and aspiration like a marble dome with the dying sunset, let us turn to the untutored minds, and the foreheads "villainous low," as they have been called, of the Negroes of South-Africa. They come to ask for the Bible; they do not recollect, or have never known its name; but they say: "Give us the book with the beautiful words, God so loved the world." In the life of Perthes, the German bookseller, he observes, on the chapters of St. John's Gospel, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth, that they are enough to live by, and enough to die by. Few, however prejudiced against the politics and ecclesiastical views of Laud, can have read his most affecting speech upon the scaffold without sympathy and admiration. quaint applications of one verse in the eleventh chapter of St. John, may be worth recording:

gets that Juxon read the Twenty-seventh | " deep and dark sermons preached in the of St. Matthew, the second lesson for that Rolls Chapel," irradiated with thought day's service, to Charles, just before he passed to the scaffold at Whitehall? Let us imagine a very different scene and date -the orange groves and minarets of Shiraz, the city of the Rose. Henry Martyn, the English missionary, is there, with three Persians. It is the one spot of fairyland in that hard and self-denying life. Where the brook goes babbling over pebbles; where the grapes hang from the vines; where the passing breeze scatters a drift of snowy orange blossoms upon the rivulet; where the nightingale sings in the dewy coolness of the thicket; the little group is sitting in the Khan's garden. There one of them, Aga Baba, read this Twenty-seventh of St. Matthew. "The bed of roses beneath which we sat, and the notes of the nightingales warbling around us, were not so sweet to me," writes Martyn, "as this discourse of the Persian." The portion of the previous chapter, which describes the agony in the garden, nerved John Huss for his death; from the experience of his own struggle, he learned to understand that divine sorrow:

Or do we read that verse, which Luther has affectionately called the Bibel in kleinen, "God so loved the world:" it embraces the two opposite extremes of the human intellect. It has been stated that, in his last illness, Bishop Butler expressed some doubt how he should know that our Lord was a Saviour for him; and that on his chaplain quoting this verse, the Bishop said: "True; though I have read that Scripture a thousand times over, I never felt its virtue till this moment; and now I die happy."* Now from the majestic intellect and massive brow of the author of the "Analogy," and of those

*We perceive upon reference to the Bishop of Cork's "Life of Butler," that the verse, as given in a collection of anecdotes, illustrative of the Assembly's Catechism, and in the "Life of Mr. Venan," is not this, but "Him that cometh to thee I will in no wise cast out." We are unable to record our authority.

His

"Yea, but here is a great clamor that I would have brought in Popery. You know what the Pharisees said: If we let him alone, all men will believe in him, et venient Romani, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation.' Here was a causeless cry against Christ, that the Romans would come; and see how just the judgment was. They crucified Christ, for fear lest the Romans should come; and his death was it which brought in the Romans upon them - God punishing them with what they most feared. And I pray God this clamor of venient Romani (of which I have given no cause) help not to bring them in."

There are not many who can have escaped feeling how gracious and tender, how divine yet how English, is that word, Comforter, as the equivalent of the Paraclete in the latter part of St. John's Gospel. Yet most of us, perhaps, are not aware who it was to whom our language owed that glorious translation. Five hundred years has this word been passing from lip to lip, wherever English is spok en. It has been ascending in hymns and prayers, alike in the music of cathedrals and in the simplicity of family worship, by the giant flood of the Mississippi, in the plains of Australia, and beneath the palms of India. Who first employed the word that has sunk into so many hearts, and risen from so many lips? with bare feet and russet mantle - but A poor priest, that priest was John Wickliffe! As a pendant to this, we must express what

has occurred to us long since in connection with the Collect for the Twentysecond Sunday after Trinity. That collect has been traced up to the sacramentary of the Anglo-Saxon Church, by means of a MS. of the ninth or tenth century in the Bodleian library. What tender and homely beauty, breathing of the same. land which knows the blessed Spirit as the Comforter!" Familiam tuam, domino, custodi" "Keep thy household, the Church." Surely it must have owed its origin to England. It could not have been written in the passionate South, in an awful temple, among curling clouds of incense, with the crucifix looming through it, like a shattered tree through a mountain mist. It must have been suggested to some kindly, honest Anglo-Saxon. It breathes of the little old church, of the burly franklin and his honest wife, and the little village boys and girls. It is steeped in the light that falls upon the place, where

"The kneeling hamlet drains

The chalice of the grapes of God."

The church in it is not an awful, majestic queen, with purgatorial processions and heartless pageants. The honest Anglo-Saxon's nature thinks of her as the good, pious, kindly housewife.

would bear me witness I learned, without books, almost all Paul's Epistles; yea, and I ween all the canonical epistles, save only the Apocalypse; of which study, although in time a smell thereof, I trust, I shall carry with me great part did depart from me, yet the sweet into heaven."

