-so long as men's hearts and minds are subject to the action of influences which draw them away from the path of divine Truth,— so long will it be necessary for the Church to wield the sword of the Spirit in combating all her foes through the sacred ordinance of prophesying or preaching.

The other remark which I would draw from this passage of St Paul, as pertinent to one of the extravagances of our days, relates to the criterion by which, here and in other places, the great Apostle measures the value of the various gifts and other means appointed for the edification of the Church,-their comparative utility or expediency with regard to that purpose. This idea runs through the whole passage, finding vent especially in that noble exclamation, I thank God, I speak with tongues more than ye all; yet in the church I would rather speak five words with my understanding, that I might instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue. Alas! how perpetually has the Church, how perpetually have its individual members, acted in direct opposition to this magnanimous humility! In such a spirit much censure has lately been poured on that portion of our Church who have been designated by the title of evangelical, because, in estimating the relative importance of any ordinance or instrument of grace, they have lookt almost exclusively to its serviceableness for the conversion and spiritual edification of their brethren. This has been condemned as a utilitarian spirit; and it has been said that they ought to have lookt, not to such narrow, earthly objects as the good of human souls, but to the one grand object, which we ought always to set before us, the glory of God. A utilitarian spirit! It would be difficult to produce a stranger instance of the manner in which we let ourselves be blown about by mere sounds. The wisest and best writers in our own country, in France, and in Germany, have been zealously employed during the last fifty or sixty years in denouncing that utilitarian spirit, which had set up a low, temporal, earthbound utility, as the test whereby to settle what is right or wrong, good or evil, among the laws and principles of the moral world. And now those who, rejecting all earthly aims and considerations, have made the eternal, moral and spiritual good of souls, their rule of judgment and of action, not with reference to principles, but to means, are called utilitarians. Verily then St Paul must be termed the first utilitarian. Nay, for what but this very purpose, which is thus disparaged with an odious

name, did the Son of God shed His blood on the Cross? Here we perceive how intense man's appetite for slavery is, seeing that, when Wisdom, after long and laborious exertions, has delivered him from an errour, he will take up the very weapon of his deliverance, and fashion new fetters out of it. On the other hand it is true that the glory of God is the noblest and worthiest object of human endeavour. But glory again is an ambiguous word, has a human as well as a divine sense; and these are far asunder as the poles. The natural man would never have conceived that the glory of God would manifest itself in the still, small voice. He wants something grand, splendid, pompous,-temples, mosques, and cathedrals, white and purple robes and processions, incense-offerings and solemn chants, things that strike the eye and the ear. Or he will require something that shall be strange and startling, repugnant to the common order of things, and to natural appetites and inclinations,-mortifications and flagellations, fakirs and hermits and dervishes, monks and nuns. Nay, he may blind himself into seeking the glory of God by that which is terrible and cruel and destructive, as Dominic and Alva and many of their collegues may probably have done, and some who took part in the massacre of the Hugonots. It would seem too as if Attila, and other like hellhounds, had whetted their natural thirst for blood, by persuading themselves that they were the ministers of God's wrath, and were to spread His glory by the slaughter of millions of mankind. Hence there is great need that our minds should be disentangled from this natural confusion, of mixing up their own notions of glory with God's: and we should be continually gazing upon the mirror presented to us in the Gospel and life of His Son, in order to learn where and in what God seeks and finds His glory. Then shall we learn, as St Paul learnt, that the best way in which we can labour to promote the glory of God, is by diligence in endeavouring to further the great work, which He especially desires to see, the salvation of souls, and their edification with all the graces of His Spirit.

NOTE 0: p. 38.

Tit. 1. 9. Αντεχόμενον τοῦ κατὰ τὴν διδαχὴν πιστοῦ λόγου, ἵνα δυνατὸς ῃ καὶ παρακαλεῖν ἐν τῇ διδασκαλίᾳ τῇ ὑγιαινούσῃ

καὶ τοὺς ἀντιλέγοντας ἐλέγχειν. This verse is rendered by Tyndall And such as cleveth unto the true worde of doctryne, that he maye be able to exhorte with wholsome learning, and to improve them that saye against it. Improve seems here to be nearly equivalent to disprove or refute. Tyndall's translation, with slight variations, is retained in our subsequent Bibles down to the Authorized Version, where it is considerably altered thus: Holding fast the faithful word, as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers. Here two material improvements have been made. Ὁ κατὰ τὴν διδαχὴν πιστὸς λόγος is not the true word of doctrine but the true or faithful word as received by teaching: and ἐν τῇ διδασκαλίᾳ τῇ ὑγιαινούσῃ. is much better exprest by sound doctrine, than by wholesome learning. At the same time the latter part of the verse has been misrendered, in a manner that obscures, if it does not pervert, the sense, which is, that he may be able both to exhort, (or rather to instruct,) in sound doctrine, and to convince (or to refute) the gainsayers. Our Version seems to make the main part of the ministerial office consist in dealing with gainsayers; whereas the more important part of it, the instructing ev Tỷ διδασκαλίᾳ τῇ ὑγιαινούσῃ, pertains mainly to the training of the believing members of the Church. This clause in the Greek depends merely on the verb παρακαλεῖν, not on ἐλέγχειν.

