retreat of the thoughtful; it has a solitude of its own, neither dreary nor oppressive; a holy and gentle stillness, which is felt by every one that passes by. It was in a season and day of the year auspicious to such influences; the red leaves were just beginning to whisper and fall; the breathing of nature was like an universal sigh; the evening clouds were hurrying to the west, to float once more in the sunset radiance; and all was still, as the decay that wears the marble of the tombs. The pale monuments rose around me, telling of the dead, not so much what they were as what they ought to have been; but I was less moved by all their legends of vanity or affection, than by one small stone which hardly rose above its bed of green. It was the memorial of that child who perished in the infancy and innocence of existence; leaving no more traces of himself among the living than the cloud that wanders and melts away in the blue heavens.

"I could not help meditating on the effects of time. At the time when the leaves, which I saw falling around me, were opening, this child was in the brightness of its rising. Now, it was gathered dust to dust.' Then it was taken from the living, and the parents refused all comfort both of God and man; now, most of those who shed tears for his early departure had forgotten where they had laid him; and the parents themselves treasured his memory with far more tenderness than gloom. Had they not the same consolations then? Had any visible angel, since, said to them that he was not here, but had risen? Was not the sun of righteousness shining as brilliantly then upon the world as now? I felt that time had done what religion then could not do: what religion might then have done, had it been intimate to the heart. For it is designed to remove the terrors of the grave; and, instead of throwing ourselves open to the accidents and misfortunes of life, we should take the consolation God has offered, and bind it to our souls. We should not allow ourselves to be entirely passive in the day of trial. We should exert all the energy of our nature, touched and quickened by religion. If our hearts are strung to the trials of life, like a fine instrument, their tones will be inspiring; but give them up to the influences of the world, and they are all sadness, like the harp of the winds, on which the passing breeze makes what melody it will.

"And yet it would seem as if the anguish of sorrow was almost as deep as if our religion never had come. The tears flow as fast and freely as they did two thousand years ago; but then immortality was like some star which shone, unregarded, in the heaven. Now its periods have been measured; its vastness revealed, and it has been made a guide to wanderers on the sea. Still, we regard the future with uneasiness and dread; we set our affections on perishing things, and are miserable when we lose them. When our friends are living and happy, we feel as if they were immortal; when they are gone, we mourn for them as if they were lost for ever.

"I saw the book of nature spread open before me, as I stood in this place of death; and it seemed as if I could read better things on its illuminated page. It is a revelation of God, like Christianity. If our Saviour told his disciples to gather instruction from the lowly flowers, there must be something taught in all the grand and beautiful works of God. I cannot believe that the sun and moon have shone six thousand years merely to enlighten the world, or that the planets wheel through their bewildering paths only to

gladden the eye with their beauty: these things have a holier purpose; a religious design. We see that not a leaf fades till the purpose of its existence is fulfilled; and then we learn, that the infant cannot perish, though in the sight of men it seems to die. He asked life of thee, and thou gavest it him; even length of days for ever and ever. All this is more than confirmed by Christianity, and religion hardly acknowledges such a thing as death; for there is no such thing as death to the soul. The change which bears the name of death, cannot deprive it of one of its affections or its powers; and if any human spirits are prepared to enter the heavenly mansions, they must be those that have left this world in the day-break of their existence, before they have been darkened by calamity or profaned by sin. The time which is best for beginning their moral improvement, is the time to die, and if we had the power, who would dare withhold them from their Father and our Father, from their God and our God?

"I left the place with a conviction which I hope will never fail me; a conviction, that death is not the momentous change we imagine; it is neither the close of life nor the beginning of immortal existence. The change which makes a man religious, should date the time when the corruptible puts on incorruption, and the mortal immortality.' The first heralds of our faith, the most intrepid men the world ever saw, regarded death with comparative indifference; they looked upon it, not as a time when they should be altered in their destiny, character, or feelings; it was simply a dissolution of the form; a release from the body, whose infirmities had so often weighed down the soul. The heaven of the blest begins when they begin to feel the peace which religion gives; death will only place them where the shadows of earth shall no longer surround them; they will go in the same path which they trod below, or rather in the same direction-for they shall ascend with wings as eagles,' and go on rejoicing in their glorious flight through the boundless heaven.

