stendom to its imperial ascendency. By itself,
the habit of lofty contemplation would have made them pietists or
Christian psalmists, and a mere turn for definition would have made them
quibblers or schoolmen; but the two united, and together animated by a
strenuous faith, made them theologians. In such intellects the
seventeenth century abounded, but we question if in dialectic skill,
guided by sober judgment, and in extensive acquirements, mellowed by a
deep spirituality, it yielded an equivalent to Dr. Owen.

Although there is only one door to the kingdom of heaven, there is many
an entrance to scientific divinity. There is the gate of Free Inquiry as
well as the gate of Spiritual Wistfulness. And although there are
exceptional instances, on the whole we can predict what school the
new-comer will join, by knowing the door through which he entered. If
from the wide fields of speculation he has sauntered inside the sacred
inclosure; if he is an historian who has been carried captive by the
documentary demonstration--or a poet who has been arrested by the
spiritual sentiment--or a philosopher who has been won over by the
Christian theory, and who has thus made a hale-hearted entrance within
the precincts of the faith,--he is apt to patronize that gospel to which
he has given his accession, and like Clemens Alexandrinus, or Hugo
Grotius, or Alphonse de Lamartine, he will join that school where Taste
and Reason alternate with Revelation, and where ancient classics and
modern sages are scarcely subordinate to the "men who spake as they were
moved by the Holy Ghost." On the other hand, if "fleeing from the wrath
to come," through the crevice of some "faithful saying," he has
struggled into enough of knowledge to calm his conscience and give him
peace with Heaven, the oracle which assured his spirit will be to him
unique in its nature and supreme in its authority, and, a debtor to that
scheme to which he owes his very self, like Augustine, and Cowper, and
Chalmers, he will join that school where Revelation is absolute, and
where "Thus saith the Lord" makes an end of every matter. And without
alleging that a long process of personal solicitude is the only right
commencement of the Christian life, it is worthy of remark that the
converts whose Christianity has thus commenced have usually joined that
theological school which, in "salvation-work," makes least account of
man and most account of God. Jeremy Taylor, and Hammond, and