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Death-knell, The, in the Country, 148.

Execution of two Young Men, Reflections on the, 214.

Glacier, The, 598.

Hand, Proofs of Design in its Structure? 51.

Infidelity, Illustrations of, in the Life and Correspondence

of David Hume. By the Rev. J. G. Lorimer, Glasgow,

339, 356, 411, 447, 476, 501, 578, 595, 602.

Interments. By J. Kitto, D.D., 288.

Medusa, By the Rev. D. Landsborough, Saltcoats, 91.
Psalmody, The Origin of Metrical, 395.

Sabbath, The Political Economy of the, 587.

Sabbath, The, at Rome, New Orleans, and in Germany, 575.
Sabbath Railway Travelling, Objections to, 614.

Science and Christianity Compared, 205, 25.

Ultraism, Religious, 528.

World to come. Ideas of the. By J. Kitto, D.D., 200,

THE

CHRISTIAN TREASURY.

CONTAINING CONTRIBUTIONS FROM MINISTERS AND MEMBERS OF VARIOUS

EVANGELICAL DENOMINATIONS.

THE RIGHT WAY TO READ THE BIBLE.

BY THE REV. JAMES HAMILTON, LONDON.

1

"How

sweet are thy words unto my taste; yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way."

To some the Bible is uninteresting and unprofitable, because they read too fast. Amongst the insects which subsist on the sweet sap of flowers, there are two very different classes. One is remarkable for its imposing plumage, which shows in the sunbeams like the dust of gems; and as you watch its jaunty gyrations over the fields, and its minuet dance from flower to flower, you cannot help admiring its graceful activity, for it is plainly getting over a great deal of ground. But, in the same field there is another worker, whose brown vest and

"THE Word of the Lord endureth for ever," and | bettering to the intelligent believer. we ought to study it with all the earnestness of those who feel that there is nothing ephemeral or insignificant in it. We sometimes feel a sadness in reading the clever works of worldly men-their witty paragraphs and brilliant essays, and sometimes their eloquent and laborious treatises on themes of transient interest. The talent squandered on them is like an Arabesque painting on the walls of a snow temple-exquisite while the fragile structure lasts, but as soon as the melting weather comes, only destined to give a vermilion tint to its trickling decay. The words of the Bible may not so glare and dazzle, at first glance, as some words lavished on fugacious topics; but their worth is their substratum. They are graven with a diamond on the rock for ever, and ex-business-like straight-forward flight may not press the same truths which we shall hereafter read on the adamant of eternity. Man's thoughts perish, but the truths of God will never pass away; and this permanency of the Bible's contents should impart a solemnity and purpose-like earnestness to its perusal.

have arrested your eye. His fluttering neighbour darts down here and there, and sips elegantly wherever he can find a drop of ready nectar; but this dingy plodder makes a point of alighting everywhere, and wherever he alights he either finds honey or makes it. If But not only are the contents of the Bible the flower-cup be deep, he goes down to the permanent to those whose taste is truc, they bottom; if its dragon-mouth be shut, he thrusts are attractive and pleasant. The right know its lips asunder; and if the nectary be peculiar ledge of God-the plan of redemption, in its or recondite, he explores all about till he discontrivance, in its accomplishment, and its covers it, and then having ascertained the God-manifesting and soul-renovating develop-knack of it, joyful as one who has found great ments the true history and future prospects spoil, he sings his way down into its luscious reof our human family, with all the Bible's resources for making the individual holy and happy-render it a book as satisfactory to the thoughtful inquirer as it is healthful and heartNo. 1.

cesses. His rival, of the painted velvet wing, has no patience for such dull and long-winded details. But what is the end? Why, the one died last October along with the flowers; the

other is warm in his hive to-night, amidst the fragrant stores which he gathered beneath the bright beams of summer.

