holiness, freedom became once more possible and common. The blasphemies were rent asunder. The light of truth began to shine. The church cast out its dead, and awoke into new and increasing vigour. And men walked forth once more as seeing Him who is invisible. The early days of the church came back. And even better days began to dawn. Jesus was Lord and King again.

The discovery of a Bible, the conversion of a Saxon monk, the Reformation, these were the steps by which this revival travelled. But the instrument, the power which effected it, was the preaching of a living and rediscovered Saviour to men. It was the manifestation, to the conscience of the world, of long-buried truth concerning Him. The pulpit at Wittenberg became a centre of life. Other pulpits awoke to their high vocation. Crowds gathered around their preachers to hear of a way to heaven, opened up to them by God himself, and as free as the air they breathed. Everywhere rose the voice of the living testimony concerning Jesus; everywhere was proclaimed the one great doctrine of that testimony, which the times required. And steadily and irresistibly the revival took root and grew. The great, manly Protestant era was inaugurated.

*

Notwithstanding a thousand drawbacks and defects, the Religious life of England is a great result. It cannot be all make-believe and surface work. Hypocrisy is not its own reward, whatever else is. There must be some force, some hidden cause, some true thing acting on the souls of even the most surface-people, to account for the widespread and unanimous adhesion, which there is in this country, to the external duties and observances of Christianity. People do not build Churches and Sunday Schools, do not take an interest in Missionary Societies and subscribe to them, without some real impelling power, other than mere habit, or natural custom, or force of circumstance supplies. Something must be acting somewhere on society to account even for this fact, that one large portion of mankind leave their homes every Sunday to spend the day in public worship.

An explanation is still more necessary, when, from the unfriendly view of the Religious world, you come to consider it with candid and sympathetic minds. Only lift up your eyes and survey the spectacle which that world presents. Open your ears and listen to the rustling of its living growths. The breath of an unseen power is sweeping through every branch; the air is filled with tokens of that power's presence. At this point it is the conversion of young souls to Christ; at that other it is the building up of converted souls in Christian life which you see. Can you doubt, that, at the heart of all that may seem superficial and imperfect, there is a hidden stream of real godliness flowing in the life of the church? Is the church itself, with its both hidden and manifested lives, with its convictions and hopes, with its energies and aims and sacrifices, an effect without a cause? Why should it continue? Why is it not submerged in the rush and roar of the industrial, political, and scientific revolutions of the world?

Honestly look at some of the simple facts in the church's experience. With whatever deficiencies in the doing, with whatever limitation in the amount, sorrowing hearts are actually comforted by her instrumentality. Widows and orphans are cheered and sympathized with; children are trained up in the principles of the Christian life; young men are warned and barred back from evil ways; young women are clad in the beauties of holiness; artisans are taught to look upon their daily toils as part of Christian service; business men are instructed in probity and fair dealing;

individual life is put under the influence of the powers of the world to come, and social life is permeated by opinions which have been learned from Christ. Time would fail even to enumerate the facts which make up the whole of Christian life. But I may go on to ask, Whether, in this country, enterprises conducted on high Christian principles are unknown? Is the nation never moved to its profoundest deeps by considerations purely spiritual,-by ideas, for example, of human pity and love? Comes there not forth at times, as from a well deep down in the heart of the people, a gush of the sincerest Christian sympathy at the advent of some benevolent or religious cause? Is modern English life uninfluenced, in its aims and motives, by hope in a future existence? Is there no cleaving of human souls to God?-no linking of man to man by Christian ties? Was there ever less of the Cain spirit, which asks, Am I my brother's keeper?' or of the bitter scepticism, which makes the struggle for human rights a butt for sneers? Do not Christian men protest, in the interests of the weak, against tyranny of every form? Are there not in thousands of lives noble aspirations after truth, noble sacrifices for the poor? And over all the Christian church, in this land, have we not honest, hearty human prayers, and strivings, and tears, and agonies for, what is believed to be, the cause of God among men? And what are these manifold effects upon the surface of Christian society-these manifestations and exhibitions of Christian thought, feeling, and activity— but the ever-present, ordinary results of Christ's truth upon the life of the church? I see behind it all, the natural action of the word of the Master upon the hearts of his servants. Under all the variety of outcome I perceive the steady rush and flow, in innumerable heart-channels and churchchannels, of the sustaining and quickening and developing power of 'the testimony of Jesus' by the prophesying of the pulpit.

What good thing in the history of the last eighteen centuries-what event worthy of an abiding place in human memory-can be named which does not owe its greatness to the truth concerning Christ? If we take a full and discriminating survey of what we truly know of those centuries, and include within our gaze, only those things which have purified and heightened the life of man upon the earth, we shall find that they are all results, direct or indirect, of the gospel.

