causes. A sceptical age succeeded the return of the Stuarts, if the clergy did not sympathise with the tone of the higher classes, they did nothing to leaven it with a better spirit, in their preaching, to use the forcible language of Bishop Horsley, they became the apes of Seneca and Epichetus, the peculiar or transcendental doctrines of the gospel were seldom handled. Sermons about the attributes, the divine right of kings. The reasonableness of religion, formed the staple of our churches' teaching. Many Dissenting Congregations became Unitarian. From this slumber Wesley and Whitfield roused our fathers, reproclaiming the fundamental verities of Christianity. Much of their success was owing to their zeal and earnestness. Wesley's power of combination, Whitfield's eloquence aided the movement. These men were in marked contrast to the lukewarmness of the age. They preached as though they really did believe what they said. Much doubtless is also due to the doctrines which they revived; but soon again their peculiarities were exaggerated by those who lacked the wisdom of the one, and the gifts of the other, whilst we cannot doubt that the movement in the main was in the right direction, still the less thoughtful members of the great party they founded were betrayed into statements which Wesley's well-trained mind reflected. In many cases antinomianism was the result.

It cannot be denied that through want of careful statements and distinctions, many, especially among the ignorant, are led to think that in receiving the doctrines of the New Testament they are freed from the restraint of its duties. We should not be surprised at this, for it requires very judicious teaching to reconcile the peculiar teaching of St. Paul on the question of justification through faith with our Lord's own manner of instructing the people, or even with the statements of St. James. So much so that Luther in the exuberance of his zeal was led to deny the canonical authority of the latter apostle. Much of this seeming incongruity is owing to St. Paul's own temperament; much to the peculiar position in which he stood, much to the epistolary form of his writings. He was a man ardent and impassioned, and whatever view we take of inspiration, it must be allowed that his ardour would colour all he said and did. He stated to the full his convictions on any particular doctrine, and whilst we may not say that he was carried beyond due bounds, yet he was led to throw into the shade other truths, even seeming as though he undervalued them if they crossed his path when concerned with substantiating some favorite opinion. He speaks of the weak and beggarly elements of the law as our translators have it, though they could only be said to be so with any propriety in comparison with the fuller revelations of the gospel. And he was the more eager, because of the firm and compact band which opposed him. Christianity in its earlier stages encountered at once the Jewish and Pagan tendencies of many of its converts; indeed the corruptions which so soon tainted its purity may in many instances be traced to these two sources. St. Paul keenly appreciated this, and therefore he uses the broadest and strongest terms whilst opposing that rule of faith of which he was the missionary to the law of works which had been received from Moses. Such uncompromising statements are natural in times of controversy, especially in such a crisis as the abolition of an old and the establishment of a new system. Men recoiling from despotism are too apt to confound liberty with licentiousness. Even the wisest are necessarily led to employ terms which seem harsh and abrupt in more peaceful times, especially when men forget the impulse under which they wrote, or the

stake for which they were contending. Epistolary writings are necessarily fragmentary. The epistles of Cicero task the learning of his commentators, for who can understand all the allusions, even if he saw the letters of that writer's correspondent. How the very shape given to the discussion in which Saint Paul enters adds to our difficulties. The point at issue, specially in the epistle to the Romans was justification, so that three parts of that celebrated scripture may be termed a treatise upon that important doctrine.

We must not be surprised that at such times as these the builder of the edifice seemed more intent on strengthening the foundation than on elaborating the structure. He was the advocate of the new revelation of God's purposes. Men do not look in religion so much for a code of morals, for it has been said well that morality can never be the subject of revelation. Our duties spring from the relations in which we are placed to others, and although in such a faith as Christianity you look for a higher estimate of duty, yet, as a revelation, the Gospel will employ itself in teaching us something respecting a future state and of our relation to God as men who have in us and our earthly being the germ of eternal life. This was just such a question as would meet the apostle on the very threshold of his ministry to any church or people.

