MAN'S RELATION TO THE DIVINE LAW. escape from its grasp; they may deny its obligation, but they cannot destroy it. They may deny it now, but they will not always be able to deny it-they will be made to feel it in its painful effects. There are no sceptics in the invisible world. It is of great importance that we should clearly understand the relation in which innocent man stood to this law--the relation in which fallen man stands to this law--the relation in which restored man stands to this law. To innocent man, this law was the charter by which he held the fair inheritance of divine favour bestowed on him. The principle of the original economy was: "Do this, and live." Obedience to the law was the stipulated means of securing the divine favour, and of obtaining higher manifestations of this favour. It would have brought him into, and kept him in, a justified state; and, both as a statement of duty, and incentive to duty, presented to a holy mind predisposed to holiness, it tended to make holy man more and more holy. The law was then strong to justify, to sanctify, to save. 31 who "has redeemed us from the curse, having become a curse for us." "There is no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus;" and the law is not with him at all the means of justification, nor the primary means of sanctification. He is "justified freely by God's grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." To him "eternal life is the gift of God, through Jesus Christ the Lord;" and as to sanctification, "the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost, given to him" by the faith of the truth, is the spring of holy obedience. Being "not without law to God, but under the law to Christ," he walks "at liberty, keeping the commandments;" not doing that he may live, but doing because he lives, and living because he believes; finding, in the holy, good law of God, a light to his feet and a lamp to his path;" a stimulus when indolent-a guide when perplexed-a constant source of delightful contemplation and powerful motive, as an exhibition of the wisdom, holiness, and benignity of Him" whose he is, and whom he serves." Such is a brief statement of the relation in which innocent, fallen, restored man stands to the divine law. 66 To the two classes into which my readers, and into which, indeed, the whole human race, are divided as to their relation to the law, I conclude with offering a few affectionate exhortations. All are by nature related to the law in the second of the ways I have been describing; "all have sinned"--all have incurred the curse With regard to fallen man, his relation to this holy, just, and good law, has undergone a most melancholy change. He has broken the law; and he is, so far as all influence but divine is concerned, invincibly indisposed to keep it. The principle of the economy which sin brings man under is: "The wages of sin is death." The law says to the sinner: "Thou hast disobeyed, thou must, thou shalt, be punished;" and it says also: "Obey, obey perfectly every one of all are under the authority and obligation of my requisitions. Every neglect, every violation, the violated law; and all who have not been debrings along with it a new sentence of condem-livered from this state, by the atoning sacrifice nation-sinks thee deeper in guilt and in perdi- and sanctifying Spirit of Christ, are so related to tion." But not one word of promise, no ground the law still. Not a few of the readers of these of hope, does the holy, good law offer to the pages may belong to this class. Are there not sinner. It would not be a holy, just, and good some of them who know they are sinners, and law, if it did. To the sinner, then, the law can- who know, too, that they are unpardoned, unnot be the means of justification. No; " by the sanctified sinners? To such I say, Oh! think deeds of the law no flesh can be justified," for of your wretched, perilous condition, every this plain reason: By the law is the conviction hour becoming more perilous and wretched! of sin." Man is a sinner, and the law con- Seck not to deny the fact that you are sinners. demns him because he is a sinner; how, then," If you should justify yourself your own mouth can it justify him? But this is not all. To the sinner the law cannot be the primary means of sanctification. For this purpose, too, "it is weak through the flesh." It cannot remove the enmity which conscious guilt generates and perpetuates. It merely authoritatively commands us to do what we are invincibly disinclined to do; and forbids us to do what we are strongly inclined to do, under the most fearful sanc tions; and in this way, through our depravity, it either rouses our depraved propensities into a state of exasperated activity, or smites our powers of spiritual action with the torpor of despair. 