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of patriotism, revenge instead of justice, and transforming the sculptured laurel wreath into the funereal cypress.

But how shall this result, by this agency, be achieved? Admitting that the influence of Christianity is appointed to exorcise this fiend of fire and sword-this Apollyon of blood and carnage-from the earth, will it be merely by infusing sentiments of reciprocal good-will into the nations, and thus rendering them averse to engage in warlike strife? That such will be the fact we have no question; but that this is all that will be necessary to divest the world of its belligerent character, we cannot persuade ourselves. The rival and conflicting interests of nations have hitherto been the main causes of War. But these interests would not have existed had not distinct national organizations existed, and will doubtless exist no longer when they are done away. For ourselves we confess that our hopes of the general prevalence of peace are founded principally upon the prospect of the disintegration of all great consolidated governments, and the merging into one vast community of the hitherto divided empires and sovereignties of the earth. Rival nations, made such by the most arbitrary and artificial causes, have ever constituted the grand abutments on which the arches of the temple of War have rested.

"Mountains interposed

Make enemies of nations, who had else,
Like kindred drops been mingled into one."

But for the permanent removal of this colossal curse from the world, is not the grand requisite, the doing away of its main procuring causes? As long as the existing fabrics of separate governments are kept up, nations will subsist in a rival attitude, and while this is the case, mutual jealousy will still be supplying a thousand occasions for the outbreaking of the war spirit. What is essential for the extirpation of the evil is, for men to believe, and to act upon the belief, that the good of the whole is the good of every part-that in a rightly ordered state of things, there could be no ground of collision between different portions of the race-that the interests of one could no more clash with those of another, than any of the straight lines drawn from the centre to the circumference of a circle should cross, or intersect each other-and that a bloody strife between two communities is as really unnatural and as abhorrent to all the better principles of our

nature, as would be a mortal combat between two brethren of the same family. A pyramidal pile of ancient prejudices must doubtless first be unsettled and thrown down, before the view now presented can become prevalent, or at least efficient; but for ourselves, we cannot conceive of Christianity as having attained its highest triumph, till it has brought the entire population of the globe to regard themselves as one great family, or, to use the apostolic metaphor, as a vast body of substantial oneness, "compacted of that which every joint supplieth, and making increase to the edifying of itself in love." In the expedient, warmly advocated by some, of a court or congress of nations, for the adjustment of international disputes, we confess we have little faith. It is a plan that supposes the continued existence of those political arrangements, the very being of which we consider as incompatible with the prospect of abiding peace. No principle is to us of more obvious truth, than that any remedial device which takes for granted the continuance of an evil that Christianity tends and promises to destroy, goes directly to perpetuate that evil. The only plan which lays the axe at the root of the evil, is that which assumes for its foundation, that there is no actual necessity for the occurrence of the causes of war, and these we conceive it to be the design of Providence to cut off, by the entire renovation of that political economy from which they grow.

The suggestions now thrown out, connecting the prospect of the abolition of war with that of the downfall of civil governments, may seem to put off the day of the world's redemption from the scourge, to a very remote period,—a deferring of hope which may make the heart of philanthropy sick. We are ready, however, to concede much, very much, to the progress of an enlightened public sentiment on this subject, even where pure Christianity has not had the principal hand in moulding it. A pacific course of policy in the intercourse of nations is evidently gaining ground. Men are becoming more and more averse to the ultima ratio regum, they shrink more decidedly from the dire resort of an appeal to arms,-they cannot bring themselves so readily to" cry havoc! and slip the dogs of war." It would seem that the truth of Cowper's remark, that "war's a game, which, were their subjects wise, kings would not play at," is beginning to be very generally admitted. In all this we recognise but the native humanizing effects of Christianity upon every

