the analogy of the authorized translation, through. The passage will thus read-we are in Him that is true, through his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God; i. e. most plainly He that just before was said to be true, viz., the Father in whom we are by Christ, to whom through our Lord we bear a new filial relation, the earnest of our inheritance of life-This is the True God, and Eternal Life. Little children! keep yourselves from idols.

The True God is the Living, the undying, the Ever-living God, who hath life in himself, being the original source of life, and hath given to Christ to have life in himself, as a subordinate source of life, and hath made him the messenger of immortality, that by him we may have life, and have it more abundantly. The title of the Almighty Father, which none besides may bear, is-He that liveth for ever and ever: the highest title of the risen Son of God, in his state of exaltation, is-He that liveth and was dead. He was crucified through weakness, says our apostle, yet he liveth by the power of God. Death hath no more dominion over him.-Behold, it is his own challenge of our admiration and confidence,-I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death, the keys of the grave or invisible world, where the King of Terrors had seemed to hold undisputed power, so that the dead are in our Lord's keeping, and will at the appointed hour, which the flight of time is bringing on, awake at the sound of his heavenly voice, and come forth to enter with their Redeemer into the light of life everlasting.

If, my Christian friends, I have in any degree succeeded in my design, I have shewn that the title of Living God is of high and solemn import; distinguishing the True God from false gods, and especially from idols and all beings, real or imaginary, supposed to be represented by them; denoting the eternity and uncaused and unchangeable existence of the Almighty; and implying, of moral necessity, the doctrine of eternal life, and thus involving the whole of " the glorious gospel of the Blessed God."

I shall now, as was proposed, conclude with a few reflections on the sense and doctrine of the text.

And,

I. Who that contemplates the degrading superstition of idol-worship, can forbear feeling and expressing gratitude to God for the rational, sublime and ennobling principles of the Christian revelation?

The experience of ages has proved that the whole system of idolatry, even in those forms which have captivated the simple by an appearance of elegance and grace, was not only senseless, but also humbling to the understanding and corrupting to the character of man. Looking at heathens, as they were found at Rome in the age of her philosophers, the apostle Paul has described them in characters which every one conversant with ancient history must acknowledge to be as true as they are revolting, both to the sense of the dignity of human nature and to the feeling of rational piety: Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things, and changed the truth of God into a lie, and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.

Christianity has turned a great part of the inhabited world, and is the only system that could have turned them, from idols to God, "to serve the Living and True God." Whether those that claim the cha

racter of philosophers will admit this to be any presumption of its truth, and whether they will acknowledge the claims which it has on this account to their gratitude and respect, must be left to themselves; but this at least shall be asserted for the religion of the New Testament, that its doctrine of the Living God, where and when soever proclaimed, has banished many of the superstitions that most degraded and afflicted mankind, and has raised in a very high degree the standard of the intellect as well as of the moral character of the species. And let this be conceded, and the most zealous advocate for Christianity need not ask in argument for much more.

II. The doctrine of the Living God is not a mere theory, it is a vital and practical truth. Infinitely unequal is the highest understanding to the comprehension of it in all its extent; but there is no mind that must not perceive that it lays upon us a solemn obligation to observe humble worship, and to keep our worship pure from superstition. To the idea of our God we bring our best and most exalted conceptions; and then we feel that we fall unspeakably below his majesty. But our incapacity of understanding his nature is his glory, and our silence is praise. We know, however, that He consists of every perfection, and that when we have risen to the highest adoration of which we are capable, there are heights in the Divine attributes of which at present we can form no conception. But religion itself requires of us, even whilst we faint and tremble before the Uncreated Greatness, that we do not confound humility with acquiescence in error. It is a first principle in all well-instructed piety that nothing mortal, nothing human, nothing created, can be attributed, without a sort of sinful presumption, to the Eternal. If in the strange eclipses of the human mind-if in the melancholy darkness that is sometimes drawn over the face of revealed truth, any should be so far left as to speak in the Christian church of a suffering, bleeding and dying God, let us be contented with asserting, but let us not, as we value truth, and honour and fear God, be contented without asserting, in the language consecrated to our use by the holy apostle in the text, WE trust in the LIVING GOD.

