Jehovah, the Supreme Lord of heaven and earth, and the Sovereign of all nations.

The lawgiver speaks with the authority of this Infinite Ruler to a chosen people, chosen to a special mission, and as the depositories of the divine oracles. The priest speaks to them by the same high authority; and a religion and a worship are set up which seek, by multiplied guards and checks, to keep them separate from the abominations and bewilderments of the idolatrous heathen of the past, and of the then present, and to preserve the great truth of the Divine Unity and Providence unadulterated, as the polar star of religious developement and human progress. But the lawgiver and the priest, guided by a higher wisdom, do not attempt too much as yet. They remember the Egypt out of whose borders they have just gotten forth. They know that Egypt literal is symbolical of that greater Egypt of bondage to the animal and sensual, to ignorance and violence and misrule, in which the race was still entangled, and forth from which they knew it must be led slowly and painfully, with many wanderings and rebellions in the wilderness.

Government and religion, therefore, still had an eye to this state of things, and got themselves constituted with special reference to the present as well as the future. They considered what class in God's school of education and discipline the race and the chosen people were in, then and there; and finding it not the first class, but much below this, the law and the motive power, the thing to be done, and the thing not to be done, and the way of it, were all fitted to the actual present condition of man; though not without significant relations to the future, to advance upward to higher grades and classes, to the first even, at last.

We have a law and ceremonial religion, a worship of outward forms, not greatly benefiting the heart, but begetting an outward conformity, and compelling a familiarity with great truths, which will eventually lead to something better than forms.

We have now also, beside the negative, "Thou shalt not steal, nor covet, nor bear false witness, nor murder," the positive, "Thou shalt be just and merciful, thou shalt be hospitable to the stranger, respectful to parents, chari

table to the poor, and reverent and loving toward God. Thou shalt not only abstain from evil under this new law and religion, but thou shalt learn to do some good; not only let go the wrong, but hold on to the right.”

But this is to be accomplished by penalties, by threats of outward judgements and punishment. The highest motive is not yet brought into play; the divinest method not yet reached. Though it command virtue and piety, it furnishes no living principle of righteousness, no spiritual life or energy, out of which this command was to get for itself a hearty and meritorious obedience. By holding forth only those motives which restrain the overt expression of the passions, without purifying the affections, it secured at best but an outward mechanical obedience; a conformity to the letter, while there was mostly an entire absence of the spirit. What was bidden was done, if at all, not from love of it, but from fear of the judgements denounced against the disobedient. The law of justice and mercy and charity and purity was respected or obeyed, not so much because of the clearly perceived rightness and excellency of them, but because of the penalty which was sure to follow every transgression of it.

Well, this again was something gained-it was an advance upon the merely negative law and religion of the pagan. Justice was done, mercy was shown, the poor and the sorrowful were relieved and comforted, and the sanctity of virtue and chastity maintained. And so society gained greatly by this forward step, even if the individual did not attain to a higher moral perception, and a more spiritual inner life. So much good was done, and the world was so much the gainer, though it was done through fear of the punishments only of a righteous law.

But this state of things was designed to be temporary, and was in the fulness of time to give place to a diviner law, and a more spiritual religion, addressing themselves to the inner man from a higher plane of truth and motive. It was needful in struggling forward and upward from the brutal and sensual of the iron age of old paganism, that the race should study for a time under the Jewish legislator, priest, and prophet; for these were the schoolmasters to bring us to Christ. Step by step man must come up over the rounds in the ladder of progress, till at last

from the topmost he steps to the highest pinnacle of the heavenly temple, and, exulting, beholds the new Jerusalem, the city of God, stretching out in glorious beauty around him on every side, into the infinite!

This is fulfilled in Christianity, which takes the place of the finished and abolished law of Moses, and of the religion of outward forms and ordinances, and is designed to complete the spiritual education of our race, and, no longer driving, to lead us and to win us to heaven and to God. It shows us, truly, the evils and the penalties of sin, but from a different and higher stand-point. It reveals to us the great fact that sin itself, marring the beauty of the divine image within us, darkening the soul with the smoke of its own internal volcanoes, snapping asunder the electric wires by which we connect in quick telegraph with heaven, and casting us down into the deep places of pollution and self-degradation-that this is more terrible than any pain, more to be dreaded than any evil that may come of mere suffering.

