isees, when they asked him if it was lawful to pay tribute to Cæsar! How skilfully he confounded the crafty malice of his foes, and taught them a religious lesson, too, by his evasion of the point where they hoped to entrap him! And he who accepted calmly the lot of crucifixion, and refused to call angels to his aid, often requested those whom he healed to refrain from telling the priests and elders; and, when John the Baptist was beheaded, consulted his personal safety by leaving Judea, and dwelling in Galilee. What gentleness and meekness of spirit distinguished him in his intercourse with the world; what warm sympathy with the penitent; what tenderness towards the guilty; what forgiving love to his most cruel foes! Yet it was he, of whom it is written that, "when he was reviled he reviled not again," who showed by the most scathing denunciation, which the literature of rebuke cannot surpass, the rottenness of heart in the Pharisees, and called them hypocrites, and vipers, and whited sepulchres.

We can readily see, moreover, that dignity and grandeur of presence were united strangely in his character with familiarity, ease, and condescension. He "came eating and drinking;" he was the friend of publicans and sinners; he passed most of his life in constant and social contact with the vile and the outcasts; yet the record always implies that his companions were awed by his very mercy; and he lost nothing of that personal sway and imposing mien, which commanded the veneration of Nicodemus and the ruler Simon, and overawed the soldiers who came to lead him to his death. So, too, we find in Jesus great calmness and great enthusiasm, an enthusiasm that manifested itself in intense calmness, as the spinning-top whirls swifter when it is motionless and sleeps. "He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;" "he was made perfect through suffering;" yet he speaks of his joy being full; and truly we may believe that, under all the hardships of his discipline, his breast was open to currents of bliss, which the prosperous worldling cannot conceive. He had friends, and yet was alone; he loved the world, and yet he overcame the world; he was the opposite of an ascetic, and yet he was the only perfect saint.

This same contradictoriness, enclosing both poles of truth, attaches even to his words. He, who said, "the VOL. VII. 35

Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them," said also, "I came not to bring peace, but a sword.” At one time, he instructed his disciples not to take weapons with them on their missionary tour; at another, he told them to sell their scrip, and buy a sword. Once, he said, "I and my Father are one," " He who hath seen me, hath seen the Father;" and again, "my Father is greater than I," "no man hath seen God at any time."

We have called attention to these peculiarities of the Saviour's nature, because by insight into the structure of his character, we gain new light upon the glory and fulness of his system. Christ and Christianity, in a certain sense, are one. "The word was made flesh, and dwelt among us," that the grandeur of God's truth might be commended to the eyes and hearts of men. And, moreover, every instance of greatness, every intricate manifestation of breadth and harmony in the nature and office of Jesus, which can be pointed out, confirms the proof of the reality of his mission, and increases the impossibility of believing that we owe the records of him to the tricks of deceivers, or the accidental symmetry of myths.

We are also taught by the theme we have considered, that truth always presents two aspects. It is an honest double-dealer. Duty branches out into seemingly opposing forms. The most contradictory qualities run together, and come to identity in living principle. At bottom, there is no difference between true formalism and spiritualism, between proper self-reliance and dependence on God, between healthy trust in the inward light and trust in a written Revelation, between necessity and free-will, between the doctrine of faith and the doctrine of works. Narrow minds take in one phase, and are fierce partisans, always logical and consistent with their premises, and always false, because their premises are too narrow; great minds see both phases, and are calm and catholic, and their speech is often charged with inconsistency. their inconsistency is only consistency with both hemispheres of truth. Christ saw deep enough to be a reconciler, to hold both poles of nature in his mind, to be inconsistent as life and the thought of God.

But

And, at bottom, too, there is no difference between justice and love, humility and strength, gentleness and digni

ty, true expediency and principle, complete self-sacrifice and the sweetest self-indulgence. Christ's soul was so faithful, and so permeated with spiritual life, that all these qualities were united in him; and the manifestations of his virtue, when we study them separately, seem inconsistent, because his character, when we look at its essence, was so harmonious and so rich, that it could not be confined to one form of life, but must flower out into every possible element of spiritual power and grace.

