cession of suns and stars going forth sublimely out of chaos and night and void, at the word of God-"Let them be!" But now in this day of advanced progress we must not talk of faith. We must not see anything in God created light. Now we must see only in man made light. Divine revelations, flashing, and sparkling, and gushing from everlasting springs of infinite love and wisdom, until worlds, and times, and new creations sport and praise in the bright shinings and splendors thereof; these must depart. Man, as a reasonable being, must away with all this work and worth of God, as a fable, must not believe in them, must cast them out if he would be free and assert his proper dignity, and must himself try his hand at a creation over the desolate ruin he has made. New moral philosophies must arise, new systems of virtue and vice, new theories concerning holiness and sin. The moral philosophy of the Bible must be given up. The way of salvation it makes known must give place to some more rational plan, some plan suggested and approved by our reason. The Christ Jesus of Nazareth, of Galilee, who lived on earth eighteen hundred years ago, must yield preference as a Saviour to some other Christ, a Christ consisting of natural human virtue, declared to dwell in every man, waiting only to be sought out and made worthy to be a Saviour by the hand of self-culture, or a Christ of good works. An atonement for sin by a bloody sacrifice, by a literal shedding of blood, by the death of Christ vicariously substituted for that of the sinner, must give place to an atonement by repentance and reformation.

Always this theory of reason tends downward more and more. It is worthy to be remarked, and ought to stand for a warning not to listen to its first stealthy approaches, that reason has never led him who put it in the stead of faith, to embrace the evangelical teachings of the sacred Scriptures, never led any one to Christ, never led any one to the revealed way of forgiveness of sin and acceptance with God. It has always inclined away from Christ, next from the God of the Bible, and finally from any God. Are we not justified,

therefore, in view of what has been said, in saying that the use of reason, as contended for by those against whose theory concerning it we object, is an abuse of it—is unphilosophical and utterly Anti-Christian? And in asserting that it is a bondage? a tyranny? a thraldom to a lie? a slavery of the soul? and that freedom is not in it? Where is liberty, then? In the word of God! In that word how apprehended? By reason? or by faith? By faith! What! Is reason to be rejected then? No! But reason is to determine, upon legitimate grounds of evidence, that we have the word of God, and not upon the wisdom of the contents of that word, and their truth. Having found by a legitimate use of reason, that we have the word of God, we must then heartily accept and believe whatsoever is therein contained, our reason itself taking the place of subjection to that which is, according to its own rightly-formed judgment, from God, to be instructed, to have its pride cast down, its darkness enlightened, its error corrected, its foolishness changed to wisdom. Having used our reason to determine by the means he has himself directed us to employ, that the One claiming to be the great Teacher is indeed he, then reason itself must sit at his feet to hear his words and to believe them to be true; accepting them without cavil, without dispute, without contradiction, in mere childlike, undoubting, simplicity of faith.

By faith in the word of God we are made free. By our faith in the word of God reason is, and never until then, itself emancipated from bondage to a corrupt and enslaving will. The word of God goes forth upon the regions of death, and death lives. It goes forth and searches the hereafter, and out of that dark, dread, mysterious abyss brings life and immortality to light. It goes forth among the mysteries of the soul and its destinies, every-where; and wheresoever it goes, darkness, doubt, uncertainty, flee away, and light and life abound. It searches out everything concerning which the anxious soul makes question, and returns sure answer. That word is not bound. It is free to go whithersoever the

eternal and omnipresent spirit of God listeth, amid the deeps or the heights of spiritual being. This is freedom; and this freedom belongs to the soul emancipated by faith in the word. For the wide regions of that word belong to faith; those vast regions which, by the word, are explored and opened up. Faith, attaching itself to that word, goes forth with, conducted by it, not as uncertainly, but confidently. It sees in the light of God, and sees afar, with more keen than angel-glance penetrating the future through the thick folds. of its garments of night and death. Compared with what lies open, fully revealed to faith beholding through the word of God of those great things to which the soul, groaning under the weight of immense, crushing burdens, and agonizing with intense desire after knowledge and relief, is related, how contemptibly little and worthless are the most boasted achievements of reason!

