will, but not of sufficient energy to resist the perpetual violence of passion at war with conscience. Or that recent modification of it, called new divinity, which, without making any different adjustment of passion in relation to conscience, decides that this disorder in the sensibilities is not depravity, and therefore, though the result is, that all men do choose wrong and "sin in all the appropriate circumstances of their being," it is no reflection on the justice of the Creator for having given them such a moral constitution and placed them in a state of probation; a doctrine which, while it is right in supposing that blame can only be attached to voluntary action, and has had a happy influence on the popular mind, and saved it from a radical reaction from evangelical religion, has, nevertheless, in its main positions, neither Scripture nor philosophy to support it; for the Scriptures do say that man is inherently depraved, and has no natural ability to keep the law; and philosophy declares that a will invariably governed by evil motives is proved, a posteriori, to be either without liberty, or subjected to such impulses as to unfit it for a state of probation; and, furthermore, that such a moral malformation is depravity.

The doctrine of general redemption relieves every difficulty, and the conflict of ages ceases. Instead of shuddering at the moral order of our world as instituted by God since the fall, we admire it. It is just such a world as God could wisely and justly create by an act of power, without the intervention of a fallen progenitor, and without the necessity of a divine Mediator; albeit, in such a case, the law given for its government would not be a law of absolute. perfection, but adapted to the capacity of its subject. The presence of the perfect Adamic law in our fallen state is all that creates our moral difficulty. Why it was not set aside as a standard of duty when man was preserved in a deteriorated nature to pass through a new probation, we may not be able to say. Some great and good men take this view, and consider the Gospel as a law of liberty substituted in its place. But this is not Scriptural. Christ declares: "I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill." Standing no longer as a condition of life and salvation, but as a rule of life, it answers as a perfect ideal of moral excellence, and presents at once a monument of the original greatness of our nature and an index of its future glory; it reveals the evil of sin in its nature and consequences; makes a grand lever of reform in the individual and in society; shows the glory of Christ as a Mediator, whose cross is seen in bold and brilliant relief upon its dark and lurid background, and impels us to him by all the power of an awakened conscience and of adoring gratitude.

ART. IV.-RELIGIOUS CATALEPSY.

CERTAIN mysterious phenomena have been occasionally witnessed in connection with religious emotions and exercises, consisting in suspended motion and consciousness. These phenomena have either been held as completely inscrutable, or accounted for as differently as were the mental culture and moral character of those who have passed judgment upon their nature and cause. If the person witnessing such examples, and who attempts to solve the difficult problem, is himself truly pious, embracing in his own mental constitution a strong element of the mystical and the superstitious, he will probably resolve the whole matter into the immediate power of God. This to him is an ultimate truth, admitting of no explanation. He will therefore neither seek nor desire any thing further.

But should he be of an incredulous temper, one whose views of experimental religion have been hastily and crudely formed, and which are consequently without much scope or analysis, he will resolve the whole thing into blank delusion, feigned impositions, or mere excitement growing out of surrounding circumstances. Or, from a mingled feeling of prejudice and repugnance, persons of this stamp may be ready to construe this mere accompaniment of religious exercise, but constituting no part of its essential character, into a formidable objection to all experimental religion, as if glad to meet with such examples of total or partial paralysis, and make them the occasion of downright mockery and scorn of Christianity itself; thus bringing the whole system into contempt and ridicule.

Others may feel as if the key to those undeniable facts which they have frequently witnessed, could it only be obtained, is a most important desideratum. Distinguished more perhaps for sincerity than deep and earnest reflection, being better Christians than philosophers, they ardently desire to experience "the power," as it is often termed, simply to satisfy their own curiosity as to its myaterious nature. These constitute, probably, the leading views which have currency in the community on this subject, and on which, as such, very little within our knowledge has ever been written. Hence, unless we misjudge, it is a subject worthy of more consideration than it has hitherto received.

But that any attempt which may be made at a philosophical analysis of those peculiar affections, will not be open to objection to some minds, is perhaps more than there is reason to expect. Cher

ishing the tenderest and most sacred regard for the cause, some will be ready to look upon any such attempt as a sort of profane intrusion into the "holy of holies," fearing it will be construed to the prejudice of existing confidence in the presence of that Divine influence in the Church on which they justly regard its vitality and success to depend. All such fears are wholly groundless. True philosophy and true divinity cannot be antagonisms. They are so regarded only by those who mistake the true character of one or the other, or of both. All truth flows from the same eternal source; it must, therefore, be in harmony with itself. To all enlightened Protestant minds a greater heresy cannot be promulgated or cherished, than that “ignorance is the mother of devotion." Hence, to an intelligent, sober, inquiring mind, the grand question on this subject is, “What is truth?" On what hypothesis should those cases of suspended consciousness and motion occasionally witnessed under religious emotions and exercises be resolved? To this question any intelligent solution, which shall be candidly proposed, should be heard and weighed with at least equal candor, whether it prove satisfactory or otherwise. This is all we ask for the views which follow.

