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CHRISTIAN UNION.

THE PRAYER OF THE MESSIAH.

FATHER, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee. As thou hast given him power over all men, that he may bestow eternal life on all those whom thou hast given him. Now this is the life eternal, to know thee the only true God, and Jesus the Messiah, thy Apostle. I have glorified thee on the earth, I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, Father, glorify thou me in thy own presence, with that glory which I enjoyed with thee before the world was. I have made known thy name to the men whom thou hast given me out of the world. They were thine, and thou hast given them to me; and they have kept thy word. Whatever thou hast given to me, they now know to have come from thee, and that thou hast imparted to me the doctrines which I have imparted to them. They have received it, knowing for certainty that I came forth from thee, and am commissioned by thee. It is for them that I pray I pray not for the world,

but for those whom thou hast given me, because they are thine; and all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them. I continue no longer in the world; but these continue in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, preserve them in thy name, whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are. While I was in the world, I kept them in thy name; those whom thou hast given me I have preserved. None of them is lost except the son of perdition, as the scriptures foretold. But now that I am coming to thee, I speak these things in the world, that their joy in me may be complete. I have delivered thy word to them, and the world hates them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not pray thee to remove them out of the world, but to preserve them from evil. Of the world they are not, as I am not of the world. Consecrate them by thy truth-thy word is the truth. As thou hast made me thy apostle to the world, I have made them my apostles to the world. And I consecrate myself for them, that they

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may be consecrated through the truth.

of the guilty on that day :-thus commencing the work for which he had died and been raised again from the dead.

2nd. Jesus prayed for the apostles

that they might be kept from the evil of the world, and consecrated to execute the commission with which they had been entrusted, and to fill up the remainder of the afflictions of Christ in the flesh, for his body's sake the church. (Col. i. 24.)

Nor do I pray for these alone, but for those who shall believe on me through their teaching; that all may be one that as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me, and that thou gave me the glory which I have given them that they may be one as we are one I in them, and thou in me, that their union may be perfected, and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and that thou lovest them as thou hast loved me. Father, I would that where I shall be, those whom thou hast given may be with me; that they may behold my glory, which thou gavest me, because thou lovedst me before the formation of the world. O righteous 4th. He prayed for the unconvertFather, though the world knoweth ed :-that by discerning the union of not thee, I know thee; and these sinners with the apostles, and the know that I have thy commission. blissful truths which they imparted— And to them I have communicated, the union of the apostles with Christ and will communicate thy name: that—and the union of Christ with God I being in them, they may share in the love with which thou lovest me. -Pocket Testament.

Such was the heavenly and comprehensive prayer of Messiah, poured from his omniscient and benevolent mind, just before he suffered as a sacrifice for sin. His heart was fixed upon the reunion of a lost and perishing world with himself and his Father. For this purpose he came into the world, suffered, bled, and died. It must be obvious to all, that the great matter for which the Saviour petitioned was the conversion of the world, and the glorification of his people. Hence he prayed

1st. For himself: that the Father would glorify him-that he also might glorify the Father. This was accomplished by his death, burial, resurrection, and elevation to universal supremacy at the right hand of the Father-his pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the day of pentecostand by his pardoning three thousand

3rd. He prayed for the chnrch, comprising, as he knew it would, persons of all nations and ages. He prayed that they might be united in one body, as intimately and indissolubly as he and his Father were united-" that they all may be one, as thou Father art in mc, and I in thee; that they may be one in us."

and an immortal state-they might know, they might believe, that God had so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth on him might not perish, but have everlasting life. This was a holy evangelical alliance of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-the apostles, the truth, and the institutions of Christianity: a system, divine in its nature-eternal in its durationevery way worthy of its origin--and fully adequate to the salvation and union of the body of Christ on earth, and its glorification and immortality in the presence of God and the Lamb for ever.

