encouraged you to live as your Father's children. It has revealed that name which Jacob knew not, Love. Confirmation has told you another truth, that of self-dedication to Him. Heaven is the service of God. The highest blessedness of life is powers and self consecrated to His will. These are the germs of truth: but it would have been miserable self-delusion, and most pernicious teaching, to have aimed at exhausting truth, or systematizing it. We are jealous of over-systematic teaching. God's love to you, the sacrifice of your lives to God,-but the meaning of that? Oh! a long, long life will not exhaust the meaning, the name of God. Feel him more and more, — all else all else is but empty words." In all our studies, and especially in all our religious teachings, we must leave room for growth, and be more earnest to implant the principles of righteous living, and a reverence for the truth as it is in Jesus, than to prove any doctrines on which the Christian world is divided to be true. And if at any time, we are to hold our dogmatic theology in abeyance, it is when we are engaged in interpreting for ourselves, or teaching to others, the words and the acts of Christ.

Perhaps the forced methods of interpretation have for no single purpose been carried to a more unwarrantable extent than in the attempts which have been made to produce a literal conformity between different accounts of the same event by the different New Testament writers, so as not to violate the doctrine of a plenary verbal inspiration. But now that doctrine is no longer held to be respectable among enlightened Biblical critics and scholars. Dr. Cureton, the learned Canon of Westminster, in the preface to his "Syriac Gospels," p. lxxxix., speaks of "the verbal inspiration of the Gospels" as "a theory long since abandoned by all scholars and critics, which, indeed, could only be maintained by those who are entirely ignorant of the way in which the New Testament has been transmitted to our own times, and which,

if persisted in, must involve very serious objections against these inspired writings, and tend to infidelity." Alford, in the Prolegomena to his learned and valuable Commentary on the New Testament, thus speaks of the theory of verbal inspiration: “Much might be said of the à priori unworthiness of such a theory as applied to a Gospel whose character is the freedom of the spirit, not the bondage of the letter; but it belongs more to my present work to try it by applying it to the Gospels as we have them. And I do not hesitate to say, that being thus applied, its effect will be to destroy altogether the credibility of our Evangelists. . . . . . The fact is, that this theory uniformly gives way before intelligent study of the Scriptures themselves; and is only held, consistently and thoroughly, by those who have never undertaken that study."

But the same violence which has been employed in forcing the language of the Gospels into harmony with a creed or an unnatural theory of inspiration, has also been used to force their statements into accordance with some favorite theory of the writer. Thus Paulus has endeavored to explain the miracles of Christ in accordance with a theory which excludes all miraculous influences, and according to which neither the ruler's daughter nor Lazarus was actually dead. The great value of Dr. Furness's charming writings on the Gospels is, we think, in some cases, seriously impaired by the restraint that is put upon him, and which he imposes upon the accounts of the Evangelists, in consequence of his favorite theory in regard to the manner in which miracles must be wrought.

The same unnatural perversion of the language of the Gospels has been effected by sceptics and unbelievers, who exercise as much ingenuity in forcing the accounts of the different Evangelists into a contradiction, as the old commentators did in forcing them away from it. They find it easier thus to discredit the authority of the sacred writings altogether, than to explain them away in such a manner

as to confirm their naturalistic theories. The critical writings of Strauss and Baur are of this sort. They begin with theories about the Gospels, to which the Gospels themselves are forced to submit. There is no question in regard to the learning, the ability, or the consummate generalship of the men who lead the movement from within against the authority of the Gospels. And they have been of immense service in calling the attention of sensible and educated men to the Gospels, and inducing them to examine them for themselves, not through the perverse optics of these framers of theories, but with their own calm and unbiassed judgment. This of itself is a great gain. All that is needed in order to establish the truthfulness of the Gospels is that they should be thus examined.

