antagonisms which reciprocate between Christian and Christian, cannot hurt the true unity of the Church, except in so far as they weaken and darken those rays of life which, flowing from the Son of God, animate and lighten the soul, and through which all are united to Him, and through Him to one another. It is only in so far as they hurt the Christianity of those who engage in them, that they hurt the unity of the Church. But this they do more than could be told. For if the essential condition of Christianity be the possession of the spirit of Christ, if those who have not the spirit of Christ be none of His, there is but little room among His disciples for the contentious, to whom, instead of salvation, the Apostle Paul assures us that God will recompense tribulation and wrath.

And

But, even when matters do not go so far as the destruction of the Christianity of those who engage in religious dispute with one another, such dispute, though. it cannot destroy the real, destroys the visible unity among Christians. hence a great evil. For mutual love, in that case, being manifestly wanting, the Church is self-condemned in the eyes of the world. Infidelity is armed with weapons of fearful moral energy. In that case, infidelity can rail-not without reason and Scripture, too, on its side-against every pretension to a holy zeal on the part of those whose most forward features are a schismatic antipathy to all but their own party. Oh, how it must grieve the Spirit of the God of Love when He looks down upon His Church, and sees it lacerated, as it is now, by party zeal! Again, and again in this single prayer we have been considering, does our blessed Saviour raise His hands (in a few hours to be stretched on the Cross), praying for the unity of His disciples, assigning as the reason of His holy importunity that when they were seen to be thus united, the world would know and acknowledge that their Master was the Son of the God of Love. And is it thus that we requite His solicitude? Is it thus that we answer to His prayer? Oh! is it the mind of Christ that we are embracing, or a holy life that we are seeking, when we are wrangling about every tittle? Whence have we gathered that our calling as Christians is to be zealous each more than another in plaiting sectarian crowns of thorns to thrust upon the bleeding brows of our Redeemer? If it be the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ that we are contending for, and striving to be fruitful in, that is good. To know the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom He hath sent, is eternal life. But how do we become fruitful in such knowledge? If we are to believe inspiration, it is by "adding to our faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity." He that lacketh these things we are assured is blind. And how many among us are blind. Would that this long night of strife was spent! Would that the day were at hand when every Christian will put on the armour of light-" Godliness, brotherly kindness, charity."

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ARGUMENTS FROM THE WHOLE BIBLE.

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The question, whether of the two is most congenial with true religion and the spirit of the Gospel in the present state of society-first, an absolute uniformity over all, as the Church of Rome maintains, and in favour of which many Protestants feel prepossessed; or, secondly, an unity of spirit, in variety of form, such as that which all evangelical communions, if united in mutual recognition and love, might immediately display, has now been answered, by viewing each part of the Bible separately, and considering the whole as composed of the writings of Moses, the Prophets, the Evangelists, the Apostles.

The results we obtain from consulting Moses lead us to the conclusion that if, instead of existing successively, as there did then in the families who constituted the Church, there existed simultaneously a great variety in the circumstances and states of society in different regions of the earth, as there does now in the families for whom the true religion is designed, a similar variety of forms in religion, provided the same unity of spirit were maintained over all, would be just as suitable; and that, since the development of the primitive Church was the immediate work of God, the existence of variety of form in the Church now actually extant, provided there be unity of spirit along with it, is not to be rashly condemned as a thing improper in itself, or contrary to the will of God.

Turning, then, from the Old to the New Testament Scriptures, we found that our Saviour represented His Church, though all under Himself as the only Shepherd, yet as composed of various folds, and we gathered with certainty from His own mouth, that the bond which unites His disciples into one is not any outward agreement in ritual, confession, &c., in a word not any mere outward act of uniformity, but a spiritual relationship to Himself (like that of the body to the head, the branch to the vine), and through Him to one another. Here, also, we found a new development and emphasis given to the principle of unity, in so far as it does and ought to manifest itself between man and man. "A new commandment (said our Saviour) give I unto you, that ye love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one towards another."

