while proclaiming 'Glory to God in the highest,' brings Him exceedingly nigh to us; and while it displays the perfections of the Deity, draws us to Him in the most intimate union. Christianity and philosophy, in regard to the Deity, have therefore an inverse action, and breathe an opposite spirit, unless they be duly blended together. We do not speak of genuine philosophy, but of that ordinary science which investigates only the origin of things, and then accepts the laws of Nature, as a substitute for its Author. But in addition to that mistaken spirit of philosophy, which rears no altars, or raises them only to the unknown God,' there are the surges of conflicting and opposing opinions rising higher, and breaking in with more force upon the received boundaries of established creeds. Most thinking men may recollect the shock which their minds sustained when endeavouring to reconcile the account of Moses with the true astronomy of the heavens—and, as a second shock of an earthquake is always more dreaded than the first, so many Christians will remember the, perhaps, still deeper mental agitation which they felt in reconciling Genesis with the discoveries of Geology. But these are not the only sources from which unbelief, in the future, will derive its armory of weapons There are days coming which will try every opinion, whether it be of God, or whether it be of man; andthese days are close at hand God appoints us trials in our minds, as well as in our outward affairs. There will be a great shaking in the theories of philosophy, as well as in the constitution of kingdoms. All these trials will serve a good purpose. They will destroy superstition, and they will establish religion, by purifying it, and causing it to pass through the fires. The mortal will perish, the immortal will remain.

Old worlds subside beneath the waves, in order that newer formations may more than supply their place-old things in the moral world pass away in order that all things may become new. An age of revolutions often crosses the path of human society, by the appointment of God, but tempered, with respect to the believer, by the promise, As thy day is, so shall thy strength be.' The source of our trial exists in the rapidity of our progress. New sciences are bursting into birth upon every side. Can we be surprised that they are contrary to religion, in their first aspect, in as far as they often are contrary to truth?

Youthful productions are not seldom out of proportion-like the cubs of the bear, they require time and care to fashion them into shape. But like all the violent energies of Nature, Infidelity, with its

giant brother Democracy, possesses the towering structure, but not the enduring life, which characterized the men of violence before the Flood-they are destroyers but also self-destructive; and, like Marius drooping over the ruins of Carthage, or perishing in the marshes of Minturnae, they also will fall and perish upon the ruins of a desolated world. While Infidelity is destroying not only Popery but itself, there is room for the renovating action of Christianity to repair the breaches of former desolations, and to give lasting repose to the world, after the storms that have swept over it-carrying whatever is noxious into the regions of destruction, as the chaff is driven away, and disappears before the whirlwind.

CHRISTIAN SORROW.

THE following beautiful and eloquent extract is from a sermon, delivered on the occasion of the death of the Rev. D. Kidston, by his successor, the Rev. John Ker:

Christian sorrow for the departed should lead us to seek reunion with the object of our affection. This is the instinct of grief wherever it is genuine-to be where the lost one is. When Jacob thought Joseph among the dead, he was ready to visit him there: 'I will go down into the grave unto my son, mourning;' and when he knew him to be in Egypt, he was eager for the journey: 'It was enough: I will go and see him before I die.' The gospel does not destroy human grief with its natural longings; it comes to consecrate it to the noblest ends, and make a ladder of it that shall reach to heaven. Instead of leaving our affection to glimmer like the phosphorescence of decay within the tomb, it elevates it to a star, and this not the evening star of memory, but the morning star of hope, that with its mild beam leads in the day. We need not say with Thomas of our departed friend, let us go and die with him;' but, let us go and live with him. Our Lord Jesus took our nature, in order that, gathering round him our human sympathies, and dying and rising visibly on high, he might teach us to set our affections on the things that are above. And every Christian friend withdrawn to his presence is a new inducement to ascend-a weight abstracted from the earthly side of the balance and placed in the heavenly one-a fresh plume which love has inserted in the wing of faith, that it may soar more readily on high. In place of seeking to occupy the blank with some earth-born pleasure, let us recognise the truth that God is fitting up heaven more

shall dissolve, and like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave' not a wreck behind, but, with a noble poet, you will be able to sing

⚫ Stand the Omnipotent decree,

Jehovah's will be done,
Nature's end we wait to see,

And hear her final groan.

