The first idea they derived from Experience and Observation. They felt it, and they saw its development in the world around them. The second, they appear to have borrowed from Inference and Tradition. Their Creator, though but dimly known, they all allowed to be good; and unassisted reason was sufficient to teach them that He was not likely to have made man so bad as he appeared to be. They discovered, and by the same process as the royal preacher, "weighing one thing after another, to find out the reason," that God had made man upright, but he had sought out many inventions. Besides this inductive knowledge, they had the starlight of Tradition, thick with phantoms of paradisaical eras, and golden ages, of lapsed privileges, of archangels, angels, demons, heroes and archons-of better times gone by, and of a "good time coming." And this last persuasion, that their position was not without remedy, was adumbrated in almost all their religious rites and ceremonies, and especially in that universally prevalent idea, the earnest of a revelation to come, that "without shedding of blood there was no remission." It seems not only desirable, but absolutely necessary before entering on the consideration of God's unspeakable gift in the redemption of the world by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to bestow some attention on the circumstances which rendered such a grant not only urgent, but positively indispensable to the happiness of the entire human family here and hereafter. We propose, therefore, before treating of the grant, to make out this necessity, by proving that in all ages, in all countries, under all circumstances, and amongst all grades of men there existed on this subject, an earnest, an all-powerful, an inextinguishable, Want. No feeling appears to be more general, or more influential among the human family than the settled persuasion that man is at enmity with his Maker. Not only are the subjects of a written revelation from heaven under this influence; but, as already stated, it includes those who, having no such law, are a law unto themselves. It has always been so. As soon as we have any record of the history of humanity, so soon do we see all men feeling after God, that they may find in Him that satisfaction which they have sought in vain elsewhere. The conscience is uneasy, the intellect unsatisfied, the reason baffled and discomforted; and the whole mai groans and travails, waiting for some further manifestation than it possesses, of the things that lie between God and the well-being and repose of the soul. As naturally as the bodily eye turns towards the sunshine, so naturally does the inner eye turn towards the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, whether to behold him in all the glory of his revealed brightness, or to hail him as the yet unrisen Sun of Righteousness, whose faint and feeble radiations are seen only beyond the everlasting hills, which seem impassable to the uninitiated in that new and living way opened up for them by the gospel. It is scarcely a solecism to say, that the beautiful language of our Articles has been echoed to the letter by almost all the nations of antiquity-their united testimony conducting to this consummation, that "Man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit." And to this general confession, their desires, their practices' their rites, and ceremonies, have exactly corresponded. The earliest written records we possess, assure us of this fact. And those unwritten witnesses still extant in the sculptured and painted tombs, temples, and palaces, of China, India, Assyria, and Egypt, all speak the same language. The dragon pagods of the celestial empire, the gigantic caverns of Ellora and Elephanta; the "men pourtrayed upon the walls, the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed with vermilion, girded with girdles upon the loins, all of them princes to look to;" and the "chambers of imagery with every form of creeping things and abominable beasts, and all the idols of Egypt," are so many proofs of the deeply rooted prevalence of these dominant ideasthat man is wrong-that he was not always so; and that he hopes still for a return to rectitude, to happiness, and to the favor of his Maker. It is less easy to produce evidence direct and succinct, upon these topics from written records. History, strictly so called, is of comparatively recent date. Its first chapters are poetical; * the imaginations and passions being developed at an earlier stage in the progress of man, than the reason and the judgment, so that it is almost impossible to separate truth from fiction. But in the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, we have such a record as seems to overleap the crescent phases of history-the poetical and the narrative, and shine out in all the plenitude of its last and philosophical aspect. The reasons for this, we do not now stay to enquire into. As Christians, we have of course, our own peculiar convictions on the subject, which, however, at the present stage of our enquiry, we do not require our readers to subscribe to. We refer to these Scriptures simply as to a book of history supplying us with striking and tangible