had the talents of an archangel, but yet had not sought their spiritual welfare, there would have been no presentation; I am sure I would have taken no part in it. We want ministers who labour for this great object, and, thank God, we have them-(hear, hear)—in the persons of our esteemed superintendent and the worthy man who is the successor of our beloved friend, Mr. Carlisle; and, my dear friend, permit me to express a hope that you will ever walk humbly before God, give to him all the glory, and sit at the feet of your Divine Master. In these massive volumes is a whole course of study, embracing all the sciences, ancient and modern-embracing, in fact, an alphabetical range of all the subjects suited to engage the attention of a philosopher, a divine, an historian, and a politician, or whatever else a man may pursue. It is one of the finest works of the day; and we have procured this noble work to express, not only our attachment, but also our desire for your future usefulness in the cause of God. Accept it, my dear friend, with the assurance of our earnest prayer that God may enrich you with all spiritual gifts, and make you ten times more useful in the future than you have been in the past. God grant it. Amen." The Rev. T. Carlisle rose, and, in a speech of great modesty, thanked the friends for their kindness, and said he felt himself unworthy of it, but would endeavour to labour and pray with increasing earnestness for the salvation of precious souls. The Rev. A. Lynn, of Forest Hill, offered a few appropriate observations, after which Messrs. H. Webber, H. Howard, A. Howard, H. Howard, jun., J. Stock, and J. Shrubsall also addressed the meeting, who all spoke very highly of Mr. Carlisle, and referred to the great good they had witnessed from his labours. After singing, the benediction was pronounced, and the meeting separated. About three weeks before, the members and friends at Lorrimore presented Mr. Carlisle with a handsome copy of Dr. Kitto's "Pictorial Bible," &c., as an expression of their love and their gratitude for his devoted labours. Notices of Books. The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, D.D. Edited by the Rev. Alexander Balloch Grossart. Vol. II. Edinburgh: James Nichol. London: James Nisbet and Co. THIS volume contains the following treatises:-"Bowels Opened; or, a discovery of the near and dear love, union and communion, between Christ and the Church; "The Spouse, her earnest desire after Christ;" "A Breathing after God;" "The returning Backslider," "The Marriage-feast between Christ and his Church." The various topics are treated with clearness and copiousness, wit and wisdom, tenderness and fidelity. All the themes are of an experimental character, and the soul of the author is always in sympathy with his theme. A clear head, a sanctified heart, with competent learning and an exuberant imagination, enable the author to unfold the precious truths of the Gospel generally in a very luminous and interesting manner, adapted to convince, persuade, encourage, and stimulate the serious reader. We can fully endorse the testimony of good old John Dod, the Puritan, who, in speaking of the work occupying the first part of this volume, says "he found it full of heavenly treasure, and such lively expressions of the invaluable riches of the love of Christ towards all his poor servants that sue and seek unto him. . . And the whole frame of all these sermons is carried with such wisdom, gravity, piety, judgment, and experience, that it commends itself unto all that are godly wise; and I doubt not but they shall find their temptations answered, their fainting spirits revived, their understandings enlightened, and graces confirmed, so as they shall have cause to praise God for the worthy author's godly and painful labours." 66 It is due, however, to the reader to state that, like most Puritan writers, there is a tinge of Calvinism slightly colouring the author's doctrine, and here and there the precious privilege of assurance' wants a stronger light and a bolder exhibition. As an example, in page 206, the author thus tremulously addresses his reader:-"Again, consider thou must be modest in thy desires of this kind. Desire no great matter at the first. I mean, not full assurance of the love of Christ at the first; but observe the degrees of his kisses, and manifestation of his love. The thief on the cross desired but to be remembered of Christ when he came into his kingdom,-no great matter; so do thou desire any taste of his love, though never so little. Indeed, so the children of God do. First they desire the pardon of sins, and having obtained this, they grow more and more in desiring the graces of the Spirit, as seals, to assure them of the pardon of them, and of his love unto them, and nearer communion with him." Assuredly, gocd Dr. Sibbes, thy modesty here leadeth thee to speak too sparingly of God's mercy, and thy counsel to the godly reader falleth short of the precious privilege unfolded to him in the glorious economy of the Gospel. Where does thy Lord and Master, or any of his inspired prophets and apostles, tell the penitent not to expect a full assurance at the first, and represent the cherishing of such an expectation as being inconsistent with a becoming