The associations with particular texts in the Epistles are countless. We write down a few. In Henry VIII.'s reign there was a custom that the bishops, on New Year's Day, should bring his Highness a gift. On one occasion the right reverend fathers all came. It rained gold, silver, purses of money, rarities of all kinds. What dainty dish has honest Master Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Lincoln, brought to set before his sovereign? A New Testament, superbly bound-a brave gift for a king. But the book is wrapped up in a napkin, and round the napkin there is a legend in large letters. More honest than courtly is the scroll. It is the fourth verse of the thirteenth of Hebrews. The thirteenth of Romans recalls one of the most celebrated conversions by Scripture that of the great Augustine. His oscillations between Manicheism and youth, up to thirty-two, passed in strange truth, between grace and sin. Open his Confessions, and their sad penitential sorrow and ethereal sanctity give the lie to Byron's brutal taunt:

"This is life eternal." When, at the age of eighty, Fisher tottered forth to his "Those strange Confessions, execution upon Tower Hill, he held in his That make one almost envy his transgressions." hand a closed volume of the New Testament. He prayed that, as it had been his best comfort, so God would enable him his misery before the gaze of his soul. One day deep thought brought out all to open it where some text might speak to his soul the consolations which it shower of tears." He went out alone to "A great storm arose, and broke in a needed and this was the text. Or, do we want a memory to go with us all Tolle, lege; tolle, lege weep under a fig-tree, and a voice said, -a voice for through the epistles; the steps of a martyr which he could not account by any casual to sound in our ears, as we walk through occurrence. He took up his copy of the that spacious ground; a fragrance from Apostle, and read-"Let us walk honestthe living flowers in his garland to blow ly as in the day; not in rioting and drunabout our spirits? Let us stand for a kenness; not in chambering and wantonmoment among the colleges at Cambridge. ness; not in strife and envying. But put Let us go to that walk in the garden of ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make Pembroke College, and inquire its name not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts from one of the gownsmen "Ridley's thereof." "No need or wish," he adds, Walk." And now let us listen to a few sentences from the martyr's exquisite farewell:

"Farewell, Pembroke Hall, of late mine own college. Thou wast ever named to be a great setter forth of God's Word. In thy orchards, the walls, butts, and trees, if they could speak,

"to read further. Immediately at the close of the sentence, a light of security was poured into my heart, and all shadows of doubt fled away." Now Augustine was the chief evangelical element in medieval theology, so that some have almost reckoned him for one of the two

In the first chapter of the Epistle to the Colossians there is a passage-"Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for his body's sake, which is the Church "-a text which, per

sackcloth witnesses. He gave an impulse ] tician observed of Scaliger, that he had to Luther. Calvin's whole mind was col- been deceived in him, for that he had exored by his. The ripples which spread pected a learned man, but that he had from his writings agitated the stream of found a man who was ignorant of nothing, thought round Pascal, Quesnel, and Fen- without a whit of pedantry or academic elon. Even yet there is a Jansenist, or dustiness about him. Let us draw near in Augustinian, Archbishop of Utrecht and reverential silence, and hear what the dyBishop of Ypres, who modifies Romanism ing scholar has to say in those awful moby much Augustinian evangelicalism. ments, when earthly learning fades away, That verse in the fourteenth of Romans like a mist, in the severe light of eternity. "The kingdom of God is not meat and "I have a hope, greater even than my drink; but righteousness, and peace, and countless sins, reposed upon Him who joy in the Holy Ghost "brings White- knew no sin, whom God hath made to be field into view. It was his text in the sin for us." churchyard of the High Church of Glasgow, in 1741, when he closed his sermon to those vast throngs by the memorable words-"Now, when the Sabbath is over, and the evening is drawing near, methinks the very sight is awful. I could almost weep over ye, as our Lord did over Jeru-haps, only occurs to us in connection with salem, to think in how short a time every soul of you must die." Pass on to the text in the fourth chapter of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians "He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin." Joseph Justus Scaliger was dying at Leyden. There he sat in his chamber, cowering over the fire; his illustrious friends and intimates were away, De Thou, Bousa, Casaubon; only Daniel Heinsius was with him to the last gasp. Tier upon tier rose his books, not so remarkable for their number as for their almost priceless value, partly collected by himself, partly the gifts of all the scholars in Europe to the "Phoebus of the learned," "the allaccomplished," "the dictator of letters." His was a genius, grand indeed, and capacious, and diffused over the whole circle of the arts. It has been said by one well qualified to judge, that those who estimated him only by his writings, his "Eusebius," or his immortal work, the "Novum Organum" of chronology, did not know the twentieth part of his learning. He was familiar with so many languages, ancient and oriental, and so exactly, that had this been the sole employment of his life, it had alone been a prodigy. Besides the history of all ages, places, times, and nations, he had a memory of wonderful promptitude; what he read once he had placed in such exquisite order in the gigantic catalogue of his knowledge, that he could find it at once, and answer any question arising from it, not only in his lecture-room, but among statesmen and ambassadors. A great poli

