ment, his malignant colleagues could find no ground human family in all quarters within and around of accusation against him, except that of his re- the great Mesopotamian levels? What were the ligious constancy. This "righteousness" is that spiritual despotisms that then rested a heavy foot toward which an impulsive and expansive benevo- upon the soul of the nations? A word or two in lence directs its aim. The gaining a multitude of reply to these questions may serve perhaps to enconverts to RIGHTEOUSNESS--to justice, truth, pro-hance and to invigorate that feeling of calm, hopebity, firmness in conduct, is the end, in respect of ful confidence with which we have been wont to which a promise is held out-of a bright and in- read the words as they stand in our Bibles. How terminable future-an inheritance (as in a later has it fared comparatively with this promise, now age it came to be described) which should be in- more than three thousand years old, when we incorruptible, undefiled, and not fading away-" an quire concerning the fate of those other promises inheritance in light." which, at that same time, were issued in the hearing of the nations-not as this, in the modesty of a Jewish captive's whispers, but with the clangour and the pomps of the imperial band, with the choicest music of the "cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music." Where now is that image of gold whose height was threescore cubits, and its breadth twenty cubits? A god-fit to be worshipped, was it not? by the prostrate nations of more than a hundred provinces; worthy object of the pious fervours of "the princes, the governors and captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counsellors, the sheriffs," and all others, the subaltern rulers of the subjected eastern world! Next comes the scope or compass of that unrestrictive philanthropy upon which, as we may say, the entire passage hinges. This turning of the many to righteousness; this bringing of the many to accept the true wisdom is the leading reason, or final cause, of the whole; and it is in respect of this chief of the "works of mercy" that the brightness of immortality is here propounded-is proffered, shall we say, to the ambition of those whose ambition intends good, and never evil, to others. One other element is here to be noted, which, although it stands out of sight in the immediate context, is not far to find in the book of which this context is the winding-up. There is here recorded a large promise; how large? immortality shall declare it! How large, they shall say whose it shall be to enter upon it! But the promise, although conveyed in terms that are symbolicaland although its definite meaning or absolute value shall never be found and fixed on earth, and which, therefore, in a sense is vague-stands where it stands, or it meets the eye of the men of each following generation like an inscription cut in upon a tablet, which tablet was at the first jointed in with a building, adjusted and cemented at the time when the workmen had reached this level of the polished stones that constitute this ancient structure. In other words, the promise of a bright immortality, brighter than that of others, and the peculiar recompense of evangelizing labours, is set, or made fast upon the predicted course of this world's afairs. There is much meaning in this collocation of a promise, which itself is manifestly unworldly and spiritual, What this meaning is may deserve some careful thought at another time. May it not well claim the amplest measure of the most careful meditation? Just now we keep it in reserve, and take up an easier line of meditation. Manifestly it is congruous with a promise of immortality that itself should outlive or outlast those things that were at the first its contemporaries, and which, at that time, seemed much more likely to live than itself. How was it, then, as to this promise, received, uttered, and recorded by this exile;-a captive, in fact, at a foreign court, and far away from the home of his ancestors; musing by night upon the river's side, and himself, perhaps, in doubt whether these words, although they were a message from God, would find their way into the sacred collection along with the institutions of the law and the voices of the prophets. What things, then, were the contemporaries of this vaticination? What were the things that, in i those times, held dominion among the nations, and ruled the minds and souls of the millions of the Where is this worship? It is where the worshippers themselves have gone; and if you would know more about it-its principles, its dogmas, its rites, its usages-more than the industrious learning of these last times may have been able to decipher from its broken monuments-if you would learn more than this scanty measure which erudition can furnish, you must even go down into the depths of the earth, you must question the congregation of Sheol! Death! death has long ago engulfed all; not only the worshippers, but the worship, the doctrine, the belief, the philosophy of that age all has long ago ceased from off the surface of human affairs. But if now you would assure yourself that those things, or the like to them, once were, and once flourished, visit the British Museum. There we shall find the credentials of those perished despotisms, and of those forgotten superstitions which were triumphant in that age when the Jewish seer and the incorrupt courtier uttered the promise of immortality, and propounded the recompense of eminent service, saying of God's servants, that "they shall shine as the stars for ever and ever." Thus far, then, these words