404 cheerful, how faithful! What a source of bliss!

APPLICATION.

1. How unaccountable is the conduct of those who renounce all this to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season! In any earthly thing analogous to this, it would be instantly resolved into insanity. Yet this is done by men, wise in all that belongs to carth and its affairs.

2. How strange the course of those who adhere to an orthodox creed, while they are mortally heterodox in every step of their conduct!

3. How passing strange the delusion of those who separate state from character, and, spite of the testimony of God, a thousand times repeated, believe that they are safe, in the absence of all proof to that effect. They believe that they are saints at the very moment they are destitute of every attribute of the sainted character!

FAITH THE PRINCIPLE OF ALL OTHER HOLY DISPOSITIONS. THE Conduct of Noah was extraordinary. He pursued a course altogether without precedent, or parallel, or apparent cause. On the supposition that things were to be as they ever had been, his procedure was the most fantastic and absurd that could be conceived. His substance, life, and strength, were all consumed on the construction of a fabric such as no man had ever seen or dreamed of;-such as could be of no use for the ordinary purposes of navigation, and, if it were, yet reared probably in an inland situation from which no human strength could transfer it to the ocean. What must thus have seemed absurdity to the world, was, nevertheless, the result of the most exalted wisdom. The man was warned of God; he believed God that it should be even as He had told him. This faith moved him with fear; fear constrained him to labour; and thus the whole is accounted for. Eminent Christians pursue in principle a course just as absurd in the eyes of the world; a course that is not the result of madness, however, but the fruit of truth and soberness.

I. FAITH IN ITS SOURCE AND OBJECTS. Faith, which is the belief of Divine truth, is always preceded by the influence of the Spirit on the soul in effecting that change which is called a being "born again, -"regeneration," and the like. Prior to this there may be an assent to evidence from the judgment, but the heart remains unaffected; the affections untouched, and the walk unrenewed. But when this mighty change is brought to pass, a door is opened for the entrance of the truth, and its evidence, the evidence on which it is received. It is seen to be worthy of God to give, and of man to receive. A heart thus renewed, is the soil in which the seed of the Gospel takes root, and where, springing up, it bears fruit to the praise and glory of God. There is without this no saving faith, or belief of saving truth; but after this every truth is believed that is essential to salvation.

The object of this faith is truth,the truth of God,-all truth, especially the doctrine of the Cross. You look at the past, up to the first of time and believe in the fall, and the effects of it in the foul deed of that fatal day when the hopes of man perished-in the revelation of mercy which then was made-in the successive renewals of the holy promise from time to time-in the advent and incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ-in his death for sin-in his love to you, and gift of himself for you-in his resurrection, and ascension to heaven-in the office which he there discharges-in his return again to the world to judge it, and settle its destinies. Here, too, you meditate the principles and feelings which he brought to the vast enterprise. His love and unutterable regard for the will and honour of the Father,-his supreme delight in holiness-his incomprehensible compassion, and humiliation-the unfathomable love which he bore to you then, and before the world was. Yes! now that the tenderness of His nature, and all the glorious excellencies of his character are known, a fire is kindled in the believer's heart that nothing can extinguish. The liveliest exercises of love and adoration are now called forth. A nearer union and intercourse with Him

fully sacrificed. Life is concerned to lie in his favour, and that favour is sought by all means as the pearl of great price. We labour whether present or absent that we may be accepted. We shall now look at

II. FAITH IN ITS EFFECTS. Faith is not merely a principle, but a power,-a power the mightiest known to man.

1. The heart is thereby purified.-The holy truths of God's word are thereby applied to it, and they there operate a spiritual cure. All these holy affections implanted at the time of regeneration are thereby cherished and strengthened. The result is, that the seeds of evil thoughts and words, and actions, are destroyed, or at least repressed. Unholy desires are kept down; evil propensities are checked; -those tyrant principles that once bore sway are dethroned, and their place supplied by those of a different order. In unison with this is the language of Peter, who appeals to Christians on the subject of purity:-"Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth, through the Spirit, unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently." Here they are declared active in the purification of their hearts; but this blessed work was brought about through "belief of the truth," and this belief was the fruit of the Spirit. This faith is the channel through which the waters of truth find their way to the heart to wash and cleanse it. This is the grand subduer of evil. Here alone is there hope of deliverance for man,-in the faith of the Cross he obtains deliverance.

