them. To receive them is but to believe that the offer is sincerely made. If an earthly benefactor offers a person certain valuable gifts, and that person believes in his sincerity he will take them. There is no mysterious meaning in accepting the blessings of the Gospel, or, as we sometimes say, laying hold of them; to believe them sincerely offered is a holy act of faith; this is to believe them ours. This is believing all God has said, and what he has required us to believe. It is objected that God cannot sincerely offer the gifts, for man's will is impotent; he has not power to lay hold of them and appropriate them. Man's will is impotent, but the only sense in which he has not power to lay hold of them and appropriate them, is this, he doubts God's sincerity; he makes him a liar, and will not believe that the blessings are really and sincerely offered. To believe that the blessings are really and sincerely offered is to believe them ours.

But it is objected that it is very easy to believe the proposition which has just been stated, to accept justification on account of the merits of Christ. This is making faith to be an act which is quite level to all capacities. The impenitent find no difficulty in believing that God is willing to pardon their sins; they would think it very unreasonable, nay, very unjust, should he do otherwise. Yes, the impenitent seem willing to believe this. But till they are enlightened by the Holy Spirit, they invariably look for salvation. from God's justice, they always rest their hopes on the lightness of their guilt, or the value of their doings, never as the Gospel requires, on the merits of Christ. They always receive salvation as a debt, never as a gift; that is, they never receive it as it is offered. No mere reasoning can ever convince them that they even need the gift contained in the Gospel offer; no reasoning can convince them that they are under the sentence of the law, and so far from ever accepting the remission of its penalty, their reason revolts at the idea that they even need it. No reasoning can ever convince them that all hopes of being justified in any degree by their own merits are forever cut off; consequently, they can never pretend to make the merits of Christ the ground of their faith. They have no conception of the insufficiency of their own merits, and their need of the blessings proffered to them, they are not prepared to receive them as a gift; that is, they do not believe the offer as it is set forth to them. They appeal to God's justice, but do not

trust his mercy-they rest on their own righteousness, but not on the mercy of the Redeemer. So far from receiving the offer, they do not even understand it. But did they understand it, they would reject the blessings as unnecessary, instead of believing them sincerely offered.

But if sinners have such confidence in the divine veracity as to receive truths on the strength of that alone, in the absence of all evidence, still the truth which the Gospel requires them to receive for their justification, is of all others, the most improbable to carnal reason, when it rightly apprehends it, and it is the very highest exercise of holy confidence in the divine testimony to receive it. The offer is addressed to those who are under the sentence of the law, and who are sensible that they need justification by something besides their own righteousness. Now, it is deception or mockery to labor to make sinners accept of justification till our preaching have taught them their condemnation. Let but the law affect the sinner, and reach his conscience, he then believes, he feels that he is under its penalty; he feels that the penalty expresses but his own deserts; he dreads God's anger, sees that no doings of his can ever avert it, that it is infinite and endless; he cannot imagine how it can be removed; he knows that he merits the eternal torments of hell, and that he who merits these can never merit any thing else; that his own works, even were they spiritual and sinless, would be perfectly valueless, of no avail to remove the curse of the law. There is in an awakened conscience an instinctive dread of God and punishment; in fact, the penalty of the law, as well as the precept, is obscurely written there. Now, come and tell the man who has hell within him in the forebodings of an awakened conscience, that God is willing, on account of the merits of Christ, to have compassion upon him-tell the man who feels that God's wrath is deserved and called for by his sins, and just what they demand-tell him that he is willing to lay it aside, and receive him as a son-tell the man who feels that he has deserved the eternal torments of hell, that for Christ's sake, and without any works of the sinner, God is willing to deliver him from them-tell him that he is willing to exalt him to the endless blessedness of heaven, without any merits of his, but for the sake of the Redeemer's merits, and you tell the man the most improbable truth that was ever announced to human reason, a truth which mere

human nature never did, and never will receive. To the awakened sinner who knows the malignity and aggravation of his sins, it seems absolutely impossible that they should be forgiven; and it is the highest act of confidence. to receive God's testimony that Christ's blood has sufficient efficacy to wash them away. To the person who feels that he has deserved hell, it seems impossible than any righteousness should deserve that he should be released and exalted to the endless joys and felicities of heaven. He, who by divine grace has believed this, can never sufficiently express his apprehensions of the preciousness of the blood of Christ.

Faith generally follows after repentance, but it may precede it; none believe that repentance is necessary to give any title to spiritual blessings; few suppose it necessary to give a warrant to receive that promise by which justification is bestowed. The offer itself contains all the warrant that is necessary or conceivable.