Truth, and truth alone, makes free. And in religious matters the word of God is the only truth, and it is all truth, and all of truth. Only by the word of God can we know God as God and our Saviour. Only there can we know ourself and our sin. Only there can we know that and how our sin may be forgiven, and that and how we may be saved. With the knowledge that we receive by faith from that word, comes the real emancipation of the soul-" the glorious liberty of the children of God." But reason can do nothing for us-nothing for him who, under the power of deep conviction of sin wrought in the soul by the Holy Spirit, goes to it with the momentous inquiry, and demanding a clear and certain solution, able to be satisfied with nothing else"What must I do to be saved?" It has been tried-and men will continue to try it, notwithstanding the history of its failures-and upon sin and holiness, life and death, time and eternity, guilt and atonement, God and his dealings with and purposes concerning our race, it sits stupidly pondering, or ignorantly and foolishly chattering, and boasting great things, and giving us nothing.

If we had not already occupied so much space, it would

be interesting to notice a little more than has been done, the affectation of superior wisdom and independence on the part of those who sneer at the advocates of evangelical truth, as narrow-minded, bigoted and anti-progressive. A comparison of the works of both classes would show that nothing is further from the truth than their boastful assertions. Faith indeed works to add to the power and vigor of the reasoning faculty, and enables it to reach a development it would else fail to secure. The works of faith stand all along the course of the history of the Church as grand and enduring monuments of such results. Those monuments stand and will stand forever, while the unsubstantial works of reason without or against faith are continually disappearing-passing away into the vast receptacle of forgotten things. There are no grander works of logical ability, of philosophical acumen, of sound criticisms, of bold independence and fearless far-forth searchings of thought than those of the earnest advocates for creeds and for absolute subjection of the whole mind and soul to the written word of God. They have always been foremost among defenders of human liberty-civil and religious-promoters of education, and of all true progress and genuine enterprise.

Reason fails, fatally fails him who relies upon it as teacher and guide at death. We do not say that the merely reasoning philosopher may not die as calmly as Socrates. But reason affords in death no really sustaining strength. It stretches forth its wings over emptiness, and struggles vainly, however anxiously, with the terrible uncertainties of the nigh future. It does not hope nor desire nor exult in any good, intelligent sense. It takes the leap which carries it forever from the experiences of this life "into the dark.” But in the hour of death, he who has lived by faith in God, and in Jesus Christ his only begotten Son, finds he has a sure strength, one that does not fail. His soul stretches forth its wings upon the boundless, illuminated expanse of revealed truth and grace, and goes forth exultingly upon the broad regions of the Divine promises, fearing nothing, hoping

all things, secure of life, confident of immortal bliss. Reason offers no rest to the weary, but annihilation-no refuge for the storm-driven, no hiding-place for the troubled soul, but the grave as a place of eternal sleep. Alas for him who trusts it! it can not make that poor offer good. It can not bind

the soul in the grave so as to detain it there.

Faith carries

the soul and lays it upon the bosom of God, in whose paternal smile it abides in peace and joy forever.

ART. II.-The Covenants of Scripture.

IT has pleased God, in all his dealings with men, to operate through a system of agencies called covenants. Of these, the number is sufficiently large to utterly perplex the generality of readers, whilst those who devote more especial attention to such things, and whose business it is to understand and expound the word of God, frequently have but a confused perception of them, failing rightly to discriminate between the several ones, and also to reduce them all to a system that is compact and clear. Wherever the Scriptures seem to be confused and without system, we may rely upon it that we have failed to comprehend them, either through lack of attention, meekness and spiritual insight, or else we have applied to them wrong principles, and with a conceit. bordering on presumption, in striving to adapt them thereto, wrest and do violence to those living oracles. He who would interpret God's word to men, must stand with the rod of God in his hand, do reverently, and sanctify him before the people. All parts of God's word have been handled deceitfully, all parts of it have been misunderstood, and what with the deceitfulness of our own hearts, and the malignity of the evil one, there has been so much misrepresentation and misunderstanding, that those who love the Lord have always gladly welcomed, and been edified with every repeated