ples, were "engrafted." In all this there is not the slightest allusion to any visible organization.

But the passage not merely contains nothing in support of the position under consideration; it also exhibits principles and facts which present in a clear and interesting light its utter fallacy. The design, the subjects, the requisitions, the distinctive blessings, of the Jewish economy, were essentially different from those of the Christian. The one related to the Jewish nation, and was designed to keep them a distinct people from the rest of mankind. The other relates to those whose hearts are renewed by the Spirit of God, of whatever nation, and has special reference to their spiritual and eternal interests. That two organizations, adapted respectively to the nature and design of these different economies, formed on principles and existing under circumstances so entirely dissimilar, should be the same, is impossible. This is the more obvious as there is nothing in their external history to suggest the idea that they are to be identified. The disciples of Christ were called out and established as a distinct community, subject to their own peculiar regulations, having the right of discipline over their own members, and pursuing their own specific ends, all, while the Jewish organization continued externally in existence, and the Jewish Christians generally observed its institutions. The Christian church, as visibly organized, can in no sense be identified with the Jewish theocracy. Its relations and ordinances are consequently established on independent grounds.

2. The passage is equally fatal to the position that infants are proper subjects for membership in the Christian church, and consequently entitled to its initiatory ordinance. That such a position receives no countenance from the supposed identity of the Jewish and Christian organizations, has been already shown. In addition to this, the passage clearly teaches that the only ground on which infant baptism is, or can be defended, does not exist. It establishes the principle, that all distinctions or privileges involving connection with the people of God, supposed to be acquired by natural birth, or independently of personal faith and repentance, are unknown in the kingdom of Christ. As it is unnecessary to repeat the evidence of this fact, it having been so fully exhibited in the preceding pages, so the principle need only be stated that its inconsistency with the theory and practice of

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infant baptism may be apparent. If infants, whether of believing or unbelieving parents, are connected with the people of God, or are fit subjects for entering into such a connection, it is only by virtue of their natural birth. It is vain to allege that their parents may be the spiritual seed of Abraham, and consequently interested in the promises of grace. The point at issue is the relation, not of the parents, but of the children. The only relations which can possibly be claimed in their behalf are natural, or those for which they are by nature qualified. But the argument of the apostle exhibited above is decisive that in the kingdom of Christ no such relations are recognized. In this the Christian economy differs essentially from the Jewish. This difference the apostle has not only fully exhibited, but he has made it the very foundation of his argument. The baptism and church-membership of infants can be defended only as this difference is overlooked, or denied, and the Jewish and Christian economies are made to correspond in the very point in which it is the object of the apostle to show that they differ, or, more properly, are opposed.

We shall not be understood as intimating in these remarks that the argument of the apostle is directed specifically against the practice of infant baptism; for as this was unknown in the primitive ages of the church, there was no occasion for any allusion to it. But to the only ground on which the practice can be defended, it is directly and irreconcilably at variance. Of the entire system of pedobaptism, it is a complete and unequivocal refutation.

T.

ARTICLE III.

IMAGINATION;-ITS USE AND ABUSE IN PHILOSOPHY.

THE same instinctive feeling which makes the strong man glory in his strength, and the racer in his speed, impels the active spirits of the world to indulge in those creations of the imagination which are the exclusive privilege of rational beings. This kind of mental activity is both natural and constant. That it is natural is evident from the two-fold fact, that nature has furnished us with the requisite powers, and that she makes nothing either superfluous or amiss. That it is constant is evident from the observation of daily life. As some writer has observed, "the little girl of the nursery" shows forth the workings of the imagination, when she anticipates the manifold pleasures of womanhood, with its thrice gay accompaniments, its domestics, its equipages, and its gallant companion,-some hero of romance. The boy revels in its delights, when, just freed from the leading-strings of his nurse, he anticipates the freedom and pride of the year of his majority,—the time when he shall be a man, like his father, shall have his father's freedom, with a little more leisure, his father's horse, with trappings a little gayer,—his father's word of command, with obedience a little more prompt, or when, somewhat older, he sees in himself the "mighty hunter," the successful captain, or the famous orator.