of power have proved their own inherent indestructible quality. A polity and a superstition of a more remote antiquity than that of Babylonia-more complicate, less barbaric, but not of any better quality in a religious or a moral sense-graced, or shamed, the banks of the Nile in the ages that are now in view. Here too Death, long, long ago, has signalized his triumphs! Such materials as were too hard for the tooth of time-the sculptured granite columns, and the porphyry obelisks have stood in their places, or have encumbered the soil, or have conserved themselves in the sands, to give a testimony which industrious erudition partially interprets, and which, so far as it has been read off in these times, shows that there was an intention in the men of those ages to build a house wherein a doctrine should securely find its home "for ever and ever." But where now is that house? where is now the doctrine which should have dwelt there as long as the sun holds his place in the heavens? The temples and the remains of Egyptian art, in front of which the modern mind is subdued by its admiration of what modern art could not rival, all these things which survive only by virtue of their material hardness and by indulgence of the climate, all are wrecks strewed over the field where Death encamped himself ages and ages ago. Among the systems of belief and worship which were the contemporaries of the Jewish prophet, two have actually survived the shocks of the world's affairs; two have lived through all these centuries, not merely in stony fragments, and in prostrate columns, and in subterranean temples, but in the minds and usages of the surviving races. Brahminism still lives, and Buddhism still lives; and they may yet for time to come count their followers by millions of the human family. Well one might ask, as to these two vast superstitions,-Is it a LIFE that they live; or is it not rather a sullen and a prostrate death? More like a death than a life is the survivance of the two Oriental superstitions; the one, as to its moral influence, a pestilent carcase; the other an azote, within range of which souls do not breathe. Many are the points of comparison which might be brought forward, if it were our purpose to form an estimate of the relative merits of the three religions which Asia has given to the world-namely, the Jewish, the Buddhist, and the Brahminical supposing that we were looking back to the remote times that are now in view. At that time, or thereabouts, Brahminism was an energetic and a very potent scheme, at once of civil polity, of popular worship, and of hierarchical pride and tyranny. At that time, or thereabouts, Buddhism, at some of its centres, was animated by an intense and selfdenying missionary zeal. The doctrine was carried from nation to nation by devoted adherents, until it had possessed itself, almost, of the entire Eastern world, beyond the Indus. From these several grounds of comparison we must now abstain; or from all of them but one, and this one, deeply significant as it is, offers itself to our notice; or we may say it is naturally suggested by the words which stand at the head of this paper. They are missionary words, and for a long while after they were uttered they seemed almost to have fallen out of the place they should have held in the minds of men. But the time of their revival came; -and such a time-such a season of renovated vitality has occurred, in the lapse of centuries, again and yet again; and now, at this moment, these words of power are powers indeed, in the hearts of thousands of those whose hearts are Bible-trained. What was the direction of the eye-what was the angle of elevation, when, in the days of the vitality of the three religions—the Buddhist missionary, the Brahmin, and the Jewish prophetlooked into the unseen future in search of the destined immortality of the human spirit? The Buddhist, with a volume of wordy sublimities and profound metaphysics, on his tongue, and an objectless glare into void space, looks out, he knows not why, or whither, toward a God-less universe; A and in this prospect the gospel he proclaims to his fellows is that of an absorption-unconscious, into the Infinite, Impersonal Mind;-even as the raindrop mingles itself, and is lost in the ocean. more definite gospel than this is the gospel of Brahminism, the instructed teacher of which finds immortality for man, not by lifting the eye skyward, but by a downward, vilifying look, among the brute orders around him. To the dying disciple he says, Make your choice now, among the things that crawl, or that tread the earth; what is it that will best please you to serve as the next home of your soul? As is the earthy, so also are they that are earthy; as is this doctrine-sensual, brutish, cruel, false-such are its teachers, and such its victims. Not of this quality is the Jewish prophet's doctrine: his eye is upward bent, and in search of symbols fitting for the conveyance of the gospel which he has to proclaim, he looks to the skies— he peruses the deep, cloudless azure of the firmament-he seeks and finds his metaphoric terms in the steady effulgence of the stars. As is to us on earth this firmament, as are to us these evershining stars, such, he says, shall be the immortality of them that are wise toward God, and who are zealous and loving toward their fellow-men. This, then, is that gospel of life-eternal which has lived through so many centuries, which yet lives, and which, even now, is showing its power to bring home to God many from the nations that are afar off-from the east, and from the west, from the north, and from the south. Of the