Let this earth dissolve and blend,
In death the wicked and the just,
Let those ponderous orbs descend,

And grind us into dust,

Rests secure the righteous man,
At his Redeemer's beck,
Sure to emerge and rise again,
And mount above the wreck.
Lo! the heavenly spirit towers,
Like flame o'er Nature's funeral
Triumphs in immortal powers,

And claps her wings of fire.
Nothing hath the Just to lose,

By worlds on worlds destroyed,
Far beneath his feet he views,

With smiles the flaming void;

Sees the universe renewed,

The grand millennial reign begun, Shouts with all the sons of God, Around the eternal throne.'

руге,

JOBADI.

POPERY AND INFIDELITY.* It is written.-In these words of Emanuel—God in our nature, we have the Divine point of view in which the Holy Scriptures are to be regarded. Within this circle there is light and life, peace and assurance for ever.

It is not written Within this circle there is doubt and darkness, and inextricable error.

From the Bible proceeds the religion of God, pure, unchangeable, and eternal, like its Author. From the fallen mind of man issue the religions of men, vain, as various; ever changing, yet ever marked with the impress of departure from God, which they derive from their inventors. The Bible is a perfect whole. It admits of no additions from the superstitious, and no curtailments from the rationalist. It remains fenced, as holy ground, from every impure hand, with the Divine sanction on its perfect integrity; having the closing words of the Revelation applicable to every part of it—' If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this Book: and, if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the Book of Life,' &c.

*Popery and Infidelity.' By James Douglas of Cavers. Edinburgh: Thomas Constable & Co.

Of the Bible it may be said, in a far higher sense than of Tyre of old, 'Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.' The Bible is its own evidence-like its Divine Author, whose brightness and character it reflects. It is a light, which coming into the world enlighteneth every man who is willing to receive its testimony concerning Jesus. It is also its own commentary-explaining, enlarging, and confirming one passage by another, and one book by another. It is our prayer-book-containing words given from God himself, whereby we may approach Him-pleading the most needful petitions, in the aptest words. It is our creed, and confession of faith-for there we find every statement that is requisite concerning God our Creator-God our redeemer God our Sanctifier-free from all scholastic technology, and bearing directly upon the heart and the life. In the Bible we have our best and only true Theology, containing all that can be certainly known respecting our salvation-not arranged in an artificial system-but so disclosed to us, both in its light, and in its shadings, as to present to us not only what is true, but every truth in its due proportion and distance. And the written word is thus complete, because it is the exact transcript of the ever-living Word-the Word that was in the beginning-the Word that was with God-the Word that was God. The Bible is the complete record of a divinely completed salvation. Holding the Head, we possess all things. Being in Christ, we are complete before God in him. When we believe in Him, He is ours, and we are his. His life is ours, and his whole fulfilment of the law, during a life of sorrow and suffering. As He lived for us, so He died for us and as by faith we partake in the benefits of His death, so we become sharers in the glories of His resurrection.

We are saved by faith-and by faith alone-by believing God's testimony concerning His Son, we pass at once from death unto life, and into a preparation for future glory. All who by believing belong to Christ are led by the spirit of Christ. The Spirit is one infinite Spirit, but the gifts of the Spirit are divided, in order that the whole body of believers may be united-none having a self-sufficiency of spiritual graces appropriated to themselves, but all made complete only in the unity of Christ's Universal Body-the congregated assembly of believers throughout all ages, to be united together in the Heaven of heavens.

The true religion evidently consists in receiving the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible. He who would mix man's words and man's thoughts with

God's words and God's thoughts, neither truly believes in the Bible, nor in its Author. Add not thou to His words lest He reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.' He who would attempt to illustrate, confirm, or extend the truths of God by the comments of man, might as well light candles to search for the sun shining in noon-day splendour in the heavens and he who would turn aside his ear to hearken to what man is saying, when God himself speaks, would act as unwisely and impiously as an Israelite, who might have ceased to listen to the voice of Jehovah, speaking from Sinai, in order to count the reverberations of the accompanying thunders, as they rolled from mountain to mountain, in the increasing distance.