66 With regard to restored man, he stands, too, in a peculiar and most important relation to the holy, just, and good law of God. He is delivered from its curse through union to Him would condemn you; if you say you are perfect, it also proves you perverse." Do not attempt to apologize, or excuse, or justify your conduct in violating the law. No excuse will bear examination at the bar of your own calm conscientious judgment now. How, then, will it bear to be urged at the bar of divine justice hereafter? "When he punishes you, you will have nothing to answer him." No, you will be speechless. Do not say the law was too strict in its requisitions, too severe in its sanction; we have scen that the law is every way worthy of its infinitely perfect Author. Do not speak of the weakness of your nature; that is but another name for its depravity. Do not harbour the thought, that you can be saved without the law being satisfied without your being both justified and sanctified. Do not attempt, for it 66 word of the truth of the Gospel, understood and So fares it with the sinner when he feels is impious and vain, to obtain either the one or the other by works of righteousness which Do not supyou may suppose you can do. pose that you can, in any degree, dissolve the connection between you and the law. No, you are bound to it by a chain indissoluble as the decrees of the Eternal. Do not suppose that you can have the law in any degree altered. When God changes, then, and not till then, can the law change; for what is the law but a declaration of God's mind and will as to what is right; and he is of one mind, and who can change him?" Acknowledge the excellence and authority of the law. Acknowledge your own inconceivable folly and wickedness in violating it, and in being opposed to it in your carnal minds. Instead of seeking to have your connection with the law dissolved, or to convert it into an instrument of justification, seek to have your relation to the law changed. That can take place only by a change taking place either in the law or in you. The former is absolutely impossible. The created universe may be annihilated, but the law of God cannot change. Oh! dream not-it is a dangerous, if continued it will be a fatal, dream-of its demands, either preceptive or sanctionary, being lowered. The change must take place in you; you must pent and believe the Gospel;" you must change your mind respecting God; you must believe the truth with respect to Jesus Christ; you must, in good earnest, believe that God is the immaculately holy, the infinitely kind being he appears to be in the face of Christ Jesus." Believing the truth as it is in Jesus-believing that "God is in Christ reconciling the world to himself, seeing he made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him"-believing that "he has redeemed us from the curse, having become a curse in our room"-believing that he hath "taken away sin by the sacrifice of himself”— you shall be "justified freely through the re- I have left myself room to say only a word or demption that is in Christ Jesus;" and, "being two to those whose relation and feelings to the law justified by faith, ye shall have peace with God, have been happily changed," through sanctifithrough whom we have received the reconci- cation of the Spirit and belief of the truth"-to liation." You will then be reconciled to God which, I trust, not a few of my readers belong. and to God's law; you will learn, indeed, to Show gratitude for deliverance from the curse .. count it "holy, just, and good," and rejoice that of the law; by cheerful obedience to its precepts it is "magnified and made honourable" in the make it evident that you do indeed count the finished work of your Lord; and loving God, yqu | law holy, just, and good;-that you delight to will be taught, by his grace, to deny ungodli- contemplate it, as exemplified in the all-perfect | ness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righ-character of your Lord and Saviour, who fulteously, and godly in the present world," while filled all righteousness; to study it in the writlooking for the blessed hope, the glori-ings of the holy prophets and apostles; and to you are re ous appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify us unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." And thus "what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh," will be accomplished through "God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin." Through this wonderful manifestation of the united glories of divine holiness and love, set forth in the The scrutiny of these all-seeing eyes I dare not "" And you need not," God replies; This Book shall teach you-read, believe, and live." And what is the practical result? A soul redeemed demands a life of praise; COWPER. reduce your studies to practice, in the cultivation of every holy disposition--in the performance of every prescribed duty. Oh! beware of giving the slightest ground to the world to suppose that the faith of these truths, the enjoyment of these privileges, has any tendency to make men say, "Let us continue in sin that grace may abound." Make it evident that "the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free,” is not a liberty to sin, but liberty in holiness. A VISIT TO JERUSALEM. "Walk at liberty, keeping his commandments." "Serve him without fear, in righteousness and holiness all the days of your life." Having died and been buried, and raised again in your Surety, who died by sin under the curse of the law once, but who now liveth for ever, by the power of God, made exceeding glad in the light of his Father's countenance, "reckon