AND what shall make it happy? What is that condition that shall make the year 1858 the happiest year we have ever As a 66 passed? new year's" welcome, we beg to offer a few plain thoughts on the elements of that condition that shall make it truly "a happy new year."

I. If we are in a state of pardon, it will be a happy new year. There is no happiness upon earth to be compared to that of a pardoned state.

"If sin be pardoned I'm secure,

Death hath no sting beside." To a pardoned sinner, the thunders of a broken law, the afflictions of time, and the solemnities of eternity can convey no terror, and threaten no alarm. The past, black as it may have been with sin, is remedied by pardon; and the future, though arrayed in all the awful majesty of inexorable justice, is deprived of dread by the removal of sin. He who enjoys this blessing of God's everlasting love, can look back with gratitude and forward with joy, for both law and gospel unite to assure him, that where sin is removed by pardon, there is now no condemnation,' and there can be no future curse. Such a man needs not wealth, or worldly honour, or "the pleasures of sin" to make him happy. Blessed with pardon, he looks up to heaven and can hear the sweet

VOL. XV.-NO. CLXIX.

and matchless assurance addressed to him, "All are your's, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's."

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II. If we walk with God" in daily communion, it will be a happy new year. "Heaven begins below" where the soul lives in daily communion with God; and "a happy new year" indeed will that be which brings us into a closer communion with our Father in heaven. It is no vain stretch of the imagination to suppose that, when "Enoch walked with God," that holy man and distinguished saint passed no day without the most intimate communion with his Maker. His heavenly Friend, though invisible, was ever at his side; and as converse flows between earthly companions when they travel by the way, so that eminent patriarch "walked with God" in holy communion about spiritual and everlasting things. And how unutterably sweet will such communion be to the saint of God upon the earth, when he converses with the Infinite Good, and brings his own poverty, weakness, and corruption, to the All-supplying Fountain of grace, strength, and holiness. The very want of the one party invites the approach of the greater with a boundless supply; and when the saint, "with groanings which cannot be uttered," opens his heart to his Divine Father, it is that he may be

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"filled with all the fulness o God." And the year that brings its round of days, where each shall witness the spontaneous flowing of the believer's communion with God, will be to him, in the highest and holiest degree, a happy new year.

III. If our union with Christ, and confiding trust in his glorious work, are clear and undoubted, it will be a happy new

year.

Christ is "the life;" hence the true believer's life is "hid with Christ in God," and can be known only to the man who is united to the Son of God. Apart from him, the soul of man is "dead in trespasses and sins." It has no more acquaintance with "life" than a corpse has with the bustle of living society. But what is the principle of union? It is faith, living faith in the Saviour, as one from whom all Divine life proceeds, and without whom all is dead, spiritually, morally, and irrecoverably dead. If, then, this union with the source of life is ascertained and demonstrated,-if we really feel that spiritually "we live, and move, and have our being" in Christ, then all is right for time and eternity. Our hope in the great future, and our exertions, activity, and success in the present world, will concentrate in Christ. He will be our "all and in all." Without him we shall conceive nothing, attempt nothing, and "do nothing" and, with this conviction upon us, we shall gladly admit that a crucified Redeemer is our life, our strength, our entire existence. Upon this conviction we shall unhesitatingly acknowledge that our justification, our righteousness by imputation, and our victory over Satan, self, and the world, can come alone from Christ, and that he is as vitally necessary to all the aspects of our spiritual life as breath is to our body, or as light is to the eye. If this conviction, this confidence in Christ, is but reduced to practice, then the present will be to us a happy new year.

