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is not the fact precisely similar in our own day? Do not too many resemble the invited guests in the parable, who were so busy with their farms and their merchandize, with the business or the amusements of the world, that they disobeyed the gracious summons, and were justly excluded from the benefits intended for them? But it is superfluous to multiply proofs on this part of the subject: we shall therefore proceed to the next point for consideration, which was to shew, that, if we neglect the warning so mercifully given us, a time will come when the things that belong to our peace shall be for ever hid from our eyes.

4. In the case of the Jews, this awful period had now arrived. God had given them up: their hour was past: Jehovah seemed to say to them, "Thou hast for saken me; thou art gone backward: therefore will I stretch out my hand against thee, and destroy thee; I am weary with repenting." It was indeed long before this sentence was thus finally issued: often had the Almighty expostulated with them, as in the language of the Prophet: "How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? How shall I deliver thee, Israel? How shall I make thee as Admah? How shall I set thee as Zeboim? My heart is turned within me: my repentings are kindled together. I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger; I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee." But now a decree was gone out similar to that of old, "I, the Lord, have spoken it; it shall come to pass, and I will do it: I will not go back, neither will I spare; neither will I repent: according to thy ways, and according to thy doings shall they judge thee, saith the Lord God." The Saviour himself, who had so often pleaded with his unbelieving countrymen according to the flesh, who even now wept over them as he approached their long-favoured CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 242.

city, and foresaw the impending vengeance, pronounces their doom. The door of mercy is about to be closed; and he proceeds, in the verses which follow the text, to predict the fatal issue. He had proved by his long forbearance and offers of pardon that he hath no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; and he was now to shew, what is no less certain, that his threatenings are not in vain, and that it is a fearful thing to fall as an impenitent transgressor into the hands of the living God.

Let us apply this subject to our. selves. Have we hitherto rejected the message of Divine mercy? Have we refused to return to a state of obedience to the Saviour? Have we preferred the world or sin to God? And have we hoped, thus living and dying, to escape unpunished? No: it cannot be thus, "God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?" We know not how soon the sentence may go forth; "Cut it down: why cumbereth it the ground?" It is not, however, yet too late: "Return to me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts." "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." Had the Jewish people listened to the warning, and, like Ninevah, repented of their transgressions, they had not been cut off; for," At what instant," saith Jehovah, "I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation against whom I have pronounced turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them." The same consolatory declaration applies to every

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individual of mankind. The threatenings of God against sinners are not intended to lead men to despair, but to repentance: his goodness also and forbearance are designed to have the same effect. While any relentings of conscience remain, any desire to repair to the cross of the Saviour, and to implore pardon of our justly offended God, our day of grace is not past: there is hope for us even now, even though it were the eleventh hour; for whoso cometh to Christ shall not be cast out. But we know not

what another day or hour may bring forth; we know not how soon our conscience may be blinded, our hearts hardened, or death cut us off in our sins. Blessed be God, the things that belong to our peace are not yet hid from our eyes: let us then, while it is called to day, hear his voice, and turn at his invitation; lest, before we are aware, the time arrive when he shall proclaim in his wrath, that we shall not enter into his rest.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer. I WAS much pleased with an extract from Waterland, in your Number for November, respecting the simplicity of the faith of the primitive church in regard to the equal Divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and the unity of the Godhead. Great advantage would arise to modern Christians from exercising a similar simplicity of faith in all the declarations of Scripture; and perhaps in this very point consists much of that humble child-like character which our Lord declared necessary to qualify persons for an entrance into his kingdom. If we observe the habits of children, we shall perceive, that till experience and observation have taught them the frequent insufficiency, perhaps even the deceitfulness, of many around them, they give implicit belief to whatever is communicated to them as truth, and are as regardless as they are ignorant of

the arguments which may be urged for or against its admission. This credence, however lightly bestowed in the first instance, remains steady in proportion as the child finds, with advancing years, and a growing capacity, that his teacher has hitherto always rightly informed him; which being ascertained, he will continue to give him credit on all subjects of knowledge above his own capacity of understanding, till their minds and information arrive at a level.