yourselves, by this death and resurrection, dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord;" and, "let not sin reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof; neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin; but yield yourselves unto God as those who are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God; for sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the law, but under grace.' Improve the high advantages of your new situation-act up to your principles and your privileges; and "whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, whatsoever things are commanded in the holy, just, and good law, think on these things." Let your holy, happy lives proclaim, "His yoke is easy, his burden is light;""his commandments are not grievous-his law is holy, just, and good." A VISIT TO JERUSALEM.† WE rose very early to set out on our journey to Jerusalem. I felt a feverish restlessness and anxiety to reach that city, which had been associated in my mind from childhood with all that is sacred and venerable; and I often said within myself as we rode along: "Is it possible that this very day my feet shall stand within the gates of Jerusalem?" Our route lay for some time through a fertile plain, which had some appearance of cultivation; there being several fields of millet in it. But the farther we advanced on our journey the more barren and desolate the country became. My mind was alternately occupied with two very different pictures. At one time I thought of the days when all the male population of Israel went up "three times in a year" to Jerusalem; "whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord." In all probability six of the tribes, whose possessions lay northward of where I then was, travelled by this very road; the party increasing at every stage of their journey, company by company," until they all "appeared before God in Zion." As I thought of this goodly assembly, all animated by one spirit, and intent on one common object, receiving each new accession of brethren with friendly greetings, and beguiling the way with social converse, the melancholy contrast Rom. vi. 1-13. From "A Visit to my Fatherland, in 1843." By R. H. Herschell. London, J. Unwin. 33 presented by the present state of the country forcibly recalled the opposite picture, as delineated in the writings of the prophets. Nay, I should not say the picture was recalled the very reality was itself before me. "The highways" are indeed " desolate" and lie waste;" instead of being trodden by a joyous company of Israel's sons, a few strangers from distant lands come to behold the judgments of the Lord, and to "say, when they see the plagues of that land, that it is not sown nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein: Wherefore hath the Lord done thus in this land? What meaneth the heat of this great anger? The marks of the curse are indeed upon the land. Sometimes a green spot will be seen at a distance, giving the idea of fertility; but when approached, it is found to bear only the tokens of the original de nunciation-thorns and briers. We rode on hour after hour, amid increasing desolation. The latter part of the way lies over a succession of mountainous ridges, where there is no regular road; but the horses clamber up the best way they can, sometimes over smooth slabs of stone, and some As we times through heaps of loose stones. My impatience to see the holy city increased every hour. climbed up each ridge, I expected that from its summit I should behold Jerusalem; but I was doomed to many disappointments, as summit after summit only gave to view another range of hills to be surmounted. It forcibly reminded me of the journey to the heavenly Jerusalem, which is a steep and difficult path, presenting one mountain after another to be overcome; but we know that at last we shall reach the city of God; and should not the certainty of this reconcile us to all the difficulties of the way? While on this tedious journey I was made fully to understand the comparison of the Psalmist: "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people from henceforth, even for ever." At length the long expected moment arrived: about noon we reached the summit of the hill Scopus, and all at once Jerusalem burst upon my view! The feelings of such a moment cannot be described; they can only be faintly imagined by those who have not experienced them. Every Christian traveller speaks of the feeling as overpowering; what, then, was it to me, as at once a Christian and a Jew! The scene of the world's redemption the metropolis of the country of my fathers" the city of the great King!" I could, in some faint measure, realize the feelings of my blessed Lord and Master, when "he beheld the city, and wept over it." But here, as everywhere else in the Holy Land, you are indebted to association alone. That which actually meets your view is a comparatively modern eastern city; her bulwarks and her palaces are those of the false prophet. The Lord has abhorred his sanctuary; he has given it to be "trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." How near this may be, who can tell? We went first to the Damascus gate, but were not admitted; we then went round to the