IV. If we resign ourselves to the sole government of the Divine will and abandon our own, then it will be to us a happy

nations may spread perplexity and dismay abroad. Or the glow of health may be reduced, and consuming sickness, or death itself,appointed in its place; father, mother, sister, brother, son, or daughter, may be snatched from our sight, and removed for ever from our earthly embrace. Yet if, under all these changes, sorrows, and losses, we are prompted by a solid trust in God our Father to exclaim, with a throbbing heart and a plaintive gratitude, "Thy will be done," even then, in the darkest day, and amidst the deepest waters, it will be a happy new year. There will be seen the golden thread of heaven interweaving its quiet brilliance with the coarse and complicated web of human life; and as the eye of faith shall trace its silent working, there will appear in all its movements the hand of an Allwise, All-merciful God. Watching the motions of that wonder-working hand, the tried and tempted saint will enjoy in its fullest assurance the imperishable truth, that "all things work together for good to them that love God."

V. If we throw our whole energies into the cause of God and his truth, it will be to us a happy new year.

To be a cumberer of the ground,"-to pass year after year until life itself has ebbed away, and leave no trace behind of "the work of faith or the labour of love," is not only the most dangerous, but it is also the most miserable condition of man. The beautiful poet of our childhood has described with remarkable accuracy this unhappy character in the well-known lines:

"And Satan finds some mischief still

For idle hands to do."

If we are not co-operating with God in the kingdom of his dear Son, then we are the slaves, and servants, and agents, of the wicked one; and no condition of existence short of everlasting perdition can compare in point of misery with the one, where the sole activity is that of evil, and the only work done is that of darkness and sin. But if, inspired with heavenly grace, and prompted to copy Him "who went about doing good," we give ourselves to the cause of God, to his church, his truth, his interests, if, with revolving seasons, each can declare with honest sincerity, 'I have loved the habitation of thy house, and the place where thine honour

dwelleth;" and that in the family, the ministry, the Sabbath-school, or the world at large, we have earnestly aimed to "turn many unto righteousness;" then, in a very high degree the present will be a happy new year. The rolling months will necessarily bring returning labour, and the assured reward of that prayerful, dependent labour, will be the fulfilment of the promise that "in due season ye shall reap if ye faint not." To have been "workers together with God" in the gospel of Christ, to have wrestled by the power of the Holy Spirit, and to have given him "no rest" until "he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth," will be to have employed precious time to the most valuable of purposes, and to have secured, in the noblest of all employments, a happy new year.

VI. If by a diligent and prayerful use of the Lord's ordinances we are enabled to make our "calling and election sure," then it will be to us a happy new year.

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The path to heaven is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." Where there is no progress there can be no grace, for "the blade, the ear, and the full corn in the ear" are necessary to each other as advancing developments of Divine truth in the heart. Its early stages are in most instances weak and faint, but, progressing onwards, it reaches eventually "the full

assurance of faith." Then, the "calling and election" are sure. The vast interests of future glory are placed from that moment beyond all uncertainty in the convictions of the believer; and while faith maintains this Pisgah elevation, the heavenly Canaan is seen beyond the Jordan, stretching out in celestial beauty into the broad plains of everlasting delight. And should the present year but place our vision upon that favoured eminence, whence we may survey in the past the "waste, howling wilderness," through which we have been so safely conducted, and overlook in the forward distance the golden city with the saints and angels there, beholding their worship before the throne of God and the Lamb, and then be assured that, once the Jordan passed, we are at home for ever and ever, the year will be itself a foretaste of that glory, and prove the best we have known upon earth.

Let us, then, "gird up the loins of our mind," and labour after this sounder certainty concerning our everlasting future. With Paul, our true wisdom is to "press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Should this be our purpose in the grace of the Holy Spirit, then its attainment will stamp the present above all former ones, as a happy new year."

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S.

THE enquiry, be it observed, is not whether the personal dignity or authority of the speakers in both cases be equal; for concerning that we cannot have a moment's hesitation. Christ is exalted above all principality and power, and has a name which is above every name, whether in this world or in the world to come, so that before Him every knee must bow.