:

III. This character of the God whom we serve is full of encouragement to us as connected and dependent beings. He is every where, and at all times, the same Living Father. His is the only eye that never sleepeth, the only ear that is never closed. He is, therefore, the Guardian as well as the Creator of all the children of men; and his providence is both the result and the exercise of his self-existent perfections. Whilst then for ourselves, our families and our fellow-creatures, we look, not wholly without anxiety, towards the mysterious future, let us calm our minds with the reflection that our God is the Father of the families of the earth. We and ours, and all that breathe, are under his ever-wakeful care and keeping. In our widest separation from each other, we are equally near to Him, for in Him we all live and move and have our being. In every vicissitude of our earthly pilgrimage, we may consider the angel of his covenant (according to the beautiful Hebrew figure) as going before us, the messenger of his Provident goodness. Our days and nights are regulated and watched by his unslumbering wisdom. Let us go forward, therefore, in the march of time, and enter especially upon the New Year, confiding in the God of our lives, remembering and rejoicing in the persuasion, that the

Living God in whom we trust is the Saviour, the Keeper and Deliverer of all men in all climes, and will be to us and ours a God and Guide even unto death.

IV. The Christian view of God, as the Living God, is cherishing to our best hopes for the cause of truth and righteousness upon the earth. It was upon Peter's confession of Christ, as the Son of the Living God, that our Lord pronounced his church to be built as upon a rock, against which the power of death should never prevail. With an ever-present Omnipotent Protector, the church of Christ is safe. Truth is an ema nation from the Living God, and contains within itself the principle of immortality. The forms of truth may change, but its spirit is imperishable. We receive by our faith as Christians a kingdom that cannot be moved. All around us is security; all before us is promise. We are not come to the mount that burned with fire, nor unto blackness and darkness and tempest; but we are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, the assembly of the spirits of just men made perfect already by their trust in the Living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe, and know by joyful experience that the truth in Christ, the Mediator of the new covenant, is the power of God unto salvation.

The aged apostle, now near the close of his divinely-appointed ministry, states it to be a motive to Christian labours, in enlightening and training the minds of our fellow-men, that our faith as Christians is rational in its principles, benevolent in its spirit, and altogether comforting in its tendency. He admits that such a faith, which may be proved by argument and evidence, and be shewn to be "glad tidings of great joy to all people," may be suspected of all manner of evil falsely, and be objected to its professors and promoters as hateful and pestilent. But rightly considered, it is only a new call to duty, and a new reason for satisfaction and confidence, that "WE TRUST IN THE LIVING GOD, WHO IS THE SAVIOUR OF ALL MEN."

The

For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth away; but the word of the Lord endureth for ever, and this is the word which by the Gospel is PREACHED unto you.”*

V. In seasons when we are called, as by the voice of nature, to medi. tate on the rapid flight of time, and when we naturally think of them that once walked, but walk no longer, with us upon earth, and when by these reflections we see in all its reality our own mortal condition, how consolatory and reviving is our faith in the Living God! Our times are in his hand, the time to be born and the time to die; and He, the Ever Blessed, who knoweth no change, with whom one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day, hath ordained all things relating to us in wisdom and in mercy, and is always present to see that his own appointments are fulfilled. They that sleep, rest under his sleepless eye and repose upon his everlasting arm. He is the God of our fathers, and of all our kindred gone before us; and He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live unto Him. When we are called to follow them in the way of all the earth, He, the Everlasting God, the Shepherd of Israel, who never slumbereth, will be our strength and

* 1 Pet. i. 24, 25.

support. We may lie down in the dust together, in peace and hope; for although we be a dying race, and die daily, we worship and trust in the Living God, whose own eternity as a merciful Father is a pledge of immortality to all his obedient children.

As we follow one another to the "house appointed for all living," how soothing is the voice which pronounces the words of the oldest of the sacred writers, in a sense, it may be, far higher than he contemplated-I know that my Redeemer liveth!*

VI. But, finally, the perfections of the God, whom we serve should impress us with a solemn sense of the necessity of personal righteousness and true holiness. He is the Living God in the midst of us, observant of our actions, acquainted with every word upon our tongues, and understanding our thought afar off. How awful then is our moral responsibility! Know ye not that ye are the temple of the Living God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.

Shew, then, I beseech you, your trust in the Living God by keeping his holy commandments; and may He be your help and your shield; may He bless you in your persons, your families and your estate; above all things may your souls prosper; and in proportion as earthly prospects fade away, and earthly hopes, one after another, fail, may you gain a growing assurance of your inheritance in heaven.

