the understanding. It lies back of testimony, in speculations touching the nature of testimony; back of argument, in speculations touching the laws of mind. So that Pyrrhonism is generally found to be at the bottom of Infidelity, this and with you cannot

reason.

It is very noticeable, how the tendency of Infidel opinions has constantly been towards Pantheism or Atheism. And this has been the development of the only strength that Infidelity possesses. The argument against Deism is the strongest argument against Christianity, and at the bottom of intelligent doubts as to revealed religion have lain doubts as to the existence of a personal Revealer. Prove the existence of a personal God, and there remains no a priori objection to Christianity worth naming. The regularity of Nature's laws suggests no difficulty, until we begin to suspect that the regularity is brutal and necessary-that the spirit of God not merely sleeps, but was never awake. And this, unquestionably, was the substance of the argument drawn from the uniformity of nature's laws as it lay in the minds of its contrivers. At this hour the most important contest in the religious world is not as to the historical truth of the Gospel, except so far as this establishes a pure Deism, but as to the personality of God. This is a very different question from the existence of a God. Blank atheism is confined to few. The acknowledgment of a sufficient Cause for the production of the effects observed is wrung from every logical mind. But that a Being exists with a personality, such as our only idea of a person ascribes to God, capable of interest in our concerns, or of manifesting himself otherwise than through outward nature or the laws of mind, this is a matter not so satisfactorily established, and one which the usual arguments for Natural Theology do not touch. If it be not absurd to call that an innate idea which some minds do not possess, it would seem to us clear that the being of a personal God was a necessary article of human faith, and that Christianity wisely assumes it; so that he who grounds his objections to Christianity upon the denial of a personal God places himself beyond the reach of conviction or faith, by the singularity of his mental and moral constitution.

We have been led off from the volumes which were the immediate occasion of this article. We did not intend however to make

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them the subject of critical remarks, which would be better suited to a journal of higher pretension than the Miscellany. We wished only to notice their general character and the nature of their contents. As they have been published in an expensive style, and a large edition has not been issued, they may not fall into the hands of many of our readers. We will therefore give the titles of the several lectures, as the shortest way of exhibiting the amount of instruction which may be derived from these pages. The two volumes contain three Courses of Lectures, delivered on successive winters. In the First Course it was Dr. Palfrey's object to present a General Scheme of the Evidences," under these titles:-I. Internal and External Evidences of Christianity. II. Credibility of Miracles. III. Need and Seasonableness of the Christian Revelations. IV. and V. Authenticity and Integrity of the Four Gospels. VI. and VII. Truth of the Evangelical Testimony. VIII. Reception of the Evangelical Testimony. Any one familiar with this class of studies will perceive the propriety in the order of topics as here arranged by the Lecturer. The Second Course embraces a "Survey of the Jewish, Pagan, and Deistical a priori Objections.” IX. Partial Success of the First Preaching of Christianity. X. Grounds of Jewish Unbelief. XI. XII. and XIII. Grounds of Pagan Unbelief. XIV. Renewal of the Controversy in Modern Times. XV. and XVI. Deistical a priori Objections-Skeptical Tendency of certain Philosophical Writings. The Third Course offers a Survey of the Opinions of Several Modern Writers." XVII. Objections of Lord Shaftesbury and Lord Bolingbroke. XVIII. Objections of Anthony Collins. XIX. Objections of Toland, Woolston, Morgan, and Chubb. XX. Objections of Hume and Gibbon. XXI. Infidelity in France in the Eighteenth Century. XXII. Objections of Thomas Paine. XXIII. Infidelity in Germany. XXIV. Recent State of Opinion in Germany and France. Besides these twenty-four Lectures we have a Memoir of John Lowell, jr., whose magnificent bequest laid the foundation of the Lowell Institute, delivered by Hon. Edward Everett, as an Introductory Discourse at the commencement of the Lectures on this foundation; and a Discourse on the Theory and Uses of Natural Religion, read at the University of Cambridge, by Rev. Dr. Palfrey, as the Dudleian Lecture for the 1839.

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year

B*.

SECRET SINS.

A SERMON, BY REV. JONATHAN COLE.

PSALM XC. 8. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.