Has this heavenly and sublime prayer ever been answered in its full design and import? Or is it now in a state of progressive fulfilment ? These are important inquiries, and demand serious investigation. The Saviour accomplished his work—the Apostles fulfilled their mission-the Holy Spirit is now the Advocate:

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"all things necessary for life and spirit of man, in the "red-leaved godliness have been imparted to us tablets of the heart," by the sword of -yet still the church is divided and the Spirit, the word of divine truth, scattered into fragments. This dis- | which slays and makes alive. Its union cannot be ascribed to the Fa- warriors-the noblest, the purest— ther, Son, Holy Spirit, or Apostles. | are summoned by the voice of God ; “God is a rock, and his work is per- and its effects may be traced through fect." O man, what hast thou done? ages, by man approaching nearer to Marred the beauty, symmetry, and his original purity, and assuming a glory of the body of Christ. Can greater likeness to God his Father. this heavenly beauty be restored, so In this class may be placed the introthat the congregation of the Lord duction of Christianity, and the Proshall again shine forth in her primi-testant Reformation of the sixteenth tive glory, fair as the moon, clear as | century. the sun, and terrible as an army with But there are other kinds of revobanners? To say this cannot be ac-lutions, whose features are not so complished, is one thing-and to say lovely, though their results are unithat it will not is another. To be formly the same. These are political dogmatical here would be presump-revolutions, produced by the tyranny tuous ; we shall, therefore, leave the subject for future consideration.

THE QUESTIONS OF THE

PRESENT AGE,

CONSIDERED IN THEIR RELATION TO
DIVINE TRUTH.

NO. I.

THERE have been, and still continue to be, periods in the world's history, when the principles and systems which have formerly been esteemed fixed and certain, are rudely assailed-when nations question the fitness and utility of the institutions they have most venerated: a sure sign of increased knowledge and mo-| ral expansion, or of increased depravity. These periods are called | revolutions. They are of two kinds, moral and political. The moral revolution, arising from an increase of spiritual life in man, is uniformly peaceful in its operations and effects. Its principles are not written by the sword of the warrior in letters of blood-its path is not traced by desolation and misery-its warriors are not summoned to battle by the sound of the trumpet-and the voices of no widows and orphans ascend to the throne of the Most High, entreating him to pity and to plead their cause; but its principles are written in the

of kings and rulers, the baleful influence of priestcraft, or all the other evils which affect a nation, and which are commonly endured until the cup of oppression is full to overflowing— till the nation, awaking like a giant from his sleep, rises up in awful majesty, and demands that its liberties shall be restored, its rights no longer withheld, and that oppression shall | cease.

But, in common with everything contrary to the laws of God, tyranny carries with it the germ of its own punishment. When the lust of power has once obtained dominion over the heart of man, it will never depart, and man will retain that power or die. Thus no moral standard of appeal being accepted, the question is decided by the sword, and the strife continues, till tyranny and oppression are swept away like chaff before the whirlwind.

Happy would it be for mankind, if the elements of evil were here stifled! but since the contest has been decided not by the highest, but by the lowest qualities of our nature-since the triumphant resignation and endurance of the martyr have given place to the fierce energies and stubborn courage of the warrior, the passions thus aroused, having acquired strength by

opportunity for all the disciples of the living God to present the Christian system to the gaze and admiration of mankind. In our own country we behold almost all the old systems dis

new combinations. Methodism, under the combined influence of wealth and priestcraft, has lost all its pristine energy, and is no longer a progressive system: the Baptists are now awakening from a long slumber, and manifesting a desire to return to more primitive and Christian principles; and the State Church presents the curious spectacle of the purest, the most learned and energetic of its

continuous exercise, will not lie down in sleep when their services are no longer needed, but rule despotically and strive among themselves: society becomes a chaos-law, government, and peace depart, and evil reigns su-solving, and resolving themselves into preme. But when no human arm can save, then He who rides on the wings of the whirlwind, whose love to mankind has ever been shown in the hour of need, asserts his power-says to the sea of crime, which threatens to sweep away every landmark, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed" —and, guiding all things by the exertion of his loving-power, makes all things work together for good: ex-members, not only declining to protracting from the crimes and follies of humanity, the balm which will not only cure the plagues of the moral and political universe, but assists mankind in attaining a more spiritual life, and by this double manifestation of character, declares that God is power, and that God is love.

It needs but little consideration of the signs of the times, to convince the man of reflection, that we are now on the eve of a great and portentous struggle, and it is necessary that we should be prepared to meet it.

