cutta, until it was attempted to be made use of in the way we have seen. But even waiving this objection, and treating of merits, this agreement could not be held binding, not only because there was no mutuality in it, it being a one-sided document, disabling in its character, and in derogation of the sovereign independence of one of the parties, but because it was also in direct violation of the provisions of the treaty of 1814, which had never been rescinded. We may even go farther, and insist that, admitting the existence and operativeness of the agreement of 1853, it did not meet the case in dispute, every one of its conditions being in favour of Persia, or at least against the pretensions of England, and upon the following grounds: Ist. Herat was being threatened, if not actually invaded, by a foreign power, and notably from the direction of Cabool, in addition to which the interposition of Persia had been invited by the actual Government of Herat. 2ndly. Persia was entitled to interfere in the affairs of Herat in support of conditions existing in the time of Yah Mahomed Khan, which conditions recognised the sovereignty of Persia with all its incidents, and contracted for the payment of a tribute, and also assented to the residence of a Persian agent. 3rdly. Because England was more than suspected of having interfered in the affairs of Herat, or at least of having failed to use her exertions to induce foreign powers, including Cabool, not to interfere with the independence of Herat. The affair was viewed very much in this light in the debates of the two Houses of Parliament on the Address at the opening of the session of 1857, Lord Derby and Lord Grey condemning the conduct of the Government as gross assumption of authority in interfering in disputes between nations without any sufficient grounds upon which to form an opinion on the merits of the dispute, and a as acting in violation of accustomed principle in making war without a formal declaration-the latter nobleman moving a vote insisting that Parliament ought to have been called together, and informed of the position of affairs with Persia before going to war, which motion was rejected by forty-five votes. against twelve. Similar condemnation was urged in the House of Commons by Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone, the latter of whom suggested the question at whose charge, whether that of the Empire or that of the East India Company, the war had been conducted. Lord Clarendon in the House of Peers met the general objections to the conduct of Government by the most extraordinary avowals; Ist, that in dealing with Oriental and semi-barbarous states it was not considered necessary that the usual forms of procedure in case of war should be observed; and, 2ndly, that the main inducement in making this war was to maintain the prestige of the country; but would it not have been more accurate to say, to recover a prestige which had been already lost, whilst at the same time sacrificing an ancient ally, whose position could never be supplied? We pass from Persia, thus abused, coerced, and depleted, almost beyond the hope of recovery, to Afghanistan, the separation of which we had so long favoured at the cost of so much treasure, military wastefulness, and time. What has been the case here? Herat was in due course obtained by Dost Mahomed Khan, thanks to British subsidies; leaving us to marvel that the lesson of Cabool should have been so lost upon our Ministers. No sooner was that monarch dead (1863) than a fierce contention arose amongst his sixteen sons and others of his family, not only for the possession of Herat, but as to all the Afghan territory. Some interesting information, obtained as is stated from original sources, is given in the July number of the Edinburgh Review upon those agitating conflicts, and upon which we base the following remarks. The most remarkable and the least creditable fact gathered from these revelations is that England, again reversing her policy, under the warning, probably, of the terrible disasters of 1842, kept aloof from all interference in them, though frequently appealed to. The terms in which these denials were given combined the benevolence of the angel of peace with the astuteness of the fox in a remarkable manner. In reply to an application from the Ufzul of Cabool, who had obtained some successes, Sir J. (now Lord) Lawrence wrote stating how that 'with great sorrow and solicitude he had for three years past seen that house (the Borahzair) and people a prey to the most calamitous dispositions,' but declaring that, whatever hostilities might ensue, 'he would still side with neither party,' holding himself prepared to adhere only to the conqueror. At length, in 1868, Shere Ali Khan, after three and a half years' continued defeat, obtained a surprising success, and entered Cabool; whereupon Sir John Lawrence, in a letter of exuberant gratulation, volunteered to hand over to him any amount of pecuniary assistance he might require, in return for which, he said, 'the British Government looked for no other return than the abiding confidence, amity, and good-will' of the blood-smeared champion of the fight. Lord Mayo followed this up by equally friendly assurances, accompanied by subsidies. In spite of all this, however, rivalries and insurrections are still going on which threaten the very existence of Afghanistan, and involve, also, contests with Herat, of which Yakoob, an insubordinate son of Shere Ali, some years back seized possession. This insurgent, it is true, later on tendered his submission to his father, an event upon which Lord Mayo, emerging from official reserve, wrote a letter to the latter (June 1871) recommending reconciliation with his son as a means of securing the safety of his rule and the peace of Afghanistan ; and adding that the efforts for her security made by the British Government might be frustrated by the unhappy state of internal strife which had arisen.' This advice prevailed; but the reconciliation with Yakoob was