THE UNITARIAN.

VOL. I.

DECEMBER 1, 1834.

No. 12.

Our Saviour's Example.

An unbeliever once said to Dr. Paley, that if God had given a revelation, he would have written it in the skies. The remark was as unphilosophical as it was untrue in fact. It overlooked human nature, and the way by which man is influenced. The reason which the doubter would have probably given why a revelation should be written in the skies, would have been that all men in all countries would thus be able to see it, to read, and to have it standing ever before them. But this mode of making all men accept revelation would, to say nothing of other considerations, be the one to lead all men to neglect it-reject it. If man were endowed with intellect alone, the scheme might be effectual; it would then matter little whence religion came, provided it only came. The truth would be equally quick and powerful whether it were traced in blazing characters along the overarching sky, or painted on the leaves of the forest, or muttered in the rippling brook, or sounded abroad by the thunder. To know would be to accept it. There would be no unbelievers, and no virtue in being a believer. No room would exist to exercise belief or unbelief. All would know with mathematical certainty what was revealed, and all would be placed under an inevitable, uncontrollable constraint to receive it. But our nature is not thus one-sided and unbalanced. We have the capacity of feeling and choosing as well as thinking. and the affections are united with the intellect. wanted not a cold revelation inscribed on the sky, but one of living warmth, uttered from living lips, gushing up from a heart like our hearts, and acted out in a tempted, sorrowstricken, yet hopeful life, such as we live. Such a revelation

A will

And we

we have. And in the manner by which God addressed it to us we see abundant proof that the same Being made the revelation who made us, and abundant cause to excite our gratitude that when the Almighty did reveal himself, it was with so much mercy and kindness. Jesus Christ was the revelation. Jesus Christ, as he lived and laboured, taught and suffered, was crucified and rose again from the dead. The truth was not an abstraction,-distant, speculative, lifeless,-but embodied in a living soul, which bore all the infirmities we bear, was "in all points tempted as we are," and which, after passing through a life of unexampled hardship and suffering, came out of the fiery ordeal perfectly unstained, victorious over sin, and victorious over the grave. Jesus did all this, and he did it through the power of that very truth which he was sent to preach to us. Thus he was a perfect Mediator, or Interposer, between God and man. He possessed all the truth which God wished to communicate to man on the one hand, and on the other he was a man, and could therefore be sympathized with by other men, in all the trials and sorrows he was obliged to undergo in promulgating that truth.

When we consider, therefore, that he is our pattern in all things, and that he taught both by his actions and his precepts, we read the brief history of his life with an eager curiosity to see how he acted upon different occasions, and treated different persons; whether he was really perfect, whether there may not have been some unguarded moment in his-sublime career, when he took an unguarded step and sinned. And when one has read through the artless story from end to end, and seen that there was no unguarded moment, not one in all that eventful, and distracted, and persecuted life, how can he fail to bow down before the Saviour, and acknowledge that he was the manifestation of the Infinite God!

The history which the Evangelists give of Christ is short. A great many actions and lessons are omitted. "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." (John xxi. 25.) The imagination, accordingly, when under the proper restraints, is able to draw a just, as well as large picture from what is said in very few words. Some short sentences, looked at in this way, become full of significance and power. Such are those which mention the fact of little children being brought to Jesus and kindly treated, and blessed by him. The ministry of Jesus was now drawing to a close.

He is soon to offer

He has left Galilee for the last time. himself up for the redemption of the world. While the dark prospect of an ignominious and cruel death is shutting around him, and the great object of his life is filling his mind with a grander and grander interest, as he approaches its accomplishment, he has nevertheless time to do every duty, great and small, to bear patiently with his disciples in their mistakes and prejudices, to work miracles, to travel from place to place, to preach to assembled multitudes. Yes; the Saviour of the world, at the most active period of his intensely active ministry, when everything was wound up to the highest pitch, and we may suppose his mind dwelt much on that solemn and mysterious tragedy soon to be enacted, finds time to show that affectionate interest in little children, and to pay them those kind attentions, which even the good are every day seen to neglect and disregard almost without being conscious that they are not doing what is perfectly right. Mark the scene. Jesus is healing the sick and dispensing the gospel of the kingdom to a vast multitude, collected to hear him in a place east of the river Jordan. Children are brought to him to have him lay his hands on them and bless them, showing at least the confidence of the parents that Jesus was a great and good man, however they might regard his claim to the Messiahship. The disciples are angry and repulse them. To them it seems an unreasonable intrusion. "Our master is engaged about more important matters than attending to little children. He has higher duties to perform than to play the fondler. Take the children away." How unlike Jesus! He directs a look of reproof at the disciples, calls back the children, frightened away by the harsh voices and angry expressions, speaks kindly to them, and then, as if touched with the tender recollections of his own sainted infancy, and the blessing which he had received in the arms of the venerable and holy Simeon, takes them up in his arms and blesses them! What a beautiful and affecting incident! How it must have endeared him to the parents of the children themselves! What a thrill of delight must have run through the hearts of the little ones to be so affectionately treated! And, as many a fond mother has bent over her child from that time downward, and thought of the Saviour's love for little children and his blessing upon them, how her own love to him has been animated! And when the blessed boon has been withdrawn, how consoling the reflection that the infant spirit has mounted on high to be with him forever who was so affectionate and kind to little children while

