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dred. Can it be justly said to be paid for them all? Certainly not. Five hundred are redeemed by a redundant price; the remaining five hundred are not redeemed at all, but are left to suffer the extreme penalty of the law.

In a somewhat similar manner our author has attempted to evade the force of another declaration of St. John relative to God's universal love to mankind in their fallen state. The inspired apostle says that "God sent His Son to be the Saviour of the world." (1 John iv. 14.) Respecting this text Dr. Morgan says, "The world is the object whose salvation is proposed. There is merit in the death of Jesus to meet the wants of every sinner. It is offered freely to each and to all. There is grace in Christ to subdue and sanctify every soul. The commission of His ministers is to 'go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.' Nothing is wanted. The sinner is without excuse. The Spirit and the bride say, Come; and let him that heareth say, Come; and let him that is athirst come; and whosoever will, let him come, and take of the water of life freely.' Redemption is complete." (P. 340.)

Here again we complain that our author, so far from showing what Jesus Christ has done to secure the salvation of "the world," in compliance with the will of His Father, and in fulfilment of His mission, calls attention simply to the Gospel ministry, which offers salvation as a free gift to all mankind. We naturally ask, On what ground is that offer made? Can any man be saved any otherwise than through the sacrifice of Christ? "Without shedding of blood is no remission." If the Gospel offer, then, is sincere, -and God forbid that any man should charge its Author with insincerity!-the blood of Christ was shed for every sinful soul of man.

To offer salvation to sinners independently of the sacrifice of the cross is rank Socinianism.

In dwelling with apparent satisfaction upon the Gospel ministry, as it was instituted by our blessed Saviour, and makes a free and gracious offer of salvation to sinners of every grade and condition, Dr. Morgan appears to have forgotten what he has said, page 369, where he avers, "God has not devised redemption, and then left it to men to receive it if they will, and reject it if they will. The same grace that provided it applies it." If men are altogether passive in respect of their redemption; and if it is "applied" to them in such a manner that they cannot but receive it; so that it is in no sense optional with them whether they receive it or not; why is an appeal made to their wills in the Gospel ministry? An "offer " made to rational beings supposes in them a power to accept or to refuse it; and the conduct of God towards those to whom the "offer" is made in His Gospel is regulated by the use which they make of this power. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." (Mark xvi. 16.) If there be no "will" exercised in these cases, why is one of the parties saved, and the other doomed to perdition? How can God be said to judge the world in righteousness? and how can unbelievers be said to be "without excuse," as Dr. Morgan says they are? And why does he in another place affirm that Christ is "ready and able to confer eternal life on all who are willing to accept it?" (P. 517.) He says, "Nothing is wanting." The answer is, that if Christ has only died for a part of mankind, redemption is wanted for the rest; and without redemption they must necessarily perish, whatever "offers" of mercy may be made to them from the pulpit.

The view which our author gives of the case of backsliders is, we think, inconsistent and even contradictory. St. John speaks of a class of persons who departed from the Christian church, and assumed an antichristian character. "They went out from us," says he, "but they were not of us; for if they had they been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us." (1 John ii. 19.) All that we can fairly conclude from this statement is, as Mr. Wesley remarks, "Their hearts were before departed from God." Dr. Morgan, however, asserts that they never were Christians, except in name and profession. He says, "Once they belonged to the church of Christ. But they continued not. They became unstable. They were given to change. They apostatized from the faith and practice of the Gospel. They were not of us,' adds the apostle. They never were. "They are not all Israel that are of Israel.' They may have professed the faith, but in reality they never embraced it. He is a Jew which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God.' Such they never were." "On the whole, it was better they departed." (Pp. 116, 117.) He expresses himself to the same effect in another place, where he says, "If we draw back from a life of faith and holiness, we are bound to conclude we are not the subjects of the Spirit's gracious work.

Whatever may have been our attainments and exercises, we must have been deceived." (Pp. 155, 156.)

On this singular statement we remark, that a man who "draws back from a life of faith and holi

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attainment when he was "not a subject of the Spirit's gracious work," he must have realized it by the unaided power of his own nature. Thus it is that extremes meet. Dr. Morgan denies that the sacrifice of the cross was offered to God in behalf of all mankind; and yet confesses that the Gospel offers salvation to all. It follows, then, that the Gospel offers pardon to men for whose sin no atonement has been made, and thus indirectly countenances the error of Socinus. And now, rather than acknowledge that men may finally fall from a state of grace, he speaks of some who had attained to "a life of faith and holiness" in the absence of the Holy Spirit's guidance and quickening power; which has ever been regarded as the capital error of Pelagius.

