way through which your departing spirit will be instantly ushered into the kingdom of light and glory. Only as received in the light of Christ's atoning sacrifice can death be held as a privilege. "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." Philip. i. 21. Naturally, death is no gain, or acquisition, or property. It is rather a deprivation, a loss, a being stripped. The evil becomes a good, the loss a gain, through our connection with Christ, who fought and conquered death on our behalf. So it stands as a point in our charter, procured and won for us by our great Champion. The next pair is,

Things present and things to come. There is a present and a future within the scope of the present life. Things present are such things as we are just now enjoying or enduring, and things to come are what await us some years hence, whether they be objects of dread or of desire. We are dark concerning the future, and may easily be the dupes of unfounded hopes or the victims of needless fears. It is well for us to view both the present and the future as being entirely in the power of providence, and refer our lot to the appointment of unerring wisdom. Then, whatever be our present and future they are sure to yield us good. The present may be dark with adversity and the future bright and prosperous, or the present may be light and cheerful and the future a gloomy perspective. Or both the present and future may be of one quality, whether good or evil. When the result is considered it is immaterial whether way it be. All are yours,- that is, there will be a profitable issue of all in your ultimate benefit. To make sure of taking up the meaning of this clause, we may run the distinction between this life and the next. "Things present" may include all things pertaining to our earthly and probationary state. Things to come" will then include all our reversionary good in heaven. So the good of both worlds belongs to christians. We have much in hand; in hope we have more. Let us look over our inventory,-how many good things we have at present! Sabbaths are ours. Bibles are ours. Ministers are ours. Sacraments are ours. Closet communion with God is ours. Fellowship with saints is ours. Are we not rich? It is true, that along with these we might reckon afflictions, persecutions, separations, bereavements, losses, crosses, disappointments, and changes. This alters not the case, unless it be an improvement. All these last-named are additional wealth. Then, what "things to come" await us! Our minority concluded, we go to mansions, and crowns, and royalties, to an inheritance of felicity commensurate with the ceaseless flow of eternity. It is as if we were masters of a universe."He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son." Rev. xxi. 7. II. THE CHURCH IS CHRIST'S PROPERTY. "And ye are Christ's." This noble corporation, which we call the church, to whose interests

66

all external objects and all passing events are subsidiary, is itself the property of one individual. The fact that all things are bent towards the church's interest and made to lean over to it, either directly or indirectly, should not be perverted to fill its members with a sense of self-importance. There is a check against this immediately added. If all things are subordinate to them, so are they themselves subordinate," and ye are Christ's." And they are Christ's more than outward things are theirs. His right in them is stronger than their right is in the things specified. He also has a right in what is theirs, a right prior to and fuller than theirs. Both they and theirs belong to him. It is worthy of note that it is not said, "all are yours whether Paul or Apollos, or Cephas or Christ." There is a reason why his name should not be added to the list. He is not related to the church as its ministers and officers are, and as external objects are. His relation is higher. The church exists for him and is inferior, dependant, amenable, subordinate. In part it is his property. And this his right rests on his passion, and travail, and agony, his sufferings being uniformly assumed as the price of his exaltation and power. "For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living." Rom. xiv. 8. The same truth is expressed in terms more tender and appealing, "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price; therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's." 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20. The ascension and exaltation of Christ in heaven, are capital proof of his right in believers. See Eph. i. 20-23. The names by which Christ is called furnish abundant illustration. He is called Master, and Lord, and Son, over the house, and Head, and Husband. The reader will do well to finger his Bible and turn up the following collection of passages,-Matt. xxiii. 8, 10; Col. iv. 1; Col. iii. 24; Eph. v. 23; 1 Cor. xi. 3, 7-12; Heb. iii. 6; John viii. 35, 36. As being his we owe him allegiance, obedience, and service. Our very persons are his. He is the only rightful claimant of our persons, which cannot properly be the property of any one else but of him. We revolt at the thought of a man, made in the image of God, becoming the property of his fellow, just as a house, or a ship, or a horse, or a dog, or anything else is his property. Things are for property and not persons. is a degradation that man was never intended for. But Christ may exercise such right over us. It is no debasement. highest glory. "Christian is the highest style of man." honour we need not decline as doubtful or unworthy our ambition. There is no loftier distinction to be challenged. Freemanship, knighthood, yea, royalty itself, is light compared with personal Christianity."Do ye look on things after the outward appearance?

It

Rather it is our

Such an

If any man trust to himself that he is Christ's, let him of himself think this again, that as he is Christ's, even so are we Christ's." 2 Cor. x. 7. "And if ye be Christ's then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." Gal. iii. 29. How dear should we be to each other, so many as are found in Christ! We are a corporation, enjoying common privilege, and equal honours, and heirs of glorious hope. Our interests and our prospects being one, bind us to mutual kindness and respect. One is our Master. Let us

be one.

