This emphatical term was not used among the Hebrews by detached individuals only, but on certain occasions by an assembly at large. It was adopted, also, in the public worship of the primitive Churches, and was continued among the Christians in following times; and Jerome informs us, that, in his time, at the conclusion of every public prayer, the united “Amen” of the people sounded like the fall of water, or the noise of thunder!-Buck.

ANALOGIES—in God's Word.

God's Word is as full of analogies as His works. The histories, offerings, and prophecies of the Old Testament are figures of better things which have been brought to light by the Gospel. The lessons of our Lord and His apostles teem with types. Almost every doctrine is given in duplicate: the spirit is provided with a body; a body clothes the spirit. Every fruitful vine has a strong elm to which it clings; every strong elm supports a fruitful vine.-Arnot.

ANALOGY-a Dangerous Weapon.

Analogy is a powerful weapon, and like all instruments of that kind, is extremely dangerous in unskilful hands.-Colton.

ANALOGY-a Telescope of the Mind.

Analogy, although it is not infallible, is yet that telescope of the mind by which it is marvellously assisted in the discovery of both physical and moral truth.-Colton.

ANALOGY.-The Use of

The important use of analogy in teaching is to fix the lesson on the imagination and the memory, as you might moor a boat to a tree on the river's brink to prevent it from gliding down during the night with the stream. A just analogy, suggested at the moment, serves to prevent the more ethereal spiritual conception from sliding out of its place.-Arnot.

ANECDOTES-Fashionable.

Anecdotes are quite fashionable; they often tell well, and that makes them fashionable. A just taste will direct you whether it will be best to fly your anecdote, or keep it in the cage. Keep it in the cage by all means if you are a party in it, or say as Paul said "I knew a man," etc.-Dr. Sturtevant.

ANECDOTES.-The Use of

A pleader at the bar, or a speaker in Parliament, has new materials to deal with every time he rises to address an audience; but we, as clergymen, have nothing to present but old and familiar truth; having to urge upon sluggish minds the application of principles in which they have been instructed from childhood. Still, have we done all we can to meet this difficulty? Do we habitually, by means of diversified presentments of our subject, interesting and illustrative criticisms upon our text, corroborations drawn from the ever-varied teachings of nature, providence, observation, history, try to throw new life and interest into our weekly-recurring theme? Why have we such a pious shrinking from the introduction into a sermon of a pertinent and telling anecdote? That these antipathies are of modern growth there is no doubt. We are informed by an historian of some note, that "one of the methods by which the medieval

preachers reached the hearts of their poor hearers, was by the introduction of every-day proverbs and household sayings;" whilst of the Venerable Bede he says:-"His great delight seems to have been to find some anecdote which would suit his subject and his auditors, and to dwell on hardly anything else."D. Moore.

ANGELS-in our Assemblies.

Angels are actually, though invisibly, in the midst of our worshipping assemblies, witnesses of our deportment, and hearers of that Gospel to which, too often, we give so languid an attention. This is the doctrine of St. Paul when he speaks to the Ephesians of the preaching of the Gospel as "to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God." Here the Church, in and through her public ministrations, is represented as furnishing instruction to angelic orders of being, as though these lofty creatures came down to her solemn assemblies, not only as observers, but as seeking lessons for themselves in mysteries which beforetime they had vainly striven to explore. And when the same Apostle exhorts the Corinthian women to have a modest veil, or covering, over their heads, in their religious meetings, he persuades them by this very consideration-that they appeared in the presence of the angels, and thus gives all the sanction of his authority to the opinion that angels are among us when we gather together for public worship.-Canon Melvill.

ANGELS.-The Church the Teacher of

What high notions have we of the dignity of our nature when we recollect that the Church is appointed to be the teacher of angels! By such words as these that "unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places may be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God," we gather that these great and mighty beings are constantly watching the Church as she gradually overcomes the obstacles opposed to her; how religion makes its way among the nations; how it civilizes, softens, humanizes, and refines them; how it prepares them for the enjoyments of this world, as well as for those to which it entitles them in the world to come;-and at every step in this progress angels behold something new concerning the greatness and love of God, which they could not by any other means have learned, no, not even by the expanse of the universe itself! Well, then, may the Church, the spiritual body of Christ, be said to have the office of instructing angels!-Christmas.

ANGELS.-Courts of

Churches and oratories are regions and courts of angels.-Bishop Taylor.

ANGELS-Helping the Preaching of the Gospel.

We gather from our Lord's parable of the sower, as expounded by Himself, that Satan busily endeavours to counteract the preaching of the Gospel; for it is said, in explanation of the seed sown by the way-side-" When any one heareth the Word of the Kingdom, and understandeth it, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart." There is no interpretation to be put upon this, save that the devil is ever watching the effect wrought by the delivery of the Word, and that, with an earnestness only equalled by his malice, he labours to thwart it, whensoever it threatens to be injurious to his power. And if evil angels be thus present at the preaching of the Gospel, in the hope of

making it ineffectual, why should we doubt that good angels are present, to strive to gain it place, and give it impressiveness? The efforts of the one are met by precisely antagonistic efforts on the part of the others, every mine having its countermine; so that if they who are against us labour to catch away the Word, they who are for us labour to imprint it.-Canon Melvill.

ANGELS not Honoured to Preach.

In place of assembling to listen to the exhortations and receive the counsels of one who shares with you your sinfulness, and lies naturally under the same condemnation, you might have thronged to the sanctuary to hear some celestial messenger, coming down in angelic beauty, and offering you in God's name a home in the land from which he had descended; and we cannot doubt that you would have hung with surpassing interest on the lips of the heavenly herald, and that as, with an eloquence and pathos and persuasiveness, such as are wholly unknown to the most touching of human orators, he warned you against evil and urged you to righteousness, your "hearts would have burned within you," and you would have resolved that you would break loose from your sinful habits, and press towards the region to which the seraph had invited you. There would have been such a power in this as does not belong to the present arrangement; and you may be tempted to think that it would have been more consistent with the love of God, had angels, not men, been His ministers to the Church. But a little reflection will expose the fallacy of any such conclusion. We do not deny, that, if some mysterious visitant, unearthly in form and raiment, were to occupy this pulpit, a deep and almost painful solemnity would pervade the assembly; and as, in tones such as were never modulated by human voice and words such as never flowed from human lips, "he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come," there would be wrought upon the mass of riveted listeners an effect, which might not indeed be permanent, but which for the time would be wholly without parallel in all the annals of human eloquence. Nevertheless-oh! "the cords of a man" are not to be exchanged for "the cords" of angels. You could not, as you listened to his Gospel, or at all events as you reflected on his preaching, put from you the feeling that the angel knew nothing experimentally of your trials, nothing of your difficulties-that he had no evil heart to struggle with, no powerful lusts to sub lue, no mighty foes to withstand him in a course of obedience; and then you would think, it is easy for one so pure as those exalted creatures, one so rich in the possession of unalloyed happiness, to urge upon us the practice of righteousness, and to declaim with a lofty energy on the vanity and worthlessness of the best earthly pleasures. And this feeling-the feeling that the preacher exhorted you to a task which he had not himself to perform, and recommended a sacrifice, which he had not himself to make-would tell quickly and fatally on the powerful hold which he might obtain upon his audience. How. ever powerful the effect for the moment, there would be a re-action, when his hearers contrasted the circumstances of the speaker and their own, and remembered he was not "of like passions with themselves." As the case now stands, it is the very fact of the speaker and hearer being precisely on a footing, which secures for him some measure of attention, or which at least presents the readiest mode of overthrowing this objection of the incompetence of the adviser to ascertain the difficulties of your ease. If I urge you to battle with corrupt lusts, it is a battle which I myself have to fight; if I entreat you to forsake sinful habits, they are habits which I myself must abandon; if I speak of the flames of hell, they are

flames by which I myself may be scorched; if I enlarge upon the glories of heaven, they are glories which I myself can gain only by a hard struggle.Canon Melvill.

ANGELS.-The Interest Felt by

The interest felt by the angels in all that concerns the Gospel and the eternal welfare of men put on their probation, forms a very humbling contrast to our cold indifference in what concerns us much more nearly than them. It is as if a ship, nearing a lee-shore in the midst of tremendous breakers, while every inhabitant of the neighbouring coast was watching her progress with beating hearts, and longing to see her delivered, the passengers and crew should pursue their wonted amusements, or, hanging over the straining sides, idly speculate on the number of billows, and sport with the raging foam! Alas! with the hosts of heaven there is all sympathy and intense interest; with perishing men, all apathy and madness!-Mrs. Milner.

