ARTICLE IV.-DR. TAYLOR ON MORAL GOVERNMENT. Lectures on the Moral Government of God. By NATHANIEL 1859. FEW works in the range of our American Theology come before the public either with higher claims to attention, or with a more assured welcome, than these "Lectures," by the late eminent Professor of Didactic Theology in Yale College, "on the moral government of God." The author was re markable in the earlier years of his professional life, for a boldness of thought, a vividness of imagination, and an earnestness of appeal, which gave to his preaching of the gospel a startling power with all who listened to it, and which made his ministration an era in the life of many a quickened soul. But remarkable as these qualities were, and great as was the usefulness which they promised in his original career as a Christian minister, they were yet subordinate in him to others which pointed to a somewhat different work as his appropriate sphere. They were combined with a rare keenness of intuition, an exactness of statement seldom surpassed in the history of philosophy, a vigor of reasoning which it was difficult to evade, and a comprehensiveness of view which left no important aspect of a subject unnoticed. These qualities early marked him a divinely constituted teacher among men, and pointed him out as a leader in the discussions by which that generation, like every other, has been constrained to adjust and to defend the fundamentals of its religious belief. When, therefore, he was transferred from the regular labors of the pulpit to a professorship of theology, very high expectations of the influence and useful ness of his labors were formed among the friends who had learned to appreciate him. These expectations were not destined to wait long for a signal fulfillment. The thoroughness and depth of his investigations gave to theological instruction in his hands a character of completeness which it had nowhere else attained. He speedily drew around him a body of students, who listened with profoundest interest to his comprehensive and exact instructions. Through the medium of many enthusiastic pupils, as well as through the theological controversies in which he was engaged, his reputation spread widely through the land, till his influence had affected more or less the theology and the thinking of all Christian denominations among us. After some thirty-five years of study and instruction, than which none could be more conscientious or more profound, he rests from his labors; and we are now called to estimate, in these volumes, what is perhaps the chief effort of his genius and his piety. The religious thinking of Dr. Taylor was molded, in a great degree, as must be the case with every independent thinker, by the original and constitutional tendencies of his own mind. His keenness of philosophical discrimination was such as might have made him-as a less degree of it has made many another man-a skeptic; but from every such result as this, God graciously preserved him by the intense earnestness of his moral nature. Probably no one of his contemporaries was distinguished by greater fervor of conviction, by a more profound and cordial acceptance of the Word of God. No one who heard him preach, could question the reality of his faith in Christ. Not only was there in him an evident sincerity of belief, there was moreover an evident command of all the distinctions pertaining to the subject, which vindicated his right to the views that he uttered with such solemn fervor, and commended with such confidence to the acceptance of others. The joint influence of such qualities as these determined his peculiar theological career. Too earnest to be an unbeliever, too much alive to the importance of the infinite realities of the gospel, to barter anything of their glory for the mere pleasure of intellectual freedom, or the mere pride of intellectual distinction, he was yet too much. master of his own mind to sit himself at the feet of any merely human teacher. No venerableness of theological systems could give sanctity, in his eyes, to a logical blunder, or excuse the oversight of a metaphysical distinction which he clearly discerned. At any violation of intellectual integrity or of logical consistency he felt that he did well to be angry; and any professed sacredness of aim did but aggravate the offense. He pursued the delinquent into the sanctuary where he sought a refuge, and smote him even at the horns of the altar. The peculiar character of the work before us seems to have grown out of the fervor and strength of the author's religious convictions, in connection with the analytic power and the logical tendencies of his mind. The force of religious truth, he felt very deeply. There is a solemn earnestness about his discussions, which must strike every reader as very different from the ordinary tone of a mere philosophic critic. His discussions are not prefaced by any lengthened introductions, but plunge at once into the depth of his subject, as though he felt that he could not reach too soon, or by too direct a path, the real facts which he had to set forth. His conclusions are not merely announced as logical results of thought; they are dwelt upon as of the highest moment, and are exhibited as invested with the most commanding interest. Everywhere the truths which he labors to establish are pressed to their moral and practical applications with a force and directness which show that, beyond any philosophic interest which might gather about them, his chief concern with them was, as the principles which are to form the character, and to mold the destiny of the soul. But with all this fervid earnestness, there is a keen analysis, a clear perception of distinctions, and a logical power of tracing things to their results, which make the reader feel that he is in the hands of a master. These deep religious convictions rested upon the harmony which exists between the principles of the gospel and the profoundest sentiments of the mind of man. All men know something of this. All feel that the forms of duty which the gospel enjoins, and the ideal of character which it presents, are sanctioned as right by whatever moral sentiments and impulses are deepest and most trustworthy in us. On this ground there is a general conviction that the Scriptures are truly the Word of God, however men may sometimes be unable logically to defend every doctrine of the Bible, and to maintain the historic verity of all that it contains. On such points as these, often much doubt is cherished, and many a difficulty, more or less serious, is encountered when men would harmonize the Scriptures with science in all those departments in which the two are related. But the great ideas are, like the sun, fixed and luminous; and whoever deeply appreciates these, will feel a faith in the Word of God, which draws its life from the very roots of his being. Such convictions Dr. Taylor seems to have felt beyond almost any intellectual man of his time. Certainly none has given more unmistakable utterance to such convictions, or shown more of genuine and unfailing confidence in their reality and power. But the singular keenness of his analytical faculty would not allow him to rest in that vague and undefined sense of this harmony which satisfies the common mind. These deep sympathies of his own soul with the Word of God, told him that it must be true, and must be, therefore, as it professes to be, the work of Him who is the Father of our spirits; but he could not be satisfied merely to feel this sympathy, nor to rest his belief on the vague sense of its existence. It was important for him to ascertain the particulars of this harmony, the basis on which these sympathies rest. What are those principles of the human mind to which the Scripture makes such effective appeal? What is the appeal itself? What are those facts dimly and imperfectly seen, in the background of our consciousness, of which all men recognize the counterpart in the Scriptures, aud which impress them with such a sense of authority and majesty when they hear them stated in the simple and solemn language of the Bible? To these inquiries, he was impelled to seek an answer, and he hoped to find one which should give definite outline to the vague aspirations of the soul, and arrange into a system the fundamental matters of human knowledge and belief. The central point around which these great convictions gathered, was the moral government of God. That majesty of law which he so deeply felt, even in these lower and earthly relations, he transferred to the high government of the Holy One, where it expanded to all that the mind can embrace of infinity. Law seemed to him there a thing of indispensable moment and immeasurable value. The claims of God, the duty of the human soul, the circumstances which enforce that duty, the sanctions which give authority to those claims, these, in all their fullness, he set himself to ascertain, to define, to express, to systematize. He would construct a principia of morals which should logically authenticate to every reflecting soul the true moral system of the universe, both in its fundamental principles, and in all the details which should make those principles unquestionable in theory, and controlling in the moral conduct of men. This aim, so original, so independent, and so noble, to vindicate and to expound to the moral consciousness of men the lofty government of God, it is the purpose of these volumes to carry out. The execution of the work is in style and method not unbecoming the loftiness of the aim. The mode of expression is always simple and unaffected, always weighty and powerful, often condensed, exact, and vigorous in a very high degree. Aiming always at the extremest analysis of ideas, and subordinating for the purposes of his argument his formulas of thought to the most rigid demands of logic, the important qualifications of each leading idea required constantly to be held up to view. These logical necessities give to the mode of expression adopted, a character of formal exactness at variance with the easy grace of a style less burdened with meaning. But while regardless of all mere niceties of style, no one was ever more studiously careful of what |