The sinner alone who, through his convictions of sin, has forever renounced all dependence on his own righteousness, has any suspicion that he needs the righteousness of Christ; all others are so far from being prepared to receive the offered blessings, that they will not believe that they need them, and no reasoning can satisfy them on this subject. The offer, so far from being believed, is never even correctly understood.

The believer has learned that eternal misery is all that he can ever expect from his own merits, that this expresses God's anger towards him. Yet so great is his confidence in the merits of the Redeemer, that he can look upon an angry God as a reconciled Father; he believes that through Christ, so great is God's love towards him, that the eternal blessedness in reserve for him, alone expresses the depth and duration of that love.

Through the merits of Christ, God is ready to be reconciled to all-his arms of mercy are extended to receive all; and every thing demanded of them is to have such confidence in the reconciling efficacy of the atonement, as to cast themselves into the arms of Divine Mercy and plead the merits of the Redeemer for the bestowal of every blessing.

The sinner cannot perish because God is insincere in his offers, but purely because he distrusts that sincerity-not from any lack of divine mercy, but from his distrust or con

tempt of that mercy-not because no offers are made, but because offers of infinite blessings are rejected.

It is to be regretted, that in the instructions of the pulpit, we see all attention absorbed by disquisitions on obligation, ability, duty, benevolenteffort, and so little said of the Redeemer's righteousness, without which all the rest is vain, and all exhibitions of obligation powerless. We seldom ever see any systematic effort to exhibit the law as a means of destroying the sinner's hopes from his own righteousness, yet without this, all the offers of mercy are made to the deafthey serve only to mislead and to ruin.

ART. VIII.-REVIEW OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF
WHITEFIELD.

By Rev. RICHARD W. DICKINSON, New-York.

The Life and Times of the Rev. George Whitefield, M. D. By Robert Philip, author of the experimental Guides, etc. New-York: Appleton & Co. 1838.

AMONG recent discoveries for facilitating the mental and moral improvement of society, the new mode of manufacturing books is by no means the least deserving notice. Once, it was deemed not advisable to publish unless it were in our power to contribute something new or valuable to the fund of learning and knowledge; now, whoever understands the process by which any portion of this fund may be converted into small coin for popular use, is seldom backward to avail himself of the secret; and. too often does it happen that he secures from the unlettered that meed which is due only to those whose thoughts he has reproduced, or whose works he has either abridged, or presented to the public under a new name and with a modern dress. It may be remarked, also, that in former times an author seldom ventured to expect immediate fame. Great as might have been his powers, he was diffident of himself; nor dared to approve his own productions until he had received the approbation of others. Important as he might have regarded his own principles and opinions, he was distrustful of their favorable reception. Writing as he in

dependently thought, and most solemnly felt, he sent forth his mental progeny to speak for themselves, and to make their unaided way through the crowd of prejudice, of ignorance, or of error. But it would seem, as if our modern author need not be in the least apprehensive of the sale of his productions, provided only he have adroitness enough to avail himself of the expedients for forestalling public opinion, or sagacity enough to watch the tide of times! He has nothing to do, we had almost said, but to consult the fashionable taste for effeminate literature, to fall in with the current of popular feeling, or with the prejudices of his party; to effect an agreement with some well known publisher, and to secure either by the presentation of a copy of a work, or through the intervention of an interested friend, the favorable notice of the daily prints, and forthwith he is an author of reputation!

Uniting so many advantages, it is not surprising, that many should adopt the modern mode of becoming, at once, authors, and authors of distinction! How much easier is it, to compile than to originate-to deal in common places, than to invent; for one who has not been liberally endowed by nature, or thoroughly disciplined in mind by study, to construct a book out of another's head than his own-to puff one's self into notice, than to earn a solid reputation!

To subserve the cause of truth is the ostensible design of some publications; and if this be the real motive, we honor it; nor do we doubt that reproductive minds may in relation to the community at large, be as useful as minds of an original order; but it requires little observation to perceive that the interests of booksellers too often secure circulation to books which owe their birth not to the throes of intellect, but to the vanity of becoming authors.

"An author! 'tis a venerable name;

How few deserve it, yet how many claim!"

Robert Philip is no unfair specimen of a modern bookmaker; and we cannot but think that he owes his reputation in this country more to the kindness of his American publisher, than to the intellectual merits of his writings. How could we refrain from impatiently anticipating the publication of his last work when it was, for so many months previous, advertised, and strongly recommended? But, after all, what valuable item has he added to our inVOL. V.

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