tality, and whom the Most High made but little inferior to the angels, who sucked those wonderful volumes out of his own fingers which the whole world scarcely comprehends, would not have flourished if he had not, with the penetrating eyes of a lynx, looked through the sacred books of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Persians, and Medes, all which he transferred into his own treasuries in eloquent Greek."

The first part of this reminds one of the inscription * on the tomb of Raphael in the Pantheon at Rome, only that the worthy bishop is more reverent than the worldly cardinal, who honored the great painter.

Our author has some very practical suggestions on preserving books as well as obtaining them, that would not come amiss in these days:

"We not only set before ourselves a service to God, in preparing volumes of new books, but we exercise the duties of a holy piety, if we first handle so as not to injure them, then return them to their proper places, and commend them to undefiling custody, that they may rejoice in their purity while held in the hand, and repose in security when laid up in their depositories."

With all the conceits and fancies of the author-and there are far less than one would expect at that age-far less than appear in the "Ormulione" or in the "Visions of Piers Ploughman" -the "Philobiblon" may well be regarded as one of the choice legacies of that age, and one which nobly indicates the educating, elevating power of classical learning under the most untoward circumstances, and the claims of medieval scholarship on the part of a studious few — and secures to Richard de Bury a noble place near to, if not beside Wycliffe, Chaucer, and other celebrities of the fourteenth century in English story.

*"Ille hic est Raphael, timuit quo sospite vinci Rerum magna parens et moriente mori."

ARTICLE VIII.

SHORT SERMONS.

"The glorious gospel of the blessed God."

- 1 Tim. i. 11.

THE glory of God is the splendor, or bright-shining of his attributes. If the gospel is glorious, it must be because it is an embodiment and manifestation of the divine glory. This is the doctrine of the Bible. It is the gospel of the glory of God, or the blessed God, which is the true form of the text.

We have, then, the idea of the blessed God blessed and rejoicing in himself from eternity-manifesting or pouring himself forth in the brightness of his glory, in the gospel; even as the sun fills the universe with light.

1. This was God's great thought, and the fulness of his joy, through a past eternity. It was the covenant and fellowship of the Trinity, the harmony of his attributes, the immutability of his justice, the breadth and length and depth and height of his love, the grandeur of his power, the dazzling lustre of his holiness and truth, the perfection of his wisdom, the freedom of his will, the rectitude of his government, the everlasting stability of his empire.

2. Its outgoing was preceded and foreshadowed by stupendous preparations. From the moment when the first star twinkled in the chaos of universal night till Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea all things had a single purpose and direction. When the visit of a king is awaited in a far off section of his dominion, the preparations are on a scale of regal expensiveness and grandeur. How transcendent, then, must be the majesty of the coming king, when the triumphal arch is the vault of heaven, and the lamps are suns and stars, and the attendant ministers are flaming seraphs, and the gates of the morning are the entrance, and the melody is the symphony of angels and the music of the spheres! On earth, too, there was fitting preparation. The blood-red war-charger had made his fiery circuit, monarchies had been crushed, ancient thrones demolished, and sceptres broken in twain; all the world was quiet under the imperial sway of the mighty Augustus, prophetic voices had been heard breaking the stillness of the long night in the wilderness, and the nations were in expectation of a wonderful advent.

3. Christ was a profound mystery, and an all-resplendent glory.

A child of miraculous conception, yet Jehovah, uncreated, himself the creator of all things; not a manifestation, but a Divine Person from eternity, the Father's equal and fellow; in form and attributes of humanity, yet the brightness of the glory of God.

4. His work of redemption is the one grand embodiment and display of the manifold glory of Jehovah. Here all his attributes are seen as they are seen nowhere beside. His justice-threatening eternal condemnation is fully satisfied by an offering of infinite value, when Jesus bows his head in the agony of Gethsemane, and yields up the ghost on the cross a satisfaction, mark you, which only a love that is infinite could make, and so the infinite fulness of the love is seen in the completeness of the satisfaction. His power achieves a grander work in the regeneration of fallen man by the Holy Ghost than when the morning stars were created; while his wisdom and goodness and holiness and truth are everywhere displayed in the guidance and salvation of his people, and the building, to its final and glorious completeness, of the spiritual temple.

"The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.". 1 John i. 7.

Is it true, as the Scripture saith, that the foolishness of God is wiser than men? Then, surely, the judgment and forethought of God, in the adaptation of means to an end, will not be less than that of men. You will not take the staff of Goliah's spear to tie up your little rose-tree, or plant a battery to keep little children from your door, or go with a fleet to save a drowning man. If Jehovah has bowed the heavens to redeem fallen men, then it is a great ruin from which they are to be saved. So, too, on the other hand, if the ruin is great and dreadful, then it must be a great salvation to meet the

case.

