6. The fruitfulness of scripture, (Ezek. xlvii. 9.)

"How it has shown itself a germ of life in all the noblest regions of man's activity: how it has with its productive energy impregnated the world :-how ....every thing has lived whither these healing waters have come, and this word attested itself.... the unfolder of all the nobler and higher life of the world."

"The real evidence for aught which comes claiming to be from God, is its power-the power which it exercises to bless and to heal.... Thus it has been well and memorably said, that the great and standing evidence for Christianity is Christendom."

Hence, after instituting a contrast between genuine and counterfeit records, between the inspired and apocryphal Gospels, Mr. T. proceeds to consider "a few aspects under which the Scriptures have shewn themselves strong, quickeners of the spiritual and intellectual life of man." . . . . Poetry and the arts-language and laws, and literature, and institutions, and manners--social and savage life, all history and all experience attest its influence. We cannot enter into detail. A single passage will exhibit the tone of this lecture.

His first reflection is-"How productive the Holy Scriptures have been, even in regions of inward life and activity, where at first sight one would least have expected it, where we should have been tempted for many reasons to anticipate exactly opposite effects. How many things Christianity might, at first sight, have threatened to leave out, to take no notice of, or indeed utterly to suppress, which, so far from really warring against, it has raised to higher perfection than ever in the old world they had attained." Thus, in the view alike of friend and foe, of Julian and Tertullian, "all art seemed inextricably linked and bound up with the forms of the old religion, and, if that perished, inevitably doomed to perish with it."

"How little," Mr. T. adds, "could the one or the other, could friend or foe of the nascent faith, have guessed that out of it, that nourished by the Christian books, that by the great thoughts which Christ set stirring in humanity, and of which these books kept a lasting record, there should unfold itself a poetry infinitely greater, an art infinitely higher, than any which the old world had seen-that this faith which looked so rigid, so austere, even so forbidding, should clothe itself in forms of grace and loveliness, which men had never dreamt of before? that poetry should not henceforward be the play of the spirit, but its holiest earnest; and those skilless Christian hymns, those hymns" to Christ as to God," of which Pliny speaks, so rude probably in regard of form, should yet be the preludes of strains higher than the world had listened to yet-that those artless paintings of the catacombs had the prophecy in them of more wondrous compositions than men's eyes had seenthat a day should arrive when, above many of the low vaults and narrow crypts, where now the Christian worshippers gathered in secret, should arise domes and cathedrals, embodying loftier ideas, because ideas relating to the eternal and the infinite, than all those Grecian temples, which now stood so fair and so strong, but which yet sought not to lift men's minds from the earth which they adorned.

"How little would the one or other, would Christian or heathen, have presaged such a future as this--that art was not to perish, but only to be purified and redeemed from the service of the flesh, and from whatever was clinging to and hindering it from realizing its true glory-and this book, which does not talk about such matters, which does not make beauty, but holiness, its end and aim-should yet be the truest nourisher of all out of which any genuine art ever has proceeded: the truest fosterer of beauty, while it is the nourisher of the affections, the sustainer of the relations between God and man: which affections and which relations are indeed the only root out of which any poetry or art worthy of the name, ever have sprang. For those affections being laid waste, those relations being broken, art is first stricken with barrenness, and then in a little while withers and pines and dies-as that ancient art, when the Church was born, was withering and dying under the influence of the scepticism, the profligacy, the decay of family and national life, the extinction of religious faith, which so consistently marked the time: only having a name to live, resting merely on the traditions of an earlier age, and on the eve of utter dissolution. Such was its condition when Christ came, and cast in his Word, as that which should make all things new, into the midst of an old and decrepit and worn-out world.”—(p. 138.)

7. Mr. T.'s last point is-the future development of Scripture. He had already shewn in what manner Holy Scripture had, little by little, laid bare its treasures to the Church, and what victories the truth had won and was winning still-how the Word was vindicating itself to be all that it claimed to be, shewing itself mighty, through God, for doing its appointed work: how, like the personal Word, it had ridden forth, and was riding yet, a victorious conqueror over the earth. He now enters upon the consideration, as a final one," in what way it is likely to approve itself a conqueror still what preparations we can trace in it for meeting the future evils of the world, the future needs of the Church: how far we may suppose that this book, which has revealed so much, may yet have much more to reveal." . . . . Here, Mr. T. observes,