What indeed is Christian history at the core but simply the record of the triumphs of this gospel among men? The earth has been full of widespread activity from the days of the apostles until now; but how comparatively little of it all is remembered! One slender but ever-broadening pathway of light runs down through the centuries. The spirit of history tends more and more to follow that line, to put everything else to one side or the other, to bring everything else into relation with this, and to brood over this alone. This pathway of light is the history of Christian truth and life.

Christian history on one, and that its richest side, is a prophecy and world-wide celebration of the power of Christ and his word. It is not ultimately the rise and fall of nations or the conflicts of races which it proposes to set before us. It is the evolution, the coming forward into greater and intenser clearness of human needs,-and parallel to that, but moving on the highways of the Unseen, the coming forward of a living Saviour, and the principles of that Saviour's life to supply those needs,-the march, in short, of God towards his proper dwelling-place in the hearts and homes of the children of men, and his victories by the way.

Reflect on Christendom. Beyond all other influences, which a true history

would have to name, it is the result of the preaching of the Cross. This made it what it is; this built it up. Consider the character of those instincts and sentiments which are the life-blood of Christian civilisation; it was the gospel which breathed them into society. Look at the races which are foremost in the wave of progress, and hastening to fill the earth with their life and speech,-the Anglo-Saxon race, for example, it was the gospel which made them what they are. All great results, all noble and beautiful living, all beneficent progress, all holy enterprise, must at last be traced to the influence of the gospel upon mankind.

'It is the honour of Christian civilisation,' writes one who has profoundly studied the character of our modern civilisation, that it has carried repentance even into the souls of nations. England has repented of having offended Ireland; Europe has repented of having practised slavery. Pagan antiquity knew nothing of these awakenings of the public conscience,—of these moral illuminations which suddenly change the hearts of men, and ere long effect a corresponding change in the state of society. Tacitus could only deplore the decay of the ancient virtues of Rome, and Marcus Aurelius could only wrap himself sorrowfully up in the stoical isolation of the sage; there is nothing to show that these superior minds so much as suspected the great crimes of their social state, even in its best days, or aspired to reform them. The Christian world, from age to age, sees new truths and virtues appear on its horizon, which reveal to it at once its grandeur and its faults, and renew its youth by purifying it.'*

I have no wish to overcolour my statement. I freely acknowledge that we are not realizing the power of the testimony as we might. England, our Colonies, America, Christendom are not yet what they ought to be. But by this very acknowledgment I am carried forward to another result of the gospel. What is it which enables us to attain a consciousness of our deficiencies, but just the greater light which resides in that gospel? Far ahead of the realized good is the ideal good in the word. Wider than our development is the scope of the truth by which we have developed. We are finite; it is infinite. Our attainments follow, but are never in advance of the word. No civilisation can transcend it. It can never cease to be suggestive and promotive of higher being. And thus, for endless ages, our children and our children's children must find in it the power of developments yet to

come.

The power of the gospel to produce such results is immortal. It resides in all its truths; it flashes forth in all its light. Its energies to-day are as elastic as when Jesus lived. As the Apostles spoke it among the villages of Judea, so it may yet be spoken. As Paul proclaimed it on Mars Hill, so it may yet be proclaimed. Luther's thunder is not dead, but sleepeth. Knox's courage is abroad amongst us still, but in other battles than that brave man fought. Wesley's spiritual force, Whitfield's tenderness, and Irving's prophetic insight are all waiting the Master's bidding, and will revive when such work as theirs has to be done again.

BIRKENHEAD.

* Guizot's Memoirs of Sir R. Peel, p. 312.

A. MACLEOD.

OF THE MANNER OF GOD'S MESSAGE.

PART IV.

In closing, for the present, these somewhat desultory remarks on the metaphorical style of the Bible, we would wish to point the attention, especially of the young, to one or two of its general characteristics. It will be noticed that the field from which the imagery is drawn is very extensive. Indeed, the whole field of nature-not to mention other sources-is gone over and gleaned, and its manifold beauties, and blessings, and terrors are enlisted to convey and to impress the truth on the mind; and hence its diversity and copiousness. The flight of the prophet, like that of the eagle hastening to its prey, is usually swift and direct, sweeping over hill and plain, forest and river, in rapid succession. The beautiful, the terrible, and the exquisitely tender, meet us by turns, or together. We are now led away among the lilies of the valley and the roses of Sharon, and again we are burrowing with the worm, or lifted up to the nests of eagles, or among the callow young of the dove and the raven, and forthwith we are let down on the mountain side in the midst of bleating ewes and playful lambs. The little stream or bubbling fountain addresses us here; and there close by the thunder speaks, and the flood claps its hands, or the earthquake lifts up its voice; and yonder, within sight, the deluge rolls, or the desert stretches away in solemn silence, whilst the still small voice of evening whispers along the valley, or breathes in low murmurs among the cedars of Lebanon. The 104th Psalm affords a striking instance of the wide range over nature which the sacred writers take, as also an illustration of another prominent feature of the inspired writings-viz. the unceasing presence of God in the midst of his works. This is one of the most marked peculiarities of the Bible. We are never allowed to forget that He is in all and over all, and that it is his voice we hear amongst the trees of the garden of nature. Wherever we go

we are commanded to put off our shoes, for the ground on which we tread is holy; and this, no doubt, is a leading reason of the awe we feel, and the sublimity we experience, in the views of nature which are opened up. God sits on the circle of the earth, He measures the waters in the hollow of his hand, the thunder is his voice, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.