Reader, to which do you belong?-the butterflies or bees? Do you search the Scriptures, or do you only skim them? Do you dwell on a passage till you bring out some meaning, or till you can carry away some memorable truth or immediate lesson? or do you flit along on heedless wing, only on the outlook for novelty, and too frivolous to explore or ponder the Scriptures? Does the Word of God dwell in you so richly that in the vigils of a restless night, or in the bookless solitude of a sickroom, or in the winter of old age or exclusion from ordinances, its treasured truths would perpetuate summer round you, and give you meat to eat which the world knows not of?

little prepossessing in the smoke of its altars, and its law of the leper, and its catalogue of interdicted meats. Another reader takes the Epistle to the Hebrews for his key, and finds himself at once in an interpreter's room, where everything is vivid, siguificant, and spiritual. In that law of the leper, as in a glass, he beholds his own natural face, and sees what manner of man he is, and what a hateful evil in God's sight sin is. Through the smoke of altars and sacerdotal vestments he discerns the heavenly High Priest; and the forbidden meats carry him forward to Joppa, and remind him of that middle wall of partition which Peter was the first to overleap. Or, an outside reader takes up the Song of Solomon, and is greatly captivated with the Eastern glow and gorgeous imagery of these sacred idyls; but a spiritually-minded At this moment we have lying before us a reader sees at once that a greater than Solomon thick and ancient tome, "A learned and useful is here. On its aromotic hills he recognises the Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, beautiful steps of his Saviour, and in its language being the Substance of Thirty Years' Wednes- of tender condescension he hears the voice of his days' Lectures at Blackfriars, by that holy and own Beloved. In the depths of its rose and its lily, learned divine, William Gouge, late pastor such reader finds "a fountain sealed" of sacred there;" and many of our readers are acquainted meaning," a well shut up" of heavenly sweetness. with Dr Owen's voluminous exposition of the In proportion as we cultivate a minute and same epistle. But they are not only the more loving acquaintance with the Word of God. doctrinal books which have been thus largely our faith will be firm, and our religion will be illustrated. Some of the obscurest flowers are sound and robust. The bee, which is gatherthe most mellifluous, and some of the least fre- ing strength and sweetness from the blossom, quented portions of Scripture are not the least needs no argument to persuade it that honey is productive. Some have a tacit prejudice hidden in the cells of flowers. And the man against the Book of Job. They feel as if it who is daily gathering comfort and support, were a funereal episode in the Bible, and look sanctification and spiritual vigour, from the drearily at it, as if dust and ashes were sprinkled Word, needs no reasonings to convince him that over all its pages. Amongst these Bible-con-heavenly wisdom is contained in the Scriptures ning Puritans was one who dwelt all his days on Job, and found its sombre-looking text full of sacred instruction and evangelic comfort. In ten quartos he has left the product of his pleasant toil; and every book in the Bible would bear to have its Caryl, if only the world could bear the books.

Then, again, there are certain plants which require some effort to reach their penetralia, but whose ample stores exceedingly requite the toil. There are such books in Scripture; labiate and personate flowers in the garden of heavenly wisdom, which need dexterity and diligence to master all their meaning. A careless comer might fancy that the trace of sweetness on the outer edge was all the honey there; but the true investigator knows better, and through the unreluctant opening pushes on to the molten ambrosia within. A careless reader alights on the outside of Leviticus, and sees

of truth; and such a man will not be easily
beguiled of his stedfastness, whatever deceivers
enter into the world. When near her death,
a singularly clear-thinking and pious student of
the Bible wrote to a friend the following result
of her own experience: "You may remember
my telling you that some years ago I declined
greatly, almost entirely (inwardly), from the
ways of God, and in my breast was an Infidel-
a disbeliever in the truths of the Bible. When
the Lord brought me out of that dreadful state,
and established my faith in his Word, I deter-
mined to take that Word alone for my guide.
I read nothing else for between three and four
months, and the Lord helped me to pray over
every word that I read. At that time, and
from that reading, all my religious opinions
were formed, and I have not changed one of
them since."*

*Memoir of Mary Jane Graham.

THE REFORMERS BEFORE THE REFORMATION.

3 who had parted with everything for his sup

THE REFORMERS BEFORE THE REFOR- port in the course of his journey, save a copy

MATION.

THE PAULICIANS.

BY THE REV. THOMAS M'CRIE, EDINBURGH. "WHEN examining the history of the eleventh century," says Beausobre, an eminent ecclesiastical historian of the last century, "I met with the bloody execution of thirteen canons of Orleans, who were esteemed the noblest, the wisest, and the most virtuous of all the clergy of that city.' These men were burnt under the pretext of being Manicheans. Prosecuting my researches into this new species of Manicheans, I discovered that they came from Italy; that those of Italy had come from Dalmatia; those of Dalmatia from Bulgaria; those of Bulgaria from Thrace; and those of Thrace from Syria and Armenia. Thus it appears," he adds, "that our Manicheans of France, Germany, and Italy, are neither more nor less than a branch of those who were called PAULICIANS. Further inquiries into the tenets of these people have convinced me that the accounts which we have generally received of them are little better than a tissue of fabrications."*