But Christianity does more than show us the evil of sin; it reveals to us the ineffable loveliness of righteousness, of goodness and spiritual purity, and the unspeakable joy of loving and serving God for his own sake; God the Creator and Universal Father, the infinitely good and gracious, "whose mercy is the central sun of all his glories joined in one." From this side it appeals to the higher nature of man, to his moral sentiments, to his noblest spiritual faculties, and through faith quickens his affections to newness of life, and brings him into glad and grateful love of God, and into conformity with his holy law, making it intelligible to him how it is really the "perfect law of liberty."

It is to this Paul refers when he says, "The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death"; or, in other words of his, "But now we are delivered from the Law (of Moses,) that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter."

The religion of Christ looks to the spirit only, caring little for the letter. It weighs the motive, and not the action. The Pharisee may throw a hundred pieces of gold into the treasury from mere ostentation and love of

applause, and they go for nothing, and get nothing in return. But the poor widow who casts in two mites for God's sake, and the truth's sake-she gets richest blessing, and is counted among the first in the kingdom of heaven. But the excellency of the gospel, of this new divine law, is that it is a law of life; or in other words, is lifegiving, furnishing the motive, renewing the heart, and inspiring it with faith and affection. In this way, it makes the worship of God the offspring of love of God, and kindness toward man the fruit of love for man. It purifies the fountain, and then leaves the stream to flow as it lists. So it differs from the old law by begetting a spiritual energy in the heart of man, and a holy life out of this; instead of producing only outward conformity by force of threats and promises, leaving the soul as dark, and the heart as hard as ever.

And this great work of regeneration it accomplishes by showing us the Father, and revealing to us the exceeding mightiness and tenderness of his love; by exhibiting the glory of his perfections, and the harmony of them; by showing us that his power and wisdom and goodness are all pledged to the advancement of our highest spiritual interests. So, as the apostle has it, we come to love God because he has first loved us; and we adore and serve him because we love him. This is the newness of spirit, of motives and impulses and principles, which the gospel creates in the soul, and which the law of penalties and forms never could create there.

It

And it enlarges and confirms this renewal by exhibiting also the beauty of virtue, the worth of holiness, the sublime joy of doing right because it is right, of doing and being good for the heaven there is in the good itself. makes us see how a righteous and true life is its own reward how to be in the temper and spirit of Christ, to be like God, is, in and of itself, the highest blessedness which men or angels can experience. In this way it calls and wins the believer to a life of holiness and heavenly-mindedness, of love and spiritual obedience, and not by threats of terror and the penalties of disobedience. It imparts saving knowledge of God, and through this quickens into life and action a faith which works by love, purifies the heart, regenerates the affections, and consecrates the whole man to God and good.

Thus have we, briefly and imperfectly enough, presented the spiritual and religio-legislative progress of our race from barbarism and the law of brute force, through paganism and superstition, through Judaism and the law of Moses, up to the Christian "law of liberty," the law of life in Christ Jesus.

The Christian should be very thankful for the New Testament, this latest and last covenant between God and man, which makes its appeals to reason, to the noblest faculties of the soul, and the gentlest affections of the heart; which seeks, not to terrify, but to encourage, not to drive through fear, but to win through love; and which, when our last study is finished, our last lesson learned in this life-school, points us to the perfect knowledge and glory and blessedness which await us in the heavenly world.

T. B. T.

ART. XXVI.

Notes on 2 Peter, iii.

WE shall not undertake to furnish extended comments on every verse of this chapter, but shall devote our main labor to the explanation of those passages in it which are supposed to discountenance the sentiments of Universalists.

Before doing this, however, a word or two as to the principles which should govern an interpreter may not be out of place. First, then, in forming a sound judge ment as to the real signification of many portions of holy writ, it is essential to know when they were written. Take the Apocalypse as an illustration. If this book was written before the overthrow of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Hebrew commonwealth, it is easy to ascertain the meaning of many allusions, the ground of many references. But if it was composed between the years 90 and 100 of the Christian era, then there are many things in it which we despair of ever under