source in the inadequacy of our understandings to measure the views of Infinity--the Apostle leaves where he finds them, without attempting a solution; and may even be thought, in his zealous enforcement of practical considerations, to bring gratuitously into view the metaphysical inconsistencies, which the vast and awful themes on which he touches seem to involve. He never assumes the language of a speculative philosopher. His example instructs us, that religion should be kept distinct from philosophy; that those plain and practical considerations, which interest our moral feelings and influence the direction of the will, should never be confounded with speculations which tax unavailingly the highest intellects, and reproduce in every age the same questions and the same efforts to solve them, without leading to any positive result. This just and obvious distinction was soon lost sight of, even in the early days of Christianity. The wild theories of the Gnostics had their origin in a forced and unnatural union of Christian faith and heathen philosophy.

Of God, Paul very plainly teaches, that he is the Supreme Fountain of all things, good and evil, and that nothing can exist independent of his will. His doctrine springs from the fundamental idea of the Hebrew monotheism, as distinguished from the dualism of many Oriental religions, and is in fact identical with that of Isaiah (xlv. 7.), "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things." Paul does not shrink from some of the most startling consequences of this view of the divine omnipotence. He has full power over his own work to make vessels of wrath or vessels of mercy. (Rom. ix. 21-23.) Men are predestinated by him to the good which awaits them. (Rom. viii. 28-30. Ephes. i. 5.) God sends into the minds of unbelievers a spirit of delusion, that they should believe a lie. (2 Thess. ii. 11.) This language evidently originates in the same conception of human relations to God as that according to which, in the Old Testament, God is said to harden Pharoah's heart. Second causes and intervening instrumentality are altogether forgotten in an overwhelming impression of the universal agency of the First Cause.

On the other hand, in regard to Man, Paul teaches, as plainly and as distinctly, the doctrine of his full moral responsibility. Both Jew and Gentile knew what was right, and justly brought on themselves the divine wrath. Both are pardoned, altogether of grace. This doctrine, it must be admitted, if pushed into all its consequences, we cannot, in the present state of our knowledge, reconcile with the other, taught by the Apostle, of

the universality of God's dominion, and the uncontrollable supremacy of God's will. In fact, as we have already observed, the Apostle has left untouched the deep problem of the compatibility of human responsibility with the omniscience and omnipotence of God. He has merely given utterance to two of the profoundest convictions of the human heart, which cannot be eradicated from it, and which we unconsciously act upon, in spite of our reasonings,-viz., that God is omnipotent and supreme, and that man is responsible for his actions and to these two convictions he has given the practical application, which the great objects of the Christian dispensation pressed upon his thoughts. He has appealed to them, in the fulness of his own religious feelings, as grounds of trust and motives to holiness, -perhaps without perceiving-certainly without noticing-the logical incongruity, which a metaphysical intellect might discover between them. But in so acting he has proved himself a true practical philosopher. He had a moral-not a speculative -object in view; and he has fixed men's attention on those considerations only which have a positive bearing upon it.

It must often happen, in some of the most important questions of belief and opinion-that facts present themselves, which it is impossible to deny, and in regard to which it is even necessary to adopt a practical conclusion-whose relation to each other, and to the general order of creation and providence, we are wholly unable to discern, and must wait to have revealed to us, with expanded intellects, in some higher order of being. Our existence is a progression; no great truths are revealed to us all at once; perhaps the greatest will be the last made known, because they are the most difficult to apprehend. We must never forget, in studying the writings of Paul, that his office, as a Christian Missionary, was rather to show men their way through the darkness of this probationary state to the kingdom of heavenly light, than to unfold, prematurely, those deep mysteries of our spiritual being, which have no immediate relation to conduct and happiness, and which, perhaps, even the light of the future world will suffice but slowly and gradually to reveal.

As to the condition of the Jewish and Gentile worlds, before and after conversion-Paul represents both as reduced, by the abuse of their free agency, to a state of moral impotence, which, while it precluded the hope of any spontaneous renovation springing up among themselves, did not exempt them from a just liability to the punishments of a neglected and disobeyed God. Out of this state, when they could plead nothing of debt or of justice, they were gratuitously raised by the free mercy of

God, in the way which he saw fit to provide for their salvation. This restoration was effected-not by the inculcation of any new moral code-not by the provision of any fresh instrumental services and assistances, a new temple, a new ritual, or a new priesthood—but by the infusion of a new spirit into their decayed moral nature-quickening into new life convictions that were dormant-opening before them new hopes and expectations and making them fully conscious of the filial relation, in which, as Christians, they were placed towards God. They were translated by these new agencies, operating on their hearts, from the service of a world of sin and death to the preparatory discipline for a world of perfect holiness and everlasting life.

Here, as in the former case, the views of the Apostle are set forth in so popular a form, and with so little regard to philosophical precision, that, if carried into all the consequences logically deducible from them, they might seem to involve some metaphysical inconsistencies, which, in our present state of advancement, it would not be very easy to remove. Why, it may be asked, should God have endowed man with a moral nature capable of such abuse, as to lead to a state in which self-renovation becomes, practically speaking, impossible,—and in which those born into it are, through the crimes of former generations, exposed to influences which disqualify them for rising out of it? and why, moreover, should they only enjoy the privilege of deliverance from a state which draws after it wretchedness and death-upon whose hearts the quickening influences of Christianity have been predestined to fall?-We can only reply, that the Apostle has dealt with the plain facts of human nature and divine providence, without involving himself in metaphysical theories concerning their relation and mutual consistency. The experience of life is, however, in accordance with his teachings. We behold every day on all sides of us, myriads of human beings sunk in an abyss of crime and profaneness, out of which they possess no ostensible means of extricating themselves, and which yet entails on them, in accordance with the moral economy which pervades the divine works, much positive suffering and a still greater loss of happiness. And in that state they continue -till the spirit of religions awakening, passing over them, fans into a more active life the yet unextinguished spark of moral consciousness-till, repenting, believing, and turning to God and duty, they become capable of instruction, desirous of improvement, and intent on fulfilling the ends of their existence. In fact, in all of us, faith is the spring and principle of moral progress. Till God and our relation to him are vividly realized