It must be curious to examine the history of a Church so very ancient, and which has passed through so many transmigrations. It must be interesting to trace the apostolic connection between the Churches of Italy, the immediate precursors of the Reformed Church, and the Paulicians, who arose in the seventh century. And the task deepens in interest when we find reason to believe that this much maligned people carried with them in all their wanderings from east to west, from the plains of Armenia to the Alps of Europe, the vital stream of evangelical truth. It might be presumed, indeed, that the principles which kept such masses together, which survived whole centuries of bloody persecution, and which flourished in soils so widely different, must have been sounder at heart, and more tenacious of life, than the vagaries of an heretical imagination. And, in point of fact, the lights of history which are only beginning to dawn on the monastic records of the dark ages, have already discovered enough to convince us of the truth of Beausobre's statement, so far as the Paulicians are concerned, that they are "little better than a tissue of fabrications." It is but a slight sketch that can be here attempted of this interesting, but little known and much neglected people.

About the middle of the seventh century, a Christian de acon, who had escaped from captivity in Syria, was returning homewards through Armenia. The exhausted traveller,

Letter of Mr Beausobre to Mr de la Motte. (Bibl. de l'Europe, vii., 145.) Beausobre is the author of a learned work on Manicheism, and had prepared a history of the Paulicians, which he did not live to publish, and which, unfortunately for the interests of historical truth. has never yet been given to the public. Memoires sur la Vie., &c., de Beausobre; Hist. Critique de Manichee, vol. ii.)

of the New Testament in Syriac, which he had carefully carried from the land of his captivity, at length reached an obscure town called Mananalis, in the neighbourhood of Samosata, and begged for lodging at the house of one named Constantine. This person, it would appear, belonged to a colony which was proscribed under the odious name of Manicheans; -a sect which arose very early in the Church, and was chiefly distinguished by holding the existence of two divinities, or supreme principles, a good and a bad-the former of whom was the creator of all that was spiritual and good; the latter, the creator of matter and all evil. The Church of Rome has branded all who opposed her pretensions and superstitions in these early ages with the epithet of Manicheans, much in the same spirit as those who have separated from corrupt Churches with us have been stigmatized by such names as Puritans and Methodists. Be this as it may, the errors of Constantine's creed do not seem to have entirely hardened his heart or blinded his understanding. He received the poor deacon into his house, and hospitably entertained him for several days. On his departure, the grateful captive made his kind host a present of his highly-prized Syriac Testament, which was in two volumes--the one containing the four Gospels, and the other the fourteen Epistles of Paul. To the study of these sacred books, hitherto locked up from him, Constantine diligently applied himself; and the simple reading of the Word of God, without note or comment, led to such a revolution in his sentiments that he publicly burned all his Manichean books, and became a zealous preacher of the Gospel. Numerous proselytes gathered around him; many Catholics were converted by him; he preached with success in the regions of Pontus and Cappadocia; and with the aid of fellow-labourers who came to his assistance, a large Church was speedily instituted, the members of which, in token of their veneration for the writings of Paul, assumed or received the name of Paulicians.* Constantine himself, from the same innocent ambition to revive the memory of the first ages of Christianity, took the name of Paul's friend-Sylvanus; while some of the leading pastors with whom he was associated were named after Titus, Timothy, and Tychicus; and six of their principal congregations represented the Churches to which Paul had addressed his Epistles.

The leading tenets of the Paulicians were characterized by the purity and simplicity that might be expected from an association which sprung from the fresh and immaculate seed of the Word. Discarding the Gnosticism of the school in which they had been educated, and

"The name of Paulicians is derived by their enemies from some unknown teacher; but I am confident that they gloried in their affinity to the Apostle of the Gentiles." (Gibbon's Decline and Fall, x., 169.)