Jaffa gate, and When thinking of its former magnificence, and viewing it now, how appropriate do the words of Jeremiah appear! "How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary! The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts." The word of the Lord went forth against Jerusalem--that word which is "a fire, and a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces." He said by the Prophet Micah that "Jerusalem shall become heaps;" and it has been literally fulfilled. The modern city is built on the heaps of rubbish accumulated by the ruins of ancient buildings. So great are these heaps, that in digging for the foundation of a house, they have to go to an immense depth before they can get to the solid rock. On this account a great many of the present houses are built on arches. The glory and magnificence of Jerusalem are gone; she is in bondage, as well as her children. The jealousy of her Turkish possessors is ever on the watch, lest anything should seem to interfere with their despotic sway; and any material change in her condition, while they continue to have the rule, appears impossible. of man. In the dark-robed form that lingers thoughtfully among the tombs in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, or bends with black turban to the ground at the "Place of Wailing," you seem to behold a destiny incarnate. The fierce dark eye and noble brow-that medallic profile that has been transmitted unimpared through a thousand generations and a thousand climates; these are nature's own illustrations, and vindicate old history. Thou son of a perverse, but mighty generation; thou chosen, yet accursed of Heaven; homeless throughout the world, yet a dweller in all its cities; treasurer of the dress man worships, yet despised by its bigots; thou inhabitest the proudest palaces, and the most sordid huts; thou art welcomed in the cabinets of kings, and hooted in the haunts of the destitute. Thy destiny, that has been so far fulfilled, must yet be gloriously completed. Thy wanderings over the world shall have an end, like the wandering in the desert, by which thou wert first disciplined, and made fit for freedom: "And we shall see ye go,-hear ye return Repeopling the old solitudes." Warburton's Crescent and the Cross. THE CHILDREN OF MISSIONARIES-THE DISADVANTAGES OF THEIR POSITION.* THE circumstances of the children of missionaries are peculiarly trying, and such as should naturally and strongly commend them to the sympathy and the prayers of Christians. These children are always exposed to a greater amount of physical suffering than children in our native land. They are the victims of some of the same causes which work the early What now remains of the glory of Mount Zion? Nothing. Its regal splendour, its hallowed sacred-prostration and premature death of missionaries themness are gone. "Therefore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed as a field," was the word of the inspired prophet to "the heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel;" and there is now a field of barley growing on Zion, as a testimony that the word of the Lord standeth sure. Where now are her bulwarks and her palaces, which the Psalmist pointed out to the consideration of the faithful? They are swept away with the besom of destruction. The last denunciation uttered by the Prophet Micah has also been fulfilled-that "the mountain of the house" should become "as the high places of a forest." This latter expression signifies the places where the worship of a false religion was carried on; the "high places" of the heathen, in the prophet's days, being always in a wood or grove. This, also, has been fulfilled to the very letter. The Mosque of Omar, the sanctuary of the false prophet, occupies the place where the temple of the Lord once stood; and, as if to fulfil the prophecy more minutely, the Mohammedans have planted around it cypress and orange trees; so that, looking at it from a distance, it indeed appears "like the high places of a wood" or forest. THE JEW IN JERUSALEM. The Jew should be seen at Jerusalem. There, if the missionary or the political economist can make little out of him, he is at least a striking specimen selves. They are exotic plants. The climate is generally more or less uncongenial, and often decidedly hostile, to the children even of foreigners. Many of the lands to which our missionaries go are often scourged by "the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and the destruction that wasteth at noon-day;" and the children of missionaries are sometimes numbered among its victims. And some of our missionaries are situated where medical relief, in case of the sickness of their children, cannot be obtained. Our own first-born died suddenly at Tabréez, of a disease which might at least have been greatly mitigated by judicious prescription; but there was no physician who could understand our language, within four hundred miles of us; and we were in similar circumstances during the sickness and death of our third child. The children of missionaries, also, necessarily suffer the privation of many privileges enjoyed by children in our native land. These privations are more and greater than can be told. What, for