The worship of the gospel is worship of the heart. It is contra-distinguished from worship through ritual sacrifices and external services. It is the direct communion of the individual spirit with the great Spirit. The reason assigned is, "God is a spirit." As he is immaterial, he cannot commune reciprocally with materiality; a mere external act cannot answer the sympathies and desires of the Eternal Mind. The spirit of the worshipper, that which is like in nature, or homogeneous with himself, can alone satisfy these. The naked soul, as in the upper sanctuary, where seraphs bow without any media,-except, as some suppose, the great Mediator, is to come directly up before its Creator and Sovereign, holding affectionate intercourse, and breathing forth the reverential adoration becoming the children of the Highest. Under the gospel, the only sacrifice accepted on the altar is a burning heart, blending its flame with the Heart of the universe.

The same distinction between the old and new dispensation, in this respect, is brought out repeatedly in the Epis tles. Paul, in dissuading the Galatians from Jewish formalities, tells them that under the old dispensation mankind were under tutors and governors in bondage under the elements of the world, to rites weak and beggarly; but under the new dispensation they enjoy the freedom and familiarity of sons; and that Jerusalem, which is the spiritual or gospel church, is free from all burdensome rites or cumbersome ceremonials intervening between the soul and God. Hence he exhorts them: "Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage"; affirming that "in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith, which worketh by love." Thus the essentiality in the church of the new dispensation is faith in Christ, or a regenerated spirit in harmony with himself. "The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost."

It is, then, the glory of the gospel, as distinguished from

the legal institutes of Moses, that the religion which it teaches is purely spiritual. It is religion seated in a heart spontaneously rising to its Creator and Lord, glowing with love, sinking in humility, bowed in submission, animated with faith and hope, awed with reverence before the dazzling glories of the throne, and yet soothed and sweetly melted in communion with him who sits thereon, through the intercessions of the only Mediator. There is no prescribed ritual constituting ceremonial holiness which must be rigorously performed before the soul can go forth on its free excursions of hallowed worship and cheerful service. Adoration is acceptable in any place, in any circumstances, in any posture, which the renewed heart dictates. True, external acts are commanded public worship and prayer. But these are nothing in God's sight without the heart; they are, indeed, only its outward expression. Two sacramental rites are instituted. But their import and designed tendencies are entirely spiritual. Baptism with water but intensifies our conscious need of purification; and the bread and wine of the sacramental table but vivify the scene of Calvary and our sense of the preciousness of the blood there spilt. The intended use of gospel ordinances is to assist, not obstruct, our spiritual apprehensions; to intensify, not abate, our spiritual enjoyments; to quicken, not deaden, the sympathies of the soul with God.

Now is it reasonable to suppose that in this purely spiritual system God would appoint an external rite so vital to the constitution of his church that her very existence should depend on its right administration; that even the conscientious misapprehension of its nature or mode by a portion of Christ's disciples would be a justifiable ground of excluding them from a service of the highest fellowship with himself and his people; especially when they who labor under the misapprehension are apparently just as desirous of pleasing the great Head of the church as are they who exclude them? Would not the fellowship of true Christians, on such grounds, render the gospel rather a ritual than a spiritual

system? In its nature, how would it differ from the Mosaic economy, which demanded the excision of all neglectors of circumcision and other outward institutes from God's people?

No class of Christians are more established than the Baptists in the conviction that the New Testament contains a dispensation of grace different from that contained in the Old; so different that they can find no foreshadowing of church government or order in it, maintaining most earnestly that "we are remitted to Christ and his apostles for light on all questions of church order and action." But in what does the New dispensation differ more from the Old, than in its spirituality and freedom from bondage to ritual service? This they admit. And yet, with a strange inconsistency, they make the mode of administering an ordinance the ground on which to erect an exclusive church organization. Do they not transfer the spirit of the Old Testament, in its rigid attachment and servitude to rites, into the New? How is the power of one rite to place a flaming sword in the entrance to another consistent with emancipation from ritual thraldom?

