In regard to the existence of the human soul, the opinions which prevail appear to me to be equally erroneous with those which are held respecting the material creation. It appears to be the almost universal opinion among those who believe in the immateriality of the soul, that it possesses an inherent immortality, or, in other words, that it is composed of an essence which is in its very nature indestructible. The human soul, say the advocates of its inherent immortality is indestructible, because it is a simple uncompounded essence. There is properly speaking, no such thing as destruction. At the death of material bodies, they are not destroyed; they are merely resolved into their original organic elements, and these enter afterwards, again into new combinations. But the soul cannot be thus resolved. It is an uncompounded simple essence, and must therefore be indestructible.

Such is the reasoning by which this doctrine is attempted to be supported, and I must acknowledge that to me it appears totally fallacious and unsatisfactory. Its whole force rests on the assumed indestructibility of the organic atoms, into which the material body is resolved. But are these atoms indestructible? were they not originally created out of nothing? and if so, do they not at every moment require the supporting power of God, to prevent them from returning to their original state of non-existence? If they do, then they are not indestructible.

As to the doctrine itself I believe it to be radically erroneous, and the offspring of a mistaken philosophy. Let not the pious reader fear, that is my object to rob him of his hope beyond the grave. God forbid that I should do him such an injury! I am myself a firm believer in the never ending existence of the virtuous; and it is because I cherish this belief, that I wish to rest it on a firmer basis than that on which it is placed by the popular faith. What, let us ask, is the prevailing belief? It is that the soul of man is self-existent, understanding by that term, not that it has created itself,-for all believe that it was created by God;—but that, having been once thus created, it can now continue itself in existence without requiring any further the supporting power of God. Perhaps most persons have never considered this matter in the light in which I place it; and yet, it appears to me the true one. Either the soul of man possesses an inherent essential immortality, or it does not. If it does, then it stands in no further need of the supporting power of God, and is self-existent. If it requires this supporting power, then it is not essentially immortal.

To myself, who believe that God alone is self-existent, and that all other existences are constantly dependent on him, it

is plain, that the human soul does not possess inherent immortality, but is entirely dependent for its continuance in being on the supporting power of God. Self-existence is an incommunicable attribute of the Almighty. Whatever is created can only have a dependent existence, and hence it follows, that in every creature, in the highest seraph, as in the worm of the dust; in the human soul as in the human body-there must be a constant tendency to return to that state of nonexistence from which they were called into being, and that, were the supporting power of God only intermitted for one moment, they would cease to be.

In resting thus, man's existence after death, not on a supposed inherent immortality, but on the supporting power of his Maker, it appears to me to be placed on its proper foundation. What gives me greater confidence in the views I have embraced than I otherwise should have had, is, that they appear to be in the perfect harmony with the sacred scriptures. There, man is never spoken of as possessing an inherent immortality; but always as dependent on God for the continuance of his existence. Eternal life is frequently mentioned, but always as a good to be sought for; -a boon to be given;-never as an essential attribute of man.-Paul tells us expressly, that God only has immortality. (a) Now this would not be true, if men and angels were also by their natures immortal.

It is not my intention now to inquire, in how far the erroneous views of immortality which prevail, are connected with, and minister to other errors of the doctrine, which have crept into the popular faith, although such an inquiry might not be uninteresting. Neither do I intend to trace out the doctrine of universal dependence on God to all its results. I shall merely refer to a single one of these.

While to the eye of the multitude, God is hid by his works, the man who is duly sensible of his dependence, feels himself constantly in the immediate presence of his Maker. If he looks within, there every throb of his heart,-every pulsation of his circulating blood, -every thought that passes through his mind, tells him that God is there, strengthening and supporting him. If he looks abroad, there not only the heavens, and the suns and worlds which glisten in the firmament; but evere plant, every leaf, every blade of grass speaks to him of God. He sees the supporting power of the Deity in constant exercise around him, in the beasts of the field, in the fowls of the air, and in the insect that sports in the sunbeam, and re(a) 1, Tim. vi. 16.

joices in its existence; and from all creation around him a thousand voices arise, calling to him in one harmonious concert: Lo, God is here! Oh! why can-why do not men realise, as they ought, that they are in the constant presence of their Maker? To the man who should feel at all times this truth as it deserves to be felt, the sentiment of it would become the power of God unto salvation.

Meadville, Penn.

H.

ART. 6.-NEW VIEWS OF CHRISTIANITY, SOCIETY, AND THE CHURCH. BY O. A. BROWNSON, Boston: James Munroe & Company. 1836.

We were prepared for something good from Mr. Brownson, but this work has far exceeded our expectations. While in eloquence of style it equals the writings of the Abbé de la Mennais and Victor Cousin, it surpasses the first in philosophic depth and the last in condensation. In fact we look upon this book as calculated to make a deeper and wider impression than any thing of the sort since "The Words of a Believer."

The following passage, from the preface, will tend to remove a prejudice which the name naturally excites:

"It must not be inferred from my calling this little work New Views, that I profess to bring forward a new religion, or to have discovered a new Christianity. The religion of the Bible I believe to be given by the inspiration of God, and the Christianity of Christ satisfies my understanding and my heart. However widely I may dissent from the Christianity of the Church, with that of Christ I am content to stand or fall, and I ask no higher glory than to live and die in it and for it.