Leaving the evangelists, then, for the apostolic epistles, we found the same doctrine so largely set forth, and we dwelt so minutely on its evidence as there displayed that we need not return to it now. In the apostolic epistles alsoharmoniously with the books of the prophets-we found that the Church is compared to a body composed of many members all united into one, differing in form and office, but all agreeing, and mutually honouring and assisting each other: also to a temple built of many variously fitted stones, united by one chief corner-stone. short, the review which we have taken of each of the sections into which the Scriptures may be conveniently divided, has led us to the same conclusion, and that all in opposition to the idea that an universal uniformity among all churches is indispensable to unity-all in favour of the idea that there may be a true and Christian unity in the midst of much variety in outward forms.

In

Our argument from the Scriptures is not complete, however, unless we view them as a whole. For, though the Bible may be viewed as a volume of inspired tracts, each having an independent unity of its own, and its own epoch, authorship, and signification, yet the Bible, considered as a whole, is also an unity. It is, in fact, that unity which is emphatically "the truth." It is the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. A few words are therefore required on the bearings on our argument of the Bible considered as a whole.

And to what conclusion shall we be led, if we view the Bible, as well as the ark, or the holy city, or the holy mountain, as a type and representative of the Church? We shall find that the testimony which it gives is altogether one with that which all the others give. In a word, what a beautiful illustration does the Bible supply of an all but infinite variety, yet with a perfect unity of truth and spirit therewith! How different from those dry productions named codes of laws, decrees of councils, canons, creeds and the like, which mere human intelligence has composed, is that volume in which the law of God is contained! What a beautiful development and display of truth from Genesis to the Apocalypse! The path of revelation, like that of the just, which it opens, "is like the shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day." "As the earth bringeth forth fruit herself, first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear," so is the Kingdom of God, so is the course of revelation, of which the Bible is the sum. All is life, change, development. And though such be the value of the sacred volume, that, if a man do but cast his desires into it, with pious trust and expectation, as a man casts seed into the ground, and though he but sleep and rise night and day, in other words, though he have not much understanding of the theory of revelation, or of the Bible as a whole, at once successive and simultaneous, yet still the spiritual life will spring up in his heart, he knoweth not how; and all will be well with him. But he who studies the blessed volume, each book in relation to the times in which it was communicated, and the circumstances of the people to whom it was first given, and each also in relation to each other book, and the whole in relation to himself, will have his piety still more amply rewarded by many a grand discovery of unlooked-for truth. Yes, every page of the sacred volume will become endeared to his heart and conscience. His reason, as well as his faith, will feed upon it. Its truths will come home to him. He will not need merely to submit to its dictates, as the desultory or merely formal reader must ever do, if he is to maintain his piety in the perusal of it. Instead of needing to submit, the Bible student will embrace. And among other discoveries he will make, is that which it belongs to our present object to insist on-namely, the

beautiful variety of form always in the unity of the spirit, which the Word of God displays. Moses, David, Isaiah, Amos, Ezekiel, Daniel, Paul, James, John, how varied their different styles, their different subjects, their different objects, their different lights, in a word, how varied the books themselves, which the Holy Ghost, through them, has bequeathed to us. Yet, with all that variety, what unity of spirit and of truth.

If, then, we are to take the Bible as a whole, as representing the Catholic Church, whose charter it is; if we are to view its individual parts as analogous to individual churches, we are led by this, as by all the other evidence which we have deduced from the Scriptures, to regard an unity of spirit in variety of form, not an absolute uniformity over all, as a constitution of the universal church, which the Scriptures even lead us to expect, at least, during a certain epoch, and one which, while the state of society is such that a variety of form in an unity of spirit is peculiarly well adapted to supply the spiritual wants of the pious peculiarly fitted for gathering in the elect, is not to be condemned on any scriptural grounds.

THE EXPECTATION OF THE JEWS.

JESUS, at the Feast of Tabernacles, standing in the temple, said: "If any man thirst let him come unto Me and drink, and out of his belly shall flow living water. The Water of Life, imparting the true life to dead souls, this is what our Jewish friends need; and they have the testimony of thousands, among all nations, who have come to Jesus and found Him to be the Christ of God, blessing them by turning them away from their iniquities. But these are Gentile believers, and the Jews stumble at the mention of a Saviour who ignores the middle-wall of partition which they insist on maintaining. They are looking for a Messiah who shall make all see this inviolable wall of separation, who shall give them national distinction and supremacy and declare them the elect of God: a Messiah who shall crown their expectations, and reward them for not having believed on Jesus, and be their joy and crown, nationally and individually. Of course when He appears there will be unbounded joy and triumph among all the Jews scattered over the face of the earth, and all people will gaze with reverence and awe upon the long-despised but now divinely-attested sons and daughters of the Most High.

