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Observer, Jan. 1, 72.

them all must harbour; but two regions, on one of which all must land. Of one of them, one has said—

"There everlasting spring abides,
And never-with'ring flowers."

The city of God-the New Jerusalem-is there: a city whose streets are gold, whose gates are pearl, whose walls are jasper, and whose foundations are garnished with precious stones; its inhabitants will ever be blessed and holy; there the River of Life shall unceasingly flow forth, clear as crystal, from beneath the throne of God and of the Lamb; and there forever shall stand the Tree of Life, yielding its fruit every month, whose leaves shall be for the healing of the nations. There the saints of God shall gaze upon the Saviour's face, and rejoice forever in the unclouded sunshine of Jehovah's love. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."

66

"While everlasting ages roll,

Eternal love shall feast their soul;
And scenes of bliss forever new
Rise in succession to their view.

O sweet employ, to sing and trace

Th' amazing heights and depths of grace;
And spend, from sin and sorrow free,

A blissful, vast eternity.".

But Oh! Who shall describe the destiny of the wicked? Theirs is the region of darkness. Along its bare, withered, blasted plains career the fierce and fiery simoons of Jehovah's wrath, long pent up, but now bursting forth in most terrific forms. The devil and his angels are there; souls lost, which might have been saved, are there; there is the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched.

Steer wisely, O steer wisely, on time's broad, rolling river, and obey the gospel of Jesus Christ, and, with the banner of salvation floating proudly on the breeze, it shall be yours to cast anchor, at last and forever, in the Haven of Eternal Rest. J. S.

ONE LIFE ONLY, AN ARGUMENT AGAINST GOD.

"This life only.”—1 Cor. xv. 19.

Ir is proposed to show that if human life, redeemed and sanctified by the mediation of Jesus Christ, be limited to this world, God Himself has committed a profound and cruel mistake in calling men into existence. The greatness of man then becomes a terrible charge against God. We cannot be satisfied with the evidences of power and capacity which attest man's superiority over all other known forms of life; these evidences themselves prove that if death be the end of life, God has made a tremendous miscalculation in the constitution of human nature. He has created appetites which He cannot satisfy; He has excited hopes which must perish in disappointment; He has built a great ship, and must destroy it because He cannot create a sea in which it can float. Is it not clearly so? What would be thought of a man who built a splendid chariot, and could not get it out of the workshop in which he had constructed it? Instantly

Observer, Jan. 1, '72.

and justly it would be said that the man had made a ludicrous as well as an expensive mistake. This is in degree precisely the position of God, if in this life only we have hope. He has made a noble vessel-perfect in its proportions, exquisite in its adaptations, sumptuous in its appointments -and He cannot find water enough for it! He has set the great ship in a little shallow pool, and left it to rot because there is no deep upon whose waters He can launch so vast and splendid a vessel! As with the ship, so with the chariot. God has built a chariot worthy of a king, and, lo! He cannot get it out of the little rickety workshop in which He built it!

Look at the case without a figure. A man believes in Jesus Christ, and so becomes identified with all that is known of purity, grace, and joy: he is animated by the sublimest hopes; his soul is restless by reason of incessant and elevating aspirations; there is ever shining upon him an ideal life which fascinates and lures his best powers; he rejects the promises of the world as well-told lies; he gets all that the world can give, and finds that it is a stone, and not bread; his whole life becomes an intense hunger after something purer, sweeter, healthier, than he has ever realized. Having thus developed, he is told that his grave is dug, and that into it must be thrown every dream, every hope, every vehement desire, and that the man who was almost an angel must wither like the leaf, and rot like the unclean beast! This is the most terrible accusation that can be urged against God. Creation is thus turned into a proof of His weakness, rather than a display of His power: this God began to build, and was not able to finish!

This world is enough for creatures destitute of aspiration. It is enough for the lion, for the eagle, for leviathan. Why? They cannot hope, they cannot pray, they cannot aspire. To them the daylight is but a convenience, not a poem. To them the seasons come without music, and vanish without benediction. We turn, however, from the noblest of inferior creatures to look at the case of man. Here is a being who dreams, prays, hopes, speculates, aspires-a being who lives more really in the future than in the present, and to whom, indeed, the present is tolerable mainly because the future is fascinating it is in this peculiarly distinctive aspect that the case of man must be considered his necessary annihilation would be a disgrace to God-a strong term indeed, but sternly and grandly true. Wise men have proved again and again that the present is illusory, that life is a series of dissatisfactions, that in all the garden of Time there is nothing but unopened buds and tender leaves of promise. Is this to be the end, the sum, the limit, of God's purpose? Then, truly, has God shown Himself to be weak, unwise, and cruel; and in the necessary annihilation of man He undeifies Himself. The annihilation of evil is divine; the annihilation of goodness is a blessed impossiblity.

