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has long been blunting his conscience and crushing down all the higher faculties of his soul by inordinate sensuality. He lives as if his being had no nobler end or aim than the gratification of the meanest appetites. "He that liveth in such ungodly pleasure is dead while he liveth." Is it possible that he can have any adequate conception of the holy and infinite Spirit? It will be long before he can ever believe in the reality of moral purity and the unutterable peace of a devout soul. He cannot comprehend the motives and spirit of one who denies his senses, wrestles down his vile passions, and dutifully bears his cross after the Divine Teacher. To him it is foolishness all.

Thus it is plain that impure and earthly minded persons-extortioners, oppressors, unjust, hardhearted, cannot know God, because in their own souls there is yet developed nothing that can sympathize with the holy and Divine. The understanding of unsanctified man is inadequate to this high wisdom. We can have no intuition of the Father till we can see his image shadowed out in our own being. We must be godlike ourselves. When his kingdom is within us, established there in its joy and purity, its peace and hope and power, then will every word of truth, and every manifestation of Divine holiness and love, speak in thrilling tones to our consciousness. Our souls will echo the Divine voice. We sympathize with Divine goodness; we feel a kindling inspiration; we know, we love, we reverence the infinite Father. We comprehend-take up into our being so much of him, as shall fill up the measure of our finite capacity; we are filled with the fulness of God." So far as we 66 escape the corruption that is in the world, we become," to repeat the sublime declaration of an Apostle, partakers of the Divine nature." "God dwelleth in us, and we in him." His spirit is our spirit. So far as we have experience of his goodness and glorious beauty, so far do we know him, so far do we see him by intuition of the soul. So far as the spirit of justice, benignity and love dwells in us and reigns in us, we are of God, godlike. The signatures of the Father are written on our inward man. On our souls unruffled by tempestuous passions we see his image, as the overshadowing heavens are mirrored from the bosom of a serene lake in a summer morning.

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This spiritual sympathy, by which the pure soul sees and knows its Father, grows as long as there is spiritual life. As you become more heavenly minded, the larger is the sphere of your consciousness.

You comprehend more and more of the unsearchable perfections of the Godhead. More and more do you receive of his revelations of truth and love. You are lifted into a purer and higher region of thought; you are baptized into the holy Spirit.

And is not this blessedness, this peace of the pure soul that lives in communion with the indwelling Father? This vision of God satisfies the deepest wants and instincts of our nature. We see him not as a thin, dim abstraction,—a being without personality, or love or providential care of us. Oh no. "Our heart and flesh crieth out for the living God." We long for the Father; and we find him. In him our souls have infinite peace. The necessities of our whole being are satisfied. To him we surrender our minds, our hearts and our lives in holy obedience and pure worship. Is not this blessedness? How poor are all the pleasures of sense and passion, compared with the hope and joy of a pure heart, which has in its inmost depths a temple of God and the sacred fire on the altar evermore burning! Truth, purity, indomitable rectitude of purpose and of life are treasures laid up in heaven; or rather, heaven comes down with its divine peace and love, like a quickening atmosphere, around the man. with whom God has made his dwelling-place. And he is blessed indeed, for pious and happy thoughts abide with him; and pure desires and growing virtues and hopes full of immortality drive out the demons of pride, covetousness and sensuality, and leave him free, strong, great, a son of God.

Thus, my friends, it is our privilege to know God, if our hearts are pure, by our sympathy with his character. We enter into spiritual union with him, when we are capable of appreciating his presence in our souls. Then to our consciousness does "he manifest himself as he does not to the world." But only so far as we are pure, upright and devout, can we have any right knowledge of him. If there be moral obliquity or defilement within, his image will be distorted as in a soiled or broken mirror. For in a certain sense the soul of man ever shapes out its own Divinity. The instinct of religion is universal, but blind."All people," said a Hebrew prophet," will walk every one in the name of his own God." The half barbarous Heathen cannot do without a god; he yearns for some being mightier than himself, on whom his soul may lean in its weakness and fear, and he gropes darkly to find him. He creates his own divinities, and transfers

to them his own passions and vices. A licentious and impure people could have sympathy only with deities like themselves. They were, as a poet sings,

"Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,

Whose attributes were rage, revenge and lust."

In like manner does the Christian fashion for himself, out of revelation and philosophy, the idea of a God after his own consciousness. What dark corruptions of our holy religion, what fearful misrepresentations of the Father's character, have sprung from the vile passions of the human heart. The harsh, exclusive and arbitrary man has embodied in a creed his own moral image, and called it God. If he is vindictive, narrow-minded, a bigot, a persecutor, such will be the character of the Divinity whom he so ignorantly worships. His God is distorted, by the medium through which he is seen, into a demon of wrath and malignity, an all-powerful despot before whom man trembles and turns pale. But as he grows purer in heart, he rises above the error and darkness of his earthly state into the calm region of spiritual meditation, where he has a vision of truth face to face, and of God in the beauty and glory of his perfection.

