168 Beauties of Binning.—Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles. From the Edinburgh Christian Instructor. or his Pastoral Care, we feel surprised that he could ever have existed in it at all. The period at which he lived was almost enough to justify a churchman for becoming a partizan, but to our taste, the sainted retirement of Leighton is calculated to shed a purer and a brighter light upon the Gospel than all the activity and energy of Burnet. As a divine, although we give him the praise of learning and labour, we cannot bestow that of accuracy, perspicuity, or arrangement; and, while his Pastoral Care speaks highly for his feelings, and his Articles for his research, his style is perhaps more barbarous and his method less lucid than that of theologians a century at least older. The fate of his works is remarkable; his history has been censured and abused, yet it has been more read and quoted than any specimen of histori cal chit chat we know, and though the Anglican clergy protested against his Exposition when the book first appeared, it has been generally adopted as a text-book for students. To this his real learning and his obvious candour have contributed. Burnet may be wrong in his opinions, but he has always the appearance of speaking his mind: you are sure of knowing at least what his sentiments are, and of finding them, if not always orthodox, always as liberal and charitable, as circumstances can possibly admit. His Exposition is remarkable for the moderation with which the Calvinistic controversy is conducted, and the skill and learning with which Popery is combated; and the student who imbibes his kindly spirit in the one, and can employ with effect his weapons in the other, is not ill furnished for the contest. Bur net must be read with caution: he is occasion We can hardly help thinking it discreditable to the religious taste of the present day that the works of Binning are so little known. He is a writer of no common order. Although young in years when he died, his judgment and his piety were mature. He was a burning and a shining light while he lived, and his works are fitted to perpetuate, and diffuse, now that he has long since gone to his rest, and his reward, the illumination which he gave out in his life and preaching. There is a depth and solidity of thinking about them, a richness of scriptural and pious sentiment, coupled with an exuberance of beautiful and striking illustration, such as none but a very highly gifted and a sanctified mind could command. We see in them, in fact, a delightful union of true genius, with the most exalted piety; of the fervour and the flow of youth, with the riper judgment and experience of age. There is originality without any affectation, a rich imagination, without any thing fanciful or extravagant, the utmost simplicity, without any thing mean or trifling. We are not conscious of overrating his power when we say, that neither in the richness of his illustrations, nor in the vein of seraphic piety which pervades his writings, is he at all inferior to Leighton, whom, perhaps, he, on the whole, most resembles. In what we have said of Binning, we are fully borne out by the recommendations of his work, prefixed to this selec- ally loose in his quotations, and occasionally on tion, from the pens of the Rev. Dr. M'Crie, and the very verge of heterodoxy in his statements. Rev. John Brown, Edinburgh. We rejoice to see this judicious selection made from the the subject of inspiration, his inaccurate mode We allude just now to his very lax notions on works of one of whom we thus think so highly. of stating the place which holiness occupies in We hope it will be not merely useful itself, but the Christian scheme, and above all, his danbe the means of bringing into notice the whole works of the author. There is a brief interest-clusions may be relied on, their premises are gerous position, that though the Apostles' coning memoir prefixed by the Rev. John Brown, not equally certain-an opinion that introduces Whitburn, to whom the public are indebted for the greatest uncertainty into the Scripture, and has actually furnished the Socinian with his most plausible arguments. We think a work like Mr. Newland's well calculated to be useful to students. The harshness of Burnet's style and his injudicious arrangement frequently prevent such from pursuing his train of reasoning, and frequently too the same subject has been pursued in a more satisfactory manner by later divines. Mr. Newland's plan meets both; his text analyses, and generally, in his author's own words, the obscure, and condenses the scattered arguments of Burnet, and the notes give references to modern and ancient works in which Burnet's views are confirmed and illustrated. We do not believe Mr. Newland to be himself of a school approaching to the Geneva standard, but we think he has conducted his little work in a very praiseworthy spirit of candour; nor are we aware that he has perverted, from regard to his own opinion, his author in any material point. this selection. From the Christian Examiner. BURNET'S character is a singular anomaly- RELIGIOUS MAGAZINE, OR SPIRIT OF THE FOREIGN THEOLOGICAL JOURNALS AND REVIEWS. OCTOBER, 1829. From the New Baptist Miscellany. THE CHRISTIAN A STRANGER AND SOJOURNER. vert with the greatest satisfaction, a topic of frequent and delightful meditation that never grows old; like the wells of knowledge, whose waters do not lose their sweetness by being No people were ever so blessed with present often drawn. It is a sweet, perhaps sometimes and temporal good as the people of Israel dur- somewhat dashed with bitter. Melancholy may ing the period of their prosperity. Their pe- be mingled with pleasure, when we