. We have entitled the marvelous phenomena, into whose nature we propose to inquire, religious catalepsy. The term catalepsy is used by medical writers to express a peculiar form of disease, consisting in a suppression of sensation, motion, and consciousness, when the subject is senseless, speechless, and remains fixed in the position in which he was when the affection seized him. The etymology of the term sheds some light upon its radical import, whether applied to a form of disease, or, with the prefix religious, to designate the peculiar affection under consideration, when it is assumed nothing morbid is involved. It is derived from Kara intensive, and λaußaivw, to seize, grasp, lay hold of. This is strictly true of the subjects of religious catalepsy, who in ordinary are suddenly seized with a partial or total suppression of consciousness and motion, which state continues with little or no variation while they are under what in common parlance is termed "the power." But we repeat the remark that nothing morbid or in the slightest degree prejudicial to physical health is assumed to attend or result from this sort of paralysis.

By way of anticipation we might here observe that we assume the cause to be, not simple, but mixed, consisting remotely, and perhaps in the largest degree, in the peculiar physical temperament of the subject. Its immediate cause in most cases, not in all, doubtless is the agency of the Holy Spirit producing the given result through the peculiar physical temperament just named, in connection with

sympathy and strong mental impressions; so that the cause may be summed up thus: remotely the physical temperament, together with the moral, intellectual, and sympathetic elements combined. In most cases, where the work of grace is deep and genuine, the moral element is doubtless immediate and paramount, touching all the responsive and yielding, though latent, susceptibilities in the mental and physical constitution of the subject, which, as so many constituent elements in the cause, combine to produce the result witnessed.

As the cause is of a mixed character, the result, partaking of the nature of the cause, is also mixed, though doubtless, in some cases, the physical and the sympathetic greatly predominate over the intellectual and the moral. For who can doubt that the physical effect of the Holy Spirit upon a congregation is contagious through mere sympathy, while conscience remains but slightly awakened? This is said discarding all design to disparage the gracious and powerful influence of the Spirit, which, like "the wind, bloweth where it listeth." It is said in allusion to the philosophy of the phenomenon in question, as we may judge from results which follow, especially upon the unconverted; of which more hereafter. So much as to the general character of the hypothesis on which we suppose the phenomena under consideration to be resolvable. Let us next inquire into its basis, together with some of the facts and circumstances which usually concur in actual examples of religious catalepsy.

That man is not only a compound, but a complex being, is a mere truism to every one who has duly reflected upon his own mental and physical constitution. The recondite link which connects the immaterial actuating spirit with the material organism, is too subtile to be a matter of intelligent speculation to the profoundest metaphysician or physiologist. Those who have penetrated the farthest into the secrets of nature are and should be content with a recognition of this inscrutable fact, without attempting an exposé of its nature. Nor is it strange if, based upon this vital union of the material and immaterial constituents in man's compound nature, we should meet with vast complexity in the action of mind upon body, and vice versa. So much at least as will tend to foil our most earnest attempts at strict analysis, and our greatest efforts to distinguish between the mental and physical in the phenomena witnessed in the affection under consideration; enough, indeed, to exclude from any hypothesis which may be chosen as furnishing a solution of the mystery involved, everything which savors in the slightest degree of dogmatism.

From the conceded fact no longer called in question that the brain is the organ of mind, as a firm stand-point, or perhaps it were

better to say starting-point, let us not slide off into the empty chimera of phrenology, whose base, as far as it respects sound philosophy, is so narrow, that the superstructure, as such, "topples to its fall." This our limits forbid us to stop to show, which, despite some things urged by its votaries in its support which may claim a degree of speciousness, we believe it would not be a difficult task to do. Our only object is to present certain data as the basis of the hypothesis on which it is believed the phenomena in question may be resolved.

Let it be remembered, then, that this organ consists of two compartments, as physiologists inform us, called the cerebrum or front brain, and the cerebellum, or back brain. In volume the front brain is said to be much the larger. This compartment is supposed to be the organ of the understanding, will, and other active mental powers, while the back brain is held to be the seat of the passive mental susceptibilities, into which department ideas are received by sensation through the medium of impressions made upon the outward senses, and thus affecting the nervous system. These ideas thus received through the perceptive faculties, supply the raw material, so to speak, of thought, reason, judgment, for the exercise of the active powers, whose seat is in the front brain. On this theory, for whose truth, as such, it is not necessary to vouch, but which seems entitled to rank with other brain-theories, and to contend for dominance till superseded by another more plausible; the back-brain is the seat of all our intuitional and instinctive ideas or perceptions. These instinctive and intuitional perceptions are so many passive susceptibilities, which are not in the slightest degree dependent upon our will, judgment, or reason. And between these two mental departments, with their respective organs, the active and the passive, there is the closest intimacy, the most perfect harmony, and mutual reciprocity consistent with their distinctness and comparative independence. To a certain extent one may act without the other, or when the other is to a great degree eclipsed or suspended. How little, for example, do we see of the purely instinctive and intuitional when the active powers are intently employed in an intricate process of reasoning! On the contrary, how many things have we done from birth, and every day still do, from mere instinct, without reason, will, or intelligence! Besides, are not the mental powers called active, and which are under the control of the will, suspended and in a state of rest during sleep? And is it not equally clear that none but the voluntary or active faculties, both physical and mental, either seek or admit of cessation or repose from the constant discharge of their appropriate FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XI.-15