despair and perish. When we profess to hold the true Gospel, we should be not high-minded, but fear; for we then in fact signally claim to be-what we ever must be our brothers' keepers; and we have no right to judge or condemn those who reject our gospel, until it has been preached not as a formal doctrine, but as a true and beneficent Christian life. § 9. LOVE. Faith can not subsist without Love, which is the "fulfilling of the law," and the "bond of perfectness." Their inner relation to each other may be obscure. Perhaps they may be compared as the act, and the habit, of the redeemed soul; or as volition and emotion. Act is ever passing into habit, as the musician learns to play without conscious attention or effort, with delightful facility, and as a second nature. This gives new consciousness of power; new courage and effort; new victory and joy. That which began with self-denial, ends in a higher life of selfindulgence. The bondage of sin has yielded to the power of self-command, and this to a higher subjection, the self-will vanishing in its free allegiance to the divine will. The individual redemption is then complete; that which began with the want of power to do right, has ended in the lack of power to do wrong, and the contingency of sin, which pertains to our probation, is passed. This is the perfect law of liberty, in which we may continue, and be blessed in our doing. Inward delight in the law of God pervades all the powers of the soul. The fear and torment that pertained to a lingering power of sin, have been cast out by perfect love. And so Virtue, we have granted, brings a reward of its own. does faith; but this is specially true of love. Love, for whatever object, imparts happiness though it be a mere fondness or pity for an unworthy thing. The poet has truly said "Love is the life of living things." 1 Augustine defines the various stages of the will in respect to freedom, as a non posse non peccare, a posse non peccare, and a non posse peccare. For it is their joy. But it is the highest joy when it is elevated and conformed to the supreme law of the world, as “holy, just, and good;" when it begins to embrace the world itself as redeemed for subjection to this law; when it apprehends the universe and eternity as the sphere of its infinitely varied application; and when it learns to rejoice in Him who is infinitely greater than the universe, to receive His smile, and to share His love and joy. As divine Love created the world, and rejoices in it all, even in a divine sorrow for that which turns away from God and dies, so Christian love, in sympathy with the divine, encircles and appropriates all things. It transmutes all things, even those which seem adverse, into spiritual wealth; like the philosopher's stone changing all it touches into gold. Love not only quickens the intellect, but sanctifies it as a spiritual sense, that "discerneth all things." The stores of learning, or the intellectual mastery of things, thus become an emblem of the Christian's wealth, in a nearer and dearer possession. He is heir of all things, because he has the mind of Christ. Because he loves, the entire world, life and death, things present and things to come all are his; as he is Christ's, and Christ is God's. This, which is the divine blessedness, must be indeed the Highest Good of man. Whence Paul, alluding, perhaps, to inquiries with which the Ephesian Christians had been familiar, prays for them, "that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in Love, may be able to comprehend with all saints, what is Breadth, and Length, and Depth, and Height; even to know the Love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God." THE END. Bretschneider, 176, 253, 255, 336 Buddeus, S. F. 47 [295, 317, 324 Calvin, J. 62, 72, 207, 350, 404 Castalio, S. 168 Cave, W. 255, 292 Chace, G. I. 229 Basil, 111, 144, 171, 325 Basnage, 223, 224 Bates, W. 72, 94, 102, 105 Baxter, R. 102, 103, 136, 464 Bayle, P. 41, 96, 130, 258, 332, 344, [351 Chalmers, T. 114, 151, 154, 230, 236, Channing, W. E. 354 Charnock, S. 77, 90, 114 [285, 341 Cicero, 8, 197, 210, 269, 277-281, Cheever, G. B. 49, 50 Bailey, J. P. 49 Bayne, P. 56 Beard, J. R. 221, 223, 224 Beccaria, Marquis of, 412 John, 45, 102 Bechai, 288, 341 Bede, the Venerable, 207 J. F. 372 Beecher, E. 53, 77, 78, 111, 406, 432 Clavering, R. 340 Clement of Rome, 208, 255, 289. 290 | Fraser, J. 267 of Alexandria, 321, 322 Clerc, J. le, 42, 109, 351 Coleridge, S. T. 110, 121, 461, 465 [110 Crousaz, J. P. de, 45, 77, 92, 98, 101, Daubuz, C. 208, 212 Didymus of Alexandria, 325 - Diogenes Laërtius 277, 285 Dobney, H. H. 353 Donatus the Grammarian, 269 Dublin Univ. Magazine, 345 Du Pin, L. E. 315 "Duration of Evil," 353, 378 Edwards, J. the Elder, 57, 68, 72, the Younger, 114 419 Eisenmenger, J. A. 287, 288, 338, Empedocles, 41 Ephraem Syrus, 144 Epictetus, 143, 282 Epiphanius, 171, 258 [341 Fulgentius, 99 Fuller, A. 72, 80, 371 Gerhard, 114 Gerson, J. 59 Gesenius, 215 Gieseler, J. C. L. 38, 315, 325 Gnostics, the, 8, 9, 35, 284-287 Goethe, J. W. von, 18, 355, 356 Gregory Nazianzen, 325 Nyssen, 144, 325 the Great, 94, 99, 136, 145 Grote, G. 191, 370 [398 Grotius, H. 166, 169, 205, 288, 315, Ham, J. P. 353 Hamilton, R.W. 48, 76, 290, 293, 305 Hammond, H. 179, 200, 203 Harris, S. 94, 102, 128 Heeren, A. H. L. 267, 268 Hengstenberg, E. W. 187, 204, 213 Episcopius, S. 203 Erbkam, H. 30, 124, 137 Huntington, J. 72 Ignatius, 290, 291 Irenæus, 8, 9, 171, 231, 254, 300-302 Isidore of Pelusium, 169 Jacobi, F. H. 236 Jamblichus, 279 Jarchi, S. 341 Jenyns, Soame, 60, 111 Jerome, 111, 169, 302, 333, 334, Jochanan ben Zaccai, 195, 338 Kant, E. 21, 29, 76, 149, 229, 412 Kimchi, D. 178, 340, 341 King, Edward, 352 Moyle, W. 335 Mosheim, J. L. 72, 276, 344 Münscher, 246, 315, 344 Murdock, J. 176, 226 Nachmanides, 169, 341 W. (Abp.) 14, 40, 44, 96, 109, Neander, J. Aug. 5, 21, 36, 303, 327 119, 124, 127, 145, 171 Kingsley, C. 8, 444 Lacoudre, A. N. 72, 77, 80, 94, 114 Wm. 167 Leibnitz, G. W. 10, 43, 86, 114, 128, Lightfoot, 183, 192, 195, 198, 257 Locke, J. 170, 248, 351 Lucas Brugensis, 72, 99 |