vent; but even in those early days the inspired writers exhorted Christians to regard the Advent as soon to take place. From the day that the Lord Jesus ascended, and angels announced to his astonished disciples, This same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven,' the Second Advent has been the one chief object on which the church has been taught to set her hopes. For this she is bidden to look; for this she is to long; unto this she is to hasten. And the effect of thus looking, longing, hasting, is the establishment of our faith. 'Every man that hath this hope in him, purifieth himself, even as He is pure.' And purity of heart, as it springs from faith, so in turn it reproduces faith. "It may be said, in objection, that the expectation of death will be an equally effective remedy against unbelief. But where, we ask, are we exhorted to look, and to long, and to hasten unto death? If, moreover, as is often the case, we be in possession of health, and strength, and vigour, we may talk of the nearness of death, but we too often act as if its approach were very far removed. Perhaps nothing shows more plainly the difference between speculative and practical belief than this very thing. Every one expects to die, but how many act as if they would live for ever. And though we do not here include Christians, yet even with them the expectation of death fails under ordinary circumstances to produce much practical effect; and, we believe, for this reason, death is not set forth in the word of God as an object to be desired, and sought, and prayed for. Death comes in consequence of the curse; the Saviour comes that there may be no more curse-no more death; hence we pray, 'Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.' And prayer giving nearness to the promises, represses unbelief." Pp. 221-223. "THE PRECIOUSNESS OF TIME becomes manifest as we realize the coming and the kingdom of Christ. As it was in the case of Nineveh, when Jonah preached, 'Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be destroyed,' so is it now; there is but a very short season of grace left. There is a pressing need to urge upon our country the duty of national repentance, that if possible God's judgments may be averted from our country. There is urgent need that all should be exhorted to press into the kingdom of heaven, lest they finally be found among those who seek to enter in and shall not be able. The time is at hand. Prophetical dates, given us in the word of God for our instruction, are closing. We dare not, indeed, fix precise times. I would caution you against any positive statements fixing the period of our Lord's return; but a waiting, watching spirit is ever to be cultivated. The gathering clouds in increasing black, ness are suspended over us. Oh, my brethren, let us at last turn to the Lord our God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness. Who knoweth if he will return and leave a blessing behind him?' Oh, how precious is the present time! What would those who neglect this season give for the present hours hereafter! And even if it be impossible to save our country from Divine judgments, yet, by protesting against evil, and promoting the truth with all our power, we shall unquestionably help to save many, as well as to deliver our own souls." Pp. 294, 295. The Rechabites; a Solemn Warning to Sincere Disciples of Jesus. 1844. An excellent little tract of fifty-four pages, full of much-needed counsel to the people of God. We shall give our readers a paragraph or two as a speci men: "The same is obvious with regard to that curse which sin deserves from the law of God. How do you know, brethren, that, as sinners, you are under that dreadful sentence, under a curse from God? Ah! surely you do not feel it; for should you feel the curse of the Almighty in your souls, your despair would manifest your condition; and Judas's end would appear to you the only and fatal escape to your torments. It is not, therefore, because you feel the curse of the law, but it is because you believe God's declaration, that you are sure and sensible of that awful condition. Here, then, faith is your teacher and master. God is true; God says it; it is so, therefore, and I depend upon it; and, as a consequence, I feel it, I am convinced and sensible of it, because I fully rest upon God's record. "Now, my brethren, do the same with respect to God's promises of grace, and you will hold and possess the peace and joy which are included in them. Because you believe the threatenings of God against sin and disobedience, you feel yourselves uneasy; believe, therefore, his declarations of love, grace, and pardon, and all uneasiness will be removed, and relief and unspeakable gladness will fill your souls. For, as God is true when he pronounces his just sentence, he is equally true when he proclaims his immense love, when he publishes his wide grace in Jesus. If, then, dear disciples of Christ, you rest sincerely and simply on God's declaration of his fatherly love in Jesus, you will have, certainly, in your souls, that firm assurance that you are children, which the sons of Rechab possessed respecting their ancestor." P. 14, 15. "But, my brethren, if to despise God's holy statutes, and if to love the world and its vanities, is an evidence of an unchanged heart, do you not see and well understand these two things? First, that no Rechabite could have either listened to, or liked and kept any command of Rechab, had he not, before all, and previously to his obedience, realized his filiation; and, secondly, that a Rechabite, had he felt himself sad and uneasy in consequence of some negligence of Rechab's intimation, could not have said that he was no son, because he was in something a disobedient son. His sadness, his complaint against his behaviour, would have been the very proof of his relation with his father, and of his honour for a parental authority. "Your mistake, therefore, is evident, when you look to your obedience be fore looking to the primitive and necessary spring of obedience; when you say, in so many words, a Rechabite will not be certain that he is a son of Rechab till he shall have obeyed Rechab, as being one of his sons. What an absurdity, do you exclaim? How could that man obey as a son if he be not