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stellations exist; he thinks his neighbour blind because he can see into other regions of the heavens, and denounces him as a traitor to the polar star of orthodoxy, for venturing to admire the Pleiades of truths confessedly of less magnitude, but which are nevertheless most surely in the heaven of God.

Our excellent brethren, when this evil has fully overspread their minds, are singularly fluent about "yea-nay preachers," "medley mixtures," and "Arminians at the core." The country theologian talks of ministers who "give a good pail of milk and then knock it all over at the end of the sermon;" and our more polished suburban masters in Israel denounce this "wide" and "open" preaching of the Gospel as "unsound" and "low doctrine." Now such sweeping criticisms as these are no doubt very richly deserved by some teachers who scarcely know their right haud from their left in divinity, but it is much to be feared that they have an injurious effect upon the minds of sincere lovers of the whole Gospel, who have not enough mental vigour and manly independence to estimate terms and epithets at their proper value. Sentenced by two or three bitter spirits to abide in the purgatorial fires of suspicion, until he has sworn allegiance to the little popes of the village, full many a gentlehearted preacher has been crippled for life; he has either kept back truths which he secretly believed, or has contorted his faith into the form which the mandate of his patrons commanded it to assume. Such a man either becomes the quiet and useless tool of the leading spirits of his congregation, or else he unhappily flutters between fear of losing caste and fear of offending his God, and finds no peaceful resting place for his foot.

There is unhappily a spiritual slavery in some of our churches, under which honest minds are writhing. Sincere brethren, undoubtedly sound at heart, but whose narrowness and bitterness are quite as manifest as their sincerity and soundness, require and command us to pinch our feet into their Chinese shoes, and contract our waists with their laces, until we are as crippled and consumptive as themselves. Now, if we very respectfully decline to obey the precepts of their super-orthodoxy, it is not because we love truth less than they, but because we dare not limit a perfect revelation, and are unwilling to stain one doctrine with the blood of another.

It is well to be consistent with ourselves, but better far to be consistent with the Word of God. There are really no contradictions or incongruities in the Gospel of Christ, but we are not always able to see the point where the divers streams of truth shall meet in one, and hence we think we see discrepancies which assuredly do not exist.

Let us not judge the Lord's Word by our feeble ideas of consistency; we can no more attain a perfect understanding of the infinite mind of God, than we can hope to comprehend the Eternal God himself. The sea is not to be held in the hollow of an infant's hand; the pillars of heaven are not to be encompassed by the arms of a child; the measures of eternity are not to be summed in a mortal life; nor are the infinite leagues of revelation to be traversed at a stride. God may say, "Hitherto

shalt thou go, but no further;" but we must not say it to ourselves. We are not yet where we see face to face; we know but in part, and that part but imperfectly.

Thus much we speak in the purest love; not censuring others for a weakness which we ourselves have often felt, but uttering a warning note, which, peradventure, may encourage the timid as well as caution the tyrannical-for well does our extensive observation teach us that an unscripturally limited theology has been the bane of many a church, a millstone about the neck of its usefulness, a gag to its Gospel testimony, an opiate to its earnestness, and a grave for its zeal; and worse still, in a few cases, in its most exaggerated form, it has cast an ill-savour upon the lives of the members, and made the Baptist church a hissing to evil men, and a stench in the nostrils of the excellent of the earth. We would none of us wilfully keep back part of the price; we long to declare the whole counsel of God; we wish to make full proof of our ministry; let us then watch against this insidious form of evil, lest we mar our usefulness and miss the Lord's blessing by a partial and one-sided testimony, and bring upon our churches dearth and barrenness by neglecting those very truths which God has most frequently owned in the conversion of souls.

II. We must now present the other side of the case, and remark that very many professors are beguiled by LOVE OF CHARITY into a most unwarrantable indifference to all doctrinal teaching. Now, true charity is so incomparably precious that its spirit cannot be too much diffused. Bigotry is never commendable, bitterness can never be approved! The world itself is sick of intolerance, and the church may well regard it as detestable. We are men-we are not mean enough to fear in our opponents that which we cultivate in ourselves; we are fallible men—we dare not make our own judgment the universal arbiter of truth and error; we are honest men, and cheerfully concede to others what we claim ourselves; above all, we are Christian men, and by reason of the liberty with which Christ has made us free, we abhor the idea of binding another man's conscience. To leave the mind of man unfettered as the air we breathe is one of the first of our unwritten precepts. Our forefathers have died for religious freedom, and there is not upon the page of history a single instance of a persecuting Baptist church. Our ancestry, our annals, our profession, our doctrines, our consciences, attach us to tolerance, liberty, and goodwill.

