the sense here used is a warping, and corrupting, and perverting of the moral nature, either in whole or in part.

What mothers, as a class, greatly want, is breadth of thought, of view, of understanding; and it is a common mistake to suppose that experience alone gives breadth. A woman may be as narrow after twenty years of maternity as she was when God gave her first the great and mysterious joy of motherhood. A narrowminded mother may be pious and self-denying, but she never can be a wise mother; and the children of an unwise mother will have the flavour of the sour grapes on their teeth so long as they shall live. A mother's education must

be incessantly going on, as long as she has a son or a daughter under her control, or even under her influence.

Not just the way "my mother pursued," because the requirements of one century are not those of the next. Education has but a few fixed principles, with a million varied applications thereof.

Another mistake, pregnant with mischief, is trying to mould our children into a certain fixed pattern, which shall be as nearly as possible the repetition of ourselves. Many a mother is sorely disappointed because her daughter, or her son, but especially the former, evinces tastes with which she has nothing in common. They display propensities which are, perhaps, not evil, but incongruous; they rush into an element in which she can scarcely breathe; they think thoughts which startle her, partly because they are novel, partly because they are the antipodes of her own; and then she commits the error of trying to repress all that she dislikes or fails to comprehend. It is only trying, for she seldom, if ever, succeeds. She simply loses the confidence of her children, and teaches them reserve, if not actual deceit.

Nothing that a child naturally displays as the bent of his disposition should be actually repressed-save revenge, lying, want of honour, and some other flagrant derelictions from the paths of virtue; and even these need caution in repression. Too often, through rough and hasty treatment of serious faults, the volcano that seems extinct only slumbers and smoulders through childhood and youth to burst forth in maturer years a terrible and devastating torrent, spreading death and desolation all around its path. Even early vices sometimes indicate the presence of superior gifts. The dogged obstinacy that tries the patience of the parent may be but the germ of a courage and a firmness which, in after years, shall make the child a giant among Our children's gifts too frequently become their curses; and it is chiefly, though

men.

Observer, Jan. 15, 76.

not entirely, the fault of unwise mothers, who, either admiring too partially, or over-appreciating the gift, let it run riot, so that sour grapes are inevitably the result; or else, disliking it, try to crush it by main force, when something worse than sour grapes ensues-that which should have been a fruitful vine growing up a deadly upas tree.

Many of our loveliest garden flowers and exotics are derived, by sedulous care and skill, from what are generally called weeds. And may not the wise mother vie with the horticulturist in the treatment of the human plant committed to her care? May she not, by a judicious treatment, change obstinacy into firmness, impudence into frankness, self-complacency into self-reliance, weakness into gentleness, levity into cheerfulness, undue sensitiveness into tenderness for others, and a sullen taciturnity into modest reticence?

But, it may be asked, Who is sufficient for this? this? What wisdom, what discretion, what patience, what courage, what knowledge, does not the mother need who would so winnow out the chaff, nor hurt the precious grain? To this I answer, All wisdom may be hers who truly seeks it; all knowledge is to be had by those who persevere in knowing; all courage is given to those who bravely and unflinchingly pursue the right; all patience is woman's own heritage, if only she be content to renounce selfishness.

The height or depth, rather of maternal unwisdom is injustice not the coarse, wicked, injustice of favouritism, that, as our French neighbours say, "goes without telling;" but the injustice which arises out of infirmities of temper -the mother's temper, not the child's. The action which pleases, or at worst is ignored to-day, displeases and is punished to-morrow; the liberty which is permitted, if not encouraged, this week, is checked the next; the grace accorded in the morning is withheld at night; and not from principle, not from change of conviction, but simply from change of mood.

But this is cruel treatment of the young. It makes them timid, and of timidity comes cowardice, and of cowardice falsehood, and falsehood opens wide the door for a troop of sins and evils. A mother who indulges herself in "moods" is of unwise mothers the unwisest perhaps of all. Of course, the moody mother cannot be a Christian you say. I would not dare say she is not; for, indeed, my friends, some Christians do indulge in the dumps to a marvellous extent, and their dumps do a hundredfold more harm than the dumps of people who do not profess to be religius. Nothing sets the children's teeth more permanently on edge than the sour grapes of moodi

Observer, Jan. 15, '76.

ness and inequality of temper which the mother eats. Of course it is very bad if the father eats them; but we are speaking here of mothers, whose influence throughout the years of childhood and of early youth undoubtedly predomi

nates.

We cannot set up schools and colleges for mothers. No; mothers must teach themselves -earnestly, prayerfully, unremittingly, selfsacrificingly! They must come to the conclusion that it is not enough to be pious, or tender, or devoted even, unless also they are wise. And they must remember, too, that a mass of knowledge is not wisdom, and that experience is more or less valuable according to the use we make of it. A wise mother is firm as gentle, cheerful as pious, and uncapricious as kind. Her yea means yea, and her nay means nay, and her children know it, and her commands are absolute; but then she is scrupulously careful never to be exacting, or unreasonable, or despotic.

