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structions as to conduct and conversation. Spiritual perception was wide awake in matters of controversy, but asleep in those of charity. These controversies even yet continue, and theology is yet enlarging its boundaries. The Scriptures for three centuries have been chiefly thus applied. If the heat of the contest has abated, and if interest in theology has diminished—if the cries of humanity are coming up in our ears from all Christendom, and we are compelled to search the Scriptures anew, to discover whether there is any thing there applicable to the demands of poverty, oppression, and misery—we find this long forgotten and unused life of Christ, his precepts, sermons, and parables, whose instructions cover the whole ground and meet the whole case. But, unfortunately, our standards, creeds, confessions of faith, catechisms, and manuals of devotion were drawn up by men more versed in polemics, more engaged in the heat of religious controversy, than versed in the principles of peace, mercy, kindness, and charity; unfortunately our whole Protestant literature, our whole religious education has all come from the same mint. The life and precepts of Christ are not incorporated in our religious ideas. We cannot, therefore, instantly apply them. We require time to cast the old skin and come out clothed in new garments of love, mercy, and peace. It was, indeed, worthy the cunning of our great spiritual enemy, thus to cheat the Reformation of half its truth and half its energy; but his skill has been not less manifested in later times, by giving to all the sayings and doings of the Reformers the sanction of age and the bulwark of conservatism: having emasculated Protestantism at its birth, he now rallies all the sober, substantial, conservative clergy, and all the rich, substantial, satisfied laymen, in defence of the noble band of Reformers who so valiantly fought the battles of the Reformation. To desert them, it is urged, would be to desert Christianity. It is virtually admitted that the Scriptures are insufficient without the explanations of these men of battle and storm; and that our theology, born in the heat of religious controversy, is our only safeguard, even at this day. The Jews fastened their traditions upon the Old Testament Scriptures, the Papists concealed the whole Bible in the machinery of their church, and the Protestants cannot escape the charge of overlaying the Scriptures with a mass of theology, in the shape of creeds, articles, catechisms, standards, platforms, confessions of faith, and manuals of devotion. Let these formularies be examined simply in the light of Christ's teachings, and their coldness, dryness, and inconsistency with the true spirit of Christianity will be manifest.

They breathe none of the spirit of kindness, mercy, and charity of Him whose ministry was among the poor, and whose miraculous powers were chiefly exerted to feed the hungry and heal the diseased. Christ's life and teachings were not deemed available in the contests of the Reformation, and were, therefore, not incorporated into the systems of that day. And now they are to be deemed inadmissible, because they come too late-the divines of that day and a century or so later having settled the whole frame-work of our Protestant religion. Taking as a sample of these compends of theology, one of the latest and most admired specimens, one that is, perhaps, the most faithfully taught and the most highly venerated by the denominations who receive it as their vade mecum, the Shorter Catechism drawn up by the Westminster Assembly of Divines, we ask a moment's attention to its main features. This catechism, framed with singular aptness, precision, and vigour of expression, is placed by several large denominations of Christians in the hands of children of the tenderest years: it is pressed upon their attention and memories as the best religious instruction which can be given them, as the very marrow and essence of Christianity. It teaches the doctrines of the Trinity, of the decrees of God, of Providence, of original sin, or the fall of man with Adam; the covenant of works, the covenant of grace, election, eternal Sonship, Christ made man, the offices of Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King; his humiliation, exaltation, and death; of justification, adoption, sanctification; of the resurrection, of the obligation of the ten commandments, of eternal punishment, of faith in Christ, of repentance, of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper; concluding with a few questions on the Lord's Prayer. And this is the milk with which their babes are fed-this is the fountain to which good people carry their children. Christ said, "Suffer little children to come unto me;" and, although these people have Christ in the Gospels, his very words intelligible to children, abounding in the most simple and touching lessons, in a form the most interesting for the tender mind of children, and containing injunctions suited to every age and every walk in life, these are all made to give way to this compend of mere theology.*

Is this bringing children to Christ? Is this honouring his instruc

*We have just noticed a work on charity, by the great Jonathan Edwards, advertised as now in the press. It is rather a remarkable fact, and somewhat indicative of the Protestant estimation of that subject, that such a work should have been permitted to sleep a century, during which time not a volume on that topic was extant in the English language. See post 384,