modesty? Nowhere. On the contrary, the privilege of "assurance" is everywhere set forth as an element of that present salvation so freely and fully offered in the Gospel; and the "modesty" that is the most acceptable with God is to take him at his word to believe all he has said with a fulness and heartiness that hesitates not to expect all that he has promised. "Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it;" "Ask and receive, that your joy may be full." Assurance is the immediate result of the Holy Spirit's witness, and the Spirit's witness is the gift imparted when we are forgiven, and we are forgiven just when, with a penitent heart, we rest on Jesus for salvation; and this believing is a duty to be exercised just now, for God will never be more able or willing. Nay, he saith, "Now is the accepted time." With such exceptions as those named, occurring here and there, the book is full of the marrow and fatness of the Gospel; and, considering its marvellous cheapness, it is got up in a style that reflects the highest credit on the worthy publisher. The series can be had through our own Book room. Baptism: its Design, Subjects, Mode, and Importance. Compiled from writings of eminent Divines, and members of the Episcopal, Independent, and other Pædobaptist Churches. Glasgow: G. Gallie. THIS is not a fair and candid argument on baptism, but a collection of short passages from various authors; quotations being mutilated and detached from their connection, beginning and ending just at those points where the sentiment seems to favour the system of immersion and other views of the Baptists. The book is constructed on the same principle as that of Wilson's "Concessions of Trinitarians "a book designed to proselyte men to Unitarianism, not by argument, but by garbled quotations from orthodox writers. On this principle men may prove anything they please, even the nonexistence of the universe around us, and even the non-existence of our selves. Hume contended that man had no soul, and Berkeley contended that man had no body; so, between them, they dispensed with the existence of humanity altogether. Quote these men as authorites, and you disprove the existence of both the material and the spiritual world; but quote them as antagonists, and they refute each other. Yet what solid evidence is there in either of them? Just none at all, except the evidence of their own follies. The author of this work has concealed his name. THE METHODIST NEW CONNEXION MAGAZINE. OCTOBER, 1862. Essays, &c., on Theology and General Literature. ON THE LAW OF GOD WRITTEN IN THE HEART OF THE HEATHEN. MR. EDITOR,-In looking over Romans ii. 14, I read thus-"For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves." You will greatly oblige by giving your opinion on the verse, and say whether the Gentiles ever had any written law, and what difference there is between a Jew and a Gentile.-Yours ever truly, A. J. Rochdale. ANSWER.-The design of the apostle in this chapter is to show that God is the governor of the world, and that all men are accountable to him for their conduct. That, as the nature of God is absolutely holy, the principles of his government are perfectly equitable; and, because equitable, impartial; and, because equitable and impartial, the judgment of God must have respect, not to persons, but to the character which men sustain, and the circumstances in which they are placed. Hence, as men's circumstances are varied, so their responsibilities are varied precisely in the same ratio. Where much is given, much will be required; for there is no respect of persons with God. "For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law; (for not the hearers of the law are just before God, bat the doers of the law shall be justified. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another ;) in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel" (Rom. ii. 12—16). Here the principles of God's government are clearly laid down, and they are those of eternal and unchangeable equity; and the difference in the final destiny of men is based only upon their diver K K sified character and circumstances. The Jews are said to have a "law" for their guidance, and they are to be judged according to its requirements. That law is the written code, contained in the revelation which God had given to them. But the Gentiles are said to be "without this law," and, in equity, they are not held responsible for that which they do not possess; yet they are said to have another "law," for which they are responsible, and by that shall they be judged. The question, therefore, is, What is that law? In answering this inquiry, we are guided by the statement of the apostle himself, who says, "The Gentiles have the work of the law written in their hearts." Observe, the apostle does not say the law itself is written in their hearts, but "the work of the law"-the pyov; that is, the substance of the law. By which he means, as we take it, the essence, or the fundamental principles of the law, are implanted in man's mental and moral nature, and so implanted as to give some degree of activity to conscience and moral sense; for the apostle subjoins, respecting the heathen who live under the operation of this law-"Their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another.” In