The wisdom of antiquity had been tasked to find out some proofs of man's immortality. Of this in the Phado we have a famous instance. We do not so much wonder then that Saint Paul gives up so much of time, and that so great a part of his writings are taken up with this most interesting discussion, especially when fierce controversy and opposition forced him to reply to objections levelled against Christianity. But why did our Lord's own teaching take such different ground? For many reasons. First because it was oral-by word of mouth: he spoke ex re natá when some particular temper of mind, some flaming sin of the times, some passing incident, some confession of a bystander called for rebuke in counsel, when his pity for suffering drew an elegant tribute to sympathy from him, or when the analogy between spiritual and corporeal malady suggested to him appropriate discourse. Such teaching must of necessity be very different from treatises such as the epistles. It does not seem from our Lord's own words "I have yet many things to say unto you but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit," &c. That he intended his own revelations to be final, he left purposely much to be taught, specially those peculiar doctrines in their full scope which until after his resurrection could scarcely be said to have existence, yet he too insists again and again on the value of faith, on justification through faith "that whosoever believeth on him shall not perish." Just as Saint Paul never concludes an epistle without several distinct practical lessons, whilst he devotes a considerable part of the 1st of Corinthians in rebuking a great breach of chastity.

It is then, we think, evident that the long dissertations we have in the Pauline Epistles on justification were forced on the Apostle by the nature of his office, the character of the times, and the condition of his converts. Were he amongst us now, we do not say that we should have nothing of justification, but we should not hear of it so often in comparison with protests against the sins of the times, the peculiar sins of districts, or parishes, or people. We can fancy we hear his indignant rebuke of lying, theft, and uncleanness; here withering at one time, here full of sorrow at another. "I fear lest I should have preached to you in vain."

"Who

hath bewitched you?" "And a sin which should not so much as be named amongst you." Do we wonder that our people are listless; sermons a byeword for sleepy essays; that Spurgeon gathers his thousands; when broad and glaring vice only draws forth some abstract discussion about sin in general; and we try to evangelize by inculcating the lessons of the Catechism as the sum and substance of all Christian teaching; that good servants are becoming scarce; honest tradesmen commercial marvels; chaste single women the exception, rather than the rule, in country villages ?

Tell the rustic congregation that they are justified only by faith. Has any one been teaching them the contrary? Do they disbelieve this? Have they told you they do not, or cannot receive it? But if it is the staple of your sermons, your hearers, as it occurs for the fiftieth time, begin to fold their arms and nod. Why? Because they are about to hear nothing new. They understand, as well as they can understand any thing, what you are about to say. But tell them you are about to say a word about lying, or evil speaking, or parish quarrels, and their conscience pricks them, and makes them listeners.

When you are present at the Quarter Sessions, you often hear from the magistrates of the bench an excellent homily on some familiar sin. Is the pulpit too proud to take a lesson? When you stay in the house of a country gentleman, you occasionally hear him remonstrate kindly, wisely, and firmly with a labourer. That labourer next Sunday will sit near you. During the week you have won his kindness by giving the wife a blanket for winter, or sending his child to school. Is the Squire to have all the common sense and a great deal of the religious talk to himself, when you have so ready a listener, and so much natural authority. Would the Squire teach so well, if he were not a kind Christian man? Does it never strike you, when you hear of the crimes which the coming assize will deal with, that the teaching of the pulpit might check some of these? Or that if you are wise, you will try to find out texts for the next half year, having reference to some of the more obvious and common faults of men.

Is your experience of your parish so pleasant, so unbroken by the remembrance of certain grave vices, and their consequences, that you are thrown of necessity upon pure doctrinal teaching? Or are you content that the gaol, the hulks, the penal colonies, or even the school, shall be the best reformatories?

Surely, in these days, when it is affirmed that our own working classes are the most drunken and debauched in Europe; when in the competition of forethought, prudence, taste, and skill, they come far behind other nations, it is worth while to ask how far the pulpit is answerable for this? and how far the religious teaching in the school, of which the pulpit is the prototype?

To listen to the mass of sermons preached to country congregations, you would think that our Saviour was a mere abstraction, not a thing of flesh and blood-or rather the man Christ Jesus. And yet he took on him some of the most important of human relations. He was a son, a citizen, a neighbour, to use his own phrase. The first mention of his childhood is a record of his obedience; the last incident of his passion a trait of his love. In the one case he goes down to Nazareth with his parents, and is subject unto them; in the other, with his dying words he commends his mother to the care of his beloved disciple. As a citizen he pays tribute, he teaches others to render unto Cæsar. He even counsels obedience to those that