But is this the kind of Advent described in their own Scriptures? What says Malachi?"Who may abide the day of His coming? and who shall stand when He appeareth? "And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false-swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right and fear not me." This shows that at the Advent of Messiah men's sins will be revealed, in odious contrast with His purity and truth; especially the hypocrisy of those who profess to fear God and yet deny Him by their ungodliness. And Isaiah declares pointedly that the Messiah will not meet with the credence of those among whom He appears. "Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed." "He is despised and rejected of men." "To Him whom man despiseth, to Him whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant of rulers, kings shall see and arise, princes also shall worship because of the Lord that is faithful, the Holy One of Israel and He shall choose thee" (Isaiah liii. and xlix.). Because of the unpreparedness of the people, there was to be a precursor, a man of the order of Elijah, spoken of in Isaiah xl. and in Malachi. The concluding verses of the Old Testament are these, and they are truly remarkable as showing the state of the people at the time of the Advent.

"Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord; and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth (or the land) with a curse.'

For the expression "turn the heart," see the prayer offered by Elijah on Mt. Carmel, 1 Kings xviii. 37: Hear me, O Lord, that this people may know that Thou art the Lord and that Thou hast turned their heart back again."

When John the Baptist appeared on the banks of Jordan preaching repentance and proclaiming the immediate advent of the Messiah, and like Malachi asking, "Who may abide the day of His coming and who shall stand when He appeareth?" vast numbers of all classes were pierced by his word and acknowledged their sinfulness and unworthiness, and received baptism at his hands as a pledge of their purpose to receive Him and obey Him when He should appear.

The point we wish to make is this, that the Advent of the Messiah is the restoration of the true standard of holy living and the consequent humiliation and repentance of those who are taught by Him, and the revolt and opposition of the many who refuse to humble themselves. The ministry of Jesus fulfilled these conditions to the letter. He came to His own and His own received Him not, loving darkness rather than light, preferring their own will to the will of God; but as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to those who believed on His name. The Jews were waiting for one who should be clothed with divine power to chastise their enemies and attest the sacred relation in which they stood to the Most High, His own elect nation, causing the Romans and all other peoples to recognise their sacred character and national supremacy. Jesus came preaching a righteousness that tarnished the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees even, thus rearing high the walls of the Kingdom of Heaven, and requiring those who would take it to take it with violence; He came stripping the Jew of his supposed goodness, choosing His disciples among Galilean fishermen, casting_out devils, healing the sick, raising the dead, but doing nothing directly to free the Jews from the Roman yoke; therefore the mass of the Jews rejected Him. But note: they fulfilled the prophecies in thus rejecting Him. They rejected Him because they had rejected the truth of God; making more of their traditions than of the precepts of God. They wanted honour and glory, and God offered them in Christ-repentance and self-condemnation; they wanted national disticntion, and God cast down the middle wall of partition between them and others.

Let the Christ now come to them from the skies; will He come to flatter them, to exalt them, to glorify them? Vain hope. Their own Scriptures declare plainly that they must know Him as a Saviour from sin, as the Lord their righteousness, as their Teacher and Example, before they can know Him as their Glorifier.

The Rabbis of the present day look for a sign deep down among the foundations of the destroyed temple. They are excluded from the area once occupied by the temple and now by the mosque of their bitterest enemy, and grope in the deep dark caverns for signs, not considering the stupendous sign that their city and temple were destroyed and their nation has remained dispersed for eighteen centuries because they refused Him that came in the name of the Lord, saying, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven."-G. B.

Foreign Intelligence.

FRANCE.

(From our own Correspondent.)