Corollary: The ordinances of the gospel should be spiritually interpreted, in harmony with its spiritual nature. The rites which the gospel institutes and enjoins must be, in their nature, like itself. As it is spiritual, they must be spiritual. They cannot consist in mode. If so, the gospel contains within itself an incongruous element. We should look mainly, therefore, at the spirit of them. The feelings, intention, design, with which they are administered, should be deemed determinative, and not their particular form, as under the Mosaic dispensation. The Sinaitic ritual was modal throughout. Mode was essential to all its observances. He who failed in this, failed altogether. On the contrary, the spirit of gospel ordinances constitutes their essentiality. This is clearly brought to view by our Saviour in his conversation with the woman of Samaria. Place and form of worship, so essential under the Old dispensation, are of no consequence under the New. VOL. XXI. No. 83.

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He who

worships in spirit, whatever the outward expression, is accepted. This principle, transferred to the rites, renders their precise form of minor consideration. Is the ordinance, whatever its mode, performed with right feelings and motives? Is the intent of the rite answered? This constitutes its essentiality, and is sufficient. The reverse of this thought will exhibit it more clearly. Modal rites, exactness in their order and relations, one being indispensable to another, prove a church ritual. The character of the rites, in this respect, always determines the character of the church. Hence, the quality of one being given, the other is known. Modal rites prove a church ritual; a spiritual church proves its rites spiritual. In perfect agreement with this principle, the Baptists, not less than ourselves, reject the idea of modality from every other church institute or act of worship. Why make baptism an exception? Why is not the spirit of the ordinance - the right feelings and motives in the use of water administered in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, sufficient to constitute baptism? It is not enough to say that baptism enters into the very constitution of the visible church; for so does the Lord's supper. There are the same reasons for making the latter modal, as the former. The truth is, to make either of them modal is contrary to the spirit of the gospel church. This Andrew Fuller virtually admits: "We should endeavor to ascertain on what principles the apostles proceeded in forming and organizing Christian churches-positive or moral. If the former, they must have been furnished with an exact model or pattern, like that which was given to Moses in the mount, and have done all things according to it; but if the latter, they would only be furnished with general principles, comprehending, but not specifying, a great variety of particulars." "There is scarcely a precept on the subject of church discipline but what may, in substance, be found in the Proverbs of Solomon."

This principle extended to the rites of the church, as consistency with the above extract demands, would give

them a spiritual interpretation. Such interpretation is given to one the Lord's supper-by the Baptists themselves. Why is it withheld from the other? Is it because it would undermine the tenet of close communion?

II. From the nature and character of divine love manifested specifically to believers. This contains several elements:

1. It is the same in kind as that which the Father bears towards his co-eternal Son. We can never fully comprehend the strength and endearment of God's love to his people, except by seeing it in the light of this paternal love of the Godhead.

a. This love is specific in character, distinct from that which God feels originally for any other being. He loves the spirits he has made, as possessing an intrinsic value surpassing the comprehension of the human mind. But he values and loves his Son as a being whose nature is too transcendently excellent to be created. It is love felt for the uncreated, as contrasted with that felt for the created. Rational love must ever be proportioned to the excellence of its object. As self-existence is immeasurably superior to created existence, God's love for his Son must be inconceivably more intense than what he feels for any finite existence; indeed, than for all finite existences combined.

b. It is love which the Father feels for his only-begotten Sona Son partaking of his essence, to whom he discloses the whole depth of his being and of his counsels. John represents him as "the only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father"; signifying, according to Chrysostom, and approved by Alford and Bengel, "community of being," represented under the form of the tenderest parental love. It is this parental love eternally enjoyed a love which (to speak according to the law of all finite affection) has been strengthening by coinmunion the most blissful through eternal years. He was "brought up with him, and was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him." This is love of transcendent excellence. It is, indeed, of a nature so exalted that, while cumbered with flesh and sin, we may be scarcely