in the Lord Jesus Christ? Yes, most assuredly; and we may survey, Christendom all over in our days and find that to be the case. They that adopt the scriptural method of rousing sinners from their lethargy and spiritual slumbers are the successful ministers. Visit the metropolis of Britain, and who are they that have crowded congregations, yea, multitudes upon multitudes following them? and who are they that have churches that are full of holy zeal and Christian activity, the true light of heaven burning in the midst of them and the dew of Israel irrigating every plant? are they not the Baptist Noels, the Leifchilds, the Shermans, the Claytons, the Reeds, and the Fletchers? Visit their places of worship on the communion Sabbath, and you will see whole assemblies participating the emblems of a Saviour's dying love, and every countenance brightening with heavenly joy and Divine consolations. But withdraw from there for a contrast and visit the atmosphere of Antinomianism, the whole scene appears cheerless and withering: the pulpit cold; Ezekiel's valley breathless; the churches paralyzed and inert; and every professor reclining on the pillow of self-security. How doleful and how heart-rending is the scene. "Woe to them that are at ease in Zion, they that grieve not for the affliction of Joseph" (Amos, vi 1-6). "How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of every field wither for the wickedness of them that dwell therein? the beasts are consumed, (no victims for sacrifices,) and the birds (no melody of praise ascending from the groves) because they said, He shall not see our last end"—(Jer. xii. 4).

Again, if we visit Bristol, the religious city of our beautiful island, where the leaven of Antinomianism is almost purged away, or if any can be found there, it is not in a state of fermentation: how delightful it is to behold there how our sanctuaries are filled; how each minister is a burning light in each of the golden candlesticks; how the Churches heave with Christian principles, and the bosom of each community throbs with the ardent zeal of the Lord of Hosts-"Awake, O north wind and come, thou south, and blow upon this garden, that the spices thereof may flow out; let my Beloved come unto His garden, and eat His pleasant fruit” (Cant. iv. 16).

Moreover visit some of the provincial towns, such as Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham, York, and so forth, and the case is still the same. In the one we find James, Swan, East, Morgan, and others, with a vast concourse of hearers, assembling around them every Sabbath day, to hear the Word of life; each in his own pulpit arousing the sinner, and building up the saint in the faith of the Gospel : and in the next we find Ely and Hamilton, with their ministerial brethren, as stars in the right hand of the Saviour, diffusing around them the light of truth, and pointing sinners to "the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." Their souls are not narrow and contracted, but expand as wide as the human race and are as spacious as the world; praying for its salvation, and yearning over its perishing nations. But oh! what a contrast is that which subsists between them and and those selfish Antinomians! The one side is light and cheering, and the other dark and frowning. The one party deliver themselves from the blood of souls, the other stain their consciences with guilt of the deepest die. The one become and scripturally are co-workers with God, in saving sinners: the other fold up their arms and coolly say, "Am I my brother's keeper ?" "O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united."

We shall leave the reader to apply the subject. We presume he sees clear enough how futile and pernicious is the error we have been exposing, and how abundant the evidences that bear against it. We would enlarge, had we room, but we desist; and "now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen."

CELATUS.

BY THE REV. HENRY EDWARDS.

(Continued from page 476.)

In the circumstances of this affecting event, we discern all the peculiarities of Peter's character. It was the same man,-who cannot see it?—that first confessed and that first denied his Master; the same man that so loved and so abjured Him. When the other disciples fled, his affection overcame his fears, and he ventured to follow to the high priest's palace. The others had not the courage to rush into the same extremity of danger, and were not, therefore, exposed to a similar temptation. No; they were not forward enough, they were not ardent enough; if the solecism may be pardoned, they were not bold enough to fall like Peter. And how momentary was his fall! The blush of dishonest shame had hardly time to tinge his cheek, ere the tears of contrition washed away the stain. The tempter dropped his prey as soon as he had grasped it. The moment of his fall coincided with the moment of his repentance; he “went out and wept bitterly." Here we see all the quick sensibility of his temper; a look dissolved him. The bigotted high priest and cruel Jews were unaffected by the manifest innocence and greatness of our Saviour's character, as it appeared upon his trial. Though the earth shook under them at His crucifixion, and darkness covered their favoured land, while the Light of nations was expiring in the midst of them, their hard hearts were not touched. All His beneficence, all His compassion, all His power-His resurrection itself left them the same ungracious, unrepenting, unforgiving, unforgiven race. In the meanwhile Peter is in tears; a look recovered this tender apostle. While his Master was suffering on the cross, Peter, I doubt not, was suffering in secret reproach and anguish on account of a fault, which, because he could not forgive himself, the world and his Master have long since forgiven him.