"Oh! that we understood this! Then the relations of parents and children would be far more endearing and exalted. They who give their children life, are to give them immortality. When they teach them to add the beauty of holiness to the beauty of childhood and of youth; when they impress religion on their souls, by the eloquence of the simple story or the music of the plaintive hymn; when they shew them how to gather the harvest of peace and happiness, which forms the heaven of the blest, they are making them immortal. To them there shall be no more death. The grave shall not be an interruption in that never-ending way, in which they pass from glory to glory on either side the grave. And they who are taken before their promise is unfolded, when their smiles are bright with an intelligence which only a parent's eye can read, do not taste of death; they are translated like the early friend of God.

"Let those who are weeping for their children remember this and be comforted. That loved one is with him who suffered children to come to him when he lived below. It is with the spirits of the just. Had it lived it might have been happy; but now there is no uncertainty. It lives where it must be happy. The gentle star is not quenched so soon as they imagine. They see it no longer, because it is lost in the deeper brightness of the sky."

DR. J. P. SMITH'S SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY TO THE MESSIAH.

(Continued from p. 600.)

[We regret being obliged to mutilate this critique by the omission of two dissertations, the one on the supposed testimony of the book of Acts to the worship of the Saviour by the first Christians, and the other on the use of the Greek Article. The whole series will, however, appear, early in next year, as a separate publication, when we intend, by extracting those passages, to put our subscribers in possession of the entire argument of the writer. ED.]

THE fourth part of Dr. Smith's work, to which we now proceed, is devoted to the consideration of "the doctrine taught by the Apostles in their inspired ministry, concerning the person of the Lord Jesus Christ." The subjects of the four chapters are, the book of Acts; the testimony of the Apostle John; the testimonies of the Apostles Peter, Jude, and James; and the testimony of the Apostle Paul.

The anxiety shewn by Dr. S., lest the book of Acts should be expected by the reader to contain a body of Christian doctrine, appears to us a strong extorted testimony to the impossibility of finding, in this important portion of Scripture, any thing like a satisfactory expression of his favourite sentiments, though he does not fail afterwards to adduce passages which he seems to regard as affording countenance to them.

'The annunciation of his design, which Luke gives in the preface to bis Gospel, seems very justly to comprehend both parts of his work and if this be admitted, it will supply us with a sufficient reason why the book called the Acts was drawn up in its particular manner and order; and it will prevent our disappointment at not meeting with those statements in either history or doctrine, which an incorrect estimate of its intention might lead us to expect. Whoever Theophilus, to whom the two books are inscribed, was, it is plain that the writer's design was, not to make him acquainted with the fundamental truths of Christianity, for in them he had been already instructed; but to furnish him with a selection of facts relative to the actions, discourses, and sufferings of the Lord Jesus, and the diffusion of his religion in some particular places, and by some particular persons. Those places and persons, it is highly probable, had some connexion with Theophilus more than other places or persons would have had: and thus some specialty of circumstances was the principle which guided the selection." "As we are not to regard the book of Acts in the light of a regular history, so this view of its design will prevent our expecting from it a body of Christian doctrine. It supposes the reader to be, like Theophilus, already acquainted with the great principles of that doctrine, and it is therefore occupied in giving him the facts which formed the basis of evidence for those principles, or which were examples of their diffusion and influence among men."-Script. Test. Vol. III. p. 6.

The book of Acts can certainly pretend to no more than being a faithful narrative of some interesting and important particulars respecting the first preaching of the Gospel by the Apostles and their companions after their Lord's resurrection. Our author's conjecture, as to the principle on which the facts were selected, appears to us arbitrary and fanciful, but it is not material to the argument whether it be true or false. Whether chosen from amongst others, on account of some peculiar power they possessed, from incidental associations, of interesting Theophilus individually, or, as seems far more probable, on account of their intrinsic value, and their suitableness for convincing men's minds, and giving them just views of the religion of Christ, it seems abundantly certain that the facts and discourses recorded by the Evangelist must be sufficient means of making known to any body the fundamental truths of Christianity. It is true, Theophilus had already acquired some knowledge of the Gospel from other sources, but the purpose of the Evangelist was to confirm and establish him in the truth, and to give him a record on which he might rely of authoritative instructions and remarkable facts, containing the principles and the evidence of the religion he had received. No book of Scripture contains any thing which can be called "a body of Christian doctrine."