Fourteen years ago, silence reigned over the moral and political heavens -great changes had been effected, social progress had received considerable impetus, and the nation, after a long and arduous struggle, was disposed to rest from its labours, and recruit its exhausted energies; but the wish was vain : the small cloud, no larger than a man's hand, arose on the verge of the moral horizon, increasing in size, growing darker and more lowering, till now it is bursting over our heads, and declares to us, in tones thrilling as the trumpet of the archangel, and solemn as the voice of God, that the time is come for the most glorious and fearful struggle that the world has ever seen-a struggle in which all the powers of evil will be engaged, but which will afford an

gress with the age, but retrograding in principles a space of three centuries, thereby throwing away their influence at a time when it is most needed to preserve themselves from overthrow. The evangelical churchmen, since the death of the great and lamented Arnold, with a few brilliant exceptions, are contemptible both in numbers and influence. suredly in this dissolution of elements, Christians have an opportunity of constructing a temple of living stones, in honor of him who gave himself as an atonement for sin.

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But it is needful to regard all the developments of the present age. To oppose us we find the Arminian, the Socinian, the Romanist, the Atheist, and the Socialist, besides the Jesuit, who is once more adapting himself to the spirit of the age. In addition to these we find great numbers of our youth who have been misled by the mystic jargon of Goethe, Emerson, and others. On the continent circumstances are encouraging: even in France genius is no longer atheis tical; and to oppose Catholicism we find D'Aubigné, Vinet, Quinet, Michelet, and many other eminent men, who are well qualified to uphold the great principles of Protestantism.

Germany, so long encircled in the dark clouds of rationalism, has still

its Ronge, its Tholuck, and others well worthy of the nation that heard in former ages the teachings of Luther.

reaction attending emancipation, will turn its liberty into lawless license: it therefore requires laws, stern and crushing, but adapted to its present

Such is the present state of civi-state of feeling and thought, and its lized Europe, presenting the largest future elevation. From the influence arena for the conflict of giant souls of the solemn and splendid mysteries and Christian principles. Yet, at the of the Egyptian hiearchy, into which present time, in England there are every Israelite was doubtless initiated, but three great questions agitated- we perceive the reason for the awful the rest are seen but indistinctly, and miracles of Mount Sinai; and in the at times, like dark and shadowy forms. debasing influence of the idolatry of These questions are Slavery, the con- Egypt is the reason for God displaynection between Church and State, ing himself rather as an inexorable and State Education. It is of the judge, than as a kind and loving fafirst we propose to treat. The Bri- ther. In like manner, for a nation tish nation has abolished the system, just redeemed from slavery, we find and nobly atoned for its participation instituted a system of slavery deprived in it ; but the battle has still to be of its most odious features, reminding fought in other lands. the nation to whom it was given of their former misery. We shall proceed to examine the laws of this institution, classifying them for more convenient examination.

SLAVERY.

Recognizing slavery as an existing system, the mind naturally reveris to its origin, and on inquiring, when did it commence? we find from the sacred and historic records, that it originated ages before God gave any system of laws to the world. We cannot, therefore, say that God originated it. The inquiry then is, who

did originate it?

If we ask profane history, and the monuments of antiquity, we shall hear a response. They declare to us that slavery resulted from the lust of power it was the result of war, and it has proved a worthy offspring of so vile a parent. Glancing farther down the stream of time, we behold a whole nation deprived of its liberty, not by God, but by a cruel king, a powerful priesthood, and a haughty military caste. During 400 years this oppression continues, till all their nobler feelings, being well-nigh extinguished, God in mercy to them, and in vindication of one of his own attributes, inflicts awful punishment on their oppressors, and breaks the yoke under which they had groaned.

A nation of slaves, from the very constitution of human nature, in the

First the laws relating to manstealing.

1." And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death."

2. "If a man be found stealing any of his brethren of the children of Israel, and maketh merchandise of him, or selleth him, then that thief shall die, and thou shalt put evil from among you."

Second-the laws whereby man might have property in man, and the duration of that right of property :

"And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee, thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond-servant, but as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubilee, and then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return, for they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt, they shall not be sold as bondmen."

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