their impression of the importance of the exercises of the school from the conduct of the teachers; remember that they will not distinguish the subject of your conversation, whether theological and ecclesiastical, or secular and trifling. All they see is, that their teachers like to have a pleasant talk together, as long as they can, before they are obliged to take their seats with them. Think, also, how often such conversations are mingled with smiles and laughter, and how this appearance will contrast with the devotional employments and scriptural lessons that are to follow. Reflect how much such conversation, even for a few minutes, is suited to disengage the thoughts of the teacher from the practical instructions he has to administer to the class. And if you should require any other motive, to persuade you to avoid such interruptions, you may say to yourself, The Sabbath is no time for gossip; the hour of Sabbath. school is short enough for its purposes, without wasting any of its minutes; these children require some preparation of mind for the prayer, the hymn, and the lesson, or they will think the whole a ceremony.'

In a word, as soon as you enter the school-room, go directly to your own proper seat. If none of your pupils have arrived, you will lose nothing by giving the lesson one more look. If there should be one, or two, or more, it is a precious opportunity to drop the kind inquiry, to direct the thoughts to the object of instruction, to prepare the mind for the occupations of the school, and to give a Sabbath direction to the thoughts. This is the time for familiar, friendly intercourse with the class individually. Now you may learn more of the character of each boy than you will be able to get out of him when all are assembled, and the routine of the lesson is in progress. He will see that you take a real interest in him, that you are willing to talk with him, and teach him even out of the prescribed hours. You cannot want occupation for this extra time. If you have nothing special in the way of personal instruction or inquiry, you may take this interval to communicate some interesting fact which has come to your knowledge, or to converse on the library books they have been reading, and discover what impressions they have made. Indeed, the man must be dull and unobserving who can find nothing useful to talk about for a few minutes with a child or youth.

I would add, let the same devotedness mark your conduct whilst in the school. Keep up your interest in the lesson, and let not your manner indicate weariness or a loss of interest. Do not leave your seat. You sit much longer at your business during the week without complaint. If you get through the lesson before the school is dismissed, fill up the time with additional comments, and practical improvement. You need not lose a moment. Stay by your class until the school is closed, and then let them not see in your behaviour or conversation any symptom of joy at your release from a task, or anything inconsistent with the solemn instructions and admonitions that have been occupying their attention. Very truly your friend.

CHRISTIAN TRUTHS.

From Taylor's Spiritual Christianity.

WE name theu, as peculiar to spiritual Christianity, those truths which the human mind had never conceived of until the Gospel and its precursive types had appeared-those truths which, although they lie broadly on the surface of the apostolic writings, so many learned interpreters have endeavoured by all means, and with indefatigable industry, to dispel from the Christian system, those truths which the pride of the heart most resents, but in which the contrite spirit finds its peace.

First in systematic order, as well as in magnitude, is the doctrine of the Propitiation, effected by the Son of God-so held clear of admixture and evasions, as to sustain, in its bright integrity, the consequent doctrine of THE FULL AND ABSOLUTE RESTORATION OF GUILTY MAN TO THE FAVOUR OF GOD, on his acceptance of this method of mercy; or as it is technically phrased, "JUSTIFICATION THROUGH FAITH." A doctrine this, which, in a peculiar manner, refuses to be tampered with, or compromised; and which will hold its own place, or none. It challenges for itself, not only a broad basis, on which it may rest alone; but a broad border, upon which nothing that is human may trespass.

This doctrine when unadulterate, not only animates orthodoxy, but shows us why it was necessary to lay open the mystery of the divine nature, so far as it is laid open in scriptural trinitarian doctrine; for we could not have learned the method of salvation, without first learning, that He who "bore our sins," was indeed able to bear them, and was, in himself, "mighty to save.'

Whatever belongs to the divine nature must be incomprehensible by the human mind; and therefore-the incarnation is incomprehensible; and therefore the atonement involves a mystery incomprehensible; but not so the consequent doctrine of justification through faith. This doctrine turns upon the well-understood relations of a forensic substitution; and as to transactions of this order, they are among the clearest of any with which we have to do, as the subjects of law and government.