attended by a number of assassinations amongst his brothers and other troubles terrible to think of. As it is, a feud still exists be tween Shere Ali and his turbulent son as to the succession to the throne, the former being disposed to ap point to it a younger son named Abdool. Can anyone pretend to say that this is a promising state of things for Afghanistan? And yet for its attainment we have through a long succession of years sacrificed the interests, drained the resources, and imperilled the very existence of Persia, of which Afghanistan is properly but a part. The question now is, What is to be done? Are we to keep up for all time the severance of Afghanistan from Persia? and if so, are we prepared to maintain both States in an efficient state of independence? Our jocular friend Punch the other day represented the Shah assuring the Government of England that he would defend her frontiers from the advances of Russia. Can he defend his own, with a population reduced by war and famine to less than four millions? And can Afghanistan do anything of the kind either, with a total population-Cabool, Candahar, and Herat included-of about an equal number, even supposing them to remain united? The problem is one which we fear is not thoroughly understood, and has certainly not been settled by the visit of the Shah, with all its attendant feasts, fireworks, and other foolish manifestations. HENRY CTTLEY. IN THE NEW BIRTH, ACCORDING TO ST. PAUL. my former article on 'The Ethics of St. Paul,' I attempted to point out how St. Paul is, above all things, the Apostle of the conscience; how, like another Plato, he bade men turn from idle speculations to the contemplation of their moral nature-of the conscience as the source of religion. We have seen that the teaching of the Apostle rested on a moral foundation, and that it was moral throughout. We were transplanted, so to speak, within the very inner sanctuary of humanity. We listened to and interpreted the testimony of the universal conscience, leaving no room for doubt or uncertainty. We are conscious of a chasm between the ideal and the real, which cannot be bridged over, and the consciousness of this is sin. Whence this chasm? Whence this interruption in the harmonious development of man? The solution given by the Apostle is, as we attempted to show, of a moral nature. The cáp, a word used by the Apostle with an ethical meaning, has usurped the veμa by means of the uxý. Man's destiny, the purpose for which he was created, is to become revμarikós, instead of which he has become σaρKIKós. Hence the idea of revelation, which is a necessary corollary of the idea of creation, includes not merely education, but also restoration. The highest revelation is to the Pauline school given in Christianity, or rather, as he did not know this word, in Christ. God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son.' In Christ the antagonism between the ideal and the real is done away with; in Jesus, or, to speak more accurately, in Christ, in the risen, glorified Man who sits at the right hand of God in majesty, the moral ideal has found a complete embodiment. On our part there is required faith, which we described in its highest and final stage as an act by which we attach ourselves to the moral ideal. A cleansing, restoring, and renewing influence makes itself felt within us. We are raised into the consciousness of Christ: one of Divine harmony and undisturbed peace. In Him we are made' a new creature.' Such a conception is peculiar to Christianity, and no one has developed it with greater precision and elaboration than the Apostle St. Paul. Our Christian Edipus has solved the riddle of the Sphinx in a way unknown to antiquity. The idea of humanity, what it is that constitutes man, was set forth more clearly by the citizen of Tarsus than by the philosophers who had been asking for centuries, 'What think ye of humanity ?' We intend to devote a few pages to the consideration of the question as to the origin and growth of the individual Christian life, and in doing so we shall take St. Paul as our guide and try to understand his theory of the new birth, or rather what principle it was that made his life a power. We stated before, and it is necessary to say it again, that there are many mysteries connected with this new life, which we are unable to solve. The beginning and the close of life in the natural world are shrouded in mystery. The embryo struggles in silence and darkness from the unknown moment of conception to the hour when it breaks its bonds and emerges into the light of day; and who can unravel the mystery connected with that second birth which we call death? But if we are here surrounded by difficulties which as yet have proved insuperable, it need hardly be remarked that the difficulties become even lyse the spiritual process of regeneration. However, a religion without mystery is an impossibility; and if it could be without it, it would fail to satisfy man. It occupies the same place in the kingdom of grace' as the night in 'the kingdom of nature.' We would as soon ask for the abolition of night as for the abolition of all mystery. All we demand is to be shown the reasonableness of a certain mystery, so that we may learn to revere and to love it, and not to fear it. greater when attempting to ana- Apocalypse-tended to deepen the gloom. It is therefore no matter of astonishment to find that the colours with which St. Paul paints human nature are of the deepest dye. In reading his language, we run a twofold danger. It is not merely the danger, to which I alluded on a former occasion, of attaching no definite, intelligent meaning to his words, of supposing that we read poetry, where it seems to be a fundamental law to be unintelligible, instead of sober prose, which ought to be clear and lucid. It is rather that we are apt to think that because his language cannot be taken literally it is therefore not real, and that we ascribe his expressions to a supposed Eastern love of exaggeration. Thus it happens that many of his