the Jews. As if to anticipate any such objection to his use of the words, he pauses before quoting them, to utter the warning -"and the scripture cannot be broken,' and then proceeds to use the passage, to show that if the Holy Ghost by the Psalmist applies the term "gods" to men as far as they are anointed of God to high

office, and so are typical of Christ, much more might he, whom the Father had sealed and sent, take to himself the name and title of God. Thus does the great Teacher give the sanction of his high authority to the verbal Inspiration and verbal use of the Old Testament Scriptures. G. P. (To be continued.)

"I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for t is the power of God unto salvation to all that believeth."--ROMANS i. 16.

THE New Testament, so called, containing the writings of the Evangelists, with the Epistles of Christ's Apostles, and with other such divine books, declare plainly unto us the summe and effect of all the Scriptures expressed in the Old Testament. That which was in figure and in obscurity involved by the patriarchs and prophets in their prophetical volumes, written by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, is in this book more plainly and evidently set out, uttered also in the self-same spirit by the children of the prophets, the holy apostles. Indeed, the law was given by Moses, but grace and veritie came by Jesus Christ, which grace this book of the New Testament doth most evidently commend and set out. In this is discoursed the whole mystery of our salvation and redemption purchased by our Saviour Christ; here is his holy conception described, his nativity, his circumcision, his holy life and conversation, his godly doctrine, his divine miracles. In this book of the New Testament is set out his death, his resurrection, his ascension, his sending of the holy Spirit, his session in our flesh on the right hand of his Father, making continual intercession to him for us. In this book is contained the form and order of his last judgment, after the general resurrection of our bodies. These be the mysteries of our faith, these be the grounds of our salvation, these be thus written that we should believe them, and by our belief should enjoy life everlasting. Once, and in times past, God diversely and many ways spake unto the fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he hath spoken unto us (upon whom the ends of the world be come) by his own Son, whom he hath made heir of all things, whose dignity is such, that he is the brightness of his

father's glory, the very image of his substance, ruling all things by the word of his power. This heavenly doctor, so endued with glory and majesty, we ought most reverently to believe, as commended unto us from the authority of the heavenly Father, to be heard as his most well-beloved Son, in whom is his whole delight, by whom he will be pleased and pacified. It will else come to pass, saith that prophet Moses, that whoever shall not hear and obey that prophet in the words that he shall speak in his Father's name, I will be, saith the Father, revenged of him. This is the last prophet to be looked for to speak unto us; in him be universally inclosed the riches and treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God his father; by him he hath decreed finally to judge the whole world, the living and the dead; by him hath he decreed to give to his elect the life everlasting, and to the reprobate (who hath condemned his life and doctrine) death everlasting. Let us therefore seriously hear and obey this our heavenly teacher; submit ourselves to this our judge and rewarder. Let us esteem his doctrine and conversation, as a full, perfect, and sufficient pattern of all holiness and virtue. Let us esteem the doctrine of this book as a most inflexible rule, to lead us to all truth and newness of life. Here may we behold the eternal legacies of the New Testament, bequeathed from God the Father in Christ his Son to all his elects. I say, the legacies hereby renewed unto us, not of deliverance from Pharao his servitude, but from the bondage and thraldom of that perpetual adversary of ours, the devil. Here may we behold our inheritance, not of the temporal land of Canaan, or of the translation of us to the place of worldly paradise, but here we may see the full restoration of us, both in body and soul, to the celestial paradise, the heavenly city of Jerusalem, above

attained. That is, under the law, not to a code written on tables, but to a Being whom the heart knows and loves, whom the spirit recognizes as its centre and its sun; and this is the secret of glorious life.

Law to a transgressor stands out in a new relation; it acts as a constraint from without, not as a life moving the muscles of action from within. This is a degradation, but the degradation is in the transgressor and not in the law. The law is still holy, good, and beautiful; it is still God's thought expressed. It represents what the transgressor was made to be, and should be, in order to enter into God's concord, and fill his appointed space in the scale of creation. Let the transgressor take the law into his heart and love it, and it will move him as blessedly as the sun-quickened sap in the veins of a plant stirs the buds to bursting, and presses out, with soft compulsion, the leaves, the branches, the flowers, the fruit. We have this guarantee about God's law. Its principle is harmony, order, perfect blessedness. His law is not strange or arbitrary. None can obey it and be still out of concord with the universe and with him. Every word which he speaks man can live by. Let him take the word into his heart, and the fruit must be concord; it must bring the life into harmony with the universal life and with himself. This is the point which the Jews quite missed. They lost the key to their dispensation, and turned it into a yoke which neither they nor their sons were able to bear. Instead of feeling that there was a grand reality in it, that this was a perfect life, sketched out by God's own hand, for a people in a mental, moral, and social condition like theirs, and that living it would make exquisite order in their homes and hearts, they set themselves wearily to do it, as you would do a despot's will, seeing no reason in it and having no hope, save that you might win