Yet simple as it is in itself, the doctrine of justification through the intervention of our legal sponsor, does, as we fully admit, rest upon a supposition so stupendous, that we are fain to recoil, and to ask, can such things be true?"

and

Is it true indeed, that the Eternal Word was "made flesh; that, as man, he put himself in the place of the guilty? Look abroad upon the wide field of nature, and then come home, and calmly consider what it is you imply when you speak of being "justified through faith in Christ; " of whom you say, that he is equal with God, and that he " upholdeth all things by the word of his power ? "

It is, we grant it, a spectacle of wonders which the Scriptures open before us on this ground; but are these wonders of such a kind that we may readily attribute them to the inventive faculty of minds like our own? Let us however trace with care the steps by which we

have come into the prospects of mysteries such as these :—just as a traveller looks anew to his footing when, having reached a mountain summit, through mists, which the morning breeze suddenly rolls away, he beholds with amazement kingdoms outstretched beneath his feet.

In bringing the mind distinctly to contemplate the scriptural doctrine of the atonement, effected by the death of Christ, we feel ourselves to have reached an elevation higher than the highest of the speculations of man.-We are compelled to confess ourselves in the presence of things divine and eternal.

In the justification of man through the mediation of Christ, man individually, as guilty, and his divine Sponsor, personally competent to take upon himself such a part, stand forward in the court of heaven; there to be severally dealt with as the honour of law shall demand; and if the representative of the guilty be indeed thus qualified, in the eye of the law, and if the guilty, on his part, freely accept this mode of satisfaction, then, when the one recedes from the position of danger, and the other steps into it, Justice having already admitted both the competency of the substitute, and the sufficiency of the substitution, is itself silent.

Such a transaction does indeed originate in grace or favour; but yet if it satisfy law, it can be open to no species of after interference. Now in the method of justification through faith, God himself solemnly proclaims that the rectitude of his government is not violated, nor the sanctity of his law compromised. It is He who declares that, in this method, he "may be just while justifying the ungodly." After such a proclamation from heaven has been made, "who is he that condemneth? It is God that justifieth!"

A sacred doctrine this! -not to be tampered with; and most honoured, assuredly, when admitted with a simple-hearted and joyful gratitude! If it be asked, Is it a truth?' in reply, besides citing the apostolical authorities, which are most explicit, we might well ask-Whence such a doctrine might proceed, if not from God? Which of the creations of the human mind does it resemble? Whether we regard that aspect of it in which it is thoroughly intelligible; or that in which it presents an inscrutable mystery, it stands equally remote from the customary style of human speculations; besides that it contravenes the pride and prejudices of the heart. Clear and bright as noon is this truth: vast and deep as infinity.

Is redemption a mystery? but let us well consider the invisible wonders that are more than dimly indicated-by the vast range, the depth, intensity, and force of the feelings proper to an unschooled conscience. If opinions, or if creeds,' may be factitious, affections are not so. How absurd the supposition that they can be! Take then a sensible and unsophisticated mind; and only adapting your style to its style-to its acquired medium of thought, may you not at once, and with ease, confer with it on the entire range of ethical questions? will it not respond and consent, while you reason concerning "righteousness, temperance and judgment to come"-while you speak of duty to man, and of duty to God, and while you bring the moral sense into contact with eternal truth and virtue.

The moral system then, and the religious position of man as related

to God is a fact, not a theory. How should you be able to awaken, in a sensitive unsophisticated bosom, and by the magic of a single word, the pungent sense of shame and demerit or the glow of virtuous sympathy, if the Creator had not, by his own endowments, made man, so far, a partaker of his own nature? How could you excite, within a guileless, and yet not guiltless bosom, the anguish of compunction; how heave it with the swellings of repentance, if the waters there were not deep? They are deep, and the agitations of that bosom-its ebbings and flowings of love, fear, resentment, gratitude, are but waves breaking upon the shore of an ocean'; and the sounds they bring to an attentive ear are the murmurs of the deep; even the vast profound of the moral universe!

We boldly say then, that the incontestible facts of the relationship between man individually, and the eternal God, a relationship at once of community of moral nature, and of forensic dependence, if duly considered, preclude every objection to which the scheme of redemption might seem liable, as if it involved more than can be granted to be possible. Such objections are, we say, precluded, inasmuch as they are anticipated by a mystery as vast, and yet not to be denied.

