literature from abroad, we have among us no controlling power of intellect. The old leaven of infidelity is still working under a new form. It is now characterised by the use of holy names deprived of their essential meaning; it assumes the Christian title, while it strikes at the roots of all faith by denying the miracles which attest the divine mission of Jesus Christ. Spinoza was, the first to deny the possibility of miracles, while at the same time he affected religious language and concern. Mr. Norton then discusses the subject of miracles, showing that they are the essential and primary evidence

that a truth has been revealed by God to man, that they are possible, capable of proof, that they are so interwoven with the character and doctrine of Christ as to be inseparable from the Christian records, that they are a firm basis of transmitted evidence, the pillar and ground of a probable faith. The train of thought which he has followed, leads him to conclude his discourse by imploring any one, who professes to be a Christian teacher and yet disbelieves the divine origin and authority of Christianity, to stop short in a course which is ruinous to the faith of others, and disgraceful to himself. Two Notes are subjoined to the Discourse. The first, containing some remarks on the characteristics of the modern German School of Infidelity, is designed to justify the assertion in the Discourse, that infidelity is now disguised under the name of Christianity. De Wette and Schleiermacher are quoted as examples, the influence of whose writings is covertly ruinous to Christian faith. The second Note is an answer to the objection to faith in Christianity as resting on historical facts and critical learning.

2. Under the name of an Alumnus of the Cambridge Theological School, Rev. George Ripley animadverted upon Mr. Norton's Discourse in a pamphlet of 160 pages. He too begins with a reference to the occasion. He considers Mr. Norton's Discourse inappropriate to an occasion which brought together the members of a body among whom prevails a great diversity of thought upon religious subjects, which however has never interrupted its harmony. Mr. Norton was understood to have in view some recent speculations current among us, but he brings the force of his arguments to bear against the doctrine of the impossibility of miracles, of which doctrine, says Mr. Ripley, we have not a single advocate. Mr. Norton is charged with an exclusive spirit inconsistent with his former well known labors, viz. in denying the Christian name to some who claim it, because in his view they fail in the conditions of being entitled to it. This exclusiveness is unjustifiable, however true and important the doctrine which is insisted upon may be, but Mr. Ripley adds, the doctrine may be shown to be almost peculiar to Mr. N.-This doctrine is, that miracles are the only proof of religious truths as revealed by God to man. Mr. R. does not question the Christian miracles, nor their validity as credentials of a Divine messenger; but he disputes the statement that miracles are the ONLY evidence of the Divine origin of Christianity. Here, it seems to us, a misunderstanding commences on the part of

Mr. Ripley. As Mr. Norton delivered his Discourse, and as we now read it, we then conceived, and we now conceive, that his full meaning is, that miracles are primarily or ultimately essential to the proof of the Divine revelation of Christian truths. There may be other arguments to add to or to follow from these, but there must be these; without these all others would be insufficient. A landowner or an extensive manufacturer may for a time leave the country, and commit his business to the care of an agent. That agent may make it probable to us that he is the authorized agent of the absent principal, by scheming and planning as the principal was known to scheme and plan, by an honest and open way of proceeding, by doing many things opportunely, and by doing all things well. But let him undertake to pull down and build up, to issue notes of hand and promise of payment and to transfer deeds in the name of the absent owner, and we believe that Mr. Ripley, though he thinks as little of profit and loss, and has as good an opinion of human nature as any man living, would think it essential that the agent should exhibit the seal and signature of his master. Certainly a court of justice would demand such credentials. A pretended Divine messenger without miracles would be precisely like the agent without credentials. Again, if the pretended Divine messenger offered as miracles some strange phenomena which might all be explained without any thing supernatural being involved, he would resemble an agent who exhibited forged credentials. In this latter case, however well the pretended agent might scheme and plan, he would certainly be in a worse position with his forged credentials than without any. Again, we may suppose ourselves sitting in a room with our back to the entrance, and imagine we hear a footstep and recognise that of a friend; then the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand, may confirm our impression; but we must see him face to face, to be fully and clearly convinced that it is he. This distinction between confirmatory and essential evidence is strong in our minds, and is as we think overlooked by Mr. Ripley, though the foundation of Mr. Norton's argument.

Mr. R. thinks Mr. N. has confounded two distinct propositions,—a belief in the Divine origin of Christianity, and a belief in a certain class of its proofs. Thus, as some persons may believe in the Divine origin of Judaism before they are satisfied concerning the miracles of Moses, so there are some who believe in the Divine mission of Jesus Christ before they are satisfied concerning his miracles. Mr. R. therefore