information, which we can find no where else in a form so well put or so connected. The record, we are speaking of, belongs to a period three thousand three hundred years ago-ten centuries earlier than the earliest of our Greek historians, and half that period in advance of her first mythologists, and poets. The Israelites, a people whom Jehovah had chosen for his own, are advancing towards the land promised to their forefathers, and God, according to his promise, had driven out before them, those nations through whose territories they had already passed. Balak king of Moab, one of the doomed nations, hears of their progress, and is naturally alarmed. His conscience bears witness against him, and the inherent dread of meeting with those judgments he has long felt that he deserves, is quickened by the consciousness that as Israel is everywhere triumphant, his own day of retribution is hourly drawing nearer. His forebodings assume a practical form, and he asks, in the agony of his soul, what he can do towards averting that anger, he has so much reason to fear. His first impulse is a very common one-the wish becomes father to the thought, that perhaps he is mistaken in his impression regarding the Godfavored people. They may after all be on no better footing with their Maker than himself, and he consequently sends for Balaam, the son of Beor, a prophet or soothsayer, in whose * Kenrick's Preliminary Dissertation to the Egypt of Herodotus, London, 1841, p. 1. eyes divination he had a large measure of faith, to defy and curse them. The covetous prophet, against his better judgment, is persuaded to come, but fails altogether in his object," his being opened," as he himself confesses, to the real state of the case, so that in the end, he is compelled to bless the very people he had been hired to denounce. The heart of Balak naturally becomes as water at this untoward occurrence; and he falls abashed before the insulted Majesty of heaven. But how can he approach him? Remember now what Balak king of Moab consulted, And what Balaam, the son of Beor, answered him from Wherewithal shall I come before the Lord, And bow myself before the high God; Shall I come before him with calves of a year old; Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, (Micah vi. 5, 7.) Now this narrative, we take to be but the echo of every heathen man's experience on the great theme of justification before God, and acceptance with him. The heart of Balak is the type of every unenlightened, unrenewed heart, groaning and travailing in pain to find out some mode of approach, some means of propitiation, some token of a return to that favor which it is too painfully conscious it once enjoyed, has now lost, but may again recover, if the "wherewithal" of God's acceptance could be known. No offering is too costly-no sacrifice too great, to make atonement for the thrice-dyed sin of the soul. This agony, we repeat, is not that of a Christian, writhing under the thrust of that quick and powerful sword, which pierces to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow. It is the anguish of ancient heathendom conscious of its disease, but knowing nothing of a remedy beyond the hope of finding it—a hope, that if implanted by the God of hope himself, it feels conscious can never "make ashamed." The inward conflict almost bursting into development in the mind of this ancient king of Moab, was not unknown to the philosophies of Pythagoras and Plato, Two laws, the laws of the mind and of the members-were always described as warring with each other in the great souls of those who studied in their schools, as well as among the wiser heathen generally. Araspes the Mede, conversing with the great Cyrus, is recorded to have said, "A single soul cannot be a good and bad one at the same time; it cannot at the same time prefer noble and vile acting; nor can it at the same time be inclined towards, and averse to, the same things. It is therefore clear that we have two souls; and that when the good one prevails, it does noble things; but when the bad one is the stronger, it attempts things that are evil." (To be continued.) THE VINE BLOSSOM. THERE are few points in the character of those holy men who wrote the Bible, more interesting and instructive than their susceptibility to the beauties of the natural world. This feature seems in all cases to indicate a degree of refinement far exceeding that of the age in which they lived, and in some instances betrays an acquaintance with facts unknown even to naturalists of the present time. In the beautiful description of an Eastern spring, given in the second chapter of the Canticles, for example, allusion is made to the goodly smell of the budding vines. The appearance of the blossom is familiar to every one; but how few are aware that it possesses a delightful fragrance, which the warm climate of the East must elicit to perfection. Under our less genial skies, and where vines are grown in the open air, this fragrance is scarcely perceptible; but let any one enter a hothouse when the tree is in flower, and he will be delighted and refreshed with the warm and exhilarating aroma. Of all the delights of this lovely season, we know of none more grateful. |