His Son Jesus Christ, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of Holiness, by the resurrection from the dead."

When St. Paul, in another place, sets forth explicitly the Gospel which he preached, and by which his tonverts were saved, he declares it to be the record of three facts, "that Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day." (1 Cor. xv. 1-6.)

If this be the aspect under which the Gospel is set before us in the New Testament, then a Church which would set forth the Gospel as it is contained in Scripture must adhere to this Scripture form of it. It is not given to any Church to assume to be more spiritual than God's Holy Spirit-so as, in place of the sequence of events recorded in Scripture as "the Gospel," virtually to substitute a sequence of certain doctrines, beginning (say) with the secret decree of God respecting the election of the individual soul, proceeding to set forth the effectual calling, conversion, and justification of that soul so elected, and culminating in the present assurance of its salvation.

Presenting the Gospel under such a form as this would not be Scriptural, for the Scriptures do not set forth this as the Gospel. I am not now denying that something like this respecting individual election, calling, justification, and sanctification, is to be found in Scripture, or to be inferred from some Scripture statements. I am pronouncing no opinion upon it, except that it is not presented in Scripture as "the Gospel."

The Gospel does not appear in Scripture under the aspect of certain dealings of God with the individual soul apart from its fellow souls. It does appear as certain

events, or historical facts, having to do with the Second Person in the Ever-Blessed Trinity, which facts are the Incarnation, Birth, Life, Death, Burial, Resurrection, and Ascension of the Son of God.

Let us first dwell somewhat on the proof of this which we derive from God's word.

First of all, by far the greater part of the New Testament is occupied with the history or life of Jesus of Nazareth, commencing with His Incarnation and ending with His Ascension.

Secondly, in the doctrinal or hortatory part, viz. the Epistles, the leading events recorded in this historical part are always referred to as constituting "the Gospel," to the utter exclusion of any more doctrinal or abstract form of Divine truth; and also to the exclusion of any expressions denoting God's particular love to individual souls as constituting the Gospel.

First, then, by far the greater part of the New Testament is occupied with the record of certain outward historical facts relating to Jesus of Nazareth.

In order to impress the great outlines of this history the deeper upon men's minds, God has caused this historical part to take the shape of four memoirs, or biographical notices; three of them going over substantially the same ground.

Instead of one life of Christ containing all particulars in chronological order, God has given to us four, which, owing to small apparent discrepancies, we cannot weave together into one connected narrative; so that we cannot make one perfect Gospel narrative or harmony, but are obliged to read or study the four separately. Literary unity, and the exactness which characterises a single welldigested narrative, or memoir, are thus sacrificed, and the charge of repetition is incurred; but all this is as

nothing, for the intention of Almighty God is carried out, which is, that our minds should be saturated with the account of the Birth, Life, Death, and Resurrection of His dear Son.

If repetition had been avoided, as it would have been in any book compiled to please men, the evangelic narrative might have been so compressed as to fill not half the space which it now occupies, and so more room might have been loft for purely doctrinal teaching; but, instead of this, we have the same incidents presented to us three or four times, so that our minds and memories must perforce retain them—retain, that is, the Gospel of Salvation in the narrative or outward objective form in which God has been pleased to embody it.

Let us now examine the Gospels, with a view to this. First of all, let us take the Gospel of St. Matthew. The first chapter of this Gospel has always formed the opening page of the Book of God's New Covenant.

It is occupied, first, with a genealogy of the Saviour; secondly, with a notice of His Incarnation and Birth expressed in the plainest and barest terms conceivable.

The second chapter contains the visit of the Magi, the slaughter of the Innocents, and the flight into Egypt. The third contains the account of the preaching of Christ's forerunner, and of His own baptism by the hands of this forerunner. The fourth, the account of the temptation of Christ and the call of the Apostles.

Such is the opening of the New Testament.

Now I ask the reader, Is such an opening of God's final and perfect revelation that which he would have expected, if, that is, he had been guided in his expectation of what God's revelation was likely to be, by that form of doctrine which, since the time of the Reformation, has undoubtedly taken most hold of the religious mind of this country

I am sure that it is not. A greater contrast cannot be imagined between that presented by the first part of the New Testament, and the corresponding part of any treatise on the Christian religion which you may choose to take up.

But we pass on to St. Mark. This Gospel commences with the words, "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God."

These words form part of the sacred text, consequently we have here the Holy Spirit's testimony to the fact that what St. Mark wrote was "The Gospel." But of all the four this Gospel contains by far the barest narrative of facts. There is from the beginning to the end of it not one evangelical remark, in the modern or popular sense of the word "evangelical."

We next come to St. Luke. In the first verses we are told that his object in writing was that a certain Christian named Theophilus might "know the certainty of the things in which he had been instructed." (Luke i. 4.)

St. Luke also incidentally mentions that many other writers had "taken in hand to set forth a declaration of those things which were most surely believed by" the Apostolic Christians, even as they delivered them who from the beginning were eye-witnesses."

We learn, then, from this short preface what were the things which formed the substance of Apostolic teaching; of the teaching, i.e. of those who "from the beginning were eye-witnesses." We learn what those things were which were "most surely believed," and in which the first converts were "instructed," or catechised."

And what were these things? The birth of the Bap tist; the Annunciation; the Birth of Jesus; the Adoration by the shepherds; the Presentation in the temple; the Baptism of our Lord; a second Genealogy; and the

account of the Temptation,-all introductory to a narrative embodying, in slightly different language, and with some variety of circumstance, the same miracles and incidents which are given in the Gospels of Saints Matthew and Mark, concluding with an account of the dufferings, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus; and all this without one word of what would now be called " evangelical application" from one end to the other.

The Gospel of St. John commences with the most dogmatic enunciation possible of the great objective fact upon which all Christianity depends, viz., the Incarnation. It is by far the most doctrinal of the four, but all its doctrine has reference to two great outward facts in the history of God's dealings with men; the first, that God had sent His Son, and the second, that He would send His Spirit.

The doctrine of this Gospel throughout is Catholic, not Puritan. It is the setting forth of Christ as the Incarnate Son or Word-as the Giver of His Flesh to be the Bread of Life-as the Resurrection-as the True Vine-as giving to His Apostles a commission similar to that of His own.

It concludes with a fourth and independent narrative of the events connected with the Death of Christ, and of His appearances after His Resurrection.

The next book which the Holy Spirit has caused to be written for our learning is also historical, giving an account of the setting-up of the Christian Church, and the teaching of the Apostles. This book contains the abstract of two sermons, one preached by St. Peter, the other by St. Paul, in addition to a number of short detached notices, from which we gather the principal features of Apostolic teaching.

In the second chapter we have the first Christian