And here we cannot too earnestly urge the great body of intelligent men and women to refuse to take any one's theory about the Gospels without first studying, not specious writings in support of it, but the Gospels themselves. Let them test every assumption of the theorist by a careful reference to the record, and not admit this or that assertion in regard to what is found in them, until they see it there with their own eyes. The study of the Gospels is a simple thing. The knowledge which has a direct and important bearing on the most important subjects in them is contained within a small compass. The comparison of one narrative with another, in order to satisfy ourselves in regard to their true relations, is easily effected by a little care, and the application of a reasonable amount of intelligence. There is a vast deal of humbug in the pretensions of our modern neologists. The cloud of words thrown round their theories, like the cloud of mysticism which enveloped the old doctrines. of the Church in its pretensions to an infallible inspiration and authority, has only to be tried in the light of reason and common sense by the truthful words of the Evangelists, and it will vanish away.

Extraordinary pretensions, however, have always, for a

season, an influence altogether disproportionate to the real power that is in them. A sceptical thought is easily lodged in the mind. Delicate and sensitive natures, who wish to believe, are afraid to examine, lest the foundations of their 'faith should sink under them. Strong-minded, efficient men, who ought to study into these things, and thus satisfy themselves, as they easily might, are deterred from so doing by a secret misgiving lest the grounds of their faith should not bear investigation. Some retreat into the straiter sects, from a less to a more rigid form of Congregationalism, from Congregationalism to Episcopacy, from Episcopacy to the Church of Rome, or directly, for extremes meet on the other side, from the Absolutism of Rationalism to the Absolutism of Romanism. There is everywhere, even in the Roman Catholic communion itself, a sentiment of unrest, coming from an inward unbelief, which men try to cover up and hide from themselves by stricter articles of faith, by more imposing forms of worship, by Church authorities, instead of healing it by letting in upon it the simple truths of the Gospel, as examined in the light of reason, and tested by conscientious and faithful lives. But change of position is not change of heart. The inward unrest, the hidden unbelief, which durst not trust God's truth unless guarded by human defences, clings to them still. These make-believe methods of finding a religious faith, and with it health and peace of mind, answer no good end. The sudden and unnatural marriages which are sometimes sought in the desperation of disappointed affections are seldom blessed. There is a hidden element of falsehood, or self-deception, at the centre of them all.

If we have doubts, we must meet them fairly and honestly for ourselves. If they are practical doubts, relating to the essentials of Christianity, the efficacy of prayer, the presence and the power of God in the soul, the mediatorial office of Christ between God and, men, we must read the Gospels for practical guidance, and, seeking to give ourselves up

entirely to their instructions by prayer, by humility of heart, by a warmer charity towards others, by more faithful and obedient lives, with the help which God will certainly give to us if we seek it thus, in our renovated affections, and the deeper, purer life of the soul, we shall find the faith, and with it the inward tranquillity and repose, which we crave. That is, we shall find enough of them to serve as a foretaste and pledge of the perfect love and peace which shall be fulfilled to us only in the kingdom of Heaven. And this is all that has been gained by the greatest saints, — by Madame Guyon and Fénelon, Archbishop Leighton and Baxter, Charles Wesley and Channing and William Croswell, as we see when we are admitted to a knowledge of their interior lives. "The perfect," we once heard Dr. Channing say, "is what we must always seek, but never hope to gain." If, on the other hand, our doubts are of an intellectual character, we must meet them fairly on intellectual grounds, and not push them aside for others, whether sceptics or bigots, philosophers or Christian believers, to do our work for us. It is better to read the Gospels ourselves, not through the creed of a church or a philosophical dogma, but with our own eyes and minds, such as God has made them, and judge of them by the principles of reason and common If they give way under the examination, let us meet the facts of the case like brave and honest men, and not like children, who blind their eyes from fear of seeing a ghost. But they will not give way. They only ask to be tried on their own merits. The reason why they seem to us so unsubstantial is, that we do not rest our weight upon them. They are like the bridge across the St. Lawrence at Montreal, which sensitively vibrates to the slightest breeze, and therefore the timid traveller may fear to trust himself upon it; but ten thousand tons of human beings and costly merchandise resting upon it, only show how firm and strong it is. The more severely we test the Gospels, the more securely shall we find ourselves sustained by them. "Come, and see,

sense.