transition state; each one remains a fundamental feature of the Christian character, an essential ingredient of the righteousness which Christ requires and imparts.

The first condition of salvation is the consciousness of spiritual poverty. Every following condition is required only because the reception of the preceding grace has enabled us to fulfill it. So soon as the kingdom of heaven, which is offered to us as a free gift, begins to be established in the soul which has been fully awakened to a sincere consciousness of her poverty before God, so soon the germ of all that the kingdom of heaven implies is planted. Man never mourns spiritually before the Spirit of grace has convicted him of his poverty. From the mental conviction of poverty springs the painful feeling of guilt as the cause of that poverty, and from this godly sorrow springs meekness of spirit, which we think refers here to our relation to God, (not to man,) and denotes that meek submission to the will of God, and to his terms of salvation, with which St. James exhorts us to receive the word of God; that submissiveness, docility, and ductility which is the very opposite to the obstinate self-will of the natural man. It is only when the conviction of spiritual poverty has properly influenced our affections and volitions, that the soul in the full sense of the word hungers and thirsts after righteousness. The righteousness which satisfies this hunger and thirst will beget the exercise of mercy to the souls and bodies of our fellow-men, and accordingly as the Christian exercises mercy he will purify himself, even as He is pure; he will become perfect as his Father in heaven is perfect; and again the more his heart is purified, the more will he become a peacemaker in the highest sense of this word, the more successful will he be in communicating the peace of God to others, in beseeching the world to become reconciled to God; it is significant that the highest function of the Christian is made dependent upon the purity of his heart. We are reminded of the passage in James: "The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable," etc. But even these peacemakers shall meet with persecution.

The first four benedictions may be said to represent the strait gate, or the seeker of salvation; the succeeding four the narrow way, or those who, having obtained mercy, perfect holiness in the fear of God. To each state of mind upon which the Saviour pronounces a benediction, there is promised a corresponding blessing; with this difference, that in the first four benedictions the conditions of the promised blessings are spiritual wants, and the promised blessings are the supply of those wants. In the succeeding benedictions the promised blessings are gracious rewards for the faithful use of

former blessings. The merciful have obtained mercy before they begin to exercise that mercy; but only if they continue to exercise it shall they obtain mercy in the day of judgment. The pure in heart were purified when they first believed, and have thereby attained already to a spiritual knowledge of and communion with God; but only if they retain and perfect that purity shall they see God in glory. The peacemakers are already children of God; but only if they execute their high mission, and remain faithful to their holy calling, shall they be fully acknowledged to be the children of the Most High before the assembled universe of created intelligences.

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We inquire, lastly, into the sense in which we have to understand the words of our Saviour: Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets; I am not come to destroy but to fulfill.” Alford remarks on this passage: "It is a question whether our Lord includes the prophecies, properly so called, in his meaning here. I think not, for no person professing himself to be the Messiah would be thought to contradict the prophecies, but to fulfill them. Neither, it appears, does he here allude to the sacrificial and typical parts of the law, but to the moral parts of both the law and the proplets, which, indeed, he proceeds to cite and particularize." Watson takes the same view of this passage; but a closer examination of the emphatic words which our Lord uses, may convince us that this interpretation is untenable.

The objection that no one could have charged Christ with having destroyed, that is, contradicted the prophets is not well grounded; for the offense that Christ gave to the Jews consisted principally in his not realizing their carnal interpretation of the Messianic prophecies. As to the sacrificial and typical parts of the law, his abolishing them was identical with his fulfilling them. They were not abolished before that which they had typically represented was actually fulfilled by the antitype; their substance was, therefore, by no means destroyed or abolished; the shadow or figure only gave way to the substance. Again, if by the law, in contradistinction to the prophets, we understand the moral law, the term "the law and the prophets" represents the whole revelation of God, given in the old covenant, as that revelation had reference either to commandments or to promises. Both contained the revealed will of God not yet fulfilled. The law had not found the corresponding obedience, and the promises were unfulfilled prophecies. In this sense the fulfillment of the law and of the prophecies contained in the Old Testament constitutes the New Testament, or, in other words, the New Testament is nothing else than the realization of the Old; the Old disappears in the New, as the germ in the fruit.

Because the law and the prophets were essentially one, the Lord said with deep significancy: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets," that is, neither the one nor the other. By using this disjunctive, our Lord further meets the charge, as if he would in any way abrogate the moral law. "No more than I can think of contradicting the prophets, do I intend to abrogate the law. If you imagine the Messiah predicted by the prophets would abrogate the law, you do not understand your prophets. If I did not fulfill the law neither would the prophets be fulfilled." Here Christ strikes at the very root of the perverse conceptions which the Jews had formed of their Messiah. The Pharisees made the commandment of God of none effect by their traditions. This also explains to us why Christ, though he speaks in the seventeenth verse of the whole Old Testament revelation, in the progress of his discourse confines himself to the exposition of the moral law, requiring of his disciples a righteousness far exceeding the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, who were then considered the highest patterns of fulfilling the law.

