Before quitting this part of the subject, we have a word or two to say on the doctrine of the Fourierists concerning the primitive state of man. They regard the paradisaical state, what they call Edenism, as a state of infancy, in which man is ignorant, without power or force. They consider man before he sinned as less knowing, less strong and energetic, than afterwards. Thus by sin came wisdom, power, and force. How far this is removed from the Christian doctrine, that by sin man lost the justice and sanctity in which he was constituted, and that the wages of sin is death, — death temporal, spiritual, and eternal, we trust our readers have no occasion to be told. But we wish to consider it in another point of view. We would like to know where, in the Sacred Scriptures, we find the evidence that the primitive man was thus ignorant and weak? Moses says not one word of it, but, on the contrary, teaches us that Adam was not thus ignorant; for the Lord God brought the various animals to Adam, to see what he would call them, "and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field." This seems to imply that the man was not altogether ignorant, and we much. doubt whether the great Charles Fourier himself ever knew enough to give to every living thing its appropriate name; for the name which Adam gave was the true name, a name which expressed the nature and character of the creature named, "And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof." The Church has always held the opposite view, and inferred from the free and open communion which Adam enjoyed with his Maker, not to speak of his intercourse with the angels, that he was really more knowing than any of his posterity. Moreover, there would have been great injustice in punishing him. so severely for his transgression, if he had sinned. merely through ignorance. He was punished because he sinned knowingly, voluntarily, without any reason or motive out of himself, save the temptation of the

Devil, which temptation he had the ability to resist. This, we believe, is the Christian view. Whether Adam knew what he knew by the single forces of his nature, or by supernatural illumination and grace, it is not necessary now to inquire. But this much is certain, he possessed perfect human nature, and was constituted in a state of complete justice and sanctity, stood in the favor of God, and would have known no evil, would have lived for ever, without undergoing the change we call death, had he not sinned. He knew and communed with God; and knowledge of God includes all other knowledge; for who knows the Creator knows the creature. But this knowledge he lost by the Fall; and it was not till after the Fall, that man was found in that state of ignorance and weakness, which the Fourierists assume to have been his primitive state. In asserting the contrary, Fourierism does but give another proof of its utter repugnancy to Christianity.

II. We pass now to our second charge against Fourierism; namely, that it seeks to supersede the Church.

We have elaborated the points we have considered, as some of our readers may think, at an unreasonable length; but we have done so not for the sake of vindicating ourselves from the charge of having misrepresented Fourierism, but because the whole Fourier doctrine, even down to its minutest phalansterian arrangements, is involved in them. If the Fourier doctrine is not, on these points, what we have endeavoured to show that it is, it is nothing but a string of absurdities and contradictions from beginning to end. It has no systematic sense or consistency, no theoretic principle, no regular logical progression. It is, moreover, only on the supposition of the goodness of human nature and the sanctity of the inclinations, and the further supposition, that the disorder which exists has its cause in the false industrial and social systems which have obtained, and still obtain, that the remedy proposed can have any adaptation to the disease, or any promise of proving effectual. This is so obvious, that we shall

spend no time in proving it, but proceed at once to show that the remedy it proposes is as different from that proposed by Christianity as is its view of the dis

ease.

In our number for July, addressing the Fourierists,

we say,

"Christianity assumes that the evil originates in man's abuse of his freedom, that here [in this abuse] is the cause of that evil in nature and outward circumstances, which reacts upon him with such terrible vengeance; it therefore proposes, as its method of recovery, to lay the axe at the root of the tree, to cut off the evil in its source, by purifying the heart, out of which are the issues of life. ..... You reverse this; the natural instincts, appetites, passions, and affections of man, you hold, are only so many revelations of the will of the Creator; and the fact, that man possesses these, is a sure indication that it was the will of God that they should be gratified.”