In a subsequent part of his volume he speaks on this subject in a manner that is certainly more scriptural and orthodox. He says, "We are taught that when a professor of religion falls into any sin, we are not hastily to conclude that he is either a hypocrite, or an apostate. He may not be a hypocrite, but on the contrary truly sincere in the profession which he has been accustomed to make. Neither may he be an apostate, although for the present his principles and purposes have been overborne by the power of temptation." (Page 480.) We ask, Why may not this have been the case with the persons mentioned by St. John, who went out" of the Christian church, not apparently by expulsion, but of their own accord? How do we know that they were never regenerated by the Holy Spirit's grace, and that they never returned to the fold which in an evil hour they sinfully forsook ? Dr. Morgan may affirm this to keep his creed in countenance, but he does not know it.

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With respect to personal sanctification, of which all believers in

Christ are happy subjects, our author justly observes, "We need set no limits to our desires after holiness. God has set none. He has said, 'Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.' The more we ask, the more acceptable are our prayers to Him." (Page 484.) If "God has set no limits to our desires," Dr. Morgan has "set limits" to our hopes; for he gives no prospect of any but a very partial deliverance from sin, and of entire sanctification to God, till "the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it." He says, "There is a sense, and a noble one, in which it must be said of every man truly regenerated, He cannot sin.' live in sin is contrary to the new nature of which he has been made a partaker. That nature cannot and does not sin. Had he no other nature, he would never sin. And when he lays down the old man in the grave, and retains only the gracious nature received in his regeneration, he will sin no more, but live for ever, perfect in holiness and happiness." (Page 208.)

To

Of believers St. Paul says, "Our old man is crucified with Him," (Christ,) "that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin." (Rom. vi. 6.) In what part of the Holy Scriptures it is taught that "the old man" of corrupt human nature will live as long as the believer himself lives, will die only when he dies, and be buried in his grave, Dr. Morgan does not inform his readers. If this statement be correct, then the furious persecutors who "stoned Stephen," and the "devout men " who buried his mangled remains, were the instruments of the entire sanctification of the first Christian martyr. In other words, they were the means of completing in him the gracious work which the Holy Spirit had begun, but left unfinished.

We have entered our caveat against

a few passages in this volume, because we think it otherwise entitled to a strong recommendation; being equally adapted to the edification of the private Christian, who desires to understand the mind of the Spirit, and to the use of the theological student, who seeks for assistance in the interpretation of one of the most profound books in the sacred canon. Dr. Morgan neither perplexes his readers by unimportant criticism, nor darkens the truth by metaphysical abstractions; and but for his Calvinism, he would have produced an exposition, beautiful alike in its impressiveness, consistency, and evangelical savour.

man.

Wednesday Evenings at Cavendish Chapel: Homiletic Hints. By Joseph Parker, D.D. London: Pit1865. So runs the title-page, from which we might reasonably suppose that, in the present volume, we have a work of Dr. Parker's; but the title-page is followed by a notice :-"I thank the short-hand writers for the trouble they have taken in writing the following discourses and though they have done more than all my critics to show me my faults, yet I award them the praise due to skill and patience." It is hardly fair to the Doctor, then, to regard the book as designed and written by him, though evidently published with his consent. If his congregation hear every Wednesday discourses similar to those here given, there is no reason to complain; and we will engage that the hearers neither sleep nor yawn. Yet we must be forgiven if we question the power of any man to produce much literature once a week. Truth is one thing, literature another. Happily, the greater good is the cheaper. Truth abounds, and can be presented at very short notice; and defective indeed must bo that presentation of truth which the Holy Spirit cannot accompany

with power from heaven. But
literature is coy.

"Much time for immortality to pay
Is just and wise; and less is thrown

away.

Downright impossibilities men seek:
What man can be immortal in a week?"

If it is fair to criticize a volume published as is the present, we may point out one or two verbal inaccuracies. We have, (p. 100,) “sophisticated excuses." An excuse is bad enough by the time that it is sophistical. Once and again we have something like wordiness. On page 24 it is said, "Here is a man who has a reputation which causes grief to the spirit of a man who is the apostle of God." Two" who's," and one "which!" The expletive "who is," or "that is," is of small advantage to a sentence. But truce to criticism:-the Doctor shall speak for himself. May the following, and all his other "good words," have their right effect! Society needs watchers as well as workers. Happy the man who has a loving sister; a sister who says little. But does much. The power of a loving woman stands next in rank to God's own omnipotence. It does not necessarily do what are termed great things. It does not reserve itself for state occasions. It has a thousand little witcheries. It has no trumpet. It moves noiselessly. It interprets the glance. It is learned in the literature of the countenance. It gets answers without asking questions. It knows the sweet soothing mystery of silence. It sees without staring......