Although I consider the views contained in the following pages original, I believe the conclusions, to which I come at last, will be found very much in accordance with those generally adopted by the denomination of Christians, with whom it has been for some years my happiness to be associated. That denomination, however, must not be held responsible for any of the opinions I have advanced. I am not the organ of a sect. I do not speak by authority, nor under tutelage. I speak for myself and from my own convictions. And in this way, better than I could in any other, do I prove my sympathy with the body of which I am a member, and establish my right to be called a Unitarian.

"With these remarks I commit my little work to its fate. It

contains results to which I have come only by years of painful experience; but I dismiss it from my mind with the full conviction, that He, who has watched over my life and preserved me amidst scenes through which I hope I may not be called to pass again, will take care that if what it contains be false it shall do no harm, and if it be true that it shall not die."

We will now attempt to give our readers a brief summary of the book. Yet we fear we shall do it injustice; for where all is so condensed, any omission breaks the course of thought. He sets forth with two propositions, on which, as upon firm foundation stones, the whole work is based. The first is, that Religion is natural to man, and he ceases to be man the moment he ceases to be religious." The second declares, that as man is a creature of growth, the institutions, forms, and embodyments of religion must necessarily be always changing.

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Christianity, therefore, he goes on to say, as given by Christ, is always "the same, yesterday, to-day and forever." But Christianity as taught by the Church, is quite another thing. It is defective, mutable, improveable. Christianity as it exists now, is very far from being what Christ meant it to be. What, then, did he mean? Let Mr. Brownson answer.

"To comprehend Jesus, to seize the Holy as it was in him, and consequently the true idea of Christianity, we must, from the heights to which we have risen by the aid of the Church, look back and down upon the age in which he came, ascertain what was the work which there was for him to perform, and from that obtain a key to what he proposed to accomplish.

"Two systems then disputed the Empire of the World; Spiritualism* represented by the Eastern world, the world of Asia, and Materialism represented by Greece and Rome. Spiritualism regards purity or holiness as predicable of Spirit alone, and Matter as essentially impure, possessing and capable of receiving nothing of the Holy, the prison house of the soul, its only hindrance to a union with God, or absorption into his essence, the cause of all uncleanness, sin, and evil, consequently to be contemned, degraded, and as far as possible annihilated. Materialism takes the other extreme, does not recognise the claims of Spirit, disregards the soul, counts the body every thing, earth all, heaven nothing, and condenses itself into the advice, 'Eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'

"This opposition between Spiritualism and Materialism presup

* I use these terms, Spiritualism and Materialism, to designate two social, rather than two philosophical systems. They designate two orders, which, from time out of mind, have been called spiritual and temporal or carnal, holy and profane, heavenly and worldly, &c.

poses a necessary and original antithesis between Spirit and Matter. When Spirit and Matter are given as antagonist principles, we are obliged to admit antagonism between all the terms into which they are respectively convertible. From Spirit is deduced by natural generation, God, the Priesthood, Faith, Heaven, Eternity; from Matter, Man, the State, Reason, the Earth, and Time; consequently to place Spirit and Matter in opposition, is to make an antithesis between God and Man, the Priesthood and the State, Faith and Reason, Heaven and Earth, and Time and Eternity.

It is ne

"This antithesis generates perpetual and universal war. cessary then to remove it and harmonize, or unite the two terms. Now, if we conceive Jesus as standing between Spirit and Matter, the representative of both-God-Man-the point where both meet and lose their antithesis, laying a hand on each and saying, 'Be one, as I and my Father are one,' thus sanctifying botn and marrying them in a mystic and holy union, we shall have his secret thought and the true Idea of Christianity.

"The Scriptures uniformly present Jesus to us as a mediator, the middle term between two extremes, and they call his work a mediation, a reconciliation—an atonement. The Church has ever considered Jesus as making an atonement. It has held on to the term

at all times as with the grasp of death. The first charge it has labored to fix upon heretics has been that of rejecting the Atonement, and the one all dissenters from the predominant doctrines of the day, have been most solicitons to repel, is that of denying the Lord who bought us.' The whole Christian world, from the days of the Apos tles up to the moment in which I write, have identified Christianity with the Atonement, and felt that in admitting the Atonement they admitted Christ, and that in denying it they were rejecting him.”

Mr. Brownson we perceive appropriates to his own use the very famous orthodox word, Atonement. It is very certain, however, that its original meaning was that which he gives it

-“to make at one"-" to reconcile." He goes on to say that Jesus and John (he might have added Paul) repeatedly declare LOVE to be the essence of Christianity.

"The nature of love is to destroy all antagonism. It brings together; it begetteth union, and from union cometh peace. And what word so accurately expresses to the consciousness of Christendom, the intended result of the mission of Jesus, as that word peace? Every man who has read the New Testament feels that it was peace that Jesus came to effect,-peace after which the soul has 80 often sighed and yearned in vain, and a peace not merely between two or three individuals for a day, but a universal and eternal peace between all conflicting elements, between God and man, between the soul and body, between this world and another, between the duties of time and the duties of eternity. How clearly is this expressed