desperation. The whole law which thus accuses and condemns, Christ has abolished (Rom. vii. viii.); and thus makes us free (John viii.). The work of the law generates sad and sorrowful children, bound in conscience, and so cast forth from the house. Sara, the true Church, though appearing sterile, few, and deserted, is fruitful before God, generating sons most free in spirit, not by the old husband, the law, which is dead, i.e. abrogated, but by the word and spirit of Christ -by spiritual nativity, and therefore of wonderful consolation, calling on the sterile and deserted to rejoice in the fecundity of faith. Wonderful is this allegory of Sara and Hagar. The earthly Jerusalem refers to Hagar, which is in Arabia, and extends to Kadesh-Barnea, which is in Judea, but the earthly Jerusalem remaining in Hagar has not spiritual liberty. But Jerusalem above is free, the true wife, whose citizenship is in Heaven, sitting in heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Phil. iii.), liberated from the law of sin and death, and giving life, having a confident heart and great spiritual consolation. (Jerusalem is literally a city, tropologically a pure conscience, allegorically the Church militant, anagogically the celestial country.) The name Sara, a princess, Neddaboth, i.e. free and spontaneous. Hagar, a stranger or foreigner, because the law does not remain, but Christ remaineth for ever. Arabia is desert and sterile; the Church is fruitful. Sinai denotes temptation, as D. Hiero testifies, ¿.e. inquietude and disturbance of peace, when from the law the knowledge of sin disturbs the conscience; Jerusalem, the vision of peace and quiet of conscience. In fine, Arabia signifies the west or sunset, and the evening which declines and sinks into night. But grace, like Aurora and the morning, causes the law and the synagogue to pass away and die, until at length it reigns and reposes in the meridian of Eternity. He expresses the sum of his teaching by a kind of universal formula or symbol of two regions, the one of death, darkness, condemnation, disquietude, and bondage, i.e. the law; the other a region of life, light, remission of sins, peace and liberty, i.e. grace or the gospel. A careful perusal of his commentary2 would, we think, lead to the con 1 The portion in brackets is the mystic interpretation of which Luther disapproves (though he gives it here), as he does of a second sense in general, which is a pity, as he appears well adapted for spiritual exposition. 2 It is so long since we read this work (except the portion under consideration), that we can only speak of it very generally, and our impression is that the lights exceed the shadows, the latter consisting chiefly of some erroneous notions concerning baptism and the inability to distinguish between genuine and apparent truths. clusion that his great object was to teach what Paul taught before him, viz. the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made us free from the law of sin and death, not that obedience to the law may be evaded, but rather that it may come out under a more perfect form, viz., as the fruit of the spirit (Rom. viii.; Gal. v.). This is identical with Swedenborg's doctrine of regeneration, the summary of which he so often admirably expresses by a similar process of ascent and descent. "THY WILL BE DONE." HELP me to bow beneath Thy hand It is Thy will, O let me say, That shrouds me in its pall; Lift Thou my drooping head to see Plann'd in Eternal Love; Wrought out by Wisdom's purest light, To raise me to the Infinite, In realms of bliss above. Fill me with all Thy Spirit's strength, Counting the cost but little worth, H. N. B. CONSCIENCE. THERE are few principles of the human character more frequently spoken of in practical life than conscience. We hear men say that they conscientiously do and believe certain things, and it is usual to accept statements of this kind as indicating honesty of purpose; but this is no guarantee that what is so done and so believed is just and true. The reason is because all that is good in virtue, and all that is true in faith, must be judged of by the laws of righteousness, and not by that personal sense or feeling which men may choose to call their conscience. Conscience of some sort is, no doubt, a peculiar acquisition of the human mind; every one feels that he has, with his education, imbibed something which is so called; that it is more sensitive upon some subjects than upon others, and that its quality varies as the state of his affection changes. It is also found that its emotions are different in almost every individual, and, therefore, it cannot be relied upon as a test for truth and justice. These facts respecting it have raised a mist around the mental philosophy which treats of the subject, and theology has been made to participate in its obscurity. Conscience is spoken of once in the Old Testament, and only once in the Gospels; but in the epistles of the Apostles it is referred to on several occasions, and presented to our consideration under different aspects. As a principle intimately associated with our acceptance of religious belief, and the performance of its duties, it is of great importance that we should be rightly informed respecting its origin and nature. Conscience is popularly understood to mean a sort of moral principle, implanted by the Lord in the bosoms of mankind without their co-operation, and that its object is to enable them to recognize, as if by instinct, what is right and wrong in the proceedings of human life also to induce pleasure when good is done, and inflict pain when injustice is committed. This however is by no means a satisfactory description of the subject. Its origin is not so independent of human co-operation as this description would seem to intimate; neither is its activity always what the definition supposes. No one knows what right and wrong are until they have been taught; goodness and truth must be learnt and loved