Everywhere the pure hearted man sees God,-in his providence, in his works of power and love, in the revelations of his word, and in the revelations of the soul. But most clearly does he see him as "manifest in the flesh." In Jesus, the perfect, divine man, is "the fulness of the Godhead " revealed. "God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts, to give us the light of the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ." To know him is to know the Father, for he is the Father's image. He said once to a disciple, almost in a tone of reproach, "Have I been so long time with you, and yet thou hast not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." We may know him by a true and hearty sympathy with his spirit. Only to holy souls, which are united to him by spiritual affinity, is he truly revealed. They become one with him, as he is one with God. "Christ is formed in them;" in their trusting faith, their fervent and filial piety, and their generous sacrifices for truth, for duty and for humanity, he reappears in his spirit and power. And thus all pure hearts, wherein the image of Christ is developed by a living faith, are the mirror in which God is

reflected; his presence is revealed in their godlike sentiments and virtues. He is manifest to the consciousness of those whose spiritual sympathies enable them to discern his image and appreciate his character. Their hearts are the abode of divine affections, and out of their daily lives the beauty of holiness shines.

And they have unutterable peace," the peace of God which passeth all understanding." Blessed are they beyond all other men,blessed in their conscious rectitude of purpose and of life,—blessed in the filial piety which loves and trusts and communes with the Father of their spirits,-blessed in their hope full of immortality, that looks for the nearer presence of infinite Perfection and illimitable Love.

THE CHRISTIAN LAYMAN.*

THIS is the title of an anonymous, and in some respects certainly a remarkable, work. The author tells us that he was "educated in what is called the Orthodox school and faith," but that he does "not intend that it shall be known even who" he is, " being desirous that the work should stand or fall according to its merits or demerits." He speaks of himself as having attained the age of "nearly threescore years and ten," and as having given "thirty years' particular examination to the Scriptures," with a view of learning what really they teach and require. The book is written in a simple and unpretending style, and in a way to enable every reader to possess himself at once of the writer's meaning. Throughout a kind and catholic spirit is manifest, and a sincere desire to promote the great ends of Christian union and peace.

The author appears well read in ecclesiastical antiquity, and able to sustain his opinions by quotations not from the Scriptures only, but from the earliest Christian writers and Apologists. His principles of interpretation, we suppose, few would dispute at this day, except those belonging to a very exclusive school. The great design of the book

The Christian Layman: or the Doctrine of the Trinity fully considered, and adjudged according to the Bible. By a Christian Layman. Mobile: and New York: 1840. pp. 371. 12mo.

is to examine "all the most important evidence of the Bible, which has any relation to the nature and character of God, of his Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

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He begins by stating principles of interpretation. He then collects into one chapter upwards of a hundred passages of Scripture, which he supposes give a fair representation of the general doctrine of the Bible upon this subject, intimating however that " more may be found of a like nature in all parts of the Bible." He next proceeds to the "being and attributes of God." "The unity of God," he says, "is professed by all Christians of every sect," though there be those who at the same time "profess to believe in a doctrine, which seems at first view to be inconsistent with the strict unity of Jehovah; to wit, that the one only God exists in three persons.' At the ivth chapter he commences the consideration of "the Divinity of the Son of God," and at once declares, that "all acknowledge that the Son of God was, and is, in some sense, a Divine Being. It is therefore uncharitable and unchristianlike to accuse any sect of Christians of denying the Divinity of Christ, their Saviour. Some may have wrong or inadequate ideas on the subject, but none deny the doctrine in toto." To the viith chapter inclusive, the work is occupied with a nice examination of the Scriptural evidence as to the true sense in which Christ is divine. The ground here supposed to be proved is, that he "was an extraordinary, a superhuman being,"-who " had a being before Abraham was," "-" transcendently superior to angels." "In the beginning,' probably when God created the heavens and the earth, he was with God.' He was glorified with the Father 'before the world was.' He was beloved by the Father before the foundation of the world.' He was in the bosom of the Father,—in all his designs a minister,—the messenger to do his will,-the Angel of his presence;" "not very God, or the Supreme, self-existent God, but the only Son of God, entirely dependent upon God, his Father, for existence, and support."

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In the viiith chapter we have the author's views of "the mediation of Christ;" for completing which work, he supposes the "middle station" which he occupies "between God and men" peculiarly fits him. He says, "the Bible fully informs us, that it was this Mediator, this only Son of God, who came down from heaven to our world, tabernacled in the flesh, dwelt in a body prepared for him,' was treated with indignity and reproach, scourged and buffeted, suffered, and died

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