sat in Moses' seat, unworthy though they might be; and his whole life was a comment upon the duties of the second table. Surely the every day vices of the mass need some antidote, either pointed rebuke or marked contrast. The life of our Lord furnishes the last; the first finds its corrective in the whole teaching of the Saviour. Other moralists-we need not repeat what every writer on the subject has said before-deal chiefly with men's outward actions; Jesus places the check upon the heart. Take for instance that beautiful promise-"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." What a fund for teaching, for the young as for the old, have we here! Suppose for instance you wished to check that turn for ribaldry which is too characteristic of our school boy days, here is your warrant. You might argue thus:-Boys generally think that so long as they abstain from sinful actions, they are in the path of duty; our Lord knew better; he tells you that prurient thoughts are sin, because these thoughts, when repeated, often form the sinful disposition, which is the true parent of an unholy life. You can direct your thoughts, as for instance when oppressed by melancholy, you try to summon more agreeable images before you; after an effort you often succeed; and so when you are pained by an untoward event, you exert a strong influence on the thoughts, and by degrees calling up other objects, give a turn to the current within. Our Lord never praises any particular frame of mind which is quite unattainable; he never enjoins a duty which he does not aid us to perform. He counsels purity; has for it his highest praise, endows it with his most abundant promise as here. Why? Just to teach you to reject unholy and sensual thoughts, by a strong effort of the will, under the Divine blessing, to curb them, or rather exchange them for holier and more ennobling reflections.

We think that infinite harm is done, especially to the young, when they hear but a series of sermons on abstract points of doctrine, because this is but substituting catechism for biography. Just for instance the reverse of what we do so wisely at College. Before boys come up to the Universities, they are well exercised in the historians, the orators, and the poets of antiquity. They fight over Caesar's battles, revel in the changing fortunes of Sphacteria, or Sicily with Thucydides; learn short and pointed reasoning from the Philippics; or from the redundant climaxes of Cicero, gain a style more suited to the genius of our own country. The pathos of Virgil, the sublimity of Homer, the history of Athens in the changing sentiments of its dramatists, alike form the youthful mind; and not till then do we teach them in the Ethics, the Rhetoric, the Poetics of Aristotle, and the Republic of Plato, to philosophize on what they have read; to draw general principles of action from the mass of facts before them, or laws of criticism from the varied stores within their reach. But in our religious teaching this wholesome order is reversed. We set before the young an imperfect picture of the controversies of the Apostolic age, instead of the living, breathing eloquence of the Gospel narrative. Our blessed Lord's own habit of teaching might show us our folly. He is asked, "Who is my neighbour?" Do we have long disputations to prove that faith is necessary to knit the bond of brotherhood? For there must be unity of purpose and sentiment; the same objects dear to ourselves and to our friends; and what more dear than the soul's hopes? Does this process of frittering away the meaning of words find place in our Lord's teaching? He at once answers the question in the words of the good Samaritan, as though he had said-Look on this picture, and on that. This answer is naturally the most forcible, but perhaps on that

very account the most intelligible; it disposes at once of every obstacle which the fanaticism of the day, and the fanaticism of all ages, puts in the way of brotherhood. It unseats an idol at every turn. How many pages

would it have cost a modern teacher to express the same rules of life.

And how much is lost by disregarding either the life or teaching of our blessed Lord. He encounters some of the severest trials which are addressed to our temper, our pride, our love of self. What a fund of rebuke, of teaching, of strength is there in the words "ye know not what spirit ye are of" when dealing with some of the strongest feelings of human nature. How would Christ have done, what did he do when placed in circumstances similar to our own? We are taught that martyrs were wont to go to the stake with some particular phrase or saying of our Lord's on their lips. How often did they imitate his example by praying for their enemies, how often take his very words on their lips, "Father forgive them." Parabolic teaching formed a great part of our Lord's ministerial work-teaching that is by incident rather than reasoning process. Yet how seldom we hear sermons on the great moral lessons to be drawn from this source. To listen to many modern preachers, you would think there were no such things as backbiting, lying, thieving. The young especially are destined to run an active course. The few precepts we give them, pointed, our main teaching, example. It is just here that the gospels are so valuable. Our Lord often rebukes the glaring sins of his day, or has occasion to notice with severity some prejudice or weakness in his own disciples. He is even brought in contact with the living, moving, world; goes out to teach; by his teaching provokes opposition. His very prophecies array pictures in which the disciples or others move about, do, or suffer, and by the side of them all, yet in marked and lofty contrast, is his own figure of perfect moral beauty standing out as in broad relief, the sun but shining on it the more gloriously because of the dark back ground. It is the figure which meets us at every turn, the central figure, as in some masterpiece of the painter, whence all the light radiates as from the glory on the Saviour's head; as though that one figure marshalled objects, however discordant, with perfect harmony; as though here was the centre of all teaching, the end of all faith, the stronghold of all effort, the well of comfort, the source of hope. So that all is concluded in this saying, "Put ye on the Lord Jesus." T. B.