before conscience can be given. It is by means of those principles that it exists, and its sensibility is according to the devotedness with which they are learnt and loved. What conscience has the infant? what does he know of right or wrong during the period of his childhood? How plain is it that the origin and nature of his conscience is dependent or the quality and extent of his education! The infant is created with capacities to have a conscience, but its existence and sensibility are coincident with that instruction through which the inflow of spiritual life is received from the Lord. The different qualities of conscience which exist among mankind are mainly traceable to the diversity of their religious instruction. Hence some do wrong of some description without compunction, which others could not do without the experience of distress. This difference could not exist, if the origin of conscience is what it is commonly supposed to be. The difference is clearly traceable to the different manner in which the individuals have permitted themselves to be influenced through the instructions they have received. One, by loving the instructions of truth submits himself to the inflow of spiritual life from the Lord, and thereby to the formation of a conscience; by violating those instructions, he would inflict injury upon that spiritual life, and so bring disturbance to his conscience; but the other, who does not love such instruction, knows nothing of that spiritual life, and therefore his transgression is not followed by the experience of any such issues. It is then only the good who can have a conscience in the true Christian sense of that expression; the wicked have it not. The Apostle speaks of them as "having their conscience seared with a hot iron." Hence it is common to say of the upright that they have a conscience, and of the unjust that they have none. A genuine conscience can have no being apart from the knowledge and love of something that is good. and true; if these are taken away there is nothing left on which it can exist. If a hundred persons were required to state their views upon this subject, supposing them all to be educated men, each would speak of it from a different platform of thought, because each would. draw his statements from something distinctive in his education and experience. Actions which would pain the conscience of one might not be offensive to the conscience of another; the reason is because the estimation of goodness and truth, in which they have been instructed, varies; and because the attractions of goodness and forms of truth have been to one more interesting than to another, and so the qualities of their conscience become dissimilar. It will be coarse or delicate, sensitive or indifferent, according to the ardency or coolness with which heavenly teachings are accepted and obeyed. The consciences of men not only differ from this cause, but they rarely, if ever, come up to the standard to which Christianity is designed to raise them. Among some nations which have made no inconsiderable advancement in civilization, there exists but little, if any, conscience concerning some of the obligations imposed by the moral law. The polygamy of the inhabitants of Turkey and other Mahommedan countries affords a sufficient illustration. What can be the conscience of those people in reference to the seventh commandment? If conscience were a principle given to man, irrespective of his learning and his love, for the purpose of enabling him to recognize what is right, and to punish him with remorse when he does wrong, it is reasonable to conclude that it would be constant in its operation, and uniform in its effects. But it is not so; it never was So. Such an idea supposes that man retains his original nearness to God and communication with His kingdom, notwithstanding the separation and distance which his transgressions have effected. Every man's conscience has a distinct relation to that which he has been taught is good or evil, true or false. Take a familiar illustration. One set of statesmen will pursue a course of policy for a nation which another set will denounce as unpatriotic and injurious to the commonwealth, and yet each will concede that the other holds his opinions, and persists in his courses on conscientious grounds. In each the other's opinions and courses are wrong, how then can the conscience which holds and adopts them be right? Is it not plain that the conscience in those cases does not indicate what is right, and that the difference of its constitution in each party must have arisen from a difference in their political education? We find persons, in professing Christian society, holding different opinions respecting the teachings of its Divine Author, and pursuing different methods in respect to some parts of Christian worship. For example: some persons believe that "immersion" in water is essential to the rite of baptism; others believe that sprinkling with water involves the same efficacy, whatever that may be. Some insist that the bread and wine employed in the Lord's Supper are, by the consecration of the priest, transformed into the body and blood of the Redeemer; others assert that no such change is effected by the ceremony, but that the elements remain afterwards precisely what they were before. This being so each party will have a different conscience upon the subject. Examples of this kind are abundant. Those who accept and love the Sabbath as a holy day set apart for the spiritual instruction of men, and those who make use of that day, as is frequently the case upon the Continent, in the pursuit of business, pleasures, and amusements, cannot have the same sort of conscience respecting its obligations. The Jew cannot eat certain meats which are forbidden by the law of Moses without committing an offence against his conscience; but the Christian can partake of them without any such compunction. This dissimilarity in the conscience of |