would not compare him in this respect, with Baxter; for he has handled his points with far greater. wisdom and simplicity: yet he errs ex abundanti. He attempts to make out things with more accuracy, and clearness, and system, than the Bible will warrant. The Bible scorns to be treated scientifically. After all your accurate statements, it will leave you aground. The Bible does not come round, and ask our opinion of its contents. It proposes to us a constitution of grace, which we are to receive, though we do not wholly comprehend it. Numberless questions may be started on the various parts of this constitution. Much of it I cannot understand, even of what respects myself; but I am called to act on it. And this is agreeable to analogy. My child will ask me questions on the fitness or unfitness of what I enjoin: but I silence him: "You are not yet able to comprehend this: your business is, to believe me and obey me." But the schoolmen will not be satisfied with this view of things: yet they can make nothing out satisfactorily. They have their de re, and their de nomine; but nothing is gained by these attempts at clearness and nice distinctions. These very accurate men, who think they adjust every thing with precision, cannot agree among one another, and do little else than puzzle plainer minds.

WHATEVER definitions men have given of religion, I can find none so accurately descriptive of it as this that it is such a belief of the Bible as maintains a living influence on the heart. Men may speculate, criticise, admire, dispute about, doubt, or believe the Bible: but the RELIGIOUS MAN is such, because he so believes it, as to carry habitually a practical sense of its truths on his mind.

THE fears of the general class of Christians are concerned about the superstructure of religion; but those of speculative minds chiefly relate to the foundation. The less thinking man doubts whether he is on the foundation: he whose mind is of a more intellectual turn, doubts concerning the foundation itself. I have met with many of these speculative cases. Attacks of this nature are generally sudden. A suspicion will, by surprise, damp the heart; and, for a time, will paint the Bible as a fable. I have found it useful on such occasions, to glance over the whole thread of Scripture. The whole presented in such a view, brings back the mind to its proper tone: the indelible characters of simplicity and truth impress with irresistible effect that heart, which can discern them as having once felt them.

On the Old and New Dispensations.

THE Old and New Testaments contain but orre scheme of religion. Neither part of this scheme can be understood without the other; and, therefore great errors have arisen from separating them. They are like the rolls on which they were anciently written, before books of the present form were invented. It is but one subject and one system, from beginning to end; but the view which we obtain of it grows clearer and clearer, as we unwind the roll that contains it.

THERE is one grand and striking feature of distinction between the spirit of the Old Testament dispensation and that of the New.

The Old Dispensation was a dispensation of limits, waymarks, forms, and fashions: every thing was

weighed and measured: if a man did but gather sticks on the Sabbath, he was to be stoned without mercy; if a Jew brought an offering, it was of no avail if not presented at the door of the tabernacle: the manner, the time, the circumstances were all minutely instituted; and no devotion or piety of spirit could exempt a man from the yoke of all these observances, for God had appointed these as the way in which he chose that a devout Jew should express his state of mind.

But the New Dispensation changed the whole system. Religion was now to become more peculiarly a spiritual transaction between God and the soul; and independent, in a higher measure than ever before, of all positive institutions. Its few simple institutions had no further object, than the preservation of the unity, order, soundness, and purity of the church-in regard to doctrine, government, and discipline.

Nor had these appointments that character of unaccommodating inflexibility, which marked the institutions of the Old Dispensation. All nations, men of all habits and manners, are to drink life from the beneficent stream as it flows. It is to throw down no obstructions, that are not absolutely incompatible with its progress. But it is appointed to pervade every place which it visits. Some, it enters without obstruction, and passes directly through. In some, it meets with mounds and obstacles; yet rises till it finds an entrance. Others are so fenced and fortified, that it winds round them and flows forward: continuing to do so, till it, at length, finds some method of insinuating itself.

And thus the dispensation of grace in the church accommodates itself to the various tempers and habits which it finds in different ages, nations, and bodies of men: it leaves in existence numberless opinions and prejudices, if they are not inconsistent with its main design, and mingles and insinuates

itself among them. It has not limited Christianity to any one form of church polity, ordained and perfected in all its parts by divine authority: but Christians are left to act herein according to cir cumstances, and to the exercise of sound discretion under those circumstances.

On Typical and Allegorical Explanations of Scripture.

IT might be expected, that, when God had determined to send his Son into the world, there would be a train and concatenation of circumstances preparatory to his coming-that the history, which declared that he was to come, should exhibit many persons and things, which should form a grand preparation for the event, though not so many as an absurd fancy might imagine.

There is a certain class of persons who wish to rid themselves of the types. Sykes insists that even the brazen serpent is called in by our Lord by way of illustration only, and not as a designed type. Robinson, of Cambridge, when he began to verge toward Socinianism, began to ridicule the types; and to find matter of sport in the pomegranates and the bells of the high priest's garment. At all events, the subject should not be treated with levity and irreverence: it deserves serious reflection.

With respect to the expediency of employing the types much in the pulpit, that is another question. I seldom employ them. I am jealous for truth and its sanctions. The Old Dispensation was a typical dispensation: but the New is a dispensation unrolled. When speaking of the typical dispensation, we must admire a master, like St. Paul. But to us, modesty becomes a duty in treating such sub

jects in our ministry. Remember, "This is none other but the house of God! and this is the gate of heaven! How dreadful if I lead thousands with nonsense!-if I lose the opportunity of impressing solid truths!-if I waste their precious time!"

A minister should say to himself: "I would labor to cut off occasions of objecting to the truth. I would labor to grapple with men's consciences. I would shew them that there is no strange twist in our view of religion. I must avoid, as much as possible, having my judgment called in question: many watch for this, and will avail themselves of any advantage. Some who hear me, are thus continually seeking excuses for not listening to the warnings and invitations of the word: they are endeavoring to get out of our reach; but I would hold them fast by such passages as, What shall a man give in exchange for his soul!"

Many men labor to make the Bible THEIR Bible. This is one way of getting its yoke off their necks. The MEANING, however, of the Bible is the Bible. If I preach, then, on imputed righteousness, for instance, why should I preach from the skies pour down righteousness, and then anathematize men for not believing the doctrine, when it is not declared in the passage, and there are hundreds of places so expressly to the point?

Most of the folly on this subject of allegorical interpretation, has arisen from a want of holy awe on the mind. An evil fashion may lead some men into it; and, so far, the case is somewhat extenuated. We should ever remember, however, that it is a very different thing to allegorize the New Dispensation from allegorizing the Old: the New is a dispensation of substance and realities.

When a careless young man, I remember to have felt alarms in my conscience from some preachers; while others, from this method of treating their subjects, let me off easily. I heard the man as a