AND the Psalmist David too, in one of the most sublime effu sions that inspiration ever prompted or that pen of mortal ever wrote, makes it his earnest prayer, "Cleanse thou me from secret faults." And well might we all join in this prayer, my friends, for sad indeed is the spiritual condition of that man who thinketh lightly of secret sin; fearful is his danger, who is anxious only to avoid open transgression, while he knowingly indulgeth in secret sin. Little can he have appreciated the evils that sin works upon the soul, and low must be his estimate of what is required of him now, and of what will be required of him hereafter, whose chief thought is how he may save himself in the world's esteem, regard. less of the thought that the great Judge of all looketh upon the heart and setteth our secret sins in the light of his countenance. Secret sins-they are those transgressions of the Divine law which escape the eye of man, which attract to themselves no no. tice from the world around us. They are the wrong acts, which we commit when there is no human eye to witness our misdeeds. They are the wrong motives, that we allow to operate upon us, when our open acts bear no trace of iniquity upon their front, but wear a goodly seeming, and perhaps win the praise of virtue. They are the wrong desires that we cherish, the unholy passions that we allow to pass unrebuked, the unchristian tempers that we permit to inflict their nettle stings upon those with whom we come in contact in the retirement of home. Then there are the many sins of omission, that leaving undone the things which we ought to have done, in which we are so apt to indulge ourselves, and for which our excuses are always so ready. Such are our secret sins -secret not to ourselves, nor to our God-but simply covered up from the view of our fellow-men, secret to the world.

Is that sin less to be dreaded by us which does not bring upon us the condemnation of the world, only because it is not seen

by the world? Is it less offensive in the sight of God, is it less likely to estrange us from him, to unfit us for the enjoyment of his presence? Is it less corrupting in its effects upon our souls? On the contrary, it is the very description of sin that is most dangerous, and therefore most to be dreaded. To ensure the death of the body, it is not necessary that disease should make its appearance upon the surface of the system; it needs not to produce loathsome deformity, apparent to the most careless observer, ere it can be accounted worthy of notice. Often when the eye is brightest, and the color upon the cheek is deepest, is the work of death going on within. And so is it with the effect of sin. It may work in secret, but it does not the less surely accomplish its work of destruction.

Indeed, my friends, we have reason especially to dread these secret sins, because they are of the very kind against which we are least guarded and protected. From the commission

of those faults which are open to the world's notice, we are more likely to be deterred by our deference to the opinions of our fellowmen, and by the influence which their opinions exert upon our well-being. The voice of friendship, the sterner, but perhaps not less salutary rebukes of those who with no friendly feeling are watching for a brother's halting, are but the sentinels that stand ready to give us warning against the open assaults of the enemy of our souls' peace; but against secret sins we have no such checks. Friends take no alarm at them, foes take no cognizance of them. They carry on the work of moral corruption unnoticed, in silence and in darkness.

And from the fact that our secret sins are unnoticed by others, do they come to be less seriously regarded by ourselves.

In the first place, our attention is less forcibly and far less frequently drawn to them, than it is to our glaring and notorious sins. In our hours of serious reflection we are but too apt to make up our opinions of ourselves from the opinions which others have formed concerning us, rather than from a true estimate of our own characters. Especially when the voice of the world chimes in with the flattering suggestions of self-love, which we are all so ready to cherish, do we lay the unction to our souls, and forget, or at least neglect to inquire into those secret sins which, perhaps

at the very moment we are so well satisfied with ourselves, are alienating us from God and working destruction in our souls. Not experiencing that partial retribution which so often accompanies our open transgressions, we suffer ourselves to think more lightly of our secret faults, and while we make it our aim to correct those faults which expose us to the censure of the world, we give no heed to those that the world knows not of.

And is it not a fearful condition for a moral and accountable being to be placed in, when he is exposed to the inroads of sin, which is left unregarded and unchecked to work its baleful influences?

But that we may not fall into this snare, it becomes us to remember the fact to which I have already incidentally alluded, and which deserves to be more prominently and distinctly brought forward. Our secret sins, as we term them, are not hidden from the eye of God, however they may be concealed from the sight of our fellow-men. That Omnipresent Eye is the witness of every act of ours, however remote from human observation. That Omniscient Mind takes cognizance of every thought and feeling of sin which is in opposition to his holy will and the requirements of his holy laws. The deep recesses of the forest, the lonely heights of the mountain, the dark caverns of the earth, the thick gloom of midnight may be around the sinner at the moment he is committing crime; death may stop the tongue that would bear witness against him, earth may cover up the secret of his iniquity, the ocean wave may roll in calm and in storm over the spot where the evidences of his guilt lie concealed: but neither the depths of the sea, nor the darkness of the night, nor the solitudes of the earth can conceal any thing from the eye of God. Sin is uncovered, hell itself is naked before him. There is no sin secret from God. Man we may deceive, but God we cannot deceive. "He setteth our iniquities before him, our secret sins in the light of his countenance."

And will our secret sins bring no retribution upon us? Is there no condemnation to those who sin not openly? I look in vain for any exemption in favor of secret sins. I find it nowhere revealed to me, that I may indulge in sin with impunity, if I am but careful to conceal my transgressions from the detection of my fellow