III. A DECLARATION OF DUTY. "Repent." It must be "Repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." Repentance is the earthly side of faith, faith the heavenly side of repentance;" or 66 "Repentance is the tear in the eye of faith." We ask not for the garments and manners of repentance; these the hypocrites can furnish; we want the thing: change of will, of purpose, of object. Oh, sinner, have you not had opportunities, encouragement, instruction, warning? The dark gulf that rolls onward to hell is not without beacon or buoy, or lightship; the coastline, the quick-sand, the rocks, the maelström, are flooded with Gospel light; and he who in our day will push on and despise the riches of the goodness and forbearance and longsuffering of God, will realize in fact the closing words of Bunyan's immortal pilgrim, "Then I saw that there was a way to hell even from the gates of heaven.” IV. A FORESHADOWING OF DESTINY. "I gave her space to repent, and she repented not. Behold," &c. How is it that man can foresee his destiny? Because he can pursue a syllogism to its conclusion. In eternity there are two places of abode; a palace and a prison. The path leading to these is on earth, the fitness for these is accomplished in time. The birthchastening, meetening, adorning for heaven, is done here ; and evil deeds and wilful darkness done and loved on earth, will most certainly fit a man for hell. Man is related to eternity. His memory is related to the book of God's remembrance; his conscience to the verdict which shall come from the great white throne! They will ever tally and agree. The time for the sinner to stop, to think, to turn, is Now, for the stream of time runs to the ocean of eternity; this limited period shall melt into the illimitable, this finite into the infinite. Then, "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still." (Rev. xxii. 11.) H. T. M. The Pulpit and its Handmaids. Extracts from the works of RICHTER. Ephemera die all at sunset, and no insect of this class has ever sported in the beams of the morning sun. Happier are ye, little human ephemera! Ye played only in the ascending beams, and in the early dawn, and in the eastern light. Hovered for a little space over a world of freshness and of blossoms, and fell asleep in innocence before yet the morning dew was exhaled. A woman who could always love, would never grow old; and the love of mother and wife would often give or preserve many charms, if it were, not too often combined with parental and conjugal anger. There remains in the faces of women who are naturally serene and peaceful, and of those rendered so by religion, an after-spring; and later, an after-summer, the reflex of their most beautiful bloom. Honour, honesty, firm will, truthfulness, advancing in spite of threatening wounds, endurance of misfortune, (or the blows of fate) frankness, self-respect, self-equipoise, contempt of opinion, justice, and perseverance. All these, and similar words, denote only onehalf of the moral nature, moral strength, and elevation. The second half includes all that refers to the lives of the kingdom of love, gentleness, beneficence. These may be called moral beauty. FORGIVENESS OF SPIRIT. Nothing is more moving to man than the spectacle of reconciliation. Our weaknesses are thus idemnified, and are not too costly, being the price we pay for the hour of forgiveness; and the archangel who has never felt anger, has reason to envy the man who subdues it. When thou forgivest, the man who has pierced thy heart stands to thee in the relation of the sea-worm that perforates the shell of the mussel, which straightway closes the worm with a pearl. FORGIVENESS, A NECESSARY VIRTUE. Man has an unfortunate readiness in the evil hour, after receiv ing an affront, to draw together all the moon-spots on the other person into an outline of shadow and a night-piece, and to transform a single deed into a whole life; and this only in order that he may thoroughly relish the pleasure of being angry. In love, he has, fortunately, the opposite faculty of crowding together all the light parts and rays of its object into one focus, by means of the burning glass of imagination, and letting its sun burn without its spots; but he, too, generally does this only when the beloved, and often censured being, is already beyond the skies. In order, however, that we should do this sooner and oftener, we ought to act like Wincklemann, but only in another way. As he usually set aside a particular half-hour on each day for the purpose of beholding and meditating on his too happy existence in Rome, so we ought daily or weekly to dedicate and sanctify a solitary hour for the purpose of summing up the virtues of our families, our wives, our children, and our friends, and viewing them in this beautiful crowded assemblage of their good qualities. And, indeed, we should do so for this reason, that we may not forgive and love too late, when the beloved beings are already departed hence, and are beyond our reach. INGRATITUDE. We do not marvel at the sunrise of a joy, only at its sunset. Then, on the other hand, we are amazed at the commencement of a sorrow-storm, but that it should go off in gentle showers we think quite natural. DEMAND OF LOVE. Love requires not so much proofs as expressions of love. Love demands little else than the power to feel, and to requite love. SEARCH AFTER TRUTH. According to Democritus, truth lies at the bottom of a well, the depth of which, alas! gives but little hope of release. To be sure, one advantage is derived from this, that the water serves for a mirror in which truth may be reflected. I have heard, however, that some philosophers, in seeking for truth, to pay homage to her, have seen their own image, and adored it instead. Theological Notes and Queries. OPEN COUNCIL. [The utmost freedom of honest thought is permitted in this department. The reader must therefore use his own discriminating faculties, and the Editor must be allowed to claim freedom from responsibility.] Queries to be answered. 14. In 1 John v. 16, there are two deaths mentioned, "A sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it." What sin is meant by the first? and does the second refer to the sin against the Holy Ghost? In verse 18 it is said, "Whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is born of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not." Does not that rest on the doctrine-once in grace always in grace? Is there not a possibility of falling? What did St. Paul mean when he said, "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall."-W. H. S. 15. If this world, renovated and reconstituted, is to be the future abode of the blessed, in what sense did Christ" go to prepare a place" for His people? CAMERON. 