of the sacred records, or to omit giving a proportionate importance to all its instructions; but we are to bestow the largest share of attention on the evangelical economy, and more especially on the apostolical epistles, because they contain the last and most explicit declarations of the divine will. To confine our regards to the Psalms, the Sermon on the mount, the Gospels, is not faith but self-will. To stop at the standard of the Mosaic or prophetical discoveries, is to depreciate the apostolical. To linger about the foot of the mountain of inspiration, instead of ascending to its summit and taking the commanding views and the widened prospects which there stretch around, is neither honourable to God nor advantageous to the interest of truth. It is to lose ALL. It is to sink down to natural reason and a darker dispensation and preparatory truth when God calls us to the accomplishing and perfect revelation of his will. Our rules, therefore, of interpretation will be misapplied, or rather will be insufficient, if we bring down the gospel dispensation to the previous imperfect and introductory ones, instead of elevating all the preceding portions of the Bible by that which closes and illustrates the whole. And human nature so strongly tends to deterioration, to low views of truth, to self-reliance, that the stronger guard is necessary in our study of the Scriptures, to watch the divine tract, and rise with the rising light of inspiration.

3. It follows that we must not ALLOW WHAT 18 TEMPORARY, LOCAL, AND EXTRAORDINARY, TO HIDE THE LUSTRE OF WHAT IS PERMANENT AND

BINDING. For the Bible was not written for one age merely, or one country, or one portion of the church; but for all times, all places, all circumstances. The Bible is not merely the inheritance of Europe in the eighteenth century, but was the guide of Asia and Africa in many preceding ages; and is to be the teacher of the whole world in some future time. The

Bible contains the Patriarchal and Mosaical covenants, which have passed away; as well as the evangelical, which remains. The Bible gives the temporary events of the first establishment of the gospel, and the extraordinary powers exercised by Moses and the prophets, and by Christ and his apostles; as well as the permanent and ordinary doctrines and promises which are to illuminate and sustain the church in all times.

There is, therefore, an obvious distinction to be made between temporary, local, and extraordinary matters, and those which are of undeviating and paramount obligation. Human nature loves ceremonies, pomp, external appearance. Human nature soon forgets the infinite grace and power of the Christian redemption, and loses herself amidst the figures and adumbrations of the law, the enactments of the Jewish polity, the directions and rules laid down for the early churches. Human nature is especially in danger of merging the sanctifying and permanent influence of the Holy Ghost, in the temporary and extraordinary power of miraculous operations. The interpreter of Scripture must modify and elevate his views by this important consideration. Much, no doubt, is local and peculiar in the Bible, which, under the Christian dispensation, is either not binding at all, or not binding to the extent that it was under the law. have much local matter. The divine Lord has much peculiar to his office. The extraordinary powers of the apostles, and the wonderful gifts of the Spirit, which ceased after the days of the first Christians, make a considerable difference in the mode of the doctrines delivered, in the confirmation of religion, and in the evidences of grace and faith.

The prophets mission of our

Yet, in the midst of all this, there is a grand, exalted, permanent doctrine, an explication of the divine will designed for all times: manifestations of God's purposes of salvation in Christ Jesus, which remain

ever the same; operations of grace on the fallen heart of man, and rules of duty for his conduct, which are similar in every age. Faith, then, must keep her eye on this capital distinction, and acquire the habit of separating, without injuring or weakening, the divine

instructions.

4. It is only an extension of the same remark to say, that we must DISTINGUISH BETWEEN REAL AND VITAL CHRISTIANITY, AND WHAT CONSTITUTES A MERELY NOMINAL ADHERENCE TO ITS EXTERNAL

ORDINANCES. For here, again, nature is ever prone to fail. "To have the form of godliness, and yet deny the power thereof" is the common disease of the visible church, and will drag down all our interpretations, unless the matter of Revelation, as contained in an inspired volume, and having a character peculiar to itself, elevate and sustain our minds. When once we have imbibed, by a lively faith in God's testimony, what real Christianity is, what is the scriptural standard of sin and holiness, what is meant by a contrite heart, by pardon and justification and peace in the blood of Christ, by a life of holy love and obedience and communion by the power of the Holy Spirit, by a separation in taste and pursuit from the pomps and vanities of this wicked world. When all this is understood; and when the opposite points of the utter insufficiency of mere knowledge, of a mere adherence to the name of Christian, a mere discharge of outward duties, a mere participation in sacraments, a mere historical faith and dead works are also perceived and appreciated, then we must be governed by the mighty discovery. We must not waste our time, nor fritter down our attention, upon externals and forms, and the tithing of mint and anise and cummin, whilst we insensibly lose sight of the weightier matters of the law and gospel. We must be aware of the

strong propensity of nature to lower the importance and explain away the injnnctions of Revelation in its peculiar characters,

We must, therefore, not apply the language addressed to the first churches, where all, or nearly all, were true converts, to churches where scarcely any are. We must not argue from the purity of Christian bodies when few and scattered, and under persecutions, and separated from the civil authority; to Christian bodies when numerous, and combined in nations, and enjoying external peace, and sustained by Christian governments. The nature of the case must modify the application of our principles. We must keep in mind the broad distinction between spiritual life and spiritual death; between vigorous and primitive Christianity, and feeble and worldly; between the church when persecuted and discharged of mere formalists, and the church when at peace and filled with them; between what constitutes real and vital Christianity, and what is only nominal and external.

5. We must also ever bear in mind, that THE USE AND PLACE AND RELATIVE BEARINGS OF EVERY TRUTH, ARE TO BE DERIVED FROM THE SCRIPTURES, AS WELL AS THE TRUTH ITSELF. This remark differs from the preceding ones. Those went rather to guard the interpreter who was in danger on the side of tameness and worldly-mindedness-this and one or two following ones, are more designed for those whose perils spring from the common corruption of our nature, but in an opposite direction. The peculiar inspiration of the Bible not only excludes cold and heartless interpretation, but excessive and rash. The place and consequences and use of each truth, are to be attended to, as well as the truth itself. We are apt to take the truths of Scripture; and, having formed them into a series of propositions, to think ourselves at liberty to use them as we will, expound them as we will, put them together into a compact

whole as we will, draw inferences from them as we will. But this is not the Bible. This is not to interpret but to enact the law. This is not to give God's inspired word its proper province, but to contract its limits according to our own imagination.

Humble faith, indeed, aided by the suggestions which common sense furnishes, will guard against fundamental errors in these respects; but the divisions and controversies and heresies which have taken their rise from a neglect of this obvious rule, make it important to dwell somewhat fully upon it.

Our duty in interpreting an inspired Book, is to consider, not only the statements of it in their broadest features, but in all their ramifications. We take the fall and corruption of man-but this is not enoughwe must examine the way in which the doctrine is stated, the uses to which it is applied, and the accompanying truths which are found to surround it. We take the purposes and decrees of Almighty Godwe deduce the doctrine-but this is not enough, unless we conjoin the proportionate space it fills, the connexion in which it stands, the churches or individuals to which it is addresssed, the practical temper and feeling enforced by it. So as to all the doctrines of Scripture. The place, the bearing, the use, the proportion, are as much matters of Revelation, and are as much to be followed out in their details, as the doctrines themselves; or else the foundation will be of God, but the superstructure of man; the premises infallible, but the conclusions fallible; the materials of supernatural temper, the building of natural.

The wheels in a complicated and delicate machine, if taken separately and dissevered from their accompanying parts, lose all their value. View them together, working the one in this way, and the other in that; some moving vertically, others horizontallythe cogs on the circle of one playing into the indented surface of another, and all regulated by the skill of the