As years pass on the unwise mother either frets over the alienation of her children, or mourns that they have "turned out so ill." She remembers how she nursed them, how she toiled for them, perhaps how she prayed for them; perhaps, at the last, it dawns upon her wearied, saddened mind, that she was unwise! But the wise mother reaps the precious fruit of her labours. And when she is gone from earth her works shall remain, her memory shall be fragrant and blessed, and the children's teeth shall not be set on edge!

THE CHURCH-PLANTING AND
DEVELOPMENT.-No. II.

IT has already been shown that the Church of Christ was not organized till after His ascension to heaven; that not till after the baptism in the Holy Spirit, on the subsequent Pentecost, was it ever alluded to as actually existing.

The term Εκκλησία, selected by the Lord to designate the Church, is found in the New Testament over one hundred times. In all its occurrences, with the exception of four, it refers to one or more of those assemblies whose Head is the Lord Jesus, and whose members, on confession of faith, have been baptized into Him. The term itself, as recently stated by Dr. Vaughan (Middle Temple Readings of the Greek Testament), denotes "A body of persons called out from a larger body, by the voice of a herald, to form a body in permanent session." There could scarcely have been coined a more fit word to designate the Church of Christ. It was in response to heralds of salvation that, on the day of Pentecost three thousand came out, not as a

temporary assembly, but for permanent session as that entirely NEW institution of the New Covenant, known as the Church of Christ. Were this but understood, churches based, in part, upon the old covenant and upon flesh, would be abandoned as adverse to the letter and spirit of Christianity. This being so, we shall devote the remainder of this article to the covenants.

God made various covenants with holy men of old--with Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Not staying to notice the first we come to Abraham. The Lord said unto him, "Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house unto a land that I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." (Gen. xii. 1-3.)

After Isaac had been offered upon the altar (Gen. xxii.) this promise was renewed and confirmed by the Oath of God. It is there worded, "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." In reference to this covenant the Apostle Paul wrote-"Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, and seeds, as of many; but as of one. And to thy seed, which is Christ. And this I say,

the covenant which was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, could not disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect. (Gal. iii.)

In Gen. xv. the Lord makes, over sacrifice, a further covenant with Abraham, giving to his seed the land of Canaan. In chap. xvii. He again appeared to him saying, "I will make my covenant between Me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly. thou shalt be a father

of many nations.' On this occasion his name is changed to Abraham, the land of Canaan is promised to him and to his seed, and circumcision is instituted and made binding upon his male descendants, and upon servants born in his house or bought with money.

In these four accounts we have two distinctly different covenants. The first concerning Christ and Abraham's spiritual seed. Therewith circumcision was not imposed. The other (Gen. xv.) has no reference to Christ, nor to the higher spiritual things. The possession of a goodly land and other temporal blessings are alone included. In the confirmation of this covenant (Gen. xvii.) circumcision is imposed, not upon the spiritual seed, but upon that of the flesh only. In the covenants then, made with Abraham and his seed, where we find Christ, we do not find circumcision, and where

circumcision is found there are only earthly and temporal blessings. Circumcision was to Abraham a SEAL of the faith which he had when uncircumcised, but it was not that to his descendants. To them it was but a SIGN of fleshly connection with him, entitling, irrespective of faith or piety, to the temporal blessings of that covenant, the sign of which God required to be put upon their flesh. Circumcision, then was a mark or token in the flesh, indicating that he who bore it was allied to the fleshly seed of Abraham, through Isaac, and entitled to the privileges of the covenant of which it was the sign. This was its only significance, and it is thus clear that this covenant did not embrace the promise of Christ, nor the spiritual seed, and that circumcision was not, save to Abraham himself, the seal or token of any spiritual blessing whatever. The whole family of Abraham, in the aggregate, was included, and the babe was as fit a subject for circumcision as its parent. Out of this family grew a great people whom God delivered from the bondage of Egypt. When they had crossed the Red Sea His purposes required the renewal of the covenant of circumcision and temporal blessing, upon a national basis, but He did not arbitrarily bind it upon the then to be organized nation. He addressed them in words of consultation, promise, and hope, saying, "Now, therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people, for all the earth is Mine: and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." And all the people answered together, and said, "All that the Lord has spoken we will do." And Moses returned the words of the people unto the Lord. (Ex. xix. 5-8.) Then the Ten Commandments, and other Divine requirements, were laid upon the nation, thus voluntarily placed in covenant bonds. The covenant of blessing to all nations in Abraham and in his seed, Christ, was not abrogated by the covenant of circumcision, nor by the giving of the law.