This unfortunate event in Peter's life was, no doubt, permitted in the counsels of a kind Providence to humble this confident apostle. It was necessary to temper the inconvenient warmth of his zeal, to moderate his impatience and to make him ashamed of his positive and ostentatious professions. This, indeed, it seems to have effected. By his lamentable fall he seems to have learned extraordinary humility; for we find him in after life acknowledging before Paul, who was comparatively a novice in the Gospel, that he had been in error, in yielding to the opinion of the Jews of Jerusalem, and withdrawing from his intercourse with the Gentiles. Yes, this venerable apostle was rebuked by his younger brother Paul, and he submitted. This humility he learned, I doubt not, in that memorable school, the hall of the high priest, where he had been so terribly rebuked by the eye of his Master. Let us turn to a most affecting and beautiful incident in the character of Jesus. As soon as He has risen from the grave, His first words to Mary Magdalene are, "Go tell My disciples and Peter that I am risen from the dead." How touching is this little mention of Peter only by name! Afterwards, in an interview with the apostles, where Peter was present, He draws from him a threefold declaration of his attachment, in allusion to his having three times denied Him. "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me? Peter was grieved, that He said unto him the third time, Lovest thou Me?" and replies, "Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee. Jesus saith unto Him, Feed My sheep."

Thus was Peter reinstated by our Saviour in his apostolical commission; and he preserved to the end of life that pre-eminence, to which his age and virtues entitled him, and all that activity which his disposition rendered peculiarly easy. Yes, affectionate apostle! from the hour of your fall Master through followed you the dangers of a public ministry; and now the crown of honourable martyrdom in the cause of Christianity adorns the head of that apostle, who was once tempted to say of his Master, "I know not the Man."

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The outline which we have now presented of the life and character of Peter, has, we hope, sufficiently prepared for the reflections which are to follow.

The first of these is, the argument in favour of the truth of the Gospel, drawn from the change of character and views of Peter and the rest of the apostles after the resurrection. It is an argument, which we earnestly entreat the unbeliever to ponder well, to examine on every side, and tell us how far its force is to be eluded.

If you will attend, then, to the characters of these twelve men, among whom Peter was unquestionably the most eminent, you find that they were in general uncultivated, and, originally, as narrow in their prejudices as the rest of their countrymen. They do not appear to have been distinguished from the middling class of Jews by any qualities, which would command peculiar respect or conciliate extraordinary affection. Certainly they were among the lsst men whom we should have chosen to propagate a new theory, and to convert to such a system as the Gospel the conceited disciples of Zeno and Lucretius, and the still haughtier doctors of the synagogue. They who sat in Moses' seat were prepared to despise their presumptuous pupils, who had been so long implicitly subjected to their ecclesiastical authority. They could not but smile, to see these Galileans putting off their fisher's garments, to put on the robes of a prophet. No; we should have chosen the noble and intelligent Nicodemus, the learned Gamaliel, the rich Joseph of Arimathea, the eloquent and insinuating Tertullus. So entirely the reverse of this were the appointments of Jesus, that the only man among the disciples who appeared capable, by the energy of his character, and, perhaps, by the powers of his mind, to spread a new religion in the face of an opposing world, is suffered to show his incompetency and give a most humiliating proof of his infirmity, which is transmitted to all succeeding generations, to satisfy the Christian, that, if that doctrine or that work had been of man, it would have long since come to nought.

Peter and the other disciples, we doubt not, attended Jesus while He lived, chiefly because they had hopes of His assuming some higher power than that of healing diseases; a power which should defeat the enemies of the Messiah, and reward with the first places in His kingdom His faithful adherents. Such was the state of Jewish expectation, that they could have formed no other idea of the kingdom of Christ. Whenever Jesus hinted that they would meet with sufferings, they probably had no conception that these sufferings would be anything more than some temporary impediments from the incredulity of their countrymen, which would soon be at an end, and terminate in their final elevation to undisputed authority. But when our Lord hinted at His own death, Peter cries out, indignant and alarmed, "Be it far from Thee, Lord; this shall not be unto thee;" so that our Saviour was obliged to rebuke him, and say, "Get thee behind Me, Peter, for thou art an offence unto Me."