But in what sense did our Lord himself fulfill the moral law? The word "fulfill," according to the original, signifies to practice, to confirm, and to fill up or complete. Christ, in the first place, confirmed it in its full extent and for all future time; he also filled it up or completed it by explaining its full meaning, its purity and spirituality; and he fulfilled it in a still higher sense by meeting in his own person all the claims the moral law had on human nature; and by doing so he fulfilled at the same time the ceremonial law, for in his active and passive obedience he became the all-sufficient sacrifice for the sin of the world. When he said, "I am come to fulfill," he had not yet fulfilled it. It was not fulfilled before he exclaimed on the cross, "It is finished." After his resurrection he said to his disciples: "These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the psalms concerning me."

But what was fulfilled by him for us, must also be fulfilled through him in us. "For the law is not to be made void through faith; God forbid; it is to be established thereby." "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, condemned sin in the flesh by a sin-offering, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."

ART. V.-BUDDHISM.

[SECOND ARTICLE.]

Eastern Monachism: An Account of the Origin, Laws, Discipline, Sacred Unity, Mysterious Rites, Religious Ceremonies, and Present Circumstances of the Order of Mendicants founded by GOTAMA BUDDHA, (compiled from Singhalese MSS. and other Original Sources of Information,) with comparative Notices of the Usages and Institution of the Western Ascetics, and a Review of the Monastic System. By R. SPENCE HARDY, Member of the Ceylon Branch of the R. A. S. London: 1850. A Manual of Buddhism, in its Modern Development. Translated from Singhalese MSS. By R. SPENCE HARDY. London: 1853.

Die Religion des Buddha und ihre Entstehung. Von CARL FRIEDERICH KOEPPEN. Berlin 1857.

WE have in a former paper presented a general view of the rise and outspread of the primal apostasy. From the stand-point thus gained we are the better prepared to appreciate the character of the entire system, as it appears in its historic development, and to estimate the value of the works before us.

The author of the first two of these books, Rev. R. Spence Hardy, arrived in Ceylon, as missionary from the Wesleyan Society of England, in September, 1825. As soon as he had gained sufficient knowledge of the language he addressed himself, and evidently with much zeal and assiduity, to "the study of the native authors," in order, he says, "that I might ascertain from authentic sources the character of the religion I was attempting to displace." Of the result of this labor of acquisition, he says with becoming assurance, further on: "A residence of twenty years in Ceylon, and several thousands of hours spent with the palm-leaf in my hand, and the ex-priest of Buddha by my side to assist me in cases of difficulty, entitle me to claim attention to my translations as a faithful transcript of the original documents."

The mine in which Mr. Hardy set himself so patiently to delve was comparatively new and of surpassing richness; for, next to the Pali, which is the ancient sacred language of the Buddhists, the Singhalese contains the most ample historic resources. Not finding time for the acquisition of the ancient language, he availed himself of the labors of a fellow-missionary, the Rev. D. J. Gogerly, who, he says, "has been pronounced by competent authority to be the best Pali scholar in existence." Besides this author, and the late Hon. George Turnour, to whom he acknowledges himself under obligation, he says he has not received much assistance from any European author." Much labor has been bestowed by European scholars on

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Indian Philosophy and Antiquities and History, and on Brahmaism; but the modern phases of Buddhism, as a sect, had been comparatively little studied, and but imperfectly reproduced in the literature of the West. With such resources, and in a field so little cultivated, a man of the perseverance and fidelity of Mr. Hardy could not fail to bring a valuable contribution to the history of Philosophy and the religious idea. And it is precisely in its historic character that the great merit of his work consists. He indulges little in speculation, or even criticism, but seeks for the most part to give us a faithful reproduction of the Singhalese documents, either in the form of a systematized abstract of their contents, or a strict translation. A good evidence of the great value of his labors is the fact that Mr. Koeppen, a few years later, very frequently cites him as a reliable authority wherever they touch upon a common topic. To many minds, indeed, such indorsement from "fatherland" is the highest testimonial an English production can receive.

The work of Koeppen is somewhat different in its scope, and exhibits the wide research, the patient labor, and the defective logic characteristic of German scholarship. In the first division of his work he discusses "The religious development of the Indians to the time of the appearing of the Buddha;" meaning the latest incarnation, distinguished commonly as Gotama Buddha. The second part gives the "Life of the Buddha, and the first period of the Buddhistic Church History to the time of the Council of Pâtaliputra." His third part, and occupying the larger portion of the book, (pp. 211-614,) presents Buddhism in its modern phases of doctrines, dogmas, and form. Buddhism he takes as a development out of the earlier Brahminical religion; and Brahminism, a similar development out of an earlier religion, and the earliest religion of India, to be a native product of the speculative spirit of man, and no way indebted to tradition-an assumption we everywhere protest against. The traditions which Moses puts on record must have been for all earliest peoples an unforfeited inheritance; the idea of a God, and a God as world-creator, must have been a very positive thing. And to ignore this great fact, in attempting to give a history of the religious idea; to involve the world in moral night till Reason untagged and cautiously withdrew the curtains of the dawn; to paint the first man, with his inferior parts still buried in the moist earth, struggling to deliver himself from chaos, "womb of ancient night”—all this, which is the view so commonly found in the books, is, we take it, both false to the fact and totally unphilosophic. Buddhism proper he dates from the Buddhaship of Gotama, whom, therefore, he makes a founder in the same sense as Jesus and Mohammed. Consistently with this FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XII.-5