"This is our confidence, that as the Scripture has sufficed for the past, so also it will suffice for the time to come.... That it has in reserve whatsoever any new conditions of the world, any new shapes of evil, any new, if they be righteous, cravings of the spirit of men, may require. We believe that as the Scripture is an armoury in which the Church has found weapons for all past conflicts, so will it find them there for all which are yet to come -conflicts, which, it may be, we as little forecast or dream of now, as we do of the weapons which are ready wrought in this armoury for bringing them to a glorious termination: and the weapons too themselves being oftentimes such, that they who were by God employed to forge them, while they knew they would serve present ends, yet hardly knew, perhaps knew not at all, what remote purposes they should also serve, to what great ulterior purposes they should one day be turned. Yet thus, no doubt, it shall be for even as in works of man's mind, talent knows all which it means, but genius, which is nearer akin to inspiration, means much more than it consciously knows; even so would men and prophets and evangelists, who were used for the uttering of this Word, knowing much of that which they spake and recorded, yet meant still more than they knew-the Holy Ghost guiding and blessing their utterances, and causing them oftentimes to declare deeper things, and things of wider reach and of more manifold utility, than even themselves, enlarged and enlightened by that Spirit as they were, were conscious of the

while. That which they spake being central Truth, presented a front, not merely to the lies of their day, not merely to the falsehood which they distinctly had in their mind to encounter, but presents a front to every later lie as well and so we have entire confidence that the truth being ever, in the language of Bacon, "an hill not to be commanded,”—such those Scriptures, which are Scriptures of every truth, shall shew themselves-an hill which shall never be commanded, but which rather shall itself command all other heights and eminences of the spiritual and intellectual world. However high they tower, this Word will always have heights which tower above them all; judging all things, it will be judged of none; itself the measure of all, no other thing will bring a measure unto it."-(pp. 150, 151.)

What, then, are Mr. T.'s anticipations of the future? We give his first entire. After observing that we can indeed guess but uncertainly what may be the future unrolling of the world's history-what antichristian forms of society may rise up. . . . . Or, again, what subtle, more attractive heresies may appear,"-he thus proceeds :--

"While it is hard for us to say what may be the exact forms of those future evils-while we cannot discern accurately beforehand the lineaments and proportions of those latest monstrous shapes which shall ascend from the pit, as neither would this foreknowledge profit us much: yet the hints which in God's prophetic word we have, the course of the Mystery of Iniquity, as it is already working, seem alike to point to this, that as there has been an aping of the monarchy of the Father, in the absolute despotisms of the world, an aping of the economy of the Son, as though he already sat visibly on his throne, in its spiritual despotisms, and eminently in that of Rome: so there remains yet for the world, as the crowning delusion, a lying imitation of the kingdom and dispensation of the Spirit-such as in the lawless Communist sects of the middle ages, in the Familists of a later day, in the St. Simonians of our own, has attempted to come to the birth, though in each case the world was not ripe for it yet:-full of false freedom, full of the promise of bringing all things into one--denying the family, while that seems to separate between man and man; obliterating all distinctions, the distinctions between nation and nation, between the man and the woman, between the flesh and the Spirit, between the church and the world. So seems it; and when we translate St. Paul's words, with which he characterizes the final Antichrist, as though he had simply called him that wicked one,' (2 Thess. ii. 8.) we lose a confirmation of this view which his words, more accurately rendered, would give us. He is not simply the wicked one, but & arouos, the lawless one: and the mystery is not merely a mystery of iniquity, but of lawlessness (avoμías). Law, in all its manifestations, is that which he shall rage against, making hideous misapplication of that great truth, that where the Spirit is, there is liberty. Then, when this shall have come to pass, then at length the great anti-trinity of hell, the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet, will have been fully revealed in all deceivableness of unrighteousness."(pp.152-154.) "But," adds Mr. T., "besides these mighty mischiefs which may hereafter arise, . . . there are others also which have already taken form and shapesome of them such as have stood strong, and in the main unshaken, for thousands of years: which yet we believe, which yet we know, shall one day be overthrown by the greater power and prevalence of the truth; church shall possess the earth, .. and being sure of this, it may not be unbecoming to see if we can at all discover in scripture the preparations which have been there made, and the might which is there slumbering, against each of those closer conflicts, which the church, by its help, must one day wage with those forms of untruth and error."

.....

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This new and only remaining point he connects with the great question of Christian Missions—a question of so much importance, and now assuming so practical a character, under auspices so various and conflicting, that we must be excused giving one more quotation of some length.

