THE

PRESBYTERIAN MAGAZINE.

NOVEMBER, 1851.

Miscellaneous Articles.

THE OLD WAR.

The

THERE is a certain war which has been raging among mankind for thousands of years. The parties do not use javelins, nor bows and arrows, nor fire arms. They do not use carnal weapons, but spiritual weapons. They fight each other with doctrines, principles, speeches, books, tracts, lives. The one party is God and godliness among men. The other party is corrupt human nature. grand maxim of the one party is faith in God. The grand maxim of the other party is faith in man. The watchword of the one party is, Trust in God. The watchword of the other party is, Trust thyself. This is the old war, the revolutionary war of all ages; and it must and will go on in this age also.

This war began in the happy garden of Eden, when man and woman refused, at the suggestion of the serpent, to trust God for the future exaltation and glory of their souls, and desired to be, that very day, as gods, knowing good and evil. God then even hinted a promise of pardon to the rebels. His divine Son was then by him in heaven, as one brought up with him. He was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him. Rejoicing, too, in the habitable parts of the earth; and his delights were with the sons of men. He rejoiced to think that the mountains and plains, that the hills and valleys of the new made earth might be peopled with a race of beings who would reflect some of the eternal rays of God's glory. He came forward and offered an interceding prayer for man. Deliver him from going down to the pit, said he, I have found a ransom. And he offered himself to be born of woman, and to undertake to bruise the serpent's head. God accepted his proposition, and spoke comfortably to man, hinting the covenant just VOL. I.-No. 11.

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made. Man could never have found out such a scheme of mercy. He had trusted himself, and was ruined. After that, Abel and Enoch, and all the righteous, constantly cried out, Trust God. Noah's watchword was Trust God, and in his time the thing was fairly tried. The rest of the world cried out Trust thyself; and they were destroyed, while Noah was saved. That strange wild manRalph Waldo Emerson-who, we believe, calls himself a Pantheist, cried out but yesterday in Massachusetts, Trust thyself; and probably supposed that he had invented something new when he said so. But instead of being something new, it is something as old as Osymandias king of kings; something as old as Belshazzar king of Babylon; as old as the builders of Babel; as old as Nimrod the mighty hunter: as old as the serpent who spoke to the woman in Eden. And if Mr. Emerson had not made that great achievement on which he so felicitates himself-got rid of the testimony of God's word and the "Calvinistic judgment-day," as he says, still some one else would have revived the old maxim, Trust thyself. That maxim will always exist on earth, reviving from time to time, until God and man are fully reconciled. There can be no Emerson on earth after that. And until that, the fight must go on, blazing through the spiritual world, like the old fight of the Persian fable between Ormusel and Ahriman. While it lasts there must always be Emersons in the world.

There is a fine old legend, in which one particular tone of sound is represented as having a peculiar power over the soul of a dreamy boy. Sometimes he could hear that particular tone in the whistling of the wind; sometimes he could hear it in the songs of the birds, and sometimes in the mazy multitude of sounds on a clear morning in the country. He had gotten hold of old Plato's idea that the planets send forth sounds of music as they roll in the sky; and he called that particular tone which had such a mysterious influence over him, the music of the spheres. He said there was a tone in his nature, somehow, which accorded with that tone. One night he lay alone upon a sick bed. At a dead hour of the night, he screamed aloud in a wild ecstacy, and said that he could hear, even then, that strange key note come ringing down from the stars, reverberating round the roof of the house and the ceiling of the room in which he lay, as the last stroke of the hammer sings its silvery reverberations round the bell of the clock. On the bringing of lights into the room he was found to be dead. His spirit had passed away in that strange ecstacy. It had fled away on the wings of that kindred music.

Whether this singular and beautiful legend of the Alleghanies has any foundation in fact or not, we do not know. We give it as we have heard it. But the principle of faith in God is like that. It descends from heaven; yet it may be recognized every where. And there is a tone within the soul of every righteous man, of every age, which more or less clearly accords with that sound from heaven. "My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt-offering,"

ing, considering, hiding in the heart, inclining the heart to perform, afraid of.

5. And so a general activity and direction of all the faculties are signified by such phrases as lifting up the hands to, eyes failing for, turning feet to, opening the mouth for, beholding, &c.

III. The emotions of a right heart towards the Scripture.

David gives an example of an affectionate and cordial attachment to, as well as sincere approval of or submission to the law of God, when he so often says that in it he rejoiced, delighted himself, calling it my delight! my delights! the rejoicing of my heart! using the simplest, most emphatic assertion of his love for it, as thy servant loveth it, consider how I love, I love it exceedingly, O how love I! and the strongest comparisons, as, better to me than gold and silver-better than thousands of gold and silver-I love it above gold, yea above fine gold—I rejoice at it as one that findeth great spoil-how sweet, sweeter than honey—I longed after it—my soul breaketh for the longing that it hath.

IV. Devotional effects of the Bible.

1. The psalm is full of prayers; showing that even the inspired writer was made to feel that it was not enough to have the word and to delight in it, and to desire to obey it. Hence his supplications in reference to the holy law; teach me, give me understanding that I may learn, make me to understand, open my eyes to behold, hide not from me, incline my heart to, O! that my ways were directed to keep it, make me to go in the path of, strengthen me in, quicken me according to, let my heart be sound in thy statutes. He knew how to plead in prayer for mercies according to thy word; and cried with his whole heart, even before the dawning of the morning, that the Lord would save him so that he should keep his testimonies.

