ee "Mercy alone can meet my case; For mercy, Lord, I cry: I perish, and my doom were just; But wilt Thou leave me? No; The intensity is equal to that most intense of Wesley's pieces, Wrestling Jacob," so highly commended by Dr. Watts. Notice, too, that gem by Montgomery; "There is a calm for those who weep." For originality and elevation read Montgomery's "A poor wayfaring man of grief”; which is excelled by very few pieces ever written by Wesley. What did Wesley ever write surpassing, in the qualities just named, Montgomery's "Forever with the Lord"? Some stanzas of this must be inserted: "Here in the body pent, Absent from Him I roam, 66 Yet nightly pitch my moving tent, A day's march nearer home. 'My Father's house on high, Home of my soul! how near At times, to faith's foreseeing eye, Thy golden gates appear! "Yet clouds will intervene, And all my prospect flies; Like Noah's dove, I flit between Rough seas and stormy skies. "Anon the clouds depart, The winds and waters cease; While sweetly o'er my gladdened heart, Expands the bow of peace! "Beneath its glowing arch, Along the hallowed ground, I see cherubic armies march, A camp of fire around." "I hear at morn and even, At noon and midnight hour, 66 The choral harmonies of Heaven Earth's Babel tongues o'erpower. Then, then I feel, that He, Remembered or forgot, THE LORD, is never far from me, Though I perceive Him not." In our judgment the English language contains little that is finer. ୧୧ Bishop Heber, according to our reviewer, "is not more polished and fluent than" Wesley; nor has he anything of his solidity, strength and fire." But surely the author of the missionary hymn, and of "From Greenland's icy mountains," "Thou art gone to the grave; but we will not deplore thee," was not lacking in solidity and strength, even as compared with Charles Wesley. And what is it but true poetic fire in the hymn commencing, "The winds were howling o'er the deep"? We quote: "The madman in a tomb had made His mansion of despair; Woe to the traveller who strayed, With heedless footstep there! "The chains hung broken from his arm, Such strength can hell supply; And fiendish hate, and fierce alarm, Flashed from his hollow eye. "He met that glance, so thrilling sweet; He heard those accents mild; And, melting at Messiah's feet, Wept like a wearied child." The peculiar grace and beauty of these lines remind us of Genevieve and Christabel. But enough. It is altogether superfluous for one, in exalting a favorite author, to depreciate every other. There is room for all, and a just appreciation of any one is not necessarily connected with injustice to any. LAST words are always regarded with singular interest. If uttered in full consciousness of the attendant circumstances, and with the ordinary powers of mind, they have often the weight, as they are the mortal conclusion, of a life. Eminent names and death-bed scenes would enforce this fact. I. Who utters these last words of our text? The most remarkable of men. 1. In his birth he was prophesied of, looked forward to through the ages, and, when he came, was heralded and sung by angels. 2. His titles challenge our attention to his life and dying words. He is Emmanuel, Head over all things, with the government on his shoulders, the Captain of our salvation, the Lamb of God, the Bishop of souls and our ever-living Advocate. 3. His works among men find no parallel. He handles the law with a divine authority, works miracles, forgives sins, and promises heaven. 4 His life all looks to his death as his great act. Life is the preface, death the volume. He is born and lives that he may die. II. What is finished in his dying? 1. What was promised to our first parents through the seed of the woman. Through death he destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. 2. He finished in fact what Abraham saw, and rejoiced to see, in faith. 3. He finished what warmed the hearts and loosed the tongues and pens of all the prophets, "beginning at Moses." 4. He finished the whole system of types and shadows and bloody offerings. No more was there to be the altar, the dying victim and smoke of burnt offerings. "There remaineth no more sacrifice for sins." 5. He finished then the Atonement, when he "tasted death for every man." There could be nothing more of vicarious suffering, substitution, or satisfaction for another's sin. Then all penance, Papal or Protestant, all repentance and reformation and all attempt at justification by works, as supplementary or completing an atonement, may cease, since he died for our sins and his blood cleanseth us from them. Then every man troubled on account of his sins may go at once and just as he is to Christ; because Christ has "finished" the atonement for his soul; and to declare this fact was the last as it was the most important thing that the Lord Jesus said in this world. "Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits: get ye out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us."