grandest ideas, couched in deep mystical language, have been reduced been reduced to commonplaces. Reading the interpretations given; by a certain school, the wellknown line might be applied to the Apostle: 6 To understand the theory of the new life according to St. Paul, it is necessary to bear in mind the view he takes of human nature as it presents itself before his eyes. The aesthetic Greek-it matters not whether living before or after Christ - must always feel considerable difficulty in understanding the ethical Hebrew. St. Paul is a Hebrew of the Hebrews. He breathes the atmosphere of the Old Testament; and what Luther said of his profound Epistle to the Romans may be applied to others of his epistles, that they are full of the light and the power of the Old Testament.' He takes a special delight in the more ascetic of the Psalms and the sterner portions of the books of the Prophets. These contain the deepest utterance of the Hebrew conscience. Far from it are all dreams of a humanity which, as it advances in culture, ripens and opens, slowly but surely, into the fullgrown flower. The man of religious genius is conscious of a moral ideal, of a great distance between it and himself, of an imperative necessity of union between the two, and an ardent but ineffectual longing to bring it about. In St. Paul this consciousness was deepened by peculiar circumstances. All thingshis own history and the history of the world around him, which inspired the sombre pictures of the Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. According to the teaching of the Apostle, Jews or Gentiles all are under sin. The spirit of the world is diametrically opposed to the Spirit of God; the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God; the mind of man is darkened, his understanding is obscured, and his heart is corrupt. Against all the unrighteousness and ungodliness of men the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. What it was that caused Adam to sin St. Paul does not tell us; it is enough for him to know from his own experience that sin reigns throughout the world. It has cast its dark shadow over all that lives and breathes; it is a mighty moral revolution, the effects of which are felt throughout the universe. The sufferings of man are connected with his transgressions; death is the wages of sin. The life of sin is in reality no life; the world seems to the Apostle like a vast churchyard: 'man is dead in trespasses and sins.' It would certainly be dangerous to take these words literally; it must not be forgotten that there is a vast difference between physical and spiritual death. But the Apostle makes use of the most suggestive image he can lay hold of to impress the members of the Church. There is no more solemn sight than that of death; there is no spectacle which strikes greater terror to the heart or which fills us with greater sadness or more vivid despair. The sinful man has left the source of his life; like a plant taken out of the soil and left without root, he must wither and die. He becomes gradually insensible to higher influences; the consciousness within him of a holy ideal grows dim; the desire to attain to it loses its intensity, and he sinks into self and all that can administer to its gratification. The life of selfishness is death. The Apostle thus describes the hopeless condition of man -and I need not enlarge on this, as a mere glance at his epistles will satisfy the reader-to impress on all the necessity of a thorough change. The revolution is to be defeated by another revolution; the first Adam, the representative of an old humanity, is to be met by the second Adam, the true man, the author of a new humanity. A reformation will be powerless where the very core of humanity is corrupt: it needs a death, a resurrection-in one word, a new birth to deliver humanity from the abyss in which it has plunged. At present all things are in an abnormal condition; the so-called 'natural' is in reality the 'unnatural,' whilst the so-called 'supernatural' is the true 'natural;' a poisonous germ has crept into man's spiritual organism, and made its destructive influence felt throughout, so that the life which man leads at present is a counterfeit of the true life. Such is St. Paul's idea of humanity; such are the recollections awakened in him when he thinks of the history of Adam. In the fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, and in the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul speaks of Adam and Christ as, contrasts. It seems that the Apostle conceived of the incarnation as independent of the fall of man,' and that he looked upon it as a necessary result of the creation. There is certainly something very strange in the idea that the incarnation would not have taken place but for the accident that sin has entered into the world. The Apostle tells us that the first man Adam was made a living soul,' and that the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.' He speaks of God having declared 'the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself: that in the dispensation of the fulness of time He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth.' Taking these two statements, not to speak of others, we are taught that the incarnation was the necessary complement of the creation, that the uxù Sãoα cannot reach the pneumatical stage without the aid of the VEμа worotour. For the end of creation is the absolute union of the human and the Divine, which is realised in the second Adam, in whom there is a complete union between the Logos and the human. In His image, after His likeness, man is made; He is the beginning and the end of creation, and, according to the teaching of the Apostle, the mediator of humanity, in whom it reaches its destiny. He is the centre of unity, the head of creation, in whom all contrasts of nature are dissolved in a higher harmony. We have indicated this thought of the Apostle, because it seems to us to explain to a considerable extent the position ascribed by him to |