The true Church is founded in belief on God's testimony-the false Church upon unqualified assent to the dogmas of men. Come and let us reason together,' is the invitation of the infinite Jehovah-Submit without reasoning,' says the prophet of darkness. To the Catholic,' says Wiseman, there is only that one gate, of absolute and unconditional submission to the teaching of the Church.'-' A Romanist inquirer perhaps goes to the priest, and tells him that he cannot find these doctrines in the Bible, his priest argues with him, and endeavours to convince him that he should shut up the book which is leading him astray-he perseveres; he abandons the communion of the Church of Rome; or, as it is commonly expressed, the errors of that Church, and becomes a Protestant. Now through all this process the man was a Protestant; from the beginning he started with the principle that whatsoever is not in that book, cannot be true in religion, or an article of faith; and that is the principle of Protestantism. He took Protestantism, therefore, for granted, before he began to examine the Catholic doctrine.' It is more amusing than it ought, perhaps, to be on so serious a subject, to observe the opposite advice which Dr Wiseman gives to Catholics and Protestants. Of the Protestant in the most winning tones he asks, Does any doubt arise in your mind? O! cherish itit may be to you the beginning of eternal life. On the other hand, to the Catholic, with a warning voice he exclaims, Does any doubt arise in your mind? O! stifle it at once, otherwise it may lead you to everlasting destruction. While Dr Wiseman lauds or condemns the same state of mind according as he expects it will issue in accordance or not with his own opinions, the Scriptures encourage and command us to terminate all our doubts by a full inquiry into the truth. How easy is the mild yoke of Jesus, how heavy the unreasonable tyranny of the Pope-commanding men,

like Pharaoh, to make bricks without straw -to believe without evidence, and to obey without any motive, but the base one of fear.

The tenor of the Gospel is, 'Hear, and understand, every one of you.' Believe, and be saved. These are the four steps by which we rise into eternal life. The Papacy commands us to believe without understanding, and even without hearing; for submission to what the Church teaches, or to what she will teach, is sufficient to secure our admittance in the fool's paradise which she promises to her proseÎytes after death. Millions upon millions in the Church of Rome live and die uninstructed in the tenets of Rome, and their submission to the Church merely amounts to a promise to believe whenever they shall be required to do so. They submit to the unknown dogmas of their priests, but their priests are in a like condition with themselves. They also have submitted their reason, their senses, their conscience to the Church. But what is the Church in the Roman sense? Simply the priesthood; therefore, one generation of priests, as well as people, submit to a former generation-each consenting to be blindfolded, and to give up the exercise of their mental powers! The reductio ad absurdam proposed to the Atheists, is realized in the Church of Rome. Here is an endless file of blind men, if not in an infinite, in an indefinite series, all trusting themselves to the guidance of each other, and approaching the brink of a precipice, without the least distrust of their safety!

Popery and infidelity have always led to each other. The Papists at one time encouraged Infidelity, fearing men should embrace Protestantism, and trusting that, wearied out with the conflicting opinions and prolonged uncertainty of infidel speculations, most would again return for repose into the bosom of an infallible Church; nor were they disappointed. Numbers, after the time of the Reformation, noted for their free-thinking and free-sayings, thought it safest to sink into their last sleep, drugged with the opiates which Rome prepares for her votaries. But the oracle of Wolsey became more and more manifestly true-Rome must destroy the press, or the press will destroy Rome. The numbers of free-thinkers increased. Infidelity became a permanent power, and its disciples began to reject, with scorn, both the fears and the hopes presented to a death-bed.

