very close relation subsists between these parables is a fact so obvious, that it need not be insisted upon. And the examples of such relationship now adduced may be held sufficient to convince the reader that the parables of Scripture have been constructed and set in position upon a definite plan, such as may fairly warrant us in seeking a systematic revelation of gospel truth in the parables themselves, even apart from other portions of Scripture.

And if such a search be not merely fanciful, but evidently reasonable, it becomes important for success in our search, that we endeavour to discover some central point of connection-some key to the system-in accordance with which we may arrange and interpret the parables in systematic order. And such a key we seem to have in the introductory form, explanatory of their reference, so frequently found preceding the parables. In Matthew's Gospel this form is commonly, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto;" in the Gospels of Mark and Luke the designation is, "The kingdom of God," and the introductory form at times assumes the character of a question, thus, "Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God; or, With what comparison shall we compare it?" This introductory reference is not by any means invariable; but it is sufficiently common to afford considerable warrant for the conclusion that it points to a central reference, which may properly guide us in any attempt so to group the parables as to obtain a general view of their unity. There appears to be little risk of error in scriptural interpretation, but on the contrary strong scriptural warrant for our procedure, if we regard the parables as a consistent and complete representation of "the kingdom of God" in this world. As to the meaning of the phrase, "kingdom of heaven," or "kingdom of God," there is no risk of dispute, as it will be generally allowed that the reference is to that spiritual kingdom which God has established in the world through the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ. By the sacrificial death of the Saviour, the throne of mercy has been set up in the midst of our sinful world—the benefits of the kingdom have been freely offered to men-and the gate of faith set open that men may enter. This spiritual kingdom, outwardly manifested in the Church visible, is that which is depicted in the parables. And in these parables the revelation of the truth as to this kingdom is given with wonderful completeness. This, then, being the key to the unity of the parables, it is easy to trace the relations of the parables to each other, as they depict different

aspects of the kingdom. First, there are those which are concerned with entrance into the kingdom; next, there are those which depict the privileges and describe the duties of the kingdom; next, there are those which apply to the relations of the kingdom to this present world; and, finally, there are those which illustrate the relations of the kingdom to the world to come. All the parables readily come within these four divisions; and when so placed, we obtain a most impressive view of their unity as a revelation of truth. Further, if they can be so distributed, the order in which they have been set down is the natural order for their consideration. It is reasonable that we should first consider entrance to the kingdom; then what is within the kingdom; thereafter, its relations to what is present; and, in conclusion, its relations to what is to come. By this order, then, we mean to keep.

While, however, the purpose of these papers will be to show the completeness of the representation of the kingdom of God given in the parables, it is needful to introduce here a concluding remark as to what is not found in the parables. The kingdom is described as an existing kingdom; but there is no representation of the laying of its foundations. There is nothing in the parables as to the eternal purpose of God-nothing as to the everlasting love out of which the reign of grace has sprung. Of these deeper, more mysterious, but essential realities, there is no indication in the parables. There could not be parabolic representation of such truths. These things are bid, as are the foundations of the building. The parables trace only what admits of analogy with occurrences in human experience. For this reason, we have no parabolic representation of the death of the Saviour, nothing which comes even so near the grand truth as the figurative saying of our Lord: "The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." We are not, indeed, without some reference in the parables to the death of the Son of God, as in that of the vineyard; but it is only in illustration of the rebelliousness of the chief priests who cast Him out from the vineyard. Of satisfaction to the holiness of God, there could be no parabolic representation, for there is no analogy of human experience which could be employed for such a purpose. No parable depicts to the eye the anguish of Gethsemane-the lifting up, that men might be drawn to Him-and that unfathomable experience of the Lord, when He made His soul an offering for sin, then "bowed His head, and gave up the ghost."