by us-the heart is cold, the will is feeble, and duty is only a mechanical service. We none of us want knowledge so much as power and even our capacity of increasing religious lightthe clearing up of those doubts and difficulties by which faith is sometimes embarrassed, and the attaining to a state of peaceful harmony with ourselves and with the world-depends far less on additional instruction imparted to the intellect, than on the right constitution of our feelings and affections, derived from a holy and filial trust in God. These are facts of daily experience and observation; and they are in unison with the teachings of the Apostle; but they come rather within the view of religious wisdom than of philosophical speculation.

Religion fixes our attention on things as they exist around us, and as we see them, in order to lead men through them, in a course of progressive moral discipline, to a higher state. Philosophy speculates, as to what things may be, in the eye of God-in the final issue of events-in those universal relations which bind all things in heaven and on earth to each other. The one fixes our mental eye on the positive realities of the finite, as the steps through which we must gradually ascend to the infinite. The other, in its eagerness for universal truth, transcends at a bound the limits of the finite, and attempts to grasp at once the infinite. Both these operations of the human mind are healthful and natural in their place. Both come out and discover themselves with the gradual unfolding of our nature. Both answer important purposes of intellectual and moral discipline.-But they are quite distinct, and should be kept to their proper spheres; and the final harmony which subsists, and will at length be discerned, between them-must not be looked for in a premature anticipation on earth, but among the remote results of the progressive development of an immortal and ever-improving soul.

We may, perhaps, go a step beyond this, and affirm that there are elements in the doctrinal system of Paul which, fully developed and carried out into the whole extent of their legitimate consequences, lead to conclusions, which take us beyond the limits of that which is actually revealed, and place us above the point of view under which the Apostle, with a practical reference to present effect and impressiveness, has set forth the condition and prospects of human beings. Paul, for example, asserts the moral death of the unconverted, and the necessity of Christian regeneration; and yet in the same system of which these doctrines form a part, he inculcates, with the utmost clearness and emphasis, the free mercy and paternal character of God. This

is the vital principle of his system, the growth and activity of which, in minds that fully submit themselves to its influence, will ultimately expel from it all less perfect conceptions, with which it may at first have been unavoidably associated, and clear it from every feeling and idea which sullies with a breath of human narrowness and imperfection the pure and unclouded brightness of the Father's love.

III. The most interesting part of Paul's doctrinal system is that which relates to Christ and the Future Life. First, let us speak of Christ. We may reduce our inquiry respecting him to three heads, under each of which we will arrange the substance of the Apostolic teachings. Who is Christ? What has he done for men? How has he done it?

(1.) Who is Christ? A man-born of the seed of David-the antitype of Adam, standing in the same relation to the new and spiritual, as Adam to the old and natural, creation-the image of the invisible God-the firstborn of the creation-Lord over all, rich unto all who call upon him-in him, through him, and for him, have been founded all things both in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible-he is before all things, and in him all things consist-he is the beginning, firstborn from the dead, that he may be first in all things-the head of the body, which is the Church-in him dwelleth all fulness-the fulness of the deity bodily, (i. e. really, actually, not as by a shadow,)—head of all principality and power-placed at the right hand of God, above every name that is named in this and the future world—all things put under his feet-head over all things to his Church, which is his body-corner-stone of the holy temple of believersmediator between God and man-a ransom for all-the mystery of godliness, manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.*

1 Cor. viii. 6. 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22, 45. Rom. x. 11, 12.ὁ αὐτὸς Κύριος πάντων. The most obvious reference here is to Christ; Tikaλouμevos is the very term used in Acts vii. 59, where Stephen invokes Jesus to receive his spirit. Coloss. i. 13, 17, 27; ii. 9, 10. Ephes. i. 20, 23; ii. 20. 1 Tim. ii. 36.ὁ δοὺς ἑαυτὸν ἀντίλυτρον ὑπὲρ, πάντων. 1 Τim. iii. 16.τὸ τῆς εὐσεβείας μυστήριον, ὃς ἐφανερώθη ἐν σαρκί, ἐδικαιώθη ἐν πνεύματι, ὤφθη ἀγγέλοις, εκηρύχθη ἐν ἔθνεσιν, ἐπιστεύθη ἐν κόσμῳ, ἀνελήφθη ἐν dón (edit. Lachmann). This passage appears to contain an enumeration of the most important incidents in the mission of Christ-his human birth-his baptism-his transfiguration-the sending out of his Gospel into the world, (comp. Matt. xxviii. 19) and the reception of it-his ascension. It must not, however, be forgotten, that the first Epistle to Timothy is distinguished by many inexplicable peculiarities, so that Schleiermacher decidedly, (ueber den sogenannten ersten Br. des P. an T.) and Neander more doubtfully, (Geschichte der Pflanzung und Leitung der Christlichen Kirche, etc., p. 400, note 1,) have questioned its authenticity.-2 Tim. ii. 8, 10. 2 Cor. v. 21. Philipp. ii. 5-11.