he was still on the earth! The world, as it sweeps on with its noise, and tumult, and selfishness, may lightly esteem this scene in the life of Jesus; but it teaches to every parent a lesson of most holy and precious truth, and hallows the relation he bears to his children with the Saviour's love. It is a scene to be remembered by every instructor of the young. It should go with the Sunday-school teacher, and animate him in all his duties. And, while engaged in providing for and instructing the young, both parent and teacher should remember that they will be paid over and over again for all they do, if they transfer to their own hearts and characters that innocence and simplicity, upon which Jesus pronounced his blessing.

L.

You perceive that he calls the Hebrew records the most faithful of all histories. This is all the merit the authors themselves ever claimed, in relation to a large portion of the Old Testament.

Dr. Franklin considered ridiculing the Scriptures a species of profaneness. He used the following language respecting one Dr. Brown, whom he met with on his journey to Philadelphia.

"He had some letters, and was ingenious, but he was an infidel, and wickedly undertook, some years after, to turn the Bible into doggerel verse. By this means he set many facts in a ridiculous light, and might have done mischief with weak minds, if his work had been published; but it never was."-Life, p. 18.

"About the year 1734, there arrived among us a young Presbyterian preacher, named Hemphill, who delivered with a good voice, and apparently extempore, most excellent discourses, which drew together considerable numbers of different persuasions, who joined in admiring him. Among the rest, I became one of his constant hearers, his sermons pleasing me, as they had little of the dogmatical kind, but inculcated strongly the practice of virtue, or what in the religious style are called good works.

Those however of our congregation who considered themselves as Orthodox Presbyterians, disapproved his doctrine, and were joined by most of the old ministers, who arraigned him of heterodoxy before the Synod, in order to have him silenced. I became his zealous partisan, and contributed all I could to raise a party in his favour, and combatted for him awhile with some hopes of success.

"During the contest an unlucky occurrence hurt his cause exceedingly. One of our adversaries having heard him preach a sermon that was much admired, thought he had somewhere read the sermon before, or at least a part of it. On searching he found that part quoted at length in one of the British Reviews, from a discourse of Dr. Foster's. This detection gave many of our party disgust, who accordingly abandoned his cause, and occasioned our more speedy discomfiture in the Synod. I stuck by him however. I rather approved his giving us good sermons composed by others, than bad ones of his own manufacture; though the latter was the practice of our common teachers. He afterwards acknowledged to me that none of those he preached were his own; adding that his memory was such as enabled him to retain and repeat any sermon after once reading only. On our defeat he left us in search elsewhere of better fortune, and I quitted the congregation, never attending it after; though I continued many years my subscription for the support of its ministers."-Life, p. 79.

A most important fact is here disclosed. Benjamin Franklin was actually excluded from public worship by useless, uninteresting, unscriptural preaching.

Dr. Franklin's views of a future life were rational and scriptural. The following extracts from familiar letters will confirm my statement.

"I condole with you. We have lost a most dear and valuable relation. But it is the will of God and nature, that these mortal bodies be laid aside, when the soul is to enter into real life. This is rather an embryo state, a preparation for living. A man is not completely born until he be dead. Why then should we grieve, that a new child is born among the immortals, a new member added to their happy society? We are spirits. That bodies should be lent us, while they can afford us pleasure, assist us in acquiring knowledge, or in doing good to our fellowcreatures, is a kind and benevolent act of God. When they become unfit for these purposes, and afford us pain instead of pleasure, instead of an aid become an encumbrance, and answer none of the intentions for which they were given, it is equally kind and benevolent, that a way is provided by which we may get rid of them. Death is that way. We ourselves, in some