such, and cease to warn men of a ruin which is accepted as true as an abstraction, not as a fact-true in the Bible, but not true out of it-a reality in the universe of realities which exists without us, and beyond the present grasp of our faculties. Preach the atonement, not as a mere metaphysical or logical expedient adapted to meet the conditions of the problem raised upon the facts of human life, by the issue of salvation to man, considered merely as an abstract question, but as a grand and vivid reality,—a provision made to meet a grand practical issue of unutterable importance to man,—an entity, -a thing, a substantial verity of immense and glorious significance, on which the heart and conscience, not less than the logical understanding can rest with a deep repose of spirit in view of its relations to eternity and God, which is unutterably sublime and precious to the soul. How many of us think that our task is done, when we define, prove, and state the nature, terms, and logical limitations of the atonement! But these are but the frame-work, or steps on which we ascend till we are face to face, with the thing which we have proved, limited, and defined. The question still returns for a higher analysis,-what is it we have thus limited and defined? The man who stops short of this question and its answer, knows nothing of the atonement as he ought to know it, even though his perceptions of it as a logical statement may be absolutely complete. Has that man any just idea of the immortality of the soul who is perfect in the logic that proves it, yet has no just sense of what it is that is thus proved? Surely conceiving a thing as an abstraction is one thing; conceiving it as a fact is another. Believing with the head is one thing; believing with the heart is another. Viewing a thing in the abstract is necessary to completeness of insight into its proofs, evidences, limits and relations to other things: it must be taken to enable the minister to bring out the teaching function of his office, the didactic side of his business. But the minister is not only a mere teacher; he is an enforcer of truth. He is not only to state and define, but to urge and apply the truth; and to do this effectually, he must see and feel the truth as a concrete and living verity it must burn into his own soul, or this function of his office will be suspended. This deep sense of the truth is essential to the completeness of his character as a teacher, and to the very existence of his character as an enforcer of the truth. Let us remember that we, brethren of the ministry, are not merely teachers of a system of abstractions, but a system of living and vivid realities. Let us grasp this system we are set to inculcate, with a deeper and more intense comprehension of its real meaning. Shall we spend the whole of our existence in this inconceivably great and important period allotted to it here on earth, charged with the teaching of a system so awful and so glorious as the mysteries of life, and the great remedies of the gospel, without really understanding them more than we do without entering more deeply into their real significance, without opening our eyes more fully on the gemmed columns, arabesque and massive, the gorgeous arches, the unutterable forms of beauty that stand around us, without opening our ears to the melodies that stream along the eternal col

lonade of God's everlasting gospel? That gospel is the grandest system of thought, considered simply as an embodied aggregation of intellectual and imaginative, moral and spiritual conceptions, which the world has ever seen. The rapt vision of the grand old poetic sage of Greece, the deep and almost infinite analysis of the stern Stagyrite, never caught a beam that deserves to be compared with the truths of the gospel, as a great system of philosophic theology. Its truths are infinite;-so simple in their original statement that a child can comprehend them-so grand in their full and complete significance, that the eye of the tallest and brightest cherub trembles, as it ranges up above the higher stages through which they ascend, far beyond all adequate understanding, save the clear comprehension of Jehovah. How little do we understand it! How incomplete are even our merely logical apprehensions of the truth in its limits and its uses. How much more do we fail of that far higher and far more intense, that more animating and sanctifying view, which springs under the teachings of the Holy Ghost. If we will really study and believe the gospel, there is no need of perpetually seeking for novelties to interest and instruct the people. There is abundant room for growth in the knowledge and conception of the simple truths of the gospel. Though theology is not progressive any more than any other true science in leaving or abandoning its fundamental facts; it is progressive in that it admits of an eternal progression in the conception of its truths, and in the knowledge of its relations to other things. It is an absurdity, absolutely grotesque in its folly, for us to imagine that we have exhausted the ideas involved in the great system of Jesus of Nazareth. That system will expand before opening intellects of angel and saint, forever and forevermore: why should we be foolish enough to think we have mastered it, when we have gotten a complete logical outline of its various doctrines stamped upon our memory? Such a knowledge of it bears to the true and full knowledge of it, the relation of a three-inch map to the continent it defines. Go, study the system you hold; go enter deeply into it by that faith which "is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen." We have pointed to the entrance, and shown you the way into the pillared aisles of this gorgeous temple of eternal truth; enter it, and study its manifestation for yourself. The simple secret of growth in piety as in intellect, is self-exertion, selfdevelopment. There is truth for you, which no one but yourself can ever see in the exact forms in which it appears to you. The secret of originality of thought, is self-exertion: each man's mind has its own individuality as much as his face: it may not be a very great or wonderful peculiarity, any more than the countenance must be striking or beautiful, in order to be peculiar; but such as it is, it will come out if only the man will exert his own faculties. This is true of piety, as it is of the intellect. To grow in anything, we must give the virtue of exercise to the power to be enlarged. To grow in grace, it will not do for us merely to read and admire the attainments of others: we must work for our own. It is needless to do more