tions? But how does it look, in an epitome of Christianity, to pass unnoticed the comprehensive precepts of Christ, reaching so deep into the heart and stretching so wide into human obligations, substituting the decalogue and applying all possible power of enlargement to make it reach the ground so explicitly covered by the very searching injunctions of Christ? Let any unprejudiced man compare this enlargement with the special sermons of Christ, and he must inquire, with amazement, what could have been the motive for the substitution? The words of Christ extend to our whole outward and inward duty, and need no paraphrase. They should be impressed upon the minds of children from infancy upwards. They constitute a practical guide for our duty to God and to man, and are, therefore, of daily and incessant application. They refer to our conduct, and direct our Christian life and conversation-therefore, perhaps, they have been left out. The framers were far more concerned about faith than works, and they passed over all of Christ except his offices, if we except the Lord's prayer, which is specially distinguished. The Reformers, and the successors to their vocation and spirit, always inculcated prayer. They could not rise to the conception of charity, and mercy, and peace, but they could pray devoutly, and loud, and long. They were willing to call upon God, but they failed to preach the gospel to the poor. They could stand up and make long prayers-they could pray in secret, and with earnestness, but the kindness of brotherly love was almost a stranger to their bosoms. In the judgment of charity, there have been hosts of such men who were true Christians, not according to the measure of their own estimation, but according to the grace of Christ, which perceives a spark of faith far less than a "grain of mustard-seed."

Whatever may have been the number and value of the children of the Reformation, Charity is yet to be born. We may rejoice that Christendom is now in labour. If Christians can now be brought to know and do what is right, charity will be the fruit of these throes, and the world will be gladdened to see the brightest and loveliest offspring of Christianity.

A CASE SUPPOSED UPON THE SUBJECT OF VARIOUS INTERPRETATIONS OF THE BIBLE.

LET us suppose that an ardent friend of the truth has found in his missionary tours a large number of people who are strangers to the Bible and its contents. The good messenger of the gospel hastens to place in their hands the holy volume which points out the way of eternal blessedness, and by his earnest exhortation and amiable deportment obtains assurance that the good book shall be carefully read. In due time the missionary invites his beneficiaries of the Bible to communicate their impressions. He finds their views differing with every different mind, from the closest adherence to the letter to the widest limit of liberal construction-he finds opinions corresponding, in greater or less degree, to all the sects of Christendom. Some profess their confidence and full faith in the whole volume, some in portions; some cling to the letter, others to the spirit; some announce it as a spirit of eternal life, but clothed in earthly habiliments; some receive it as a veritable and entire revelation from heaven; others as only containing heavenly truths mingled with human statements-as containing a mass from which we may select the important declarations which convey the message of eternal life; some admire the history of the Old Testament, and the morals of the New; some, the poetic portions of the Old Testament and the benign precepts of the New; some find the Trinity clearly taught; others, while they receive the Bible as the word of God, Christ as their Saviour, and the Holy Spirit as their Sanctifier, cannot receive the doctrine of the Trinity; some find warrant for believing in a great mysterious mystical body, called the church, while others believe that Christ enjoins no form of organization upon his followers, leaving them to adopt such, in all circumstances, as they may deem most effective, most suited to peculiar cases-that the organization and the form of the ministry may be unfolded and gradually shaped by the piety of the people, and not that this piety can be dependent upon any form of church government or ecclesiastical arrangement-that no other creed or confession or manual of piety is required than the New Testament itself.

A much greater variety of opinion was manifested by these students of the Bible, among which were many who could perceive no

beauty nor truth in its pages, and some who were disposed to regard the whole as an invention of impostors.

Our missionary replied to this candid expression of the views of his Bible readers, that he had much reason to be gratified by the evident attention which had been given to the holy book he had placed in their hands, and thus continued:-"I am not surprised to find a wide diversity of opinion among you. It could not be otherwise, as God has constituted the human mind: if we judge for ourselves, our judgments must be different, for our minds are no more cast in the same mould than our faces. Diversity is a characteristic of the world and its creatures. There is even much diversity in each one of us at different times. God could easily have given us his word in such a form that no shadow of doubt could have rested upon any passage, and no room have been left for inquiry, or thought, or weighing of conclusions. He has not done so. The course of His providence, as well as the nature of his revelation, shows that his mode of dealing with men is, to place before them, constantly, that which must exercise all their mental and moral powers. As by bodily exercise the muscles are developed in size and improved in strength and facility of motion, so, in the order of God's laws, the powers of the soul expand with exercise and attain increasing energy and activity. You differ widely in your construction of God's word, because you vary in mind, in knowledge, in judgment, in mental habits, and because there are varieties also in your moral constitution. If you were all willing to be guided implicitly by me, giving up your conclusions for mine, it could not benefit you, because God knows your real opinions, and, in His view, acquiescence is not faith, and sincerity is better than mere profession. According to my understanding of the Scriptures, some of you have seized the whole truth and have found the way of life, and some of you have found a Saviour, who have not perceived the whole truth; some of you have a very clear view of the letter of the word without having attained, perhaps, to the spiritual meaning; there is a line, seen only by the eye of God, between those of you, whether wholly right or not, who believe unto salvation, and those who come fatally short. No human hand can trace that line. I beseech you all to strive that you may not at last come short of a saving knowledge. You have merely begun the study of the Scriptures; a long life will not exhaust their lessons of wisdom. But stop not, as too many do, in their mere learning and exposition, study rather their spiritual meaning and their general scope. Let every step you make in the knowledge of the

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