the despot's favor, and secure his rewards. And thus it became a yoke of bondage and serfdom; not because of its own bright nature, but because of the corruption of the nature out of which it had to bring forth its fruits. Let us examine more closely the popular idea as to the excessive severity and formality of the (Jewish) law. To a transgressor who had not in him the living principle of obedience, it was, beyond doubt, fearfully formal and stern. So is our statute book to a felon, while on you and me it sits as lightly as air. We are quietly, without being conscious of it, living out a whole statute-book every day. If you talk of formality and severity, consult the statutebook of the heavens; conceive the order of the procession of the planets written out on tables-each movement confined to the breadth of a hair. There is form sublime in its formality; severity, awful in its righteousness and constancy. Equally overwhelming, as we have already hinted, would be the revelation of the laws of the bodily, domestic, or political life in the form of a statute-book. We should start with horror to find what formalists we are in our freedom; how prescribed are the motions of the most complete and royal faculties of the sense and soul. In fact, to find the law is to find freedom. A flower ordained to the sunlight is a serf in the darkness; a soul ordained to holiness is a slave in sin! Outlaws are ever outcasts;-out of law, out of fellowship, order, happiness, as long as the outlawry lasts. St. James speaks of the perfect law of liberty. Liberty is perfect, in perfect obedience to perfect law. The powers are free, and have full play when they find their full expression and action in harmony with the mind of him who fashioned them, and vouched them to a particular use.From "The Exodus of the Soul." (To be continued.)

We have glanced at Job in his prosperity, when the candle of the Lord shone upon or over his head, and when "the secret of God was upon his tabernacle."

Yes, he not only enjoyed vast possessions and many home-comforts, but was

held in the highest social esteem, and as a great, generous prince, a carefully exact and impartial judge and wise counsellor, received the profoundest reverence, while, as a sympathizing, steady friend, he was regarded with fond affection. He was one

of God's nobility, most richly endowed with everything tending to make life desirable, and crowned with that true godliness which sanctified the whole.

It is well for us to get as close a view of the high and noble estate and position of this distinguished witness for God as possible, that we may somewhat estimate the cunning, malignant means taken by his enemy to lay him low and bring him to curse God-a purpose unlimited in wicked malice, but restrained-hedged in by the constant care of his Almighty, living Redeemer; and the only effect of which was to sound a loud assurance throughout all ages, that "he who dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.'

To understand Job's allusion to the candle, or rather lamp, of God shining on his head (xxix.), we should remember that it is customary in the East to have a light all night in every occupied room; this is indeed considered essential; and thus the destruction of the ungodly is betokened in the saying, "The candle of the wicked shall be put out." (Chap. xviii. 5, 6; Jer. xxv. 10.)

Lanterns are hung up over the couches of persons of rank, which, literally, cause the light to shine on or over their heads. The custom, no doubt, originated in unsettled times, when those who "love darkness" chose the night for evil deeds of violence and robbery, and from a superstitious dread of unseen and wicked spirits, who were supposed to be kept away by the lights.

Thus David employs the figure to denote the safety of those whom the Lord keeps: "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?'

How delightful to be delivered from the fear of evil-to know we have his presence to whom "the night shineth as the day," and who is "as a wall of fire round about,' so are we alike safe at home, or on the most dangerous journey!

"When by his light I walked through darkness." So torches or cressets are carried aloft in the night-marches of caravans and before distinguished travellers.

Then Job alludes to the intimate friendship he enjoyed with the Lord (xxix. 4), and his secret was with (or in) his tabernacle. Kitto says,

"The word rendered 'secret' means a couch or cushion upon which one reclines, and also a divan or circle of friends sitting together in consultation. The idea intended to be expressed is, therefore, pro

bably that God came, as it were, to his abode as a friend, and admitted him to the secrecy of his friendship, and to an acquaintance with his plans. This idea is continually presented to us by the sacred writers. Thus the Psalmist expresses the Lord's friendship towards his people by the phrase, The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him, and he will show them his covenant.' So likewise in the patriarchal history, we find the Lord's remarkable question, Shall I hide from Abraham the thing which I do?'"'

