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penances and sacrifices of self-instituted | The grace of God was frustrated: the worship, been designed. work of Christ was suspended: the offers of a free and full salvation were withheld: and the "glad tidings" of redemption were misrepresented or unknown. The results were disastrous. It was insult to Heaven-mockery on earth. The soul had no restingplace: human hope no anchor: the guilty conscience no relief: and prayer no reason, and no plea, at the foot of the Divine throne. All was darkness

This was virtually the question which was engaging and beginning to agitate the mind of Europe at the commencement of the sixteenth century, and soon produced that discord and division which He foretold who was Himself "the truth," and had appeared to testify it in our world-" I came not to send peace on the earth, but a sword." The tyranny of Rome, which had at that time reached its height, and spread its-all was confusion-all was lost! A delusions over almost every land, had framed and imposed the huge error on the mind of the nations, (or at least had attempted so to do,) that the above momentous inquiry was to be answered by the merit of human doings; and that these, according to a fixed scale of rising or declining value, which it held in its own hands, would secure just so much, and no more, of the favour and goodwill of an offended God. It had set itself up to be both mediator and judge between the consciences of men and the supreme tribunal of the universe, and affected to dispense peace and pardon in its own name, and in the name of the Infinite Majesty, to erring mortals, on the ground of penances to be endured, or works to be performed, or payments to be made, in obedience to its own demands, and in accordance with its own

wreck had happened to the dearest interests, aspirations, and prospects of humanity; and in the midst of the calamity no other than a spurious help and feigned deliverance was at hand; whilst of that help none could avail themselves, for, in addition to its own feebleness and insufficiency, it set up a rival to the only power that could avail, and the only arm that could bring salvation.

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The question was, Is it" of works," " of grace?" Is it of God, or of man? Of Christ, or of the sinner?that righteousness which justifies: which procures acceptance before the supreme Lawgiver, and causes man to be treated as if he had never sinned and never fallen? On whom shall a feeble creature, immortal, accountable, and guilty, depend? On himself, or another? On his own doings and suf

prescribed rules. This daring usurp-ferings, or on those which constitute

ation it had sustained now for some ages past, and this awful delusion it had spread with all the diligence of priestcraft, and all the "deceivableness of unrighteousness," through the nations around. It was an error of gigantic magnitude, and of dire consequences! At once it robbed the Almighty of his glory, and man of his hope. It sullied the perfection of the Divine law, and undermined all its claims. It contemned the rights of eternal justice, and darkened the lustro of eternal love. It reduced to a nullity the cross of Emmanuel, and left mercy, in its noontide splendour there, shorn of all its beams.

the righteousness and atonement of the Son of God?

Just at this time, God was working in secret for the solution of this inquiry, and preparing an instrument by his providence and Spirit for the manifestation of it before Europe and the world. There was a young man in the heart of Germany, in a convent at Erfurth, amongst the secluded and solitary there, on whose soul this tremendous question had long weighed with more than ordinary power, and whose deepest feelings it had agitated, even as the lake is tossed by the violent storm. It had impelled him from one expedient

to another; and through all the successive stages of a liberal education it had followed him, to rise and deepen with his progress in the knowledge of himself, of literature, of science, and of the ecclesiastical studies of the day. In all these he had sought rest, and found none. It haunted his spirit by night and noon; in solitude and in society; in the family and in the school; in the university, and now in the convent to which he had betaken himself with the hope of finding refuge there. There were no means which he left untried, and no imposed form of devotion, or attention to the external ceremonies of religion, with which he was not willing to comply. He was an earnest disciple of the Church of Rome. He had readily observed all her prescribed rites and ordinances and of fastings, penances, and prayers, he might have said, as one before him had of the institutions of Pharisaism, "All these have I kept from my youth." But miserable comforters were they all. He found no peace within. They left him a stranger to light, to hope, to consolation; and the storm agitated his bosom still. He saw, he felt the overhanging wrath of God. The thunders of Sinai sounded in his ears; and its awful lightnings flashed conviction deeper into his soul. He wept, he prayed, he wrestled, he feared, he fainted! It was as if the fountains of the great deep were broken up within him; whilst over him the heavy clouds were gathering, and the rising waves of grief and despondency were threatening soon to overwhelm him. Again he retired: again he wrestled: again he disputed with the world, the flesh, and the devil. To work out his own salvation was all his thought, all his aim, all his hope. He had no other idea at that time he had no other resort. Distressed, distracted, and alone, he threw himself on the cold floor of the monastery in which he lived, while ever and anon the sigh of his spirit burst forth to break its silence

"How shall

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with the anxious inquiry, man be just with God?" Deliverance was near. Being that "showeth mercy," was at hand. "He will not contend for ever, neither will he be always wroth, lest the spirit should fail before him, and the soul which he hath made." He "will not suffer us to be tempted above what we are able, and will with the temptation also make a way for our escape." There was a Bible in the room of the convent in which the sufferer lay. He turned his eyes upon it. It was chained; but it was liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to one that was bound. He read therein. He moistened it with his tears, and perfumed it with his prayers. Not more carefully did his father dig in the mines of Mansfeldt for the precious ore, than the young Luther now searched the Scriptures, that he might find therein the "pearl of great price." He sought, and found. One precious truth after another engaged his astonished and enraptured view. He read: "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us by the washing of water and the renowing of the Holy Ghost." "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth from all sin." "The Lord our righteousness." Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out."