now than simply remind you of the mode in which these grand results are to be obtained: your creed furnishes you the simple guide all through the wonderful adventure. This knowledge can only be obtained under the teachings of the Holy Ghost: it is conditioned absolutely on those spiritual perceptions, which are only gotten as gifts from this divine agent. Faith is the fruit of the spirit: it is the gift of God. Go, seek it by prayer and incessant waiting upon God in the due use of the appointed means. Remember God is more willing to give his Spirit to them that ask him, than earthly parents are to give good gifts unto their children;-that this is the very business which the Spirit accomplishes in the plan of salvation, leading into the truth and sanctifying through it. Go then and learn to believe the elements of your creed.

Nor should we do justice to the subject, should we fail to remind you of exerting this faith on those points, which are peculiar to your own creed, as well as those which you hold in common with other branches of the Church. There is a wonderful power in the Calvinistic theology. When it really penetrates the soul, and sends its living energies through all its faculties, it is like a fire in the bones: it girds up the soul with an inexorable and vehement spirit: it infuses a life which reaches every power of the intellect, and every feeling of the heart, with an extraordinary power at once to rouse and sober, to intensify and calm the tumult of its feelings. But to educe this power, the peculiarities of this creed must be embraced by this living and masterly principle of apprehension, which we have been endeavoring to illustrate. But it is shorn of its majesty when merely held in the cold solution of an unspiritual and unrealizing belief. Viewed only from this level, the natural hatred of the carnal mind to it, has great advantage in resisting all real and enthusiastic devotion to the creed. No wonder: such an apprehension of it leaves the real power and glory of the system unrevealed to the understanding, and no attachment can spring up to it, because no principle of counter-action is engaged in subduing the opposition which will inevitably meet the system from the carnal pride and guilt of the soul. It is only when the issue has been made,-when the conquest has been won,-when the power of the spirit has encountered the pride of the soul, and overwhelmed its opposition,-it is only in this attitude of profound and truthful submission to God, that the true nature of the sovereignty of God, in the salvation of sinners will appear. It is like one of those ingenious contrivances which at first sight seem only to present a mass of chaotic elements, arranged with no relation to each other, and exhibiting no trace of beauty, no sign of utility to the eye; but when we assume a peculiar position, and take a view from a certain attitude or depression, the hidden relations of the parts start into sight, and we behold the elements of beauty and power, blended in the very chaos we were unable to comprehend before. Let the soul bow into this deep attitude of submission to the truth, and the hidden glory of the divine sovereignty will unseal its splendid mystery to the eye, and it will be able to