recollect culiar advantages may be expressed in one that the place that now knows us will soon word:-they were a theocracy; God was their know us no more; that we must "lie down in king. The Lord chose them to be his people, the dust," and "the worm feed sweetly on us. and he became their protector and father. He Yet still the better, the happier, feeling will premade them the eye of knowledge to the human vail, when we remember that "now is our salrace, the glorious altar from which the light of vation nearer than when we believed;" and truth shone far and near. They were, what the that "if the outer man perishes, the inner man Greeks boasted that their Delphos was, viz. the is renewed day by day;" and that when "the navel or middle of the world. If the nature of earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved, the dispensation under which they lived be con- we have a building of God, a house not made sidered, it will appear that their laws were with hands, eternal in the heavens." It is inmost admirable-that they manifested a wis- teresting to see how this sentiment has been dom and clemency truly divine. Their coun- recognised and felt by saints in former times. try was one of the finest on which the sun look- Not only did Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who ed down-a land abounding with springs of dwelt in tents in the land of the Canaanwater, metallic mines, and woods of the more ite, confess that they were strangers and pilvaluable kinds of trees-a land adorned with grims on the earth; but even the king of Israel, hills of vines and olives, and intersected with seated on the throne of Jerusalem, could say of valleys of corn that bore a hundred fold, and of himself, "I am a stranger with thee and a sofields beautiful with flowers as the gardens of journer, as all my fathers were; probably referEurope. Incredible almost is the account of ring to the words above cited from the book of its fertility in those happy times when the Lord Leviticus. The author of the 19th Psalm in"opened his good treasures," and commanded treats that God would reveal to him his comthe heaven to "give the rain in its season." mandments, because he was a stranger on the Property was to a great degree equalized, and earth; and the apostle Peter, remembering the family inheritances were secured by the that he was shortly to put off the tabernacle of year of Jubilee. By several laws made speci- his body, as the Lord had showed him, exhortfically for that purpose, their poor were protect-ed the brethren, to pass the time of their soed and cherished in a surprising manner. In journing here in fear. short, they were, whilst obedient, a most happy and enviable nation. If any people had reason to be attached to their country and to human life, it was the people of Israel. Yet, as if to impress the sentiment most deeply on our minds, because for our benefit it was written, they were reminded, that the land of Canaan was not theirs; that they were only lodgers and travellers, who had turned aside to remain for a season, and who should speedily depart. "The land," said Jehovah, "is mine; ye are strangers and sojourners with me." Levit. xxv. 23. That life is a journey-that we are all travellers to another world, is a common, a trite sentiment. Yet it is one, if rightly understood, deeply impressive; and to the Christian it is a glorious truth, a fact to which his thoughts reRel. Mag.—Vol. IV. The life of a good man is a state of continual progression towards everlasting happiness. His labour, his toil, his expectation, will not be in vain in the Lord. The inheritance is sure; for He that cannot lie has promised it. It is “reserved in heaven" for him; and he is himself "kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation." Here we have the two elements, the two parts, of this divine truth. It is kept, and he is kept; and each is kept for the other; and both are kept by the same mighty power. What is therefore to hinder this junction? Or, in other words, what is to prevent the celestial pilgrim from reaching the place of his destination? Delightful thought! Every year, every month, yea, every day and every hour, places him nearer the object of his wishes. He is not like a person on a wrong track, who, the longer No. 22.-P he travels, is but the farther off from the point he is desirous of reaching. Every district of country he has left behind him, every common -meadow-wood-stream-every charming spot over which he lingered, as if reluctant to - leave it; and every avenue horrent with shade and fearful with silence, every region of savage scenery through which he crept with breathless fear-all he has past has shortened the distance between him and the city of his destined abode. As when a person, travelling to the metropolis of a great empire, sees at length the smoke in the distance, and catches occasionally a glimpse of one of its spires, as the wind lays it bare and the sun flashes on it; and begins to find that the road is more frequented with people and carriages, coming and going-as, under all these circumstances, he knows that he is within a few miles of the city, and begins to quicken his pace: so the Christian, advancing in the divine life, feels that he is coming nearer heaven; and his expectations are afresh excited-his desire to tread the golden streets reawakened-his long cherished affection for its inhabitants revived--and all his soul calmed, solemnized, and elevated with the immediate prospect of coming to the gates of the New Jerusalem-of emerging up amidst the splendours of immortality, and of beholding, from heavenly places in Christ Jesus, the vision of God and the Lamb. but not in despair; persecuted but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed." He