the controversy on works of supereroga tion. It is a flower which withers in the hot hand of controversy. Would we see it fresh and fragrant in the chamber of a dying saint, let us read the adieus to his friends and to the Church, of Adolphe Monod. There is a print in the little volume. A white pillow, and on it a head reposed with jet black hair, a fine brow, worn and pinched features, and a wasted hand. But we see not all. In that chamber are assembled thirty or forty, to whom, week by week, he addresses a few words. On the 4th of November, 1855, his subject is "the Pastor suffering for the good of the Church;" his text the passage we have named. Do we not read its meaning in the light of that sick room—

"Is it not true that my affliction has helped to call your thoughts to death, to eternity, to Gospel verities? Is it not true that in the fraternal love which I bear you, you have been pushed, as it were, to prayer? I feel that the people of God lift me on their prayers; and I not good for you? Has not a spirit of peace am penetrated with joy and gratitude. Is it and serenity been spread over those who are with me? You see, then, how I find sweetness in the thought that my sufferings are for you; so that I may say, in the spirit of St. Paul: Í rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that my flesh, for his body's sake, which is the Church.""

which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in

Or, again, does it not give liveliness to our feelings, in regard to those glorious descriptions in the closing chapters of the

Revelation, when we think of M'Cheyne | the Holy Communion, almost admit of preaching on "the great white throne," being treated as a text from which to one fine night, by moonlight, to a vast consider the history of Christianity. Full throng near an old church; or of that as they are in themselves of "exceeding most affecting anecdote told of the late great love," they may remind the historvenerable Bishop Mant? When he was ian of blazing piles and bloody wars, of sitting in his room, weak and dying, his fierce controversy and party hatred, from son read to him those chapters: "Bring the thirteenth session of Trent, and the me my hat and stick," said the old man, Lutherans and Sacramentaries, down to feebly, "I want to go, I must go to that Denison and Ditcher. On reading the country;" or let us transport ourselves to glorious song of the Seraphim, in the text the death-bed of Robert Hall, and hear of Isaiah, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord him breathe out with his dying lips: of Hosts, the whole earth is full of his "Even so, come Lord Jesus.” glory," one is immediately apt to think of the Te Deum, which is, as it were, encrusted upon that verse. Often has the Te Deum been chanted on occasions that might make the angels weep. The massacre of St. Bartholomew is almost too obvious. Let us attempt another scene. At three in the afternoon of July the 15th, 1099, Godfrey stood on the walls of Jerusalem. A few hours after, and the sunset fell upon the minarets of the mosque of Omar. Then, bareheaded and barefooted, the Christian soldiers ascended the hill of Calvary. A voice of priests chanting, rose upon the air; it vibrated through the few olives which yet remained in Gethsemane, where the Saviour had knelt; it fell softly upon the purple mount of Olivet-" Holy, Holy, Holy. Lord God of Sabaoth!" And yet superstition had never offered a bloodier hecatomb to Moloch or Baal, upon the Mount of Offense, or in the valley of Hinnom, than these men, in the insulted name of Christ, had just presented, on the very spot where he had moistened the ground with drops of agony, and poured out his blood for his enemies. They chanted over seventy thousand slaughtered Moslems, and a multitude of Jews, who had been burnt alive in their synagogue.

The associations, historical and biographical, connected with Scripture, would not be fairly handled, unless we confessed that there were others of a different and painful character connected with some of its texts. Scripture, like its divine subject, is appointed for the trial of the human spirit. "It is set for a sign, that the secrets of many hearts may be revealed." When we read that desolate passage in Job, where he exclaims, "Let the day perish wherein I was born-let that night be solitary," we may recollect how a great but bitter spirit turned to it. When Swift was in the height of his glory, courted by ministers, and fawned upon by peers; when he used to meet Lord Treasurer and Mr. Secretary at Lord Masham's; when he made a more conspicuous figure at the Thatched House than Escourt himself with the golden gridiron suspended from his neck; it is painful to see him retreating to his lodgings, and "lamenting his birth-day," as he termed it, by read ing over the third chapter of Job. When the traveler reads at St. Peter's at Rome, the inscription traced in colossal characters round the cupola, which overhangs the apostle's grave-"Tu es Petrus," he can not but think of the fabric which the craft of many bad men, and the superstition of many men who were not bad, have reared upon the one foundation. The word to Jeremiah, "See I have this day set thee over the kingdoms to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy," appears as the text of the famous bull by which Pope Paul III. put Henry VIII. under interdict and deposition that "most impudent brief," as Francis of France termed it.