-Isaiah xxx. 10, 11. ISRAEL, being tributary to Assyria, revolts. As Sennacherib is about to invade Egypt, the Jews fear that he will take Judæa in his way. They therefore propose an alliance with Egypt. This proposal Isaiah rejects and rebukes, and at the same time points out to them their downward course in unbelief and impiety. The text marks the six steps, which we shall call : The Sliding Scale of Scepticism and Ungodliness. 1st Step. "See not." Notice not so carefully what God says against us. Make not Sinai so bold a feature in sacred geography. Allow for figures of speech, rhetorical flourish and poetry, in the Bible. 2d Step. "Prophesy not unto us right things." Though you see and believe all this, you need not preach it. We believe as much as you do, but it is not profitable to have depravity, regeneration, election and atonement preached. 3d Step. "Speak unto us smooth things." Out of the true select the pleasing, and so be popular and fill the pews. Preach the promises, talk of Calvary, mercy and heaven. Speak doubtfully of hell, or what would be better, give a learned dissertation on Hades, Sheol, Gehenna, Hell and the grave. Make evangelical doctrines so smooth that men will not feel them. Call total depravity a most unfortunate term, and make league with Egypt to overthrow the Assyrians. 4th Step. "Prophesy deceits." Turn the divine truths from their intent. Explain away the unwelcome ones. Reject some passages as spurious. Doubt the uniform and authoritative inspiration of the Scriptures. Also preach theories, speculations, philosophies and schools. Preach on literary, economic, civil and social questions. Bear down, if you must on somebody, on the heathen and foreign sinners. 5th Step. "Get ye out of the way." We weary of this antiquated religion. It is behind the times. All men are inspired so far as they are holy, and all books so far as good. All time is sacred and all service, if given to a useful life. A church with limits and requisitions is narrow and illiberal. Apostles and Puritans have had their day, and now we have ours. We are the modern reformers and believe in progress. "Get ye out of the way." 6th Step. "Cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us." We have our doubts and difficulties about the existence of an eternal, personal and sovereign God, with the attributes of omnipresence, omniscience, justice and holiness. We are parts of God and he of us. Or perhaps unproduced and eternally producing nature is the only God. We are not certain whether there is any God. Therefore cease to speak of him before us. So do men glide down the scale, from a scriptural theology and religion, to liberalism, naturalism, infidelity, a bald deism, and perhaps atheism. We infer 1. That the understanding, and not the heart, should make one's religious creed, for we see that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. 2. That the decline into error and impiety is almost imperceptible in its little beginnings. Guarding, therefore, against slight curves, we shall the more surely avoid the turning of wide and dangerous angles. 3. That we should part from old land marks with great caution. For, in so doing, we may part from prophets and apostles and the goodly company of confessors. 4. That the ministers of God are greatly tempted to be unfaithful. For they would like to please their hearers, and be popular, and build up the society; while they often find themselves in Isaiah's triangle, with Jews, Egyptians and Assyrians severally in each corner. ARTICLE VIII. LITERARY NOTICES. 1.-Lectures on the Science of Language. By MAX MULLER, M.A. Second Series. Large 12mo. pp. 630. New York: Charles Scribner. 1865. [Boston: E. P. Dutton & Co.] THE study of words yields to few other mental exercises in interest, as any one may find by thoughtfully turning over the pages of a book of synonyms or a large dictionary. There may not be much connection in the reading, but there is endless entertainment and instruction. These two courses of lectures, the first of which we reviewed in an article in Vol. II., p. 539, illustrate this in a more systematic way. Their design is to prove that the Science of Language belongs not to the historical but to the physical sciences. The difference between the two is this: the historical are those which deal with the works of man; the physical, those which deal with the works of God. In this sharp generalization, Professor Müller defines his position as holding that language is a natural fact or phenomenon, as really as are the stars and the rocks which give to astronomy and geology the substances of their investigation and classification. With him, language was no more invented or fabricated by men than were the elements of any branch of physical philosophy. The elements of this science he finds in primitive roots, or phonetic types, that is, significant sounds, which no longer appear as separate words, at least in the higher families of language, but are the germs of words-the residuum of the last analysis of speech, answering to the substances in nature which can not be reduced to any simpler form. These roots were neither mere imitations of natural sounds by the human voice, nor were they interjectional exclamations. They were, in every instance, sounds which sprung out of, |