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this there lies a principle. Under no conceivable set of imals of happiness that from moment to moment made circumstances are we justified in sitting

By the poisoned springs of life, Waiting for the morrow which shall free us from the strife. Under no circumstances, whether of pain, or grief, or disappointment, or irreparable mistake, can it be true that there is not something to be done, as well as some thing to be suffered. And thus it is that the spirit of Christianity draws over our life, not a leaden cloud of remorse and despondency, but a sky-not perhaps of radiant, but yet of most serene and chastened and manly hope. There is a past which is gone for ever, but there is a future which is still our own.

The Bible.

It is the universal applicability of Scripture which has made the influence of the Bible universal. This book has spell-bound the hearts of nations in a way in which no single book has ever held men before. Remember too, in order to enhance the marvellousness of this, that the nation from which it emanated was a despised people. For the last eighteen hundred years, the Jews have been proverbially a by-word and a reproach. But that contempt for Israel is nothing new to the world, for before even the Roman despised them, the Assyrian and Egyptian regarded them with scorn. Yet the words which came from Israel's prophets have been the life-blood of the world's devotions. And the teachers, the psalmists, the prophets, and the law-givers of this despised nation spoke out truths that have struck the key-note of the heart of man; and this, not because they were of Jewish, but because they were of universal application.

This collection of books has been to the world what no other book has ever been to a nation. States have been founded on its principles. Kings rule by a compact based on it. Men hold the Bible in their hands when they prepare to give solemn evidence affecting life, death, or property; the sick man is almost afraid to die unless the Book be within reach of his hands; the battle-ship goes into action with one on board whose office it is to expound it; its prayers, its psalms are the language which we use when we speak to God: eighteen centuries have found no holier, no diviner language. If ever there has been a prayer or a hymn enshrined in the heart of a nation, you are sure to find its basis in the Bible. The very translation of it has fixed language and settled the idioms of speech. Germany and England speak as they speak because the Bible was translated. It has made the most illiterate peasant more familiar with the history, customs, and geography of

ancient Palestine than with the localities of his own country. Men who know nothing of the Grampians, of Snowdon, or of Skiddaw, are at home in Zion, the lake of Gennesareth, or among the rills of Carmel. People who know little about London, know by heart the places in Jerusalem where those blessed feet trod which were nailed to the Cross. Men who know nothing of the architecture of a Christian cathedral can yet tell you about the pattern of the holy Temple. Even this shews us the influence of the Bible. The orator holds a thou

sand men for half an hour breathless-a thousand men as one, listening to a single word. But the Word of God has held a thousand nations for thrice a thousand years spell-bound; held them by an abiding power, even the universality of its truth; and we feel it to be no more a collection of books, but the Book.

life sweet and pleasant are forgotten, and very richly has our Father mixed the materials of these with the homeliest actions and domesticities of existence. See two men meeting together in the streets, mere acquaintances. They will not be five minutes together before a smile will overspread their countenances, or a merry laugh ring off at the lowest amusement. This has God done. God created the smile and the laugh, as well as the sigh and the tear. The aspect of this life is stern, very stern. It is a very superficial account of it which slurs over its grave mystery, and refuses to hear its low deep undertone of anguish. But there is enough, from hour to hour, of bright sunny happiness, to remind us that its Creator's highest name is Love.

REV. STOPFORD A. BROOKE.

The biographer of Mr Robertson is himself a popular preacher and author. The REV. STOPFORD A. BROOKE, M.A., incumbent of Bedford Chapel, Bloomsbury, was sometime preacher in St James's Chapel, York Street; and three volumes of SerYork Street, have been published. Mr Brooke is mons (first, second, and third series) delivered in author also of Freedom in the Church of England, six sermons suggested by the Voysey judgment, which were held to contain a fair statement of the views in respect to freedom of thought entertained by the liberal party in the Church of England. One volume of Mr Brooke's Sermons, entitled Christ in Modern Life, is now (1876) in its ninth edition. He has also published Theology in the English Poets, Cowper, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Burns; the Life and Work of Frederick Denison Maurice, a memorial sermon; and a little manual on English Literature, forming one of a series of primers edited by Mr J. R. Green. The last sentence in this manual is suggestive:

'Tennyson has always kept us close to the scenery, the traditions, the daily life, and the history of England; and his last drama of Queen Mary, 1875, is written almost exactly twelve hundred years since the date of our first poem, Cadmon's Paraphrase. To think of one and then of the other, and of the great and continuous stream of literature that has flowed between them, is more than enough to make us all proud of the name of Englishmen.'

