followers hope to be raised and to reign with Him. The Christian faith is not merely to believe what Christ taught, but to believe in Him. As the promised Messiah, a man might believe in him while he was on earth; but what the Messiah should be, and that he should be a Redeemer by his death, no one did or could understand, till that great work was accomplished; the true nature of the redemption, and of the faith by which we must partake of it, and all the circumstances of the Messiah's spiritual kingdom (which did not exist during his ministry on earth) his Apostles themselves could not collect, even after his departure, from all his former discourses, till they had received inspiration from on high, to enable them to preach the true doctrines of the Gospel. And when they did understand this Gospel, they thought it necessary to give an explanation of it in their discourses and in their epistles. Those, therefore, who neglect their inspired preaching, and will learn nothing of Christianity except what they find in the discourses of Jesus, confident that they alone contain the whole truth, are wilfully preferring an imperfect to a more complete revelation, and setting their own judgment

above that of the Apostles. It is frightful to think how much they stake on this their supposed superiority;---what consequences of their blind presumption they may have to abide; "professing themselves to be wise they become fools;" and as they despise the teaching of the Holy Ghost who led the Apostles "into all Truth," is it not to be feared that if they persist in this their rejection of Him, He will give them over to their own vain conceits; and leave those who have turned aside from the "living waters of the Spirit," to "hew out for themselves broken cisterns that will hold no water?"

The books, then, which we call the Four Gospels, do not, it should always be remembered, contain an account of the christian religion, but, chiefly, memoirs of the life of its Founder, who came into the world not to make a revelation, so much as to be the subject of a revelation; and who, at the close of his personal ministry, tells his disciples, "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now." Nor do the Evangelists undertake the task of teaching the christian faith; since they wrote for the express use, not of unbelieving

Jews and idolaters, but of Christians who had heard the christian doctrines preached, and then had been regularly instructed (catechised, as the word is in the original) and examined, and, finally, baptized into the faith. Christianity was not (as many are apt to suppose) founded on the Four Gospels, but, on the contrary, the Four Gospels were founded on Christianity; i. e. they were written to meet the demand of Christians, who were naturally anxious for something of a regular account of the principal events from which their faith was derived. "Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order, a declaration of those things which are most certainly believed among us.... it seemed good to me also to write unto thee, in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed."

The book of the Acts of the Apostles contains a history of the progress, but no detail of the preaching, of Christianity. Many of the discourses mentioned as having been delivered, are not themselves recorded: the object and design of the work being (as in the case of the Four

Gospels) not to teach Christianity to its readers, who were already Christians, but to give them a history of its propagation.

Our chief source, therefore, of instruction, as to the doctrines of the Gospel, must be in the apostolic epistles, which cannot, indeed, be expected to afford a regular systematic introduction to Christianity,-an orderly detail of the first rudiments of faith, calculated for the instruction of beginners entirely ignorant of it, since all of them were written to those who were already converts to Christianity; but yet, from the variety of the occasions on which they were composed, and of the persons to whom they were addressed, and from their being purposely designed to convey admonition, instruction, and exhortation as to christian doctrine and practice, (which is not the case with any other part of the Sacred Writings), the apostolic epistles do contain, though scattered irregularly here and there, according to the several occasions, all the great doctrines of the Gospel, as far as it has yet been revealed to men, explained, enforced, repeated, illustrated, in an infinite variety of forms of expression; thus furnishing us with the means, by a

careful study of these precious remains, and by a diligent comparison of one passage with another, of attaining sufficient knowledge of all necessary truth, and of becoming "wise unto salvation, through faith, which is in Christ Jesus."

The most precious part of this treasure we have from the pen of St. Paul; he being the author of the far greater part of the Epistles, (about five-sixths of the whole), and also furnishing even a greater variety still of instruction than in proportion to this amount, on account of the variety of the times, and circumstances, and occasions, which produced them, and of the persons to whom they were written :-individuals and entire churches; Jews and Gentiles; converts of his own making, and strangers to his person; European and Asiatic; sound and zealous Christians, and the negligent or misguided. The same faith is taught to all; the same duties enforced on all; but various points of faith and of practice are dwelt on in each, according to the several occasions. This very thing, however, the variety of the circumstances, the temporary and local allusions, and, in short, the thorough, earnest, business-like style of his