And now unto the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, the only Wise God, the Blessed and only Potentate, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen or can see, to Him be honour and power everlasting. Amen.

BEAUTIFUL ILLUSTRATION OF THE LOVE OF TRUTH. THE Preface to "The Scripture Doctrine of Atonement," by the learned Dr. John Taylor, of Norwich, is as follows: "Reader, I warn you to peruse this Treatise with great caution, and without any deference to my judgment; for possibly I may have mistaken the sense of Revelation. But as I trust God will forgive the errors of an upright intention, so I heartily wish you may clearly discover and candidly correct them."-JOHN TAYLOR.

* Job xix. 25. The writer cannot help concurring in opinion with Bp. Patrick, and some still older commentators, that these words of this book, so venerable, amongst other things, for its antiquity, do not refer to an eternal, but to a temporal deliverance, such as is described in the conclusion of the volume. Some of the American critics, belonging to reputed "orthodox" churches, maintain with great zeal and ability the same interpretation. See particularly a work just republished in London, entitled "Anastasis," by Geo. Bush, Professor of Hebrew, New York City University, pp. 98-104. The Professor gives the following quotation from Rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel, (De Resur. Mort., Lib. ii. C. 3,) as explanatory of the sense of the Hebrews on the passage:-"There is nothing in it any way relating to the resurrection, nor doth it appear that any of the Hebrews ever understood it in such a sense. The meaning and import of the words is this, I know that He who is the Redeemer of my soul, and translates it to a seat of happiness, is Living and Eternal through all ages." Is it not clear from this that the Rabbi expounded the words of spiritual future life, although without specifying the resurrection as the means of redemption?

DR. ARNOLD.*

IT is seldom that an event, not connected with public interests, has excited such deep and general feeling as the death of Dr. Arnold, in June, 1842. Its suddenness was startling; for he had scarcely reached middle life, and had appeared to be in perfect and vigorous health. It was generally known that a large and affectionate family had been deprived of a parent equally beloved and revered. These circumstances would always have excited sympathy and regret; but there was much more than this in the case of Dr. Arnold. The public had recently rejoiced in his elevation to a post in which he could combat most effectually that spirit of political and ecclesiastical bigotry to which Oxford seemed wholly given up; they had welcomed the specimen of his Lectures as an earnest of more finished productions, in which, year after year, he would have promulgated his comprehensive and enlightened views of history and politics. And when these hopes were blighted, men's regret was heightened by the reflection that, even if another Arnold could be found, there was little chance of his being placed by a Tory Administration in Arnold's chair.

Mr. Stanley has fulfilled the wish, felt alike by friends and strangers, to have some memorial of a character of such rare excellence. He has produced a most interesting book, which no one, whether agreeing or disagreeing in opinion with Dr. Arnold, can read without feeling his moral standard elevated by sympathy with a pure, lofty and generous mind. He had enjoyed the best opportunities for knowing him, having been his pupil, his colleague and his confidential friend. In the midst of a very busy life, Dr. Arnold found the means of keeping up an extensive correspondence, in which he poured out all his feelings with the most perfect freedom. His letters thus form a large and very interesting portion of Mr. Stanley's biography. He was one of those men with whom for a time a single idea takes possession of the mind so completely, that it breaks forth on all occasions and to all persons; and hence there is considerable repetition of the same sentiments on the Church, the state of parties, the condition of the lower orders, and other subjects on which he felt very strongly. But there is so much earnestness and sincerity in all he writes, and so much vigour and variety in his expression, that this repetition is not wearisome, as might have been expected. Though entertaining deep reverence and affection for his master and friend, Mr. Stanley has not made himself the partizan of his opinions, and has wisely abstained from any formal delineation of a character which no one can mistake who carefully reads his volumes.

Thomas Arnold was born at West Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, on the 13th of June, 1795, and received the most important part of his school education at Winchester College. He does not appear to have made any eminent proficiency in those branches of education to which the routine of our public schools was then confined; and he evidently worked very hard in after life, when he became master of one himself,

The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, D. D., late Head Master of Rugby School, and Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford. By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, M. A., Fellow and Tutor of University College, Oxford. In 2 Vols. 8vo.

Fragment on The Church. By Thomas Arnold, D. D., 8vo. 1814. Pp. 132.