same time in which this Epistle to Timothy was written. He suffered also a violent death under the same Roman Emperor with Saint Paul. In the writings of the philosopher are many beautiful passages directed against the vice we have been considering, and no one ever inveighed more pointedly against the luxurious indulgences to which riches are applied. Yet Seneca, first the disciple of the abstinent school of Pythagoras, and afterwards of the self-denying sect of the Stoics, made himself, by his inordinate desire of amassing wealth, the richest man in Rome, and by his passion for splendor the most magnificent,

This inconsistency of profession with practice, at once illustrates the exact difference between speculation and conviction, conceit and truth; and serves, without any other arguments, which, however, are not wanting, to demonstrate the real character of Seneca. Though

acquainted

acquainted probably with the religion of Jesus Christ, and not improbably with our apostle himself, from his near connection with Gallio, one of Paul's judges, yet he can never be considered as its convert and trying them by the testimony of their lives, we are obliged to conclude of these two martyred moralists, that Paul lived a Christian, and Seneca died a Heathen.

J

CHAP. XV.

ON THE GENIUS OF CHRISTIANITY, AS SEEN IN SAINT PAUL.

AD a sinful human being, ignorant

HAD

of Christianity, labouring under the convictions of a troubled conscience, and dreading the retribution which that conscience told him his offences merited, had such a being, so circumstanced, been called upon to devise the means of pardon and acceptance from an offended Creator, how eagerly, in the hope of relieving his tormented spirit, would he have put his imagination to the stretch! How busily would he have sharpened his invention, to suggest something difficult, something terrible, something impossible; something that should have exhausted

hausted all human means, that should put nature to the rack, penances, tortures, sacrifices all Lebanon for a burnt-offering, thousands of rams for an atonement, rivers of oil for an oblation; still concluding that he must perform the act with his own hands, still expecting that himself must be the agent of his own deliverance.

But when a full offer of peace, of pardon, of reconciliation, comes from the offended party, comes voluntarily, comes gratuitously, comes, not with the thunders of the burning mount, but in the still small voice of benignity and love, free love, benignity as unsought as unmerited; when the trembling penitent is assured, in the cheering words of our apostle, that he shall be "justified freely "through the redemption that is in "Christ Jesus," when he is assured that all that is demanded on his part of the compact is, to accept the propitiation made

G 3

made for his sins, through the forbearance and tender mercy of God; when he hears that to him, and not to him only, but, to all who will accept it on the offered terms, of faith and repentance, this previously inconceivable proposal is made;

who would doubt that, overwhelmed with joy and gratitude at the report of a world redeemed, he would eagerly fly to lay hold on an offer, not only beyond his hope or expectation, but beyond his possibility of conception ?

Yet is not the fact too often directly the reverse? His pride had suggested to him, that if some difficult thing were to be done, he should have done it himself, if something were to be suffered in the way of hardship and austerity, or something achieved in the way of glorious enterprise; something that should be splendid in the act, which should bring renown to the doer, then his na

tural