The Creation (Genesis i. 1).

It was necessary that a spiritual revelation should be given in harmony with the physical beliefs of the period; and when we demand that the revealed writings should be true to our physical knowledge in order that we should believe in inspiration, we are asking that which would have made all those for whom the Bible was originally written disbelieve at once in all it revealed to man. We ask too much that book was written on wiser principles. It left these questions aside; it spoke in the language, and through the knowledge, of its time. It was content to reveal spiritual truth; it left men to find out scientific truth for themselves. It is inspired with regard to the first; it is not inspired with regard to the latter. It is inspired with regard to universal principles; it is not inspired with regard to details of fact. The proof that it is inspired with regard to prinThe sorrows of the past stand out most vividly in our ciples is that those principles which it lays down or recollections, because they are the keenest of our sensa- implies are not isolated but universal principles. They tions. At the end of a long existence we should prob- are true of national, social, political, intellectual, as ably describe it thus: Few and evil have the days of the well as of spiritual life, and above all, and this is the years of thy servant been. But the innumerable infinites-point which I especially wish to urge, they are identical

The Smiles and Tears of Life.

with scientific principles. Let us test this in the case of this chapter.

The first principle to be inferred is that of the unity of God. One Divine Being is represented as the sole cause of the universe. Now this is the only foundation of a true religion for humanity. Starting from the Semitic peoples, it has gradually made its way over the whole of the Aryan family with the exception of the Hindus; and even among them, and wherever else the worship of many gods exists, it is gradually driving out polytheism and establishing itself as the necessary religion for humanity.

The next principle in this chapter is that all noble work is gradual. God is not represented as creating everything in a moment. He spent six days at His work, and then said it was very good. Now there is no principle more universal than this-that in proportion to the nobility of anything, is it long in reaching its perfection. The summer fly is born and dies in a few days; the more highly organised animal has a long youth and a mature age. The inferior plant rises, blooms, and dies in a year; the oak transforms the storms and sunshine of a century into the knotted fibres of its stem. The less noble powers of the human mind mature first; the more noble, such as imagination, comparison, abstract reasoning, demand the work of years. The greatest ancient nation took the longest time to develop its iron power; the securest political freedom in a nation did not advance by bounds, or by violent revolutions, but in England broadened slowly down from precedent to precedent.' The greatest modern society -the Church of Christ-grew as Christ prophesied, from a beginning as small as a grain of mustard-seed into a noble tree, and grows now more slowly than any other society has ever grown-so slowly, that persons who are not far-seeing say that it has failed. The same law is true of every individual Christian life.

The next truth to be inferred from this chapter is that the universe was prepared for the good and enjoyment of man. I cannot say that this is universal, for the stars exist for themselves, and the sun for other planets than ours; and it is a poor thing to say that the life of animals and plants is not for their own enjoyment as well as ours but so far as they regard us, it is a universal truth, and the Bible was written for our learning. Therefore, in this chapter, the sun and stars are spoken of only in their relation to us, and man is set as master over all creation.

The next principle is the interdependence of rest and work. The Sabbath is the outward expression of God's recognition of this as a truth for man. It was commanded because it was necessary. 'The Sabbath was made for man,' said Christ. And the same principle ought to be extended over our whole existence. The life of Christ, the type of the highest human life, was not all work. Come ye into the wilderness, and rest awhile.' Toil and refreshment were woven together. But as in this chapter there were six days of work to one of rest, so in His life, as it ought to be in ours, 'labour was the rule, relaxation the exception.' Labour always preceded rest; rest was only purchased by toil. Lastly, there is one specially spiritual principle which glorifies this chapter, and the import of which is universal, 'God made man in His own image.' It is the divinest revelation in the Old Testament. In it is contained the reason of all that has ever been great in human nature or in human history. In it are contained all the sorrows of the race as it looks back to its innocence, and all the hope of the race as it aspires from the depths of its fall to the height of the imperial palace whence it came. In it is contained all the joy of the race as it sees in Christ this great first principle revealed again. In it are contained all the history of the human heart, all the history of the human mind, all the history of the human conscience, all the history of the human spirit. It is the foundation-stone of all written and unwritten poetry, of all metaphysics, of all ethics, of all religion.

