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lived on earth, and passed through all human experience in accomplishing the works of Redemption and Salvation, by subjugating the hells and glorifying His humanity. A difficulty or an objection, as the case may be, may present itself here. Admitting that there is a correspondence in the works of God, what ground is there for believing that it enters into His Word? What relation is there in this respect between Creation and Revelation? The ground of similarity is this. The WORD who is the Origin of Creation is the Author of Revelation. The Word, by whom all things were made, and without whom was not anything made that is made, is the Divine Wisdom, by which Divine Love created the universe; and the same Wisdom it was by which Divine Love revealed the written Word. Besides, as Creation came forth from the Sun of the spiritual world, and proceeded by discrete and continuous degrees until it terminated in dead or inert matter; so Revelation came forth from the same Sun, as the Sun of Righteousness, and proceeded by successive degrees until it terminated in the letter, which in itself is dead. In its descent, Revelation passed through all the heavens, where its Divine sense clothed itself with an angelic sense, celestial and spiritual, and thence descended into the sphere of nature, where it clothed itself with a natural sense, adequate to the understanding of man. Creation and Revelation thus run parallel to each other; one as the Work, the other as the Word of God, each containing wisdom that can never be exhausted. It enables us to understand the Word, to some extent at least, as it is understood in heaven. It raises the mind above the appearances and obscurities of the letter, and enables us to see truth, on all religious subjects, in spiritual light. By this light the allegory of creation in the beginning of Genesis unfolds itself in a history of the re-creation of the human mind, showing the wonders of Divine grace in the beginning, progress, and completion of that marvellous work by which the created being becomes truly man, for the sake of which Creation and Revelation exist, and for which the great work of Redemption was accomplished.

The work of regeneration is also seen to be described in the literal history of the patriarchs; in the going down of the sons of Jacob into Egypt; in the deliverance of the children of Israel from Egyptian bondage, their journey through the wilderness, and their entrance into and final settlement in Canaan. It is seen in the history of the judges, and of the kings of Israel and Judah. It is seen delineated in its various states, aspects, and phases in the law, the prophets, and the psalms. So that the whole of the Old Testament Scriptures, when

the veil of the letter is removed, discloses a history that is purely spiritual, and one in which every Christian can see the progressive work of his own regeneration portrayed.

Nor is this a characteristic of the Old Testament only. The New Testament, where the Lord's life on earth is recorded, with His words of wisdom and His works of love, deeply interesting and highly instructive as it is, as set forth in the plain literal sense of the narrative, is still fuller of interest and instruction when seen in the light of the spiritual sense. For instance, when the miraculous cures He performed upon the bodies of men are seen to be exact correspondences of the works of mercy by which He restores the souls of believers to spiritual health, which is salvation; when the miraculous feeding of their bodies with loaves and fishes is seen to represent the still greater work of feeding their souls with goodness and truth; when the raising of the dead to life is seen to represent the still greater miracle of raising the soul from the death of sin to the life of righteousness,the Lord's miracles acquire a higher significance, and exercise a greater

When His discourses, which consisted largely of parables, are explained by the law of correspondence, in the very language of which He, as the Eternal Word, spontaneously expressed Himself, His wisdom is seen to be still more profound, and to penetrate more deeply into the soul of things, than when understood only according to the letter. When, indeed, the Lord's whole life on earth is seen, in the spiritual sense, to describe His life in the souls of the regenerate, His birth, His growth in wisdom and stature, His temptations and sufferings, His fastings and prayers, His death and resurrection; when all these are seen to represent the beginning, progress, and completion of His life in us, the Gospel brings Him still nearer to us, and makes Him a very present Saviour.

Besides the regeneration and salvation of man, there is another and far greater and more important work which the inner meaning of the Word discloses. In a high sense all Scripture is prophetic; and the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of all prophecy. In its inmost sense the Word treats of the Lord alone, as manifested in our nature upon earth, and of His great work of glorification by which He made His humanity Divine. The very fact of such a work having been effected by the Lord is hardly known in the Christian world; and yet it is the very central truth of Christianity; for unless the Lord had glorified His humanity, no flesh could have been saved, because no man could have been regenerated or born again. It was to provide for the

regeneration of man that the Lord came into the world; and He provided for it by assuming man's nature, and making it perfect by a process similar to that by which He regenerates man. The Lord's glorified Humanity is therefore the perfect Archetype of regenerated humanity. It is the Medium through which, and the Pattern according to which, the Lord regenerates man; and without which regeneration would have been impossible. This great and mysterious work is that which is treated of in the inmost sense of the Word. It had especial relation to the Lord's inner life, which even those nearest to Him never clearly saw while the Lord was passing through it. As the Lord had meat to eat which His disciples knew not of, so has He sufferings to endure of which they had no idea. His fastings and prayers, His temptations and agonies, were among the inward and invisible means by which His humanity was made perfect. So far as the terrible experiences of the Son of Man are now known, they are, by a most unhappy perversion of Christian truth, believed to have been endured to appease Divine wrath and satisfy Divine justice, and to have been inflicted by the hand of God Himself! There is no more blessed deliverance from the errors that grew up around Christian faith during the dark ages than that from which the herald of the New Dispensation has been the means of effecting for us on this allimportant subject, and no one on which it may with more truth be said, "Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven."

