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Moreover, with what authority or propriety can you exhort a man to any duty? If you do so, you assume, however unwittingly, yet very absurdly, that he has the identical power which you deny, viz., power to have good volitions, when God produces in him evil ones. Besides, if he had any such power, you would act altogether in the dark, and at the hazard of urging him to will contrary to the Omnipotent will and the good of the universe. For the executive will of God, you say, has no respect to what is right or wrong, but only to what it is wisest and best should take place;" and as you are bound to exhort him to will only that which is right, what a disaster it would be, should you incite him to will not only against the divine purposes and agency, but in opposition to "what is wisest and best should take place"!

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Not least among the absurdities would it be, to persuade him to repent. Repentance implies sincere contrition for sin. But the theory being true, there is no sin. Nothing is wrong, or can be. The volitions of men, which include all their sins, so called, are produced by an "irresistible agency upon the heart." They are not only fated, but fated for the "wisest and best." The incendiary may have fired your buildings, but why should he repent? Not because he could have done otherwise; for God produced the volition that moved his hand to set the fire. Not because his volition was evil; for all its evil was its inherent quality, and necessarily created with it. Not because he did harm; for if he did any, it was not only done of necessity, but was the wisest and best that could take place. Not because he transgressed the divine law; for if he did so, it was in the volition divinely created. Not because he is conscious that he did wrong; for if the theory be true, his conscience is false. Dr. Emmons very consistently says, that sinners "have no reason to be sorry that any evil action or event has taken place," and that they cannot be so, " without being sorry for God's conduct," vol. IV., p. 374. By this, however, he does not mean to admit the absurdity of repentance here charged upon his theory. On what ground, then, would he exhort men to repent? We have discovered none, and can conceive of none, unless it be, that "sin is one thing, and the taking place of sin is another;" as if an act of sin and the sin of the act could have different relations to the agent, or to a moral standard. The absurdity of this assumption has already been exposed. If God causes the entity of an evil act, he

causes its evil nature. If man is not to repent of the taking place of his sin, he is not to repent of his sin. If God produces man's volitions, he produces all that is wrong in them. If man cannot be sorry that his evil actions have taken place, "without being sorry for God's conduct," and this Dr. Emmons affirms, then he cannot repent of the sin of those actions without repenting of an inherent property of "God's conduct." If by eating unripe fruit, your health should be injured, and you should say, "I repent of eating the noxious quality of the fruit, but not the fruit itself," you would talk absurdly enough; but not more so than the theologian who exhorts men to repent of the sin of their acts, but not of their acts of sin, that is, of their sin, but not of their sinning. The truth is, Dr. Emmons's theory of agency involves us in inextricable difficulties. It is not, as some have imagined, a system of surprising and beautiful paradoxes, but of actual and absolute, though ingeniously palliated, contradictions. It is a theory by which the moral problem is insolvable, nay, by which the very conception of such a problem is utterly exterminated. Nothing, we believe, but the genius and moral excellence of its author, has hitherto saved it from universal rejection.

The theory which we have now very briefly examined, has important relations to which we cannot here allude. If any one would convict us of having misconceived the theory, he must either show that we have not understood Dr. Emmons as he wrote, or that he did not write as he meant. If there be errors in the reasoning by which we have endeavored to verify our allegations, they will be easily detected. It will doubtless be said, that Dr. Emmons would not admit these consequences. No one supposes that he would, unless he would disavow his own cherished philosophy. "He would not admit these consequences!” Is he therefore wronged by an endeavor to prove that they are legitimate consequences? Where is the Where is the proper tribunal? Is he the arbiter before whom we are to try his own speculations? If these consequences can be set aside, then we are so much in the dark, that we need, for their refutation, something far more luminous than a mere ipsum non dixisse.

Though a necessity has been laid upon us of animadverting on the philosophy of a very eminent and excellent divine, we have nevertheless a deep reverence for his character, as one both so great and "so good, that we shall seldom find his equal." With respect to various important merits in his writings, we do

not know that we estimate them a whit less highly than his warmest admirers. We could, on many accounts, wish his volumes a wide circulation; and his fourth volume we do heartily commend to the most careful and studious perusal of all who are disposed to look with favor upon his peculiar theory of divine agency. While we cannot but record our regret, that much of his intellectual might was so exerted that it may be available on the side of the fatalist, still the elements of his character challenge our confidence and admiration. We confide in his estimate of theology, as the most important and exalted of all sciences. We confide in him, as a man of extraordinary wisdom and uprightness; a man in whom there was nothing timeserving, no concealment, no dark windings, no want of transparency. We admire his wit, his originality and independence of mind. We both confide in him and admire him, for his magnanimity, his amplitude of views, his noble freedom of investigation, and his rare courage in declaring his opinions. We confide in him and revere him, because he had a generous faith in the future progress of the mind-a faith inspired by "the growing capacities of men," as well as by the history of science; because, in theory and in practice, he condemned the groundless and disheartening sentiment, which he represents as "often flung out, that all the subjects of human inquiry are nearly exhausted," and that no great advance in knowledge is to be expected or attempted; because he believed there is " room left in divinity and metaphysics, as well as in other sciences, to make large improvements;" because he was an advocate "for pushing researches further and further;" because he disliked what he called "a caveat given to men, not to pry into things above their measure;" because he never frowned upon the spirit of inquiry, as if it were the spirit of skepticism, nor regarded men as sinning by being inquisitive, unless they transgressed the limits of attainable knowledge; and because any disposition to say to the earnest inquirer," thus far shalt thou come and no farther," would have met his severe reprehension.