But we suppose the scriptural doctrine of human salvation effected by the propitiatory sufferings of the Son of God to be assented to. By what rule then do we discriminate between a cold orthodoxy in respect to it and an evangelic faith? Our rule must in this instance be an experimental, rather than an abstract one: a rule not so much polemical as practical.

It seems reasonable to affirm, that, if the apostolic doctrine of justification through faith, be clearly held and cordially admitted, it will occupy the foremost place in our regards; for it is the ground of all our hopes, and the relief of every fear it is the luminous centre of all religious truth. It is the sun in our heavens; it is the source of light, and the source of vital warmth. We do not therefore hesitate to affirm that it is scripturally held only by those who do assign to it this prominent position, who recur to it ever and again with delight, who never feel it to be an exhausted theme; who build their own hopes upon it firmly; who invite others to do the same with confidence; who neither distrust it in theory, nor dishonour it in practice; who enounce it freely and boldly; and of whose piety it is the spring and reason.

On the contrary, we cannot but impute a want of apostolic feeling, as well as a dimness of religious perception, to those, whatever articles may be expressed in their creed, who speak reluctantly on this great theme, or ambiguously, or in a tone of evasion; who now confess it, now deny it; and whose writings or discourses on the subject baffle the endeavours of the most candid to ascertain what it is they really believe.

And without a doubt, or a moment's hesitation, we charge those with disaffection towards this first principle of Apostolic Christianity, who would fain "reserve" it for the hearing of a few, and would put it, and keep it under their bushel. We utterly disallow, as spurious, the delicacy of those who profess that they cannot desecrate so sacred a truth as that of the Atonement, by proclaiming it in the hearing of the thoughtless multitude!

The great question now at issue in the Protestant church is not whether we shall restore or reject certain ancient superstitions, but whether we are to retain that Gospel, that bright apostolic truth, which those superstitions so early supplanted, and with which it never has for a moment consisted, and never will consist. The question on which, at this hour, the religious destinies of England turn, is not whether we shall re-establish, or shall repudiate, the " ROMISH," or any other doctrine," concerning purgatory, pardons, worshipping and adoration, as well of images as of relics, and also invocation of saints; those fond things vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the word of God." THIS IS NOT THE QUESTION; but whether "the righteousness of God through faith," shall stand or fall among us, and whether the Protestant Church itself shall continue to be a witness for God, or shall be rejected as apostate. If the distinctly pronounced doctrine of justification through faith be indeed apostolic, can the bold restorers of the base superstitions of the fourth century make out their title to the honours of Apostolicity? How can we grant it them, or how refuse to assign it to those who having clearly read this apostolic truth in the apostolic writings, cordially entertain it, and convincingly teach it, and who honour it in their lives, and whose orders are authenticated by the Holy Spirit, in "giving efficacy to the word of his grace?"

LUTHER'S PRAYER.

ON the 17th of April, 1521, the marshall of the empire, Ulric Papenheim, cited Luther to appear in the afternoon in the presence of Charles V. and the diet at Worms. He was in deep exercise of mind. God's face seemed to be veiled ! His faith forsook him! His enemies seemed to multiply before him, and his imagination was overcome by the aspect of his dangers. In that hour of bitter trial, he threw himself with his face upon the earth, and thus uttered his broken cries

O God, Almighty God everlasting ! How dreadful is this world! Behold how its mouth opens to swallow me up, and how small is my faith in Thee! O! the weakness of the flesh and the power of Satan ! If I am dependent upon any strength of this world, all is over! The knell is struck-sentence is gone forth! O thou, my God, help me against all the wisdom of this world. Do this, I beseech thee! Thou shouldst do it by thine own mighty power. The work is not mine, but thine. I have nothing to contend for with these great men of the world! I would gladly pass my days in peace. The cause is thine-and it is righteous and everlasting. O Lord, help me! O faithful and unchangeable God! I lean not upon man. It were vain! Whatever is of man is tottering. Whatever proceeds from him must fail. My God! dost thou not hear? Art thou no longer living? Thou canst not die. Thou dost but hide thyself. Thou hast chosen me for this work. I know it! Therefore, O God, accomplish thine own will! Forsake me not, for the sake