equally faithful, bold, and distinct, we pass at once into a chaos. We come to works of disputed genuineness, with a corrupted text, full of interpolations; and which, after all, are so different from the Apostolical Epistles in their distinctness and power of touch, that even if we could rely on their authenticity, the knowledge to be derived from them is exceedingly vague and scanty. In this absence of good and trustworthy records, all manner of wild guesses, and stories either without any foundation or greatly altered and exaggerated, grew up plenteously; and it is sufficiently striking that while we have a legendary account, pretending to relate the place and manner of the deaths of all the Apostles, there are scarcely two of the whole number, of whose deaths we have even so much as a statement of probable authority.

Thus God has, as it were, encircled the goodly garden of Scripture truth, in which there grows the tree of life, with a wide belt of desert on every side, preserving it manifestly distinct from all other and merely human cultivation, and condemning to a more than ordinary blindness those who can see but little difference between the garden of the Lord, and the howling wilderness that reaches up to its very walls. We stop then at the last Epistle of St. Paul to Timothy, with something of the same interest with which one pauses at the last hamlet of the cultivated valley, when there is no

thing but moor beyond. It is the end, or all but the end, of our real knowledge of primitive Christianity; there we take our last distinct look around; further the mist hangs thick, and few and distorted are the objects which we can discern in the midst of it.

Into

But this last distinct view is overcast with gloom. "In the last days perilous times shall come." Then there follows a picture of what men would be, who in word and form were Christians, but in deed led the lives of the worst heathens. Those who had the form of godliness, or of Christianity,for the two words in the Epistles to Timothy are generally synonymous,—those who had the form of Christianity, were yet false, unholy, disobedient; lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. what hands then was the Church of God to fall, when such men as these were to be its members? But the Apostle relies that Timothy would in his own generation struggle against this evil, because he had from a child been familiar with that revelation of God which was profitable for the teaching of truth, and for the removing of error, for correcting all that was amiss, and fostering every seed of good in us, for the perfecting of God's servants in all good works. This is St. Paul's testimony to the importance of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, when as yet the truths of Christ's Gospel were known more by the hearing of the Apostles'

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preaching than by the reading of their written works.

This testimony is one that is well deserving of our attention. No doubt it is applicable, and even in a higher degree, to the writings of the New Testament; but yet this is not its original meaning; St. Paul spoke it entirely of the Old. And it is manifest that he points to the Old Testament as to the only sure foundation, to speak generally, on which Christianity could be built; that those who received it without this foundation were likely grievously to corrupt it, that those who received it upon this foundation were likely to be made wise unto salvation.

Now it is manifest that St. Paul is not here referring to the types or prophecies of the Old Testament; he is not regarding its witness to Christ, but its own preparation for Him. For it is plain, that although a knowledge of the prophecies might greatly contribute towards making a man believe in Christ, yet if he had believed on Him without knowing these prophecies, he would, so far as their witness was concerned, be exactly in the same place as though he had known them: they would but have helped him to that faith which he had reached without them, by the mere hearing of the words and works of Christ, and of His resurrection from the dead. What St. Paul means, then, is something different from the witness afforded by

the Old Testament; it must be the general character of its revelation of God. And in this respect it does certainly seem that the Old Testament is most perfectly fitted to be, not only historically, and regarding the world as a whole, but for each one of us in the formation of our own minds, a preparation for the knowledge of Christ.

We all know that the predominant character of the New Testament is mercy, in the widest sense of the term. It speaks of light, of freedom, of exaltation, of glory. It does away with the bondage of forms and ceremonies; it addresses men as reasonable beings, appealing to their consciences and their inward sense of right and wrong. In a word, it holds out to them the privilege of being no more the servants of God, but His children. All its tendency, therefore, is comforting and elevating. But do we all need to be comforted and elevated? May it not be that we are in no distress that needs comfort?-that we are in no such humiliation as requires to be exalted? Surely it very well may be so, and is so beyond all question with many of us.

And is not the effect of Christianity on such a state of mind very often just what the Apostle describes it? Men retain its form, but deny its power. They are not enemies to Christ; on the contrary, they admire His character and His words exceedingly; the beauty and purity of Christianity

affects them with unfeigned pleasure; its promises cannot but be most delightful to them. But meanwhile the yoke of Christ, light as it is, and so great a relief to those who really are wearied and heavy laden, is more than they can consent to bear. They admire Christianity, but can scarcely be called themselves Christians; their lives therefore are full of evil,-self-indulgent, proud, disobedient, unthankful, and unholy,-exactly in the manner described by St. Paul.

Now what, on the contrary, is the predominant character of the Old Testament? May it not, speaking of it as a whole, be certainly said to be awe? One instance may be mentioned which shows this in the strongest manner. The characteristic differences of the Old and New Testament may be seen in the two last chapters of St. John's Gospel on the one hand, and in the last chapter of Deuteronomy on the other; in the view given of Christ rising on Mount Calvary, and Moses dying on Mount Nebo. For consider who and what Moses was; how faithful a servant of God, and how favoured. Yet even he, for one unadvised word, for one indulgence, as it should seem, of a hasty temper, though generally the meekest man upon earth, even he was not allowed to enter that promised land, which for so many years he had been looking for. He had laboured, and another was to enter into his labours; and before Israel