In

But just glance at Job's adversity. what did this consist? In the reversal of all that had blessed, cheered, and dignified his former days; for it would appear that step by step his malignant foe assailed every part of his well-being, and, by special permission for a time, dried up the source of each: his possessions, even the whole-his children, every one-his body throughout, "from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot"-and then his character and consequently the friendship of his real friends all failed, until love of life itself yielded to loathing, and amazing patience and resignation to petulance and wonder. But in all this, if we look aright, we shall see the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy." (James v. ii.)

Let us, for the sake of illustration, look at one part of his deep trials-his bodily sufferings. Dr. Kitto says:

"The opinion that Job's disease was the black leprosy, is of most ancient date. It is founded on the indications which the book contains, and which are observed to answer to this disease. These indications are afforded in the fact of his skin being so covered from head to foot that he took a potsherd to scrape himself; in its being covered with putrefactions and crusts of earth, and being at one time stiff and hard, while in another it cracked and discharged a fluid (vii. 5); in the offensive breath which drove away the kindness of his attendants (xix. 17); in the restless nights, which were either sleepless or scared with frightful dreams (vii. 13 14, XXX. 17); in general emaciation of the body (xvi. 8); and in so intense a loathing of the burden of life, that strangling or death were preferable to it (vii. 15)."

A learned physician thus describes this fearful disease,

Elephantiasis first of all makes its appearance by spots of a reddish, yellowish, or livid hue, irregularly disseminated over the skin, and slightly raised above

the surface. The spots are glossy, and appear oily, as if they were covered with varnish. After they have remained in this way for a longer or a shorter time, they are succeeded by an eruption of tubercles. These are soft, roundish tumours, varying in size from that of a pea to that of an olive, and of a reddish or livid colour. They are principally developed in the face and ears, but in the course of years extend over the whole body. The face becomes frightfully deformed; the forehead is traversed with deep lines, and covered with numerous tubercles; the eyebrows become bald, swelled, furrowed by oblique lines, and covered with nipplelike elevations; the eyelashes fall out, and the eyes assume a fixed and staring look; the lips are enormously thickened and shining; the beard falls out; the chin and ears are enlarged and beset with tubercles; the lobe and alæ of the nose are frightfully enlarged and deformed; the nostrils are irregularly dilated, internally constricted and excoriated; the voice is hoarse and nasal; and the breath intolerably foetid. After some time, generally after some years, many of the tubercles ulcerate, and the matter which exudes from them dries to crusts of a brownish or blackish colour; but this process seldom terminates in cicatrization. The extremities are affected in the same way as the face. The hollow of the foot is swelled out, so that

the sole becomes flat; the sensibility of the skin is greatly impaired, and in the hands and feet often entirely lost; the joints of the toes ulcerate and fall off, one after the other; insupportable foetor exhales from the whole body. The patient's general health is not affected for a considerable time, and his sufferings are not always of the same intensity as his external deformity. Often, however, his nights are sleepless, or disturbed by frightful dreams; he becomes morose and melancholy; he shuns the sight of the healthy, because he feels what an object of disgust he is to them, and life becomes a loathsome burden to him; or else he falls into a state of apathy, and after many years of such an existence he sinks either from exhaustion or from the supervention of internal disease."

"Oh, with what infernal malice and skill was such a disease selected, by one who well knew the influence of the body upon the mind. It was chosen as the fittest to bring the patriarch into that state of mind which Satan's purposes, or rather his argument, required; and if the reader studies the utterances of Job attentively, he will be enabled, without difficulty, to trace the progressive influence of the disease upon his mind, and to measure the degrees by which his soul succumbed to its power."-Daily Bible Illustrations.

S. K. B.

DEAR SIRS,

In attempting a brief reply to the queries on preaching from "A Sincere Doubter," permit me to premise a few observations on the "non-essential" clause to which he refers. Let it be affirmed that to preach the gospel, to administer the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's supper, to maintain the order and discipline of the Church, &c., are, in relation to their several ends, essential; yet it may be true that many things pertaining to the style, order, and detail of carrying out these functions, may be justly termed “nonessential." In visiting different churches, we find a variety of modes and arrangement in regard to the number and times of services on the Lord's-day, the order

of things in administering the ordinances, the method of admitting members, &c., but who dares to say which of these several modes is the essential one? Where the scripture teaching is explicit there is no room for doubt, or warrant for alteration; but in other cases there is room for the exercise of christian liberty. To take shelter under the non-essential clause in cases where we have an express command, and an undoubtedly applicable example from Christ or his apostles, is to confound things which differ, and to deem those things to be non-essential which are otherwise. It would be, in effect, to deny the supremacy of Christ in the government of His Church. But who shall speak with the authority of law on details re