perfection of which his nature is capable, and in which he was originally created.1

Christianity is not simply designed for the next world, a means to save the souls of men hereafter from the consequences of their sins. It is designed for this

unconditioned essence, gulf of existence, terror of the imagination or the heart, or, finally, in presence of two closed doorsthe one that of hell, the other of annihilation."-(VINET.)

1 "To enlighten our understandings in the knowledge of our duty, to influence our wills in the practice of it, he has revealed to us the holy Scripture, which, as it lays down the best method for the attainment of that perfection we are capable of in this life, so it furnishes us with the best arguments for the prosecution of it."-(R. NELSON.) "The great aim of Christianity is to unite us once more to God, to transform duty into sentiment, to teach us how to love what we ought to do, and to do what we ought to love.”—(VINET.) "The design and end of Christ's religion is to amend and reform the manners of men that he might purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works'a people who might shine as lights in the world-by the exemplary practice of all virtue and goodness."-(Ditto.) "The will of God," says Paul, “is our sanctification, that the decays of our frame and the defacements of God's image within us should be repaired, that the faculties of our souls should be restored to their original integrity and vigour."-(Dr. ISAAC BARROW.) 2" Many are prone to imagine nothing else to be meant by salvation but to be delivered from hell and to receive and enjoy both heavenly happiness and glory; but the conformity of our heart to the law of God, and the fruits of righteousness with which we are filled by Jesus Christ in this life, are a necessary part of our salvation."-(W. MARSHALL.) 'Many men seem to think that the gospel is sent into this world as a lifeboat, to pick off from the foundering wreck as many of the great population as it possibly can, and let the rest go down.... But Christianity is not a mere wrecker's boat.”—(H. W. BEECHER.) "The solici tude (of Christians) is limited too much to the attainment of salvation, and that signifies too exclusively escape from the evils to come, and participation in the future blessedness."—(D. THOMAS.) "If we confine the gospel to the proclamation of pardon we rob it of its principal glory. Precious as pardon is, it is not to be viewed as an isolated blessing: it is a means to the moral end of our sanctification; and to the latter it is subordinate." (E. RUSSELL.) "If, without looking for a present holiness on earth, he pictures to himself a future beatitude in heaven, he resembles the man who, across that haze of nature's

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world as well as for the next; for the bodies as well as for the souls of men ;1 to keep them from sinning not less than to save them from the consequences of their sins.2 Christ took upon himself our nature; lived, suffered, and died here, not only to provide a blessed hereafter for the righteous, but to diffuse a knowledge of truth, and to instruct in the practice of righteousness;8

atmosphere which wraps all things in obscurity, thinks to descry the realities of ulterior space, when he has only peopled it with gratuitous imagery of his own."-(Dr. CHALMERS.)

1 "Jesus Christ is come to seek and to save that which was lost. . . Not only all men but also all man-consequently all his faculties, all his aptitudes, the man of earth as well as of the skies, in other words, humanity as well as man."-(VINET.) "The immortality of the gospel is not simply the immortality of the soul, it is the immortality of humanity. It is man that is to live hereafter, and whose whole nature, so to speak, is to be perpetuated for ever."-(T. BINNEY.) "The souls of the blessed shall not only be glorious. but their very bodies shall be filled with glory." (JEREMY TAYLOR.) "Christ partook of human nature and associated it with the divine ... a clear proof that God has not cast off human nature, but designs to exalt and dignify it." (J. SMITH.) "Then (in that future life) you live again in the body, in the very. body as to all essential properties and all practical intents and purposes in which you live now. I am to live (then) not a ghost, a spectre, a spirit, I am to live then as I live now, in the body."-(Dr. CANDLISH.)

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2 "Never forget that the object of the Saviour is to redeem you from all iniquity; and that every act of wilful indulgence in any species of iniquity is a refusal to go along with him."—(Dr. CHALMERS.) Religion is and can be nothing else but a design to make us like God, both in the inward temper of our minds and in our whole deportment and conversation."-(H. ScOUGAL.) "We should desire to be holy, not primarily, because without holiness eternal happiness is impossible, but because our Father which is in heaven is holy."—(Dr. H. DArling.) "Those who have risen to distinction in the Christian life are moved more by the love of righteousness than the desire of happiness. They esteem it more to be like Christ than even to receive from him. God himself is greater and better in their eyes than his gifts." (D. THOMAS.)

"Jesus Christ did not come to earth merely to die. He taught, worked miracles, lived in the different relations of human life; and the gospel in preserving for us other memories besides those of his death has recommended to our study as to our

and in this he calls upon all who believe on him to follow his steps.1 He came to take away sin here, and to purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.2

Whatever is good, or true, or noble in the world, is

...

veneration Jesus Christ as a whole. . . . It is not alone by the sufferings comprehended between Gethsemane and Calvary, nor by the passion, properly so called that Jesus Christ saves us, but by all the sufferings of his life, which was throughout a passion. It is not even by the sufferings of all his life that he saves us, but by all his life by all that he effected; by his actions and by his words; by what he did and by what he suffered; by his life as by his death."-(VINet.) "A main part of Christ's business in this world was to teach by his practice what he did require of others, and to make his own conversation an exact resemblance of those unparalleled rules which he prescribed." (H. SCOUGAL.) Our religion "sets before us a living copy and visible standard of good practice, wherein we have all its precepts compacted, as it were, into one body, and at once exposed to our view."-(Dr. J. BARROW.) "Example, in order to be a rule of duty adapted to human beings, must be a human example, because men could not follow the example of an angel or of any nature different from their own."-(Philosophy of Plan of Salvation.) "The great effect of the incarnation, as far as our human nature is concerned, was to render human love for the Most High a possible thing."-(A. H. HALLAM.)

