CHRISTIANITY AS A META- of cloud, yet they each admirably PHYSICAL SYSTEM. subserve their purposes in the economy of nature. Christianity, which I. REASON AND REVELATION.-It is Revelation in its ripeness and mahas been the dark policy of unbe- turity, appeals to the highest reason, lievers to set Reason and Revelation and is in solemn harmony with the at variance. Wickedness and folly most profound conclusions of human combined have led them to seek and understanding. Yet Reason, though imagine such an impossible conflict. powerful and majestic, is a vassal Among the religious, ignorance and without being a slave. Apprehendsuperstition have led many to the ing, in some measure, the suitability same degrading conclusion. The of the disclosures which have come vindictive enemies and the injudi- from above, but not able to rise above cious friends of the supernatural have the facts of redemption, so as to rest arrived by different roads at the same with certainty on the everlasting reagoal; yet it has not proved a temple sons upon which they are grounded, of reconciliation. The strife continues it is surely no depreciation of Reason loud and violent as ever, both ad- to declare that there are deeps in the mitting antagonism between the divine mind which cannot be sounded forces or powers, but each claiming superiority for the energy which has enlisted his own faith. They might as reasonably seek for opposition between the sun and the moon; the one splendid with original light-the other serene in borrowed lustre. Though the one which rules the day sometimes burns with destructive glory, and the one which rules by night often sails under black masses by the human-that the infinite in space and duration cannot be reached by earthly measuring-line; or that the spirit of man, though it is the lamp of God among visible things, yet cannot reveal the secrets from the bosom of Divinity. As the stars of the great vault are hidden and obscured, not by darkness, but by a curtain of light which the Lord of day stretches over them, so the silver A A II. MORAL AND POSITIVE LAW.— Would to God that men generally could apprehend the nature of moral law. Teachers too commonly give single prominence to divine will. Now this, though certainly a foundation, is not the deepest foundation. That which can be established by mere will can be changed or inverted by the same authority. We conceive, for instance, of Satan as a great intellect, entirely separated from God, and utterly abandoned to evil-one who abode not in the truth, but from the beginning of our moral history was a liar and a murderer, and still remains the malignant, implacable, and remorseless enemy of God, truth, and holiness. We conceive of Christ as the being who walked the earth in divine beauty, the crowning incarnation and salient spring of all things pure and undefiled in word and action. Suppose then a decree from the Supreme, which declares that from henceforth the character of Satan shall be the pattern character, and the character of Christ that against which we are to strive and pray with watching and fasting. Impossible! lamp of reason fades and pales away well lighted for its base, and high amid the golden splendours in the over head a mystic roof, where many inner temple of Godhead. Two lamps of fire tremble in partial illugrand conditions appear to be insemination, but disclose not the mystery parably connected with a revelation of that ebon dome from which they from God. First, that the substantial are suspended. testimony on which faith is to rest, and the duties in which faith is to live, should have a crystal clearness and transparency, seizing strongly on the common understanding, and piercing deeply the common heart. Second, that the truth received and enjoyed should have relations and connections wonderful and inscrutable. Without the first, the gospel could not be glad tidings of great joy to all men, but would only increase the misery and pain of the human race. The mass of men have neither time nor power to pursue the recondite; but demand, by the urgency of their condition, broad lines of evidence, and principles of action popular and powerful. Without the second, Revelation would at once be condemned as a humanism. Coming from a God who from everlasting to everlasting dwells in glory uncreate and inaccessible, and treating of relations between himself and his creatures, which look backward into antique ages and forward into the eternal state-downward into the human soul, and upward into the mind of Divinity-it must be mysterious and sublime. In the nature of the case, it transcends the ordinary track of reason and the boundaries of nature, stretching away into infinity and eternity. Fields that are insufferably bright in crimson lustre, and forests which are solemn in majesty of darkness, appear through every vista. Such is the superscription of God on his method of redemption, feeding with proper aliment wonder, ideality, veneration, and all the moral faculties, on the cultivation and supremacy of which depends our elevation in the scale of spiritual being. Christianity realizes both the conditions spoken of, having a firm ground exclaims the reader. Certainly impossible. But wherein lies the impossibility? Because, if will only was concerned in the existing moral relations, will might change and overthrow, transforming evil into good by new legislation. It is impossible, because (with reverence be it spoken) the spiritual relations of the universe rest not upon will, human or divine. They arise by moral necessity from the character of God, which is as ancient and immutable as his being. The