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It was enough. It was all his salvation; all his desire. Henceforth and for ever, that sacred volume shall be the guide of his inner man, and the light of his soul. He studied it by night; he perused it by day. Sometimes a whole day was occupied in pondering one of the precious truths he had discovered therein, especially when it bore upon the great subject of his mental controversy, and the question of his personal acceptance with God. Gradually his mind was illumined; his heart found peace; and the burden of his guilt fell as he stood and gazed upon the Crucified One. At once he

saw the awful delusion in which, for years, he had been trained; and as he persevered and meditated, the "mystery of iniquity" became more and more revealed to his view. He descried his fearful mistake. His eyes were opened just on the brink of the precipice to which Rome had conducted him, and from which all her strategy and power could not deliver him. Her superstitions had propounded to him an enormous lie, instead of the truth of God, and it could not stand. The falsehood was now exposed. The proud fabric of human merit fell, and left him alone in its ruins. The self-inflictions of a voluntary humility could bring him no relief. The grace of Christ alone could save. The righteousness of Christ alone could justify. And like Jonah, as he escaped from the belly of hell, he joyfully exclaimed, "Salvation is of the Lord!"

Such was the process by which the great Reformer discovered and felt the doctrine of justification by faith in the perfect righteousness of the Son of God. In him it was the heart of humanity conflicting with Rome. In this he was the representative man, struggling through the darkness, bursting the fetters, and at length escaping the gloom, and coming into the liberty of the children of God.

Not to himself alone, not in vain for others, was that cardinal truth of Christianity and brightest beam of Holy Writ thus revealed to the mind of Luther, and so powerfully impressed on his inmost soul. It had been presented to him, and its infinite importance and value had been apprehended by him, in a way and amidst circumstances that were calculated to brighten the discovery, and seal the impression on his heart. A sense of his own vileness and guilt, his native helplessness and misery, had produced a feeling of utter selfdespair, and disclosed to his view the absolute insufficiency of any works or attainments of his own, and of those of all other created beings, to bring peace

to his mind, or secure his acceptance with a holy God. In vain was he recommended to rites and penances, to confession and absolution, to the priests and to the fathers, to the halls of science, or to the shrines of the saints. They could not supply his want. They could not relieve him of his burden. They could not calm the tempest of his soul. But the rising of the "bright and morning Star" did. The glories of the Sun of Righteousness dispelled all the illusions of his mind, and dissipated the mists of error, darkness, and doubt, in which he had been so long involved. Now he saw "the truth," and the truth had made him free. That truth, that one glorious truth of salvation, had taken deep hold of his spirit, and it was to be his theme, his charter, his guide, and his aim, through all the future days of his life. It had brought joy and peace to him in believing. It had ended the strife where wit and reason failed. It had healed his wounded spirit, and bound up his broken heart, and poured the balm of consolation over all the powers of his being, when nothing else could have ministered such relief; and how now could he but rejoice over it, and be enamoured with it, and view it as the most precious gift of God's love to man? All his hopes, and joys, and treasure were there. It had proved to him "the day-spring from on high," and as life from the dead,—" As the light of the morning when the sun ariseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain."

Happy was it for himself, for the Church of God, for Europe, for the world, that it was so. In the soul of Luther it was like the mustard-seed cast into the earth, which was to spring, and rise, and become an expanding tree, in whose branches multitudes might find shelter and repose. It was the opening of a well of water, which was to "spring up into everlasting life," and overflow its boundaries to irrigate

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the nations in its course thitherwards. | to suffer all things for the gospel's sake He will endure the reproaches of some, the pity of others, the scorn of more. He will fight with men, as with beasts at Ephesus." He will withstand Tetzel to the face, and confront him for his horrid traffic in indulgences, and such soul-destroying ware. He will write his theses, and affix them to the door of the church at Wittemberg, that all may see them. He will attend a “Council, and vindicate them there." He will go to Worms, "though he should have to encounter as many devils as there were tiles on the houses of the city.” He will burn the Pope's bull in the view of all Christendom, for the glorious truth which he has found, and for its propagation throughout Europe and the world.