But neither of these conclusions is dependent on inference. Both are clearly and strongly affirmed in the Bible. They are the two great facts in the history of God and the human race. In the teachings of Jesus and his apostles they are cardinal, and everywhere presented as counterparts, the one of the other. Thus in the text, "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."

1. Here is an all comprehending evil.

What is it? Sin, the transgression of the law, that which every man does every day and takes no thought of the enormity of the evil.

What is evil in the estimation of men? Sickness, pain, poverty, shame, famine, pestilence, war, widowhood, orphanage, madness, despair, death. And these, all, are the direct, natural, inevitable consequence of sin, aye, of the one first sin committed in Eden. "For by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned."

This death is not of the body only, but of the soul as well- death spiritual and eternal. God denounced this on the race as the penalty of Adam's sin; and it has come, and is coming, coming, evermore; and all the dreadful evils under which the earth groans are but the faintest foreshadowing of the misery of lost souls beyond the grave. Is God unrighteous?

--

When the Spirit of God convinces a man of sin, as Christ said he should, he makes him feel and confess that hell- an eternal hell is the desert of his sin. Does the Holy Ghost teach a lie to man's conscience?

Can all your efforts wash clean from your soul one stain of sin? The uniform result of such efforts has been a deeper despair.

2. Note the answering greatness of the redemption by Christ. For long ages the oracle had sounded and reverberated through the amplitude of heaven, and the habitations of men, " Without the shedding of blood is no remission!" During all those ages rivers of blood had flowed round about altars divinely appointed and set up, while the agony and blindness of man's despair had often sought to turn away a dreaded retribution by the shedding of human blood: but all in vain. The world, in its guilt and heavy despair, awaits the coming of a Divine, an Almighty deliverer.

The eternal Son of the Father, in the plenitude of his power and grace will save will cleanse from all sin. But how? The plenitude of the divine power and grace, and the absoluteness of the divine will, cannot avail. "Without the shedding of blood is no remission!” God is bound by a necessity lying in the profoundest depths of his infinite and immutable being a law unto himself.

Out of this springs the great mystery of the incarnation, that the Son of God may have somewhat to offer - his own blood.

Thus he is prepared to atone, to regenerate, to sanctify, to save. The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

9*

ARTICLE IX.

The Patience of Hope. By the author of "A Present Heaven;" with an Introduction by JOHN G. WHITTIER. Third Edition. pp. xxxiii. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

171.

1862.

THIS is not merely a devout meditation upon the work of Christ, and the spirit and remunerations of his gospel, it is also a profoundly thoughtful treatise on the relations of this great mystery of godliness to the existing characteristics and wants of humanity; another and a very effective effort to bring this cultivated, restless, energetic age to the cross for true and lasting repose. It exhibits a mind and a heart in the writer deeply pervaded by the power of that faith which she labors to make beautiful and persuasive to others, and a familiarity with the best Christian literature, from which she culls many a precious gem of thought and devotion with which to enrich her page. We shall do the reader a kindness to give what space we have to spare to the author's own richly mellowed and flavored words. She is writing of the believer's self-renunciation :

"But how is Christ's follower to obtain this freedom? How is this great transfer lying at the very heart of our spiritual life, the exchange of our own will for a better one, to be effected for a being like Man, impelled alike by the weakness and the strength of his whole nature to cleave unto the dust from whence he was at first taken? At this point we must pause a moment, feeling that our subject has drawn us into a desolate, even awful region, where, like the traveller high up among the mountains, we would fain hold the breath and hurry onward, lest a word too lightly spoken should bring down the impending avalanche. For all thoughts that lead us from the circumference of faith to its centre draw us insensibly, and with a force that becomes irresistible, the nearer we approach that centre, to the sacrifice of the death of Christ. Motus rerum est rapidus extra locum, placidus in loco. There is no rest for the soul of the believer till it settles forever on this magnet. No rest; I would say, also, no progress for the soul until it receives within it this great motive power; receives it not only as a fulfilled fact, but accepts it in its boundless consequences, and recognizes as first among them that of its own 'baptism unto his death.' . . . . O blessed saying! O promise like unto that made to the two chosen disciples, 'Ye shall indeed drink of my cup;' and what if our Lord's cup should prove to be the cup of vinegar mingled with gall, it is none the less the cup of blessing and of full, unreserved communion. Kiss me with the kisses of thy mouth, for thy love is better than wine."" pp. 46, 47.

This self-renunciation involves, also, a self-denial of many pleasant and attractive tendencies of the natural life: