thousand, and suppose the average number constantly in our harbor to be from three to five thousand. Contributing as they do to the comforts and prosperity of every home, and guarding, as in time of war they do, this commercial metropolis, do they not demand and deserve a still increasing share in our sympathies and aid?

4. It is, again, by no means the policy of the church, to overlook so influential a class, as that of our sea-faring brethren. They are in the path of our missionaries to the heathen. If converted, they might be amongst their most efficient coadjutors, as, whilst unconverted, they are among the most embarrassing hindrances the missionary must encounter. They have, it should be also remembered, in their keeping, the highways of the earth, along which travel its literature, its commerce, and its freedom. What would be thought of the statesmanship or patriotism of the man who, in time of war, would propose surrendering to the enemy all the roads and bridges of the land, in hopes of retaining possession of the rest of the territory? The mere proposal would be regarded as combining folly the most absurd, and treason the most disastrous. Yet what else is the church doing, if she relinquish the sea-faring class to the influence of sin and to the will of the destroyer of souls? She would be proposing virtually a most ruinous truce with Satan, when resigning these to his unresisted control, and when offering to abandon to his keeping the keepers of the highways of the nations.

5. While humbled in the review of her past negligence, and in the sense of present deficiencies, as to her labors for the seaman, the church has yet cause for devout thankfulness in the much that has recently been done for the souls of those who go down to the sea in ships, and in the perceptible change that has already been wrought in the character of this long-neglected class of our fellowcitizens and fellow-immortals. God has poured out his Spirit even on the incipient and uncertain efforts of his people; and from many a cabin and forecastle the voice of prayer even now ascends, and on many a deck the words of this salvation are read. Let us not be weary in well-doing."

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6. And now, lastly, we ask each of you: In that day, when earth and sea shall meet heaven in the judgment, where do you propose to stand? Among the saved, or the lost-the holy, or the sinful at the right hand of the Judge, or at his left? Purposes of partial reformation or of future repentance cannot save you. Christ is now willing to be gracious. He who will at last appear as the Judge, now comes as the Redeemer. He is now an Advocate; soon he will be the Avenger. Heaven stoops to win you. Hell rises to allure and destroy you. Oh, yield not to Satan. Reject not Christ; for the Judge is at the door. And not this soul only of yours, but this body also must live-must live forever; and can you wish it to live in endless, hopeless misery? A throb

bing brow, or an aching tooth, are now sufficient to embitter all the enjoyments of life. What will it be when the whole body is cast into torment? Can you desire to meet your impenitent friends, to spend an eternity together in growing hate and mutual recrimination-to face your pious friends, a godly father, or a praying mother, and catch your last glance of hope, your last sight of happiness, as you see them mounting to glory, whilst you sink yourselves into a sea of fire-the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone forever and ever?

V.

THE SCRIPTURAL ESTIMATE OF PHILOSOPHY.

BY REV. GEORGE B. CHEEVER, D. D.

PASTOR OF THE CHURCH OF THE PURITANS, NEW YORK.

Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the traditions of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ."-COL. ii. 8.

THE glorious richness of the epistle of Paul to the Colossians is all owing to the fulness and vastness of its presentation of Christ. The glory of Christ there rises like a sea of light, and swallows up everything else in its bosom, and on its waves the soul is borne onward, entranced, itself, in glory. And as this epistle begins with the supremacy, the infinite pre-eminence, the all-in-all-ness of Christ, in all worlds, all beings, and all things, in all God's universe, and then applies, out of this infinitude of glory and absoluteness of reign, the consequent rule of perfection and obedience for believers in Christ, so the first thing we are to consider, prior to opening the leaves of this text, is the completeness of the Christian in Christ, and the all-in-all-ness of Christ to the Christian.

"Ye are complete in him." All your real need is to be in Christ, and all your anxiety should be, to be rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith in him, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. For he is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning of grace, and the completion of glory. All that we need, for time and eternity, we find in him; and he is made unto us, of God, our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. This secures our independence of all mere human wisdom. You are entirely superior to that, you have no need of that, just in proportion as you are rooted and grounded in Christ, and have access, by faith in him, through the ministration of the Spirit, to the unsearchable riches of his Word, and all God's treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Ye are complete in him; and therefore, when men come to you in all the puffing majesty and parade of human science and speculation, beguiling you with enticing words, and assuring you that this or that philosophy or speculation must be mastered by you, before you will comprehend the genius of Christianity, or that it is only through this or that ingenious theory, as through a new-constructed telescope, that you can see Christ Jesus as he is, or the wonders of

the Word aright, or can arrive at the completeness of Christian knowledge and character, remember that you are complete in him; and that too, not according to men's philosophies, nor by their assistance, but just according to God's Word, and by the teaching of God's Spirit. And since in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete in him, as you have been taught, in the Word, and by the Spirit, beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the traditions of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

And here is the first thing to be considered in the warning of this text, as a contrasted point of truth and duty, in opposition to the babblings of science falsely so called; namely, the supremacy and independence of God's Word, and of the Christian in it, under the guidance of the divine Spirit; and the fact that faith in God's Word, and in Christ Jesus as presented there, is the only perfection of human reason, the only true philosophy and science. The bringing of the Word of God to the bar of human reason, and the throwing of it upon mere external evidence and philosophy for its support and understanding, were a portion of that leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees, against which our blessed Lord cautioned his disciples. But you can neither believe God's Word, nor have any understanding of it, according to the mere traditions and philosophies of men. You are thrown upon God's Spirit, and if you have not got your theology there, philosophy can never let in one ray of spiritual light upon your soul. You cannot know God's Word, but by the Spirit of God. If the Holy Spirit be in your soul, guiding you into the truth, as the truth's living Interpreter, then you will see and know it; but not otherwise. All true faith is life, not the movement of the understanding merely, but of the heart. Belief in God's Word is life, a thing dependent not upon evidence, but upon the living Spirit. And evidence itself can never be rightly seen and felt, without this life. All living theology, and all power to teach it; all true knowledge of God's Word, and all power in the use of such knowledge, are dependent on God's Spirit, and without the Holy Spirit as the guide and teacher of the soul, philosophy and speculation can do nothing for its light.

Now, divine revelation itself informs us, that this living Spirit and Interpreter of God's Word, even the Spirit of Truth, is a Being whom the world cannot receive (that is, the world unhumbled, unregenerate, unconverted,) because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him. The very pride of men's hearts, in the ignorance and darkness of self-will, prevents their receiving him. And furthermore, the same divine Word informs us, that the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. He must come humbly to God, and beg to be enlightened. In the neglect of that divine Spirit, without his teachings, and without that constant, earnest prayer, which is a habit of life and faith,

into which the Holy Spirit always leads the heaven-taught soul, it is impossible to arrive at the truth; and all the knowledge a man boasts in such a case, and all the perfection of philosophy, and all the lights of science and speculation, are but miserable presumption. The soul, in the neglect of prayer, and of God's Spirit, cannot but go astray.

And while she dotes, and dreams that the believes,

She mocks her Maker, and herself deceives.

Her utmost reach, historical assent,

The doctrines warped to what they never meant.
The truth itself is in her head as dull

And useless as a candle in a skull.

Hence, it is no wonder that Paul cautioned the world of believers in Christ against pretended philosophic instruction from such Beware lest any man spoil you, through philosophy and vain deceit, after the traditions of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. The moment a man, be he a minister of the Word, or a private Christian, begins to mind tradition and philosophy, instead of Christ, or to mingle up tradition and philosophy as parts of his Christianity, that moment he begins to be spoiled. And when a man undertakes to teach and feed others with philosophy and tradition, instead of the pure milk of the Word in Christ and him crucified, he is not only securing his own starvation, but he is starving others. He feedeth on ashes; a deceived heart hath turned him aside; and curious it is to see how a man, by eating ashes himself, can persuade others also that ashes are good food. This mixture of philosophy with the bread of life, and the strong and frequent warnings against it in God's Word, remind us of the descriptions of a worthless piety in the minor prophets. "Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people; Ephraim is a cake not turned." Paganism and Christianity together, and even that mixture half-baked, have generally constituted the piety of the so-called philosophers of this world. And the great work of philosophy in all ages has been, to spoil the truth. And this, not always because of the badness of the philosophy, or its error, but because of setting it upon the throne, appointing it as judge. But God has determined that there shall nothing occupy the throne of God and reason in man, save only the Lamb that was slain. There shall be a simple faith in him, casting down imaginations, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Philosophy must ever be the handmaid, not the mistress nor the judge.

And as to progress in theology, there can be no such thing but by experience. Theology itself is a production of life, of the Spirit with the Word, in hearts quickened out of the death of trespasses and sins, and new created in Christ Jesus. And all progress in theology must be the product of life, not of mere learning; for without the inward teachings and life-giving power of the Holy Spirit, men are ever learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth-a phenomenon in modern times most remarkably mani