lines, which, in the finest climax imaginable, describe the magnificence and grace of this astonishing transaction: Survey the wondrous cure, And at each step let higher wonder rise. My species up in arms! Not one exempt! Night Thoughts, No. iv. DIALOGUE V. ASPASIO having some letters of importance to answer, as soon as the cloth was taken away, retired from table. His epistolary engagements being dispatched, he inquired for Theron. The servants informed him that their master had walked into the garden. A very little search found him seated on an airy mount, and sheltered by an elegant arbour. Strong and substantial plants of laburnum formed the shell, while the slender and flexile shoots of syringa filled up the interstices. Was it to compliment, as well as to accommodate their worthy guests, that they interwove the luxuriant foliage? Was it to represent those tender but close attachments, which had united their affections, and blended their interests? I will not too positively ascribe such a design to the disposition of the branches. They composed, however, by their twining embraces, no inexpressive emblem of the endearments and the advantages of friendship. They composed a canopy of the freshest verdure, and of the thickest texture; so thick, that it entirely excluded the sultry ray, and shed both a cool refreshment, and an amusive gloom; while every unsheltered tract glared with light, or fainted with heat. You enter by an easy ascent of steps, lined with turf, and fenced with a balustrade of sloping bay trees. The roof was a fine concave, peculiarly elevated and stately. Not embossed with sculpture, not mantled over with fret-work, not incrusted with splendid fresco; but far more delicately adorned with the syringa's silver tufts, and the laburnum's flowering gold, whose large and lovely clusters, gracefully pendent from the leafy dome, disclosing their sweets to the delighted bee, and gently waving to the balmy breath of spring, gave the utmost enrichment to the charming bower. Facing the entrance lay a spacious grassy walk, terminated by an octangular basin with a curious jet-d'eau playing in the centre. The waters, spinning from the lower orifices, were attenuated into innumerable little threads, which dispersed themselves in an horizontal direction, and returned to the reservoir in a drizzling shower. Those which issued from the higher tubes and larger apertures, either sprung perpendicularly, or spouted obliquely, and formed as they fell several lofty arches of liquid crystal, all glittering to the ye and cooling to the air. Parallel to the walk ran a parterre, planted with an assemblage of flowers, which advanced one above another in regular gradations of height, of dignity, and of beauty. First, a row of daisies, gay as the smile of youth, and fair as the virgin snows. Next, a range of crocuses, like a long stripe of yellow satin, quilted with threads, or diversified with sprigs of green. A superior order of ranunculuses, each resembling the cap of an earl's coronet, replenished the third story with full blown tufts of glossy scarlet. Beyond this, a more elevated line of tulips raised their flourished heads, and opened their enamelled cups; not bedecked with a single tint only, but glowing with an intermingled variety of almost every radiant hue. Above all arose that noble ornament of a royal escutcheon, the fleur-de-luce, bright with ethereal blue, and grand with imperial purple; which formed, by its graceful projections, a cornice or a capital of more than Corinthian richness, and imparted the most consummate beauty to the blooming colonnade. The whole, viewed from the arbour, looked like a rainbow painted upon the ground, and wanted nothing to rival that resplendent arch, only the boldness of its sweep, and the advantage of its ornamental curve. To this agreeable recess Theron had withdrawn himself. Here he sat musing and thoughtful, with his eye fixed upon a picture representing some magnificent ruins. Wholly intent upon this speculation, he never perceived the approach of Aspasio till he had reached the summit of the mount, and was ready to take a seat by his side. Asp. Lost, Theron ! quite lost in thought! and unaffected with all these amiable objects! insensible amidst this profusion of beauties, which, from every quarter, make their court to your senses! Methinks, the snarling cynic in his tub could hardly put on a greater severity of aspect than my polite philosopher in his blooming Eden. Ther. Ah! my dear friend, these flowery toys, which embellish the garden, are familiar to my eye, and therefore cheap in my esteem. I behold them frequently, and for that reason feel but little of the pleasing surprise which they may possibly awaken in a stranger. Something like this we all experience with regard to events infinitely more worthy our admiring notice. Else, why are we not struck with a mixture of amazement, veneration, and delight, at the grand machinery and magnificent productions of nature? That the hand of the Almighty should wheel round the vast terrestrial globe, with such prodigious rapidity and exact punctuality, on purpose to produce the regular vicissitudes of day and night, on purpose to bring on the orderly succession of seed-time and harvest! We wonder when we read of the Israelites sojourning forty years in the desert, marching backward and forward over its burning