three systems, or call them the three gospels, to which we have here referred, it may be said that among them they exhaust the resources of the human mind, when it puts itself in quest of a religion. No scheme of belief or worship which might not properly take its place as a species, or a variety, under one or other of the three, has hitherto been propounded, or taught and accepted among the nations. But now, in thus regarding the three as the principal classes or orders of religious doctrine, it is highly important to note what is the inner reason, or the reasons, that are characteristic of each; and in duly considering which, we come to see the cause of the vast disparity of the two, as compared with the third. The inner reason-or, as we might better say, the twofold reason-of this disparity is this: The very essence of the religion which Daniel professed, and which prophets and apostles have taught, and which now Christian missionaries are carrying abroad-or its essence, as compared with the other two-is the emphatically professed, and the firmly-held doctrine of God-Personal— the Almighty and the Father, with whom individually we have to do. This was, and is, its distinction, as compared with the horrific Polytheism of the one religion, and with the vague, unintelligible Pantheism of the other religion. But now the doctrine of God-as taught from the first page to the last of Holy Scripture-brings with it, invariably, another and a counterpart doctrine, namely, that of the individual importance of the human being-or, say, the inestimable value of every human being, body and soul; so that neither body nor soul may ever be contemned or left un cared for, or be proudly scorned, or selfishly put out of sight. In regard to its individual wellbeing, all human souls, and bodies too, are on a level, in the view of that religion which teaches the personality and paternal character of God, and which affirms that, in his sight, there is no such respect of persons as the pride and selfishness of men so fondly insist upon. It is on this ground that the religion of the Scriptures, Hebrew and Christian, stands distinguished from every other religion, ancient or modern; and that it holds a position that is antagonistic to all of them, and as widely distanced as is the remotest border of the celestial universe from its opposite border. Well may we turn aside from, and forget those delusions, ancient and modern, to which we have made this incidental reference. Sensuous are they, and sensual, impure, gloomy-deathlike are they all in their several moods. We turn to a better and a brighter prospect, even to "the promise that is left us, given us in the testimony of prophets and apostles. Note now the purity, the permanence, the unearthliness of those conceptions of the future life, which those symbols are employed to convey or to indicate. Yet withal notice the extreme brevity of this conveyance; or, as we might say, the reticence of this message from heaven. There are but a few single instances anywhere to be found, and these must be gathered from the Bible itself, in which so few as twelve words stand representative of so much as these do: a life renovated-a life endless—a life undecaying in its enjoyments, in its services, in its distinctions, in its advancements. The same number of words, in the handwriting of one whom you know to be able to substantiate whatever he may say or write, shall convey to you "a princely fortune." Lay your hand rather upon these words: choose them as what you think "better than thousands of gold and silver:" so shall they be in the end when you are to stand in your lot in the latter day." The message, if it had been sent in greater amplitude of language, or had more of descriptive expansion, would not, we may be sure, have been serviceable to us. In what terms could any such description of the Endless Future be given us? No other terms could have been employed than such as are supplied by the material objects around us. The language of heaven, by necessity, must to us be the language of earth; and it must bring with it, therefore, in every phrase, commingled ideas of decay, corruption, insecurity; and so the message, if thus expanded, would only defeat its own intention; for it would lead us back to earth more than it would lift us aloft toward heaven. Let us look into this distinction. You may say, if you please, that insensibility to human suffering, and apathy, in the sight of it, and patience in the endurance of it, and a consequent indifference to life, and the reckless abandonment of the sick and infirm, are physical characteristics of the races of Southern Asia; and, therefore, that this apathy should not be regarded as the result of the religions of those races. Be it so; but then the two Asiatic religions have, on different paths, fallen into concert with these national moods; and instead of exerting a remedial influence, counteractive of this cruel and unnatural apathy, they have, each in its way, administered to it a poison of doctrine which converts what you please to call "a physical tendency," into a horrible fanaticism. Witness those floatings upon the Ganges, around which the greedy vulture sweeps his flight! Witness the infanticides which attest the presence of the Buddhist teaching in every town among the millions of China! Asiatic tendency-or no such tendency, let only that religion come into action for which Daniel in his day was a witness, and then we shall see woman recovering woman's loving instincts-the mother showing herself to be the mother indeed; then shall we see, alike under dark skins and white skins, the actings