2. And so the whole psalm is a continued act of praise for the divine law, its hopes, comforts, promises; for what it had done and would yet do; for its restraints, directions, doctrines; for its pureness, completeness, suitableness. "Thy statutes have been my songs;" "at midnight I will rise to give thanks;" "I will praise thee when I shall have learned thy judgments;" "my lips shall utter praise when thou hast taught me thy statutes."

V. The sentiments towards mankind according to their treatment of the divine law.

David was a companion of them that kept it; horror took hold of him because of the wicked that forsook it; he beheld the transgressors, and was grieved because they kept it not; rivers of water ran down his eyes, because they kept it not; he recorded the rebuke of the proud who err from it; his zeal consumed him, because his enemies forgot the words of God. He taught the young to cleanse their way by taking heed to it according to those words. When princes spoke against him, he made the statutes of heaven his counsellors, and out of them he answered those who reproached him.

He would speak of this law before heathen kings, and not be ashamed. "My tongue shall speak of thy word."

It is to be feared that many of those who in speeches and essays, and alas! in sermons, extol the pre-eminence of the Bible in every kind of excellence, are not among its most constant readers. The book-making age produces many rivals to the Scriptures. It was not so, indeed, when the 119th Psalm was written, but is the Holy Word less indispensable or excellent than in the days of David?

H.

THE RULE OF CHARITY.

IT is a subject of inquiry, whether any rule has been established by the Sacred Scriptures on this point. The writer has searched the word of God, and can find no other than this general one in the New Testament: we are required to give freely, liberally, cheerfully, (2 Cor. ix. 5-7); and according to our ability, (1 Cor. xvi. 2.) No proportion of our substance is prescribed. This is left to our own judgment: "Every man according as he purposeth in his own heart, so let him give."

The patriarch Jacob, when fleeing from the danger to which he was exposed from the anger of his brother Esau, whom he had defrauded of the blessing of the birth-right; and awaking from a pleasing dream, in which God had been graciously pleased to manifest himself to him, and to make great and singular promises to him; made a solemn vow that the Lord should be his God; and added these words: "And of all that thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto thee." But this vow of Jacob is not to be regarded as prescribing a rule to determine the amount we ought to appropriate of our substance to religious and benevolent purposes. It may suit the circumstances of some, but not those of others: many ought to give as much, and some much more.

It has been calculated that the Israelites gave as much as onethird of what they received from the Providence of God. But what was required from them is not required from Christians. We live under a new dispensation. The yoke of bondage that was imposed on the Jewish Church, has been removed from the Christian Church. The present dispensation is characterized by a filial temper. Believing Christians are sons, and not servants. (Gal. iv. 7.)

In regard to charity, alms-giving, God has left us free, without prescribing what amount of our property we are to appropriate to religious and benevolent purposes. This, as already said, is left to our own judgment. Every one, however, ought, in the fear of God, to determine what he can, and ought to do, in view of what God

has, by his kind Providence, done for him; and especially in view of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, though he was rich, yet for our sake became poor, that we, through his poverty, might be rich. (2 Cor. viii. 9.)

The order given by Paul in 1 Cor. xvi. 2, is, I believe, misunderstood. It does not apply to all Christians, so as to require them to consider, on every Sabbath-day, what they are able to give in charity, and to lay it up in store at home. If this were a correct interpretation, it would lead to a sad profanation of that holy day. What! is a merchant to look over his accounts on the Sabbath, and determine his gains through the week past, in order to ascertain what proportion he can lay by for religious and benevolent purposes? What portion, then, of holy time would be left for other duties, demanding the hours of the Sabbath? Admitting that labouring men, who receive their weekly wages, could determine how much they ought to give in a few moments, it would not be necessary to spend any portion of the Sabbath in settling the question. It might be settled on Saturday evening, when they receive their wages. The text, in the common translation, does not say a man is to determine on the first-day of the week how much he can give; it only says every one is, on the first-day of the week, to lay by him in store: and consequently if a man were to determine the amount on Saturday, and then, on the Sabbath, lay it by him in store, he would literally comply with the rule. Correct the translation, and the true meaning of the rule will be seen. We may adopt Doddrige's rendering: "On the first-day of the week let every one of you lay something by, in proportion to the degree in which he hath been prospered, treasuring up, that so there be no collections when I come." Dr. McKnight's translation is similar. To show that the rendering in the Bible in common use, needs alteration, let the following remarks be considered.

1. The apostle gave his direction a considerable time before he expected to be in Corinth, to receive the contribution, and carry it to Jerusalem.

2. As he wished to receive a large contribution, his direction contemplated not a single collection on one Sabbath, but a collection on every Sabbath intervening between the time of giving the order, and his coming to receive the amount. A single collection

from each member of the church would not have been much in the aggregate; because they could not give much at one time: but, by contributing something on every Sabbath, the weekly collections on many successive Sabbaths would amount at the conclusion to a large sum.

3. The design of the apostle was to avoid collections at his coming to Corinth, and to have all ready prepared to his hand. This is evident from these words at the end of the text, "that there be no collections when I come;" and especially from what he says in his second epistle, which was written some time after his first, that contains his direction: "For as touching the ministering VOL. I.-No. 11.

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