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the study of my life. My first lesson was the catechism, and my earliest delight was in reading religious books, conversing with religious people, and thinking of God and heaven. I was not yet thirteen when I was affected as you have been, - had deep and pungent conviction for sin, heard, as I fancied, the Son of God declare my sins forgiven, and felt all the ecstatic joy you now feel.'

"And yet have become an unbeliever!'

"""T is true. But I have not labored to make others unbelievers. Unbelief has few attractions. It adds no glory to the universe, no warmth to the heart, no freshness to life. It is a sad creed; the wise endure it, but none love it.""

pp. 30, 31.

While in this state, the Rev. Mr. Smith, a young minister, who had just come into the neighborhood, called upon him. Mr. Smith announces himself as having come "with a message from God." This announcement leads directly ot he discussion of a Revelation. The conversation turns first upon the historical authority for the genuineness and divine origin of the books composing the Bible. They then come to a discussion of miracles, as a proof of a message from God. Elwood is represented as having decidedly the best of the argument.

"I have observed that you religious people, in defending miracles, assume to be in possession of all the knowledge of God communicated by the supernatural revelation miracles are brought forward to authenticate. You assume the truth of the revelation, and by that verify your miracles; and then adduce your miracles to authenticate the revelation. But I need not say to you that before you have authenticated your revelation you have no right to use it; and before you can authenticate it, on your own showing, you must verify your miracles, - a thing you cannot do without that knowledge of God, which you say is to be obtained from the revelation only." pp. 22, 23.

It must be borne in mind that Mr. Brownson is here stating the argument as it appears to the infidel. We shall see byand-by what are his real views of miracles.

After this conversation with Mr. Smith, Elwood falls in with a Mr. Wilson, who is also a minister, and with whom he discusses the argument from nature in favor of the existence of God. This argument is no more satisfactory to Elwood than that from miracles in favor of a Revelation.

"This conversation merely shows the insufficiency of the common argument from nature, an argument much insisted on

by those who seek arguments for others, not for themselves; but which is quite too easily set aside. Perhaps no man has stated this argument better than Paley, in his Natural Theology, and yet it was that work which first raised my doubts of the existence of God. If Paley had really felt the need of convincing himself of the being of a God, he never could have written that book. No man is ever converted to Theism by the argument from nature. And the reason why that argument is relied on is because it is the most easily adduced, and those who use it, feeling no need of any argument for themselves, think it ought to silence the atheist.". p. 61.

Whatever we may think of Elwood's remarks and objections, we cannot deny the fact that they seem to the unbelievers to have all the force and importance that is here ascribed to them. If we can show the doubters that their view of these arguments and their objections to them are wrong, it is very well. But it is of but little use, so far as they are concerned, to say so, unless we can make it appear to their minds that it is so. We e can hardly expect to gain anything by merely denying the force of the infidel's objections. This is often done with a manner and tone, if not even with words, that reproach them with obstinacy and perversity. This is not only unjust and uncharitable, but it moreover usually serves to confirm them in their infidelity. We must win people by our respect and love before what we say will have much effect upon them. If we can allow to the infidel all the importance that he attaches to his objections, and yet find grounds of faith against which he will feel no such objections, we may hope to succeed. This is what Mr. Brownson attempts to do.

In consequence of a revival in the place, Elizabeth had been converted, and felt bound to sacrifice this" dearest idol of her heart" upon the altar of her God. After this sacrifice, Elwood says:

"One tie alone was left me, one alone bound me to my race, and to virtue. My mother, bowed with years and afflictions, still lived, though in a distant part of the country. A letter from a distant relative with whom she resided informed me, that she was very ill, and demanded my presence, as she could not survive many days. I need not say this letter afflicted me. I had not seen my mother for several years; not because I wanted filial affection, but I had rarely been able to do as I would. Poverty is a stern master, and when combined with talent and ambition,

often compels us to seem wanting in most of the better and more amiable affections of our nature. I had always loved and reverenced my mother; but her image rose before me now as it never had before. It looked mournfully upon me, and in the eloquence of mute sorrow, seemed to upbraid me with neglect, and to tell me that I had failed to prove myself a good son.

His mother died and left him alone.

pp. 88, 89.

"I lingered several weeks around the grave of my mother, and in the neighborhood where she had lived. It was the place where I had passed my own childhood and youth. It was the scene of those early associations, which become the dearer to us as we leave them the farther behind. I stood where I had sported in the freedom of early childhood; but I stood alone, for no one was there, with whom I could speak of its frolics. One feels singularly desolate when he sees only strange faces, and hears only strange voices in what was the home of his early life. "I returned to the village where I resided when I first introduced myself to my readers. But what was that spot to me now? Nature had done much for it, but nature herself is very much what we make her. There must be beauty in our souls, or we shall see no loveliness in her face; and beauty had died out of my soul. She who might have recalled it to life, and thrown its hues over all the world was but of that I will

not speak.

