will have the least pride, and he who is perfectly holy will be perfectly humble. He that is free from all sin is of course free from pride.

But it is asked, If perfection is attainable, why are there none who are perfect? On this question we shall make several remarks. In the first place, it takes for granted what we deny, viz. that none have reached perfection. There are those who say they are free from sin, and whose deep humility, godly lives, and self-denying labors in the cause of their Redeemer, leave no reason to doubt the truth of their pretensions. But these, it is said, are interested persons; they wish to support their doctrine, and therefore are not impartial witnesses. Just the same objection is brought against the witnesses of our Savior's miracles and resurrection. These,' says the infidel, are Christians; they are interested persons-party concerned; they wish to support their doctrine, and therefore are not competent witnesses. Let those who are free from this bias-who are not Christians, testify to the miracles, and I will believe.' Who does not see that this is impossible? The mind that admits the miracle admits the religion; and the very fact that he testifies to the resurrection of Christ, disqualifies him in the view of the infidel for being a competent witness. So in the case before us, an example is demanded of one who has attained perfect holiness. Examples are produced. These,' 'tis said, are dreaming fanatics; they believe the doctrine and wish to support it, therefore they are incompetent witnesses. Give us one who is not a perfectionist, and we ask no more.' Who does not see that this request is absurd. For one who denies that perfection can be attained, will not, of course, pretend that he has obtained it, and therefore can be no witness in the case. I repeat, therefore, there are those who claim to be perfect, and whose lives do not give the lie to their pretensions. These I offer as witnesses, and their testimony must stand as true, till it is proved to be false.

And these witnesses may be much more numerous than we suppose. Christian perfection is not a quality that will make a display in the world. It will not be proclaimed upon the house tops or at the corners of the streets. On the contrary, he that has reached it is perfectly humble, and seeks not the notice or applause of the world. His whole object is to do his duty to God and his fellow men, and to wait in joyful expectation for the coming of his Lord, and I doubt not but on that day when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed, many a Christian who was unknown or despised in the world, will be found to have lived even here without stain and without spot, the perfect image of his Lord. But that the number of such is small, compared with the whole number of Christians, I do not doubt. It is a melancholy fact, but no more so than another fact, that even in Christian lands a great majority of those for whom Christ died, and who believe in the importance of a change of heart, live without God and without hope in the world.Owing to the wickedness of the heart and the wiles of the adversary, few comparatively even of good men reach this state of perfection, till death is swallowed up in glory. There are two other reasons why so few become perfect. One is, few believe the doctrine. We cannot expect to see it exemplified till it is believed. The other is, most persons entertain wrong views of it. They suppose it implies something superhuman, and therefore are deterred from efforts to reach it, which they would make, were their views correct. But man is not required

to exercise the powers of an angel, or to possess the same degree of holiness as an angel, any more than he is required to know as much as an angel. As to the probability that any will reach this state, we can only say, if our views are correct, Christians can and ought to be perfect; they also have a prevailing desire to be perfect. Is it not probable that some of them will be perfect?

Thus have we endeavored to explain the doctrine of perfection, and present some of the more prominent Scriptural proofs. If we have done any thing to free it from objections and exhibit it in its true light, we shall be abundantly rewarded for our labor.

ON PREPARATION TO MEET GOD.

A SERMON BY THE REV. H. W. HILLIARD, A. M.,

To comprehend the full force and spirit of this passage, we must examine those parts of the chapter with which it is immediately connected. It will be observed that the idolatry of the Israelites is severely rebuked; they are reminded of the terrible judgments which had been inflicted on them, and of their own singular incorrigibleness.

And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord. And also I have withholden the rain from you when there were yet three months to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city; one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered. So two or three cities wandered unto one city to drink water, but they were not satisfied yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord. : I have smitten you with blasting and mildew: when your gardens, and your vineyards, and your fig trees, and your olive trees increased, the palmer worm devoured them: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord. I have sent among you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt your young men have I slain with the sword, and have taken away your horses; and I have made the stink of your camps to come up unto your nostrils: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord. I have overthrown some of you as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning; yet have ye not returned unto me saith the Lord. Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. For lo, He that formeth the mountains and createth the wind, and declareth unto man what is his thought, that maketh the morning darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of the earth, the Lord, the God of hosts is His name.'