The Phalanx does not and will not contradict this statement. The statement, so far as concerns the Christian doctrine, all will admit; so far as it concerns Fourierism, the quotations we have made abundantly prove its correctness. The work proposed by Christianity is, to regenerate the soul, to purify the heart, and to bring man into communion with God; the work proposed by Charles Fourier is, to find and establish a social and industrial order which shall afford a free and full gratification to all our desires, to all our inclinations, or tendencies. The difference in the point of view of each leads necessarily to this difference in the work proposed by each. Christianity, regarding man as being by nature, since the Fall, a child of wrath, prone to evil, unclean within and without, sold under sin, in bondage to the Devil, who has power over him, seeks to deliver him from this bondage, to restore him to inward moral freedom, to cure him of evil concupiscence, and present him holy and blameless, covered with the robe of Christ's righteousness, before his God. In a word, it regards man as inwardly diseased, and it seeks to cure him. Fourierism, on the contrary, regards man as whole in himself, but as the victim of the false medium in which he lives. He is as the plant struggling to work its way

up to the light, but kept down and turned out of its direct course upward by overlaying rocks, which it is too feeble to push aside. Man is diseased, but only so far as affected by the surrounding medium. The seat of the disease is in the medium, not in him. Its effort, therefore, is to heal the medium, - sure that then man himself will be instantly convalescent. According to Christianity, the seat of the disease is in man; according to Fourierism, it is in social and industrial institutions. Here is a broad distinction, and there must needs be a wide difference between the disease recognized by the one and the disease recognized by the other, and one would naturally conclude, a priori, an equally wide difference between the remedy proposed by the one and that proposed by the other. Let us see if it be so.

Christianity proposes to remedy the disease by removing the curse under which man by nature labors. This it does by the blood of the atonement, applied to the individual by the water of baptism, which is called the "washing of regeneration," and by the infusion of confirming and strengthening grace, whereby the sinner is freed from the dominion of sin, is strengthened to keep the law of God, and to attain to true justice, sanctity, and love. It renews and communicates the power of a higher life, gives us the power to become sons of God. It presupposes, that by sin we lost our sonship, and by nature have not power to regain it, nor to retain it; and it recognizes the necessity of our receiving supernatural aid, which aid, when received, becomes in us the ability to will and to do what God commands. The great practical matter is the communication of this ability or power, which is "Christ formed within us, the hope of glory." The great question concerns the means by which it is communicated. These means are chiefly the sacraments of the Church, which only the Church has, and which only the Church can rightfully administer. Hence, the Church becomes, under God, in the hands, so to speak, of the Holy Spirit, the medium of our redemption from sin, our restoration to justice and sanctity, and growth in

true knowledge and love. For this purpose Christ founded the Church, for this end he sustains it by his presence with it "all days unto the consummation of

the world."

Now, Fourierism, by asserting the native holiness of man and his instincts, and transferring the seat of the disease from man to the medium in which he lives, declares this remedy unnecessary, so far as it concerns man himself, and obviously inappropriate, so far as concerns the diseased medium. It declares, then, that there is no necessity for the sacraments, because there is no need of the infusion of supernatural power, and, therefore, no need of the Church to possess and administer the sacraments by which it is communicated. It goes further still, and asserts that there was no need of the atonement, therefore no need of the Christian Sacrifice, and then no need of Christ, and then, of course, that Christianity is all "much ado about nothing." We defy The Phalanx to get away from this conclusion. Whoso denies the Fall, in the Christian sense, and the corruption of human nature through Adam's sin, denies all necessity of the Christian dispensation, and virtually the Christian religion itself. There is no use in multiplying words on this point. We repeat, then, what we said in our July number,"Christianity is a system of means divinely devised and instituted for the recovery of man from sin, his restoration to justice and sanctity, and his growth in knowledge and love. This system of means you [the Fourierists] reject, and substitute therefor the discoveries of Fourier, and for the Christian Church, its ministries, sacraments, and disciplines, the Fourier phalanx, with its groups, series, and alternations of labor." What now shall we say to The Phalanx's denial that the Fourierists reject Christianity as a system of means divinely devised and instituted for the recovery of man? All we can say is, if they accept it, they are much less consequent reasoners than we have given them credit for. Christianity, with its ministries, sacraments, and disciplines, is, on their hypothesis, superfluous and absurd.