certain, before acting, that he is a son indeed ? "What an absurdity, will I repeat, (and directly to your own good sense), it is to say, I will be sure that I am a child of God after I shall have loved God and kept his statutes with the heart of his child. "Of his child? But you say that you are not yet his child. How, therefore, could you obey as a child? What! you doubt to-day whether you be or not an Englishman, a citizen of Great Britain, and a subject of Queen Victoria, and you would attempt to feel, to speak, and to act, as a son of England, and specially as a servant of her Queen! In good logic, Sirs, be certain, in principle, that you are citizens, and then you will see how to be faithful citizens. Have, and retain before all, in the stem of your persuasion the sap of your national birth and right, and then you shall have it in the branches of your feelings and actions; and these effects will evidence that energy, that previous cause-I mean the very sap of your citizenship." P. 18, 19. "Consider, and search, therefore, your own mind and conscience, and, examining yourselves, do ascertain whether you say, with a kind of habit and levity, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; or whether you bow before him in your inner man, in your soul, because you assuredly believe the testimony which the Father has given and proclaimed under heaven, that he gave us eternal life, and that such a life is in his Son Jesus. This is your duty, as well as your life. Be not, therefore, idle or indifferent. To stagger is a doubt; and a doubt, when God hath spoken, is a sin. Hear God, therefore; and, depending humbly upon his word of grace, believe his promise, and give thanks to the Father for his unspeakable gift. Without that positive certainty, never will your soul even desire, much less perform, the meanest work of true Gospel obedience. The law of God will be, indeed, before you; and moved, as you will be, with fear, or with a kind of submission, and also, perhaps of love to God, you will acquiesce to the command, as it is written, and you will do, even with many sacrifices and self-denial, what the letter prescribes; and so, disciples of God's authority, you will appear before men at a wide distance from unbelievers and profane servants of sin; but never, no, never, will the least of your performances issue from faith, since you will obey, in your best hours, in order to make you sure that you have faith, the true faith which manifests itself by good fruits. Fruits (do you not see it?) will be sought after, as a proof and assertion that now you are allowed to have faith. Belief, therefore, will not be the root of them, the sap and energy of their issue. The Rechabite, therefore, if he be in your position, and still in doubt about his filiation, will abstain from wine, in order to make him sure that Rechab was indeed his father. He will not, therefore, keep a father's command. No, he will not act as a Rechabite, as a son; and that kind of obedience, without connexion with the spirit of a child, will be feeble and dead in itself, and will be surely troubled, restrained, and choked by the first temptation. "Such is, Christian, the situation of many professors of religion, and such is the true reason and spring of that idle, dull, and unsteady observation of Jesus's precepts and examples. Great pains, labours, and works are taken, are suffered, and a decided perseverence also is performed, by many disciples; and nothing, however, is obtained from so many deeds but new doubts and new sighs; and as the spirit of adoption is not the spring, the efficacy, the force and support, of that religious exertion, it has no reality in God, and very soon the world, the flesh, and the lust of this age, come and prevail over it. The just,' it is written, shall live by faith.' Faith, therefore, and not life, is the first. Believe, and you shall live." P. 23, 24. Rome and the Reformation; or, a Tour in the South of France. A Letter to the Rev. Richard Burgess, Honorary Secretary of the Foreign Aid Society. By J. H. MERLE D'AUBIGNE, D.D. London: Seeley, Burnside, and Seeley. 1844. This is one of the most intensely interesting little works that we have read for some time. It carries us on from beginning to end with all the flow and interest of a romance. We can only extract one paragraph at the commencement regarding Popery. Popery is now the great enemy to be overcome upon earth. To no country would it prove more formidable than to England; and God, who chooses his soldiers from whence it pleases him, seems to call more especially upon those in England who know his word, to come forth to the glorious conflict. But the question is, where are these Christians to fight with the enemy? Is it in England only, or is it elsewhere also ? "France is the stronghold of Popery. Not Italy, not Spain, not Germany, but France. This is even openly avowed at Rome itself. And it has almost ever been thus. The greatest theologians of the Romish Church belonged to the university of Paris. And at the present time, those Jesuits, those missionaries who are spreading themselves throughout America, the islands of the Southern Ocean, China, and over the face of the whole earth, have gone out from France. "It is therefore in France that Popery must be encountered. You, my dear friend, have seen and understood this, and at the same time, have felt convinced that the battle must be fought by Christians whose native tongue is French. Knowing, therefore, that both at Paris and Geneva, there existed 'Evangelical Societies' having this object in view, and desiring to co-operate with them, you, together with some other Christian friends, formed a society in London, under the name of the Foreign Aid Society."" Pp. 2, 3. · Memoir of the late James Hope, M.D., Physician to St George's Hospital. By MRS HOPE. London: Hatchard. 