Sabbath Evening Readings on the New Testament, Sacred Philosophy,

Selection from the British Poets,

Select Remains of Rev. John Mason,

Sermons for the People by F. D. Huntington, D. I Sermons for the Sick Room, by Jabez Burns, D. D. Sinai and Palestine,

THE

FREEWILL BAPTIST QUARTERLY.

NO. XIII.---JANUARY, 1856.

ART. I.-THE PUBLIC CONFLICTS OF CHRISTIANITY.

Christianity has attained its present position in the world by means of many earnest struggles. Her march to empire has not been steady and quiet. Her progress marks the eras of human history, and many a continental convulsion has indicated. the strife from which her principles have sprung into the reverent view of men. The conflict awakened by her approach to the individual heart, and which Paul so graphically pictures in his epistle to the Romans, only symbolizes the warfare appointed her by Providence on the stage of public affairs.

And all this was to be expected, both from the announcement of the Master, and the nature of the forces which the gospel brings into contact. "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." So clearly did the Great Teacher reveal the process by means of which his truth was to win its way to supremacy. And as no iniquity, however hoary or venerated-however successfully it had passed the centuries unchallenged, or robed itself in statutory vestments-was to find toleration before the new law at length promulged from heaven; so there was no reason for supposing that it would meet the cordial welcome of communities whose general life incarnated the views it came to exorcise. It could neither compromise with evil, nor wink it out of sight. It could never be content with a decorous exterior, beneath which demoniacal passions raged, and it had nothing of the cowardice or the worldly wisdom which leaves a Gibraltar of sin unstorm

ed because of the difficulty of its capture. It did ask a place for its divinity in the world's well-filled it grasped the badge of authority and proceeded to other god from the temple. It did not even admit of religious eclecticism; it was only content with it wore the robe of a peasant, it spoke with the ton It claimed the world as its temple, the submissive hearts as its priesthood, and all human deeds as its

The hostility of which Jesus prophesied appeare the gospel dreamed in its cradle. It was not simply as a single man stood up to oppose it; the whole civil p he represented sent the bloody edict to search out th evangel. The guiding star flashed a terrible bright crimes of that usurping government, and so it rose out the light by violence. That was the formal oper war, whose only truce is capitulation, and which finds only in victory. It illustrates the whole conflict, b spirit, and in its issue. Christianity shows human w demands that they be put away; the guilty parties, repentance, seek to kill the prophet which rebukes, or the law which condemns them; the prophet is hidd hand of Providence, or his voice, quieted for a day, le length from the grave with a tone that pierces the skies, and hastens the execution of the statute which die.

Sometimes Christian faith enters into and takes I of a single soul in comparative quietude. No fierce seem to stand at the door to dispute the passage. Th darkness gives way to the celestial light, as moun change slowly to a veil of golden gossamer, and then liquid gems all over the rocks and shrubbery. In the sky of distrust, star after star comes out, followed by ral light and the triumphant sun. The weary spirit y rest, and welcomes the offer of repose. Perplexed jargon of pretenders, it hastens joyfully to sit at the f true Teacher ere he has finished his first beatitude. ( comprehending its wants, and beholding the sources o finds successive elements of satisfaction in partaki

truth has brought freedom; but the method has been no outward ear caught the clank of a fetter as it heart has changed masters, but no terrible and obvio has taken place on the boundary line which divides t of the old from that of the new sovereign. Earnest been done, stern self-discipline maintained, a rocky kept up against all soul-foes; but all has proceeded that a careful outward observer might fail to disce indication of conflict.

The same thing is more or less true of communiti times an old religious faith becomes effete, and po foliage in autumn, while a truer religion is budd boughs from which it fell. Or, still better, perhap faith begins to germinate, and in the process pushes and decaying system, as the needles of an evergreen by disengaging the former growth from their cells, a ing them into the dust beneath. A mistaught no ready now and then to hear the voice of a true teach approach of Christianity to the border of a new lan a pean of welcome. Icy barriers sometimes gently the Sun of Righteousness throws his beams upon the eyes of a people having grown weary of gazing upon gratefully on the uplifted cross. Christianity co still small voice, having thrown off the garment of fi ed her tempest herald, and put off her shoes whos stirs the earthquake. Finding a narrow entrance to heart, and a small place for rest, it passes within a itself like the leaven-as surely and as silently.

This method, however, both in the private an sphere, is the exceptional one. The quiet usually after the storm. The soul is generally a battle the strife is fearful before a treaty of peace is Immanuel. The subject is sorely rent ere the evil his citadel. And in communities there is usually test before the gospel acquires the mastery of gener authority is often disputed, and its rigid requisitions of. Open opposition sometimes awakes at its ap sometimes it is offered the kiss of hypocritical frien its doctrines are decried as irrational and disorga now they are sought to be diluted by mixing them mass of prevalent opinions where coalescence is just as the same apostles were at one place accused the world upside down, and at another were incense of pagan sacrifices. The cause of this of one and the same, while the forms it assumes a One age quarrels with it for possessing a feature wh complains of it for wanting. Now it is charged w dicting science in its ignorant simplicity; and now for its unfathomable profundities, over which stro grow dizzy. One opponent indicts it for its dry another takes his pen to portray the folly of its fanci it meets the charge of being too presuming and aut and there it is declared to be wanting in comprehe At one period its morality is affirmed to be practical a world from which all sin is excluded; and then it i with a laxity of principle, and with revealing a God good men must hate for his moral deformities. arraigned for contradicting intuition; and there for history. Such, and so varied and self-contradictor grounds its opponents have chosen.

It has been left for nearly every age to forge weapon of warfare, or exhume and furbish an old on Christianity has been compelled to guard herself aga cession of new foes, or at least old foes with new modes. The infidel spirit has been routed in one qua to hasten to a new point and erect fresh bulwarks.