sands, and find neither their clothes waxing old, Deut. viii. 4, by so long a use, nor their feet swelling with such painful journeys, Neh. ix. 21: yet we are neither impressed with wonder, nor affected with gratitude, when we enjoy the benefits of the air, which clothes the earth, as it were, with a garment; which has neither contracted *Here is, it must be confessed, some little deviation from the general laws of the season; some anachronism in the annals of the parterre. The flowers united in this representation do not, according to the usual process of nature, make their appearance together. However, as, by the economy of a skilful gardener, they may be thus associated, I hope the possibility of the thing will screen my flowery productions from the blasts of censure. any noxious taint through the extensive revolution of almost six thousand years, nor suffered any diminution of its natural force, though exercised in a series of unremitted activity ever since the elementary operations began. This draught in my hand shows us the instability of the grandest, most laboured monuments of human art. They are soon swept away among the other feeble attempts of mortality; or remain only, as you see here, in shattered ruins, memorials of the vain and powerless ambition of the builders. How strange then, that a structure, incomparably more tender and delicate, should be preserved to old age and hoary hairs! That the bodily machine, which is so exquisite in its frame, so complicated in its parts, and performs so many thousands of motions every moment, should continue unimpaired, yet act without intermission, so many days and weeks, and months and years! How strange all this; yet, because common, how seldom does it excite our praise, or so much as engage our notice ! Asp. Your remarks are as just, as the neglect of them is customary.— Unaccountable supineness! Though "God doth great things," worthy of all observation, "yea, and wonders without number," we yawn with indolence, instead of being animated with devotion, or transported with delight. "Lo! he goeth before us," in evident manifestations of wisdom and power, "yet we see him not; he passeth on also," and scatters unnumbered blessings from his providential hand, "but we perceive him not," Job ix. 10, 11. This, though greatly culpable, is to be reckoned among the smallest instances of our ungrateful insensibility. Are we not inattentive even to the work of redemption? That work, which, according to the emphatical declaration of Scripture, "exceeds in glory," 2 Cor. iii. 9; is by far the greatest, the most marvellous of all sublunary, perhaps of all divine transactions. Are we not shamefully unaffected, even with the appearance of God in human flesh? Though the King of kings vouchsafes to exchange his throne for the humiliation of a servant, and the death of a malefactor; though he is pleased, by the imputation of his active, as well as passive obedience, to become "the Lord our righteousness; " yet Ther. You are taking an effectual way, Aspasio, to rouse me from my reverie, and make me indeed like the snarling philosopher. "Imputed righteousness is a scheme grossly frivolous and absurd, utterly insufficient to answer the end proposed; and, one would think, could never be depended on, where there is the least degree of understanding and capacity for reasoning *." Asp. Who is warm now, Theron? May I not remind my friend, that the resentful is no more fitted to work conviction than the rapturous? Perhaps you have not duly considered this subject, nor seen it in the proper point of view. I have sometimes beheld a ship of war several leagues off at sea. It seemed to be a dim cloudy something, hovering on the skirts of the horizon, contemptibly mean, and not worthy of a moment's regard. But, as the floating citadel approached, the masts arose; the sails swelled The reader will probably be disgusted at this heat of temper, this asperity of diction, and both so abruptly introduced. I have no apology to make for my Theron. The reader has reason to be disgusted, has reason to be chagrined. Only let me desire him to remember, that this is the very spirit, nay, these are the very words, of a celebrated opposer of our doctrine; not added when he has fully proved the absurdity of the scheme, but assumed even upon the entrance to his discourse. out; its stately form and curious proportions struck the sight. It was no longer a shapeless mass, or a blot in the prospect, but the master-piece of human contrivance, and the noblest spectacle in the world of art. The eye is never weary of viewing its structure, nor the mind in contemplating its uses. Who knows, Theron, but this sacred scheme likewise, which you now look upon as a confused heap of errors, may very much improve when more closely examined; may at length appear a wise and benign plan, admirably fitted to the condition of our fallen nature, and perfectly worthy of all acceptation? Ther. I know not what may happen, Aspasio; but there seems to be very little probability of such a change. For, though my last opposition was a mock-fight, in my present objections I am very sincere, and to this doctrine I am a determined enemy. The notion of a substituted and vicarious righteousness, is absurd even to common sense, and to the most natural and easy reflections of men. Asp. It may not, my dear friend, agree with our natural apprehensions, nor fall in with the method which we might have devised for the salvation of mankind. But this is the voice of Scripture, and a maxim never to be forgotten: "God's thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor his ways as our ways," Isa. lv. 8. "His righteousness is like the strong mountains, and his judgments are like the great deep," Psal. xxxvi. 