In all human affairs there is action and re-action, and there is a continued war between the past and the future. Rome has her roots in the past alone. If once the edifice of superstition were overthrown, it could never be reconstructed on the same

foundations. Infidelity, and its ally the extreme democracy, have their roots, and derive their chief nourishment from a state of things which is not yet fully developed. As Rome leans to the past, so Infidelity rests upon the future—and the future must prove the conqueror in the strife. The lapse of time, of itself, adds to the strength of the one, and diminishes the resources of the other. That the recent revival of the Church of Rome is not action but re-action, is evidenced by considering the countries where Romanism is stationary and where it is progressive. In countries where Rome has prospered long, she prospers no more the apparent success of Romanism in these, is a political, not a religious triumph. Where it has long been planted, it has exhausted the soil, and shows symptoms of decay. It is not prospering in Spain or in Italy. It is progressive in France, where the mind, wearied out with fantastic systems, seeks a brief repose in an assumed credulity; and where the politician, finding no base for his operations amid the endless shiftings of Infidelity, seeks to erect his renovated structures onthe massive, though unsound, foundations of superstition. There is

growth,there is greenness, in the Upas tree of Popery, but at the centre it is deadrotten at the core Its new life is confined to the rind, and it wants internal vigour to resist the storms that are ready to assail it. Popery has exhausted the religious feelings in the countries where it has long prevailed; but, entering a fresh soil, it still finds the materials upon which superstition, as well as religion, can workmoral principles not altogether discarded; and a conscience, though darkened, still in some measure alive to the importance of eternity. But, as the materials which are thrown up from the depth of the sea to form new islands are immediately subjected, as they emerge, to the erosion of the waves, so the recent acquisitions of superstition, whether in France, in England, or in America, have but a brief period of existence assigned them, and will be again swept off and carried away by the waves of doubt, and the conflicting currents of opinion.

Popery, encouraging an abject blindfold submission, and blending the sublimest truths with the most pitiful fables, produces, by a necessary revulsion, a disbelief of every principle. When doubt begins, there is no limit to its progress in minds from which every rational principle has been removed, and where reason, by disuse, has lost its legitimate exercise: and nations, deprived of moderate liberty, and of the temperate use of their rational faculties, violently vibrate, with scarce a pause, between despotism and democracy, superstition and Infidelity.

Thus, Infidelity and superstition have at once a joint and conflicting existence, each springing out of the other, and each endeavouring to destroy the other, like the spectre fiends in Dante.

'Ivy ne'er clasp'd

A dodder'd oak, as round the other's limbs The hideous monster intertwin'd his own. Then, as they both had been of burning wax, Each melted into other, mingling hues, That which was either, now, was seen no more.' For the mind, in the revolutions of states and of opinions, rapidly passes from believing all, to believing nothing; and again, worn out by a contest that has no end, and finding nothing stable to rest upon, either in institutions or principles, makes a sudden transition, back to its ancient creed. But though individual combatants may change from side to side, the conflict of opinions continues; success, by the re-action it occasions, leading to defeat, and defeat, from rallied forces, changed into victory. Popery and Iufidelity are carrying on an internecine con

test.

Like the two serpents in the ancient romance of Merlin—

'The red dragon and the white
Hard together gan they smite,
With mouth, paw, and with tail:
Between hem was full hard batail;
That the earth dinned tho,
And loathly weather wax thereto.
So strong fire they casten anon,
That the plains thereof shone,
And sparkled about, so bright
As doth the fire from thunder-light
So they fought, for sooth to say
All the long summer's day.'

We have much to regret that true Christianity is not yet on the field, with all her collected forces, to profit by the strokes which her mutual enemies are dealing to each other. But so it has ever been-the good cause is the last to raise its banner, and advance its lances, that the glory of the victory might belong to God, and no part of it to man.

Philosophy itself, at times, wears, unconsciously, an adverse aspect towards Christianity. It is too apt to regard God as the creator only, and not also as the preserver of the universe-whose power and presence are as much required to maintain the laws of nature, as originally to impose them. Hence, God seems chiefly to reign beyond the bounds of nature and of time. As progressive discoveries enlarge the boundaries of the world, and augment its duration, the Deity appears to recede farther and farther into the profoundities of space, and towards the confines of eternity.

