honor to any other profession; but no man stands high enough from native or acquired powers to do honor to this. What being did God ever create that would not be dignified, ennobled, by being appointed embassador to a world? The man who will lightly assume or lightly lay by these robes is a trifler whose tread pollutes the Holy of Holies. The calling demands an undivided mind and heart and life, all the culture that schools or books or the world can give; all the moral energy, faith, and love that can be brought down from heaven; and after all these, the preacher who is worthy of his calling cries out, "Who is sufficient for these things?"

ART. II. THE MORAL CONDITION OF INFANTS.

We do not hesitate in affirming the salvation of all infants dying in infancy. For, 1. Infants are innocent of all voluntary violation of God's law, and consequently uncondemned and uncondemnable. 2. Being uncondemned, there is no legal impediment in the way of their restoration to spiritual life, or rather the impartation to them of spiritual life in regeneration, if it please God to impart this grace in infancy. 3. Being passive in God's hands, they can offer no resistance to any work which he may choose to perform in them by his Holy Spirit as preparatory to the heavenly state. 4. They, in common with all human beings, are redeemed by the blood of Christ, and are graciously entitled to eternal life, and also to a meetness for heaven, either actually imparted or else placed within reach in probation. 5. As those dying in infancy are never placed upon probation, God stands graciously pledged to save them unconditionally.

And here we may safely leave them, assured that no human being will ever be deprived of his right, through Christ, to eternal life, except by his own fault in a voluntary rejection of Christ, or an equivalent refusal of such terms as may be offered in the dispensation under which he lives. The child dying in infancy has an indisputable title to the heavenly inheritance, and to an unconditional preparation for its enjoyment. But it

does not follow that all children have in all respects the same claim. Nor does it follow that even those dying in infancy come into the world regenerate; nor that they are "born of the Spirit" as soon as they are "born of the flesh;" but only that this spiritual birth takes place before death.

We are perfectly at liberty, then, to inquire, what is the moral, or rather spiritual condition of a human being up to that period where infancy passes into responsible agency-the period where probation begins? Infancy or its equivalent continues up to that period, but not, strictly speaking, beyond it. Does the child, or does he not, enter upon probation in a regenerate state?

An idea, vague, undefined, almost without form, has long existed in some minds, that, in virtue of the atonement, a gracious state substantially the same as the new birth, is the birthright inheritance of every descendant of Adam. A posthumous and unfinished work of the pious and gifted Mercein has given partial form and expression to this idea; and the names of F. G. Hibbard and Gilbert Haven, names loved and honored in our Israel, have given it additional currency. Still, it is not yet very well developed, nor very accurately defined. It lacks completeness of detail and distinctness of outline. This is to be regretted. If the doctrine is true, and especially if, as Mr. Haven somewhat exultantly claims, Methodism is to have the honor of reforming the theology of Christendom upon this point, we ought to know just what we are receiving or rejecting, advocating or opposing.

It will be our aim in this discussion to deal candidly with these writers, and to charge them with holding no views which they do not distinctly avow, though at times their language may seem to imply much more. Still, we shall feel perfectly at liberty to point out the logical tendency of their views, and to follow them out to their legitimate results.

There are two points of primary importance, which are so distinctly avowed that the meaning cannot be mistaken. One relates to the moral effect resulting to infancy from the atonement, the other to the period at which this effect is produced. A third point, relating to the extent of this effect, is stated with equal distinctness, yet is not decidedly avowed as forming a part of the theory, and probably would not be without some

important limitations; though, as will be seen, it is the necessary complement of the theory, imperatively demanded by the system of interpretation adopted by these brethren.

1. It is distinctly claimed that infants are in a regenerate state a state in every thing essential, identical with that resulting from the new birth in the case of adults.

Mr. Mercein says:*

The law assigns as one of the penalties of evil its self-perpetuation, its inability to every virtue, and its insensibility to, and forfeiture of, spiritual influences. The atonement withdraws this penalty, and gives, in germ at least, and a new birth, the elements of purity with a capability of growth, under influences adapted to our spiritual constitution. In other words, the atonement regenerates. These are precisely the benefits conferred in adult conversion.-P. 13.

Mr. Haven, who is bold almost to recklessness in his statements, says:

To be a son of Adam till we willfully cast away our birthright is to be in Christ a son of God.-P. 9.