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These are the universal principles which are to be found in this chapter. And this, we are told, is not inspiration; this is not the work of a higher spirit than the spirit of defective and one-sided man. This illuminating constellation of all-embracing truths; stars which burn, eternal and unwavering, the guides and consolers of men in the heaven which arches over our spiritual life; their light for ever quiet with the conscious repose of truth, 'their seat the bosom of God, their voice the harmony of the world'-to which, obedience being given, nations are great, souls are free, and the race marches with triumphant music to its perfect destiny— this is not inspiration! Brethren, it is inspiration.

BISHOP WILBERFORCE.

SAMUEL WILBERFORCE, D.D., Bishop of Winchester (1805-1872), was the third son of the Christian philanthropist, William Wilberforce. After his education at Oriel College, Oxford, Mr Wilberforce was ordained curate of Checkendon, Oxfordshire, and rose to be Bishop of Oxford in 1845. In 1869 he was translated to the see of Winchester. Ás a scholar, a prelate, and debater in the House of Lords, of gracious manner and winning address, Bishop Wilberforce was highly esteemed, and his accidental death by a fall from several volumes of Sermons and Charges, Agathos his horse was deeply lamented. He published and other Sunday Stories, History of the Epis copal Church in America, Hebrew Heroes, &c. Two volumes of Essays contributed by the bishop to the Quarterly Review were published in 1874

The Reformation of the Church of England. It bears the mark and impress of the intellectual or spiritual peculiarities of no single man. Herein at once it is marked off from the Lutheran, the Calvinist, the Zwinglian, and other smaller bodies. On each one of them lay, as the shadow on the sleeping water, the unbroken image of some master mind or imperial soul The mind of that founder of the new faith, his mode of thought and argument, his religious principles, and his great defects, were reproduced in the body which he had formed, and which by a natural instinct appropriated and handed on his name. And so it might have been with us too, had there been amongst the English Reformers such a leader. If Wycliffe-the great forerunner of the Reformation, whose austere figure stands out above the crowd of notables in English history-if Wycliffe had lived a hundred and thirty years later than he did, his commanding intellect and character might then have stamped upon the religion of England the essential characteristic of a sect. But from this the goodness of God preserved the Church of this land. Like the birth of the beautiful islands of the great Pacific Ocean, the foundations of the new convictions which were so greatly to modify and purify the medieval faith were laid slowly, unseen, unsuspected by ten thousand souls, who laboured they knew not for what, save to accomplish the necessities of their own spiritual belief. The mighty convulsion which suddenly cast up the submarine foundations into peak, and mountain, and crevasse, and lake, and plain, came not from man's devising, and obeyed not man's rule. Influences of the heaven above, and of the daily surrounding atmosphere, wrought their will upon the new-born islands. Fresh convulsions changed, modified, and completed their shape, and so the new and the old were blended together into a harmony which no skill of man could have devised. The English Reformers did not attempt to develop a creed or a community out of their own internal consciousness Their highest aim was only to come back to what had been before. They had not the gifts which created in

others the ambition to be the founders of a new system. They did not even set about their task with any fixed plan or recognised set of doctrines. Their inconsistencies, their variations, their internal differences, their very retractations witness to the gradualness with which the new light dawned upon them, and dispelled the old darkness. The charges of hypocrisy and time-serving which have been made so wantonly against Cranmer and his brethren are all honourably interpreted by the real changes which took place in their own opinions. The patient, loving, accurate study of Holy Scripture was an eminent characteristic of all these men. Thus the opinions they were receiving from others who had advanced far before them in the new faith, were continually modified by this continual voice of God's Word sounding in their ears, and by corresponding changes in their own views. Thus they were enabled by God's grace, out of the utter disintegration round them, to restore in its primitive proportions the ancient Church of England.

BISHOP ELLICOTT.