may have walked in the quiet sunshine of peace, or sat down in great delight beneath the shade of that divine tree whose fruit was sweet to his taste; or, he may have heard the water-spouts of the deep calling to each other, as they broke in thunder, and rolled all their waves and billows over his head. In short, his experience may have been as singular as his temperament is peculiar; and his feelings have been modified as much as possible by education, views of truth, temptation, situation in society, and | events of life; but, through all those vicissitudes of experience, he forgets not that he is a pilgrim, that this world is not his rest, and that he is "journeying to the place of which the Lord said, I will give it you." His sentiments accord with those of the patriarch Jacob, who said, "I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord." Through the whole of his life, or at least, the greater part of it, Israel felt that here he had "no abiding city, and he looked for one to come. " Whether he was in Padan-aram, keeping the flocks of his uncle Laban, exposed to the drought by day and frost by night; or, whether he pitched his tent before Shechem, the city of the idolatrous Hivite; or dwelt in Bethel, the place where the Lord appeared to him, and where he saw the angels of God ascending and descending on the ladder that reached to heaven; whether he sojourned in Hebron, the country endeared to him by so many associations, the place of his youth, the spot where the three celestial guests honoured the patriarch's board, the inheritance containing the cave where his fathers Isaac and Abraham lay; or whether he offered sacrifices at the well of Beersheba, beneath the grove planted by Abraham and upon the altar built by Abraham; or, lastly, whether he was finishing his days in Goshen, under the protection of his beloved son Joseph, and surrounded by his numerous posterity; in all these situations he probably never forgot, that he was passing "the days of the years of his pilgrimage;" and, seed-time and harvest, morning and evening, waited for God's salvation. It is remarkable that when he saw his end approaching, and had called together his sons around him, he interrupted the blessing he pronounced on them in order to give vent to this long cherished feeling: The recollection that he is a pilgrim greatly influences his feelings and modifies his experience. He is not unmindful of his future prospects. He reflects often on Christ's second coming. He meditates on the period of the manifestation of the sons of God-the period of their redemption and adoption. He remembers often the language of the apostle: "When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall we also appear in glory with him ;" and, "We know not what we shall be; but we know that when Christ shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." He can say with Paul, “I count not myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." It is to him what the apostle Peter denominates it, "the end of his faith;" the object which he had in view when he first believed, and which he still keeps in sight. Since the period of his early espousals to Christ he has not, for any length of time forgotten it. Many may have been his subsequent feelings, his conflicts and trials, his hopes and fears, his seasons of exultation and of humiliation. Frequently may he have been bowed down greatly; and, as frequently, the joy of the Lord may have been his strength. The thorn may have been planted in his flesh, the messenger of Satan sent to buffet him. He may have passed through the night of weeping, and seen the morning of joy; or the Lord may have given him songs in the night. He may have been in straits, and brought out of them. He may have viewed the sea before him, the pursuing army behind, and the precipitous mountains on either hand; and, standing still, have seen the salvation of the Lord. He may have been "troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed,' Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that the rider shall fall backward. I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord. Gad, a troop shall overcome him." The parent was forgotten in the saint; the prophet for a moment closed his eyes on the visions of prophecy, that he might open them upon the glory, which was just ready to be revealed. The Christian's recollection of his situation as a pilgrim in this world, and the anticipation of a better, mitigates his anxiety for present good. He does not indeed despise the present: he is no hermit or cynic. He makes no merit of abstaining from what God allows; nor has he any idea of lashing and scourging himself into saintship. All the good things of the present state are good to him. He is to the full as able to extract satisfaction from them as other men. Pleasant to him is the light, and sweet are all the influences of earth and heaven, with all their grateful vicissitudes; and glorious to him is this theatre of wonders the universe, that spreads out before his imagination its illimitable fields, sown thick with prodigies of wisdom and power. Dear to him is friendship, and literature, and the noble institutions of his country, and every thing good in its season which God has given him a heart to enjoy. He is never indifferent to the claims of humanity, or the calls of patriotism, or to any of the interests of the human family, considered only as the inheritors of this world. Yet he cannot forget that this is not his rest; that he is "journeying to the place of which the Lord said, I will give it you." His love of the present is consequently moderate, wise, and consistent with the dignity of his future destination. Whilst he enjoys