and applications to which future ages would be disposed to put them.

The Christian writings abound in seminal ideas; they are full of beginnings. The outlines are many, but there are no finished pictures. The value of those writings may be best represented by the term Life. We know they are inspired, because they are inspiring. The living man is the best confirmation of the living book. This book is not a plumb-line by which to test the perpendicularity of a wall; it is a living spirit, quickening and regulating spirits capable of illimitable development. With infinite appropriateness, therefore, it closes with an apocalypse,-not with a final line, but with prophecies of a future which shall eclipse the splendour of all earlier light. The Old Testament closed with a prophecy; the New Testament culminates in a revelation. The New Testament is only the beginning of books; not a finished and sealed document, according to popular notions of finality, but the beginning of a literature punctuated and paragraphed by tears and laughter, by battle and pestilence, and all the changes of a tumultuous yet progressive civilization. The Apocalypse looks towards the future with ten thousand eager and glowing eyes. What if that apocalypse be fulfilling under our own observation, and Christ be saying to us, "Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the signs of the sky, how is it ye cannot discern the signs of the times?"

God is, so to speak, issuing ever-enlarging editions of the New Testament-so rapidly, indeed, that the world itself can hardly contain the books. Though we no longer know Christ after the flesh, yet we walk with him in the holy sanctuary of the spirit; and from among

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the golden candlesticks, he throws out all the rays by which we read to-day's story and to-morrow's apocalypse. He is still "the light of the world," and still there is about him all the mystery of light. The light which reveals the landscape, needs itself to be revealed; so paradoxical is nature, like nature's God, that we are dependent for revelation upon what is itself a mystery! If we have ceased to know any of the facts of the Book -its temples, sacrifices, washings, oblations, and miracles -it is because we have come to a deeper sympathy with its spirit. We have now transcended the use of the grammar and the lexicon, except for the most rudimentary and initial purposes. We are not now dependent upon the scribe, but by a divinely regulated instinct we know the hand and the voice of God. Our faith cannot be broken down by a misspelt word or a mistaken date ; the heart is enthroned as arbiter, and it knows the "going" of the divine step.

No doubt the Book does contain contradictions more or less real. So does the book of nature. The desert contradicts the garden; the storm contradicts the calm; summer and winter are utterly discordant; one plant grows poison, another is impregnated with healing juices; the savage beast and the creature of gentle blood face each other in the contradictory book of nature. The world is full of contradiction, and an intolerably insipid world it would be but for its anomalies. Every man is his own contradiction. In ten years, a growing man will throw off many tastes, companionships, and habits, which to-day are pleasant to him. There is nothing without an element of contradiction but death, and death itself is the great contradiction of God. Human maxims and

policies are continually at strife. Out of contradiction comes education. But what is contradiction? Not lying, necessarily-not even opposition, absolutely; contradiction may simply mean incompleteness, or may arise from ellipsis. Two gases may mutually antagonise, yet may be held altogether by a third. Two statements may be discrepant, until a missing link is supplied. A man may pursue two divergent courses of conduct, yet may hold his integrity without a breach; when smitten on one cheek he may turn the other, and yet he may rebuke an offending brother; he may judge no man, yet he may refuse to cast his pearls before swine, or give that which is holy unto the dogs: this supposed contradictoriness he has learned of Jesus Christ, who, though he had not where to lay his head, promised to those who followed him "a hundredfold more in the present world;" who reproached men for not coming to him, and then told them that no man came unto him except the Father drew him, and afterwards gave them to understand that they would be damned if they did not come unto him; who preached trust concerning to-morrow, and then told men to make unto themselves friends of the mammon of unrighteous

ness.

All this appears to be most contradictory and perplexing, yet the same kind of contradiction marks the whole life and speech of men. One book may be many books, as the New Testament is literally. Its chapters may be addressed to different men, or to the same men under different circumstances; or cautionary words may be interposed in anticipation of possible abuse. One of the New Testament writers states plainly that there

are in the revelation two distinct kinds of spiritual aliment, known respectively as "milk" and "strong meat; one for babes, the other for men. When babes eat men's food, what wonder if they suffer from doctrinal dyspepsia, and be excluded from the Church as heretics? And when men appropriate the babe's milk, what wonder that the Church should suffer in robustness and power? There is one remarkable saying of Christ's, which prepares us for ever-widening revelations of his purpose in relation to man he said, "I have many things to tell you, but ye cannot bear them now: howbeit when he, the Spirit of Truth is come, he will lead you into all truth.” Among the " many things" would be explanations of hard sayings and complements of unfinished circles. The plan of revelation, too, hinted that man should become more and more independent of the scribe, and more and more reliant upon the Spirit. Writing is a human contrivance, but thinking is a divine operation. The scribe for the child, the Spirit for man. The instructions of a parent or schoolmaster amply illustrate the whole case alike as to method, instrument, and result. At one period, the child is addressed as if he were irresponsible, and at another, as if every deed would be brought under judgment. The schoolmaster first sets before the pupil the most detailed methods of calculation, and insists upon every step being taken; afterwards he shows the pupil how to abbreviate the processes of doing the very same work, and actually ridicules him if the calculation is carried on in the detailed and minute method which at first was affirmed to be right. So a man is educated in proportion as he becomes able to group and summarise details, and by scientific

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ellipses to pass rapidly towards results. All this is part of a great movement from the letter to the Spirit, from the symbol to the life. This is man's upward course towards God; a deliverance from manual toil, and an entrance upon the joys of a work which never satiates the appetite, and never wearies the faculty. When we are "perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect," we shall escape the tedium of manual processes, and work from the spiritual centre.

According to the processes, so may be the verdicts which men may pass upon one another. The pupil who is only able to do a sum in simple multiplication would not be able to bear" a revelation respecting the differential calculus; but in proportion as he was able to acquit himself well in multiplication, the teacher would be justified in saying that he was a good scholar, and yet that he knew nothing;-good, as far as he had gone, yet ignorant in view of the vast region which remained to be explored.

When Christ tells men to come unto him, he is addressing them in their alienated condition; when he tells them that they will not come unless the Father draw them, he is but cheering and confirming their Christward desires. The statement is equivalent to this I am so unlike what all men have expected, and I have commenced my work in so unlikely a manner, that no man could possibly come unto such a poor, friendless, homeless man, except my Father draw him; present no external charms, I can appeal to no sordid. motives; if any man, therefore, feels the slightest drawing towards me, he may regard the inclination as divinely inspired, for no man cometh unto such a