Deprive us of the prophecies under the Old Law and the miracles under the New, and we should be deprived of all means of proving Christianity as a supernatural religion, as supernaturally inspired and revealed, and should be reduced, as Mr. Owen is, to naked rationalism, or downright demonism. The prodigies of the devil do not carry us above nature. They are indeed Satan’s efforts to counterfeit genuine miracles, but at
best they only give us the superhuman for the supernatural. If the author could prove the Christian miracles are not miracles, though credible as facts, or if he could bring them into the category of the spirit-manifestations, he would in effect divest Christianity of its supernatural character, and render it all as worthless as any man-constructed system of ethics or philosophy. His Christianity, as set forth in his pages, has not a trace of the Christianity of Christ, and is as little worthy of being called Christian as the bald Unitarianism of Channing, or the Deism of Rousseau, Tom Paine, or Voltaire, or the Free Religion of Emerson, Higginson, and Julia Ward Howe.
What Mr. Owen regards as a highly important fact, and which he urges Protestants to accept as the means of triumphing over the Catholic Church, namely, that the Christian miracles and the spirit-manifestations are worthy of precisely the same respect and confidence in a Christian point of view, is far less important than he in his profound ignorance of Christianity imagines. How far he will be successful with Protestants we know not; but his success, we imagine, will be greatest among people of his own class, who, having no settled belief in any religion, who know little of the principles of Christianity, are, as all such people are, exceedingly credulous and superstitious. These people hover on the borders of Protestantism, have certain sympathies with the Reformation, but it would be hardly just to call them in the ordinary sense of the term Protestants. Yet Protestantism, being substantially a revival in principle of the ancient Gentile apostasy which led to the worship of the devil in the place of God before our Lord’s advent, there can be no doubt that Protestants are peculiarly exposed to Satanic invasions, and there is no certainty that they may not follow Mr. Owen back to the devil-worship from which Christianity rescued the nations that embraced it. But we have said enough for the present. Perhaps we may say more hereafter.
[159] 1. The Debatable Land between this World and the Next. With Illustrative Narratives. By Robert Dale Owen. New York: Carleton & Co. 1872. 16mo, pp. 542.
2. Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World. With Narrative Illustrations. By Robert Dale Owen. Philadelphia: Lippincott & Co. 1860. 16mo, pp. 528.
THE ANNUNCIATION.
MARCH 27TH.
She kneels in prayer—a childlike, virgin form;
What purity is mirrored in her eyes!
Her dove-like glances, with devotion warm,
Are raised in worship, to the midnight skies—
But look! a heavenly radiance bright has shone
Around the virgin chosen of the Lord;
In her rapt prayer she hears the angel’s tone,
“Hail! full of grace! for lo! upon the word
Of thy consent waits now the heavenly dove,
Whose wings o’ershadowing thee shall lightly rest
One moment on thy pure and humble breast,
And make thee by that awful seal of love
The mother of thy God!” She bows her head,
While fiat mihi in meek tones is said.