eternal I Am could not will evil without divesting himself of that essential holiness which is his glory. His will is the declara tion of his nature. His laws are not arbitrary nor perishable, because they are transcribed from the book of his own sublime moral character--statutes in which the essential light and the essential love are embodied in eternal and life-giving principles. From the bosom of central Godhead, that sanctuary of justice and fathomless ocean of life and love, sprang those solemn relations which we sustain to each other and to the Creator, and those divine laws which have imperial control. But if moral law, which is necessarily the same through all worlds and among all intelligent beings, springs from the bosom of God, whence comes the positive law which claims authority over the conscience in our fallen planet? From the same source- -the well-spring of truth, justice, and mercy. It is in this department of divine ordinance that will comes more directly into the field of contemplation. Legislation, in a dangerous emergency, is by necessity original. Still it is so arranged that the positive shall glorify the moral. The ancient law is magnified and made honourable through the ample dominions of God. The inviolability of his law never received such profound homage, or such triumphant vindication, as it received by the work of Jesus. The positive deeds on which we rest for salvation are in strict harmony with the living spirit, but far above the letter of moral law. Hence we have realized a more full manifestation of the character and heart of the great Father than there could possibly exist in the state of primal innocence. A class of men exist even among professing Christians who profanely or thoughtlessly seek to depreciate positive ordinances. Were they not contracted in mental range, they might reflect that their censure falls upon entire Christianity. By baptism, the supper of the Lord, and other cognate ordinances, we feed upon spiritual food, and enjoy life divine; but it was likewise by ordinances that the life was procured, and the food rendered accessible. The ancient eternal moral law made no provision for the preternatural state of things arising out of sin and rebellion against God. By positive appointments, ruin was averted, sin was arrested, death was conquered, and the gates of immortality reopened. Christianity is a positive supernatural appointment, and all its elements are elements of life. Could we separate the branches from the trunk, we would only leave a maimed and bleeding body; and no valid reason could be assigned to prevent the destruction of the entire system, providing our first work was justifiable. Considerations of this kind are well adapted to prevent men from trifling with the institutions of the Divine Lawgiver; for if we neglect or undervalue the ordinances by which we are to lay hold upon his work, why might we not, on the same ground, neglect or despise the ordinances by which he laid hold upon both God and man, to bring them together in peace and reconciliation? III. GRACE AND MERIT. From St. Augustine and Pelagius to Gottschalk and Scotus Erigena—or from Luther and Erasmus down to Portroyal and the Jesuits, when Pascal, a solitary warrior, routed an army what a controversy has raged on this question. Renewed in every age, and left unfinished by every generation. In what attitude must man stand before the eternal throne? In the legal haughtiness of one who has worked out his own redemption, and merited his own salvation—or in the condition of one who from the core of his being feels his own unworthiness, and is fain to fling himself upon the mercy of God in Christ? When condemned criminals were ready to perish, no man could give a ransom for his own soul, or provide an expiation for his brother. All were guilty, silent, and helpless. If mercy flows, if love is triumphant, it could dream of finding grace in Calcan only flow from the pure fountain | vinism. Listen to an orator of that head of life. Grace or favour un- grim school :--" God has from all bought, undeserved, must originate eternity predestinated to eternal life the method of recovery and purifica- a portion of the human family. They tion. Man in his crime and wretch- are chosen for glory by his absolute edness was diseased both in power will through unconditional election, and will. He could not conceive of and will certainly reign in bliss any scheme for ransom and justifica- through eternal ages. All the rest tion, or imagine how the ancient of the world are either consigned to peace could be enjoyed and perpetu- perdition by absolute reprobation, or ated. In this aspect we stand before the great God passes by them in inGod in that poverty of soul which is difference, leaving them to perish." our true riches, humble and shiver- This is the naked spirit of the system, ing in the blast of nature, until we apart from all glossing and disguises. are attired in the robes of warmth We easily conclude that such a sysand beauty which become ours by tem, in the room of being glad tidings the blood and righteousness of ano- of great joy to all people, is the most ther. We have all been pursued by tremendous message that can be heard the same dread tempest of vengeance, upon earth, and re-echoed in thunder and at midnight, shipwrecked in the from hell. In the room of having same tremendous sea. If, while we for missionaries a Divine Saviour desperately struggled with winds and with bleeding compassion, and a host waves of wrath and ruin, a celestial of sanctified martyrs with weeping messenger has spoken peace to the benevolence and deathless