carried this same spirit of self-aggrandizement into the presence of God; he predicted that the Eternal Spirit himself should come and wait on his glory. He is distinguished from every other teacher by this, that while he spoke of lowliness as his chief characteristic, he seldom released the attention of his hearers from himself-and yet the heart of the christian is sensible of no inconsistency here, for it feels that while what he has said of himself is measurable, what he left unsaid and unrevealed, is immeasurable.

On the other subject named-the evangelical nature of our Lord's teaching-perhaps, the first thought that occurs, relates to the fact of our Lord's discourses containing less of the peculiar doctrines of grace than the teaching of the apostles. How is the striking contrast between the gospels and epistles, in this important respect, to be accounted for? The following considerations may furnish a satisfactory reply. 1. It was only in accordance with his own arrangements and predictions that it should be so. Hence, he foretold that his first disciples should do greater works than he did; that their success should be greater: and that it was reserved for the Spirit to lead them into all truth. 2. The very limited and gross apprehensions of the disciples imposed a restraint on the teaching of Christ, and determined the measure of his divine communications. Though he had many things to say' to them, he pronounced them unable to bear the disclosure. And what would be the things which, under these circumstances, he would necessarily withhold-what, but the more spiritual truths and peculiar doctrines of salvation? 3. The object and limit of his instructions appear to have been, to inculcate the nature and necessity of that moral excellence which God and heaven require; in order that he might make us feel the want of it, preparatory to the offer of his

Holy Spirit to produce it. The full and explicit exposition of the evangelical system, therefore, did not come within the pre-determined scope of his teaching. For, 4. He came less to preach salvation than to procure it; to make known redemption, not by a verbal and detailed announcement of its plan, but by the visible accomplishment of its conditions; to be the gospel, and to make it. He came to supply the facts out of which the evangelical doctrines are deduced, and which must philosophically precede them. For what is the doctrinal part of the gospel but the exposition of these facts? their transplantation out of the historical or external world, into the intellectual or spiritual? 5. It might, however, be easily shown, that whatever is essential to the christian system is to be found, in semine, in our Lord's teaching. His divinity, his atonement, the influence of his Spirit, and all the leading doctrines of grace are to be found there in a condensed state, in a quintessence. If the principles of christianity as taught by the apostles, form a chain of evangelical truth, the first link, the very staple ring, is to be found in the teaching of Christ. The humble incrustation cannot conceal from the eye of the mineralogist the precious gem that dwells within, and a single blow, properly given, will lay bare its peculiar primitive or fundamental form: many of our Lord's sayings have a signification and a value far beyond their unpretending appearance; nor is it difficult for the christian disciple to discover in them the first forms, the simple elements of evangelical truth, of which the teaching of the apostles was only the lamina, the natural accretions afterwards formed. His sayings are texts; their writings are only the necessary amplification and comment. Their instructions are not so properly a new revelation, as the result of the opening of their eyes to behold the wonderful things contained in his teaching. 6. And, finally,

the uniform mode of divine revelation, in all ages, required that the doctrines of grace should be gradually developed; proceeding from the obscurity of dawn in our Lord's teaching, to the radiance of noon-day in that of the apostles.

Since writing the preceding paragraph, I have been surprised at meeting with the following remarks, bearing on the same subject; which as they occur in a popular work of the present day, Abbot's 'CORNER STONE,' deserve a moment's attention. Others are embarrassed when they think on this subject;' (that is, on the greater prominence given to the object and efficacy of our Lord's death in the epistles compared with the gospel;) they do not know how to reconcile the seeming inconsistency, though they endeavor to diminish it, as far as possible, by exaggerating and emphasizing the little which Jesus Christ did say, in regard to his sufferings and death. . . . . He who cannot take the directions which Christ or John gave, for beginning a life of piety by simple repentance for the past, without adding something from his own theological stores, or forcing the language to express what never could have been understood by those who originally heard it, he cannot be studying the gospel in the right Spirit.' To put a forced and mystical construction on any part of the oracles of God, is an act of irreverence which cannot be sufficiently deprecated. But it is one thing to put them to the torture, compelling them to utter what they never meant; to turn from them, or to drown their voice with our own, before they have uttered all the mind of the Spirit, is another.

The statements cited appear at least to be unconsidered and unguarded; and, on the principle which they seem to involve,—namely, that the understanding of our Lord's original hearers was the measure of his meaning,—I will venture to remark; First, that, in direct contradiction to this proposition, it is a well-known canon of scripture in

terpretation, that the sayings of our Saviour are to be apprehended, not merely in that sense to which the views of his hearers at the time could reach, but in the sense which he himself attached to them.' Second, his own practice contains a warrant for this canon; for how often do we find him applying it to the interpretation of the Old Testament: expounding some of its truths in a sense more spiritual and profound, than even the original propounders themselves conceived. Third, his express declarations, and the confessions of his apostles, harmonize with it. They frankly acknowledge, that when he adverted to the nature and necessity of his sufferings, they understood not his meaning. He reproached them with their slowness of apprehension. He promised his Spirit to recall hissayings to their minds as so many lost truths. He intimated that he had left in their possession truths of which they little suspected the value. And after his resurrection, he said unto them, these are the things which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you . . . . Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures;' obviously implying, that, up to that moment, they had not understood his evangelical expositions of them. Fourth, it seems to be necessary for the moral developement of our nature, that the truth employed should be such as is itself capable of constant expansion and new developements ;that, like its Divine original, it should brighten while we are looking at it; heighten while we are aspiring to reach it; and thus elevate us to itself, the standard of perfection.

Accordingly, all the first lessons set us by God in nature and providence, appear to be constructed on this principle. He who becomes a student of nature soon finds that he is bending over a fountain which deepens beneath his gaze. And what is the Jewish economy, if we desire to reach its interior truths, but a vast, profound, élaborated enigma,—

to which the gospel indeed brings us the key,-but the opening and exploration of which is yet incomplete: excusing, if not justifying the opinion of Origen, that ‘a clear understanding of the reasons of the Israelitic economy, and of all the Levitical laws, belongs to the privileges of the future life.' And the teaching of Christ seems to possess the same profound and comprehensive character. Comparative anatomy informs us, not only that animated nature forms an ascending series of beings, beginning with few organs, and increasing in number, complexity and finish, up to man; but that in some of the earliest and simplest links of the living chain, there is traceable at promise, a mute prophecy of all the rest, a rough outline of all that is to follow; that many processes are sketched in the lower animals, the completion of which is reserved for the composition of man. In like manner, the entire system of Judaism was one compacted prophecy of the gospel, a presentiment of Christianity; in which the great doctrines and virtues, which it is the province of the new dispensation to develope and mature, may be found in the embryoes and elements. And, on the same principle, in the sayings of Christ, the gospel may be found thrown out in its rudiments. For Christ,' saith Milton, gives no full comments, or continued discourses, but speaks oft in monosyllables, like a master, scattering the heavenly grain of his doctrine like pearls here and there, which requires a skilful and laborious gatherer. His teaching is the seedplot in which the great doctrines of grace were first sown, to be afterwards transplanted and cultivated in the inspired ministry of the apostles, where they have room to luxuriate and yield in perfection the fruit of life.

Considerations like these embolden us to suppose, not merely that the whole evangelical system as developed by the apostles, lies, in its germ, in the teaching of Christ;