There are two prominent thoughts suggested by this sublime controversy between God and His people. First, that the judgments of God are not vindictive, but that men by persisting in a course of transgression make it necessary that they should be punished.

Very unworthy conceptions of the character of God are sometimes entertained. There are many who take but a partial view of His ad

ministration, and blind to the extended benevolence which characterizes it they condemn it as severe. They point to the expulsion from paradise, the deluge, the destruction of cities, the overthrow of nations, and other instances of the signal punishment of sin, as illustrations of their view. They look to the punishment, but they forget its philosophy.

God is benevolent : no truth can be clearer. The heavens above us declare it, and the earth beneath our feet teaches it. It is illustrated in that wide regard which embraces the universe in all its amplitude, diffusing life and preserving harmony throughout the worlds; and in that concern which we daily witness for the preservation of the humblest creatures that exist. Our Lord employed the sparrow and the lily as illustrations of this feature in the Divine character. In the sacred writings power is ascribed to God, and wisdom, and other qualities; but St. John declares that God is love.'

When then in viewing the Divine administration we discover instances of punishment and suffering, we must account for them upon some other principle, than to suppose that they result from a disposition in God to create unhappiness. The great tendency of the administration must be looked to; the relation which the beings who suffer sustain to others must be regarded.

That this view may be made clearer, let us examine some circumstances in the history of mankind which will serve to illustrate and enforce it. The history of the plagues which were sent on Egypt, is thought by some to furnish a very strong argument against the mercy of the Divine administration. We think that its testimony is of a directly opposite character. To appreciate these events properly, we must regard the moral and religious condition of Egypt at the time when they occurred. Idolatry of the grossest kind prevailed. It is said by an author, whom we shall call to our aid in remarking upon the miracles which were performed by Moses among the Egyptians, that though idolatry took its rise in Chaldea, Egypt seems to have become at a very early period tinctured with that vice, while in the extent to which they carried it, all ancient writers allow that no people can be brought into comparison with the Egyptians. That brute worship originated in Egypt, can we think be as little doubted, as that it gradually arose out of the use of hieroglyphical writing, and at all events we know that it was practised there to a degree in itself irreconcilable with common reason.'

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Now it seems to us, that under these circumstances the introduction into Egypt of the Israelites, a people acquainted with the true God, must be recognized as a very favorable event for the Egyptians.— When it became necessary to remove the Israelites from the land of their bondage and degradation, the means employed to bring about this result were manifestly designed to benefit their oppressors by exposing the folly of their idolatry.

The first plague to which God condemned Egypt to submit, was the conversion of the waters into blood. This strange effect was produced by an instrumentality well calculated to lead them to a knowledge of God. Moses His servant barely smote the river with his rod.— This very remarkable circumstance would have astonished any people, but it had a special application to the condition of Egypt. The Nile, which gave fertility to their lands, was considered by the Egyptians a

god; and yet it is converted at the command of a servant of Jehovah into a substance which none of their priests could touch or even approach without pollution.'

The plague of the frogs succeeded this, another unavoidable source of pollution.

Then came the plague of the lice, and they were upon every man and beast throughout the land. Now if it is remembered that no man could approach the altars of Egypt on whom so impure an insect harbored, and that the priests to guard against the slightest risk of contamination wore only linen garments, and shaved their heads and bodies every day, the severity of this miracle as a judgment upon Egyptian idolatry may be imagined.'

While it lasted no act of worship could be performed, and so keenly was this felt, that the very magicians exclaimed, 'This is the finger of God.'

The same principle is traced in the fourth plague, of which one of their deities was made the instrument. Swarms of flies came upon all the land.

The fifth plague it is said struck at the root of the system of brute worship. It was the murrain among the cattle: Neither Osiris, nor Isis, nor Ammon, nor Pan, possessed power to save his representative; and the sacred bull, and ram, and heifer, and he-goat were swept away by the same malady which destroyed others.'

