with thy soul towards his cimmerian lair, and make him render up his prize. Come back, thou subtle essence; I will not change thee for a continent of jasper, or a million thrones of pearls and diadems of gems. Come back, thou incorruptible immortal, and as thou standest on the threshold of eternity, washed in Immanuel's streaming blood, and seest all the kingdoms of the earth dissolve, and all things mortal mouldering down to dust; as the corruptible puts on incorruption; as stars are falling from their orbs, and suns do "pale their ineffectual fires;" thou, and thou only, canst "The darkening universe defy To quench thy immortality, O, “what shall a man give in exchange for his soul!" SCRIBES AND PHARISEES. SAY unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." This wonderful portion of Holy Writ-our Lord's Sermon on the Mount-contains, in a small compass, a complete system of morals, far more refined, and established upon far sounder and purer principles, than could ever have been discovered by the wavering and uncertain light of unassisted reason. In fact, they are too pure, too refined, and too exalted to be understood or practised, without the restoration of some portion of that original condition of the mind and heart of man, to which alone they are suited, without the communication of that diviner light, and that celestial strength, by which alone their beauty can be perceived, their majesty acknowledged, and their severe and uniform application made the object of his steady and successful labours. There is a glorious harmony between the principles and the practice, the mind and the life, of the disciple of Christ. The heavenly purity of Christian morals would be impracticable, but there is a principle of vital energy, as well as of vital holiness, given to the believer, that renders his otherwise intolerable yoke a light and easy burden. The new life is not to be lived, nor even comprehended, without the renewed mind. Hence it is that so many have misinterpreted the Scriptures, and laboured to explain them into a mere rule of life; not considering that the rule is too strict, the life too high and holy, to be brought into practice without an entire transformation of the subject of the new law. His old habits and affections must be laid aside, his former earthly and sensual tendencies relinquished, a fresh spring of emotion must be found, and fresh manifestations of it must appear; the old man must be crucified with his affec others-not that stupid, lumbering bluster which some men would substitute for manliness and truth, but a straightforward, unobtrusive, independent life, in which the religion is not acted, but felt-in which a constant effort is made to live it out consistently before the world-in which no attempt is made to disguise our innumerable lapses and failings in which the outside and the inside of the cup and the platter correspond, with no thin pottage of caut over the one, to conceal the thick crust of devilry that clogs up the other; and whatever good we do, or try to do, let us not do it to be seen of men, but to be rememb bered by the righteous Judge, along with the widow's mite and the cup of cold water, on the day of final reckoning. But the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees was an incomplete and mutilated, a partial and short-sighted righteousness. It was directed to parts only, unmindful of the whole it rested on the means, without regarding the end-they "strained at a gnat, and swallowed a camel;" that is, they set the example which is very consistently followed by many pietists now-a-days, of blushing with evangelical horror at the sins of others, while they rolled their own under their tongues as a sweet morsel-they gained a reputation for goodness and philanthropy by blundering about in moral darkness to cast motes out of their brothers' eyes (or rather to direct general attention to them, without casting them out), while they carried about a beam in their own eye, which was decidedly not a sunbeam. "They tithed mint, rue, anise, and cummin"-good, easy souls!" and omitted the weightier matters of the law." It was, further, an irregular, fitful, capricious, feeble and inconsistent righteousness. What they acknowledged to be right they did not consistently pursue. They connived and winked at the grossest enormities, and passed by the vilest iniquities with a selfish and interested view. It was a proud, ambitious, and self-dependent righteousness. It consisted of greetings in the market-place-a kind of Evangelical Alliance, where they met for no other purpose than to smile in one another's faces, to call each other "dear Brethren," and to "laud each other face to face, till every farthing candleray conceived itself a great gas-light of grace." It consisted in the recognition of mutual distinctions, in the receiving and administration of the most contemptible flattery-in cringing and craven obsequiousness on the one hand, and disgusting and haughty patronage on the other. In this respect, again, it set an example which is too often followed by men who ought to know better by ministers of the Gospel, and professors of itwho, instead of standing on a common equality of abasement before God, call each other Rabbi, and merge the manliness of Christianity in the effeminacy of its counterfeit. They sought the highest places at feasts-in which again they are accurately copied by many members of our churches, who are always desperately offended unless they are doing something which will bring them prominently into view, which will single them out from the rest of their neighbours, and make them look and feel important. There are no more complete hot-beds for petty self-conceit than Christian churches; no more signal theatres for the display of the very smallest and most contemptible forms of human ambition. There is a most detestable amount of jealousy in our churches; every Sabbath that we meet for the professed worship of God, there are numbers of us (in every community, and in my own not the least-small though it be) who spend our time in feeding our spleenish tendency to gossip, by staring at, and scrutinising our neighbours, so that we may have a topic of amiable and intellectual converse through the day. One friend happens to perform a good office, which brings him more prominently forward than another, and immediately his motives become misconstrued, and envy and malice are busy in his disfavour. This is plain speaking, but it is the plain truth, so it needs no apology. We know it applies more or less to ourselves, let us honestly apply it and take it home, take it in the spirit of kindness and faithfulness in which it is suggested; and if we have any jealousies and animosities, let us lay them aside, and work heart and soul together in the great work set before us. There is no time for these things. There is enough for us all to do; and, whether we take the highest or the lowest room, we shall, if we are faithful stewards, receive our Lord's "well done." The righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees was an ex |