of filial piety; the aged and the sick cared for, and lovingly served; and human life, in each instance, irrespective of individual merits, or social We should, however, be ready to gather from importance, highly prized, and religiously regarded. the symbols the whole of the meaning which, under We should note here, before we pass on, the the safe guidance of Scripture itself, they may be abiding characteristic of the doctrine of which the held to convey. We need not be afraid of the ancient Buddhism was a coherent embodiment- outgoings of meditative thought so long as we are namely, its contempt for man whenever the indi- willing, at every moment-at every adventurous vidual falls into helplessness, ignorance, destitu- step forward, to check our excursive venturings by tion, or worthlessness, in the utilitarian sense. It the sure word of the inspired Scriptures. would be easy to fill pages with citations from recent writers of high repute in England and America, of which this is the drift: "the many" of the human race the million, and especially the ignorant and the unhelpful-the dregs and the scum of the social mass these, instead of diverting our energies, and consuming our material, should be thrown overboard, or in any other manner put out of the way. The mass of humanity is only "guano," so these writers tell us! We stay not either to quote passages of this order, or to criticise them; it is enough to know, concerning the philosophy of this school, that its property has now, and ever has been, to go on uttering itself in paradoxes more and more odious and virulent, until the outraged instincts of human nature are provoked to put it to silence as an in Daniel looks upward to the resplendent vault, seen as it is seen in that climate, and fixing his eye upon a dazzling constellation, he says of those who shall "turn many to righteousness," that they "shall shine as the stars for ever and ever." Be it so; and while he thus borrows his symbols from the skies, he could think only of the unchanging and the unsullied effulgence of these gems of the firmament; but now we, of this time, instructed as we have been by God's own revelation of his universe, granted to us in these last times, see more in the stars than the best-skilled of the Chaldean astronomers saw in them. It is true that, in our midnight meditations abroad, what we see, even with all the aids of the telescope, is only a stedfast glory; and we see the unfailing faithfulness of each star as it comes round to the meridian, night after are night to a moment. The pomp of the visible uni- 66 upon those spheres the awful purposes of the moral universe are in course of fulfilment; upon those spheres high purposes are pondered, large ambitions are devising their schemes; generous enterprises, baffling evil devices, are in progress; upon those spheres histories are on record that reach back to the primeval morning, when there was a chorus of the sons of God in His presence. In those spheres, silent as we may think them in that lone field of the skies, there is the fulness of life; there is soul, and there is labour, and there is service, and there is duty, and there is obedience, and there is patience, and there is endurance, and there is sacrifice of self for the good of others, and there is worship of God; and in a word, nothing is wanting there of all those things for taking a part in whichreadily, knowingly, with practised ability, and cheerfully, and courageously, and religiously-the severe disciplines of this now passing seventy years of toil, care, sorrow, trial, are the fit and the needful preparation. A word then, and we have done; we have now trod our path back to earth, to our proper placeto the low ground which we have learned to call "the vale of tears," the valley of the shadow of death. But it is not a place of slumber, any more than of spiritual ease. Hear what the voice from Heaven proclaims; and on hearing it, let us follow the meaning of every word to the utmost extent of warrantable meditation. "They that be wise shall shine as the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever," this assuredly knowing, that service, service for others, in obedience to God, is the law of the universe, and the condition of blessedness in all worlds. ISAAC TAYLOR. THE RAM CAUGHT IN THE THICKET. ABRAHAM is called in Scripture the "Father of the earth" holy patriarch the extinction of his most hallowed hopes, and almost, as it were, the end of all things; but the sacrifice of such a son by his father's own hand might have been regarded, indeed, as a consummation beyond the submissive endurance of humankind. In the words of a great and good divine- He seemed to be pressed unavoidably with one or other of the greatest evils in the world, either of them eternally ruinous unto him: he must disobey the command of God, or he must let go his faith in the promise; either of them being filled with eternal ruin." But he felt that the command as well as the promise was from the ever-living and unchangeable God, and "knowing in whom he had believed," his perplexity led to no presumption. He obeyed the voice of the Lord. In relation to the less sacred portion of our subject, it is interesting to find that sheep, now the most numerous and valuable of all domesticated creatures, are the earliest named in holy writ. We need scarcely remind our readers of the most ancient subservience of these animals to the human They are the first recorded as under the dominion of man:-" And Abel was a keeper (or feeder) of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground." Their domestication thus appears to race. |