NTO the whole of this subject I do not enter. I simply wish to look at it, and that briefly, in the light of geology, or at least in the light of recent researches or discoveries in that science. Of course, there are cross lights—from history, from ancient monuments, from the nature of language, and from other quarters-which cannot be left out of the reckoning in the full consideration of the theme; but we can do nothing now to show how far these bear upon, confirm, or contradict the geological argument. To proceed then-It will be at once acknowledged by every geologist, that so far as his researches have gone, geologically speaking, that is, looking to and accepting the succession of life on our globe as revealed in the rocks, man's appearance on the earth is a very recent event. An amateur geologist has indeed said, very much I suppose in the way of paradox, that there is nothing in the science to prevent man's remains being found in the lowest rocks, or among the first appearances of animal life; but all true observers do not vex themselves with the thousand possibilities that may occur to a speculative or curious mind; they wisely are concerned chiefly to know the facts. When this witness then is called in, the fact is-and this is admitting all the force of the evidence-that man's appearance is not remote.

"In tracts of fluent heat began,
The seeming prey of cyclic storms,
The home of seeming random forms,
Till, at the last, arose the man.”

Since I remember geology even, there was a part of it very much slurred over, although it has come into prominence now. It embraces what were called the superficial formationsclays, gravels, and sands-which all the textbooks, and mostly all geologists, got rid of as speedily as possible, with one remark, "They are the superficial formations;" and I well remember also with what curious interest I heard that Fleming, prince of observers, had begun to classify those difficult beds. They have risen, as I have said, into notice and importance now, be

cause it is in these beds that we have the geological records of the more recent changes on our earth, and in which have been detected what seem to be the first appearances of man. By themselves, to the student of the science, those beds are deeply interesting, because some of them reveal a state of things very different from what in this country we are familiar with now-the glaciation of our own land and of nearly the whole of Northern Europe, and especially without any doubt the prevalence in our own region of the cold, and the land ice, and the ocean ice, which characterize the shores and the seas of Greenland at the present moment. But above all, these beds are profoundly interesting, because there are in them not a few indications that, towards the close of what is broadly called the Glacial Epoch, man had come upon the scene; and if we could in any way fix the date of the deposition of the beds, then we would fix the date of man, or at least of man's appearance in this part of the world.

Two questions then arise-First, In what beds do we first meet with the evidences of man? and, secondly, What is the antiquity of the beds? (or date, if we can perchance translate the record into historical formula.)

First, In what beds do we first meet with the evidences of man? Confessedly the oldest are certain gravels in the valley of the Somme, which have their correspondents in the south-east of England, and if not contemporaneous with, at least only preceding by brief interval, certain accumulations in caves, which have been examined in this country, in France, and in Belgium. The cave evidence is very difficult to deal with, because, as these dens of the earth have been used both as his abode and as his grave by man, there is often such intermingling of the relics of the long past with those of the more recent, as to throw into utter confusion any attempt towards chronological arrangement. Notwithstanding the greatest care taken in opening and examining some of the caves, yet what can any one say

positively as to the order in time of those memorials which are exhumed, when a penny of a King Edward is shovelled out along with the bone of an extinct species of hyaena? If living beast and living man did really meet, it was not certainly in the days of any of the Edwards of the English line. Yet, not to dismiss this part of the subject too rapidly, let me ask, Is there any good evidence from the caves that man was contemporaneous with some of the extinct species of other animals? We shall see immediately how that bears so pointedly on his antiquity. Well, so far as I know, the evidence as to this point is very slender. Carved on a piece of bone, and it must have been anyhow by the hand of man, there has been found in one of the caves the rude picture of a mammoth, and it has been concluded from it that the savage who engraved the lines was on the same field and in the same era, or else how could he give an engraving of the beast. I have not seen it, and cannot therefore speak as to its similitude to the restoration of a mammoth; but a doubter might fairly start the idea, that if the picture be not the fancy of the savant in its interpretation, it was the fancy of the savage in its execution; and if said doubter were a countryman of mine, he would clamour for the verdict-Not

proven.

The evidence from the gravel beds is less confusing, and requires not only a fuller but a more generous treatment at our hands. In these deposits there are remains or relics of man. I believe his own bones have not been found; for the human jaw said to have been dug out some years ago in the pit of Moulin Quignon, seems to have been introduced by the workmen. If forgery it was, it was indeed a very clever one; for, according to all reports, its special features indicated to the ethnologist one of the lowest of our I think, however, with all frankness, we must admit the chipped flints and the beads as true works of an ancient and lowly manufacture.

race.

