When we love the Lord our God with all our soul, mind, and strength, we glorify him for what he is in himself; and when we love his creatures, according to their worth in the scale of being, we glorify him through his creatures, as the servants of his household, and the subjects of his empire. If we are holy, we shall glorify God; and if we glorify God, we shall be holy. The one cannot exist without the other; and they resolve themselves into the same thing.

God, by the display he made of himself in the work of creation, intended to produce in the minds of his intelligent creatures either a true or a false impression. No one will

affirm that his object was the latter. And if the former, then he must have intended that the impression should be according to the intrinsic worth of beings in the scale of being. This impression is holiness in the heart; it is to love the Lord our God with all our soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves; and to govern the conduct by this impres sion, is holiness in the life.

This view perfectly accords with the Scriptures. As our limits forbid an extended examination, we will select from those passages quoted by Edwards, to prove that God is his own end in creation.

The first class are those which speak of God as the first and the last, the beginning and the end. "Thus saith the Lord the King of Israel, and his Redeemer the Lord of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and besides me there is no God."-(Isa. 44: 6.) "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty."-(Rev. 1: 8.) "I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last."-(Rev. 1: 11.)

These passages simply teach the eternity and absolute sovereignty of God. They have nothing to do with his end in creation; and the wonder is that a divine like Edwards should have quoted them for such a purpose.

A second class of passages are those which declare everything to have been created for God:-" For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him."-(Col. 1: 16.) "For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all thiugs, in bring ing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." (Heb. 2: 10.) These texts teach that God is the Creator, and proprietor of all things that they were made by him, and for his use; but they do not decide what use God intends to make of them, nor

what end he means to accomplish by them. They have no sort of bearing upon the question under discussion.

A third class, are those passages which speak of God's glory as the end of all things. They may be arranged under three heads:-(a). Those passages which speak of what God does as being done for his name's sake, or for his own glory: "I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth; even every one that is called by my name: for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him." (Isa. 43: 6, 7.) Thy people also shall be all righteous they shall inherit the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glori fied."-(Isa. 60: 21.) "And what on enation in the earth is like thy people, even like Israel, whom God went to redeem for a people to himself, and to make him a name?" -(2 Sam. 7: 23.) "Nevertheless he saved them for his name's sake, that he might make his mighty power known." -(Psalm 106: 8.)

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These texts teach that God does what he does, to lead his subjects to praise and glorify him, and to magnify his great and holy name; in other words, to love him with all their soul, mind, and strength and what is this but creature holiness?

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(b). Those passages which enjoin it upon the creature to do what he does to the glory of God: "For ye are bought with a price therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's."-(1 Cor. 6: 20.) "Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God."—(1 Cor. 10: 31.) The teaching of the first passage is simply this, that as the death of Christ has provided a ransom for us from sin and its consequences, we should consider ourselves as belonging to God, and adore and love him with all our hearts, and so exhibit the power of the gospel over our bodies and spirits, as to lead others to do the same. The other passage teaches that whatever we do, we should do it with direct reference to perfecting the love of God in our hearts, so that we may adore and praise him with all the soul, mind, and strength; and to advancing his kingdom, by perfecting this love in the hearts of others, and thus leading them to do likewise. Thus the state of mind and course of conduct inculcated by these passages, would be holiness in ourselves, and an endeavor to promote it in others.

(c). Those passages which speak of the glory of God as

the result of certain acts of the creature: "Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God."-(Phil. 1: 11.) "Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples."-(John 15: 8.) But how is it that, 66 being filled with the fruits of righteousness," and "bearing much fruit," glorifies God? It does this in two ways: These fruits are holiness embodied in the life, and they present the transcendent excellence of God's ultimate end in creation. They produce their effect upon other minds, and lead them to praise and glorify God, and thus promote holiness in them.

To love and adore God with all the heart, is to glorify God; and to love and adore God with all the heart, is holiness in exercise: so that, in this sense, God's glory and the exercise of holy affections are the same thing. And to lead others to love and adore God with all the heart, is to lead them to glorify God; and to lead others to love and adore God, with all the heart, is to lead them to exercise holy af fections so that to promote the glory of God in others, and to promote holiness in them, is the same thing.

The end of God in creation, then, as we think we have shown, is not in himself, but consists in the promotion of creature holiness, and that happiness which may appropriately be called the HAPPINESS OF HOLINESS.

ARTICLE IV.

GOD'S LAW OF SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT.

By REV. PHARCELUS CHURCH, D.D., Boston.