1843. A memoir of considerable interest. The subject of it, from the same root as the Hopetoun family, must have been a man of very superior abilities, and lofty character. The enthusiasm with which he seems to have thrown himself into his profession was unbounded, and his researches into the theory and practice of auscultation must have enlarged the boundaries of medical science. Before he was forty he attained to the highest eminence and promotion to which he had from his youth aspired, but the fruit dropped from between his hands just as he had plucked it. Indeed, it was the excitement and exertion connected with his canvass for the place of honour that he last pursued, which overthrew his constitution, and the sorrow of the world brought death.' Yet Dr Hope was a man in Christ. It would appear that he had been brought under a saving power of the truth by the ministry of that man of God, Mr Howels of Long Acre, and though still there may be traced in his life the pride and ambition of the old man, crucified but not dead, he rested with most simple trust on 'Him who justifieth the ungodly,' as all his hope. And great was his peace. No death we ever read of was so like a departure as his; (pp. 297-300) it was matchlessly calm and attractive. It was perfect peace,' and all through the one Righteousness. Sacred Biography, Illustrative of Man's Three-fold State-Present—Intermediate-and Future. By J. SMITH, M.A. Glasgow. 1844. This is a respectable book, and may be read with interest and advantage. It contains nothing new, and somewhat that is erroneous, yet upon the whole we feel at liberty to recommend it as containing a good deal of usefully plain instruction. Should a second edition be at any time called for, we would advise the author to scrutinise his work very carefully, and remove the many traces of haste and crudeness which it now presents. Gethsemane was surely not a village,' p. 258. To say of that sweet night, sweet as it must have been, which Jesus spent at Bethany, "heaven (p. 288) this evening would scarce be worth possessing-silence reigns in heaven, for its dwellers surround the house of Martha," is without taste or meaning. We can see no good as likely to accrue from throwing out the suggestion, (p. 34), that after all Cain might have been saved. The sarcasm levelled at those who hold the doctrine of election, (p. 26), just proves, that he who levelled it, like most who employ the same strain, have yet to study the subject, and learn charity. Two lectures are inserted near the close, upon "The Intermediate State,” and “ The Resurrection," which are of no value in themselves, and are certainly more than out of place in a volume of sacred biography. We might have given some extracts, to show our author's style, but our space forbids us. One note, however, we cannot help quoting, as containing a good exemplification of the reductio ad absurdum. A popular minister of Glasgow (John Muir, D.D.) showed in a series of lectures on the Book of Esther, that it contained no real 2 E VOL. XVII. NO. III. history, but was parabolical, and that Ahasuerus meant God,—Esther, Christ, -Mordecai, the Holy Ghost,-and Haman, the devil. The hanging of the devil must have been an interesting part of the lectures." The Theses of Erastus touching Excommunication. Translated from the Latin, with a Preface. By the Rev. Robert Lee, D.D. Edin. 1844. We must deal at length with this volume some future time. In the meanwhile we would only remark, that it is more than ludicrous,—it is deeply lamentable to find our Erastian opponents entering for the first time on the study, and discovering the very import of that controversy to which they so eagerly committed themselves, only when to them and to us it is a controversy conclusively settled. As a matter of argumentative speculation, or historical research, Érastianism may at times require a little discussion still; but most certainly as a question of ecclesiastical principle, it is shut up to every minister and member of the Church Established, and to every adherent of the Church of Scotland Free, it is shut up not less as a question of national policy. The battle of Erastianism, we are convinced, has been fought for the last time, and will not be renewed. It is the controversy of the Papacy that now sounds the alarm, and requires the faithful to make ready their weapons. Strange it is, therefore, and sad to see any who profess to honour Christ, and his word, coming even to examine his claims, not until after every point connected with them has been ultimately set to rest, and things will remain just as they are, take what side such men as Dr Lee may choose. Assuredly from those who have acted with so little foresight, or principle, or courage, in the conflict of Erastianism, we have nothing to expect in the conflict of Popery. Very likely, they will do in this latter case as they did in the former—they will take the side of interest, and raise the cry of moderation and peace; and whilst they profess most vehemently to condemn all her errors, most effectually will they contribute to the dread success of the Romish harlot. Five Sermons on the Temptations of Christ our Lord in the Wilderness, preached before the University of Cambridge in Lent 1844. By W. H. MILL, D.D., late Fellow of Trinity College, and Christian Advocate. Cambridge. 1844. Considering the position of the lecturer, and the audience he addressed, we were prepared to find much more talent in this volume than what its careful perusal has discovered. Our belief, indeed, was, that it would be replete with profound discussion; and we had intended to make it the ground-work for an extensive article. We have been much disappointed, however; and throughout the entire five sermons, we meet with nothing but the most common-place thought, expressed in that very Latinized style which detracts so much from the elegance of Faber's writings. Thus he speaks of "questions infructuous for education," (p. 21), and again he says, (p. 21), "nothing can be more delusive than the imagination that, by ignoring the matter by equilibration of mind between the catholic proposition and its opposite, we are imitating the primitive believers." Of course the question of our Lord's tentability is cousidered at length, and the serious heresy broached by Mr Irving, in connection with this matter refuted. We are surprised, however, to find it stated, (p. 35), "that this detestable ascription of a corrupt humanity to our Lord has passed comparatively unheeded by the age," for assuredly it was this daring tenet that of all of Mr Irving's peculiarities, awakened the most general dismay, and led to his immediate deposition by our Church. The exposure of the re |