would shudder at the blasphemy of such interrogations, to whom the subject may yet be a source of perplexity, it cannot be unwise, to attempt, at least, the removal of these and similar difficulties. The desire of elucidation does not always argue a captious doubt: nor the endeavour to supply it, a presumptuous dogmatism. We are only at liberty to leave objections unanswered, or reject the scruples of reasonable enquirers, when the best exercise of reason can suggest no reply; and then it is our duty modestly to retire, and await the revealments of another day.

With regard to the subject under discussion, there are some things we are warranted confidently to affirm, and some we may venture diffidently to suggest. We may affirm without hesitation, that the matters in question were not inserted for an indifferent, an unwise, or an ungracious purpose-that they were not introduced to mislead our judgment, nor to offer violence to our religious faith-that they were not intended to derogate from the honor, the purity, and the justice of God-that they were not meant to render us careless about the commission of sin-or to deaden our perceptions of its guilt and danger. These assertions alone, deducible from the tenor of the Sacred pages, are sufficient, with a devout and humble

mind, to deprive the subject of any painful obscurity-yet something further may yet be suggested, in order to its elucidation, that intelligence may assume the place of submission, and gratitude supervene on the removal of doubt.

The allusion already made to the moral lessons which may be inferred from the dispute between Paul and Barnabas, has anticipated a part of what might here be advanced. Other reasons remain to be urged, sufficient to vindicate the wisdom, and, possibly, to explain the design, in which the matter in dispute may have originated: such as, the importance of a faithful and impartial account to all the purposes of Scripture biography-the objections that would occur to the virulence of the sceptic, and the despair that must arise in the conscience of the sincere, if the characters of holy men had been otherwise represented; and handed down in a state of unattainable perfection, without any shadow of human infirmity, or the occasional deformities of actual guilt. The force of these considerations might be considerably expanded, were not the necessity for conciseness imperative. But a further reason remains, of such clearness and cogency, that it would seem alone decisive of the subject.

The Christian dispensation is essentially a

plan for the recovery of a lapsed and guilty race. It pre-supposes man in a state of rebellion, unable to make atonement for past offences, or to merit forgiveness by future obedience. It proposes conditions of a different nature from those implied by his original creation, and conformably with which he could no longer hope for favour or safety. It offers him both of these in virtue of a "new Covenant," which removes at once the insurmountable difficulties of the old, renders the honor of God and the happiness of man no longer incompatible, and admits the harmonious exertion of the Divine attributes in the final salvation of an apostate world.1

The writer will be pardoned for quoting here the following expressions of the excellent and "judicious Hooker:" "Doth it not follow, that all flesh must of necessity fall down and confess, We are not dust and ashes, but worse; our minds from the highest to the lowest are not right; if not right, then undoubtedly not capable of that blessedness which we naturally seek, but subject unto that which we most abhor, anguish, tribulation, death, woe, endless misery. Here cometh necessarily in a new way unto salvation, so that they which were in the other perverse, may in this be found straight and righteous. That the way of nature, this the way of Grace. The end of that way-salvation merited, pre-supposing the righteousness of man's works; their righteousness, a natural hability to do them; that hability, the goodness of God which created them in such perfection: But the end of this way, salvation bestowed upon men as a gift, pre-supposing, not their righteousness, but the forgiveness of their unrighteousness Justification: their justification, not their natural ability to do good, but their hearty sorrow for their not doing, and their unfeigned belief in

This stupendous scheme, so stated in the Holy Scriptures, that without its admission they present a mass of doctrines, contradictory amongst themselves, and wholly inapplicable to the circumstances of those to whom they are addressed-so wonderfully conducive to the declared objects of Revelation-so full of motives to cheerful obedience so rich in comfort under conscious inabilities; is yet so much above the reach of human invention, so strange to the perceptions of natural reason, so evidently a new and substituted system, that nothing seems attended with greater difficulty than to overcome the prejudices of the law of nature; and induce men, even when convicted of guilt and imperfection, to look out of themselves for the satisfaction of that guilt, and to accept freely and in good faith, the merits of that vicarious perfection, which has been so freely and explicitly offered them. The very phenomena attendant on the promulgation of this systemits perversion by the profane to the excuse of licentiousness-its rejection by the proud and self-righteous-its adulteration by the philosoHim, for whose sake not-doers are accepted, which is their vocation; their vocation, the election of God, taking these out from the number of lost children: their election, a Mediator in whom to be elect: this mediation, inexplicable mercy; his mercy, their misery, for whom he vouchsafed to make himself a Mediator."-(From the "learned Sermon of the Nature of Pride.")

phizing-and its cautious, guarded, and sometimes jealous and timid exposition by the upright and sincere, are so many proofs, that it is in principle, as in date, a super-added system, applied to an incidental condition of the species, neither arising naturally from its original constitution, nor coalescing spontaneously with it when applied.

Yet the recognition of this covenant is the first step to our happiness, and every part of our progress is but a gradual completion of its terms. To refuse its adoption, is to oppose our own safety. To attempt its reconciliation with the exploded compact, is proportionably to neutralize, or wholly to destroy, the efficacy of its merciful and salutary influence. Every thing, therefore, which tends to its faithful acceptance, every thing which removes the obstacles to its fulfilment, or the occasions of its abuse, is subservient to a matter of incalculable importance.

It need scarcely then be added, that the records in question have an immediate tendency to this very end. The necessity for the admission of an imputed righteousness, in order to man's acquittal with a Holy God, is strikingly illustrated by these instances of depravity. The folly of reliance on our own merits is set forth in these specimens of human weakness. Pro