But Christianity, on the other hand,

while proclaiming 'Glory to God in the highest,' brings Him exceedingly nigh to us; and while it displays the perfections of the Deity, draws us to Him in the most intimate union. Christianity and philosophy, in regard to the Deity, have therefore an inverse action, and breathe an opposite spirit, unless they be duly blended together. We do not speak of genuine philosophy, but of that ordinary science which investigates only the origin of things, and then accepts the laws of Nature, as a substitute for its Author. But in addition to that mistaken spirit of philosophy, which rears no altars, or raises them only to the unknown God,' there are the surges of conflicting and opposing opinions rising higher, and breaking in with more force upon the received boundaries of established creeds. Most thinking men may recollect the shock which their minds sustained when endeavouring to reconcile the account of Moses with the true astronomy of the heavens-and, as a second shock of an earthquake is always more dreaded than the first, so many Christians will remember the, perhaps, still deeper mental agitation which they felt in reconciling Genesis with the discoveries of Geology. But these are not the only sources from which unbelief, in the future, will derive its armory of weapons There are days coming which will try every opinion, whether it be of God, or whether it be of man; andthese days are close at hand God appoints us trials in our minds, as well as in our outward affairs. There will be a great shaking in the theories of philosophy, as well as in the constitution of kingdoms. All these trials will serve a good purpose. They will destroy superstition, and they will establish religion, by purifying it, and causing it to pass through the fires. The mortal will perish, the immortal will remain.

Old worlds subside beneath the waves, in order that newer formations may more than supply their place-old things in the moral world pass away in order that all things may become new. An age of revolutions often crosses the path of human society, by the appointment of God, but tempered, with respect to the believer, by the promise, 'As thy day is, so shall thy strength be.' The source of our trial exists in the rapidity of our progress. New sciences are bursting into birth upon every side. Can we be surprised that they are contrary to religion, in their first aspect, in as far as they often are contrary to truth?

Youthful productions are not seldom out of proportion-like the cubs of the bear, they require time and care to fashion them into shape. But like all the violent energies of Nature, Infidelity, with its

giant brother Democracy, possesses the towering structure, but not the enduring life, which characterized the men of violence before the Flood-they are destroyers but also self-destructive; and, like Marius drooping over the ruins of Carthage, or perishing in the marshes of Minturnae, they also will fall and perish upon the ruins of a desolated world. While Infidelity is destroying not only Popery but itself, there is room for the renovating action of Christianity to repair the breaches of former desolations, and to give lasting repose to the world, after the storms that have swept over it-carrying whatever is noxious into the regions of destruction, as the chaff is driven away, and disappears before the whirlwind.

CHRISTIAN SORROW.

THE following beautiful and eloquent extract is from a sermon, delivered on the occasion of the death of the Rev. D. Kidston, by his successor, the Rev. John Ker:

Christian sorrow for the departed should lead us to seek reunion with the object of our affection. This is the instinct of grief wherever it is genuine-to be where the lost one is. When Jacob thought Joseph among the dead, he was ready to visit him there: I will go down into the grave unto my son, mourning;' and when he knew him to be in Egypt, he was eager for the journey: 'It was enough: I will go and see him before I die.' The gospel does not destroy human grief with its natural longings; it comes to consecrate it to the noblest ends, and make a ladder of it that shall reach to heaven. Instead of leaving our affection to glimmer like the phosphorescence of decay within the tomb, it elevates it to a star, and this not the evening star of memory, but the morning star of hope, that with its mild beam leads in the day. We need not say with Thomas of our departed friend, let us go and die with him;' but, let us go and live with him. Our Lord Jesus took our nature, in order that, gathering round him our human sympathies, and dying and rising visibly on high, he might teach us to set our affections on the things that are above. And every Christian friend withdrawn to his presence is a new inducement to ascend-a weight abstracted from the earthly side of the balance and placed in the heavenly one-a fresh plume which love has inserted in the wing of faith, that it may soar more readily on high. In place of seeking to occupy the blank with some earth-born pleasure, let us recognise the truth that God is fitting up heaven more