This

Now in God we have an infallible Teacher and Guide; one who neither can nor will mislead us; and our concern and our prayer should simply be, to understand aright what he has revealed. is a truth not only acknowledged but felt and acted upon by all sincere believers. Whence then comes it, that, possessing the same honest desire to embrace sound doctrine, and with the same infallible revelation in their hands, Christians are lamentably divided and subdivided in their opinions; and that, besides there are perhaps scarcely two ina multiplicity of distinct sects, dividuals of precisely the same sentiments? Many causes may indeed unite to produce this unhappy consequence; education, prejudice, partiality, every thing which tends to warp the judgment, and to subject its determinations to the in fluence of the passions. Still the want of a simple reception of the declarations of Scripture in their plain meaning, is one very considerable source of the janglings and divisions in the Christian church. For these disputes do not arise so much from the words of holy writ, simply taken in themselves, as from the deductions men draw from them, and the systems they build upon them; or from their opposing one text to another, and profaning those spiritual weapons which ought to be employed exclusively against the common enemy in a suicidal contest among fellowdisciples and friends. The active

reasoning mind of man, seduced perhaps by the artifice of the enemy of souls, usually goes beyond the simple specification of a doctrine to speculate concerning the manner and the cause; and if these form no part of the revelation, the speculatist is induced, in default of this support, to work up a theory, weak, inconclusive, and liable to the well-founded objections of an adverse theorist, whose system in its turn is not less vulnerable. Surely these circumstances should teach us a lesson of diffidence in our own powers; and lead us to rest contented with whatever is necessary for us to know as revealed in the Bible, though there should not be added such minute explanations as would fully satisfy all the inquiries of a curious mind.

I think I read the Scriptures to the greatest advantage, when in any difficult passage I neither conceal from myself its difficulty, nor attempt to bend it to my own general view of the analogy of faith, or to form a new hypothesis to make a system apparently consistent in all its parts; but consider with myself whether, notwithstanding the general obscurity of the passage, there is not some clear and serviceable truth to be gained from it. I would take as an illus tration of my meaning the eleventh chapter of the Romans; respecting which a Calvinist and an Arminian might argue, as many have done, till their temper and their Christian affection were forgotten in the contest. In the mode I propose, while I pretend not to avoid every difficulty, I gain much useful information from what is obvious. I learn the importance of faith, from ver. 20; the necessity of caution from ver. 21; the great hope to be enter tained by the Gentiles from the restoration of the Jews, in ver. 12; and though I may not be able to fathom ver. 32, which is, as it were, the summary of the Apostle's meaning, ("For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have

mercy on all,") yet I may obtain from it a delightful view of the character of God. How should my heart be filled with love towards him while I receive in simple faith this consolatory declaration! However ohscure his dispensations may appear to my feeble reason, however difficult I may find it to reconcile the account given of them in his word, yet one point I can and do understand, that they are so ordered that God "might have mercy upon all." And by the reception of this truth in faith, I shall find my heart well prepared to unite in the devout adoration of the Apostle in the concluding verses.

I have purposely mentioned a part of Scripture which has preeminently given rise to speculations, to reasonings, and of course to controversy. In arguing on such passages, each party says, and often truly, though there may not always be sufficient candour in the opponent to allow it-" It is not the declaration of Scripture that I oppose, but your explanation of it, and the consequences you draw from it." In the midst of the disputed passages in the ninth and two following chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, stands a verse fraught with the utmost consolation to the sincere inquirer, and one to which I have turned, and found that rest I sought for in vain in the endeavour clearly to understand the more difficult passages: "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." What I need is salvation: mere knowledge, and in short every thing else besides this, is comparatively of no importance. I am informed in these few words how I may obtain that salvation. My conscience will tell me whether I call upon the name of the Lord; and if its report be favourable, faith in this name will bring the peace attendant on justification, and Christ be formed in my soul the hope of glory.

There are truths in Scripture,

which I think we may compare to the antagonist muscles of the human body; which being necessary to give due motion to the limbs, the power and energy of the whole are weakened, if any one be strengthened at the expense of another. The sacred writers, fearless of seeming contradiction, occasionally even bring these truths together in one view. Thus, in the well-known passage, Phil. ii. 12, 13; " Work out your own salvation; for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure;" and so again, 2 Pet. i. 10, "Give diligence to make your calling and election sure."

The late Mr. Cecil justly observed; "Some men get hold of an opinion, and push it so far that it meets and contradicts other opinions fairly deducible from Scripture." In order to avoid this error, it would be well to attend to an important suggestion of Mr. Venn: "To guard against dangerous perversions, it may be laid down as a maxim in divinity, That it is necessary not only to hold the doctrines of the Bible, but also to view those doctrines in the same light in which the inspired writers viewed them, and to make only the same inferences from them which they did. For there is scarcely any truth which may not be held in a partial manner, or seen through a distorting medium; so that we then only believe as the Apostles did, when we receive their tenets in the same full comprehensive manner in which they delivered them, dwell upon them in the same proportion to other truths, and draw the same conclusions from them."-Simple faith in the word of God, as we find it, and as far as we understand it, would, I apprehend, lead to such a just view of the Bible as Mr. Venu recommends. It would also bring peace to the soul; it would tend to allay controversial disputes; and, like the study of nature from nature herself, would lead to far

clearer discoveries of truth in the revealed word of God, than all the boasted systems of mere theologians have e ver been able to effect. S. H.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

THE common interpretation of our Lord's words (John iii. 5), "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God," appearing to me both incorrect and liable to misconception (witness the late controversy on baptism), I am induced to offer a somewhat different view of the passage, which I would convey in the following observations upon part of our Lord's discourse with Nicodemus..