Nor does our present inquiry so much relate to the comparative clearness and fulness of disclosure in exhibiting the way of salvation; for in this it perhaps might be shown that the discoveries of grace made in the epistles are more full and clear even than those communicated by the Saviour during his personal ministry on earth. This, so far from derogating

from his superiority, manifests his condescension in a stronger and more wonderful manner. As the great Bridegroom of the church, he was willing to put distinguished honour upon her, giving honour to the weaker vessel. (1 Pet. iii. 7.) "Verily, verily, I say unto you," are the words of the Almighty Saviour, "He that believeth on me the works that I do shall he do also; and GREATER works than these shall he do." The Lord Jesus was willing that his apostles should, by the power of the Holy Ghost, convert more sinners in the space of a few days, than were probably converted during the whole of his perHe well knew sonal ministry on earth. that without him they could do nothing, and this he carefully taught them to re

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member. A few hours only before his | death he said, "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all | truth." (John xvi. 12,13.) Some of Christ's clearest and fullest disclosures of the way of salvation after his death and resurrection, when he opened the understandings of his disciples, are not recorded in the gospels at all; or, if mentioned, it is with the utmost brevity. Have these most important discoveries been lost to the world? Certainly not: they survive in the teaching of the apostles. After the work of redemption was finished, and Christ had ascended on high, and received gifts for men, and sent forth the plenitude of the Holy Spirit, the veil was not merely rent from the top to the bottom, but taken away, so that " we all with open face beholding as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, by the Spirit of the Lord." We assume it, therefore, as proved, that the fullest and clearest disclosures of grace and salvation were given forth after the departure of Christ's bodily presence from the earth.

There can be no degrees in real truth, in so far as truth itself is concerned: that is, one real truth is as true as another real truth. But if there can be no degrees in truth viewed abstractedly as truth, there may be assertions which in one sense are true, but not in another. There may be likewise indefinite degrees in the importance of several distinct truths, in their bearing on the interests of ourselves or of others. And all real truths may be expected to have authority in influencing the understanding, in proportion to their intrinsic importance and the amount of evidence by which they are proved. But the medium or channel by which any truth is conveyed, does not increase or diminish the importance or value of such truth, provided its accompanying evidence be conclusive, If, for example, information were brought to me that a wealthy individual had left me property to the amount of £1000 per annum; it could make no real difference in regard to the effect of that information on my mind, whether a nobleman or a pauper brought me the information, provided the evidence of the fact were unquestionable, and equal in both

cases,

The chief hazard in the communication of truth, is, lest it should be intermingled or encrusted with error or falsehood. Many tales have a basis of fact, but fiction has been wrought up into the superstructure; so that as a whole they can have no claim to belief. Many reports are partially true and partially false: and unless we are competent to separate the true from the false, our belief is properly held in abeyance.

One chief reason why Divine revelation claims our implicit regard and belief is, the ground that we have to conclude that it is free from falsehood and error. What we understand by inspiration* is, the superintendence of God exercised over the writers of the Holy Scriptures, to preserve them from false and erroneous statements. If such a superintendence was exercised, then we may without hesitation receive their writings as embodying pure truth.

Our argument is with those who admit the Divine authority of Christianity and the Divine authority of all the sayings of Christ recorded in the four gospels.

I. Let it then be remembered, THAT WE HAVE NO SAYINGS OF CHRIST WHICH WERE WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. All the words of the Saviour which have been handed down to us were written by his disciples, and the earliest date of any of the gospels, so far as can be ascertained, is not less than eight years after the ascension of the Saviour; while the last of the gospels-that of John, is supposed to have been written about sixty years after the facts and sayings which it records were done and spoken. As we have no proof that the disciples wrote down the sayings of Christ at the time in which they were uttered, or even took notes of them, we might justly hesitate concerning the correctness of their report after the lapse of

* This may be deemed too low a view of inspiration, but it is sufficient for our purpose at present. Mere "superintendence" is unquestionably "too low a view of inspiration." We should never omit from any statement of inspiration the important fact of an infallible communication; and this on the sufficiently solemn ground that, when deprived of this dignity, inspiration is reduced to the inferior office of simply "superin tending" something already known. But inspiration is confined almost exclusively to the communication of truth not known before; and this grave particular should always be remembered when treating upon the subject. With this explanation, the able reasoning in the above paper will be better understood.-ED.]