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people, or any people acting as they have done, shadow of death-their God was their God come I'll give them my mind on the matter."

When the doctor had gone, the tailor and his wife looked each other silently for a moment or two in the face; they knew at once what was to be done. God must first be spoken to-his Son had rebuked fevers, and cured them, and even raised the dead to life; how could they go through this affliction without him?

Little Jack was too heavy to be disturbed by their voices; so down they knelt by his bedside, for it was a great help to them to have right before them, and to bring as it were then and there into the immediate presence of God,

the one who was

sick, it may be, even

unto death. And they prayed-and John Patch told God all that was in his heart about the boy-and that happened to be ex-, actly what was in his wife's heart too, so that all she had to do was to say 'Amen.' And this the mother said to the thanksgiving part as well as the praying; for her husband had, according to the word (Phil. iv. 6) made his requests known with thanksgivingand now, according to the promise, the peace of God which passeth all under

standing kept the

what would. He was unaltered, let what troubles might invade their house. They would praise him for himself, and not merely for what they had received from him; and hand in hand, and heart with heart, would they meet all that he appointed for them.

There was no flurry, or nervous excitement; no rushing here and there, and everywhere; no prating and indecision about the tailor's wife, as she prepared to make all needful arrangements for

"This could not be her Jack at all."-p. 423.

this great calamity. Calm in the power of an orderly mind and simple trust in God, she settled all the affairs of

the family with her

husband; and he,

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like a wise man,

fell in with them all.

But even after all arrangements had been made which their circumstances admitted of, there was much left which could not be settled. Who was to feed them? for under present circumstances the tailor could not take in work. Who was to keep the house quiet? Who was to sit up at night? How were all the little necessaries of illness to be provided? All these difficulties crossed the minds of the tailor and his wife, but had not

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heart and mind, both of himself and his wife, she and her husband prayed and praised; and if through Jesus Christ. ever it was wise to live by the day, was it not so now?

Oh! it is a tower of strength, a well of peace, an infinite resource, when husband and wife can pray the one prayer; and even if they cannot speak, still think the one prayer in thought; when both can praise, and when they can go forth into trouble-one in God, one before God, one with God.

Thus went forth John Patch and his wife into what loomed before them like the valley of the

Oh! it was wonderful how helpful that thanksgiving in prayer proved to them both. It seeme so to call to their mind that God was good; it made them feel so fresh and strong; perhaps much of the peace which passeth understanding had come that way. The tailor and his wife went into their trouble with thankful hearts-the surest way to come out of it with the same.

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HE title of this paper is not meant to church better than Christianity, and end in loving imply that toleration, in some of its himself better than all." True, living Christianity shapes, is itself only another form of begins by loving Christ personally; loving him intolerance; nor do we deny that for his own sake, as well as for what he taught an enlightened, ingenuous, charitable and did for us; loving him more and more, the tolerance is due from every man to every other more we know him, and the better we understand man, whether in the ordinary freaks of fancy, or in his holy and beautiful life, and his precious atoning the weightier matters of faith, religious or political. death. Every man has some model character Our theme may be in some measure expressed in which he studies and strives to imitate; a sterling our Lord's warning, "Woe unto you when all men | Christian, like David, "sets the Lord alway before speak well of you." To each individual, his motive him." He thinks, speaks, and acts, as far as in is of more import than the measure of his tolera-him lies, "looking unto Jesus." Christianity is tion of other men's opinions. Like the famous not a system, it is conformity to Christ; and condeclaration of James II., which set forth a general toleration of all religions, with an ulterior view to bring in a dogmatic system which should set on a general persecution; infidelity, and its blind kinsman, indifference, affect universal liberty as a preliminary to universal licentiousness. I am inclined to think that with both infidelity and indifference, their policy, if they have one, is not so much in favour of their own vague and desultory theories, as in opposition to the definite sanctions and restraints of religion and virtue.

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formity to Christ is of more importance than uniformity of creed. Hence sincere Christians are more anxious to bear in their bodies the marks of the Lord Jesus, than to say, "I am of Paul," or, "I of Cephas," or to profess, in a supercilious, narrow temper, "I am of Christ," as if no one else was; as if every "trumpet," except their own, gave an uncertain sound." To welcome as a brother a fellow-Christian for Christ's sake, we must recognise in him Christ's marks, rather than our Our interpretations may be wrong, but His inspired text cannot but be right, holy, and true. Attachment to any system, as such, is no sufficient evidence of attachment to the truth for its own sake. Her true lovers may avow with Paul: "We scek not yours, but you." Faith, like truth, must be independent of inferior or collateral motives or consequences.

own.