2. The world is thereby overcome. "Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world; and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus Christ is the son of God?" Conquest is here an effect of regeneration. This triumphant faith is an essential attribute of those who are born of God. This faith, stimulating and working by holy love, secures to the soul a decided victory over the love of earthly things, over the fear of man, over the love of human applause, over false shame, and regard to character, and over whatever opposes itself to the service of the blessed Jesus. It brings heaven to earth; it gives reality to things unseen, and brings nigh things that are distant. Oh, the wonders that this faith has achieved! Witness Abraham leaving the land of his birth, and going he knew not whither. See Moses refusing to be called the son of

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Pharaoh's daughter, and boldly saying, "I am an Israelite; ""choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt!-By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible." The victories of this world's heroes are as nothing compared with those of the children of God. To possess faith is to command Omnipotence. Earth and hell combined cannot stand before the believer.

Here is the secret of soul prosperity; see that faith be steady, be strong, and the soul will be flourishing. Keep the mind ever intent on that point where the lines of all doctrine meet, on the Cross! Let us, then, go to work in the right way, ever looking unto Jesus. Let us heartily and honestly pray unto him to strengthen our faith, and give us the victory.

Nothing avails to salvation but faith in Christ. His death is the great instrument of expiating human guilt; the grand means by which the mercy of God can be shown, and shower down its blessings. It is in believing this great truth, that the blessings of the Gospel are obtained. If you are apprized of this you will, if also aware of your own state and character, be constrained to flee for refuge to the hope set before you in the Cross. He who does so shall never perish.

As nothing saves but faith in the blood of Christ, so no faith is real and saving but that which produces love. God is love, and the gift of Christ to save us is the fruit and expression of that love. The Apostle truly says, "herein is love; here is the demonstration of it. How loving and lovely is God in this glorious Gospel by which he reconciles and saves! How full of beauty and excellence is the Divine character as displayed in the Gospel! Often has it, in its larger degrees of discovery, proved too much for man, in his present condition;-he has sunk under the sense of beauty; been overpowered by the weight of glory! In Christ we have a modified view of the Divine glory and excellency; here the excess of brightness is so softened that the eye of renovated humanity can "look on glory with less affliction from its lustre." We get nearer to Him; we are less perplexed, and awed by his majesty. Such are the objects with which faith brings us into contact; and can we but love, admire, and adore?

August, 1853.

J.

SERPENT WORSHIP. THAT mankind should have disliked to retain the knowledge of God, and sought for objects of worship among stocks and stones, creeping things, and fowls of the air, is all but incredible and most humiliating. But that the serpent should have found such favour, and been exalted to such distinction, is utterly confounding. The difficulty is all the greater, from the fact of the enmity which obtains between man and the seed of the serpent. At the same time to hate and worship is the very climax of contradiction and of infatuation!

In most of the ancient rites we discover some allusion to the serpent. In the orgies of Bacchus, the persons who partook of the ceremony used to carry serpents in their hands, and with horrid screams called upon Eva, Eva. They were often crowned with serpents, and still made the same frantic exclamation. One part of the mysterious rites of Jupiter Sabazius was to let a snake slip down the bosom of the person to be initiated, which was taken out below. These ceremonies, and this symbolic worship, began among the Magi, who were the sons of Chus; and by them they were propagated in various parts. Epiphanius thinks, that the invocation of Eva, Eva, related to the great mother of mankind, who was deceived by the serpent; and Clemens of Alexandria is of the same opinion. But I should think that Eva was the same as Eph, Epha, Opha, which the Greeks rendered Ophis, and by it denoted a serpent. —Bryant's Anc. Mythol., vol. ii. p. 197.

In Egypt was a serpent named Thermusis, which was looked on as very sacred; and the natives are said to have made use of it as a royal tiara, with which they ornamented the statues of Isis. We learn from Diodorus Siculus, that the kings of Egypt wore high bonnets, which terminated in a round ball; and the whole was surrounded with figures of asps. The priests likewise upon their bonnets had the representation of serpents.-Ib. vol. ii. p. 200.

It is said, that, in the ritual of Zoroas ter, the great expanse of the heavens, and even Nature itself, was described under the symbol of a serpent. The like was mentioned in the Octateuch of Ostanes; and moreover, that in Persis, and in other parts of the east, they erected temples to the serpent tribe, and held festivals to their honour, esteeming them the supreme of all gods, and the

superintendents of the whole world. The worship began among the people of Chaldea. They built the city Opis upon the Tigris, and were greatly addicted to divination, and to the worship of the serpent. Maimonides, ap. Selden, De Diss Syris, Syntag. 1. c. 2, ad fin. From Chaldea the worship passed into Egypt, where the serpent deity was called canoph, can-eph, and c'neph. It had also the name of Ob, or Oub, and was the same as the basiliscus, or royal serpent; the same also as the Thermuthis: and in like manner was made use of by way of ornament to the statues of their gods.— Ib. vol. ii. p. 203.