The undisputed excellence of a charitable spirit has, however, become a snare to many amiable minds. Mistaking tolerance of persons for indulgence of error, they have ceased to reprobate false opinions. It is thought by such men unkind to charge others with holding unscriptural views, and they shudder at the forcible language which earnest believers hurl at the deceivers of modern times. Paul's anathema, pronounced against the men or angels who should preach another Gospel, grates upon their ear; the holy wrath of Jesus himself against scribes and Pharisees is only allowed by them, but never appreciated. If in stray moments they rise to the dignity of defenders of the faith, they attack their antagonists in the style of Dr. Pye Smith's letters to Belsham, the

famous Socinian, which Andrew Fuller thus sternly criticised :-" That was not the way Paul addressed heretics; he did not say to Elymas, My dear sir, pardon my apprehensions, but I fear you are under some serious mistake;' no, his words were thunder and fire. O, full of all subtlety and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?'"

A manly charity can comprehend severe language, can receive it from others without astonishment, and return it without animosity. Effeminate charity delights in honeyed words, smooth speeches, flowery compliments, hollow courtesies, pretended friendships, and loud professions of union; yet have we often observed that when the fit is on it, it plays the bigot for liberality, and would extirpate and utterly destroy all who are not as profoundly tolerant as itself. All men are, now-a-days, freely admitted into the magic circle of the brotherhood of love, except those who have a mind of their own; we are allowed to differ if we will conceal the difference, but our name will be erased from the list if we dare to intrude our peculiarities. And this is called charity! Why, when words expressed men's thoughts, it would have been styled a tyrannical attempt to gag the mouths of honest men! So nearly allied is this plausible virtue to barefaced persecution, that one hardly knows which of the two deserves the sternest reprobation-some indeed would prefer the honesty of the worse to the pretensions of the better. Our churches need not fear a more terrible curse than this blessed charity; it is to be execrated with all the vehemence with which we would denounce the bigotry it pretends to despise. Its tendency is to lower the value of fixed and definite doctrines, and thus to cast down the hedges of the Lord's vineyard, and give up her vines to the wild boar of the wood. Men thoroughly under its influence are ready to throw our creeds into the waste-basket, to laugh at our solemn protests, and ridicule the earnestness of our testimonies. According to the phraseology of these men, doctrines are dogmas, decision is arrogance, clear views are shallow platitudes, and zeal for truth is sectarian bigotry. We need not travel far for illustrations, for our own denomination couid supply unhappy instances. Let this plague run through the camp, and our tents will soon be desolate; no destroyer can be more mighty; the darkest form of infidelity would not be half so deadly. Better is it for us to fight with a decided falsehood than with the phantom, the ever-changing Proteus of latitudinarianism. What a long word we have just used, but surely it is not long enough, and fails to describe that indefinite anything-and-every thing-arianism which we fear is increasing among us.

Let us labour after a clear and scriptural view of the truths of God's Word; let us learn humbly, depending upon the Holy Spirit; let us judge deliberately, doing nothing rashly, but let us see to it that when once we know the mind of the Spirit, we hold fast that which is good, and are rooted, grounded, and settled in our faith. We need not be obstinate, but we must be firm. Like the ship in the storm, we must have good anchorage; we shall soon be shipwrecked if we are carried about with every wind of doctrine. We must have our loins girt about

with 'truth, wearing it not as a mantle which hangs loosely upon the shoulders, but as a girdle bound firmly around the loins.

It will be well for us to prepare for warfare, for it will surely come; and however we may wish for quiet, we shall not find it easy to maintain a peaceful conscience if we join in affinity with error. "Love," says Gurnal, "goes ever armed with zeal, and draws this dagger against all the opposers of truth. Qui non zelat, non amat. He that is not zealous does not love." Let us then contend earnestly for the faith. Hard must be our blows-hard, we say, not because we hate, but from the very intensity and truth of our affection. That love which lets men perish in their follies is but the semblance and mockery of love; true charity will alarm a neighbour if his house be on fire, will speak very plainly if it see him upon the brink of a precipice, and will show but little delicacy in unmasking a pretender who is attempting to entrap a friend. No truce, no parley, no surrender! War to the knife with falsehood and heresy! "CHARITY" is the modern Diana of the Ephesians; but great as the goddess seems to be, she is a false deity, and we cannot bow before her. Souls of Knox and Luther, we need warriors of your mettle! The remembrance of your names shall inspire us while this day we write upon our banner your old watchwords and sing your old war songs.