ledged fact, that they disowned, with horror, the whole system of Manicheism; and we may simply state it as our conviction, without entering here into the grounds on which it rests, that the Paulicians did no more than insist on their being judged by the writings of the New Testament, to which they owed their first illumination in the truth, in preference to those of the Old, and more especially the Levitical law, to which their opponents were constantly in the

of the ceremonies of which many of the abuses of the Church may be traced.*

deriving their knowledge immediately, though imperfectly, from the Fount of Inspiration, their creed was distinguished rather by its freedom from error, than by its fulness of truth. It is easy for a Protestant to recognise in the list of their errors, given by Phocius and Peter Siculus, at once their historians and their accusers, some of the leading points of the Protest of the Reformation. "Against the gradual innovations of discipline and doctrine," says Gibbon, who has been singularly favourable to the Pauli-habit of appealing, and to an attempted revival cians, the more, perhaps, because they were hardly acknowledged as Christians, "they were as thoroughly guarded by habit and aversion as by the silence of St Paul and the evangelists. The objects which had been transformed by the magic of superstition, appeared in the eyes of the Paulicians in their genuine and naked colours. An image made without hands was the common workmanship of a mortal artist, to whose skill alone the wood and canvass must be indebted for their merit or value. The miraculous relics were a heap of bones and ashes; the true vivifying cross was a piece of sound or rotten timber; the body and blood of Christ, a loaf of bread and a cup of wine, the gifts of nature and the symbols of grace. The mother of God was degraded from her celestial honours and immaculate virginity; and the saints and angels were no longer solicited to exercise the laborious office of mediation in heaven, and ministry upon earth. In the practice, or at least in the theory of the sacraments, the Paulicians were inclined to abolish all visible objects of worship; and the words of the Gospel were, in their judgment, the baptism and communion of the faithful." It is sufficiently plain that it was the study of Inspired Truth, and not any tendency to Manicheism, which taught them to spurn so much of the fiction and mummery of their time; and we can easily understand what is meant by that despite of the cross," and "disrespect for the Virgin," of which their enemies bitterly accuse them. At the same time, these accusers are compelled to acknowledge that the Paulicians "held the doctrines of the Trinity, and of Christ's incarnation and Godhead." And when we add, that they appealed to the Scriptures as the only standard of faith and practice, and boldly contended for the unlimited use of the Sacred Oracles, we have surely stated enough to show that they could not be so deeply infected with error as has been generally supposed. The most serious charge against them is, that they rejected the Scriptures of the Old Testament; but this can be easily explained. That it could not be on the same principle which led the Manicheans to reject the ancient Scriptures, namely, on its characteristic hypothesis that they were the revelations of the devil, or the author of matter, is very obvious from the acknow

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Twenty-seven years did the faithful and fervent Constantine-Sylvanus labour in his vocation, when the number of his followers having at length roused the jealousy of the emperor, a body of soldiers, under the command of one Simeon, was despatched, with orders to smite the shepherd and scatter the flock. Simeon, in order to execute his commission in the most emphatic way, placed Constantine in the midst of a circle of his disciples, and, as the price of their pardon, commanded them to stone their heretical leader to death. The Paulicians lifted the stones, but instead of aiming them at their devoted pastor, flung them simultaneously behind their backs. One of their number, however, called Justus, emulous, we should say, of the fame of Judas, though, in the estimation of the Popish historians, rivalling the prowess of the youthful David in slaying Goliath, aimed his stone at the head of Constantine, and killed him on the spot. And thus fell the brave and pious Sylvanus, as he loved to call himself, in a way which must have recalled to his own mind the memory of the first martyr of the age which he sought to revive. But, as if to complete the resemblance, the death of the martyr was followed by the conversion of the persecutor. Struck with the constancy displayed by Sylvanus, and the devotedness of his followers, who resolved rather to die than recant, Simeon, who had acted the part of Saul of Tarsus, returned to Constantinople an altered man. Shutting himself up in his own house, he devoted three years to a close study of the Scriptures, and other books; after which, without apprizing any of his friends, he returned to the place of Constantine's martyrdom, made a profession of his faith in the Gospel which he had once sought to destroy, and was accepted by the Paulicians as the successor of the man whom he had put to death, under the assumed name of Titus."

The accession of Simeon to the ranks of the Paulicians was the signal for kindling anew the fires of persecution. Very soon, through the agency, it appears, of the detestable Justus, they were betrayed into the hands of their ene mies; and the emperor, collecting them together, devoutly burned them all, pastor and people, upon one enormous funeral-pile. One

*Those who wish to see this subject treated at greater length, may cor sult Milner's Hist. of the Church, vol. fi. p. 493, &c.; Faber's Vallenses, p. 31, &c.; Vaughan's Life of Wycliffe, vol. i., p. 116, &c.

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