The apostles retained these worldly hopes till the very last moment of their attendance on our Saviour. Of course His arrest must have sufficiently surprised them; but when they found that there was no interposition on His behalf, and that He was not to escape from the hands of the officers, they gave up His cause as lost. Their full-blown hopes were blasted in an hour, and all the gay andimposing imaginations of a worldly kingdom, with its palaces and crowns, robes and riches, the ermine and the sceptre, vanished like the dream of the morning, leaving them nothing in place of all this, but their nets and rods and fisher's garments. "Then all the disciples forsook Him and fled." Peter returns, indeed, from curiosity, or from personal attachment; but he returns only to deny his Master. In this state of confusion and disappointment, when the few disciples are dispersed, Jesus is tried; and the unwillingness of Pilate, the last hope of His friends, avails nothing to His release; but the new founder of the Christian faith, without resistance, surrenders Himself to crucifixion and breathes His last breath upon the cross. Now, I ask, where was the religion which He preached? His history has come to a close; His life has gone out, after a short and dazzling lustre; His religion has dissipated with His disciples; and in this solemn hour what remained, I ask, of Christianity? Why was it not at that moment obliterated? why was it not then added to the funeral pile of the thousand and ten thousand systems and chimeras of the human mind? The triumph of the Jews was at that moment complete. Jesus had expired, and the Gospel appeared to have sunk, never again to rise. Wait but a few days, and a man arises in the midst of an assembly of thousands of hostile Jews, with confidence in his fea

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tures, intrepidity in all his motions, with the utmost fluency, sincerity, gravity and energy of speech. He begins by saying, "Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a Man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by Him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know ; Him, being delivered by the determinate council of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain; this Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ;" and He hath shed forth this Spirit, which ye now see and hear. This speech is delivered in the presence of eleven other men, who corroborate every fact by their own testimony of the same. And who is this man? Who are the men, so assuming, so presumptuous? Do you know, that this man is Peter, who but a few days since, denied his dying Master, and hid himself to conceal his shame? Do you know, that these are the same men, who fled in all directions upon the arrest of Jesus, and of whom we hear no more, till we find them in this assembly of the murderers of their Leader? I have a right to ask the sceptic, whence this sudden transformation? Jesus, you say, is dead; His body moulders in the dust; His resurrection is a mere fable. Will you say, that they who followed a Master principally for the reward they expected, when He was alive, were thus completely and suddenly changed in their views, their hopes, their intrepidity, their whole character, when they know that He was dead, and was still lying lifeless in the grave? From a dead man, what had they to expect? From His murderers what could they anticipate, but a fate similar to their Master? I have a right to call upon the sceptic for a solution of this difficulty. I have a right to demand of him to inform me, why the religion of Jesus was not utterly extinct, when He was dead upon the cross, and His disciples had fled in consternation. I have a right to be informed, if Jesus did not rise, and the story of the apostles is a fable, whence is it, that a religion, which contains these facts, has existed through eighteen centuries, humble in its origin, persecuted in its progress, and gaining strength by opposition? How was it, that twelve cowardly and feeble men established a religion in the centre of Jerusalem, the Founder of which had but just expired in the shame of an accursed crucifixion?

You may say, if you please, that it was enthusiasm and fanaticism in the apostles, so that they really imagined, that they saw and conversed with Jesus after His death, and were not guilty of falsehood, but were only insane, when they maintained the fact of the resurrection. But what enthusiasm is this! Who could bring together twelve men, who had fled in consternation, and induce them to agree in a consistent and intelligible story? If they were enthusiasts, whence the change of their ideas respecting the nature of our Saviour's character? whence this new direction of their views? If they were enthusiasts merely, it is to be supposed, that they would be enthusiasts according to their old notions, and that a little of that suffering and persecution, to which they were soon exposed, would cure them of their madness. But the most pusillanimous of men are converted into the most bold and intrepid; the most ambitious and worldly, into the most spiritual, disinterested and faithful. They maintain, through the greatest sufferings-sufferings, such as they could not once think of, with patience-a faith, which has stood to the present hour, and will stand, I believe, till the heavens are no more.