It is not that error and vice are more trusted, even by the vicious, but that truth and virtue lie in the way of their ease and self-indulgence. This, for the most part, is the solution of the cry for liberty by the ungodly and the unbelieving, but not in every case. There are some doubts as sincere and honest as belief. Nay, there are some doubts which, for their season, are more sincere Hence it follows that we should distrust ourthan some beliefs. Doubts which don't believe, selves if our faith has come to us as an accident of not because they won't, but because they can't. education, or a result of example, or as an unex Leighton said: Where there is a great deal of amined adoption for the sake of conformity to the smoke, and no clear flame, it argues the wood is times, or to the social sphere in which we move, green, and much moisture in the matter, yet it or as an indolent escape from the toil and dust of witnesseth certainly that there is fire there; and, inquiry. Moreover, it may be that another man's therefore, dubious questioning is a much better doubts may lead us to investigate the grounds evidence, than that senseless deadness which most of our own religious profession, and indirectly take for believing. Men that know nothing in help us to detect how flimsy and uninfluential they sciences have no doubts. He never truly believed, are, so far as concerns any real conviction of our who was not first made sensible and convinced of hearts. The foundations of Zion are deep and unbelief." indestructible; but, perhaps, they have not been That man in the Gospels was not far from faith | laid within us, and we have consequently built whose prayer was, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief." He knew his weakness by coming in contact with the strong, and this led him to cry for strength. The pious and learned Bishop Leighton proceeds: "Never be afraid to doubt, if only you have the disposition to believe, and doubt in order that you may end in believing the truth." Coleridge comments on this extract: "He who begins by loving even Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or

doubt

nothing thereon, unless it be the wood, hay, and stubble, which, whatever they may be built upon, cannot abide the fire. The discovery of how little it was that satisfied what we called our faith, should induce more tolerance of the uneasy which requires more to be persuaded than we did; if, indeed, we could fairly affirm that we have ever been fully persuaded in our own mind at all. The chief, if not only, difference between us is, that our faith assumed the form of passive acquiescence,

INTOLERANCE IN TOLERATION.

427

and the other man's doubt goaded him to an in-accessible to his tender mercies, his forbearance voluntary unbelief. Let us not condemn that man and long-suffering, and his everlasting love unheard: we may be breaking a bruised reed, or Every man is entitled to deferential expostulation quenching a smoking flax. His actual doubt is from every other man. Beware of coming the more moral and intellectual, more upright and Rabbi over men. It is natural, it is their right, more hopeful of issue in reality, than any man's to resent it. In spiritual as in secular matters, nominal belief. Let us beware of intolerance to the rule is equally cogent and politic. When the truth under the subtle pretence of intolerance the world speaks well of a man of God, the world of error, thereby fighting against the practical has not come over to him, but he has gone over dominion of faith, in the uniform, and with the to the world. It is at this stage of his proweapons, furnished from her own armoury. fession a man begins to be intolerant of others Exercise patience and tenderness towards the who happen to fall short of, or exceed, his piebald, undecided mind, wrestling, like young Jacob, parti-coloured standard. They who have attained in the dark, whose cry, "I will not let thee go, what they account the happy medium between except thou bless me," may be constructively God and the world, satisfied with their self-pleasing more anxious than yours. pitch of civil, or formal religion, have usually that point of presumption with it, which constitutes their own size, the model and rule by which to examine all others. What is below it, they hypocritically condemn indeed as profane; but what is beyond it, they reckon needless and affected preciseness, and, therefore, are as ready as any to let fly invectives or bitter taunts against it.

"He jests at scars who never felt a wound;" but the Christian, like the good Samaritan, pours wine and oil into the gashes, which the priest and Levite passed by. There is a great temptation to pass by all cases which may entail the labour of investigation, a tax on sympathy, and some selfdenial to relieve. The priest and Levite are the symbols of that uncharitableness and insensibility which would leave a molested mind weltering in its doubts and perplexities, and call that a tolerant spirit which would not intermeddle with others, but let them live or die as they are. Such a spirit is no neighbour to the man who falls among thieves. On the contrary, the thieves themselves would desire no better accomplice than the un-character, whether better or worse than their own. fraternal apathy which lets their victim perish. He who loves God, loves man, and he best loves man who brings him to God. "Bear ye one another's burdens" (whether of mind or body), "and so fulfil the law of Christ."

It is forbidden us to judge one another; but there is a charity enjoined which hopeth all things -even against hope. Abraham's hope, in spite of natural possibility, it is true, relied on God's promise. Alas! there are some hopes to which no promise is annexed, but the hope that a weak, or misguided, or unbelieving brother may yet turn and live, even if we never see it, or know it, is no abuse of the charity that never faileth. It is the charity that believeth all things in the shape of faith working by love, when it has no other ground to stand on, when all apparent evidence is against the impression, except the uncovenanted extension of the mercy that saw Ahab humbling himself -the mercy which endureth for ever. In most cases, the milk and honey of the promised land are more winning and effective preachers than the fire and brimstone of the burning lake. The one may enkindle some filial ray of hope in a heart, which the other might provoke to defiant despair. There is no more awful sight than that of a soul driven to bay. By the terrors of the Lord we may persuade some men, but most men are far more

They pray neither with the publican nor the Pharisee, but standing between the two, condemn them both, and believe they go down to their house justified rather than either. They are the men, and every other man is either a publican or a Pharisee. Their devotion is a kind of moral Thuggism, which consists in strangling every other