16. By the probation of angels, I mean the same as the probation of man in its commonly received meaning. I have no source of information on the subject; it is the very thing I want. The passage in Jude to which you refer, Bushnell says does not refer to angels, but to man. But that is not exactly my question. If there was any means of ascertaining if all angels have passed their trial-of course supposing them to have been, like man, placed on trial. I have often seen it stated as an acknowledged fact that they have, but have never seen a proof given.-W. G. PASCOE. 17. The surviving friends of deceased persons very rarely appear to suffer from any fears or doubts respecting the favorable acceptance and reception into heaven of the departed. In our daily experience, it is very seldom indeed that we hear the expression of any anxiety or uneasiness upon the point. Whence this apparent indifference or composure?-MEMENTO MORI. 18.-As supernatural power is not a converting or regenerative agency, and as miracles would appear to be only adapted to affect minds of a low or wrong intellectual status, may I ask from what point of view the miracles of Christ are of value or importance to the men of the present day? The hand which causes our wonderful planet, with its many millions of inhabitants, to revolve round the sun, can, assuredly, without effort, give sight to the blind, health to the sick, speech to the dumb, life to the dead, and feed thousands with a few loaves and fishes.-CŒLITUS MIHI VIRES. Literary Notices. [We hold it to be the duty of an Editor either to give an early notice of the books sent to him for remark, or to return them at once to the Publisher. It is unjust to praise worthless books; it is robbery to retain unnoticed ones.] THE REVIEWER'S CANON. In every work regard the author's end, Since none can compass more than they intend. THE BOOK OF JOB. By the late HERMANN HEDWIG BERNARD, Ph.D., M.A. Edited, with a Translation and additional Notes, by FRANK CHANCE, B.A., M.B. Vol. I., (containing the whole of the original work). London: Hamilton, Adams, & Co. THE erudite and profound author of this book was, for seven and twenty years, Hebrew teacher in the University of Cambridge; a fact, which, in itself, is a guarantee of competency to deal with this, the oldest and greatest poem of the world. The following are some of the advantages which Dr. Bernard's exposition of this book possesses over all others' with which we are acquainted. (1) The bards of this old poem, or if you will, the actors of this old drama, are so treated throughout that their characters are found to remain intact from the outset to the end. (2) The speech of Elihu, which most other expositors have treated as empty bombastic, the grandiloquent utterance of a shallow, conceited, and presumptuous youth, is here made to appear the most sage-like and eloquent part of the book. (3) The exposition is conducted by the help of the Hebrew contained in the Bible itself, and not, as is generally the case, by constant recourse to cognate languages. (4.) Scarcely a verse or even a word is employed in the interpretation disagreeing with the established version, the reason and the rectitude of which the author does not endeavour to justify. Into the questions as to what class the book may be considered to belong, whether the speakers were fictitious or real characters; if they existed, where they lived, and who was really the author of the work, Dr. Bernard does not enter. His ruling purpose has been to ascertain the train of reasoning pursued throughout. As the production of one of the first Hebraists of our age, a shrewd and profound thinker, a ripe scholar, greatly possessed with the spirit of the thought and religion of the ancients, this work will be hailed by every genuine Biblical student. THE BAMPTON LECTURES. By J. HANNAH, D.C.L. London: John Murray. THIS work contains eight lectures, the subjects of which are :-Inspiration and Revelation, their respective definitions and range: The reality of the Revelation as established by a contrast with heathen religions: The reality in the Inspiration as illustrated by the Atinomies of Scripture: Its reality as illustrated by the duplex sensus: The Human Element: History and Science: Moral Difficulties. Superiority of Scripture to its writers: and-General Conclusion. The mere statements of the subjects will indicate to our readers that the volume touches the vitalities of the great book of Scripture. The reverent and learned author discusses these momentous subjects with great ability, and in a spirit scientific and devout. The work is worthy of a place by the side of the most-famed volumes in the Bampton Series. FRUITS FROM CANAAN'S BOUGHS. By JOHN RUDALL, Barrister-at-Law. London: James Nisbet & Co. THE author of this book considers that in no age of the Church was Divine truth more powerfully exhibited than during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and with the great religious writers of those ages he has held fellowship for many years, made extracts from their ponderous folios and worm-eaten volumes. The result is this work. Belonging as the author evidently does to what has been called the 'savoury school" of orthodox Christians, his selections agree with his own spirit and views. He has not perhaps sought the most racy, farreaching and brilliant utterances of the old writers, but those sweet and comforting things that the Christians of his own type will relish and prize. 66 THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS LIFE IN ENGLAND. By SAMUEL ROWLES PATTISON. London: Jackson, Walford & Hodder. 66 THIS work comprises a rich store of historic information of a very valuable kind. The author looks at the history of England through the conviction, that its progress in every thing that is good in man is to be ascribed to Christianity. "The first Christianity of this country," says the author, was communicated by an impulse of that wave which beginning its flow at Jerusalem, on the death of the proto-martyr Stephen, passed over Asia Minor, by Macedonia, into Greece; thence to Italy, Africa, Spain and Gaul; everywhere fertilizing as it flowed. It came to us colored with some few corruptions which had been thrown into its pure waters in their westward course, but still free from the baneful mixtures which Rome afterwards added to the noble current. The earliest historical relations of British Christianity, rejecting the hypotheses which would assign its origin to Apostolic preaching—or to the influence of Claudia, celebrated by the verse of Martial, and possibly the same as is referred to in the epistle to Timothy-or to Brau, the father of the patriotic British king Caractacus, appear to have been with ecclesiastical Gaul, of which Lyons and Vienne were the chief cities. |