We are told by Orus Apollo (Lib. i. § 1), that the basilisk, or royal serpent, was named "Oubus." The deity so denominated, was esteemed prophetic; and his temples were applied to as oracular. This idolatry is alluded to by Moses, Levit. xx. 27, who, in the name of God, forbids the Israelites ever to inquire of those demons, Ob and Ideone; which shows that it was of great antiquity. The symbolical worship of the serpent was, in the first ages, very extensive; and was introduced into the mysteries, wherever celebrated: it is remarkable, that wherever the Amonians founded any places of worship, and introduced their rites, there was generally some story of a serpent. There was a legend about a serpent at Colchis, at Thebes, and at Delphi; likewise in other places. The Greeks called Apollo himself Python, which is the same as Opis, Oupis, and Oub.-Ib. vol. i. p. 58.

No symbol occurs more frequently than that of the serpent on the Isiac Tables, the Obelisks, and other ancient monuments of Egypt.-See Montfaucon's Antiq. by Humphreys, vol. ii. p. 171— 242. The same may be observed in the Mythology of the Hindus.-See the curious plate subjoined to Moor's Mythology of the Hindus. "In most systems of poetical mythology," says the writer (p. 340), "serpents appear to have been the beautiful, deceiving, insinuating form that sin originally assumed." See, also, p. 342.

In the learned dissertation on Egypt and the Nile from the ancient books of the Hindus (see Asiatic Researches, vol. iii. p. 345, octavo edit.), mention is made of a serpent called Heredi, famed throughout Egypt. The Mussulmans insist, that it is a sheikh of that name transformed into a snake; and the Hindus are equal to them in their superstitious notions.

"My learned friends at Casi informed me," says Lieutenant Willford, "that the sacred snake is at this day visited by travelling Sannyasis."

Abadon, or Abaddon, is supposed by Mr. Bryant to have been the name of the Ophite god, or old serpent, mentioned in the Revelations, chap. ix. 11; xii. 9; xx. 2, with whose worship the world had been so long infected. It probably originated among the people of Chaldea, who were greatly addicted to this species of idolatry. From Chaldea it passed into Egypt; and in Egypt Moses must have learned its history.

It may seem strange, that there should have been in the first ages such an universal defection from truth; and above all things such a propensity to this particular mode of worship, founded on a mysterious attachment to the serpent. What is scarcely credible, it obtained among Christians; for one of the most early heresies in the Church was of this sort, introduced by a sect, called by Epiphanius "Ophite," and by Clemens of Alexandria, "Ophiani."-Bryant, vol. ii. p. 218; and Dr. Lightfoot, vol. i. p. 1022.

In the religion, or rather the mythology of the Hindus, the sovereign of Patala, or the infernal regions, is said to be the king of serpents, and is called Séshanága. Asiatic Researches, vol. i. 249. In Montfaucon, there is a representation of the two opposite principles of good and evil, under the symbols of two serpents contending for the mundane egg.

The serpent also was in Egypt, occasionally, the symbol of the Deity, of the heavens, of the sun, of eternity, and of health.

From the poison with which the Creator has furnished some of the numerous species of serpents, they may be considered as appropriate symbols or emblems of evil, destruction, and calamity. In India, the destroying power, or death, we are told, is signified by the serpent; and in the northern mythology, Lok, the genius of evil, is styled the father of the great serpent, the father of death, the adversary, the destroyer. (Mallet's Northern Antiq. vol. ii. p. 190.) Nothing is more common on the ancient helmets than the figure of a serpent for a crest. We read of a class of soldiers called "draconarii," from their ensign being a dragon, that is (in Latin, draco), a large snake. Our dragoons, and the French "dragons,' derived their title originally from the

same insignia. The transferring of the serpent to the skies, as we find from the delineations on the celestial globe, and assigning to "Ophiuchus huge" such an immense space in the heavens, is a presumptive proof that this also proceeded from an act of idolatrous serpent-worship.

Now, it should always be remembered, that the great object of the Mosaic dispensation was to separate a chosen people from the idolatrous nations which surrounded them, and to establish the worship of the one true God. How, therefore, could this be more effectually done, than by representing Satan, or the evil spirit, as possessing the form of a serpent, that great and admired object of heathen idolatry, particularly among the Egyptians, and making it the instrument of seducing our first parents?-(See Div. Legation of Moses, book vi. § 2.) For though no mention is made of the devil in all the writings of Moses, under any of his usual names, if we do not consider the Serpent in this chapter as one of them, it is clear that he was the real agent in producing man's first transgression, particularly as the disastrous fact is frequently alluded to by the writers of the New Testament. Rev. xx. 2; xii. 9; 2 Cor. xi. 3; Rom. xvi. 20.