this statement the apostle is speaking of the state of the heathen generally, not absolutely. His language, indeed, is guarded, and intimates a general, though not a universal application. Respecting the law, he does not say the whole law, in all its length and breadth, but the work or substance of the law is written on their hearts; and, respecting mankind, he does not say every human being, but heathen nations generally. Some tribes, indeed, have sunk so low in brutal ignorance as to have lost all idea of God, and, eonsequently, all consciousness of responsibility to a superior power; yet even these must have some notions of human rights, and of those principles of social equity which are contained in the moral law, though they knew nothing of the Lawgiver himself. Passing by these, however, as far below the ordinary condition of mankind, we find, in the history of all ages, that heathen nations generally have recognized such distinctions between good and evil, justice and injustice, right and wrong, and have had such corresponding convictions of sin, as have clearly indicated a moral sense, as well as a mental discernment, as to the different quality of moral actions, and which showed the operation of conscience. We have proofs of this fact in the political, social, and moral codes of nations, in the various penalties pronounced against crime, in the writings of poets, historians, and moralists, in the almost universal approval of the virtuous and the good, and in the general condemnation of the wicked. Amidst all the darkness, superstition, and perversion of right, which have marked the history of mankind, we still see such an approving recognition of truth, equity, and goodness, in the literature of Gentile nations, as fully demonstrates the apostle's statement respecting "the work of the law written in the human heart," and the witness of conscience speaking out amid the thoughts and reasonings of men's hearts-accusing or *This is evident, both in omitting any term expressive of universality, and by using the Greek word river-a word expressive of generality in this connection, but not of totality. excusing, condemning or approving the proceedings of men around them, and those also which formed the staple of their own individual character. Whether these moral sentiments among the heathen sprang from traditionary truths, derived originally from revelation, and handed down from a patriarchal antiquity, or whether they sprang from the operations of the Holy Spirit, who visits every human heart with some degree of Divine influence, the apostle does not state. We are inclined to think that they proceeded from both these sources; and the sentiments thus derived were so perfectly in harmony with reason, so accordant with man's mental and moral constitution, and so subservient to universal good, that they were rendered almost imperishable. The Apostle Paul himself knew, as a man of letters, how the facts of Gentile history sustained and corroborated his statement respecting the operation of the great principles of the law in the human heart. Familiar, as he doubtless was, with the literature of Greece and Rome, he was competent to testify as to the evidence therein furnished of the prevalence of moral codes and individual sentiments, in harmony with the fundamental precepts of the written law of God. Though much of the literature of the ancient classics has perished, it is remarkable what fine moral sentiments are scattered up and down in those works that remain. In direct evidence of the apostle's statement respecting the work of the law written on the hearts of Gentiles, we find that classical writers of Greece and Rome often refer to the existence of unwritten lawslaws not comprised in any human code, but which operate within the soul. These they call "the laws of Nature," the "voice of Nature," laws "divine" as well as "human," and laws, indeed, superior, in their authority and obligation, to all mere formal and written codes. Thus Sophocles represents Antigone as despising the orders of Creon, appealing to voiμа äɣpañтa—unwritten laws-laws which she affirms to be superior to his authority, and which laws, she says, "were not of yesterday, but had always lived, no one knowing whence they came.' Cicero speaks of the same laws "as not written, but as being innate; laws which," says he, "we have not learned, or received, or read, but derived from Nature itself." The same writer speaks, also, of actions which, "though neither sanctioned nor condemned by written laws, are nevertheless sanctioned by the law of Nature." Again, the same writer affirms, that "justice and right are established by Nature, not by opinion, and that the sense of justice is born with us." To this * Οὐδὲ σθένειν τοσοῦτον φόμην τὰ σὰ Ζῇ ταῦτα, κοὐδεὶς οἶδεν ἐξ ὅτου 'φάνη.-Soph. Antig. Est igitur hæc, Judices, non scripta sed nata lex; quam non didicimus, accipimus, legimus, verùm ex natura ipsâ arripuimus. Hoc quamquam video propter depravationem consuetudinis neque more turpe haberi, neque aut lege sanciri, aut jure civili: tamen naturæ lege sancitum est.-Cicero " De Officiis," lib. iii. 69. § Nos ad justitiam esse natos, neque opinione, sed natura constitutum esɛejus.Cicero "De Legibus," lib. i. 29. |