What followed? The Lord said, "O that there were such a heart in them that they would fear Me, and keep all My Commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever." But such was not the case, and very soon multiplied violations stood against them, the promised blessings were forfeited, and God determined to abrogate the covenant and make a new one, not with the nation, but with individuals thereof. Some six hundred years before Christ the Word of the Lord came by Jeremiah, saying, "Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with

Observer, Jan. 15, '76

the house of Judah; not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, which My covenant they broke, although I was a husband unto them saith the Lord: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; after those days, saith the Lord, I will put My law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour and every man his brother, saying, know the Lord; for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, saith the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquities and will remember their sin no more." (Jer. xxxi.)

There can scarcely be a more important question than, Have these new covenant days come? Let us endeavour to find a clear answer. The "seventy weeks of Daniel ix. bring us to the cutting off the Messiah, not for His own sins, but for the sins of others. We are there told that He shall "confirm the covenant with many for one week;" not with the nation, but with many; that is with numerous individuals of the house of Israel and of the house of Judah. In the middle of the week He was also to cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease, v. 27. This He did by His own death, not actually, but as legal and God owned ordinances. The Jews

continued their services till the destruction of Jerusalem, but after the death of Christ the temple became their own house, and its service was no longer God's-" Your house is left unto you desolate."

The Hebrew word rendered "to confirm" means "to make strong." Covenants, in ancient time, were ratified by sacrifice, consequently we read, "Whereupon neither the first covenant was dedicated without blood. For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the covenant which God hath enjoined unto you.". To this the Apostle adds, "It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us." (Heb. ix.) we have a NEW covenant, made strong by better blood than that which confirmed the old covenant, which had never been strengthened by such glorious manifestations of the grace of God as were in process when the Spirit was given on

Here

Observer, Jan. 15, '76.

Pentecost. Consequently, it could only be regarded as weak in comparison with that then about to be established, and to embrace remission of sins and the anointing of the Holy of Holies. Accordingly, Jesus, at the last supper, said, "This is My blood of the new covenant which is shed for many for the remission of sins." (Mat. xxvi. 28.) The reader, who has not mastered this interesting subject, will do well to examine carefully Heb. viii., ix., x., wherein is clearly taught that the old covenant is done away, that the new covenant is established; the very words of the promise of Jeremiah being there applied. If it be asked, why God promised to make a new covenant with the houses of Israel and Judah, seeing that the covenantees were not to be Jews only? the answer is, because Christ came to the people of the old covenant; the Apostles were commanded to proclaim the terms of the new covenant first in Jerusalem; the first converts, and those for some seven years afterwards, were Jews; so that the covenant was made with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; that is with "the many" who would accept it; the rest were cut off, and Gentile believers were subsequently grafted in. Please note the following conclusions:

1. The covenant promised by the Lord (Jer. xxxi.) and established by the Christ, was not an old covenant patched, mended, and newly sealed and signed, but a NEW COVENANT. Saviour reprobated putting a new piece upon an old garrnent.

The

2. "My covenant shall be in your flesh," said Jehovah. That is upon the flesh as an external sign. The covenant meditated by Moses was put upon tables of stone. But the new covenant is otherwise recorded-"This shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord, I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts."

3. Under the old covenant babes were included and, therefore, as parties to the covenant, and while under it they were taught to "know the Lord." Under the NEW COVENANT, as flesh "profiteth nothing," is excluded, and ALL the covenantees "know the Lord," and cannot come into the covenant without knowing Him, such teaching is neither needful nor possible.

4. All the covenantees of the new covenant receive the plenary remission of sins. I will forgive their iniquities, and remember their sins no more." Under the old covenants there was no final remission, but a remembrance of sins every year. The blood of bulls and goats could not take away sins.

5. Under the old covenant, "when the fathers had eaten a sour grape the children's teeth were

set on edge." In other words the blessings of the covenant being temporal, evil conduct brought temporal calamity, which the children shared, though not partakers of the fault, as under other ciscumstances they shared the blessings without contributing to the national obedience. Under the new covenant this principle no longer prevails. Each shall be condemned for his own sin, if unrepented of, and none shall die for the sins of others.

6. The old covenant, based on flesh, embraced the whole nation. The new only includes those who accept its blessings by faith in its once dead but now ever living Mediator.

(To be continued.)

THE NEW JERUSALEM.-No. II. I.—Ancient Jerusalem, a type of the New Jerusalem.

In Name. This celebrated city, around which cluster so many and sublime and affecting reminisences, is supposed to have been founded by Melchisedec, king of Salem, that is Peace. According to Cruden, the full name Jerusalem, signifies the vision of peace: thus its very name is prophetic. (Jer. iii. 17. 18.)

