wholly applied to promote the interest of his great Master. He was one of extensive and almost universal reading; he was well skilled in the oriental languages, and the Jewish learning, as may appear from many of his sermons; and, indeed, he was furnished to a very eminent degree with all usefu knowledge. He was very much to be admired for his readiness in the Scriptures: he had made i, his business to acquaint himself thoroughly with those sacred oracles, whereby he was furnished unto all good works: he was able to produce suitable passages from them on all occasions, and was very happy in explaining them to others. Thus he improved his time and his abilities in serving God, and doing good, till he arrived at a good old age, when it pleased his great Master to give him rest from his labours, and to assign him a place in those mansions of bliss, where he had always laid up his treasure, and to which his heart had been all along devoted through the whole course of his life and actions. He was so highly esteemed among all learned and good men, that when he was dying, one of the chief of his order deservedly said of him, There goes one of the greatest, and one of the best men, that ever England bred.''

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY

TO

THE REIGN OF GRACE,

FROM ITS RISE TO ITS CONSUMMATION.

BY ABRAHAM BOOTH.

THERE is no one term which is more frequently employed in the Bible, to denote our relationship to God, than the term covenant. But though the import of this term is sufficiently understood when it relates to the intercourse between man and man, we fear it is very indistinctly apprehended when it expresses our relation to God. A covenant is an agreement between at least two parties, and it is generally at first proposed by one of them, and then acceded to by the other. If the former be very distinct, and absolute, and peremptory in the terms that he lays down, the latter, in the act of giving his acquiescence, feels that he is coming under very distinct and certain obligations. The engagement is just felt to be as formal upon the one side, as it is upon the other—and when it is a contract between man and man, there is a strict and definite understanding, both with him who originated the articles, and him who complies with them.

It is thus, in any social or earthly covenant. We there see how anxiously the utmost explicitness

is secured, by one clause and one stipulation after another, that each may know the distinct place he has to occupy, and the distinct part he has to perform. There is a certain relative position in which the one party stands to the other, so that when the one enters upon his place in the covenant, and then acts the part that is assigned to him, the other conforms to the covenant by entering upon his place, and acting the part that is assigned to him. Were there a loose or obscure understanding on the one side, then, on the other side, there might be freedom for a loose and obscure understanding also. But a well-framed covenant does away all looseness, and admits of nothing but what is strict and determinate; so that all who are concerned may have a clear and well-defined path to walk in. The formal and peremptory attitude of one party in the covenant, calls for a corresponding attitude from the other, and summons him to an observation just as pointed and as rigorous as the terms that are imposed. And the line of performance for each is so marked out, that each is fully aware when he keeps by it, and as fully aware when he steps aside into any track of deviation.

Now, if such be the real force and import of a covenant, what a lesson does it hold forth, when this is the very term that the Bible so often employs in expressing that transaction by which a man enters into a right relationship with God. What a power of rebuke is conveyed by this single term, on the loose, and indefinite, and floating imaginations of almost every man, as to the right federal position which he himself should occupy,

and as to the question, whether he has actually and personally entered upon it. What a fell denunciation does this one vocable carry with it, not merely on the unsettledness of his accounts with God, but on the unsettledness even of his conceptions, as to the footing upon which, if we may use the expression, the account is opened with Him. How vague the apprehensions of the vast majority are, as to the terms in which an agreement is struck with God, and as to the way and method in which that agreement is kept up and maintained with Him. And this charge extends a great deal farther than to those who profess no care and no concern about the matter. How many may be specified of those who are versant in the whole orthodoxy of the new covenant, and yet with whom the question is altogether undetermined, whether it be a covenant that they have individually laid hold of. They love the evangelical language, and they like to breathe in the atmosphere of an evangelical society, and they feel that the decided preference of their taste is towards the tone and habit of evangelical professorship, and yet, with all this, they have not set themselves to the question, "What shall I do to be saved?" with that pointedness, and formality, and mature deliberation upon articles, which the very term of a covenant appears to demand of them. They breathe, perhaps, many good desires, and are in the way of many good impulses, and give their most cordial assent to the truth and importance of all the scriptural doctrine that is proposed to them; nay, can speak soundly and well about the new covenant, and yet have

never distinctly, and solemnly, and individually, charged the obligation of its articles upon themselves living very much adrift and at random after all-with no distinct place of relationship to God, personally and actually in occupation—with no urgent or practical sense of any clearly articled engagement between Him and them, viewed in the light of two parties linked together by the tie of mutual promises, and respectively bound to certain mutual performances, and habitually unconscious, all the day long, of having taken up any position in which they have certain appropriate duties to discharge, and every occupier of which has the right to look from the other party in the contract for the fulfilment of certain stipulations.

Meanwhile there is no want either of clearness or of precision with God. All is pointed and peremptory in the manifesto that He has given of Himself to the world. He wills us to enter into covenant with Him, but lays down the terms of it in a way so distinct and so authoritative, as to preclude and lay an interdict upon all others. In framing the articles of this covenant, all the high and unchanging principles of heaven's jurisprudence were concerned and we behold upon the face of it, the sure impress of that moral character which obtains in the sanctuary above. It is a document which announces the truth, and the justice, and the uncompromising dignity of the government by which it has been issued; and there is indeed a striking contrast between the disregard in which it is held by men on earth, and the intense earnestness of that gaze which it drew from the choirs and