instance, are the intellectual advantages enjoyed by these children? In general, they have no school, no teacher, and no instruction, except the very limited amount which the missionary himself communicates, during the few moments which he is able, with the utmost difficulty, and but very irregularly, to redeem from his pressing care and toil for the salvation of the perishing around him. From Perkins' Eight Years' Residence in Persia. THE CHILDREN OF MISSIONARIES, &c. 35 The children of missionaries are most alarmingly that day for our own pleasure. Little children must exposed to moral contamination. So far as residence remember that the Sabbath is God's own day, and they is concerned, they are upon a level with the benighted must not rob God by taking some of his day for around them. Nothing but the single taper of the playing and making a noise. Suppose that on some grand day you had a holiday given to you, on which missionary's own example shines upon their path-you were told you might play and make as much noise way. All else is deep darkness. They feel nothing as you liked. Now, suppose that while you were of the pure moral atmosphere of enlightened Chris- very happy at play, your master or mistress called tian lands. Every man, every child whom they you in, and made you come to school, and learn some meet, is a sower of tares. They cannot step from lessons would you not feel angry at being robbed of some of your holiday? I am sure you would. But their parents' dwelling without being in peril. The how often do you rob God of some of his day? How peril is much nearer. The domestic-the nurse, who often do little boys and girls play, and make a noise enters the missionary's abode to assist the sick on Sabbath, just the same as on other days, and thus mother, brings with her the deadly poison; and ere take some of God's own day for amusing themselves? he is aware, there is painful evidence that it has been Oh! this makes God very angry; and we cannot too successfully administered to his unsuspecting children who love God will not play on the Sabbath, think that such children will ever go to heaven. Ono! children. It is not long ago, that a painful case because it is God's day; but what time they have occurred, in a pious English family in Persia. The over from school-time they will spend quietly and in parents had, with much pains-taking, secured the a holy manner. When they go to church, they will services of a Mohammedan domestic, whose kind pray that they may go to get a blessing there; they attention to their little one for some time created in will not try to be thinking of their play and other things while in church; but they will listen, and seek to understand what the minister says. And when they go home they will go quietly, remembering it is God's day; they will not play and idle away their time with others as they go; but they will go home in a quiet manner, and when they get there, they will get some good Sabbath book, or their Bibles, and read Such constant and appalling exposure of the child-them. O how I wish there were more children who ren of missionaries, appeals with an eloquence which nothing else can, for the prayers of Christians, that the Lord, who alone can afford them effectual succour, would shield them from threatening destruction. The fact that so many judicious missionaries deem it to be their duty to part with their children, and send them home, for preparation to obtain a comfortable subsistence, and to be useful in future life, and for security from hostile influences, speaks volumes on this subject. them only increased confidence and satisfaction. But how were they surprised and shocked, on one day finding their little girl, then four years old, kneeling with her face towards Mecca, and lisping the devotions of the false prophet! Column for the Young. THE SABBATH-DAY. "Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy."-Exod. xx. 8 I DARE say you have often heard your minister say this at church on a Sabbath; but perhaps you have never thought what it means. Well, if you will listen, I will tell you the meaning of it. We are commanded by God to "remember the Sabbath-day." Whose day is the Sabbath? It is God's own day, and we are told to keep it holy. The word Sabbath means ji rest. Now when God made the world, and all in it, he was six days in making all, and on the seventh day he "rested." The seventh day was the same as the Sabbath-day, and God rested on that day, to show people that he wished them to rest also. By resting I mean stopping from all week-day work-from all play, and from everything that belongs to this world. God has given us six days in the week in which we may be busy at work, and be industrious about worldly things; but God says that the Sabbath is his own day; and that then people must do no work, but must keep it holy. What does keeping the Sabbath holy mean? It means that on the Sabbath-day we are to do nothing but what belongs to God and our souls. We are to think of God, and not of this world; we are to think of our souls, and not of our week-day business. We are to remember it is God's own day, and therefore we must not take away any of the time of kept God's day holy! Do you not wish to keep holy |