the good it tenders, he knows it is far inferior to that which is in reserve for him. Other men are more eager in the chase, because they have no higher game; this is their all; they seek no other-desire no other-think of no other. Let us eat and drink, say they, for to-morrow we die. They become impatient; they are vexed beyond bearing with the obstacles that meet them. The Christian is distinguished by a calm self-possession, a subdued feeling, arising from a just appreciation of worldly things compared with those which are heavenly. He uses the world as not abusing it, knowing that the fashion thereof passeth away. Should this picture, a circumstance not improbable, be extremely unlike many silver-slippered professors, we are not disposed to allow the delineation to be inaccurate; but would rather give the lie point blank to their Christianity. To the Christian pilgrim present suffering is comparatively light. His sensibility to suffering, in whatever form it may come, is as acute as that of others: it is, in some respects, more acute. As his benevolence is greater, his sympathy is stronger; as he desires the happiness of men more ardently, he laments their miseries more bitterly; and, as his own capacity for enjoyment has been improved and enlarged by the religion he has embraced, the ills of time become more heavy and oppressive, and awaken within him reflections of a more melancholy character. But then he has peculiar supports and consolations. He is saved by hope." It continually goes before him as the star before the Magi. It draws him on as by a continual charm, and stands still at last over the palace where Jesus reigns. We know the influence of hope in ordinary cases. We know what the merchant will risk in the hope of gain; the adventurer, in quest of good fortune; the naturalist, in pursuit of scientific discoveries; and the warrior, that braves death in a thousand forms, and undergoes a thousand perils," seeking the bubble reputation, even at the cannon's mouth." What is it that animates those individuals? It is not what they have, but what they expect. Yet the object of their expectation is uncertain, and always of very limited value. How much then may not the Christian be animated, when he has in prospect a good of illimitable worth, and when his pursuit is sure to be rewarded with success! If he meet with inconveniences, he cannot forget | that they belong to his profession as a pilgrim; and he will patiently bear them, in the anticipation of reaching that distant good, the possession of which will counterbalance a sea of toil, and the labour of ten thousand lives. A pilgrim is not disappointed in meeting with inconveniences by the way. The road may be rough or thorny, it may lie over the burning waste, or through the deep and horrid defilethe valley of the shadow of death-the sheltering palm-tree may be wanting to shield off the scorching heat of noon, and the fountain to quench his thirst. He may be obliged sometimes to lie down on the wet earth, exposed to the chilling night wind; or, he may pass the night in a wood, where, among the branches of the tree he has climbed, he hears the hissing of the dire serpent, or the roar of the tiger leaping on his victim, and various cries of doleful creatures. But did he not know all this before he started? Did he expect to find the life of a pilgrim a life of ease and luxury? Did he suppose he should find the road carpeted for him, as if he were a Persian king? or strewed with garlands, flowers, and branches, as if he were a conqueror, entering the metropolis of his empire in triumph? Surely not. He knew there were hardships before him; he reckoned on meeting with them; and he resolved to brave them, animated by the hope of accomplishing the object of his journey, of reaching the long wished for spot, where all his toils will cease. And shall the Christian, who is a stranger and pilgrim on the earth, and who is journeying to the place of which the Lord has spoken to him, be disappointed by the troubles of the present life? Shall he not rather encounter and vanquish them, as he presses on to the "mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus?" The pilgrim travelling to the celestial land is reconciled to the loss of his Christian friends. He looks around him, and sees how death has thinned the ranks of his acquaintance. One drops, and another drops, until the grave contains the great majority of all whom he has loved-all the excellent of the earth" "with whom he took sweet counsel, and with whom he went to the house of God in company," "with the voice of joy and praise, and with a multitude that kept holyday." He has seen the grave opened to receive them; he has heard the hollow sound returned by the crumbling of the mould upon their silent shell; he has seen the tomb shut them in, excluded from the light of the sun, and cut off from the paths of the living. He has seen oblivion touching his closed lips when their names were mentioned; or slowly nibbling away with the chisel of time the letters in which he had engraven them, in the fond hope that they might retain their place in the recollection of the living. He has shut up the thought of them in his heart; and if he does not mention their names, it is because he dares not trust himself with the subjeet; or because it seems a violation of the sacredness with which death and immortality have invested them. These sensations he has experienced again and again, as the insatiable grave has repeated his demands, calling for another and another of his companions. He has felt the pathos of the poet's remark, that He prays that he may "not run in vain, neither labour in vain ;" that when he comes to the gate of the holy city, he may not hear that