One life only is an argument against God's goodness, against God's heart! Assuming that there is but one life, see how God must treat the noblest of His creatures. Take men like the psalmists. There are the psalms; look at them even as common human writings. Look at their agony, their expectation, their trust, their all but infinite faith in God, and love for His name. The psalmists often sang as if already they had laid hold of eternal life. They stood above the world; they loudly and sweetly praised the excellency of God; they declared Jehovah to be all their salvation and all their desire; they saw Him riding upon the heavens, and longed to be at rest in His eternal keeping. To all this God's answer is extinction! Can a more revolting blasphemy be conceived? Hear the speech of the

Observer, Jan. 1, '72.

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great God: I made thee, O man; I set the stamp of my image upon thee I cursed thee with a thirst which no river can quench; I excited a hunger in thine heart more terrible to endure than all the ills which torment and consume thy flesh. Thou hast prayed, hoped, yearned, with most poignant desire, for a world larger, better, brighter, than this; I answer thee with the answer of Death. Whilst thou art yet praying, I destroy thy being with a stroke! Is this goodness? Is this love? Is the God of our dreams pitiless as a beast of prey?

On the other hand, if we spare His goodness, it must be at the expense of His wisdom. Why create such a creature as man? Could a creature not have been created who would have been satisfied with the present world? Why should man have had any notion of a future, either good or bad? Yet all men live in the future. Their hearts are in the sunny morrow,—the long bright day that is to be! Every man is cheered by the Simeon-hope of seeing a child that shall show all the salvation of God. Even amongst ourselves we know how our very generosity may, when unable to complete itself, become a pain and a temptation to those upon whom we have bestowed it. Our gifts may be large enough to create dissatisfaction with one daily lot, yet too small to secure contentment with another. One sovereign given to a poor man may help him out of a trouble, whereas a hundred might lift him high enough to give him a glimpse of another social state, but not power enough to enter it, and be at rest. Into his poverty there has been infused an impracticable ambition. He has a right to say, "You should have either done more for me or less; your generosity has excited an ambition which it cannot satisfy." With some such words we may address God, if our existence be confined to this life only. If it is not His purpose to continue and perfect the consciousness with which He has endowed us, He has, so to speak, overbuilt Himself in our creation. God should either have gone farther or not so far: He cannot stop where He is without exposing Himself to the angry and righteous charge of having succeeded in the infliction of misery, and failed in the bestowment of joy.

Granting that you never doubted the existence of a life beyond the present, the discussion of the subject is of the first importance on two accounts: (1) We may be called upon to give to others a reason for the faith and hope that are in us; and (2) we may feel more keenly the obligations which another life imposes on us to live nobly in the present world. The latter point is full of instruction and stimulus. Attend to it, if you please, for one moment, that we may at least indicate the line of practical inference and application:

First: If there is another life, in what relation does our present existence stand to it? Is it disciplinary? Is it preparatory? May we lose the opportunity of eternal life? May we so use the present world as to go downwards and not upwards in the world that is to come?

Second: If there is another life, what will be its effect in regard to the moral confusion and restlessness of our present existence? Here, virtue is often undervalued vice is often successful; cunning overthrows simplicity: is there yet to be reconciliation? is right to be set in the chief place? are mysteries to be cleared up? is the glory of Divine righteousness to shine through all the obscurities of Divine Government? Our Christian hope answers-YES!

Third: If there is another life, can they be wise who exhaust themselves within the limits of the present world? What a fool is the mere money

Observer, Jad. 1, '72.

gatherer! How deluded is he who mistakes a part for the whole! What an ironical success is his who builds a stately house upon the sand!

Fourth If there is another life, is not he the wise man who regulates the present by all that is solemn and sublime in the future? The deepest life must be a mystery to the life that is superficial. "Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." He that findeth his life shall lose it." 66 He that loseth his life shall find it." "Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven." The man of the world is excited, restless, combative the man who lives in the Lord Jesus Christ looks at "things not seen," and is calmed and strengthened by "the power of an endless life." Take courage, O human heart, in all thy sorrow and aching! Redeemed with infinite price, sanctified by the Eternal Spirit, thou shalt live in God's presence, and see light transfiguring every mystery into a mercy, and showing the righteousness of the hidden way of God. This poor illusory scene is not all; early graves, broken columns, frustrated purposes, pain and sorrow, storm and loss,-these are not the sum of God's meaning, nor the measure of God's love. Out of this chaos is to come Beauty, Order, Rest. Dear Jesus! our heart's hope is still in Thee! Thy thought concerning us is full of mercy. Are we to perish, though we have believed in Thy name? Wilt Thou cut the poor hands which cling to Thy dear cross, so that we drop into the pit of death? Wilt Thou blind the eyes which are looking wistfully towards Thyself? This be far from Thee, Lord! Thou canst lose nothing save the son of perdition--the children of light shall be set in the midst of Thy glory, and satisfied with the fulness of Thy love! J. PARKER, D.D.