The warrior has many a waking as well as sleeping dream, in which, as in the last dream of Marco Bozzaris, his imagination seems as

"light of thought, and gay of wing,

As Eden's garden bird."

The student and the philosopher, too, have certain times when this wildest but perhaps most beautiful of faculties is their almost sole companion. They love to yield to its wildest suggestions. They love to live and breathe in the atmosphere which it colors and fills with odors. They love to let it roam, free as mountain air, wherever it lists; and they rejoice the most when it plumes itself for its loftiest

flights, when it tells them of the unseen, the unknown, the unapproached, and the hitherto unapproachable, when it broods over a chaos of insulated facts, and gives life to systems which, to their partial eyes, seem perfectly to embody the great principles that always, though sometimes silently, pervade and combine those facts.

Is it not invidious, then, to stigmatize imagination as "that forward, delusive faculty, ever obtruding beyond its sphere," as the source, to be sure, of some good, but the parent of all evil? Imagination has its own appropriate functions and sphere. Within that sphere, and in the discharge of these functions, it is rightly used, and should be highly prized. Without that sphere, it is abused. All aberrations are alike, though not equally, injurious. All tend to disarrange the order of the parts, to introduce discord instead of harmony, to elicit error instead of truth.

We propose briefly to consider the province of imagination in philosophy, and hence to draw a line of demarkation between its use and abuse.

I. The imagination supplies a vacancy which, but for it, would be left in the mental organization. We have senses to furnish us with facts, memory to retain them, powers of association to combine and generalize them, and of reasoning, by which, from them, to deduce great general principles. But what faculty suggests theories, proposes solutions of problems, and asks questions? This is the exclusive province of imagination. It suggests, proposes and queries. Reason answers its questions, pronounces upon the validity of its proposed solutions, and sits in judgment upon the truth or falsity of its theories.

On every subject of human thought has imagination asked thousands of foolish, as well as thousands of wise questions. It asked, Cannot there be found the philosopher's stone? or an "elixir vitæ?" May not the whole great creation be resolved and explained by the properties of numbers? Are not matter and mind non-existences? Does not the earth slumber, the centre of the august universe? These and such as these are among its questions, to which reason and experiment have answered, "No."

But imagination has asked other wiser questions, the answers of which are fraught with the best interests of our

race.

It asked Copernicus, and probably a Grecian sage

more than two thousand years before him, does not our earth describe its mighty circle around the sun, the great centre of our system? Reason answers "Yes." It asks again, As the moons revolve about their planets, and these about the sun, do not the countless suns that fill immensity revolve about the centre of their respective groups, and these groups move in slow and solemn magnificence around some common centre of the universe? Does not the eye of the Eternal, resting upon this almost infinite array of circling and intercircling worlds, behold each acting its own separate part, and all conspiring to form one huge consolidated whole? It asks again, May not certain celestial phenomena explain the formation, and suggest some truthful hints concerning the decay and final dissolution, of worlds? To these questions reason is hitherto partially silent. It may yet answer, and in that answer may be developed an array of principles that shall astonish the world.

Imagination asked Newton, Cannot the analogies of a falling apple explain some of the most wonderful phenomena of the heavens? Profiting by the hint, reason has demonstrated the well nigh universal presence and action of a power, to which we are indebted for the order and harmony of the universe. It asked, Is not the diamond inflammable? And the diamond has been burned. It suggested the models of those complicated machines which have so materially diminished labor; of those contrivances which have given to man a power, so that even "the winds and the sea obey him;" of those arts which ameliorate the sufferings, and contribute to the necessities and comforts of mankind.

Thus does imagination ever query. It proposes a thousand solutions of the enigma of man's existence and faculties. It sets forth the ideas of various minds; it proposes new theories of its own creation, and bids you choose between them. Indefatigable in its attempts at the explanation of facts, it proposes theory after theory, until reason either pronounces. a discovery made, or, with many an unanswered question before it, gives up the subject in despair. It suggests plan after plan for the practicable amelioration of human woe. It proffers many a resolution of the perplexing problems of philosophy.

Such is the ordinary use of imagination in philosophical inquiries. It is a kind of scout, sent forth to learn of the