It did. God had given to the youthful monk of Wittemberg a mind formed for great purposes, and the accomplishment of glorious things. Large, elastic, indomitable, and aspiring, it was the very mind to receive, to grasp, and then to propagate, a truth of infinite moment to the spiritual interests of his generation. Cultivated by education, exercised in the schools of philosophy and of literature, familiar with | all the prescriptions and impositions of Rome, and endowed with courage which nothing could intimidate or dismay, he seemed the very man to wage war with any species of oppression or deceit which bore upon the moral prospects of mankind. Moreover, he had now been taught in the school of grace. He had sat at the feet of the great Teacher. Such was the man-the man of God When Christ has need of a special in--the man of his age-the man of his strument to perform his work, he pre- generation. He honoured God, and pares it by suitable previous discipline, God honoured him. The same grace and thus brings it forth, as a polished that distinguished Saul of Tarsus among shaft in his quiver, to execute his de- the apostles, rendered Luther pre-emisigns. And so he did with his ap- nent among the Reformers. pointed servant now. That mental pensation was committed to him. He process through which he had passed; had one great mission to fulfil, one that deep insight which he had ob- special work to perform. It was to tained into the spiritual necessities of "bear the name of Christ," and to exalt his own nature; that awful conflict His merit as the only and all-sufficient with himself and with Satan, the very Saviour, "before the Gentiles and remembrance of which was anguish to kings," and the children of his people. his soul, had but prepared him to em- For this he lived; for this he laboured; brace, with more than joyous welcome, for this he suffered. It was to spread the blessed truth of redemption, and the doctrine of complete justification to resolve that, having bought it so through the righteousness of Christ, dearly, neither earth nor hell should imputed to, and received by faith alone, again wrest it from his hands. Accord- that he dared and endured all. This ingly, he held it fast, and "sold it not." was the key-stone of the arch he threw Not all the attractions of superior—the foundation of the structure he power, nor the promises of ecclesiastical promotion, could induce him to part with it; nor all the threats of imperial wrath, or indignant Rome, induce him to renounce it. "They would have forgiven me all," said he on one occasion, "if I would but have written down six letters-Revoco" (I recant). But no. It is impossible. He is willing

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reared-the compass of his voyagethe polar star of his horizon. He saw its fulness-its Divine authority-its adaptation to the necessities and weakness of our fallen nature, and he durst not "hold that truth in unrighteousness," by withholding it from his fellow-men. It glowed in all his sermons; it pervaded all his writings. To illus

trate it, amidst prodigious labours, he published his " Exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians;" and in his solitude in the Castle of Wartburg, translated into his native tongue the whole record of the wonderful works of God. That was a boon Germany had never received before; a gift in which her sons rejoice to this day. It diffused, it has perpetuated, it enshrines the truth for which Luther contended, and the might of which enabled him to evade all the stratagems, and endure all the fury, of the apostate Church of Rome. And when she shall have exhausted all the resources of her deceit and her tyranny, and the fountains of her corruption are dried up, and of her imposing hierarchy nothing is left but the ruins, that truth shall survive, to tell the secret of her fall, and to disclose the power that inflicted the mortal blow. She gave not God the glory. She laid prostrate in the dust the finished work of the eternal Son, to exalt in its stead an imaginary righteousness and merit of her own. She took from man the only ground of his hope, and left him in the moral universe, a debtor of ten thousand talents to his righteous Sovereign, with nothing to pay. She had been intrusted with the deed of Heaven's conveyance, which brought the pardon down, free, full, and irrevocable;

but this she had concealed, defaced, and buried beneath the accumulated heap of her superstitions and traditions, the rubbish of ages. But that revelation of eternal love "cannot be hid.” Like the orb of day, when he conquers the mist of a wintry sky, or as he emerges from his ocean bed, it shall still warm the earth and spread light over the nations. As "the Article of a standing or falling church," which the illustrious Reformer pronounced it to be, judged by that standard, the mystic Babylon shall fall never to rise again; whilst the church of the living God shall lift up her head, and triumph in her glorious inheritance, the sacred deposit intrusted to her care. That deposit is the cardinal truth of salvation, "more precious than rubies, and all the things that can be compared to it,"-than "the chief things of the ancient mountains, and the precious things of the lasting hills;" that truth which alone can give peace to the conscience, hope in life, victory in death, and the prospect of eternal happiness beyond it. "Being justified freely by his grace," through faith in the Beloved. "Surely, shail one say, In the Lord have I righteousness and strength." "In the LORD shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory."

M. C

DR CHANNING AND SOCINIANISM. SOCINIANISM has often been characterized as "the half-way house to Infidelity." Of late years it has been giving many proofs of the legitimacy of its claims to this unenviable distinction, in the eagerness manifested by some of its disciples to perform any service that might help to undermine the authority of revelation, and advance the cause of unbelief. Theodore Parker in America, the Martineaus in England, and others of the same school

whom we might name, are now among its most efficient promoters. Disregarding the indestructible evidence by which the Bible is proved to be from God, they are labouring to bring it down to the level of other books,-like them, containing somewhat that is good, with much that is either questionable or bad, and requiring, therefore, the discriminating exercise of the human reason to embrace the one and reject the other. Of course, while the

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