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"O women, wives, and sisters, know your power over true hearts! There are wretches......on whom your lavished love falls in vain; but there are other natures on which every sunbeam and every dew-drop tells!" Honour to every attempt to exalt the influence of Christian womanhood!

Rationalism and Revelation. London: Longman, Green, and Co. 1865.-The author repudiates the doctrine that "science and revelation are twin sisters." He coquets with both, but does not appear to have made up his mind about either. It is useless to enter the lists with a writer who, after filling fifty pages with loose and incoherent jottings on the subject in hand, informs his readers that he has treated it in a "plain and popular manner;" and who, after garnishing every one of these pages with quotations from a host of writers, excuses himself the labour of further similar "analysis" on the ground of having treated the subject in a "broad and generalizing manner."

A Concise Dictionary of the Bible, for the Use of Families and Students. Edited by William Smith, D.D. London: John Murray.-There are some, probably, whom it may not be needless to remind of the distinction between curtailment and abridgment. The one is easy as "leaving Hamlet out of the play;" the other, in a work of any dimensions, can only be executed by those who, to a competent knowledge of the subject, add the perception and use of

literary perspective.” It is not with a book as with a statue; which, once issued from the sculptor's studio, any mason may reduce by scale and compass, or any manipulator reproduce in plaster. To reduce an argument, a description, a history, proportionally, is an achievement little inferior to that of its original production. This Dictionary, then, is a skilful abridgment, and not a mere mechanical curtailment, of the well-known larger publication, with which every biblical student is familiar. It is the "main object of the editor to place within the reach of every Christian household a popular abstract of a work which has received the approval of those most compe

tent to express an opinion on the subject;" and in this he has succeeded.

The larger Dictionary is condensed, in about a thousand pages, to a third of its bulk; nearly every article is transferred, to a greater or less extent, and the more important ones, such as "Paul," "Je

sus Christ," "6 canon," "" versions," (among which we should have been glad also to have seen that on the Holy Spirit,) are given copiously. Frequent illustrations add to the value of this abridgment of a work which, notwithstanding some drawbacks, inevitable, perhaps, in what is the product of many hands, and which we yet hope to see remedied in future editions, has largely contributed, during the last few years, to the earnest study of the Bible. To young divinity students it is a boon; and it is just the volume for a schoolroom prize, or for a gift to a son from a thoughtful parent. We admit the claim advanced in the preface, and gladly give it a place among our "family" Bible dictionaries accordingly.

German Rationalism. By W. K. R. Hagenbach. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1865.-This volume, from the pen of one of the most accomplished scholars and learned divines in Germany, is a comprehensive and philosophical history of the rise and progress, of the vicissitudes and varieties, of the conflicts and defeats, of modern Rationalism. To the young student it will prove a welcome and invaluable guide in tracing the origin and development of one of the most subtle and immoral forms of unbelief that has ever assailed the Bible or disturbed the church.

Rationalism is no new thing of this no one has furnished more copious and convincing evidence than our author, in the noble book by which he is already well known, "The

History of Doctrines." It is, however, with the more recent phases of Rationalism that he deals in the work before us. Beginning with the famous "Wolfenbüttel Fragments," and ending with the undisguised blasphemy of Bahrdt, the able author gives us a condensed and exhaustive outline of German infidelity.

It is some satisfaction that the soil so prolific of poison has largely supplied the antidote ; and certainly the champions of orthodoxy, together with their eminent services, were never more impartially or eloquently signalized than by the powerful pen of Professer Hagenbach. The English mind has, of late, been more than surfeited with stale plagiarisms from German Rationalism; and we, therefore, give the more cordial welcome to this solid, thoughtful, instructive, and most seasonable volume.

The Hand-Book of English Literature. By Joseph Angus, D.D. London: The Religious Tract Society.

-We cannot live on essences; our food must be in certain bulk as well as of a certain quality. It has been said that there is as much nourishment in an egg as in we know not how much solid beef. But woe to him who carries the paradox into practice! To those who know how to use a manual, this volume will be of much service; but to the half-hearted student, who pants after intellectual wealth, unwilling to pay the price of its attainment, it may prove a snare. As the latter character, however, is being left more and more behind, goes more and more helplessly to the wall, in the modern social race, so there is a large number who will thank Dr. Angus, and make a legitimate use of this "photograph of our literature." It is intended "to supply the curious inquirer with facts that may serve his purpose, or guide him to further

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