violate the moral order and fitness of things essential to the existence in harmony and love of the intelligent universe, in one form or another, has the dominion over him, and he knows it. He needs deliverance from its guilt, pollution, and power. The Gospel is found to be exactly adapted to meet this want of man's moral nature. It has been tested by multitudes of all ranks and conditions in the different ages of the Church, and has proved to be eminently effective in promoting this end. That the perfect adaptation of the Christian religion to meet the moral and spiritual necessities of man's nature should ever have been called into question, is not easily accounted for except on the ground of its existing corruptions. It certainly could never have arisen from a candid contemplation of the nature and legitimate results of Christianity itself. It must, however, be obvious to every unbiassed mind that pure Christianity cannot, in reason, be held responsible for the intolerance, superstitions, and absurdities, arising from human corruptions of it. But much of the sceptical reasoning of the past as well as of the present century, is based on the preposterous assumption that the Christian religion is responsible for all the evils that have arisen from the false teachings and unholy practices of its professed adherents..

The tendency of the present time towards latitudinarianism, as distinguished from evangelicalism in religious belief, is so great, that every honest endeavour, judiciously put forth, to check its onward and mischievous march, will doubtless be hailed by every true Christian and every ardent lover of the pure and the true, as an effort in the right direction. Christians properly so called,

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however, except so far as they may be liable to be drawn away through temptation and the seductions incident to this probationary state, stand in no need of works of this nature; because, being true believers, they have, in the language of an inspired apostle, "the witness in themselves." They have an argument for the truth of Christianity Divinely implanted within, which, so long as it is properly guarded by habitual intercourse with God in prayer, and the faithful discharge of known duty, all the powers of earth and hell can neither gainsay nor remove. "The Spirit itself," the apostle tells us, beareth witness with our spirits that we are the children of God." Very many there are, therefore, who can say they know there is a supreme supernatural intelligence at work among There is with them an absolute certainty about it. They are certain of it from the conscious supernatural change which has been instantaneously effected in their moral and spiritual natures. They can say with John, "We know that we have passed from death unto life;" and again, "We know the things that are freely given to us of God by the Spirit which He hath given us; and because, as he further asserts, "Ye have an unction from the Holy One."

men.

Some there doubtless are among God's children who would hesitate to express themselves with so much assurance in relation to their conversion and adoption into His family. Their experience of the new birth has, perhaps, appeared to be more of a gradual work, under the comparatively insensible influence of grace from their childhood upwards. Or their experience, like, perhaps, that of the gentle Lydia of the Gospel, whose heart the Lord opened to receive the soul-quickening word, was

not of so marked a character as to justify such positiveness in reference to a felt supernatural power unmistakably at work upon their souls at the time of their conversion. They did not, as have very many who had previously been intensely exercised under the powerfully convicting influence of the Spirit of God, so suddenly and consciously emerge from a state of fearful darkness, into God's most marvellous light; and from a state of condemnation and impending wrath, to that of conscious forgiveness and justification, accompanied by powerfully and instantaneously inwrought feelings of the most endearing affection, filial love, and adoring gratitude. Such experiences are, however, of common occurrence; nor are they confined to times of general religious awakening, nor to any particular class of persons. But however more or less marked, or whatever the attending circumstances connected with this gracious work of the Spirit, all truly converted persons are conscious from time to time that they have " 'passed from death unto life," from a state of nature to grace, inasmuch as they feel the love of God to be sweetly shed abroad in their hearts, take a delight in the spiritual and holy exercises of the closet and the sanctuary, and hate and strive against everything unholy and sinful. But others there are who have not yet experienced this "adoption of children," and consequently have no such experimental knowledge of. Divine things. They are still enveloped in the darkness of nature's night, and cannot while in this state spiritually apprehend, nor have they by nature any disposition to apprehend the great and saving truths of the Gospel. And from this natural disrelish for the truly spiritual and holy it is, that scepticism as to the truth of the Bible

itself is found to prevail among all classes of society, and even in the midst of enlightened Christian communities. But the salvation of such as these is comprehended in the benign purposes of Jehovah, and it is mainly on their behalf, therefore, that the love and sympathies of Christian writers are enlisted, and find their development in the production of works written in reply to publications which, as the offspring of fallen, degenerate nature, are unhappily directed "against the Lord, and against His Anointed."

Among certain modern philosophers of the rationalistic school, it appears that the evangelical or Gospel plan of salvation, as taught by our Lord and His apostles, is henceforth to be regarded as having run its course and become obsolete. It has had, they say, "its day," has answered very well as a religion for the comparatively unenlightened ages of the past; but it is to be regarded. as quite unsuited to the refined literary tastes, and speculative habits of the progressive present. Dismantled and left quite bare of its old robes of Primitive purity, and clothed with a dress more in conformity with the fashionable tastes of a scientific age, it may still be permitted to have a name to live; but as to its existing in a state of old-fashioned orthodoxy, or Divine primitiveness and purity, it is out of the question-to the extreme intellectual sensitiveness of this advanced guard in the car of human progress, the idea seems altogether insufferable. Among the leaders in these schools of fashionable religious novelty, may be mentioned the names of Strauss, in Germany; Newman, in England; Parker, in America; and Renan, in France; all of whose deistical writings, with the exception of those of the last-named, were

brought under critical review in the Evangelical Alliance Prize Essay, entitled, "Infidelity: Its aspects, causes, and agencies;" by the Rev. T. Pearson. Other men of talent and learning in each of these and other countries, have been active coadjutors with these men in their efforts to dispossess the religion of the Gospel of its Divine authority, and with it, of all its intrinsic excellency and power; but their efforts, however apparently successful for a time in furthering the cause of error and sin, must, since they are directed against the Divinity and heaven-sustained purity of God's holy religion, necessarily be futile and without permanent results. Man may propose, but God will dispose. Such men may propose to overthrow the religion of the Bible, of Christ, and of God; but Omnipotence will prove more than a match for them. The shafts which they aim at the vitals, the religious life of the Church, God, through the instrumentality of His servants, shall hurl back upon themselves with redoubled force, as it ever has been, to their utter confusion and dismay.

These gentlemen have, it appears, no particular objection to the perpetuated existence of a nominal Christianity, provided it be divested of its authoritative ordinances, sacraments, and doctrinal essentials. It may exist, but it must be as a leafless, limbless trunk, and divested of even its life-giving roots. It may still be suffered to have a place among men, but it must be as a disfigured, unauthoritative, inanimate statue, subject always for its continued sustentation in any form to the capricious will of its originator-man. But is it nothing, we might ask those philosophic gentlemen, in proof of its Divine origin, and consequent perfect adaptation to the nature