see the vision which David saw, when he exclaimed, "the Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice." The church needs this baptism of the spirit, to lead her more deeply into the real meaning and power of her own high, severe and noble creed. There is too much disposition to blanch from the bold statement of our grand peculiarities of religious belief. It requires courage,-a calm, resolute, nay, sometimes a stern, vehement spirit, to encounter the universal storm of indignation and contempt, which greets the fearless vindication of the divine decrees. This opposition comes not only from the vicious and abandoned, but its most formidable form, is found in the vast multitudes of able and devout men, who flinch from the stringency of the predestination of the eternal King. Many nominal Presbyterians, many who are sincerely attached to other elements of the order and creed of the Church, flinch from these. In almost all our congregations, persons are to be found, who seem to shrink whenever the terms predestination and election are heard from the pulpit. There is tremendous temptation in all this, either to soften down, or explain away, or altogether ignore these articles of our creed. This ought to be resisted. We have no right to blanch from the statement of God's own doctrines, or the use of God's own terms. The manner in which Paul uses these terms, defines the duty of the ministry with perfect precision; nor can we prevent the observation being made by a shrewd and keen-witted intellect, that the entire abandonment of these terms, or the use of them only to be explained and apologized away, instead of being freely and boldly interspersed in the free preaching of our pulpits, indicates at all events a fear of the terms, if not a disagreement with the doctrine. Let us give the same positive and aggressive form to these doctrines, which they receive in the epistles. Let us not break the unity of the grand formulary of doctrine stated in Romans, and while we present in a positive form, the fore-knowledge of God, his calling, justifying and adopting the sinner, commit ourselves to the inconceivable absurdity of mentioning the predestination, which is stated in the series of doctrines, only in a negative form, as if it was to be stated only as a subject of limitation, and the theme for ingenious and subtle erasures. Let us not be ashamed of the truth: God has used these terms: they were right to be used, and we dare not encounter the responsibility of denying, or being ashamed of them. Let us not blanch from the vocabulary of the spirit; nor yield for an instant to the idea that the sovereignty of God, mysterious though it be, is not as glorious as any other of his attributes, and that the foundation of all hope to man, is unworthy of a complete exposition, and an unqualified defence.

Lastly, let us bring ourselves to the apprehension of the evanescent nature, and the inconceivable importance of the period of time allotted to us here. We are standing on the borders of eternity, and weaving the web of its destinies on this side of the mysterious bourne. The seed time of eternity, a space brief at best, uncertain at all times, liable to be terminated every moment, how awful-how sublime!

The soul bows in mute and astonished awe before the solemn and overwhelming fact. Let us nevertheless believe it, and gird us up to meet its issues humbly, earnestly, affectionately, and with a meek, resolute trust in Jesus. All will be well with such a soul: the man is blessed who trusts in God. This period so awful as it is, is passing rapidly with its mysterious train of dim and infinite issues. The rapid revolution of the days, marks the cycle of the march: the thunder of the sun on its path in the heavens, is the music of the host, and the spirits of men are passing daily by thousands through the embossed and cloud-spotted archway of the material heavens. The night comes when no man can work. Let us be in haste to the harvest ;

"Let's take the instant by the forward top,
For we are old and on our quickest decrees,
The inaudible and noiseless foot of time

Steals ere we can effect them;

Thus we play the fools with the time,

And the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us."

THE OFFICE OF DEACON.

It is not proposed here to consider the issue between us and Episcopalians in reference to the office of Deacon; nor to test the views here presented by the teachings of Scripture; but simply to define the Presbyterian idea of Deacon.

In the 6th chapter of the Form of Government, we have the doctrine of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. on this subject, which is precisely the doctrine of Calvin, Knox and the Reformed Churches generally. It is in these words:

"The Scriptures clearly point out Deacons as distinct officers in the Church, whose business it is to take care of the poor, and to distribute among them the collections which may be raised for their To them also may be properly committed, the management of the temporal affairs of the Church."

use.

As this chapter includes all that is taught in our constitution, as to the nature and functions of the Deacon's office, let us analyse it closely.

1. Let it be observed that according to the book, Deacons have no doctrinal functions, so far at least as the congregation is concerned. Whether in "taking care of the poor," is included anything more than seeing after their temporal or bodily wants, we shall not now inquire: but these officers are not, in any sense, congregational expounders of the word of God.

2. They have no legislative powers of any kind. Their powers are wholly executive or administrative, in the narrowest sense. They are, in virtue of their office, trustees and agents of the congregation as to a certain specified class of subjects.