Our divine religion has been, by the wisdom of God, conveyed to us historically: we are to collect its principles and their influences from the study of the discourses and actions of our Lord and his chosen followers. But that there should be a single narrative of any considerable portion of the public ministry of Christ himself, or of his apostles, which should not exhibit the leading and essential truths of his religion, seems altogether incredible and almost inconceivable. All the evangelists wrote their histories for the immediate information of those who had already been convinced of the truth of Christianity and instructed in its doctrines, but it was necessary to give them an authentic record, and it is not to be for a moment supposed that what were esteemed sufficient, though very imperfect, memoirs of the words and actions of Christ, could leave untouched any peculiar and characteristic doctrines of his religion. The same reasoning applies to the book of Acts. It contains only specimens of apostolic instruction, but they are fair and sufficient specimens, and we must expect them to put us in possession of the substance of Christian teaching: not to re-state all which was adopted from Judaism, and assumed, as known by Christian preachers, but to give us the peculiarities of the gospel, and to explain the opinions of its promulgators on those points which, from their novelty, their extensive influence, or the prevalence of erroneous views, they deemed it most important to press upon the attention of their hearers. Are the doctrines respecting the person and work of Christ, which now assume the name of orthodoxy, to be classed in this number? If they are, let the plain fact that they are not made the subjects of instruction in any part of the book of Acts be accounted for; if they are not, then, even

supposing them not to be altogether false and unscriptural, why do modern divines presume to attach to them an importance which apostles and evangelists evidently did not attribute to them?

It is chiefly in an indirect manner that Dr. S. supposes the book of Acts to support his opinions. He has collected its testimony under nine heads. Some of his statements excite our extreme surprise, but we are under the necessity of confining our remarks at present to one or two points. He tells us, first, that the real humanity of Christ is here "stated in the clearest terms." This, it seems, is perfectly consistent with the reputedly orthodox doctrine. Yet we certainly feel at a loss to understand how some of the texts here quoted are to be reconciled with that doctrine. We know it is held that our Lord was truly man as well as truly God, and, therefore, we might expect to find him on some occasions called man, but what is to be thought when he is said to be "a man proved to you to be from God by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did by him amongst you?" A man from God-not a God-man-proved to be sent from God by miracles-which were not his own-were not effected by any part of his own nature, but which God (plainly spoken of as a distinct being) did through him. To us these words seem absolutely irreconcileable with the doctrine of the two natures, as directly opposed to it as if they had been designed to contradict it. Of this at least we are certain, that if the most perspicuous and appropriate language for designating a human prophet, divinely commissioned and attested, were carefully sought out, no words could be found fitter for the purpose than those which the Apostle Peter has employed in this passage, according to common supposition, with so very different a meaning.

Were it necessary, we might apply a similar argument to other remarkable instances in which our Lord is called a man, but it would be useless to go on; for those who do not see the force of the reasoning in the case we have been considering, will not be impressed by any thing we might add respecting other passages. We hope it is clear to every reader that here and elsewhere our argument is drawn not from Christ being called a man, but from his being so called under circumstances, and with explanations, which appear to us inconsistent with the notion of his having been more than man. It is, therefore, no reply on the part of believers in his deity to say that they also acknowledge his humanity. They are called upon to shew, by suitable and consistent explanation, that we have not good grounds for affirming the incompatibility of the language used with the admission of any other besides a human nature. This is what is required, but what we have seen no attempt to accomplish, and firmly believe that no ingenuity can accomplish.

*

We must, in the next place, take a specimen from the chapter on the testimony of the Apostle John. The elaborate dissertation on the intro