It may be quite true that human hands could still fashion them; and if there were certain persons anxious to impose on our credulity with a jawbone, might they not more successfully impose on us with a rude weapon made to hand? There are, however, certain tests which can be applied,

on

and which would infallibly detect imposture. First of all, the flints from the gravel beds in the Valley of the Somme are of a type which, once seen, can never be forgotten, and which it would require a mastery in the art to imitate. Somewhere in Yorkshire, I believe, they attempted to set up a manufactory for what seemed a growing and an open market, but, unless with the uninitiated, the article won't go down. Secondly, those flints which have been deposited in gravel beds for ages, there effloresces on the surface a deudritic crystallization of iron and manganese, which no rapid chemistry of man could produce, and which, requiring long time, attests their age. Thirdly, the surfaces of the flints also are bleached into a kind of porcelainic white, which the fresh fracture never presents, and which, therefore, must have resulted from long exposure. the flint men were the first of Western Europeans, so their weapons are of a ruder, simpler, more savage, more antique character than the polished and edged instruments of an after-race. I think also what are called the beads, and supposed to have been worn as an ornament by those primitive men, but which are in their origin a fossil of the chalk, have been perforated by hands which had not forgotten their cunning.

If

From all this the inference must be drawn that man existed in the region, and was in the possession of some industrial art, when the gravel beds were deposited in the deep valleys of Southern England and Northern France. Of course, even in the full geological examination of this subject, it would be necessary to pass into older lands, to those which we all think are nearer the cradle of our race. And until we know more of the recent geology of Central and Western Asia, and of Egypt, we cannot determine with anything like certainty at what point the beds with human remains come on in the page of history. It seems almost as if there had been a flint age the world over; but then in all lands it is not synchronous,. there being at this hour, on the face of our earth,. tribes, whose only weapons of their own manufacture are wrought out of stone. It is wonderful, moreover, how in the same land the ages-stone, bronze, iron, and which science has so proudly determined may run parallel-thus rendering the problem of the amount of time still more compli

cated and difficult of solution. Also, after the age of their barbaric infancy has passed with any people, owing to cherished habit, and that reverence which all minds more or less feel for what is old, the flint weapons are retained in use for sacred purposes, such as slaying the sacrifice, or opening the bodies of the dead in the process of embalming. In many ways the subject is thus interlaced and involved, and there are elements which must be taken into consideration, which have been by many altogether overlooked.

Secondly, What is the date or era of the beds? I return again to the gravel beds in the Valley of the Somme, and now, historically speaking, a remote antiquity has been demanded for them for three reasons:-First, They contain, along with the works of man, bones of animals of extinct species, such as the mammoth and the fossil horse; second, they must have been formed when the climate and terrestrial outlines of Western Europe were very much different from what they are now; third, there are in the Somme Valley two systems of beds, it is said, both of which contain the flints and the bones, and which are of different age, demanding a long interval between, and thus casting back into a more remote past the wanderings and workings of man.

We allow that the bones are those indicated, and are genuine remains, yet it does not necessarily follow that man and the mammoth were contemporaneous, though their remains or relics are found in the same gravel bed. In such a valley as that of the Somme, there must have been the reduction and the succeeding reformation of beds; and what if the fossilized bones have been washed out of older beds and are deposited with the works of man? There is certainly room for further examination on this point, because the bones are very highly mineralized, and are mostly fragmentary, and even indicate breakage and attrition after mineralization. On this account, it is so very desirable to obtain a bone of the species homo, that we might judge of its mineralization and other circumstances of its occurrence.

Lyell, Prestwich, and others, consider the beds as of different ages-not only requiring long time for their deposition, but an interval also to elapse between them. But this has not remained an undisputed conclusion. Recently a very elaborate

paper has been read before the Geological Society of London by Tylor, who arrives at, and contends for very different conclusions—such as that the gravel beds, higher and lower, are of the same age that they were formed after the close of the Glacial Epoch, during what the author is pleased to call the Pluvial Period-and that this Pluvial Period immediately preceded and ushered in Historical Times.