It is believed that the sixth plague was intended to rebuke the practice of offering human sacrifices. This was done to propitiate Typhon, or the evil principle. There are reasons for believing that these victims were selected from the Israelites. Moses, by the direction of Jehovah, approached the furnace where the victims were burned, and imitating the manner of the Egyptian priests, took a handful of the ashes, and casting them into the air, there came instead of a blessing boils and blains, peculiarly obnoxious upon all the people of the land. The inability of Typhon to protect his worshippers was thus shown.

In the seventh plague it is said that Isis the god of water, and Osiris the god of fire, were the instruments. Lightning and hail came with tremendous power upon the land, and the horror of the Egyptians may be imagined, when we remember that Egypt is blessed with a sky uncommonly serene, that in the greatest part of it no rain falls from one end of the year to the other, and that even in such districts as are watered from on high, a slight and transient shower is all that the inhabitants ever witness.'

The eighth plague was that of the locusts, and while in itself a serious evil, it demonstrated the inability of the gods Isis and Serapis to protect the land from their invasion.

In the language of the writer whose course we have mainly followed in viewing these miracles,' The ninth plague was directed against that species of superstition, which, as it first broke in upon true religion, so it seems to have held throughout the highest place in the estimation of the heathen. Light, that great god of Chaldea, was shown to be a mere creature in the hands of the Most High, and both the sun and the moon were veiled during three days and nights from the eyes of their astonished worshippers.

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The tenth and most tremendous judgment of all was, as indeed it

is represented to be, a perfect application of the law of reprisal to the stubborn and rebellious Egyptians. "Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my first-born. Let my son go that he may serve me, and if thou refuse to let him go, behold I will slay thy son, even thy first-born." Before this threat was carried into execution, every effort had been made to subdue the obstinacy of Pharaoh. Judgment after judgment had been sent upon him and his subjects, by none of which were the children of Israel affected. His gods were shown to be no gods-his sacred river was made the source of defilement to him. The sun refused him its light, the locusts devoured his crops, yet none of all these things succeeded in convincing Pharaoh that Jehovah was supreme throughout the universe, and that it was his wisdom to obey. Then, and not till then, God raised his arm to strike, and the strength and the pride of Egypt perished in one night.'

In this whole controversy we think that the mercy of God was largely displayed.

The history of the Israelites will furnish farther illustrations of our view. It is well known that they were very early distinguished as the people of God, and were peculiarly blessed. The manifestations of the Divine regard for them were such as to attract the observation of other nations. By a direct and most remarkable display of power God delivered them from bondage; the waters retired at their approach and left them a sure passage for their hosts, and then overwhelmed their pursuers; a heavenly banner waved over them by day and by night, and guided them on their way; for them water gushed out of the rock, and food became abundant in the wilderness. In the red path of battle they were shielded, and the strength of nations was subdued before them. They enjoyed a glorious intercourse with the Almighty. His presence was with them, and His voice was heard in their midst ; its still, clear tones proclaiming His loving kindness.

Now glance at the future history of this people. See them overtaken by calamities, visited with famine, the fertility of their lands destroyed, their beautiful places desolate, thousands sinking under the breath of pestilence, their young men slain with the sword, their strength in war vanquished, and their glory spoiled; hear them sighing in captivity, see them sitting in sadness upon the banks of strange rivers, far from their home and their temple; survey all the scenes of their wonderful history, and then ask, 'What has done all this? Here is the arm of the Lord made bare against a people who were once cherished. Can it be imagined that the administration of the Almighty is capricious? This mighty change in the condition of the Israelites is to be accounted for upon principles very clear and equitable. It was the result of their own transgressions; the effect of that discipline which it is necessary for moral purposes, should be extended over all. Moses, the illustrious legislator of the Israelites, clearly predicted the sufferings of this people, and attributed them solely to their abandonment of duty. He represented to them how necessary it would be to punish rebellion, and while he promised as the reward of obedience, the largest blessings, he assured his people that their sins must bring upon them distressing calamities. What a melancholy sanction has history given to all that he uttered!

Why did the Israelites suffer from famine? That they might see VOL. VI.-October, 1835.

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