A SURVEY OF HISTORICAL SUPERNATURALISM.-No. VIII. A PRINCE among thinkers, Ewald, has written the history of the children of Israel. The principles of his history are commonly admitted in Germany. A few extracts will sufficiently reveal the spirit of the work. "The oldest songs of Canaan ring with the name of Sinai as the august beginning of all the glory of the history of Jahve and his people; to the distant Sinai Elijah flees in the despair of his soul as to the primeval hearth, and the last asylum of the sacred fire of Israel, there to wait for the voice and the light of Jahve. All the peculiar institutions of the people, indeed the very existence and character of the community, with its spiritual truths and unusual aspirations, pointed back in the most emphatic way to a time in which had dwelt the power and the courage to institute such things and to establish them, so that they existed for many centuries. Assuredly we cannot think of this period, the results of which are so great, which gave to the nation all its glory and pride, and which determined its altogether peculiar character, and the direction of its actions for many centuries, indeed for the whole of antiquity,—but as one of the most extraordinary kind." "If religion is thinking and acting under an immediate certainty of God, i.e. His being, His eternal truths, and His purposes, it is clear that every one of its truths must seem to the man who lives under its influence to be a word of God Himself; and in uncertain, dark situations of life everything it counsels and discloses will seem to be the direct counsel and revelation of God. The great eternal I,-before which the human I is as nothing, and in which it must first find its rest and home if it is not to perish, this infinite I becomes audible in the individual, and so fills and

Observer, Jan. 1, 72.

moves him. The individual in this way first finds the true end of all his indirect thinking and doing, i.e. his thinking and doing so far as they enter into the world: he receives light and joy, and that freedom which has the necessary limit within itself, and is hence, at the same time modification and law to itself. As, however, religion (fear of God) may affect the individual in different degrees of light and strength, and as the whole series of the most diverse capabilities of the human spirit combine themselves with it in the individual in the most diverse ways, so may the capacity to communicate its utterances to others as clearly as they are in himself be united with it in the individual, in whom it is already strong. And if the Divine I speaks so clearly and powerfully out of the human instrumentality to others, and seeks to lay hold of others, then, in that man thus speaking, the revealer and interpreter of the divine mysteries, the prophet, in the first and most general sense of that word."

Ewald, by his invariable tone and spirit of thinking and writing, rebukes the men who had imputed conscious imposture to the great leaders of Judaism. It is proper, however, to explain that he has no more faith in miracle than his predecessors, even of the worst school. Moses had properly given all the glory to God, but Ewald, conceiving that this was only modesty, restores the glory to Moses as the one who had the wisdom and the courage to institute such things. He and the prophets who succeeded him had no objective revelation, and beheld no outward glories-all was subjective and inward-but so powerful and realistic that the inspired men translated their convictions into facts, and their aspirations into history. This conserves the holiness of Moses and the prophets-allows ample room for their truth and purity-and permits the historian to avoid the blaspheming coarseness of former scribes, and employ language of dignity and reverence. But after all, what is the gain? The foundations of the moral world have equally perished! And if the great fathers of Judaism are securely shielded from conscious deliberate imposture, their morals are certainly saved at the expense of their brains. Men of good conscience they might be; men of sound intellect they could not possibly be. The plagues of Egypt, the passage of the Red Sea, the miracles in the wilderness, the terrors and lights of mount Sinai, the Shekinah fire which led the host are all condemned, are no longer historic verities, but merely the intense visions and dreams of holy men projected outwardly. If this be verily so, the leaders were insane themselves and had millions of fools to operate upon. For it is manifest that the millions believed in the realism of the miracles, celebrating them by stone memorials, by solemn ordinances, by vivid song and by simple uncoloured history. In order to accomplish the transmutation which he desires, Ewald represents the people of Israel as an earnest, aspiring people, full of noble activities, striving after salvation, and in the sunshine of their supreme felicity God drew so near to them that they could believe that He had divided the sea and glorified the mountain with His presence. And Moses, who knew how the people were at home in God, gave an external form to inner necessary truths, and made it historical that God descended upon Sinai and spake the words of the Decalogue. In what labyrinths and mazes of sophistry a man, even of genius and natural ability may be lost, simply by the determination to reject the miraculous. The history, God given, is crowded with miracle; but, then, we wise men of Germany have decreed that miracle is impossible. I must write this history over again, eliminating the supernatural, but saving the righteousness and moral character of the Lawgiver and the

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