It appears to me evident, that it was not the Saviour's design at the commencement of his ministry ex-, plicitly to declare himself to be the Messiah; but that He appeared as a Divine messenger, to whose preaching and doctrine the people were authoritatively called upon to attend. "The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand,-Repent ye, and believe the Gospel,"-exhibit the substance and manner of the Saviour's preaching.

The circumstances of his birth, and that of his precursor John the Baptist, in addition to the visit of the wise men, and the notoriety given to all these events by the slaughter of the infants at Bethlehem, probably led a large proportion of the nation at first to believe that the Messiah was born about that time; but so many years having elapsed without his making a public appearance, it is probable that they had at length come to the conclusion that the person then born was not the Messiah; and the event, it is possible, especially considering the malignant perturbations and awful visitations of the times, was almost entirely forgotten. But when Jesus appeared, preaching and working miracles, inquiry concerning him would of

course take place; and the learned and leading men of the nation must consequently have been fully informed of all the circumstances which had agitated the nation at the time of his birth, and must have been convinced that he was the individual then born, though the wise men not having returned to Herod left it uncertain where he was born so that, in fact, he was shortly afterwards almost universally considered to be a native of Nazareth; aud this, together with the circumstances of his appear ance and preaching, seemed to render it improbable that he was actually the Messiah. It is evident, I think, from many passages, that there was much uncertainty in the general opinion as to the manner in which the Messiah was to be introduced, and the person or persons by whom he was to be preceded. It is clear that our Lord treated it as a high attainment even in St. Peter, a considerable time after this period, that he was fully assured that Jesus was the Christ of God. The Jewish rulers must, however, have been at least convinced that he was an extraordinary messenger from Jehovah, and, considering the time, that he was in some way connected with "the kingdom of God," and they could the less doubt of the reality of his mission, and the greatness of his character, from the testimony given to both by the Baptist". It was nothing then but the spiritual and humbling nature of his doctrine-bis preaching the Gospel and opening the kingdom of heaven to the poor,

• John, I presume, spake concerning the Saviour under a Divine inspiration, something like that of the old prophets-not enlightened perhaps himself as to the full meaning of the predictions respecting Christ; for it is hardly to be supposed that he had attained to such a complete knowledge of the sacrifice and atonement, as our Lord's most intimate disciples did not acquire till after the descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost.

the meek, and the lowly-that kept them from coming to him. The spiritual hopes which his preaching and doctrine were calculated to excite, were directly opposite to their proud, revengeful, and secular expectations: they determined, therefore, not to come to him (ver. 20.) But in the case of Nicodemus, though he was grossly ignorant of spiritual things, and perhaps had been immersed in all the rabbinical prejudices, yet the principle of malignity, and many of his countrymen's deeply rooted prejudices, appear to have been dethroned; and his heart being brought by the Holy Spirit to an obedient temper", and feeling a strong desire for an interest in the kingdom of God, and his need of Divine illumination, he ventured to go to Jesus, frankly acknowledging his own and his brethren's conviction, that he was a Divine Teacher, and presenting himself before him for instruction. Under these circumstances, our Lord saw it right, in the most direct and impressive manner, to inform him of the spiritual nature of the kingdom of God: "Verily, verily," &c.: as though he had said, "This kingdom is a new world, which a man cannot perceive till he is born into it. The kingdom of God is not such a kingdom as the Jews have been looking for-a secular kingdom. The kingdom of God cometh not by observation: it must be within you." The abruptness and unexpected nature of our Lord's answer, so utterly at variance with his prejudices, amazed him; but his questions in reply, though indicating gross ignorance, discovered neither coutempt nor disgust. Though confounded, he does not evince any disposition to take offence; and the majesty of our Lord's manner was no doubt calculated to foster in him a submissive temper. The more deeply to impress the mind of * This, I think, the Saviour meant to intimate, for his encouragement, in the 21st verse.

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