This change, then, in the character of Peter and the disciples, let the infidel account for, if he can, without admitting that fact, which is the basis of our religion. If the fall of Peter lends any confirmation to the truly miraculous nature and propagation of our religion, he did not fall in vain.

We have learned something, then, from Peter's history, in aid of our faith. It also affords instructions of a practical nature. It gives us all a lesson of resolution and vigilance, lest we too fall from our steadfastness. Let no Christian say, that he can never be precisely in Peter's situation, and therefore that he can never deny a Master, who is no longer present with His followers. We deny Him, Christians, when we suppress our secret convictions of the truth of His Gospel, and would make the world believe, that we "know not the Man." We deny Him, when we attempt to shake off the restraints of His laws, or bend them to a more convenient

standard; or when we take pains to hide the few peculiarities, which our Christian education, or profession of the Gospel, yet oblige us to retain. We deny Him, when like Peter, we mingle with the vicious and the base; endure the jests of the scorner, and the licentiousness of the man of pleasure; and lest we should be suspected of rigour or of superstition, choose not to be distinguished from the promiscuous multitude of worldly men, who know not their God and their Redeemer. No; it is not impossible to deny our Master, nor is it easy to be always true to His cause. It seems, indeed, to be no difficult task, to be a Christian, when the religion is creditable, when respect attends on its institutions, and men throng to the temples, and the profession of Christianity leads to public honours. But, my readers, to say nothing of the struggles, which every disciple of Christ has to maintain with the corruptions of his own heart, a man must not expect to be a Christian, even in the best of times, without suffering some reproach from being true to his Christian principles. The standard of the world is low and variable; but the everlasting laws of Christian purity, piety, and benevolence, are not affected by any change of manners, or fluctuations of opinion. The Gospel stands in the midst of the tide of fashions and fancies, the measure of all opinions, but regulated by none. He who would be faithful to His religion, cannot pass through the world without being tempted by the example of others, tried by many severe duties, reproached by some, whom he wishes to love, and neglected by others, whom a little sacrifice to his principles might retain in his favour. Let him, then, be vigilant and resolute. Again; the fall of Peter teaches a lesson of humility. If there are any presumptuous and enthusiastic Christians among us, they may learn from this history, that they are not the most secure. Excessive confidence in religion is hardly to be distinguished from arrogance. It is never the means, and seldom the consequence of a religious life. Let us not trust, then, too much to any temporary excitements in religion, and much less think ourselves secure, because we have made a competent profession of our faith. Let us remember, too, that no man is allowed to make wanton trial of his faith and virtue. A man may be justly left to be overcome by a trial, which he has presumptuously sought, when he might have triumphed over a temptation, and stood a test, which was presented to him in the ordinary course of providence. The spirit of the Christian life is, indeed, a spirit of power and fortitude, but it is always joined with humility, distrust of one's self, humble estimation of one's own powers, and deep sensibility to the infirmity of human virtue. The daily prayer of the Christian is, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.' "Let him, who thinketh he standeth, take heed, lest he fall.

Again; we learn from the history of Peter, that though a good man may fall, he is yet distinguished by tenderness of conscience, and deep and severe contrition. Peter "went out, and wept bitterly," and returned to his Master. The habitual offender may regret his sins, because he retains a lurking fear of their consequences; but the good man suffers, because he feels the shame and ingratitude of his offences. He feels a stain, as he would a wound, though the world may not have discovered the blemish; he hopes for pardon, but does not cease to mourn.

To conclude; do not flatter yourselves, because Peter fell and instantly recovered, that he, who is every day sinking, and falling from his fidelity, is to be as easily recovered. Contrition may purge away the occasional lapses of a man, who lives the life of a disciple; but it is difficult to conceive how the effects of a depraved life, the example of which has been extending and operating in every direction, are to be expiated or removed by a dying hour of fear and sorrow, however deep, however painful. "Watch, therefore, and pray, that ye fall not into temptation."

UNITY. AS Lord Falkland, in King Charles's army, wandered, exclaiming, "Peace, peace!" so shall my prayer in life, my longing in death-oh! may my everlasting portion be-Unity, unity!-Rev. J. Sortain.