to gratify ourselves? We know how express are the commands on this point. Warfare, and a course of violent action, do not very well harmonize with this.

Once more consider the self-sacrificing nature of the Gospel religion. How does it require of the servants of the Lord that they yield, and give up the momentary interests of time, counting them as nothing letting all go, and even life itself, as though that and all the rest were trifles compared with piety and eternity, and the so living as wholly to follow the Lord, and exemplify the holy peculiarities of the New Testament kingdom. Our divine Head does not so much care for our good here as for our future, and that we so conduct as to honor him before a rebellious world, and practically to exhibit to that world, the loveliness of Christianity. If his followers strive and fight, has it a tendency to convince the irreligious that his kingdom is altogether a benevolent one? But the seeing them ready to sacrifice all things and do good, but no injury, it causes them to have that conviction.

Still again, look into the New Testament. Contemplate the genius of our holy religion; its great object is to strike a death blow to earth and all earthly affections. Its intention is to have the disciples of the Savior dead to the world, and abstracted from it so far as their feelings, desires and expectations are concerned; that they in habit feel that they are strangers upon earth, and have no business here but to do the Master's work, and then go home. Does not every les

son of the Gospel teach them that they are to look for nothing in this abode but care, labor, and "much tribulation;" that they are not to calculate for any repose in this present state of being, but only anticipate it in a different and future one ? Were the disciples of the Savior habitually to feel that they are forbidden to fight-that they are re quired to be non-resistant among men as sheep and lambs among wolves-that they are defenceless, and are commanded by their Head so to regard themselves, would not this cause them most powerfully to realize that they are not at home in this present life, and lead them in their thoughts and with their desires to look away to another and happier world? Would not such a convietion deaden their affection to earth, wean them from it, and make them fix their minds on what is eternal and unseen? Would this not have, and that most powerfully, an earth and flesh-killing effect? What a harmony between what we are contemplating, and the pacific doctrine of the Gospel, as had been brought into view!

In the last place, let us consider the character which above all things it is the object of the Gospel institution to have formed in and by those whom the divine Lord has as his subjects. The malignant state of the human heart as man now is in his fallen condition, has been brought into view in this chapter. Other evil dispositions and propensities in him, have been contemplated in the preceding ones. [More of the kind will be found in that which follows.] In all this we have something very unlike the holy kingdom of God.

P

It is sin. And what was the leading object of our Savior in his mission into the world, but to have this put away from his people? He came to save them from all unrighteousness. He de. signs the present as a state preparatory to another, a holy, loving, benevolent condition of being, and intends that every thing else shall be subordinate to that preparation. This is an all important consideration, and one that seems to be entirely overlooked by the Christian advocates for war. Allow the followers of the Prince of Peace to fight-to be men of war and butchery, and will their sinful dispositions be destroyed? and will it tend to mould their character like that of the Gospel, and prepare them for the realms of light? Every one answers no; sin and sinful passions grow stronger by connection with war and fighting this is one of the greatest sources of corruption on earth, as all experience and observation prove. War causes every virtue in the breast to die, and every vice to thrive. There is nothing about it which makes the soul tendernothing causing it to be meek-nothing to be amiable and kind; in a word, nothing to cause that disposition to grow and flourish, which in this chapter we have seen will reign predominant in the new earth, and which will constitute so much of its loveliness.

CHAPTER VIII.

PURITY OF THE NEW WORLD.

THIS is a polluted, loathsome world. Mankind defile it by indulging, like brute beasts, their obscene lusts. To this the high and low, rich and poor, refined and vulgar, give way. It is witnessed in the palace and hovel, is practiced in secret and public, in city and country, in every land, whether civilized or uncivilized, whether Pagan or Christian, and has prevailed and reigned in every age since sin entered the earth. It has not only been made to be defiled in the way mentioned, but by all the sensuality in which the race in their state of sinful degeneracy indulge themselves, gratifying every appetite and disposition of the flesh. It is in all respects a world of pollution, even materially: there is nothing in it that is pure, or can be preserved and kept in a fair pure state all nature seems to be defiled, tending to pollution.

Not so will it be in the world to come: that will be a fair and pure condition of being. Respecting this the Sacred Oracles are plain and full. Let us hear their language on the subject. "At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord; and all nations shall be

gathered to the name of the Lord to Jerusalem; neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their heart." (Jer. 3: 17.) The above quoted passage, though seemingly relating to the period immediately subsequent to the Babylonish captivity, yet it is so expressed that the mind regards it as having an eye to something not yet disclosed. In the 35th chapter of Isaiah we have a glowing and animating representation of the prosperity and glory attending the Messiah's reign; in the connection it is said, "And a highway shall be there; and it shall be called the way of holiness: the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those, (the ransomed.) No lion's whelp shall be there; nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon; it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there." The Prophet Zechariah, in speaking concerning the time when all the families of the earth will worship the Lord, says: "In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, HOLINESS TO THE LORD; and the pots in the Lord's house, shall be like the bowls before the altar. Yea, every pot in the Lord's house shall be holiness to the Lord of Hosts; and all they that sacrifice shall come and take them, and seethe therein. And in that day there shall no more be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord forever." The most, it is probable, hold that the period to which the prophecy in the chapter from which the above is taken alludes, is future; and although in what is quoted, as well as other parts of it, there is a mode of expression designed