"How profitable were it," Mr. T. observes," in regard of the more effectual conducting of Christian missions, to be more conscious than generally we seek to be, of what is our peculiar strength, and what the peculiar weakness of each of those systems of error which we seek, in love to the souls which are made prisoners by it, to overthrow ;-so that we should not blindly run a tilt against it, with no other preparation save a confidence in the goodness of our cause, but with wisdom and insight assail it, where there were best hope of assailing it with success. For every one of these, while their strength is in that fragment of truth, which however maimed and marred, with whatever contradictions and under whatever disguises, they hold, have also eminently their weak side, that in which they signally deny some great truth which the spirit of man craves, which the scriptures of God affirm-a side, therefore, on which, if assailed, they must sooner or later perish, or rather will not always continue at strife with their own blessedness. To know this, and to know also what engines out of the divine armoury ought to be especially advanced against each of these strongholds of confusion; to know, not merely that we are strong and they weak, but where and why strong in regard of each, and where and why they are weak; this is surely a needful, as it is a muchneglected, discipline-a duty not to be indolently foregone by a Church like our own, a Church which God's providence and leading has so clearly marked out to do the work of an evangelist on vast continents and in far islands of the sea. To give such a training as this, was no doubt the meaning and purpose of the catechetical schools of Alexandria, so famous through all Christian antiquity-their purpose being to afford the highest culture to the evangelist, to give him the fullest understanding of what he was to oppose and how he was to do it. And such an insight as this, could we have it clear, into scripture and its adaptation for overcoming each shape of falsehood, how would it make us workmen that need not be ashamed! How would it enable us at once, and without beating the air, to address ourselves to the points at issue between us, on one side, and Jews, Mohammedans, and infidels, on the other. For the truth which is still the same, which might not give up one jot or tittle of itself, though it had with this the certainty of winning a world; may yet of infinite love continually change its voice, and present itself ever differently, according to the different necessities of those whom it would fain make its own.

"And, on the other hand, we address ourselves, but in a slight and inefficient manner, to our work, when without discrimination, without acquaintance with those systems which hold souls in bondage, which hinder them from coming to the light of life, we have but one method with them all-one language in which to describe them all-one common charge of belonging to the devil, on which to arraign them; instead of recognizing, as we ought, that each province of the dark kingdom of error is different from every other -instead of seeing that it is not their lie which has made them strong, enabled them to stand their ground so long, and some of them-saddest of all! to win ground for a while from Christendom itself: but the truth which that lie perverts and denies. Handling them in that other way, we turn but to little advantage that manifold Word of wisdom with which God has enriched his Church, which contains its own special antidote for every error, and which would allow, and indeed demands, a much more special dealing with each, and one which would get much more nearly to the heart of the matter." -(pp. 156-159.)

Such are Mr. T.'s general views. He then passes in review some of the rival religions which yet dispute the world, more particularly Mohammedism and Hindooism, as well in its later as in its earlier forms,-shewing, "how each presents points of contact for the absolute truth: how all present points of weaknesssides upon which they dumbly crave to be fulfilled by this truth, even while they are striving the most fiercely against it and how the truth in holy scripture is at once the antagonist and the complement of them all." A forgetfulness of all this, Mr. T. conceives, has been fatally injurious.

:

"There is no more delicate task,”.........he remarks, "than to set men free from these superstitions, and yet, at the same time, not to lay waste in their hearts the very soil in which the truth should strike its roots.... Where this process of men's extrication from error has been rudely or unwisely done, either by their own fault or that of others, where they have risen up in scorn, and trampled upon their past selves, and all that in time past they have held in honour, how mournful frequently the final issue! Thus, how unable do we often prove to retain the converts from Romanism which we have now. They do not return to that which they have left, but they pass on,—they pass through the truth into error on the other side.... And so too the Hindoo children in our modern schools, when we have gathered them there, and shewn them in the light of modern philosophy, the utter absurdity and incoherence of their sacred books, and provoked them to throw utmost scorn on these, we yet may not have brought them even into the vestibule of the faith, rather may have set them at a greater distance than ever: for to have taught them to pour contempt on all with which hitherto they have linked feelings of sacredness and awe, is but a questionable preparation for making them humble and devout scholars of Christ. Wiser surely was St. Paul's method, who ever sought a ground common to himself and him whom he would persuade, though it were but an handbreadth, upon which to take his standwho taught men reverently to handle their past selves and their past beliefwho to the Athenians said, "Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you," and spoke of the Cretan poet as" a prophet of their own" who re-adopted into the family of the truth its lost and wandering children, however they might have forgotten their true descent, in whatever far land, under whatever unlikely disguises, he found them. So was it that he became, in the language of a Greek father, which contains scarcely an exaggeration, the νυμφα γωγὸς τὴς οἰκουμένης, he who led up the world as a bride unto Christ."-(pp. 163, 164.

Thus has Mr. T. aimed, in his successive lectures, "to bring out an inner witness for scripture, from that which, to an earnest and devout examination, it shows itself as fitted for doing-from that which it has already done-from that which we may believe it will accomplish yet." He thus concludes:

"And, indeed, as regards aught which may be brought forth with purposes hostile to the faith, may not the past well give us confidence for the future? One and another adversary has risen up for what has not the world beheld in this kind? Essays on the miracles, Ages of Reason, Lives of Jesus, Theories of Creation. And then, in the first deceitful flush of a momentary success, oftentimes the cry has gone forth, It is finished! and the fortress of the faith is held to be so fatally breached, as henceforward to be untenable, and its defenders to have nothing more to do than to lay down their arms,