III. CHRIST IS GOD'S PROPERTY. This heading may seem irreverent. We do not mean it so. Having said that all things are the church's property, that the church is Christ's property, uniformity requires us to complete in the same style. "And Christ is God's." He is God's Son. He is God's Servant. He is God's Christ. "Peter answering, said, The Christ of God." Luke ix. 20. We cannot cloak it, that this clause brings us to a border-ground of doctrine which wakes up our caution and makes us thoughtful. The divine nature of Christ and the equality and unity of the Son with the Father, are substantial verities. Even if we were unable to harmonise this statement with them, our mental incapacity would be no sound reason for giving up the said doctrines. We are free, however, to admit, that subordination and inferiority to the Father are here affirmed of the Son, an admission which needs not to shake our belief in his Divine nature. The scope of the section requires this admission. First, the world and things, all of them, are subordinate to believers. Second, believers are in such relation to Christ as the specified objects are in to them, that is, they are subordinate. The same formula being repeated about Christ and God, obliges us to admit subordination in the third instance. Be it admitted then. We are in no difficulty but such as we meet in other parts of Scripture, where the humanity of Christ is affirmed and his office in the redeeming work is brought into view. Such a coming down into lower position was necessary on the part of the second person in the Trinity to effect our recovery. His condescension was necessary to our elevation. It suffices to say, that this humiliation was not his original condition. He came into it and assumed it, and the work being done, returned back again to the glory of his original state. Substantially, this is the solution usually given of this difficult place. We will not dogmatise concerning it. It is but candid to acknowledge that we understand the first two propositions of our subject better than we understand the last. And what then? Suppose we cannot comprehend and adjust the difficulty, our refuge is in simple faith. There being a weakness in the human faculties to take in the whole orb of truth, we must be content to let faith step in where reason fails and falters.

The grand practical lesson is, to live in peace and charity, to reap good from church arrangements, and from providential appointments, and to cultivate such a state of mind that all the varying phases of our lot may be tributary to our advancement in goodness of character, which may grace help the reader and the writer both to do. Amen.

T. G.

ART. VIII.-DIFFERENT KINDS OF ORATORY.

HE purest form of oratory is the oratory of extempore discourse, moment of cogitation. There is no prepared matter; it is given to the speaker at that instant what to say. The man, of course, comes to the emergency already stored with that general stock of facts, fancies, and conclusions, which he has accumulated in the course of his life, and which forms his intellectual capital; and, in the case of a habitual speaker, it is natural to suppose that this his prior information will lie in the line of any emergency on which he may be called to exert himself. But with all allowance for this, the real feat, or the connected elaboration of the discourse, has to be accomplished while he speaks. Many and various as are the exhibitions of human power, we doubt if there is any other so impressive at the moment, so calculated to give an idea of the complex capabilities of the human being, as the sight of a true orator out on the mid-voyage of such an extempore discourse. What skill, what vigilance, what navigation! How now he goes full sail, rising and falling with the favouring blast, and leaving league after league behind him; now he slackens sail, and tacks; now he descries a rock a-head, or a span of cloud on the horizon, forewarning the coming tempest! It is art against the elements, seamanship against infinity! Thought has to follow thought, period has to follow period; each as it falls has to fulfil its mission, and all have to be connected. In the burst and triumph of one moment, the orator is unaware what he is to say in the next, or how he is to say it; and yet, when that next moment comes, lo, he is again high on the human crest of another billow! Great is the power of training; and something of this success, even in extemporization, may be obtained, as we have already said, by assiduous practice. Nor without assiduous practice is any one likely to attain it. But the man whom nature has qualified specially so to excel, and the only man who will ever pre-eminently so excel, is the man

who, by a constitutional necessity, clarescit urendo, or cogitates best under the condition of present oratorical excitement. There are such men-men who are at their best intellectually only in a kind of higher mood to which they may be roused; whom physical perturbation encourages and clarifies, whose thoughts leap most nimbly from point to point, and follow more and more complex laws of association the more the temperament of their whole being is raised; who are perhaps dull, sluggish, and confused if talked to quietly, but ray out lightnings when they confront an audience.

In nothing, perhaps, is the true nature of the orator's constitutional faculty better seen than in the demeanour of a princely extempore speaker under casual or hostile interruption. Being a man whose very nature it is to grow clearer as he burns, it is in his nature also to seize anything that will serve him as fuel. Phrenzied as he is, he sees everything with eagle eye; he is alert to every possibility of suggestion; let a rag but flutter, and he is ready to dart at it. Woe to the fool that thinks to interrupt him! The interruption is a godsend; he recoils for a moment to let it be fully heard or seen; but it is only to swoop forward again, and pin his victim. Pages might be filled with such stories of the use of interruptions to great orators. Here are one or two, partly from our own recollection, partly from Dr. Goodrich's book:

"Patrick Henry interrupted.-The greatest American orator, in the agitation preceding the revolt of the American colonies from the mother country, was Patrick Henry. Speaking once in a great colonial meeting, which he was carrying along with him in his vehement denunciations of the policy of George III. and his government, he suddenly went beyond himself as follow:- Cæsar had his Brutus; Charles the first had his Cromwell; and George the Third- Ere he could finish the perilous sentence, the audience caught the alarm; and, Treason!' Treason!' rang from every part of the hall where there were any loyalists. The orator stopped a moment, and then slowly, but with a voice that quelled the uproar, repeated his words: Cæsar, I say, had his Brutus; Charles the First had his Cromwell; and George the Third-may profit by their example.' The loyalists were left to make treason out of that if they could; and the rest of the audience were mad with applause.',

"Chatham interrupted by Mr. Wynnington.-On the 6th of March, 1741, Chatham, then Mr. Pitt, and but a young man, delivered a short but very emphatic speech in the house of Commons, in reply to Horatio Walpole, who had accused him, among other things, of a theatrical behaviour. 'A theatrical part,' he said, 'may either imply some peculiarities of gesture, or a dissimulation of my