PARIS, June 15, 1894. PÈRE HYACINTHE has been successful in his lectures on Anarchy and its Causes, drawing crowds by his splendid oratory and manly denunciations of the reigning evils in education, morals, and godless science, and giving the one remedy-viz., a return to God. He thus visited the towns of Béziers, Narbonne and Perpignan. The Bishop of Versailles tries a somewhat different method (!) by exhibiting once more the treasure of the Church of Argenteuil, near Paris,-the seamless coat of Our Lord! and instituting a pilgrimage thereunto! What does Treves say to this? The coat of Argenteuil happens to be in fragments, but the objection is easily waived by the explanation that in 1790 the worthy Curé divided the seamless fabric, in order to hide it in several places, and thus save a portion, if not the whole, from

revolutionary outrage and destruction! Legends are put forth to support this superstition?

The Polytechnic School has celebrated its centenary; the Roman Catholic students had their memorial at Saint Etienne du Mont, the Jewish members at the Synagogue, and the Protestants at the Oratoire Church. About forty of the present day and a large number of former scholars, who have remained true to God, were there. The venerable pastor, President of the Reformed Church, L'Vernes, declared that the Polytechnic curriculum had injured neither his faith nor his pastoral vocation which he had distinctly received at the early age of fifteen. Other like testimonies were given, that nothing need prevent true science and true religion going hand in hand. The President of the Lutheran Executive Synodical Commission, is a Polytechnician, General Coste, late commander-in-chief of Paris, M. Schloesing, Director of the Government manufactories of tobacco, Colonel Roux, second in command of the Polytechnic School, and many other Protestant men of distinction educated there, were present. Remarkable speeches were made. Among others, Pastor Appia spoke of the influence of strongly-educated young men, forming over the land a sort of moral net-work, in which Christian faith has a wide place.

A second

The atheist lecturers, who counted on a grand success in their hall at Montmartre, waited on their platform in vain for hearers; they hoped to prepare numerous youths to deny the being of a God, in view of certain fêtes, but no hearers came except one, and he was an English tourist drawn in by curiosity. attempt was made, but with still less result, no English tourist being at hand. The whole was an absolute fiasco. Is it a symptom of lassitude on the part of the Parisian public, and a consequent leaning toward religion, or rather the feeling that any such lecture is superfluous ?-perhaps both.

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The Rationalistic periodical, La Vie Chrétienne, has ceased to appear, and merges into the Revue Chrétienne, which, however, assures its readers that no objectionable articles will be admitted. The temptation to latitudinarianism is strong in those regions of religious thought. The Témoignage has a wise word of warning: History (it says) is very instructive on this point. It shows that unbelief has never found an entrance, with open face, into the Church. It has always glided in by a door ajar,-penetrating under cover of great respect for everything essential, claiming only a little more elbow room for what is termed secondary doctrines. Thus, in the last century, rationalism crept through the breach made by pietism, and wore a pietist cloak so cleverly woven that it was easily mistaken for the reality. Many churches thus became rationalistic unawares, and when it was discovered it was too late to mend the evil. We seem to be in presence of an analagous phenomenon. The capital importance of pure doctrine in its full integrity is denied by some in the name of history, by others despite history; and men who set out from opposite points of the horizon bid fair to meet, at no distant period, on the ground of common negation. The danger presses. We will not weary of repeating that Revelation is one whole, that all that God has judged good to reveal to us is essential, and that to make a choice in it on our own authority would be an usurpation of the rights of God. Any church whose leaders allowed themselves to be thus deceived would pay dearly for this error. It might fancy at first that it had lightened itself of a dead weight, but it would soon discover that what it had cast away was the very doctrine of Salvation."

The same paper, referring to the need of lay action to spread religion and preserve it in church members, calls strenuously for the increase of deacons; an interesting and cordial gathering of those of the Lutheran Church seems to promise well. A godly group of 250 boy catechumens had a pleasant afternoon in the Young Men's Christian Association premises with songs and refreshments, and wise speeches from different pastors well used to youth, and the bright company of numerous members of the association. Mr. James Stokes, the American citizen who contributed so nobly to the building and appropriating of the premises, has received the decoration of the Legion of Honour from President Carnot. The President has also sent a gold medal and diploma to the Society of French students of the Protestant Theological School in Geneva on the occasion of its sixtieth anniversary.

The valiant director of the Mission Intérieure has again hired a theatre, affixed advertising wall papers, distributed hand-bills with tempting subjects for lectures,