CHAPTER VII.

System of the Catechism.-Its theological ground and constitution. Its general methods and forms of action.Historical exemplification.

3

It seems to be due to the whole subject, that the system of the CATECHISM, as here opposed to the system of the Bench, should be a little. more fully described. This might well form the theme of a separate tract. As a closing chapter to the present publication, it can claim our attention only in a very general way.

The Anxious Bench has stood before us as the representative and type of a certain religious system, having its own theory and its own practice, both replete with dangerous error. In the same way, we exhibit the Catechism as the representative and type of another system, including in like manner both theory and practice, of an opposite character. It is not meant of course, that the whole system originated in the Catechism, or that it must stand or fall in every instance with the use of the Catechism; but simply that this belongs to it, in principle and constitution, and is well fitted at the same time to stand as a specimen of its general meaning and force.

The theory of religion in which the system of the Catechism stands, is vastly more deep and comprehensive, and of course vastly more earnest also, than that which lies at the foundation of the other system. This last we have seen to be characteristically pelagian, with narrow views of the nature of sin, and confused apprehensions of the difference between flesh and spirit; involving in the end the gross and radical error, that conversion is to be considered, in one shape or another, the product of the sinner's own will, and not truly and strictly a new creation in Christ Jesus by the power of God. This is an old heresy, of which notice is taken by the apostle Paul in the second chapter of his epistle to the Church at Colosse, and which has been actively at work in the Christian world, under various forms and disguises, from that time to the present. It has often put on the fairest appearances, seeming even to go beyond the general life of the Church, in the measure of its zeal and spirituality. It can easily affect also, deceiving itself as much as others, to honor the grace of God, and to derive all its life from a source beyond itself. But still the imagination remains, that this life is something that stands in the individual separately taken, the property of a particular self, rather than a more general power in which every such particular self is required to lose itself, that "old things may pass away and all things beeomc new." The man gets religion, and so stands over it and above it, in his own fancy, as the owner of property in

any other case. From such monstrous perversion, the worst consequences may be expected to flow. The system may generate action; but it will be morbid action, one-sided, spasmodic, ever leaning towards fanaticism. In opposition to this, the true theory of religion carries us continually beyond the individual, to the view of a far deeper and more general form of existence in which his particular life is represented to stand. Thus sin is not simply the offspring of a particular will, putting itself forth in the form of actual transgressions, but a wrong habit of hu manity itself, a general and universal force, which includes and rules the entire existence of the individual man, from the very start.*

The

disease is organic, rooted in the race, and not to be overcome in any case by a force less deep and general than itself. As well might we look for the acorn to forsake in growing the type of its proper species, and put forth the form of a mountain ash or stately elm. "That which is

This point is well maintained in a Defence of the Second Article of the Augsburg Confession, ("gegen alte und neue Gegener,") by Dr. Sartorius, one of the most distinguished Lutheran divines of the present age. Had the treatise been written expressly against the theory of sin brought forward some time since, in this country, by Dr. Taylor of New Haven, of whom probably the German theologian had never heard, it could hardly have furnished a refutation of it more thorough and complete. It is directed against the Rational, ism of modern Germany, which only reiterates here the Pelagianism of the Romish Church, as we find it withstood in the ever memorable Confession of Augsburg. This shallow theory, as exhibited by Dr. Taylor, constitutes as we have seen the very soul of Finneyism, which is simply another name for the system of the Anxious Bench.

born of the flesh is flesh." So deep and broad is the ruin, from which man is to be delivered by the gospel. And here again, the same depth and breadth are presented to us also in the Christian salvation itself. Man is the subject of it, but not the author of it, in any sense. His nature is restorable, but it can never restore itself. The restoration to be real, must begin beyond the individual. In this case as in the other, the general must go before the particular, and support it as its proper ground. Thus humanity, fallen in Adam, is made to undergo a resurrection in Christ, and so restored, flows over organically, as in the other case, to all in whom its life appears. The sinner is saved then by an inward living union with Christ, as real as the bond by which he has been joined in the first instance to Adam. This union is reached and maintained, through the medium of the Church, by the power of the Holy Ghost. It constitutes a new life, the ground of which is not in the particular subject of it at all, but in Christ, the organic root of the Church. The particular subject lives, not properly speaking in the acts of his own will separately considered, but in the power of a vast generic life, that lies wholly beyond his will, and has now began to manifest itself through him, as the law and type of his will itself, as well as of his whole being. As born of the Spirit, in contradistinction from the flesh, he is himself spiritual, and capable of true righteousness. Thus his salvation begins, and thus it is carried forward, till it becomes com

plete in the resurrection of the great day. From first to last, it is a power which he does not so much apprehend, as he is apprehended by it, and comprehended in it, and carried along with it, as something infinitely more deep and vast than himself.

Now as one or the other of the two opposite theories of religion, thus briefly described, may be found to reign, not in the written or oral creed of those who take an interest in the sub-ject, but in the inmost core of their life, the result will appear, with characteristic difference, in the whole tenor and bearing of their religion itself, practically considered. And this difference will be substantially that of the two systems now compared, the religion of the Catechism and the religion of the Bench.

It might seem indeed, at first view, that the theory which sets the particular before the general, in this case, would be found more favorable than its opposite to earnest and vigorous religious action, in every direction. And so it is often taken to be, in fact. The other scheme, involving as it seems to do a helpless dependence of the individual upon a generality deeper and more comprehensive than himself, first as it regards sin, and then again as it regards righteousness, is held up to reproach, as a view that cuts the sinews of moral action, and may be expected, where it prevails, to lie like a paralysing incubus on all the energies of the Church. But this idea is contradicted by universal experience, as well as by the true philosophy of life.