DR CHARLES JOHN ELLICOTT, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, a distinguished Scripture commentator and divine, was born in 1819, son of the Rev. C. S. Ellicott, Rector of Whitwell, near Stamford, Lincolnshire. He studied at St John's College, Cambridge; obtained the Hulsean prize in 1843;* in 1858 was chosen to succeed Dr French as Professor of Divinity in King's College, London; in 1860 was elected Hulsean Professor of Divinity in Cambridge; in 1861 was made Dean of Exeter; and in 1863 was promoted to the see of Gloucester and Bristol. Dr Ellicott's first work was a Treatise on Analytical Science, 1842, which was followed by the Hulsean lecture on the History and Obligation of the Sabbath, 1844, His most important work is a series of Critical and Grammatical Commentaries on St Paul's Epistles, published separately (all of which have gone through several editions), namely, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, Thessalonians; also Pastoral Epistles. A volume of Historical Lectures on the Life of Our Lord by the bishop is now in its sixth edition; and he has also published Considerations on the Revision of the Authorised Version of the New Testament. In the preface to his Lectures, Bishop Ellicott

says:

I neither feel nor affect to feel the slightest sympathy with the so-called popular theology of the present day, but I still trust that, in the many places in which it has been almost necessarily called forth in the present pages, no expression has been used towards sceptical writings stronger than may have been positively required by allegiance to catholic truth. Towards the honest and serious thinker who may feel doubts or difficulties in some of the questions connected with our Lord's life, all tenderness may justly be shewn.'

The Lectures do not aim at being a complete Life of our Saviour, but go over the leading incidents-the birth and infancy, the Judean, Eastern Galilee, and Northern Galilee ministries, the journeyings towards Jerusalem, the Last Passover,

*The Rev. John Hulse of Elworth, in the county of Chester, by his will, bearing date 1777, directed that the proceeds of certain estates should be given yearly to a dissertator and a lecturer who should shew the evidence for revealed religion, and demonstrate the truth and excellence of Christianity.' The discourses were to be twenty in number, but the Court of Chancery in 1830 reduced the number to eight.

and the Forty Days. Copious notes from the great Greek commentators and German expositors are given. The critical and grammatical commentaries on St Paul's Epistles are also copious and invaluable to students. A passage is here subjoined from the Historical Lectures.

The Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem.

In the retirement of that mountain-hamlet of Bethany a retirement soon to be broken in upon-the Redeemer of the world may with reason be supposed to have spent His last earthly Sabbath. There too, either in their own house or, as seems more probable, in the house of one who probably owed to our Lord his return to the society of his fellow-men, did that loving household make a supper' for their Divine Guest. Joyfully and thankfully did each one of that loving family instinctively do that which might seem most to tend to the honour and glorification of Him whom one of them had declared to be, and whom they all knew to be, the Son of God that was to come into the world. So

Martha serves; Lazarus it is specially noticed takes his place at the table, the visible living proof of the omnipotence of his Lord; Mary performs the tender office of pure or too costly for its God-that tender office, a mournfully foreseeing love, that thought nought_too which, though grudgingly rebuked by Judas and, alas! others than Judas, who could not appreciate the depths of such a devotion, nevertheless received a praise which it has been declared shall evermore hold its place on the pages of the Book of Life.

But that Sabbath soon passed away. Ere night came on, numbers even of those who were seldom favourably disposed to our Lord, now came to see both Him and the living monument of His merciful omnipotence. The morrow probably brought more of these half-curious, believing visitants. The deep heart of the people was half-awed, yet, as it would now seem, in a great measure stirred, and the time was fully come when ancient prophecy was to receive its fulfilment, and the daughter of Zion was to welcome her King. Yea and in kingly state shall He come. Begirt not only by the smaller band of His own disciples but by the great and now hourly increasing multitude, our Lord leaves the little wooded vale that had ministered to Him its Sabbath-day of seclusion and repose, and directs His way onward to Jerusalem. As yet, however, in but humble guise and as a pilgrim among pilgrims He traverses the rough mountain-track which the modern traveller can even now somewhat hopefully identify; every step bringing Him nearer to the ridge of Olivet, and to that hamlet or district of Bethphage, the exact site of which it is so hard to fix, but which was separated perhaps only by some narrow valley from the road along which the procession was now wending its way. But the Son of David must not solemnly enter the city of David as a scarcely distinguishable wayfarer amid a mixed and wayfaring throng. Prophecy must have its full and exact fulfilment; the King must approach the city of the King with some meek symbols of kingly majesty. With haste, it would seem, two disciples are despatched to the village over against them, to bring to Him who haste the zealous followers cast upon it their garments, had need of it' the colt 'whereon yet never man sat :' with and all-unconscious of the significant nature of their act, place thereon their Master-the coming King. Strange it would have been if feelings such as now were eagerly stirring in every heart had not found vent in words. Strange indeed if, with the Hill of Zion now breaking upon their view, the long prophetic past had not seemed to mingle with the present, and evoke those shouts of mysterious welcome and praise, which, first beginning with the disciples and those immediately round our Lord, soon were heard from every mouth of that glorifying multitude. And not from them alone. Number

