brought into being, when made in the image of God; for man will then truly know God, and will give equal honour to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The truth, holiness, and love of the Father will be honoured in acknowledging his righteous indignation against sin; combined with adoration of that stupendous act of love which could devise the means of saving sinners and converting them into saints: the obedience and condescension and all sufficiency of the Son will be honoured in receiving him as accomplishing the will of the Father, and himself dying in order that we may live for ever; and the power of the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, will be shown in us, by his overcoming the resistance of our rebellious will and hearts estranged from God, and a nature grown old in apostacy an 1 hardened in the evil course of generation after generation of sinners. By such a training, man is able more fully to understand, and more perfectly to exhibit, in its manifold fulness, the varied and wonderful forms of the love of God, more so than if we had never fallen-more so than if we had kept our first state, and had manifested only the uniform aspect of perfect obedience to all the commands of God. This constancy the unfallen angels do in their spheres of blessedness exhibit: and its opposite, in the hopeless misery of total final apostacy, is exhibited by the fallen angels in their abodes of torment and despair. But to manifest a fall, followed by redemption and subsequent exaltation to a higher place than that possessed before the fall-such grace-such a paradox of love-was reserved for man alone; and this stupendous act of truth and mercy, of righteousness and peace, will be the theme of praise throughout eternity; and not only to the sons of men, made by adoption the sons of God, but to the angels around the throne and to the universe of God! O, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For of him, and through him, and to him are all things.

Our mistakes, for the most part, proceed from narrowness of view; each individual limiting his attention too much to his own personal salvation, and losing sight of the primary, allinclusive, and final purpose and object-the glory of God, for which all things were made, towards which all things are tending, and which shall have its accomplishment in the kingdom of heaven. This is what St. Paul has in view when he prays that the understanding of the Ephesian Church might be enlarged to comprehend that glorious mystery which had been hidden from former generations, but was revealed in the

coming of Christ and in the preaching of the Gospel: not in the coming of Christ alone-not in the preaching of the Gospel alone--but in the combination of both; because the revelation of God stands not only in fact-not only in word—but in acts interpreted by means of the word. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork; but only vaguely and imperfectly until the word goes forth to make known the Gospel to the ends of the world. Christ Jesus took flesh, not only to accomplish redemption therein, but also to bring out the image of God thereby: and he hath not only accomplished the redemption of individuals by his death and resurrection, but he is become head over all things, for his body's sake-THE CHURCH: and, that in order to restore man to his place of pre-eminence spoken of in the eighth Psalm and the second of Hebrews, for which Adam was created, but which mankind lost through the fall. We may venture to assert with all confidence, though we speak it with all reverence, that God could not assume any other form in which to reveal himself than the human form, because man alone, of all creatures, was made in the image of God: and one chief attribute of man was, that he was placed at the head of the visible creation in that sphere to which he belonged with a relation to this lower world similar in kind, though infinitely removed in its nature and degree, to the relationship which God bears to the whole universe. But a part of the mystery which St. Paul rejoiced in was the knowledge of the primary fact that God had created all things by the Son, and that they were made for him also: were made in order that he might use them by assuming that body which had been prepared for him and by him in the creation of Man, in order that, in the form which was created after the image of God, the glory of God might be manifested. "Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: in burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then, said I, lo! I come, to do thy will, O God" (Heb. x. 5). And so with us: it will be of little final avail to receive Christ as the sacrifice for our sins, unless we also receive him as our righteousness and sanctification; and, in the strength of this faith, are carried on to do all the will of God.

The mystery in which St. Paul rejoiced, and which he was so earnest in imparting to the Church, had also respect to the connection between man and the inferior creation, as well as that between man and God: this connection being formed, ratified, and established by that body mystical of which Christ in the heavens is the head, and of which the Holy Ghost is

the quickening life, and the abiding all-sufficient energy. When God created man in his own image, male and female created he them. And God blessed them and said unto them, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." St. Paul says this is a great mystery, speaking of Christ and the Church: and in all his epistles refers to this act of creation as the type, whenever he has occasion to speak of the action of the Church upon the world, as an instrument for bringing out the mystery of the kingdom of heaven.

But because man is the head of creation the mystery must be first brought out in man, and that first in the individual man; then in the relationship between Christ and the Church; and then in the operation of the Church upon the world: as the mystery was in like manner begun in the person of Christ, and then imparted by him to the Church, and shall ultimately concentre in his person as King of kings and Lord of lords.

Justification by faith should be regarded not merely as an act done towards us, but as a new principle implanted in us. The Church is the fold of the faithful; Christ is the door of that fold; faith is the passport which gives us admission. But Christ is also the Shepherd whose guidance the flock love to follow; and he is the Captain of salvation under whose victorious banner we fight the good fight of faith; and our place in the Church is not merely a place of safety-not merely a passing from one category to another—but it is an entire change of character, and a new calling regulated by new principles; we pass from death, which is nonentity, to life, which includes every thing; old things are passed away and all things are become new. The motives and springs of action are such as had no existence in the heart before; the standard and model of action is Christ whom we knew not; the strength and wisdom is from above through the means of grace set in the Church; and the end or aim of all true members of the Church is wholly different from that which they had in view before they were brought to the knowledge of the truth-the righteousness imputed for justification necessarily issuing in sanctification as its fruit.