1 "The example of our divine Lord is uniformly proposed to us as the model of our lives, the never-failing guide to virtue and happiness."-(Dean GRAVES.) "Nothing but the imitation of Jesus Christ enables us to penetrate into the secret of his thoughts and of his heart."—(VINET.) "The truest and most substantial practice of religion consists in the imitation of the divine perfections." (Archbp. TILLOTSON.) "The characteristic thing in being a Christian is the education of every part of the soul upon the model of Christ Jesus."-- (H. W. Beecher.) "Every one is and must be acceptable to God according as he resembles Christ."—(J. SMITH.)

2 "We greatly dishonour Christ's earthly mission if we ever conceive of it as having any lower purpose than that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works."-(Dr. H. DARLING) "The end of Christ's incarnation, humiliation, and death itself, being by St. Paul, defined to be the redeeming us from all iniquity, &c., so in effect the reformation of our lives and heightening of Christian practice to the most elevated pitch” is "the one only

not distinct from, but allied to, Christianity.1 Whatever tends to the diffusion of knowledge, to the diminution of crime, to the lessening of physical suffering, to the extending of material comfort or happiness is for the advancement of Christianity. With every advance in

design of all our Christianity."-(Dr. HAMMOND.) "He died that he might take away sin, and not only, or chiefly, to procure our pardon, which was done by him for a farther end, that an universal indemnity being offered through his death, all mankind might be thereby encouraged to enter into a course of holy obedience with all possible advantages, having the hopes of endless happiness and the fears of eternal misery before them."-(H. SCOUGAL.)

1 "If we reflect that the Spirit of God is the only fountain of truth, we will be careful as we would avoid offering insult to him to reject or contemn truth wherever it appears. If the Lord has been pleased to assist us by the work and ministry of the ungodly in physics, dialectics, mathematics, and other similar sciences, let us avail ourselves of it, lest by neglecting the gifts of God, spontaneously offered to us, we be justly punished for our sloth. Shall we deem anything to be noble and praiseworthy without tracing it to the hand of God? Far from us be such ingratitude." (JOHN CALVIN.) "All good is from him, all that actually amends us and conduces to our real welfare we ascribe to him with the most sincere and unreserved conviction.”—(J. SPALDING.) "If you do not see that the commonest things in life belong to the Christian scheme-the plan of God-you have got to learn it." (G. MACDONALD.)

2 He who "has discovered a new means of alleviating pain, or of remedying disease, who has described a wiser method of preventing poverty or of shielding misfortune, who has suggested additional means of increasing or improving the beneficent productions of nature, has left a memorial of himself which will communicate happiness to ages yet unborn, and which, in the emphatic language of Scripture, renders him a fellow worker with God himself in the improvement of his creation" -(A. ALISON.) "Not only religious and moral institutions, but arts, and sciences, and legislation, as well as moral and religious truth, in all the different forms and varied degrees in which they are found in different countries and different ages of the existence of mankind, are entitled to be ranked in the class of means for the advancement of the kingdom of God; and according to the degree in which by any of these means the face of the universe is beautified, the social institutions of man bettered, or their moral and religious condition improved, in the same degree and

science, with every improvement in art, with every addition to our material comforts or happiness the cause of Christianity is promoted, the cause of the kingdom of righteousness, which in the latter days is to be established on the earth, is advanced.1

The end of all knowledge and of all religion is the perfection of our nature, and the bringing it again into that condition in which it was originally created. The natural powers of man are unequal to the task, and a revelation has been vouchsafed to him, making him acquainted with the laws which have been broken, and showing him how his nature may be again brought into harmony with them.8

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to the same extent is the kingdom of God extended and established." (Manual of Conduct.) Every new discovery in science yields its contribution to the proofs and illustrations of the wisdom, the power, and the goodness of God."-(Dr. McCoSH.) "Every new accession to our scientific knowledge is an additional argument for adoring the infinite wisdom of God, the Creator of all things."-(Dr. DALE.)

1 The command of God to our first parents was "be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it." "To us the illustrious students of nature are ministers of God. ... by whose service and mediation rich and innumerable blessings, which it has ever been in the heart of God to grant, are actually obtained for the relief of human suffering, the increase of human happiness, and the general elevation and improvement of the condition of our race."—(A. ALISON.) "Every increase of the happiness and security of human life, every alleviation of pain, every protection against disease, resulting from a profounder acquaintance with the resources and laws of the physical creation is a fresh discovery of the wealth of Christ's goodness and a fresh reason for faith in the bright golden age which he has promised shall one day bless mankind."—(Dr. Dale.)

2 "The whole nature of the gospel redemption means nothing but the one true and only possible way of delivering man from all the evil of his fall.”—(T. À KEMPIS.) "Science is advancing its discoveries and politics its reforms, and all to remove the evils under which the world is labouring."-(Dr. McСosн.) "The end of true religion as far as it regards us... is the salvation and happiness of mankind."-(Archbishop LEIGHTON.)

"The first point of wisdom is to understand our true interest and to be right in our main end; and in this religion will best