by Christians in other parts of the world with peculiar deference and respect. It was at Jerusalem that our Saviour conversed with his disciples, died, and rose again; it was there that the saints were first gathered together after the death of Jesus; and there that the miraculous gifts of the Spirit were first poured out upon them. Hence the community of Christians at Jerusalem was esteemed as a parent church, and its authority was the greater, because it was so long governed by some of the apostles. We may learn from the book of Acts, that the decrees of the assembled church in that city were received by Christians in other places with unqualified submission; and Paul requested the prayers of his brethren in Italy, that his services might be accepted by the saints at Jerusalem.2

It is equally indubitable, that during the same early periodthe period appointed for the first establishment in the world of the christian religion-the miraculous endowments of the Holy Ghost and the gift of direct inspiration were poured forth, not only on the apostles, but, in various degrees, and according to the nature of their respective callings, upon numerous other individuals. There is reason to believe, as has been elsewhere remarked, that such endowments were the common portion of all those persons, who filled the more eminent offices, or performed the more important duties of the primitive church.3

No one will deny that it was a duty of a highly important nature to address a doctrinal treatise to those persons, who had been the first to receive and disseminate the truths of Christianity; to stir up the pure mind in that very community of Christians, which was regarded by other churches with so much reverence and it is evidently very improbable that at such a period, so eminent a duty should devolve on any individual, who was not avowedly gifted with divine inspiration. This improbability is very much enhanced by the contents of the epistle itself, in which there is a manifest assumption of a very exalted authority. It abounds, more than almost any part of the sacred volume, in decisive declarations of the most important doctrines, in warm and fearless exhortation, and even in spirited rebuke.

Acts xv. 22-31.

2 Rom. xv. 31.-comp. Acts xi. 1–18; xxi. 18-25. 3 Essays on Christianity, 2d edit. 8vo. p. 98. dressed in this epistle; but if there is evidence of any further restriction, it surely points to Jerusalem rather than to Cæsarea. See Stuart, vol. i. p. 83. [p. 68.]

Of an authoritative exhibition of doctrine, there can scarcely be found a more sublime specimen, than in the commencement of this epistle: "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things; by whom also he made the worlds; who, being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high." Of severe reproof I would adduce as an instance, chap. v. 11-13, "Of whom (i. e. Melchizedek) we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing; for when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again, which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk and not of strong meat." Of fervid and powerful exhortation a more striking example need not be selected than chap. xii. 25-29, "See that ye refuse not him that speaketh; for if they escaped not, who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that (speaketh) from heaven, etc. etc." Surely it is no more than reasonable to believe, that the individual, who, in the first age of Christianity, could address, in language thus distinguished for its boldness, decision, and authority, the principal and parent community of Christians,-must either have been an apostle, or else one of those companions of the apostles, who were fully acknowledged in the church to be endowed with immediate and absolute inspiration.

Independently, however, of any consideration respecting the church to which this epistle was addressed, our reliance on its divine authority may safely be grounded (in connexion with its apostolic date) upon its own internal excellence and scriptural weight. Whether indeed we regard the gravity and efficacy of the language in which it is couched; or the high importance of the doctrines which it unfolds; or the power with which those doctrines are applied and enforced; we shall perceive ample reason for believing that it is rightly included in the canon

1 Also, for doctrine see ch. ii. 14-18; iv. 12, 13; vi. 4-8; vii. 24-28; xi. 1; xii. 22-24: for rebuke, xii. 4, 5: for exhortation, ii. 1-3; iii. 1, 2, 7, 8, 15; iv. 1, 2, 14—16; vi. 11, 12; x. 19–27; xii. 1-3; xiii. 1-19.