In conclusion, we cannot but hope that the debatable ground between necessitarians and their opponents, is not always to be a land of shades and of conflict. It seems to us, that already "we scent the morning air of the coming day" that is to shine upon sacred philosophy. It may be a long time before that day will reach its full effulgence; for mind has its inertia as well as matter. We cannot expect so strange a thing as

that men should readily and at once abandon their hereditary household deities. It is nothing new, that men having a philosophy which requires them to marshal, in its defence, a host of subtleties, should withstand a philosophy whose strength lies only in simple facts and intuitive convictions. So it was in the days of Galileo. We are told that Lizzi, a Florentine astronomer, in order to disprove the existence of planets which many had actually seen, clung to his logic. As there are but seven metals, he argued, seven days in the week, and seven apertures in the human head, therefore, there cannot be more than seven planets! Another astronomer of the Platonic school refused to look at the heavens through the telescope, because, as he said, if he should see the moons of Jupiter with his own eyes, he must yield in the controversy and renounce his former opinions. As science advances, there will always be a class of philosophers afraid to look at Jupiter's moons. To this class, however, we do not refer Dr. Emmons, for we think that he had the temper and faith of a genuine philosopher; but that in his youth he had been enmeshed in the mighty sophisms of a necessitarian philosophy. To the influence of that philosophy, we must, doubtless, attribute the fatalism of his theology. Still he was right in maintaining that mental and moral science are not to be sundered from each other. But if our theology shall have formed an unnatural and portentous alliance with an untenable philosophy, that connection must be severed, or else they must both sink together. If great ingenuity be requisite in "making joints" between our metaphysics and our faith, we may suspect that one of them is false. There can be no repulsion between them so long as both are true. We shall greatly err, if we imagine a philosophy indubitable because associated with great and sacred names. Let us hallow the names, but scrutinize the philosophy. As defenders of truth, we need to look well to its philosophical safeguards. If its alert and resolute enemies discover that we are trusting in the shield of a false philosophy, a blow may be aimed at the very vitals of our theology by some feeble arm, which even the strongest will not be able to parry. Let us see to it, lest the bulwarks of our faith, being ready to fall away, invite to the assault, whilst we are reposing in a fatal security. For truth's defence, let us never rely upon a philosophy, however canonical, that is at war with the strongest utterances of common sense, with the plain facts of consciousness, and the first truths of universal intuition.

ARTICLE VI.

RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY-ITS NATURE, ENDS, AND VALIDITY.*

PSYCHOLOGY is the science of mind in general; and divides itself into two distinct branches-Empirical and Rational.

Empirical Psychology finds the facts of mind, and gives to these facts a systematic arrangement. The mental states and exercises, which appear in experience, constitute all its elements; and the testimony of consciousness is assured, as the valid criterion for any facts, which may be doubtful or disputed. If, in any case, a contradictory consciousness between two minds be alleged, the umpire lies in the general consciousness of humanity, and the appeal is made through some of the many methods by which the concurring testimony of the human race, on that disputed point, may be gathered. This ultimate test is, what is commonly and properly called an appeal to COMMON SENSE.

Rational Psychology passes on beyond the facts of mind as given in experience, and seeks some necessary and universal principle by which the fact is controlled, and through which alone it can be intelligently expounded. This principle is seen to be a priori to the fact, independent of it, and conditional for it. It is the rationale of the fact, or the law by which that mental exercise, given in experience, is altogether and necessarily determined. The Elements of Rational Psychology are not, therefore, the states and exercises of the mind as given in consciousness, and appearing in experience, but those conditional principles through which experience itself is possible, and the facts of our mental being alone intelligible. It affirms, not as through experience in consciousness, this is; but from the peremptory law of the conditional principle, this must be. The human intellect is itself cognized in the a priori laws, which determine necessarily its entire agency.

This distinction may be more fully illustrated by a reference to other cases than the facts of mind. Whatever is capable of

* We withhold the author's name in this case, because the article is introductory to a contemplated publication, in which it is designed to evolve more fully the principles herein foreshadowed.-ED.

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