darkness and the tempest of Mount Sinai, yet the general aspect of the law-giving and law-avenging Jehovah, was austere and stern; so that St. John declares "The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." But I would go farther than historical deduction, and assert broadly and beforehand, that it is not in Nature, in Events, or in Reason, to unveil to us with a certainty sufficient for our Peace and Hope, the Love of God towards man; and that in the personal communications only which the Father has vouchsafed us by his Son can we truly know him as he is. What is called Natural Religion is indeed the ground-work of Christianity, but it can never be the substitute for it. It is the awaking of those feelings which prepare for, anticipate, nay demand, a Revelation from Heaven; but so far from rendering such a Revelation unnecessary, so far from having the power of self-expansion so as of itself to grow up and unfold into Christianity, the very fact of its existence is just that which renders a Revelation indispensable as the supplement to its incipient but insufficient workings. The chaos of emotion which it stirs within the mind is just that which requires the influence of the informing Word of truth. Because darkness covers the face of the earth, and yet over that darkness the Spirit of life sits brooding, therefore God hath said "Let there be light!" The glimpses of the

Divine character afforded to mankind by Nature and Providence teach them indeed those preliminary lessons to which the fuller manifestations of Revelation are supplementary. But all the intimations of Nature and of Providence are dark, imperfect, perplexing, without the key which Christianity presents. They furnish the component letters of the Alphabet, but flung abroad without arrangement; and even when we laboriously collect these elements together and piece out with them some few words and sentences, we find that we have only just begun the language and got fragments only of the truths of God, and we instinctively cry out for more-more definite, more extensive, more systematic, revelations of his will. All we reach is mere conjecture; and only by the interpretation of the Author of these fragments, only by the plainer history of the books of God, can we make full sense of, even if we can at all decipher, the puzzling hieroglyphics on the vast and awful Pyramid of Nature, and the vague mysterious legends of Tradition.

Nay, yet more than this. Not only do the deductions of the understanding from the things and events around us, not tell us clearly of the fatherly character of God; but they tell us of the reverse. We learn from them not so much the truth of pardoning mercy, as of avenging justice. The world is full of punishment-prolonged and often inexorable

punishment. Almost every transgression and disobedience manifestly receives its just recompense of reward. Not only wilful but even involuntary and heedless infractions of the laws of Nature and society, are by the natural course of things continually bringing with them trouble, pain, disease, and death. The voice of God concerning transgression, if spoken forth at all in Nature, is a voice of severity and condemnation. As the thunders and lightnings of Mount Sinai were but one particular instance of those general tempests which so often rage in the natural world, so the denunciations of Mount Sinai were but a particular expression of the general truth which Nature is continually uttering, "God is a consuming fire." Even the seeming exceptions prove this. Even the temporary delays of punishment confirm this. Even the letting sinners have their own way for a season, only beings upon them more extensively the misery which is annexed to Sin. Punishment may let the Sinner get for a time the start, but with unwearied pertinacity does it track his steps, and springs upon him inevitably at last. "The Lord is known by the judgment that he executeth: the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands."

And O then blessed be God that " having in times past spoken to the fathers by the Prophets, he hath at last spoken unto us by his Son!" Blessed

be God that "the Son of God is come and hath given us an understanding that we may know him that is true, yea may be in him that is true"enter into union and communion with the unseen Father "through his Son Jesus Christ!" No longer need we now cry "Show us the Father," for

"he that hath seen Jesus hath seen the Father." No longer need we doubt about the Father's compassion to every returning penitent, for this compassion Christ has manifested by accumulated proofs, in every possible way; by his teaching, by his character, by his words and deeds of never-wearied pity, and above all by his sacrificial and vicarious death. "In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our Sins." "For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die; but God commendeth his love to us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us!"

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CHAPTER V.

SPIRITUAL REGENERATION.

THE object of revelation is to meet the fallen condition of mankind in all its extent, and to bring back the soul in all its exercises to God. It applies itself therefore to the Heart, to remove its natural indifference to God; and to the Understanding, to dispel its natural Ignorance concerning God; but it stops not here, for this alone would leave untouched the main-spring of our nature, the deep and influential Will. This, alas! is naturally averse to God. It grows up in us as a will of "the flesh," and therefore cannot but be contrary to Him who is Spirit, for "the flesh lusteth always against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh." And consequently all Attention to God's truth and Acquaintance with his character will but deepen our Aversion to Him, because it heightens our perception of the natural contrariety which exists between us, unless there come the influences of his Spirit to subdue that natural opposition, and by the seed of