6; the former immoveable, the latter unsearchable. Ther. The mention of mountains puts me in mind of what I was reading yesterday; the keen irony with which Abimelech's principal officer chastised the blustering Gaal: "Thou scest the shadow of the mountains, as if they were men," Judges ix. 36. He, it is sarcastically intimated, was afraid, and my Aspasio seems to be fond, of shadows. Asp. Happy for your Aspasio, that irony is no argument. If a jury was impannelled to try me and my doctrine, I should certainly except against Irony. Generally speaking, he is neither a good man, nor a true : and, if I remember right, you yourself consented to set him aside in this debate. I shall therefore adapt my reply rather to what is solid than what is smart. "This notion," you say, "is absurd even to common sense." A saying, on which I must beg leave to put a query. It was, I own, absolutely beyond the power of common sense, unassisted by divine revelation, to discover this truth. I will grant, farther, that this blessing infinitely transcends whatever common sense has observed in all her converse with finite things. But if I have any the least acquaintance with common sense, I am very sure she will not, she cannot pronounce it an absurdity. To this judge I refer the cause. And to open the cause a little, let me just observe, that God imputed our sins to his Son. How else could the immaculate Jesus be punished as the most inexcusable transgressor? "Awake, O sword, against the Man that is my Fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts," Zech. xiii. 7. Is not this the voice of a judge pronouncing the sentence, and authorizing the execution? Or rather, does it not describe the action of justice, turning the sword from us, and sheathing it in Christ? who, if he was our substitute with regard to penal suffering, why may he not stand in the same relation with regard to justifying obedience? There is the same reason for the one as for the other; every argument in favour of the former, is equally conclusive in behalf of the latter. Ther. I very freely grant, that Christ Jesus was punished in our stead ; that his death is the expiation of our sin, and the cause of our security from penal suffering. But this Asp. Will undeniably prove, that sin was imputed to him; otherwise he could not truly suffer in our stead, nor be justly punished at all. "And imputation is as reasonable and justifiable in one case as in the other, for they both stand upon one and the same foot; and, for that reason, he who throws down one, throws down both." I should not have interrupted my Theron, only to introduce this answer from an eminent divine, who adds what should be very seriously considered: "And therefore, whoever rejects the doctrine of the imputation of our Saviour's righteousness to man, does, by so doing, reject the imputation of man's sin to our Saviour, and all the consequences of it. Or, in other words, he who rejects the doctrine of the imputation, docs, by so doing, reject the doctrine of the expiation likewise*." Ther. I know nothing of this divine; and, eminent as he is, can hardly take his ipse dixit for a decision. Asp. I was in hopes you would pay the greater regard to his opinion, because he is not in the number of the whimsical fanatics. Give me leave to observe farther, that the imputation of Christ's righteousness bears an evident analogy to another great truth of Christianity. We did not personally commit Adam's sin, yet are we chargeable with guilt and liable to condemnation on that Ther. How! we chargeable with guilt and liable to condemnation on account of Adam's transgression! This position I must deny, I had almost said, I must abhor. None other could, in the eye of justice and equity, be blamable for any offence of our first parents, but they only. "In Asp. So says Theron; but what says St. Paul? This may be the voice of natural reason, but what is the language of divine revelation? whom," that is, in Adam, "all have sinned." Ther. The words, if I remember right, are, "For that all have sinned." Asp. In the margin they are translated as I have repcated them. For this interpretation I might contend, as not in the least incompatible with the original phrase t, and as the most precisely suitable to the sacred argument. But I wave this advantage. Let the words run into your mould, and the translation take your form. They are equally decisive of the point in debate. They assign the "reason why death came upon all men," infants themselves not excepted: "For that," or inasmuch as, “all have sinned." How? Not in their own person, this was utterly impossible But in that first grand transgression of their federal head, which, as it could not be actually committed by them, must, according to the tenor of the apostle's arguing, be imputed to them. Ther. Pray, what do you mean by that stiff, and to me unintelligible phrase, federal head? Staynoe upon Salvation by Jesus Christ alone," vol. i. p. 334. † Εφ ̓ ᾧ παντες ημαρτον, Rom. v. 12. |