It is worthy of remark that, amidst all this luxuriance of imagery, no sense of satiety is felt. The fulness and overflowing is like some of nature's sweets and lasting delights, which satisfy, but do not cloy. They have in them a certain indefiniteness and seeming endlessness. We are never weary, for example, with the sound or motion of running water. Its tale is never told-we fancy something still to come; and yet, substantially, it is ever the same. Its music is simple and even monotonous, and yet never caught. It cannot be painted, and cannot be sung. It is too fugitive for eye or ear to catch, and refuses to give itself fully to either the sheet of the musician or the canvas of the painter. Nor is this quality confined to water in motion; we meet it in the waving grass, the forest shaken by the wind, in the songs of certain birds, and especially in their full choir, and, indeed, in the sights and sounds of nature taken collectively; so that the attention is engaged without being fatigued, and the mind satisfied without being satiated. It still finds something new, or conceives it does, in the converse of nature— something varied, and still pleasing; so that a long life has no power to destroy the charm, but, on the contrary, increases it, multiplying its sources, and adding to its force.

'The earth was made so various, that the mind
Of desultory man, studious of change,

And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.'"

The Bible possesses this quality in an eminent degree. It has a beginning, but no end. It is ever speaking, and has never done; ever full like the sea, and never at rest. What the sun takes up, the clouds give down. The general elements may be alike, but, as in the moving kaleidoscope, they are differently grouped, and give forth ever-varying prismatic hues.

As in nature too, the transitions and contrasts of the Bible are frequent, and often abrupt; and this may be one reason of the lasting pleasure which both afford. We often, as in the psalms and the prophets, pass at a bound from the lowliest to the loftiest subjects; but it is done in such a way, so artlessly and unaffectedly, that the mind is not shocked but pleased by it. At this moment all is intense in thought and abstinent in speech; and then the rein is given to fancy, and it rushes by in a flood of imagery, and carries the reader away as with a whirlwind. Here the writer crushes and concentrates his proof, or expands and handles his argument with the fulness of the orator; and there we meet with the loftiest and most ennobling thoughts, embodied in a clear, calm, mellow diction, and yet pervaded by the deepest earnestness and utmost tenderness. Elsewhere the language is plain, and almost colloquial; the incidents and allusions domestic and familiar; the descriptions circumstantial and picturesque; and, ere we are aware, the tempest of prophetic denunciation passes along, and the waves arise and make in thunder for the shore. Sometimes, in Ezekiel, it seems as if at midnight the doors of the deep had broken up, and that the furious and emancipated billows were hurrying away, with resistless and desolating sweep, into the gorges and darknesses of the terrible future. All again becomes suddenly quiet, as the sea of Galilee at the word of Christ, and then a few small words come in, laden with such vast thoughts that they press out the sides of heaven to receive them. The great thoughts they convey lie still and motionless in majestic repose, as a mighty mountain range in moonlight, or a winter firmament with its countless stars. There is stillness, but vastness; magnificence in repose, like the half-hour's silence in heaven; the serenely, but sublimely beautiful; an endless variety, and yet variety in unity, as in outward nature, and over both the spirit and atmosphere of heaven breathes. Nor, obviously, is the change sought for change's sake. The Bible, like the sea, rises and falls with its subject. Tranquil in calm, but terrible in storm; sudden in its vicissitudes, as seas around the line, which rise in might at the first stroke of the hurricane, though not, like them, to roll for days afterwards, but rather like the tempest-beaten forest, or the tempest itself, it passes, and all is still. The affrighted herd browses calmly the instant the danger is gone.

The tempest, the earthquake, the fire, and the still small voice thus follow each other in close succession, or are mingled up together. In short, all creatures and elements are summoned to the task, and laid under tribute. The locust, the moth, and the leviathan, the sparrow and the eagle, the lamb and the leopard, the lion and the ox, the owl in the desert and the cattle upon a thousand hills, the wolf prowling for his prey and the hart panting after the water brooks, the creeping things on the land and in the sea, the rich vineyard and the barren waste, the nettle in the ruin and the willows by the water courses, the shadows of trees and of great rocks in weary lands, the little springs among the hills and the surges of the sea, the hyssop in Cowper-The Sofa.