for something more. It is this which more than any other thing enables the understanding to comprehend the higher senses; and it disposes the heart to welcome the higher instruction which responds to its larger wants. There is such a thing as a merely intellectual reception of the higher senses of the Word. But this has no value in itself, and no permanence; never indeed any value whatever, excepting as it affords a means for purifying and elevating the affections, and improving the life. On the other hand, as we have already intimated, there may be a preparation for a reception of the higher senses, which is attended by no reception of them in this life. The cause of this may be, that the higher truth is not presented here to the mind that would receive it. It may be also, that it is presented, and rejected, through the unfortunate influence of education, or of circumstances, which cover the truth with a veil and distort its features. But, in either case, and always, one thing is certain; a sincere obedience to the literal sense, an honest and affectionate reception of it, a conformity of the life to its requirements as to the will of God, will open the understanding for a reception of the higher senses, and they will be received, in this world or in the world to come.

All this attempted explanation of the formation of the Word as the means of conjoining man with angels and with God, and of the ascent of man up its several steps, may suggest the objection, that we suppose God to be doing indirectly and circuitously that which might be done by the mere putting forth of his power; by the fiat of almightiness. Certainly it seems to be open to this objection; and as certainly every other explanation of the ways of God with man is open to the same objection. If, however, we know anything, we know that God acts by means. We may know as well, if we choose to reflect, that he acts by means, be cause his own perfect blessedness springs from the activity

of infinite benevolence; from an infinite doing of good; and he uses all that he creates as the means and instruments of

- to each in

his benevolence. He is able to impart to all its own degree and after its own form a measure of his own happiness. For all happiness is from him and is his. The question therefore in respect to any theory of the divine action is, not whether it represents him as acting circuitously and indirectly, but whether it is one which brings together all these means and instruments in universal harmony, and exhibits all as living from and governed by laws of divine order, and as co-operating in the effecting of those great ends of the divine love, of which the very laws of God are but expressions and instruments.

There is such a thing as ascending or advancing in the knowledge of any truth. And as all truths radiate from one centre, they must approach each other as they approach that centre; and truths which are apparently irreconcilable, draw near, and become consistent and harmonious, by a higher understanding of them. If we take the first and simplest truths of religion, we may find that they seem not merely distinct, but discordant or even opposite; but when we advance along the paths they point, we shall see them converge. As we go on, we find their conformity, their conjunction, and almost their identity. We find the higher truth that lies within them; and we find it a reconciling truth, doing the work of peace. Perhaps the simplest of all religious truths is that which commands us to cease to do evil and learn to do well. Whoever begins to obey this command supposes that he and with his own strength and power. But he is told also that this power is not his own; that it is his only by continual derivation from God, whose strength in him resists evil. We have here two truths, either of which by itself is perfectly intelligible. One, that a man ought always to avoid

does so of himself,

and resist evil, because he always has power to do so, and is a free agent therein, and must abide the responsibility of free agency. The other, that he has no power to resist evil, but that strength and disposition to do so are always given to him from God, if he only wishes to receive them; and that this very wish, which is the condition of his receiving power, is not his own, but God's, and is given him from God. Take the one truth alone, and he is a free agent, and may be good, independently of God. Take the other truth alone, and he is but a machine; an instrument used and impelled at the pleasure of another. But within and above these two is yet a third, which reconciles and conjoins them, and makes of them but one. This higher truth teaches, that God gives us individuality as the foundation of all further gifts, and then with every further gift gives liberty and freedom to use it as a free agent. To understand this truth perfectly we must stand at its source, we must have penetrated to the centre; and therefore no created intelligence can understand it perfectly. The wisest of the angels of God may always have something more that he may learn of the great mystery which harmonizes the personal freedom of man with the absolute power, the perpetual government of God, making them both perfect. But while the wisest may for ever grow in this wisdom, the humblest may always have their portion of it. Sincere and reverent acts of religious obedience open the heart, and through the heart the mind, to some perception that he who would thus strive to be less a sinner is led and strengthened by the mercy of God, and at the same time is acting with a freedom he never knew before. This perception is even then, dim as it may be, the light of his life; and it brightens with every step of his progress as he draws nearer to the Source of light. Its radiance shines alike upon the mercy of God, and on his own freedom. Both become clearer

each with the other, as with growing certainty he ascribes his very freedom to the mercy of God. We may at least imagine an angel, one of those who are near his throne, at every moment feeling and rejoicing in the utmost intensity of personal existence, and at the same time enjoying a perception of the government of God over him, of the influence of God within him, of the love of God towards him, and of his own utter nothingness without all these, which fills his heart with a faith that extinguishes all doubt, with a love that casteth out all fear, and with a blessing that is the shadow of the very blessedness of God.

There is yet another religious truth of which we would speak in this connection. We mean that which is expressed by such texts of Scripture as the following, from the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah and the twenty-second chapter of Luke.

"He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes are we healed. The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. For the transgression of my people was he stricken. It pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief; he shall bear their iniquities."

"And being in an agony, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground."

In all that is said of our Lord, and in all that he says of himself, we may find the means of illustrating a principle

in conformity to which much of the Word is written; and which has provided its enemies with the means of cavil and objection, and has not unfrequently given pain to the good, whose enemies within them infested them with falsehood. We refer at once to the apparent conflict between different passages which refer to the same subject, and to the absence of express and definite statement as to most important doctrines. Where the Word speaks of moral precepts, of the rules of life, there is no conflict, no uncertainty, no want of the most absolute precision. He who goes to it to ask what sin he should avoid, what good he should do, need never go away unanswered. But in matters of doctrine it is altogether otherwise. To explain this, we must understand that in the Word is all Truth; and Truth which is given to all men. That is not given which is so given that it cannot be received. The Truth therefore is so given in the Word that all men may receive it. They who stand on so low a plane of thought, that the higher form of doctrine would be to them but a cloud and a stumbling-block, find that form of it which is adequate to them, and suits their state, their needs, and their capacity. And those who are in a higher and in the highest state of mind, find also the very words which flood their understandings with sunlight. If man were required to combine these apparent opposites, or rather to express these two forms of Truth, he could do so only by saying that in one place which must be denied and renounced by him who ascends to what is said in another. Not so is it with God. He says in one place that which is Truth, but which is a Truth that may serve as the external, as the body, of the higher Truth which is elsewhere expressed. He who reaches only the first, may stop there; he has made some progress, if he makes no more; but he who advances beyond this, does not lose it, for he carries it with him.