Again he says:

It must be possible for God, it is his duty, through the atonement of Christ, so to impart of the regenerating grace that flows from justification to the new-born soul, that it may grow in the likeness of its God and Saviour, and, never knowing the hour when he was engrafted into him, may always be conscious of the life of God in his soul.-P. 12.

Mr. Hibbard is more elaborate, perhaps more cautious, in his language, but not less explicit. He defines "regeneration" to be "life-the life of God in human nature." And after showing some of the circumstances under which this life is received by adults, goes on to say,

But does all this prove that in infants there cannot and does not exist a principle of divine life, a seminal regeneration, graciously imparted, or begotten, of the same quality or nature, and from the same efficient source of life as that in adults? differing indeed in extent and force, and in the circumstances and conditions of bestowment, but not in essence, quality, or efficacy.-P. 647.

*The quotations from Mercein and Haven are taken from Mr. Haven's article in the Methodist Quarterly Review for January, 1859. Those from Mr. Hibbard are taken from the Quarterly for October, 1859. References are made accordingly.

Quotations to the same effect might be greatly multiplied, but it is needless.

2. Another point claimed by these writers is, that the effects of the atonement upon our nature, whatever those effects may be, are coincident with the effects of the fall.

Mr. Mercein says:

From the moment that the law was broken the atonement became operative in Adam and his race.-P. 13.

Mr. Haven says:

Our connection with Adam corrupts and ruins us at our conception; our connection with the second Adam restores us to as fair a condition at the same point as it would have been had the first parents kept their first estate.-P. 10.

Mr. Hibbard says:

We take the ground that children are reckoned to Christ and his Church; that as soon as their distinct entity or individuality is established, as soon as they become human, possessed of a human soul and endued with the faculties (undeveloped) of a moral being, as soon as the ego of percipient existence is formed, so that the capacity for moral happiness or misery becomes a property or possibility of being, so soon the human soul comes within the all comprehensive and gracious provisions of the atonement. The date of redemptive power and grace to each individual of our race is coincident with the date of existence.-P. 635.

Again,

Whatever effects flowed from Adam's sin, or from Christ's righteousness, to the human family, flowed to infants, as such, in the first instance. They flowed to our humanity, our common nature, our race, and they reached human nature at the moment it became human.-P. 636.

3. Another point clearly set forth by these writers is, that the actual effects of the atonement are not only commensurate with the effects of. the fall, completely counteracting, neutralizing those effects, but that they superabound beyond them. Mr. Haven, as already quoted, says:

Our connection with the second Adam restores us to as fair a condition. . . as it would have been had the first parents kept their first estate.

A little further on he says:

Christ died for the race. By virtue of that death the curse entailed on it by Adam was removed from each soul, until the soul voluntarily adopted it as its own.-P. 17.

Mr. Hibbard says:

The apostle employs the terms life and death to set forth the effects of Adam's sin and Christ's righteousness upon the human race.-P. 636.

In this connection he says further,

The grace is not only co-extensive with the death and counteracts it, but it superabounds and overflows. . . . Whatever, therefore, is the effect of Adam's sin upon our race, denoted by the term death' we find its sovereign antidote and opposite in the effect of the grace of Christ, denoted by the terms "life" and the "receiving abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness." If the "grace" the "gift of righteousness," and "life," do not annul the death sentence and restore to life, and even go beyond it, the argument [of St. Paul] means nothing: is merely a deceptive hyperbole.-P. 637.

Again,

Whatever that "condemnation " was, as to its legal or moral effect upon our race, it was effectually removed by the efficacious righteousness of Christ, and a "justification to life" was bestowed in its stead. . . . The justification covers all the condemned, and reverses the "judgment" which stands against us, at the first moment when it would take effect.-P. 638.

It must be that these passages mean more than the writers intended, yet not more than the theory under consideration demands, as will be seen hereafter. But it was no doubt the intention of the authors to teach, that the effect of grace is to regenerate human nature in the same moment in which it becomes depraved, to impart spiritual life in the moment of spiritual death; or, in other words, that it meets and vanquishes death at the instant of his assault upon our incipient humanity, imparting life to that humanity at the very moment of its inception. Thus, death never actually takes place until it is brought on by voluntary transgression. Upon this point we take issue with them.

In settling such questions as this, our ultimate appeal is not, as Mr. Hibbard justly says, to human opinions or church tradition, but to the word of God. Yet is it not quite possible to set aside too readily the godly judgment of men equal at least to ourselves in learning, piety, and spiritual discernment? to