"Let us in life and death

Boldly God's truth declare;

And publish with our latest breath
His love and guardian care."

(To be continued.)

MARY; AND THE ANOINTING AT BETHANY.

CHRIST gave Mary, who poured the alabaster box of spikenard, very precious, upon his head and feet, a fame destined to be as wide as the world, and to last as long as time: "Wheresoever this Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached throughout all the world, there shall also that which this woman hath done be told for a memorial of her." Yet these words are spoken in a comparatively narrow circle, in which circle, by the way, there was only One person who thoroughly approved the action. However, that One person's approval was enough for Mary. She had not meant to please any one beside. Her ambition was to please him; not to do something that should make a noise, but to testify her faith and love. She was not only accepted, but found what she had not looked for-renown. One sentence gives it. What the Agrippas and Herods would have done anything to secure falls to the lot of this loving disciple of Christ-a name that shall never die out of men's mouths as long as there are tongues left to utter it.

A glance at this interesting scene cannot but be profitable and pleasant, as we hope, to the readers of the Baptist Magazine.

The time and circumstances claim our first consideration. Without taking them into account the incident cannot be fully understood.

The first circumstance of time which it is important to notice is, that Christ was now at Bethany, in the course of his last journey to Jerusalem. A day or two before he had left the obscure village of Ephraim, where he had lain

concealed from the fury of the Jews; for they had at last come to a resolution to lay hold of him, and had published a proclamation that "if any man knew where he were he should show it, that they might take him." Now Christ retired to Ephraim, not because he feared death, but because his hour was not yet come. But when the time arrived, he quitted that retirement with his disciples, informed them that he was going up to Jerusalem, and for what end. They followed him, full of sorrow, and wondering at the holy fortitude with which he went to meet his death. They spent the first night at Jericho, with Zaccheus. The next day they passed on toward the great city, and in the evening arrived at Bethany. Thus the time is to be distinctly marked. When our Lord was on his way to his last sufferings, Mary anointed his body for the burial.

Let it be observed, further, that during the Saviour's last journey to Jerusalem, not more than a week before his death, his conduct was very different as compared or contrasted with what it had been before. He now seems to lay open claim to the character of Messiah. Until now he had purposely thrown a veil over this title; had charged his disciples not to make him known; had forbidden those whom he healed to blazon it abroad; had gone out of sight when the multitudes grew too clamorous in his praise; and, in short, in every possible way in which any other humble-minded man could seek to suppress ostentation, he had done it. Now, in this last week of his life, his course is completely altered. He sets up openly to be the Messiah. Wherever he goes, he goes accompanied by crowds and acclamations. The night before, when he entered Jericho, there were so many that Zaccheus could not catch sight of him without climbing a tree. When he went out of Jericho in the morning there was the same throng attending him, that made so much noise in passing, as compelled the blind men to wonder and ask what it meant. These two blind men, unrebuked, appeal to him as the Son of David, and, being rewarded with their eyesight, follow him with acclamations and hosannas, joined in by all. Subsequently, instead of entering Jerusalem on foot, as often before, he himself sends his disciples for an ass, upon which he makes a kind of triumphal entry into the city, the people cutting down branches from the palm-trees and strewing them, with their garments, in the way. When he comes into Jerusalem the first thing he does is to perform an act of authority, casting out the buyers and sellers; and then, remaining in the temple and teaching, the very children come leaping round him and shouting, Hosannah to the Son of David. It seems, therefore, very evident that just at this time our Lord's conduct was wholly changed; whereas he had before been the most retiring and unassuming of mankind, he now comes forward, asserts titles and dignities, permits multitudes to salute him king, rides triumphantly into his own city, chastises and drives out the defilers of his Father's house, and, finally, accepts at the hands of Mary a royal honour, for these circumstances are necessary to set her action in its true light, as expressive of her acknowledgment of him as king, of her affection to his person, and of her subjection to his authority.

Although not tending to throw any additional light upon this incident, yet as the question may be asked why our Lord should have pursued a course so different from all that had ever distinguished him before, perhaps a brief answer is necessary, notwithstanding that it is a digression. The reason, then, was twofold. To give the Jews one last opportunity of acknowledging and embracing him as their Messiah. He had never before made such an open claim, or afforded them so just an occasion. At the same time, it was a conduct that could not fail to bring on a crisis. The Sanhedrim had passed a

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