"It was now that I really needed the hope of immortality. The world was to me one vast desert, and life was without end or aim. The hope of immortality is not needed to enable us to bear grief, to meet great calamities. These can be, as they have been, met by the atheist with a serene brow and a tranquil pulse. We need not the hope of immortality in order to meet death with composure. The manner in which we meet death depends altogether more on the state of our nerves than the nature of our hopes. But we want it when earth has lost its gloss of novelty, when our hopes have been blasted, our affections withered, and the shortness of life and the vanity of all human pursuits have come home to us, and made us exclaim, 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity;' we want, then, the hope of immortality to give to life an end, an aim.

"We all of us at times feel this want. The infidel feels it early in life. He learns all too soon, what to him is a withering fact, that man does not complete his destiny on earth. Man never completes anything here. What, then, shall he do, if there be no hereafter? With what courage can I betake myself to my task? I may begin, - but the grave lies between me

and the completion. Death will come to interrupt my work, and compel me to leave it unfinished. This is more terrible to me than the thought of ceasing to be. I could almost, think I could,

at least, I

consent to be no more, after I had finished my work, achieved my destiny; but to die before my work is completed, while that destiny is but begun, this is the death which comes to me, indeed, as a 'King of Terrors.'

"The hope of another life to be the complement of this, steps in to save us from this death, to give us the courage and the hope to begin. The rough sketch shall hereafter become the finished picture, the artist shall give it the last touch at his ease; the science we had just begun shall be completed, and the incipient destiny shall be achieved. Fear not to begin, thou hast eternity before thee in which to end.

"I wanted, at the time of which I speak, this hope. I had no future. I was shut up in this narrow life as in a cage. All for whom I could have lived, labored, and died, were gone, or worse than gone. I had no end, no aim. My affections were driven back to stagnate and become putrid in my own breast. I had no one to care for. The world was to me as if it were not; and yet a strange restlessness came over me. I could be still nowhere. I roved listlessly from object to object, my body was carried from place to place, I know not why, and asked not myself wherefore. And yet, change of object, change of scene, wrought no change within me. I existed, but did not live. He who has no future, has no life." pp. 91, 92, 93.

Elwood's attention was then called to the wrongs and abuses in society, and he became a reformer. This gave him a subject to occupy his thoughts, and an aim in life. He was for a while more happy than before. But he soon became exhausted, and his health failed. He then became acquainted with Mr. Howard. Mr. Howard was a good, consistent, and intelligent Christian, and by his kindness and charity did for Elwood what it would have been nearly, if not quite impossible to have done by argument. Mr. Howard had that charity that "believeth all things," "hopeth all things," and "worketh no ill to its neighbor." Elwood was surprised to find these virtues in one who professed to be a Christian. Mr. Howard took him home to his own house, where he treated him with great kindness, and gave him an opportunity to recover his health and spirits. Mr. Howard sympathized with Elwood in many of his views of the wrongs and abuses in society. He treated him with respect, and gave him credit for having much more that was good in him than Elwood had ever supposed that he possessed. While VOL. XXVIII. 3D s. VOL. X. NQ. II.

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staying with Mr. Howard, Mr. Elwood met with a Rev. Mr. Morton, who had himself been an unbeliever.

From the time that Elwood met with Mr. Howard, there is little or no incident in the story. It becomes a discussion of the nature and grounds of Christianity. Mr. Howard recognised the use of the philosophic element in religion, and encouraged Elwood to use it. He thus prepared him to receive a faith in the supernatural. The argument, by which Elwood was converted, together with its terminology, are from a philosophy, with which many of our readers have but little, if any acquaintance. Any attempt, therefore, to give, within the limits here allowed us, an adequate account of an argument, that is but too briefly stated in the book itself, would be useless.

One more quotation will exhibit Mr. Brownson's view of miracles.

"What say you of the marvellous stories, called miracles, with which the Bible is filled? '

"The first question with regard to these miracles is, did they actually take place? I can assign no reasons a priori why they should not have taken place. Nature is but God's will, and he is not bound by what we term its laws; for its laws are himself. Therefore, there was nothing to hinder him from performing them, if he chose. Also the general canons of historical criticism, which I adopt in all other cases, seem to require me to admit them. I cannot persuade myself that the universal belief in miracles is wholly an error. I could not so believe without depriving myself of all ground of certainty. Then the miracles of the New Testament are so interwoven with the texture of the narrative, and make up so essential a part of it, that I cannot deny them, without casting suspicion on the whole narrative itself. And I cannot reject the narrative itself, without departing from the principles of historical evidence, which I find myself compelled to admit everywhere else.

"The second question in regard to the miracles is, are they genuine miracles? That is, were they actually performed by the power of God, or were they mere tricks of jugglery? This question is not to be answered in the gross, but in detail. Each individual miracle is to be taken on its own bottom, and to be judged by itself. This we are able to do, because, as I have shown, we have in us an element of the supernatural. Therefore, there is in us a power of detecting God intuitively. If we detect the presence of God in the miracle, we are to term it an actual miracle. This I think I can do, at least, in some of the alleged miracles. I therefore contend for the genuineness of at least a portion of the miracles recorded in the Bible.'