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less others there were fast streaming up Olivet, a palm-branch in every hand, to greet the raiser of Lazarus, and the Conqueror of Death; and now all join. One common feeling of holy enthusiasm now pervades that mighty multitude, and displays itself in befitting acts. Garments are torn off and cast down before the Holy One: green boughs bestrew the way; Zion's King rides onward in meek majesty, a thousand voices before, and a thousand voices behind rising up to heaven with Hosannas and with mingled words of magnifying acclamation, some of which once had been sung to the Psalmist's harp, and some heard even from angelic tongues. But the hour of triumph was the hour of deepest and most touching compassion. If, as we have ventured to believe, the suddenly opening view of Zion may have caused the excited feelings of that thronging multitude to pour themselves forth in words of exalted and triumphant praise, full surely we know from the inspired narrative, that on our Redeemer's nearer approach to the city, as it rose up, perhaps suddenly, in all its extent and magnificence before Him who even now beheld the trenches cast about it, and Roman legions mustering round its fated walls, tears fell from those Divine eyes-yea, the Saviour of the world wept over the city wherein He had come to suffer and to die. The lengthening procession again moves onward, slowly descending into the deep valley of the Cedron, and slowly winding up the opposite slope, until at length by one of the Eastern gates it passes into one of the now crowded thoroughfares of the Holy City. Such was the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem.

BISHOP EDWARD HAROLD BROWNE.

He

The present learned Bishop of Winchester, son of the late Colonel Browne of Morton House, Bucks, was born in 1811, and was educated at Eton, and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he was wrangler in 1832. His academical career was highly distinguished. In 1833 he obtained the Crosse theological scholarship, in 1834 the first Hebrew scholarship, and in 1835 the Norrisian prize for a theological essay. became Fellow and tutor of his college. From 1843 to 1849, he was Vice-principal and Professor of Hebrew in St David's College, Lampeter; in 1854 he was elected Norrisian Professor of Divinity in the university of Cambridge; in 1857 canon residentiary of Exeter Cathedral; in 1864 he was consecrated Bishop of Ely; and in 1874, Bishop of Winchester. The principal theological work of Bishop Browne is his Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles, Historical and Doctrinal, which was published (1850-53) in two volumes, but is now compressed into one large volume of 864 pages (tenth edition, 1874). In his Introduction (which is a clear and concise historical summary, relating to the Liturgy and Articles) the bishop has the following sensible remarks :

Interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles.

In the interpretation of them, our best guides must be, first, their own natural, literal, grammatical meaning; next to this, a knowledge of the controversies which had prevailed in the Church, and made such articles necessary; then, the other authorised formularies of the Church; after them the writings and known opinions of such men as Cranmer, Ridley, and Parker, who drew them up; then, the doctrines of the primitive Church, which they professed to follow; and, lastly, the general sentiments of the distinguished English divines who have been content to subscribe the Articles, and have professed their agreement with them for now three

hundred years. These are our best guides for their interpretation. Their authority is derivable from Scripture alone.

