Gentiles, as to their responsibility, is the only correct interpretation. As to Abraham, I consider him as the root, but looked at as the personification of the three principles of election, of calling, and of promise.

I press distinctly, that there are privileges besides, outside of vital union with Christ, and privileges for which the Gentiles will be responsible, as the Jews were for theirs. See 1 Cor. x. Those who have enjoyed these privileges will be punished with more stripes, if they have not profited from them; while those who have not possessed them, will be beaten with few stripes. It was a privilege to be servant in the house, to have received one talent; but such persons, or class of persons, were not united to Christ in a vital manner. The seed sown in the stony ground was a privilege; but there was no root, no vital union.

As to any attack made upon the position I hold, let those who make it take care that they mistake not its difficulties and my weakness for the position itself. To answer such attacks, would be either to justify oneself, or to accuse others. According to the blessing found in the position, God will draw to it those whom he means to bless. If there be no blessing in it, one cannot wish God to draw his children to it.

Moreover, some little experience in these things shows their value. They turn aside those who have not sufficient faith to walk according to conviction; they stop for a time simple souls, and these exercise the faith of the faithful; but then, the reaction is all the stronger; and all this turns to blessing, and leads souls into a freer and more blessed position. Moreover, it is good, if defamed, to entreat, and in patience to submit oneself to the will of God in well-doing.

That the principle, "that all have a right to speak," may have produced a necessity in the minds of some to be the sole speakers, or to take the directive of worship, one can well understand. That these two evils render simplicity of obedience more difficult, one can also comprehend; but the evils of a system, which I believe bad, ought not to form the rule of conduct for those, at least, who wait on God.

MIXED PRINCIPLES.

THERE is a difference between those characters in Scripture which are formed by what have been termed “Mixed Principles;" and those persons who occasionally were led to act upon such principles. The character and life, for instance, of Lot and of Jonathan were formed by mixed principles. Lot, though associated with the call of Abraham, was a man of the earth all through-and Jonathan, though witnessing the sorrows and the wrongs of David, continued in Saul's court all through. Their character and their life were formed by associations which were untrue to the energy of the Spirit at the time.

But take such men as Jacob and as Jehoshaphat, and in them you find another generation. Jacob was a cautious man, who had his worldly fears, and schemes, and calculations, such as greatly disfigure and alloy many of the passages of his life. His building a house at Succoth, and purchasing a field at Shechem, were things untrue to the pilgrim life, the tent-life to which the call of God had called him. But I could not put him with Lot. His life was not ruled by these things. He was still a stranger with God in the earth-and, indeed, in the closing scene of his journey, when in Egypt, there is many a beautiful witness of full moral recovery. So Jehoshaphat." Vanity betrayed him, as worldly cautiousness and the schemes and calculatings of worldly fear sadly betray Jacob. Jehoshaphat joined affinity with Ahab. Jehoshaphat put on the royal attire. He acted in terrible inconsistency with the sanctity and separateness of the house of David. He was untrue to the testimony which became Judah against the revolt and the idols of the Ten Tribes. He was unlike Abijah, the son of Rehoboam, in the day of the battle.

But though this was so, we could not put Jehoshaphat in company with men of mixed principles; at least I judge so. His life, generally, was the life of a true son of David, and king in Jerusalem. Very dear affections breathe through his spirit towards the God of the temple there. Very noble deeds were done by his hand, and the God of his father owned him all through. But like Jacob and to a very sad extent, if you please, he was betrayed into ways which made his testimony a mixed and imperfect thing-so that in him, as in. Jacob, it was not only nature prevailing to do evil; but it was nature prevailing to lead him for awhile, and that, too, again and again into the ways and the connections against which the call of God would have had him testify.

END OF VOL. III.