ANGELS.-The Joy of

There are around the angels material glories which no man's unpurged eyes could bear to look upon. They have scenes of beauty, magnificence, and splendour, which we shall see, but which now, because of the feebleness of our eyesight, we could not bear to gaze on; yet the angels turn aside from all the material splendours of their glorious home, and gaze with arrested and riveted delight upon this one fact-that a soul has repented and turned to God. They see, as the most beautiful diamond that sparkles on the brow of heaven, the tear that drops from a penitent's eye. Amid the sounds and melodies of cherubim and seraphim about the throne,--among the harmonies of a thousand harpings, of whose music we have no adequate conception,-the sigh of a broken heart penetrates and rings fullest of sweet melody to an angel's ear. An ancient writer has well said "the tears of penitents are the wine of angels;" that is, their greatest joy is derived, not from the splendour of their abodes, but from the news borne from this lost orb of a soul repenting, a sinner saved.-Dr. Cumming.

ANTIQUITY.-The Customs of

Antiquity is no infallible argument of goodness; though Tertullian says"The first things were the best things; and the less they distanced from the beginning, the purer they were." But he must be understood only of holy customs.-T. Adams.

ANTIQUITY.-The Effect of

Time consecrates;

And what is grey with age becomes religion.-Schiller.

ANTIQUITY.—Looking Backwards to

If we look backwards to antiquity, it should be as those that are winning a race, to press forwards the faster, and to leave the beaten still farther behind.Colton.

ANTIQUITY-in Relation to Error.

Antiquity is a venerable word, but ill used when made a cloak for error. Truth must needs be elder than error; as the rule must necessarily be, before the aberration from it. The grey hairs of opinion are then only beauty and a crown,

when found in the way of righteousness; copper will never become gold by age. A lie will be a lie, let it be never so ancient. We dispute not by years, but by reasons drawn from Scripture. That which is now called our ancient opinion was once but a new error. When you can tell us how many years are required to turn an error into truth, then we will give more heed to antiquity, when pressed into the service of error, than we now think due to it.-Flavel.

ANTIQUITY-in Relation to Truth.

"Tis not antiquity, nor author,

That makes truth truth, altho' Time's daughter.-S. Butler.

APOCALYPSE.—The

The sublimest book of the Bible, but, withal, the darkest and most difficult. With its plagues and its earthquakes, with its woes and its vials, in startling contrast to the bland glories of the Gospel and Epistles, the Apocalypse shows that it was not without reason that its author was named beforehand a "son of thunder."-Dr. J. Hamilton.

APOCALYPSE.-The Design of the

This is my view of the Apocalypse:-It was intended to be at once the chart, and the pole-star, and the light of the Christian Church, over the stormy waves of time, until the great Pilot who walketh upon the waters and stilleth the waves should again give Himself to the sinking ship, and make her His abode, His ark, His glory, for ever and ever.-E. Irving.

APOSTASY.-The Beginning of

Look to your secret duty; the soul cannot prosper in the neglect of it. Apostasy generally begins at the closet door.-P. Henry.

APOSTASY.-Misery Resulting from

Just as truth and virtue create in the soul a positive heaven of bliss, so their abandonment is ultimately followed by a misery like that of perdition itself. When the apostate disciple became sensible of his atrocious guilt, life had no longer the shadow of a charm for him; he went out and hanged himself.”— Dr. Davies.

APOSTATE.-The Religious

APOSTLE.-The

His confidence in Heaven
Sunk by degrees.-Claudius.

Sent directly from the bosom of the Father into this sin-defiled world, Jesus is pre-eminently the chief of the apostolic band. Hence St. Paul appropriately designates Him-"The Apostle of our Profession." It was His prerogative, therefore, to call "the twelve," and to qualify them, and send them forth with the banner of His cross in their hands and the truth of His atonement in their hearts.-E. Davies.

As "the Apostle of our Profession"-the prime-minister of the Gospel Church, Christ was the principal messenger of God to men,-the great revealer of that faith which we profess to hold, and of that hope which we profess to have.M. Henry.

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