voice from within, more terrible than a thousand thunders-" Depart"-"I know you not." Depart! Ah! Whither shall he go? Whither shall he go? If he has lost that blessed prize which had been the object of his constant pursuit-of his passionate longings-of his deepest anxiety-of his "many prayers and tears;"-if, after having come within one little step of attaining it, he must turn his feet aside: whither shall he go? The thought of such an event is overwhelming ; the very possibility is terrible. He therefore endeavours to practise true wisdom-to "lay up a good store against the time to come." He connects the labours of time with the destinies of eternity. He strives "if by any means he may attain to the resurrection of the dead." He sows unto the spirit. He regards the present state of probation as the seed time of the soul, and eternity as its harvest; and he is anxious not only to sow "the good seed of the kingdom," but to scatter as large a quantity of it as possible-to sow "bountifully, that he may also reap bountifully;" remembering that Christ will render to every man according as his work shall be." These are his principles, his hopes, and desires; these the objects of his solicitude. And, taking out of his bosom as occasion may require, the roll of his spiritual directory; relieving his uneasy steps by the staff of divine support; and drinking of the brook by the way;" heaven "the most melancholy effect of years is the catalogue of those we loved and have lost perpetually increasing.' "He has felt himself growingly alienated from a world in which he sees he is every month literally more a stranger. But, though sad, he is not distressed; though he sometimes shed tears, he sees through them as they fall, the visions of the future. He "sorrows not as those that are without hope." He believes he shall see them again. He is himself a pilgrim he is travelling towards that very country they have entered. They have closed their pilgrimage before him: some of them have hasted like the Baptist to fulfil their course: they have found an easier and more expeditious path across the wood around which he is toiling with weary steps. Yet the time will come when he will arrive at the termination of his wanderings, and be admitted to the presence of those from whom he has been for a time separated. He will see them again, and his "heart will rejoice, and no man taketh from him his joy." With these hopes he comforts himself and others. When he remembers that his friends have died in the Lord-have entered into rest, and attained the object of their most anxious wishes;-that, in leaving this world, they have made a most advantageous exchange; that they would be filled with horror at the very thought of leaving the warm bowers of Paradise to return to this cold and bleak region; that they have not forgotten those old friends whom they have left behind; that they are awaiting the happy day when they will join them-are looking for the gather-in his eye and love divine in his heart; heeding together of all the elect of God, the filling the seats of heaven, the ripening and fulfilment of all the purposes of grace ;-when he remembers these things, he "lifts up his head with joy, knowing that his redemption draweth nigh." "Having these hopes in him, he purifieth himself even as Christ is pure." Seeing all these things must be dissolved," he considers "what manner of person he ought to be in all holy conversation and godliness." Knowing that nothing unclean, nothing that defileth, can enter the city to which he is going, he labours "to purify himself from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." The recollection gives elevation to his sentiments, as well as sanctity to his conduct. He lifts his thoughts to a higher region; he "sets his affections on things above;" he has "his conversation in heaven." He leaves behind him " this dim and dusky globe, which men call earth," to breathe a purer atmosphere, and "draw empyreal air." He treads on the stars, and converses in thought with the immortals. Nor are his feelings fanatical; they are sober, solid, deep, noiseless, built on knowledge, inspired by truth; they are the result of long meditation, mature thought, steady faith, firmness of moral purpose ;-the fruit of a life of prayer and communion with the Divine Spirit: for he walks not by the outward light, but by that which "shines in the word, and the mind through all its powers irradiates." His great care is to gain at last an entrance into the happy country whither he is going. * Pope. less of the vanity, turmoil, and tumult of the world, which rolls by his ear like the evening sound of the distant village, he marches on calmly and confidently to immortality. From the Christian Guardian and Church of A SERIES OF SERMONS, Preached in St. THESE are very superior sermons. They are short, clear, full to the point, and containing more originality than we have met with for a considerable period, without any of that crudeness and those eccentricities which are so often mistaken for novelty. The volume is introduced by an appropriate preface, from which we learn that the discourses are printed nearly as they were preached, and are published to meet the wishes of a congregation affectionately desirous of some memorial of the author's late ministry among them. The discourses are thirteen in number, and treat of the holiness, justice, jealousy, mercy, and love of God; on man's will by nature, his weakness, justification, and its blessedness, eternal life the gift of God, &c. We shall not however detain our readers by any observations of our own, but shall proceed at once to insert various extracts which will, we conceive, convince them of the intrinsic value of the work itself. |