By the law of spiritual development, we mean the rule which God has prescribed to himself in building up true religion among men. It is, of course, a question, not of philosophy, but of fact and history. By an appeal to these sources of information, we shall find some of the peculiarities of this law to be as follows: 1. It is gradual. 2. It combines in itself all the agencies of history, thus making the wrath of man to praise God. 3. Its indirect mode of reaching results is often the most direct, as the death of Christ is the life of Christianity, and the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

In illustration of this great law, let us notice,

I. Those developments which were introductory to Christianity.

The Cross is the key-stone of history, from which the two

wings of the stupendous arch extend either way, one reaching backward to the fall of man, and the other onward to the consummation of all things. This is the central luminary which holds all human events in their place, spreading light and glory over the whole scene. Apart from Christianity, history would be a book without index, order, or arrangement, covered in the darkness of impenetrable hieroglyphics.

The process introductory to Christianity contains a series of facts four thousand years in extent, to explore which we shall content ourselves with a few of its outlines, such ashow the idea of God was developed-how diffused among the nations-how they became united by a common languageand how their political amalgamation was ultimately effected.

1. How the idea of God was developed.-A moment's reflection will show that the new truths concerning God and his government which our Saviour came to impart, were grafted upon the Jewish theology, and were a further expansion of what had been previously revealed through Moses and the Prophets. Jesus came not to abolish, but to fulfill; not to explode, but to explain and expand. The New Testament is the key to the Old, without which it could not be understood, or, as the apostle expresses it, "we could not look to the end of that which is abolished," because of the veil which covered the face of Moses.

If the Jewish theology had not been previously given, how different must have been our Saviour's work! In that case, he must have created by miracle a new religious terminology, and by miracle have grafted it upon the thinking of those with whom he wished to communicate, before he could have imparted the ideas peculiar to Christianity. The whole process would have been forced and unnatural, like producing at once a full-grown oak in all its pride and stateliness, instead of doing it by a gradual series of developments from the acorn. Without the Jewish theology, Christianity would have begun its life in a vacuum, as to its means of expansion and perpetuity.

God, therefore, had been preparing for the dawn of Christianity through all the previous night of the world, by the stellar light of the Patriarchal dispensation, by the lunar effulgence of Moses and the Prophets, by an imposing ritual, by the messages of holy seers, by the devotional effusions of pious men with the fire and in the flowing style of poetry, and by the various events of a civil government which he condescended to administer in person. In this way, the true idea of God's unity, in opposition to the universal polytheism of the

heathen, of his living or life-giving, intelligent, almighty and omnipresent agency, in opposition to the dumb idols and dead divinities of the nations, came at length to be restored to the mind of man, from which it had been expelled by ages of corruption and debasement.

And with the growth of these ideas was that of a religious terminology suited to express them, from which such words as law, sin, holiness, sacrifice, throne of grace, atonement, justification, purification, and so on, have been derived, and wrought into the New Testament to become the permanent types and vehicles of thought to the pious men of all ages and nations. Some attempts have lately been made to invalidate this terminology by showing its indeterminateness, which cannot succeed, however, because they are against the nature of things, and which, if they should, would bring into discredit God's long course of labor in giving it to mankind.

Who will fail to recognize in this whole process of four thousand years' continuance, the working of one Supreme Intelligence, educating the mind of man to a knowledge of Himself, and giving him appropriate symbols and modes of thought and expression to assist him both in conceiving and communicating those truths which are essential to salvation? It was by this long training that Christianity was introduced.

2. How this theology became diffused among the nations.The Jews conceived the idea, to which they still adhere, that it was designed exclusively for themselves, because to them the living oracles were committed. But God designed it for all nations, in whose behalf he appointed the Israelites to officiate as a kingdom of priests. The Gentiles needed to be prepared for the gospel as much as the Jews, and hence he forced the latter, much against their will, to impart the light of their theology.

In connection with the process of elaborating that theology out of the Jewish mind, there was from the first a gradual diffusion of it, and Moses speaks of God's wonders upon Israel and upon Egypt as designed "to declare his name throughout all the earth." But it was not till war and captivity had scattered the Jews among all nations to establish their synagogue worship, that their theology became the property of mankind. So much interest in their literature was thus excited among the heathen, that the Old Testament was translated into Greek by order of an idolatrous court, so early as 285 years before Christ.

These events produced a ripeness in the heathen mind to receive the gospel, and the synagogue audiences, made up of native Jews and proselyted Gentiles, everywhere afforded a