CHAPTER XVII. TO ANOTHER-REVIEWING. T was a happy time, to me and many; but not entirely free from the accompaniments of human frailties, I confess! Extemporaneous preaching seems peculiarly liable to them; especially if the mind of the preacher be susceptible of emotion from what he may behold transpiring in the audience at the moment. A little more self-command would have been of advantage. It so happens, that the employments and scenes of the day usually influence my preaching at night-whether in reading, writing, answering letters, or excursionizing-giving a hue and a coloring to my style in the pulpit, or on the platform. There are some minds which resemble the transparent surface of a lake, where the sun, the moon, or stars may mirror themselves; and the clouds-sunny or thunderous; the mountains too, and rocks and cliffs, and trees; the eagle and the sparrow, raindrops, sunbeams, and waterfall! A piece of poetry, written in 1825, caused that movement of the fancy-for poetry, like romance, is bewitching. The poetry I did not repeat, because I could not, but the sentiments came forth in a state of transposition! Fancy furnished thus with wings, excursionized; yet not, I trust, regardless of Mrs. Osgood's "rule of caution": "Let fancy fly her fairy kito, And light with wit its wing, dear; Bid reason hold the string, dear! "For, soaring where the poet's heaven That little particle "so," what an immensity of meaning there is in it! Jesus did not attempt to describe it. Neither did John, who recorded it. And it may well stand over as the theme of eternity! "God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten son, that," etc. No man, attempting to ponder this text for the pulpit, that does not feel his imagination put under an arrest by "so loved." And it is only when under the excitement and warmth of public speaking, he is bold enough to attempt its expansion! Oh! how poor and weak the richest imagery, or strongest figures of comparison! springs, brooks, lakes, rivers, oceans-blades of grass, foliage of summer trees, flowers, shrubs, forests-sun and moon and starsimmensity—all that takes the name of water, vegetable matter, space, all fall infinitely short, and the mind, like the dove of the deluge, is glad to return to the Ark-to Jesus, the gift of the Father's love, and softly and humbly say to all around "Could we with ink the ocean fill, Was the whole earth of parchment made, Was every single stick a quill, Was every man a scribe by trade; To write the love of God alone, Would drain the ocean dry, Nor would the scroll contain the whole, Though stretch'd from pole to sky!" And, oh! how sweet to rest and triumph there! and sing "A way he is to lost ones that have strayed; A robe he is to such as naked be; If any hungry, to all such he is bread; Is any weak, in Him how strong is he! I rested in Jesus at last, did I not! And when there, found my heart-breaking, heart-softening argument! And if your heart was not melted, it was of more solid metal, likely, than the rest that is all! If all the angels of heaven had lent their assistance in those profundities and altitudes of comparison, we had still been infinitely short! "Thanks be unto God for the UNSPEAKABLE gift," will, most likely, be the exclamation of eternity! the climax of our contemplations of it-the chorus of our songs! The entire fifty-third chapter of Isaiah I commend to your attention. It is impossible you can apply it to any other that ever existed upon the earth than Jesus Christ. One in Germany, after quoting "The Lord hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all," "The chastisement of our peace was upon him," thanked God that such was the case! adding that otherwise he could not have made room for the conviction in his heart that his sins would not be imputed to him, even if an angel from heaven had brought him the intelligence, unless, at the same time, he had been told what had become of the sins thus taken from him; that nothing here below could be plainer to him than this, that his blood-red sins could not be pardoned arbitrarily, or overlooked, or unnoticed as trifles of no account. If so, how could he any longer believe in a just and holy God? But when told in the Gospel, not only of his misdeeds, but how they were transferred to him who appeared in his place, even "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world"—even his sins-and thus beholding such an intervention, he could no longer doubt, but was enabled sensibly to grasp the legal ground of his absolution. "It is for my sins which. he atones, and my debt which he liquidates;" and thus he could throw himself rejoicing into the arms of everlasting mercy! a mar That "the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us-and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"—is แ vel" to you, I marvel not! it has been so to the greatest minds of all ages. Junius, centuries ago, was reclaimed from atheism by the same divine declaration. He tells us that the New Testament lay open in his study, upon which he carelessly turned his eye, and found himself arrested by the strange majesty and profound mystery of John i. 1-14, and that by further meditation and inquiry, it led to his conversion! St. Paul exclaims, "Great is the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh-seen of angels," etc. A "marvel" indeed, the more you consider it; for, as godly Flavel observed, if we beheld the sun to fall from his sphere, and to become a wandering atom, or an angel turned out of heaven, and converted into a fly or a worm, the abasement would not equal the incarnation of the Son of God, when he took upon him our nature, became a man, and obedient unto death, even the death of the cross! To comprehend this great mystery is one thing, to believe it is another. A nutshell may sooner contain all the water of the sea than your intellect comprehend this amazing fact. Nor is it any disparagement to your intellect. A Trinity in Unity, and a God manifest in the flesh, would require a Doctor Angelicus from heaven! The mysterious union of your own spirit with your body-if you will allow yourself time to think closely-you will find it sufficiently incomprehensible to master your "intellectual capacity," let alone the profound doctrine of the Holy Trinity. This mystery of your own existence you will find quite as inaccessible to your understanding, I fancy, as the sublime declaration, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; the same was in the beginning with God; all things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." (John i.) Is Jesus Christ "second to God" here? Is he subordinate to God the Father? What thinkest thou? With regard to your difficulty in believing in that which has not been revealed to your senses, have patience, my friend! It shall be so, by and by-in another state of being! Till then, you must allow faith a place among your senses, for it is a gracious sense. It is to your soul what eyesight is to your body. Without eyesight, what a blank the world would be to you! of the new-born soul," says Mr. Wesley, "whereby every "Faith is the eye true believer seeth Him who is invisible-seeth the light of the |