On the subject of subscription, very few words may be sufficient. To sign any document in a non-natural sense seems neither consistent with Christian integrity nor with common manliness. But, on the other hand, a national Church should never be needlessly exclusive. It should, we can hardly doubt, be ready to embrace, if possible, all who truly believe in God, and in Jesus Christ whom He hath sent. Accordingly, our own Church requires of its lay members no confession of their faith except that contained in the Apostles' Creed. In the following pages an attempt is made to interpret and explain the Articles of the Church, which bind the consciences of her clergy, according to their natural and genuine meaning; and to prove that meaning to be both scriptural and catholic. None can feel so satisfied, nor act so straightforwardly, as those who subscribe them in such a sense. But if we consider how much variety of sentiment may prevail amongst persons who are, in the main, sound in the faith, we can never wish that a national Church, which ought to have all the marks of catholicity, should enforce too rigid and uniform an interpretation of its formularies and terms of union. The Church should be not only holy and apostolic, but as well, one and catholic. Unity and universality are scarcely attainable, where a greater rigour of subscription is required than such as shall insure an adherence and conformity to those great catholic truths which the primitive Christians lived by, and died for.

Besides his elaborate Exposition of the Thirtynine Articles, Dr Browne has published two volother Subjects, 1859, and the second on Messiah umes of Sermons, one on the Atonement and as Foretold and Expected, 1862. The latter is Messianic prophecy, derived chiefly from Jewish a vindication of the true predictive character of sources. He is author also of The Pentateuch and Colenso in 1863; and The Deaconess, a sermon the Elohistic Psalms, written in reply to Bishop preached in 1871. The bishop is also one of the writers in Aids to Faith, in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, the Speaker's Commentary, &c.

ARCHBISHOP THOMSON.

The Archbishop of York, DR WILLIAM THOMSON, is a native of Whitehaven, Cumberland, born February 11, 1819. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and at Queen's College, Oxford, of which he was successively scholar, Fellow, and tutor. He took his degree of B.A. in 1840, was ordained priest in 1843, and was four years pastor at Guildford and Cuddesden; in 1848 he was appointed select preacher at Oxford, and in 1853 was chosen to preach the Bampton Lecture. The subject was the Atoning Work of Christ. Two years afterwards (1855) he became incumbent of All-Souls, Marylebone; and in 1858 was chosen preacher of Lincoln's Inn. This appointment is generally held to be preliminary to a bishopric, and Dr Thomson was in 1861 made Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. In 1863 he was promoted to the archiepiscopal see of York. His first work An Outline of the Necessary Laws of Thought, was a logical treatise, acute and learned, entitled 1842.

This was followed by the Bampton Lecture; by Sermons Preached in Lincoln's Inn Chapel, 1861; Pastoral Letter, 1864; Life in the Light of God's Word, 1867; Limits of Philosophi cal Inquiry, 1869; and by a Life of Christ and

other articles in Dr Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, as well as contributions to reviews and other literary journals. One of the most valuable of Archbishop Thomson's professional labours was editing and assisting in the authorship of Aids to Faith, a series of theological essays by several writers, designed as a reply to Essays and Reviews. In this volume (third edition, 1870) Dean Mansel took up the subject of the Miracles; the Bishop of Cork (Fitzgerald), the Evidences; Dr M'Caul, Prophecy and the Mosaic Record of Creation; Canon Cooke, Ideology and Subscription; Professor Rawlinson, the Pentateuch; Dr Browne, Bishop of Ely, Inspiration; Dr Ellicott, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, Scripture and its Interpretation; while the archbishop himself, as editor, selected as the subject of his essay the Death of Christ, or the doctrine of Reconciliation:

grammars, and small dictionaries. In 1867 he became editor of the Quarterly Review. This indefatigable scholar and littérateur is a native of London, born in 1815, and educated at the London University, in which he was Classical Examiner from 1853 till 1869. In 1870 he published, in conjunction with a friend (Mr Hall), a Copious and Critical English-Latin Dictionary, said to be the result of fifteen years' labour. In acknowledgment of his service to the cause of education and classical literature, the university of Oxford, in 1870, conferred upon him the honorary degree of D.C.L. Perhaps no university honour was ever more worthily won.

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DR CHARLES JOHN VAUGHAN.