of inspired writings. To confine our, views, for the sake of brevity, to its doctrines ;-Dr. Owen observes that he who forms a just estimate of them "will be ready to conclude that the world may as well want the sun, as the church this epistle." Without assenting to this proposition, which is derogatory to the other scriptures, we may with truth remark, that had it not been for the epistle to the Hebrews, the revelation of christian truth would have been left comparatively incomplete; for there are recorded in that epistle doctrines of great moment, which are either not declared at all, or not declared with the same fulness and perspicuity, in any other part of the sacred volume. It is only in the epistle to the Hebrews, that we find a direct and explicit revelation of three great truths, respecting the sacerdotal and sacrificial observances of the ancient Jews; the first, that they were typical of Christ; the second, that they were in themselves utterly unprofitable for the purpose of redemption from sin; the third, that they were all annulled by the sacrifice of the Son of God, and by the introduction of a spiritual dispensation. Whether we consider the vast importance of these truths to the scheme of Christianity, or the strength and prevalence, in the Jewish believers, of those prejudices which they contradict and overturn, we must surely admit, that for their original promulgation and permanent record, no influence and authority would suffice, but those of direct and confessed inspiration. The priesthood of Jesus Christ is another doctrine of peculiar importance in the christian scheme,―a doctrine abounding with support and consolation to every humble believer. Now, although this doctrine is briefly declared in Psalm cx. it is unfolded at length, explained in its several particulars, and traced to its practical results, only in the epistle to the Hebrews.

Other doctrines, which are by no means peculiar to this epistle, are nevertheless declared in it with a preeminent degree of clearness and power. Where shall we find a more sublime description of the personal dignity and divine character of the Son of God, than in the first chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews? Where so luminous a statement of the practical operation of faith, as in the eleventh chapter of the same epistle? Or who shall persuade us that he was not inspired, who could draw that most forcible of contrasts, and, for the encouragement of believers in every age, pronounce with so much authority, that "we are not come unto the mount that might be touched and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and

440 Canonical Authority of the Epistle to the Hebrews. [JULY

tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words: which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more"-but "unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first born which are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel ?"

It is needless to carry our argument further. With all those persons who are accustomed to study this epistle for their spiritual benefit, may safely be left the consideration of the question, whether there is any part of the Bible-with the single exception of the recorded discourses of our Lord himself-in which, on the whole, the wisdom of God appears to be more deeply seated; any, upon which the power of the great Inspirer has produced more conspicuous effects; any, from which the Christian derives more frequent or more edifying lessons of doctrinal and practical truth?

Well may we be thankful to that superintending Providence, which has caused this invaluable treatise to be handed down to us from age to age, as a constituent part of the divine record; well may we be jealous of every attempt to shake its authority or to remove it from its place.

ART. II. THE NATURE AND MORAL INFLUENCE OE HEATHENISM, ESPECIALLY AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS, VIEWED IN THE LIGHT OF CHRISTIANITY.

By Prof. Tholuck of Halle. Translated by Prof. Emerson.

[CONCLUDED FROM PAGE 290.]

PART IV.

ON THE Influence of hEATHENISM UPON LIFE, PARTICULARLY AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.

SINCE, in their essential parts, the religions of heathenism are nothing but a religious conception or apprehension of the life of external nature; and since the chief point or characteristic of this natural life is its continual decay and continual generation; so in this manner death and generation became a chief object of concern in the ancient religions. We see this no where more plainly than among the inhabitants of India. One and the same original divine being, Brahm, (the same that lies at the foundation of all the phenomena of the world,) appears as god the creator, i. e. Brahma; as god the upholder, Vishnu; as god the reproducer after destruction, Siva.

The farther however this pantheistic worship advanced towards the West, the more this decay in natural life lost the reverence paid to it; it was too gloomy and depressing for the fickle Greeks and the colder Occidentals, although it flourished till a late period in Hither Asia, Syria, and Phrygia. On the

160 See a treatise on this point of heathenism containing fundamental information, which is here made use of, in Scheibel's Beiträge zur Kenntniss der alten Welt, Bresl. 1806. Th. II.

* Sinnlichkeit, here rendered sensuality, is sometimes more comprehensive in its import, embracing all the pleasures enjoyed by the senses. But in the ensuing section, it is used simply in the import of sensuality, with but one exception which will be noticed in its place. I have therefore preferred this rendering instead of so uncommon a term as sensualness or sensuousness. TRANS. 56

VOL. II. No. 7.