NOTE P: p. 38.

Donne, in speaking on this point, in his 35th Sermon, pours out a strain of that rich eloquence in which his prose-writings abound. "This one word, arguet, He shall reprove, convince, admits three acceptations: First, in the future,-He shall: and so the cum venerit, when he comes, signifies antequam abierit, before He departs. He came at Pentecost, and presently set on foot His commission by the Apostles, to reprove, convince the world of sin, and hath proceeded ever since by their successors in reducing nation after nation: and before the consummation of the world, before He retired to rest eternally in the bosom of the Father and the Son, from whom He proceeded, He shall reprove the whole world of sin, that is, bring them to a knowledge that, in the breach of the law of nature, and in the guiltiness of original sin, they are all under a burthen, which

none of them all of themselves can discharge. This work St Paul seems to hasten sooner. To convince the Jews of their infidelity, he argues thus: Have not they heard the Gospel? They, that is, the Gentiles; and if they, much more you: and that they had heard it he proves by the application of those words, Their voice is gone through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world; that is, the voice of the Apostles in the preaching of the Gospel.

66 Hence grew that distraction and perplexity which we find in the Fathers, whether it could be truly said that the Gospel had been preacht over all the world in those times. If we number the Fathers, most are of that opinion, that before the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem this was fulfilled. Of those that think the contrary, some proceed upon reasons ill grounded, particularly Origen: Quid de Britannis et Germanis, qui nec adhuc audierunt verbum Evangelii ?-For before Origen's time, in what darkness soever he mistook us to be, we had a blessed and a glorious discovery of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in this island. St. Jerome, who denies this universal preaching of the Gospel before the destruction of the Temple, yet doubts not but that the fulfilling of that prophecy was then in action and in a great forwardness. Jam completum, aut brevi cernimus complendum;-nec puto aliquam remanere gentem quae Christi nomen ignorat.—

"The later divines and the School, that find not this early and general preaching over the world to lie in proof, proceed to a more safe way, that there was then odor Evangelii, a sweet savour of the Gospel, issued, though it were not yet arrived to all parts; as if a plentiful and diffusive perfume were set up in a house, we would say the house were perfumed, though that perfume were not yet come to every corner of the house. But, not to thrust the world into so narrow a strait, as it is when a decree is said to have gone out from Augustus to tax all the world,-for this was but the Roman world;— nor, that there were men dwelling at Jerusalem, devout men of every nation under heaven, -for this was but of nations discovered and traded withal then ;-nor, when St Paul says that the faith of the Romans was publisht to the world,—for that was as far as he had gone;-those words of our Saviour, The Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preacht in all the world for a witness to all nations; and then shall the end come, have evermore by all ancient and modern Fathers and schools, preachers and writers, expositors and controverters, been

literally understood, that before the end of the world the Gospel shall be actually, really, evidently, effectually, preacht to all nations: and so, cum venerit, when the Holy Ghost comes, that is, antequam abieret, before He go, He shall reprove, convince, the whole world of sin, and this, as He is a Comforter, by accompanying their knowledge of sin with the knowledge of the Gospel for the remission of sins.

"It agrees with the nature of goodness to be so diffusive, communicable to all. It agrees with the nature of God, who is goodness, that, as all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened, and so came the Flood over all, so there should be diluvium Spiritus, a flowing out of the Holy Ghost upon all, as He promises, I will pour it out upon all, and diluvium gentium, that all nations should flow up to Him. For this Spirit spirat ubi vult, breathes where it pleases Him: and though a natural wind cannot blow east and west, north and south together, this Spirit at once breathes upon the most contrary dispositions, upon the presuming, and upon the despairing sinner, and in an instant can denizen and naturalize that soul that was an alien to the Covenant, empale and inlay that soul that was bred upon the common amongst the Gentiles, transform that soul which was a goat into a sheep, invite that soul which was a lost sheep to the fold again, shine upon that soul that sits in darkness and in the shadow of death, and so melt and pour out that soul that yet understands nothing of the Divine nature, nor of the Spirit of God, that it shall become partaker of the Divine nature, and be the same spirit with the Lord.— Shall any man murmur or draw into disputation why this Spirit doth not breathe in all nations at once? or why not sooner than it doth in some? Doth this Spirit fall and rest upon every soul in this congregation now? May not one man find that He receives Him now, and suffer Him to go away again? May not another, who felt no emotion of Him now, recollect himself at home, and remember something then which hath been said now to the quickening of this Spirit in him there? Since the Holy Ghost visits us so, successively, not all at once, not all with an equal establishment, we may safely embrace that acceptation of this word, arguet, He shall, He will, antequam abierit, before the end come, reprove, convince, the whole world of sin, by this His way, the way of comfort, the preaching of the Gospel."