This is a subject which we earnestly commend to the attentive consideration of every devout Christian. It separates from the plan of redemption all that is arbitrary and artificial, and shows it to be perfectly consistent with the nature of God and with the nature of man, between which it was intended to establish a harmonious relation, and a perfect and eternal reconciliation.

Some who are convinced that substituted suffering and righteousness is unscriptural as well as unreasonable, are yet at a loss to understand for what immediate purpose the Lord lived and died; and those who believe that His life and death were vicarious, are so completely at a loss to conceive of any alternative view, that when the doctrine of substitution is objected to, they ask in amazement, "If Christ did not come to suffer, the innocent for the guilty, what did He come to do?" This most momentous question has now received a most satisfactory answer, and the want of a positive view which some have felt, has been completely supplied. The Lord came into the world to

effect in His own Humanity that very work which He now, from His Humanity glorified, effects in every one who comes to Him to be saved.

The glorification of the Lord's Humanity is revealed as a doctrine in the letter of the Word; but in the inmost sense of the Word the whole process and progress of that marvellous work is described, from its beginning to its end, from the Lord's birth to His death, or rather to His Ascension in that Divine Humanity, from which descend that spiritual power and those holy influences by which men are regenerated and made new creatures.

He who has been chosen as the honoured instrument for making known these things to mankind under the New Dispensation-what place does He occupy among Christian teachers? He is a teacher of teachers, a prophet among the sons of the prophets. Like another Elisha, he came to the Gilgal of the Church when there was a dearth in the land to feed the sons of the prophets; and when, not knowing the true from the false, they shred wild gourds into the pottage, and brought death into the pot, he cast in the meal of sound doctrine and removed the evil which their error had produced (2 Kings iv. 38-41). Like another Peter on the day of Pentecost, he resolved the prophetic signs that marked the end of the Old and the beginning of the New Dispensation, the darkening of the luminaries of the Church, the sun of love and the moon of faith; and the pouring out of the Lord's Spirit upon all flesh, so that the sons and daughters of the Church should prophesy, and her young men should see visions, and her old men should dream dreams, and whosoever should call upon the name of the Lord should be saved (Acts ii.). Like another John in the isle of Patmos, he was in the Spirit, and saw as an accomplished fact what John saw in a far-off vision; he saw actually what John saw prophetically, a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and he beheld the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

It is such a teacher that the Christian world pressingly needs, and to whom it is invited to listen. The new influence which, he testifies, is now descending from heaven, is silently but evidently diffusing itself in the world. It is penetrating all receptive minds, and modifying all religious systems. This, with the teaching of the truth, which the Writings of our enlightened scribe contain, will gradually change the state of Christendom, and through Christendom

the nations of the earth, until the kingdoms of the world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever; when the Lord shall be King over all the earth; when there shall be one Lord, and His name one, one fold and one Shepherd. EDITOR.

FROM BEYROUT TO BETHLEHEM:

BEING REMINISCENCES OF A RECENT JOURNEY THROUGH THE HOLY LAND.

By C. COLLINGWOOD, M.A., etc.

VI. NAZARETH.

I CANNOT agree with Dr. Porter, that though the position of Nazareth is peculiar, it cannot be called either fine or picturesque; for it struck me as being decidedly picturesque, if not fine. The first view of it from the hill above looks down upon a considerable irregular cluster of houses, adhering, as it were, to the precipitous sides, and stretching away to the more level base, situated, indeed, upon the small ridges which seem to support, so to speak, this not very lofty eminence. I leave out of the question altogether at present the splendid view from the summit of the hill; but the white houses, situated at various levels on the hillside, with the surrounding diversified landscape, are certainly striking. Like all Eastern towns, it looks best at a distance, and although some of the houses in Nazareth are clean and neat looking, most of them are fearful hovels, and the streets abominable, the mud being rather worse here than elsewhere. Dungheaps are an abundant product, the odorous streams from which run in all directions in wet weather. In one of the houses I saw children playing in a room shared by a camel; in another a donkey was the supernumerary tenant after these, a gazelle looking over a balcony could be pardoned. In the outskirts are small domed mud erections, which I took at first to be ovens, but on peeping into one, I saw a whole family, and not a small one, ensconced in the interior.

Nazareth is said to contain about 4000 inhabitants, mostly Greeks and Greek Catholics. The Maronite Christians, about 400 in number, have a great reputation for good looks, the women being for the most part remarkably handsome and graceful. They wear the same curious head-dress I had observed between Tiberias and Nazareth, namely,

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