It is worthy of observation, that the printed Samaritan copy instead of "a serpent," reads "a liar," which is in harmony with the assertion of our Saviour, as recorded by St. John, viii. 44. "He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it."

The word "subtil " (Gen. iii. 1), does not so much denote the craft and insidiousness of this creature, as its gentle, familiar, and insinuating nature. That the serpent before the fall was mild and gentle, and more familiar with man than any other animal; that it did not creep on the ground, but went with its head and breast reared up, and advanced; that, by frequently approaching our first parents, and playing and sporting before them, it had gained their fondness, is not only the sentiment of Jews and Christians, but what seems likewise to have some foundation in Scripture: for when God says, "He would put enmity be tween the serpent and the woman, and between his seed and her seed," he seems to imply that some sort of kindness and intimacy subsisted between them before: and hence we see the reason why the

devil should assume the form of a serpent rather than that of any other creature. What sort of serpent this was, we are not told in Scripture. Perhaps there is none now like it in all respects, having been greatly degraded by the curse of the Almighty. Probably it was of the kind of those winged serpents, which are still found in the eastern and southern parts of the world, styled fiery, flying serpents, or seraphim; and termed fiery, not merely from their inflammatory venom, but because they appeared shining like fire, when they flew in the air. And from hence those lofty angels, who were frequently employed by God to deliver his will to mankind, were called seraphs, or seraphim. The devil is therefore thought to have made use of this kind of serpent, that he might resemble one of these angels of light.-Fawkes.

The great objection to this conjecture respecting the flying serpent is, that the report of the existence of such an animal is deemed fabulous, unless the serpens jaculus may be figuratively so called, from the rapidity with which it is said to spring from the ground and dart on its prey. The fiery, flying serpent mentioned by Isaiah (chap. xiv. 29), is considered by the learned Bp. Lowth and others, as a symbol of Hezekiah. It might have served on other occasions to express some religious mystery, or to represent some supernatural being; but there is no well authenticated account by naturalists that such a species of serpent ever existed.

Those who are not satisfied with the above interpretation of the epithet "subtil," have asserted many particulars respecting serpents, to prove that they really possess more craft and subtilty than other animals; but some of these are extremely puerile, and others are evidently false. As proofs of extraordinary intelligence, it is said, for instance:

1. That when attacked the serpent immediately conceals his head, by either thrusting it into the earth, or surrounding it in a spiral line with his body.

2. That, concealing himself in sand of the same colour, he lies ready to bite whatever passes by.

3. That before he drinks he spits out his own poison, lest by swallowing it he might destroy himself."

4. That, by exposing only the small protuberances on his head, which resemble grains of corn, he catches birds that fly to him, mistaking them for food.

5. That, in the winter, when his sight

is injured, he restores it by rubbing his eyes with fennel.

6. That, when his scales are stiff and torpid, he scratches them with juniper prickles; and

7. That he presses one ear close to the ground, and stops the other with his tail, that he might not hear "the voice of the charmer," or enchanter: for Bochart has shown by numerous references to classic authors, that there were many persons in the East who possessed the art of charming serpents. It is said that they rendered them perfectly tame, and could at any time entice them from their holes by music, and by muttering a certain form of words. Hieroz. lib. iii. cap. vi.

But enough; the world is still sprinkled with serpents, the foe and the terror of man; still that dread angel, who fell from his high estate, known as "the great dragon, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world," is amongst us, "going about as a roaring lion, seeking persons whom he may devour." The poison of the serpent is still as pungent and mortal at this moment as when the serpent was first made, and when he slew his first man. Satan, too, is just as malignant as at the hour when he murdered our first parents-and through them, us all. Sin is still the seed of death. The subject, then, is anything but one of idle curiosity; it is fraught with the deepest instruction, and calculated to excite the utmost dread.

DIVINE APPROBATION. "Study to show thyself approved unto God." 2 TIM. ii. 15.

FIRST, let this study be directed to the diligent keeping of the mind. Our thoughts are heard in heaven. We are exhorted to keep the heart with all diligence. Without this diligent study and application, all will go wrong in life. The springs must be made pure before the actions are right. To discipline the heart rightly must be a constant, habitual work, resolved on and carried out in principle and practice. The Psalmist prays, "Let the meditation of my heart and the words of my lips be acceptable in thy sight." To enjoy the Divine approbation, the inner temple must be purified, and made meet for the Master's use. He must cultivate holy thoughts and holy desires, fully to enjoy the blessings of life; and thus study to approve ourselves unto God. Without this evidence of keeping the heart in the fear and love of God, where is the evidence