VAUGHAN, D.D., is author of a vast number of The Master of the Temple, CHARLES JOHN sermons and addresses, besides several works of Lectures on the Romans, on Philippians, the First more elaborate character. His Expository Epistle to the Thessalonians, the Acts, the Revelation of St John, &c. are valuable and popular theological works. Some of his collected sermons were delivered in the chapel of Harrow School (two series, 1849 and 1853); in the parish church of St Martin's, Leicester, 1853; Epiphany, Lent, and Easter Sermons, 1860; Sermons at Doncaster, 1863; The Book and the Life, being four sermons at Cambridge, 1862; Twelve Sermons on Subjects connected with the Church of England, 1867; Lessons of the Cross and the Passion (six lectures),

What is there about this teaching that has provoked in times past and present so much disputation? Not, I am persuaded, the hardness of the doctrine, for none of the theories put in its place are any easier, but its want of logical completeness. Sketched out for us in a few broad lines, it tempts the fancy to fill it in and lend it colour; and we do not always remember that the hands that attempt this are trying to make a mystery into a theory, an infinite truth into a finite one, and to reduce the great things of God into the narrow limits of our little field of view. To whom was the ransom paid? What was Satan's share of the transaction? How can one suffer for another? How could the Redeemer be made miserable when He was conscious that His work was one which could bring happiness to the whole human race? Yet this condition of indefinite-1869; Earnest Words for Earnest Men, 1869; ness is one which is imposed on us in the reception of every mystery: prayer, the incarnation, the immortality of the soul, are all subjects that pass far beyond our range of thought. And here we see the wisdom of God in connecting so closely our redemption with our reformation. If the object were to give us a complete theory of salvation, no doubt there would be in the Bible much to seek. The theory is gathered by fragments out of many an exhortation and warning; nowhere does it stand out entire and without logical flaw. But if we assume that the New Testament is written for the guidance of sinful hearts, we find a wonderful aptness for that particular end. Jesus is proclaimed as the solace of our fears, as the founder of our moral life, as the restorer of our lost relation with our Father. If He had a cross, there is a cross for us; if He pleased not Himself, let us deny ourselves; if he suffered for sin, let us hate sin. And the question ought not to be, what do all these mysteries mean, but are these thoughts really such as will serve to guide our life, and to assuage our terrors in the fear of death? The answer is twofold -one from history and one from experience. The preaching of the Cross of the Lord even in this simple fashion converted the world. The same doctrine is now the ground of any definite hope that we find in ourselves, of forgiveness of sins and of everlasting life.

DR WILLIAM SMITH.

Most of the divines who assisted Archbishop Thomson in his Aids to Faith have been associ

ated with DR WILLIAM SMITH in a Dictionary of the Bible, its antiquities, biography, geography, and natural history (1860-1863). This work is a complete storehouse of information on every subject connected with the Bible. Dr Smith has also edited Dictionaries of Greek and Roman Antiquities, Biography, Mythology, and Geography (1840-1852), and several students' manuals,

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Last Words in the Parish Church of Doncaster; &c. For thirty years or more, it may be said that not a single year has passed without some work from Dr Vaughan; and his ministrations in the beautiful Temple Church in London (of old the church of the Knights Templars) are attended by large congregations. Dr Vaughan was born about 1817, and having passed a brilliant university career at Trinity College, Cambridge (in 1837 Browne's medallist for the Greek ode and epigram, and gainer of the members' prize for Latin essay; in 1838, senior classic), he entered into holy orders, and became Vicar of St Martin's, Leicester-a parish of which his father had been incumbent. He was next Head Master of Harrow School (1844-1859), refused the bishopric of Rochester in 1860, and shortly afterwards became Vicar of Doncaster. After a residence of nearly ten years at Doncaster, he accepted the Mastership of the Temple in 1869. As parish clergyman and as Master of the Temple, Dr Vaughan has been distinguished equally for his affectionate earnestness and zeal and his unwearied activity, while his classical attainments have placed him in the first rank of English scholars.

Three Partings.

From Last Words in the Parish Church of Doncaster.

Life is full of partings. Every day we see some one these partings, and churches are full of these partings, whom we shall never see again. Homes are full of and therefore 'Scripture also, the mirror of life, is full of these partings; tells us how bitter they are or takes that for granted, and tells us rather how solemn they are, how admonitory, how important-bids us regard them, use them, turn them to account.

First, I will speak of bodily partings. Those who were once near together in the flesh are no longer so.

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