degraded objects! Who is there that can believe in this, and turn the grace of such a God into licentiousness? Who can indeed believe in it without fulfilling the great commandments of the Law, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, and thy neighbour as thyself?"

It is then the glory of the Gospel, and of that alone, as has been well remarked by a late eminent divine,' that it makes a provision for bringing sinners into conformity with the Law. In proportion as the conscience feels the healing efficacy of a Saviour's blood, and understands the meaning of those thrilling words, "Thy sins are forgiven thee," will be the joyful, thankful, cordial alacrity of body, soul, and spirit in the Redeemer's service. We require not only to be taught what virtue is, but, which is a yet harder lesson, to be instructed to love her likewise; and he who doeth all things well has given us to this effect, not rules merely, but what the common sense of mankind declares to be far more effectual, a living example of perfect excellence. He veils Himself in flesh that his splendour may not overpower the objects of his gracious care, and renders his holy attributes attractive even to sinners, by showing how he can feel, and act, and suffer for them. Ah, surely they who learn not to admire in Jesus the lineaments of the Deity, will never find in all the precepts and prohibitions of the Decalogue one living or recommendatory grace! The attainments that have been made in art and science may serve farther to illustrate this truth.

Nor is the

1 Rev. W. Howels.

analogy an unreasonable one. Genius is nothing more than the faculty to perceive and imitate what is sublime and beautiful. In nature, as in grace, perfection can be attained only by contemplating God in his works. The great difference lies in this, that in the latter case, the natural man being dead in trespasses and sins, is incapable of discerning anything of a spiritual nature, without the regenerating influence of the Holy Ghost. The man of genius looks abroad into nature for models to pursue, copies this impress of the character of God in all her fair proportions, and finds that in so doing he has unwittingly adhered to the best rules the ablest masters could have given him. Thus does he attain, by a simple and delightful method, to a degree of perfection that otherwise he would have failed to find; for it is a well authenticated fact that rules alone never have made a proficient.

But the Law shines forth in its true splendour when considered as witnessing to Jesus Christ. In conjunction with the prophets it bears testimony to the holiness, and faithfulness, and perfect obedience of the Saviour's character: (Rom. iii. 21) both together they form a complete picture of that new man of which he furnishes the sole original-they prove the oneness of that Eternal Spirit which designed the inimitable outline, and animated its consummate likeness. The eye of God could alone behold the features of Deity. He gave to man a copy of himself, and then appeared to prove the correctness of the work. Nay more, he took feature by feature, line by line, and compared them together; but the proud Pharisee could not discern the resemblance, for his eye was fixed upon himself! Christ by

uniting in his Person the two natures of God and man, is the Alpha and Omega of all knowledge and of all truth. In Him, all enmities are destroyed, all unions are adjusted, all differences are reconciled, and all difficulties removed. He is therefore The Way. He is The Truth, for in Him the weakness of the creature and the strength of the Creator are eternally demonstrated.—He is also The Life, being the beginning of the creation of God, Rev. iii. 14. In the counsel of Jehovah, the Christ, or as he is sometimes called, the power and wisdom of God, is described by Solomon, as "set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the world was," Prov. viii. 23,-He being the great end and purpose of creation, Col. i. 16, 17. But it was at his resurrection that he was "declared to be the Son of God with power," then was he truly manifested as "the beginning, the first-born from the dead." We perceive therefore, how, both in the purpose and act of the Father, he is the quickening principle, the root, the seed-bud as it were, from whence the whole redeemed creation of God should derive vitality and support. To believe in Him therefore is to believe in the destruction of all enmities, the adjustment of all unions, the reconcilement of all differences, and the removal of all impediments. It is to believe that though weak, yet are we strong-though poor, yet are we rich-though vile, yet are we holy-though dead, yet shall we live! This is the precious Cornerstone whereon a fallible mortal may build throughout everlasting ages, the eternal foundation which will remain when every refuge of lies shall be for ever swept away!

It is then the voice of full, free, and sovereign

mercy, that can alone give a new energy and direction to the human heart, for if righteousness come by the Law, then Christ is dead in vain. The prisoner rescued from his disgraceful thraldom by the very hand that he had before despised and even persecuted, is constrained with grateful love to employ his ransomed powers in the exclusive service of his great Deliverer. Invited by the Spirit and the Bride, he fixes his eye steadily on Jesus, and so swerves not from the narrow path which leadeth unto life. He finds substantially expressed in Him, all that the Law had dimly shadowed forth-all, and far more than his eye, however enlightened, can ever penetrate. And he prefers the substance to its shadow. He loves not a commandment merely, but that transcendent Being, whom yet, without a commandment, he should esteem it his highest glory and privilege to obey-for the Spirit of the living God has engraven the Law upon his heart.

J. D.

THE MOST FORLORN OF HUMAN BEINGS.

MADAM,

THE two or three pages in your last number, entitled "Can nothing be done?" brought full upon my mind a circumstance and a thought which seems to me to add one deepening touch to the picture you there drew.

In former years I have more than once or twice asked and answered, to myself, the question, Which is the most deeply, desperately, hopelessly forlorn, of all the classes of ruined humankind?

Is it found in the wretched captives who toil out their existence in the mines of Peru; or under the lash of the Virginian slave-driver; or in hopeless exile among the snows of Siberia? Oh no,-not here must we seek it.

Is it among the poor infants who find a premature decay in the fourteen and sixteen-hours toil of our own heated factories; or among those who are cast, by the profligacy of France, into those vast receptacles of wretchedness, the Foundling-hospitals, there to perish, in a majority of cases, unpitied and unknown, or to grow up to continuate the guilt which produced them? Not in these, nor in the various other wholesale warehouses of misery, shall we find that which I take to be the most pitiable of all states or conditions of earthly suffering. But I will proceed to point it out.