These sadder recollections teach most instructive lessons-lessons of modesty, charity, and mutual tolerance-lessons of human imbecility, guided through centuries of storm and error, to a haven of tranquillity and truth. We must confine ourselves, however, to the lessons which may be derived from the other and happier side of the subject.

In the first place, then, we suggest that Texts misunderstood, have been the to trace and collate historical and biograplea of the mendicant orders, and intro-phical associations with passages of Scripduced "counsels of perfection." The ture, may be useful in exciting a fresher passages which contain the institution of interest both in the one and the other. It is

"And still the wonder grew, How one small head could carry all he knew."

No wonder at all, for the more we know the more we can know. Knowledge thus compacted is as different from loose pieces of information, as a well-packed carpet-bag from a plethoric and badly tied brown paper parcel. Let our readers try this string of association with the multifarious bits of ecclesiastical and biographical ana, which every educated man daily reads, and they will thank us for our hint.

a great point gained when we read any | tion. And, finally, all three, and all the thing with a purpose in view; it stimu- truths wrapped up in the untruth and lates the flagging attention, and gives the mysticism of heresy and philosophic theoeye an unwonted quickness. It is yet a sophy, melt into St. John, the apostle better thing when we can give unity to of love, and the representative of the scattered pieces of knowledge-when we Church's last stage. Is there a parallel can bind them into one bundle, and find lesson in the order of the Epistles? a "colligation for our conceptions." Ac- These were comparatively little studied cessions to information do not then bur- until the Reformation. In those of St. den the mind. On the contrary, they are Paul (including the Hebrews) we have more deeply rooted into its soil because the doctrine of justification by faith, and their relations are multiplied; each is a root the overthrow of that exaggerated systhat throws out a thousand tendrils, and tem of sacerdotalism which prevailed in both helps, and is helped by every other the Roman polity. Then, St. James might express a short oscillation towards the opposite side of the truth, as, for instance, in a large section of the English Church. St. Peter restores the balance, and, finally, in St. John, the two streams of thought once more coïncide, leading us to the same result as the Gospels. However this may be, without the free use of Scripture the Church freezes into a stiffened shape. There is a certain convent of Belem on the coast of Spain. It is a monument of the time when Spain was the Spain of Columbus. That convent has a strange chapel. It is a marble ship about to weigh anchor. Masts of marble serve for columns; ropes and cables of marble are quaintly wound about them. Not far off, the Atlantic breaks upon the coast, and the free winds shout forever across the waters. As well might one expect that marble ship to launch forth upon the great deep, as a church without the Scriptures to float upon the stream of time to the far-off island to which it is bound. Our able countryman, Lord Dufferin, describes Van Jayen, in Spitzbergen. It is like a river larger than the Thames, plunging down hundreds upon hundreds of feet; every wreath of spray, and tumbling wave frozen in a moment stone-stiff, rigid as iron, awful, everlasting death-in-life, staring up at the sun and the stars in their courses, and never meeting the Norland winds, and the washing waves, with the thunder-music of its waters. Such is the great stream of Christian life in the Eastern and Western Churches: so stiff, so rigid, so immovable, because their history and biography is not breathed upon by the living breath of the Bible.

Such a mode of looking at the Bible has a tendency to give us a blessed confidence in it. The word which converted Augustine and Rochester is still mighty as ever. The word which comforted martyrs in their agony; which has been healing, strength, and peace to the loftiest intellects and profoundest spirits of our race, remains, unexhausted, to us. They have leaned their giant weight upon it, and it has carried them bravely over the awful chasm between time and eternity, and their experience of its power to sustain increases our faith.

Thus, too, we learn the expansive power of Scripture. It is a striking thought that the very arrangement of the Gospels may be a prophecy. Thus, St. Matthew represents that stage of the Church when the Jewish element was the largest, and the great point was to show the fulfillment of prophecy in our Lord. St. Mark, who dwells so much upon the outward demeanor, upon the richly symbolical actions of the Redeemer, expresses that phase through which the mind of Christendom passed in the Middle Age. St. Luke, with his Pauline training, his parables of abounding grace, and his dwelling upon the Sacrificial work, stands for the outburst of evangelical truth at the Reforma

How much have we omitted!-for, first, the fairest pictures on the page are those of the Captain of our salvation. The Saviour's gentle face hangs over many a