To fill a few pages which would otherwise be lost, is ad ded an extract from Rev. William Law's address to the Clergy. " THIS commandment, saith Christ, I give unto you, that ye love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another as I have loved you." "Can the duellist, who had rather sheath his sword in the bowels of his brother, than stifle that which he calls an affront, can he be said to have this mark of belonging to Christ? and may not he that is called his Second, more justly be said to be second to none in the love of human murder? Now what is the difference be tween the haughty duellist with his provided Second, meeting his adversary with a sword and pistol behind a hedge or house, and two kingdoms with their high-spirited armies, slaughtering one another in the field of battle? It is the difference that is between the murder of one man, and the murder of hundreds and thousands. "Now imagine the duellist fasting and confessing his sins to God to-day, because he is engaged to fight his brother to-morrow; fancy again the conqueror got into his closet on his bended knees, lifting up his hands and heart to God, for blessing his weapons with the death of his brother, and then you have a picture in miniature of the great piety that begins and ends the wars all over Christendom. " What blindness can well be greater, than to think that a Christian kingdom, as such, can have any other goodness or union with Christ; but that very goodness which makes the private Christian to be one with him, and a partaker of the divine nature? Or that pride, wrath, ambition, envy, covetousness, rapine, resentment, revenge, hatred, mischief, and murder, are only the works of the devil, whilst they are committed by private or single men; but when carried on by all the strength and authority, all the hearts, hands, and voices of a whole nation, that the devil is then quite driven out of them, loses all his right and power in them, and they become holy matter of Church thanksgiving, and the sacred oratory of pulpits. " Look at that which the private Christian is to do to his neighbour, or his enemy, and you see that very thing which one Christian kingdom is to do to another. Look at that which proves a man to be not led and governed by the Spirit of Christ, and you see that which proves a kingdom to be under the dominion and power of Satan. Wherever pride is, there the devil is riding in his fiery chariot; and wherever wrath is, there he has his murdering sword at work. What is it that fallen man wants to be redeemed from, but pride and wrath, envy and covetousness ? He can have no higher separation or apostacy from God, no fuller union with Satan and his Angels, than he has of the spirit of these tempers; they constitute that which, whether you call it self or Satan in him, the meaning is the same. Now suppose man not fallen into this self or satan, and then there could be no more war or fighting in him, than there was in the Word made man in our flesh. Or suppose him redeemed from his fallen nature, by a new birth of the Lamb of God born in his soul, and then he can no more be hired to kill men gloriously in the field, than to carry a dark lanthorn by night to a powder plot. "Love, goodness, and communication of good,is the immutable glory and perfection of the divine nature, and nothing can have union with God, but that which partakes of this goodness. The love that brought forth the existence of all things, changes not through the fall of its creatures, but is continually at work, to bring back fallen nature and creature, (so far as it is for his glory,) to their first state of goodness. "O sinner, whoever thou art, repent and turn to God, whilst thou hast Adam's flesh upon thee; for if thou diest without Adam's repentance, blackness of darkness, ages of a gnawing worm, and fire that never ceases to burn, will stand between thee and the kingdom of Heaven afar off. "To prevent all this, and make thee a child of the first resurrection, Jesus Christ, God and man, the only begotten Son of his infinite love, came into the world in the name, and under the character of infinite pity, boundless compassion, inexpressible meekness, bleeding love, never-ending patience, long suffering, and bowels of redeeming mercy, called the Lamb of God, who with all these supernatural virtues, taketh away the sins of the world." FINIS. |