The Jutellectual Christian-is Dangers.

Definition of Christian experience-A mistake corrected-The experience of the intellectual- Explanations-The intellectual Christian in a pulpitBy a deathbed-Illustrations-Mary Jane Graham-Dr. Johnson-Paley --Pascal-Robert Hall-Simeon-Webster of America--Neander.

THAT "there are diversities of gifts but the same Spirit," was the declaration of an inspired man regarding the apostolic church; and the same remark is applicable, though in a modified sense, to the churches still. We cannot look on the religious soul, or trace the mental movements of those who are in earnest preparing to meet their God- the men who believe the five grand realities, God, Sin, Death, Judgment, and Immortality -without observing an exhaustless variety in the Holy Spirit's work. The one Lord, the one faith, the one baptism, are held or rejoiced in by all whom that Spirit has taught; but the complexional distinctions of Christian experience are so manifold as to baffle our endeavours to describe them.

But before proceeding farther with an account of these varieties, it may be well to repeat what we mean by Christian experience, and we think that a definition is not difficult. It certainly is not the result of those intuitions which, according to some, constitute true religion. It is not the mere development of our own consciousness along the various channels in which man's emotions run. It is just the written truth of God exemplified in the life of man. It is the heart correspond

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ing to what the Scriptures say of a believer's heart. It is the understanding existing in the conditions ascribed to the Christian understanding by the Spirit of God. It is the will moving in harmony with the laws by which it should be regulated, according to the revelation of Jehovah's mind. It is, in short, the whole man rejoicing, lamenting, hoping, fearing, aspiring, doing, suffering, all according to the mind of the Supreme, as unfolded in his unerring Word. Now, it will at once be seen, that there is much in the life even of some earnest Christians which cannot be brought under this definition or description of experience; for there is often very much that is in direct opposition to the will of God. There is the prevalence of unbelief, declining to accept of the gospel-and that can be no ingredient in Christian experience, in any proper sense. There is the morbid and self-consuming spirit of the legaland neither is that possessed of aught that is properly Christian. It is rather the mind in a state of disease, than the mind guided to the dwellings in which, David says, "the melody of joy and health is heard." There is the overwrought and feverish excitement which signalizes some minds at seasons of awakening and revival. Neither can that be comprehended in any right definition of Christian experience. In short, the experience of a Christian is one thing; but Christian experience may be a widely different thing. With the former, much ignorance or error may mingle from time to time -in the latter, there can be nothing but what is according to the mind of Christ; it is the living epistle of the Lord Jesus; and were this distinction carefully kept in view, it would often preserve the truth from being injured in the house of a friend, as well as deliver the soul from the error of supposing that its condition may be right and safe while declining to close with God's offer of mercy, or mixing up the divine specific against sin and misery with man's own corruptions, his errors, and perversions of the simple truth.

The peculiarity, then, to which we would here refer,

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in regard to Christian experience, may be called the experience of the intellectual man. That the intellect should hold a prominent place in our religion, as in all that man finds to do, only fanaticism will question. Every gift of God is good; and, while consecrated to his service, a powerful intellect, far from conflicting with spirituality of mind, may supply grand materials, on which the soul may ruminate and grow strong, or ascend to those lofty regions to which only the few can soar. To pronounce a divorce, as some have done, between intellect and godliness, and assume a necessary union between feeble mental faculties and the faith of God's people, is to injure religion and outrage the order of things. It is the declaration of Paul, that he "would pray with the Spirit, and pray with the understanding also he would sing with the Spirit, and sing with the understanding also;" and the same should be the determination of all who know that the religion of the God of truth is adapted to the whole man, and is meant to subdue and spiritualize our faculties, not to extirpate or overlay them.

On the other hand, however, while some would displace the intellect, or look with suspicion on its use in religion, others would allow it too prominent a sphere, and this is never done without detriment to the power and ascendency of spiritual truth in the soul. It is clearly the mind of God, that the most gifted in point of intellect cannot penetrate into the mysteries of the spiritual kingdom by any self-derived strength. The very attempt to do so implies a misapprehension of one of the first principles of the oracles of God; for here the gifted and the feeble are utterly on a level. If it be true that "no man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost;" if it be "not by wisdom, nor by might, but by the Spirit" of the living God, that all saving truth is known-then the attempt to know it by mortal power implies direct antagonism to revelation. The mystery hid from ages continues hidden still from the wise and the prudent, while it is often revealed unto

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babes; and the oblivion of this leads, we repeat, to spiritual detriment, or often to shipwreck in the faith.

We need only glance at the condition of the churches to see illustrations of this. When the intellectual preponderates in the mind of men, even though conversion may have taken place, it is not uncommon to notice a coldness-almost a scepticism-on the subject of vital godliness, as the Scriptures describe it, or as the heart of the Spirit-taught Christian rejoices over it. Religion is regarded rather as a thing to be judged than submitted to-rather as a subject on which to exercise ingenuity, than a system designed to permeate and sway the whole heart and soul, and strength and mind. It is mainly objective in its character; its truths are studied with the calmness or the coldness which characterises the manipulations of the algebraist, not with the earnestness which becomes us when life or death for ever is at stake; and it has happened, within the range of our own observation, that men of this class, who had given trustworthy reasons to believe that they were indeed converted and transformed by the renewing of their minds, were suspected of being merely nominal Christians, by some more ardent and sanguine followers of the Lamb. We do not refer at present to that pitiable error by which some are led astray, and are inflated by the idea of their intellectual superiority-so that nothing but an intellectual gospel, and intellectual grace, and intellectual spirituality, were such combinations of words not utterly incongruous, can meet the high demands of their minds. These are the great swelling words of the intellectually vain, which indicate too surely that the character of the model disciple is not yet theirs, they are at once to be suspected as ranking amongst those who are without. But we refer to men of whom something more than charity bids us believe that they have passed from death to life; and some such we know who are suspected of being still in the gall of bitterness, because of the coldness which charac

*Matt xv.ii. 3.

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terises their religion. It may have the steadfastness of principle; but it imparts no impulse-it generates no warmth. It resembles a cold winter scene, whose chief decorations are icicles or hoar frost, rather than the green and goodly scenes which greet the eye when the Sun of righteousness is shining, and his genial heat, if not his glowing fervour, is felt in the soul.

Place such a believer in a pulpit. He will announce dogmas as accurate perhaps as the mathematics; but as cold, and as remotely related to spiritual life. He may reason like Butler, or criticise like Bentley; but the whole tends to chill rather than to generate a healthful glow-it is as if the Scriptures did not contain the words, "It is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing." In brief, there may be light shining; but it is not into the heart. No irradiation reaches it. All is cold, cheerless, unattractive; and unless God had provided some better thing for us, the understanding might have been stored, but the heart would never have been warmed, roused, impelled. Who has not seen such a preacher, environed perhaps by not a few likeminded hearers-dragging, perhaps, the Word of God to the tribunal of man's judgment, and rejecting or receiving at the bidding of the intellect of man-not as we are taught by the Spirit of the living God? Many are weak and sickly among us, and some sleep, because of this tendency and tone.

Or place such a man by a deathbed side. Is the dying one unprepared to meet his God? How unfit is the merely intellectual believer, when his own soul is not glowing with love-but rather chilled by a species of formality-to rouse, to urge, to persuade! Or is the dying one a child of God? Is the land Beulah in sight? Is the soul hovering on wing to be there? How unfit

are those in whom the merely intellectual element preponderates, either to sympathise in the joys, or to comprehend the aspirations of the departing spirit! All that he can advance is felt to be vapid and unavailing, and it is well if he do not rank those prelibations of