"In prosecuting the subject (says Mr. Heurtley) my aim has been throughout to view it, not as though it were isolated and detached, but rather as a part, intimately connected with other parts, of one large and comprehensive whole" (165).

"If man were not fallen from that righteousness in which he was originally created, the will and the understanding would invariably go together; faith could not be an idle and inefficacious principle-a mere speculation resting in

the mind, and exercising no influence upon the life and conversation" (182). "The truth is-and it is a truth which it deeply concerns us to bear in mind-that faith is God's gift Not only does the Lord give the word by the hearing of which faith comes, but he also prepares the heart, by the gracious influences of his Spirit, to receive that word as into good ground, so that it may not lie there barren and unproductive, but may spring up and bear fruit. For lack of this preparation, which lack was yet their own fault, many among the Jews did not yield even a bare assent to the truth. For lack of this preparation, numbers at this day, though living in a Christian country, reject Christianity, and numbers are led away by what the apostle describes as damnable heresies" (2 Peter, ii. 1). "God sending them strong delusion that they should believe a lie, because they received not the love 66 We little of the truth that they might be saved." (2 Thes. xi. 10). consider how much we stand in need of God's grace, even that we may yield a cordial assent to the truth, apart from the influence which that assent may have upon our wills and affections" (184).

"And as the faith by which we are justified influences the will and affections, it must needs manifest itself, as circumstances arise, in the various acts which have their source in these. And hence it is not unfrequently spoken of as though it were identical with these acts, or rather with the habits from which they proceed. (Thus St. Augustine, Ille credit in Christum, qui et sperat in Christum et diligit Christum...... Inseparabilis est bona vita a fide quæ per dilectionem operatur ; imo vero ea ipsa est bona vita '); though, if we would speak accurately, we must distinguish it from them.” Thus it produces repentance, yet it is not repentance; it works by love, yet it is not love; it is the spring of all holy obedience, yet it is not obedience; it leads to assurance, yet it is not assurance; it assumes the form of hope and trust, yet, in strictness, it is distinct from hope and trust" (186).

From all which considerations it is evident that faith is an all-pervading principle, without which it is impossible to please God in any stage of our Christian career: it forms the ground of our acceptance in being the means whereby we lay hold on and appropriate that sacrifice which God hath provided in the cross of Christ for the sins of the whole world: it is the living principle of obedience and of every act of service which we do being risen with Christ, and offering acceptable sacrifices through him, the high priest, who presents the only true and proper sacrifice of his own blood in his own person at the throne of God in the heavens; and it is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, in the strength of which we press forward to the mark of the prize of our high calling, as kings and priests unto God, waiting for the full accomplishment of the things we believe in, at the coming and kingdom of our Lord, in whom, though now we see him not, yet believing, we rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory.

It is in this sense that the faith is one in all ages of the Church; because the objects of faith are the same, and the principle which enables us to appropriate those objects is necessarily the same. But with this oneness of object and principle there may very well exist a principle of growth and enlargement in the faith of the Church; and the objects of faith also may become more and more distinct as the Church draws nearer to her goal, and as the time draws near for seeing no longer through a glass darkly, but face to face. This is the truth which has been perverted by many to that degree as to expect what they falsely call development of the objects of faith, in the sense of their being more and more disclosed, and so apprehended with greater clearness towards the end of a dispensation than they were at the beginning: for it is the development of the same objects which faith apprehended at the beginning; and they were quite as steadily believed when first presented to the faith of the Church, and wrapped up as it were in the bud, as when they were more fully expanded or developed in subsequent ages. For faith is an operation on the will and its region is the spirit of man, and it acts with equal power in every stage and variety of mental culture; and therefore it is that Christianity is fitted to be the religion of all mankind: the distinguishing sign of it was that to the poor the Gospel was preached, and those who preached it were unlearned and ignorant men. But development is no spiritual process: it is of an intellectual character and depends upon discussion and time, which enables the Church to see things in a variety of aspects, and so to balance and adjust the things which are brought under her review, that no one thing inay supersede or clash with any other thing.

The faith of the Church is implicitly contained in the sacrament of baptism, administered in its earliest and simplest form; for baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, is an act of faith in the Trinity, and belief in the several Persons of the Godhead and the proper attributes of each Person; and it is the baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ, as expounded in the sixth chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans: and it is the sacrament of regeneration as declared by our Lord in the third chapter of St. John's Gospel: therefore it is a token of faith in the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church, and of our looking for the coming of the kingdom of heaven. Moreover, in baptism, we assent to the doctrine that we are by nature dead in trespasses and sins; and are of God's mercy, and through the sacrifice of his Son in our stead, made by adoption