I have thus endeavoured, in briefest phrase, to state what I believe to be the present state of the question, so far as it essentially concerns us, and I have no great difficulty in reconciling any likely date for man with our ordinary beliefs. I would take care, indeed, not to commit the Bible of God to any of our poor chronologies-and for myself, I may prefer the long to the short; but certainly there is no cause for any alarm, as respects revealed truth, or the ark of God. Even suppose we allow that all science is pointing in this direction, and even it proved that man was contemporaneous with some of those extinct creatures to which I have referred, it does not necessarily involve so ancient a date as we might at first suppose. It is not man going back to their time, but their coming down to his. The urus, which Cæsar mentions, is long ago extinct in France; and in our own land there are species mentioned in history which have passed away, such as the reindeer, the beaver, and the wolf. Man is not now surrounded by that same creation, as that which he beheld when he first awoke to consciousness and Edenic bliss. If, in the years that have gone since then, we know of no new species that have emerged, we know of many that in the struggle of life have succumbed. It is quite within the range of probability, that some of the savages of Gaul may have seen and slain the last of the herd of mammoths; or at least that, when the fair land of France became delightful to man, it became uncongenial to the beasts, and that consequently they had to retreat to other regions. I have no doubt of it. All science, if rightly interpreted, only confirms what is said in the book of Job, "We are but of yesterday and know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow." And as for infidelity, I am inclined to think that it has its seat and source far oftener in the heart than in the head. Oh, could we only bring man

M

OVED with fear." This is the expression to which I propose chiefly to call your attention at this time. It brings before us a very interesting subject-namely, the influence of fear in religion. Is it a legitimate influence?— and to what extent ? Does it enter as an element?-and if so, what is its due place? We meet with extremes in this point, as in all others. Fear seems to have little or no place in the religion of some; it is almost the only religion of others. It were a vain attempt to discover some perfect theory in regard to this matter—to lay down some distinct formula or absolute rule which would apply equally to all cases: yet there is surely a measure of certainty to be attained. As much light may surely be thrown upon the inquiry as will prevent serious error, if not altogether exclude partial mistakes.

Two questions, then, present themselves as demanding our attention at the very outset.

First, Is fear an element in man's nature? Is it an ingredient in his mental constitution? In other words, has he the capacity of being "moved with fear?" Is he so formed by God as to be impressed, influenced, acted upon by a certain class of motives, or considerations from without, which are in their own nature calculated to produce a certain class of emotions which we have agreed to recognize by the terms fear, alarm, terror, and the like? This is the first question ; and no one who knows human nature, who knows himself, can hesitate for a moment what answer to give to it. Fear is an element in man's nature. It is one of the deepest, the strongest, the earliest, the most abiding of his intuitions, or endowments, or capacities, or whatever else you choose to call it.

Secondly, Is there anything in religion to meet this capacity in man-anything objective to set

over against the subjective? A priori, we would at once say there must be. Man was made for religion-for God, that is. This is the final cause of his existence. Man is a religious being; this is the key to his whole character and existence; without this it is a riddle. It is true, fear may answer subordinate ends in relation to my connection with this world-guarding me against physical evil, and stimulating me to the supply of my physical wants. But I call these subordinate, for they are not the primary ends of human existence. Religion must have claims over this part of my nature. I am prepared to find this; and I do find this when I come to examine the one authoritative standard - the Bible. I discover there views given of the Divine character of its holiness, justice, and truth: of my own character-of its sin, its guilt, its demerit of the future-its judicial reckoning, its everlasting recompense of happiness or misery. These are views which address themselves to only one part of my nature; and I need not say what that part is. They presuppose in me, in all, a capacity of fear. They would have no meaning apart from this. There would be nothing in me, nothing within, to respond to them. And so far, therefore, is religion (the religion, I mean, of the Bible—the gospel, as we love to call it) from ignoring this part of man's nature, or from resisting it, that it expressly acknowledges it, speaks aloud to it, takes advantage of it, turns it into a new direction, and consecrated to a worthy end-the glory, namely, of God, and the salvation of the soul.

Some may deem all this rather metaphysical. But, I would ask, Is not this relation which we have been tracing between human nature and religion, between the revelation within and the revelation without-this harmony between them, this adaptation of the one to the other-is it not