It has its significance, that John in his Gospel, always writes Hierosoluma when speaking of Jerusalem, that being its Greek name; but in the Apocalypse he calls the heavenly city Hierousaleem, which is the Hebrew name, and the original and holy appellation of ancient Jerusalem. Paul likewise, in his epistle to the Galations, observes the same distinction.(Trench.)

The city is mentioned (Heb. xii. 22) under the name of heavenly Jerusalem; in Gal. iv. 26 it is called Jerusalem which is above; in Rev. iii. 12, New Jerusalem, and in chap. xxi. the holy city. These names the Apostles were directed by the Spirit to give to this city, to show that Jerusalem in Canaan was a type or emblem of it.-McKnight on Heb.)

In Situation. Palestine was appointed by the Lord to be the abode of His people, the nursery of His Kingdom. Its position between the Mediterranean Sea on the west, the mountains of Lebanon on the north, and the Syrian wilderness on the east, and the Desert of Arabia Petrea on the south, is peculiar; while it constituted the centre of the three divisions of the world, as it was then known, the country, like the nation which occupied it, was secluded by its insulated position from the rest of the world. The interior was protected by the peculiar features of the whole region from

foreign influences, while, at the same time, its position between Egypt, and the great Asiatic Kingdoms, the vicinity of the widely extended commerce of Phoenicia, and its own

near

approach to the most important channels along which the commerce of the world flowed, combined to establish it in the centre of the activity of the world. The country was, in this manner, specially adapted to become, at first, the silent, and retired nursery of the Kingdom of God; and afterwards, to spread abroad, in all directions, and among all nations, the great salvation, when the latter had reached the period of its maturity. (Kurtz.)

The Lord declared of the capital-Jerusalem,

"I have set it in the midst of the nations and countries that are round about her." (Ezek. v. 5.) Here Jerusalem is regarded as the centre of the whole earth, designed to radiate the true light over the Nations in all directions. No centre in the ancient heathen world could have been selected more fitted than Canaan to be a vantage ground, whence the people of God, could act with success upon the heathenism of the world. It lay midway between the oldest and most civilized states, Egypt and Ethiopia, on the one side, and Babylon, Nineveh, and India on the other, and afterwards, between Greece, Rome, and Persia. The Phoenecian mariners were close by, through whom they might have transmitted the true religion to the remotest lands: around them were the Ishmaelites, the great inland traders in south Asia and north Africa. Israel was thus placed, not for its own selfish good, but to be the spiritual benefactor of the whole world. Compare Psalm lxvii. throughout. (Fausset.)

"Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together, whither the tribes go up, the Tribes of the Lord, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord."

"It is the city which men call the perfection of Beauty the joy of the whole earth."-When I stood, says Porter, that morning on the brow of Olivet, and looked down on the city, crowning those battlemented heights, encircled by those deep, and dark ravines, I involuntarily exclaimed, "Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth is Mount Zion, the city of the Great King."

Observer, Jan. 15, '76.

Is this a type of the water of life, which flowed from Jerusalem, towards the four quarters of the earth? (Luke xxiv. 45. 47.)

Salvation, like a river, rolls

Abundant, free, and clear.

Its Temple Service. Jerusalem was the seat of God's worship, and is thus regarded as an emblem of the New, where eternal worship will be celebrated. (John iv. 20. 21; Rev. xxi. 22; xxii. 3.) "The Lord hath chosen Zion, He This is my

hath desired it for His habitation. rest for ever; here will I dwell, for I have desired it."

"Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem." (See also Ps. lxxvi. 1. 2.)

The heathen Plutarch wrote: If you travel through the world, well you may find cities without walls, without literature, without kings, not peopled or inhabited, moneyless and such as desire no coin, which know not what theatres, or public halls mean; but never was there, any one city seen, without a temple, without some god or other, which useth no prayers, nor oaths, no prophecies, and divinations, no sacrifices either to obtain blessings, or to avert curses and calamities; nay, methinks a man should sooner find a city built in the air, than that any commonwealth altogether void of religion, should be, first established, or afterwards preserved and maintained in that estate.-(Trench. Hulsean Lectures, p. 268.)

And yet we are told that the perfect city will have no temple; "I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty, and the Lamb, are the temple of it."

After all a temple speaks of sin, as well as of God; no temple service will be needed, where there is no sin, no conscience stains to be wiped out. All ritual is like so many steps in the ladder, which conducts to God, but having arrived at His abode, ceremonies, ritual, temple, all vanish.-(Greenwell.)

"the

But there is that which is far better, throne of God, aud the Lamb," and besides it is immediately added, "they shall see His face."

Oh, the delights, the heavenly joys,
The glories of the place

Where Jesus sheds the brightest beams
Of His unveiled face!

(To be continued.)