people among whom it obtains, and only wait for its more complete operation to realize the utter and irrevocable abandonment of the barbarous practice. To this result, moreover, we perceive a marked approximation, in the more pacific interpretation beginning to be put upon the precepts of the Scriptures bearing upon the subject, and in the rigid scrutiny to which the reasonings in favour of defensive war are beginning to be subjected. It is, doubtless, a question which may well give pause to the moralist, whether the current opinions of mankind in regard to the duty of self-defence, do not stand related to the custom of war, with all its horrours, precisely as did, a few years since, the general sentiment in respect to moderate drinking to the habit of intemperance. The advocate of peace may perhaps be taking too high ground in denying unqualifiedly the right of self-defence, but we are persuaded that the expediency of waiving the right on the ground of its inevitable abuse, offers a position on which he can safely stand. Making all due allowance for the perversion of the doctrine, it may yet be asserted that the extent of a Christian's permitted, we might say, commanded, reliance on the succours of an overruling Providence, is but imperfectly apprehended, even by pious men. We are well aware, that the idea of trusting to Providence, when armed legions are pouring down upon us, will be at once branded as the height of fanatical folly. Yet the charge moves us not. We grant, indeed, that if a people in such circumstances are not unanimously confiding, they cannot assure themselves of divine protection. The right-minded may suffer from their fellowship with the unbelieving. But let any community, in the spirit of meekness, conscientiously and unitedly cast themselves upon the defences of Omnipotence, and that not merely as a temporary expedient, but as part of a general course of devout obedience, and we see not why the same power which planted an impregnable bulwark around the ancient race of Israel, so long as they remained steadfast in allegiance, will not interpose for the safety of those who trust in his Providence, from the fear of transgressing his law. Or if we suppose that they should fail to be protected, and should become the victims of a brutal soldiery, yet their voluntary sacrifice, which could easily be compensated in another world, would tell so powerfully on the moral interests of the universe, that they could even afford to make it. But after all, our views of the grand

process which is to result in the abolition of war, repudiate the hypothesis of one people's thus invading and destroying another, from the mere wantonness of cruelty; for the same causes which will render the one averse to resisting evil, will make the other unwilling to inflict it.

Such are some of the more prominent features of the prospect which revelation spreads before us, to animate hope and to guide exertion. The kindred topics of the general diffusion of knowledge, the perfection of the mechanical arts, the advances of physical and intellectual science, and the promotion of longevity, as the legitimate result of the spreading and deepening influences of Christianity, might properly claim a place in a general survey of the field upon which we have here entered. But our limits forbid farther enlargement, and we barely advert, in conclusion, to the felicity of the lot of the present generation, particularly the ministers of righteousness, who are called to engage in a work which is already commenced. The causes which are destined, under God, to result in the issues now feebly described, are already in active operation; they have but to put their shoulders to a wheel which has actually begun to revolve. If there be any thing which gives peculiar lustre to the age in which we live, it is the train of events now in progress, betokening the high purpose of Heaven to shake the things which can be shaken, that those which cannot be shaken may remain. Let us not, however, indulge the visionary hope that the ordinary laws of human agency are to be superseded, or that a series of miracles is to be played off by Omnipotence for the entertainment of a wondering world. Far from it. The instrumentality of human effort is as much to be employed in the temporal regeneration, as in the eternal salvation of our race; and the drift of the foregoing remarks will not have been fully apprehended, unless they go to work the conviction, that the one is as really embraced in the range of the ministerial calling as the other, and that no department of beneficence lies without the sphere of their appropriate action. While the salvation of sinners from the wrath to come, constitutes their main and paramount function, an object never to be lost sight of is the redemption of the race from the thraldom of present misery and degradation. As a fitting accomplishment for this great work, they cannot fail to perceive the importance of acquiring large views of the revealed purposes of Jehovah, and of VOL. I. 46

thus coming into deep sympathy with them,-of imbibing a noble catholicism of spirit,-of not straitening the ingenuous heavings and yearnings of a pure benevolence by the narrow limitations of sect or party, of giving themselves, in fine, to the interests of man, universal man, in aiming at which, they approximate most nearly to the designs of his Creator.

ART. II. HAVE ANY PASSAGES IN THE SCRIPTURES A DOUBLE SENSE?

By Rev. PARSONS COOKE, Pastor of a Church in Ware, Mass.

THOUGH either side of this question may doubtless be taken, salva fide et salva ecclesia, still a satisfactory determination of it, is, in my view, highly important. That there is a double sense has rather been assumed than proved, by our popular commentators. But the doubts of many learned German commentators, and of some in our own country, are reasons why it should no longer be regarded as a first principle in hermeneutical science. I propose in this article to state briefly some of the reasons which incline me to the belief, that a double sense is, in some instances, to be found in the Bible.

The double sense, if found at all, exists in those passages where a divine prediction, promise, or assertion, includes two objects or events, mutually related as type and antitype. For example; Christ is predicted under the name of David, and the prediction is so formed as to have its fulfilment both in Christ, and in David. Again; the promise of rest to the ancient people of God, is so shaped as to have its fulfilment, both in the possession of Canaan, and in the possession of heaven,-two objects related as type and antitype.

It will readily be seen, that language, having this twofold application, differs essentially from simple allegory. Allegorical language has a literal and figurative sense; only one of which, however, is the real sense intended to be conveyed to the reader's mind. Some object, real or imaginary, is held out as the means of illustrating thought, or as a picture, to exhibit the features of an absent original. But in the case of typical language, both senses are real

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