And the keen and poisoned shafts of their tongues are a persecution that will be called to a strict account. The slanders, perhaps, may not be altogether forged or untrue. They may be the implements, not the inventions, of malice; but they do not, on this account, escape the guilt of detraction. Rather it is characteristic of the evil spirit in question, to work by the advantage of real faults, but these stretched and aggravated to their utmost. It is inexpressible how deep a wound a tongue, sharpened to this work, will give, with no vulgar noise, too, and a very little word. There is no form of intolerance which is more intolerable than this moral assassination, with no more honour or gallantry in it than a besotted Fenian's shot from behind a bush, and at his victim's back. It is the guilt of cruelty aggravated by the shame of cowardice, and rendered all the more scandalous from the pious, or patriotic pretence under cover of which it is perpetrated. It is the selfish greed, too covetous of toleration to its own preferences, to its own moral or doctrinal lusts, to have any to spare for the predilections, or infirmities, or honest convictions of others. The sumptuous fare in the house of Dives, leaves none but crumbs for the suffering Lazarus at its gate. Nevertheless, an infinitely more terrible contrast awaits the parties hereafter.

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While, then, the Christian cultivates an ingenucus, compassionate spirit in all things, he should still be ready to give to every man that asketh him a reason of the hope that is in him, with meekness and fear." The meekness will obviate that appearance of dictation, or implied intolerance, which men naturally resent as a trespass on their moral freedom, and the display of which commonly frustrates the purpose of conviction. The blessed Author of all truth began his public teaching, not with the imperious eagle, but with the gentle dove resting on him. The same sweet symbol is still the only legitimate heraldry of the Christian champion. If he would have the truth in his hands to prevail in a way that becomes His Divine teaching, who did not " strive, nor cry, neither was His voice heard in the streets," you must not be afraid nor ashamed of the Gospel, but you need not be rude and dictatorial. Dare not oppose the truth, nor yet be its disciple merely in order that men―any men, good or bad-may speak well of you. Even good men's praise may not be without peril, and bad men's praise is the only one of the two you will have any way earned. Let neither be your motive to the pursuit of truth, but let it be the truth itself, or otherwise your intolerance of evil, or toleration of good, will alike expose you to their condemnation, "who loved the praise of men, more than the praise of God."

Above all, guard against that ultra-insensibility to sin and error in others, which is sure to induce, if it does not arise from, a growing indifference to sin and error in yourselves. The parent of such reckless toleration is a secret or avowed intolerance of the Divine commandment, involving the rule of self-denial and daily sacrifice. In Israel, when idols multiplied, sacrifices declined. You are not directly responsible for others, unless by your own unfaithfulness, or accordance with their misdeeds, you make yourselves so; but you are responsible for what you allow or do yourselves.

is blessed if he eat not, with the view, "lest he make his brother to offend."

In brief, the intolerance of a true Christian is confined to the only subject where he has the right and power to exercise it-viz., over himself. Others, as God ordained them, are free to stand or fall-to accept or reject the truth, at their option, though at their peril. The Lord shall judge them, not their fellow-men. Your judgment would be a trespass alike on the Divine appointment and prerogative. "Judge yourselves." The task will find you enough to do, and infinitely too much, if you were left to make the bricks without the straw. There is the straw of Bethlehem, on which the infant Saviour lay in the manger, as part of the humiliation of his atoning sacrifice. By faith make use of that; plead Christ's blood and righteousness, and then the harshest judgment which the holy intolerance of an accusing conscience may compel you to pronounce against yourselves, will be set aside and answered in his tender mercy who discriminates between the toleration of the sinner, and the condemnation of the sin.

Thus you will follow your Lord's example, and display his loving, patient, and considerate spirit. Your intolerance, instead of being another sin against the Lord, in your repudiating the selfabasing doctrines and discipline of his cross, will seize upon your own besetting sins, the consciousness of which will recoil in a tender toleration of other sinners for his sake who had tolerated so much ignorance and hardness of heart in you.

Recognising in the history of all persecutors an intolerance of the good in others, in proportion to their toleration of evil in themselves, you will resolve with Jacob-"Come not thou, my soul, into their secret-unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united."

The characteristic wisdom taught by Christianity, and which is the secret of its genuine influence in individual hearts and lives, and which alone will ever tell upon the world, when more really and extensively illustrated by its professors, is "first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy."

"Happy is the man that condemneth not himself in that which he alloweth;" assuming, of course, that what he allows himself is innocent or immaterial. But if a less enlightened brother's conscience be offended by it, in the law of mutual love, the immaterial thing becomes important; and, as St. Paul directed in the case of meats offered to idols, "Take heed, lest this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that are weak.” In any analogous case, the triumph of Christian principle is to tolerate in a brother even what you would not tolerate in yourself-offer it a sacrifice on the altar of your faith to please your neighbour to his edification. The immolation in the heart of Abraham was no nobler proof of the faith that worketh by love. "He that doubteth is damned if he eat," and the other, though he had no doubt, or not.

Most men decline to reprove others, through fear of incurring their ill-will against themselves. They prefer personal popularity to a self-denying charity. They have a fair-weather love of the truth, but so soon as the difficult or disagreeable point arises, they desert their colours. We have need to pray for the wise discrimination which directs its disciple, never to even seem to reproach, but when and how to reprove, without waiting to calculate whether men will speak well of us

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