As we stand before the massive structure of the Saviour's character, so complex, yet so simple, pervaded by a great law of unity and harmony, that reconciles all its parts, it is like standing before some Gothic minster where each niche, and turret, and pointed window con spire to the simplicity of impression, and its grandeur results from its myriad details of grace. It is like listening to a symphony by some great master, in which various movements, and a thousand melodies, and occasional discords even, contribute to the sublime and inspiring effect. That life is God's greatest gift to us; it enfolds the fulness of truth.

T. S. K.

ART. XXIX.

The Church of Christ and of the Apostles.

We propose to set forth the peculiar character of the Christian Church, as it appears in the New Testament. Without confining ourselves to a precise order in our method of treatment, we shall endeavor to show how it was constituted, how it was distinguished, what were its regulations and observances, and to ascertain what claims it was supposed to have on believers, and what place it held in the religion of the gospel.

We will begin with a fact which, we think, will readily occur to all our readers, namely, that as a general rule,

wherever the apostles made any considerable number of converts, they gathered them immediately into what they called Churches. Take the book of Acts, read there the history of their preaching and journeyings, follow them in the narrative from place to place; and wherever they went, or wherever the gospel was received, there we generally find Churches springing up. This appears to have been always the case. For example, we find the believers at Jerusalem formed into a Church; those at Antioch likewise; the same with those at Rome, at Corinth, at Thessalonica, Philippi, Ephesus; and so in all other places where there were Christians. No man can read the book of Acts, and the Epistles, with an eye to this point, without being satisfied that all known and approved Christians, speaking in general language, did, at that time, belong to Churches, as the term was then used.

If any should now ask, What kind of bodies were the Churches in those days? how were they organized? or, were they organized at all?-we beg leave to defer these questions for a few moments. What we wish to fix atten. tion upon, at present, is this: that the Church, (no matter now what kind of a body it was,) embraced the great mass of Christians known as such, that all the recognized believers in general, belonged to what the apostles called their Churches. There may have been individual exceptions, say in places where the believers were very few, or so scattered that they could not well be brought together. But, even in such cases, it should be observed that the general rule appears seldom to have been dispensed with, so important was it always regarded, and so different was the state of things from that which now prevails. St. Paul speaks of some Churches in single households; he mentions the Church in Priscilla's and Aquila's house at Cenchrea, the Church in the house of Nymphas at Laodicea, &c. If there were believers in a place to the number of a single family, including probably servants and perhaps neighbors, they were gathered into a Church; for that was the association in which it was understood that all Christians were bound to unite. So that Churchrelation or Church-membership, was the peculiar form of social life in which Christianity was then maintained, and in which its professors lived and acted. It is important

that this general fact should be kept in mind, through the remainder of this article.

And now, with respect to the question, What kind of bodies these apostolic Churches were, which thus embraced all the acknowledged believers. It seems to be thought by some, that they were the whole congregations which attended on the ministry of the gospel, in the several places where it was preached. But this is evidently a mistake. Can any reader of the New Testament suppose that the Churches, there spoken of, were merely accidental assemblages of persons, drawn together by some temporary occasion, and then dissolved, so as no longer to be a body of any kind, when the occasion was past? We put the question in this form, because we have heard it argued, that since the original word, translated Church, signified, according to its primitive definition, simply a convocation of whatsoever kind, the Church of the New Testament was nothing more than the multitude that came together in the Christian meetings, and then separated, never perhaps to meet again. Now this, it appears to us, is but arguing against the obvious fact of the case. No matter what had been the primitive meaning of the word, nor how it was occasionally still employed in other connections; in this connection, it had acquired a technical sense, by special usage. It had become the appropriated name of that one peculiar body in which it was intended that only Christians should be admitted, and which was consecrated to them; just as the term, synagogue, which originally signified nothing more than a concourse of people, indefinitely, had become at length appropriated to the reg ularly organized institution, of that name, among the Jews.

If, after what we have said, any should still doubt whether the Church, under the apostles, was not simply the assembly of their hearers, we will refer the question back to them to answer by the test of facts, rather than by lexicography. There was, for instance, the multitude which collected on the day of Pentecost, to witness the miraculous gift of tongues, and to which St. Peter preached his sermon on the occasion. Now, was that multitude of hearers a Church, in the apostolic sense of the term? Nobody will pretend it; and yet it was the congregation, in that case. Again, when Peter and John healed the