love-it infernal tumult, and carried us under would require for its prime apostle his wings to the shore, let us not an incarnate Moloch, assisted by a boast of our security, as if we had legion of ancient furies with snakes reached the haven by skill and energy twisted around them. If such a reign of our own. The supernatural facts were possible, the men whose moral which are the historical groundwork nature is not utterly consumed by of Christianity-the miraculous evi- the cancer of selfishness, would radence which renders the facts credi- ther cast in their lot with the forsable-the adaptation of the mercies ken and the condemned, than have provided to our condition and circum- any participation in the fiery splenstances the original missionaries dour and disastrous renown of such pure heroic and saintly, who publish- an awful administration. The grace ed the glad tidings-the Providence of God is not a hidden fountain to which has preserved the record in which an initiated few are led by the books, institutes, and life, bringing Holy Spirit, that they may return the whole scheme down the torrent among us with spiritual pride and of ages in all its integrity and fresh- scornful pity; but it is a bright, free, ness, with the bloom of youth and magnificent river from which all may the dignity of age-all this is of God: drink in life and immortality, and what could man do? lave therein for healing and renovation. It is actually on this basis that the final judgment will rest and pro"God commandeth all men every where to repent, because he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assur But still the grace of God is neither Calvinistic nor Antinomian. It will form no alliance with heathen fatal-ceed. ism, strike no league with modern licentiousness. Were it not for our familiarity with the wanderings and delusions of man, as history reveals him, we might wonder how any one ance unto all men in that he hath help us to travel the solar walk and raised him from the dead." When the sceptre of love and reconciliation has been extended and contemned-when the cup of life has been presented and rejected with disdain- -we can see and feel the justice of condemnation. The judgment-seat is glorious and inviolate. But condemnation for unbelief in a salvation not provided for us! This would be sufficient to shake the pillars of the universe, and spread a pall of darkness over all things once believed in as pure, divine, and eternal! IV. NATURE AND MIRACLE.-In this age of cold and barren philosophy we have grown almost atheistic in our methods of conception and expression. We speak so much and so often about the course and laws of Nature, that we often forget that we are employing mere abstractions. Course of Nature surely means the agency of a personal, powerful, and intelligent Being. Laws of Nature, the rules and principles of order, affinity, counterpoise, and mutual action which God has established among material things; or the direct action of the Divine Being on the universe of his creation. Metaphysical abstraction has become the ally of moral alienation. Hence men are ready enough, with freezing politeness, to acknowledge a great First Cause, but would rather have him at an immense distance. Let him loom as a gigantic spectre on the silent shores of immensity and eternity, or brood sullenly in the remote abysses of time and space; but not approach the thoroughfares of present life as a watchful and presiding spirit. But no speculation can destroy the historical realities by which God was revealed on the theatre of time and nature. It is written in characters of fire on all high places of the creation, and sounded in trumpet voices through the wide earth that the everlasting God has been with us in miraculous energy. Science may milky way; the telescope may vastly widen the field of observation, until we grasp, in some faint measure, the marvel and the magnitude of visible external nature; but in the largest sweep we take, let a man walk across the field of observation, and at once his mental rank and spiritual destiny eclipse all. No wonder that the laws of nature were suspended in attestation of testimony, when the salvation of man demanded such splendid evidence. The theatre of action was noble; but the actor, the moral agent, was greater, and so God came near to him in immediate manifestation. V. FAITH AND LOVE.-Some unreasoning or unreasonable people inform us that they cannot understand Christianity fully, and therefore do not believe. They profess to be waiting to know and comprehend. We only desire to remind them that faith is neither knowledge nor demonstration. Sensible experience gives knowledge, geometry brings demonstration, while faith gives substance and reality to things which are neither scen nor self-evident. If the unfortunate men who are waiting for evidence, sensible or mathematical, will not cast away their vision, and seek higher philosophy, they will never have the illustrious honour of walking by faith. It will certainly be out of the field, and out of the question, when the invisible is revealed, and the mild Mediator appears on exalted throne as Lord of creation and judge of the world. Faith is the belief of testimony: hence it is the substance and the evidence, or the conviction and the confidence, of things unseen and hoped for. From faith springs hope, which is certitude or conviction vivified by the element of ardent desire. While faith rests upon the great rock of the testimony concerning Jesus, hope roves among the promises with vital joy, and spreads immortal wings in exulting assurance. "And now abideth faith, |