is not a declaration of God. Some, therefore, of the Predestinarians, especially in these more liberal and enlightened times, while they maintain that a certain number are ordained to life, admit that there are none doomed to absolute death, but the non-elect may be saved if they choose. This doctrine, though not so cruel, is not indeed less inconsistent with the truth than the other. It implies that God takes care of a certain number, and leaves the rest to take care of themselves; that He has secured the salvation of some, but left the others to secure theirs if they can. Does not this milder phase of predestinarianism suggest a doubt that the whole system is the offspring of human ignorance and presumption? If God could secure the happiness of a portion of the human race, He could secure the happiness of the whole. Why, then, did He not do so? Did He want the power, or did He want the will? The advocates of this opinion are not ashamed to say that He was able, but they either say, or leave it to be inferred, that He was not willing. They are ready to vindicate His power, but seem not at all loth to impeach His goodness. They tell us, indeed, that all mankind deserved eternal damnation, and that those who are left to their fate only meet with their well-merited deserts; while the election of a certain number magnifies the grace of God, in giving to some what He might justly have withheld from all. Oh, wretched, shameless sophistry! Men are not ashamed to compromise the character of God, by maintaining a doctrine that outrages every better feeling and sentiment of our nature, and then seek to vindicate it by a contemptible quibble, which their own reason must tell them is a mockery. If God could have secured the salvation of one, He would have secured the salvation of all. He wills that all men should be saved. The Scriptures tell us that God has the will as well as the power to save all. Is it asked, Why then are not all saved? The Scriptures do not leave us to discover this by such human reasons as those which have been put forth to solve the difficulty. They tell us plainly that all men are not saved, because not all are willing to be saved. 'Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life." How often would I have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not." Can man give a better, a more satisfactory, a more instructive reason than this? Why should he attempt to substitute the miserable jargon of the schools for the intelligible and convincing language of inspiration? 66 66 What, then, is election? It is God's acceptance of those who are fit for His kingdom and for its uses and happiness. And how may we secure this election? By doing, to secure our election with God, as we should do to secure our election with men. If we wish to obtain an office, the proper way to proceed is, first to prepare ourselves for it, so that we may be qualified to perform its duties. We all condemn the principle and practice of either obtaining or bestowing offices of trust through favour, and not on account of merit. Equally may we condemn the assumed principle that God takes us into His service, and exalts us into His kingdom, from what some men call free grace-giving it to whomsoever He will. God's grace is indeed free, and man can claim no merit. But according to the definition of it given by some, God's grace is not free in any true sense. It is thrust on some and withheld from others. But God's grace is free because it is freely offered; and what is thus freely offered must be freely accepted, if accepted at all. Man can have no merit, in the religious sense, because "it is God that works in him both to, will and to do of His good pleasure." But although man can have no merit, he can have virtue. He can have those qualifications for the kingdom of heaven which can be acquired by a faithful use of the means which God has appointed for his attaining a state of holiness. It is only the good and faithful servant that enters into the joy of his Lord. It was only those servants that faithfully and industriously employed their five and ten pounds that obtained authority over five and ten cities. We may rely upon it that the election will not make us either holy or happy. It is unwise, therefore, to trust for our salvation to any such a notion as that our condition has been settled in the councils of eternity. Let us rather believe what the spirit and teaching of the Word alike testify, that if we would be chosen of God, we must be such as to fit us for His choice. would enter into life, keep the commandments." Give all diligence to make your calling and election sure. "If ye M. THE RHYTHM OF BERNARD DE MORLAIX, ON THE CELESTIAL COUNTRY.* Ir is curious, in the present age of mental progress, to trace the undercurrent of what may, in some respects, be considered a retrogressive tendency in religion, in literature, and in the various branches of art. "Mediæval tastes," as the phrase goes, may not be very deeply rooted among us; but they are none the less very widely shared and cultivated "The Rhythm of Bernard de Morlaix, Monk of Cluny, on the Celestial Country. Edited and translated by the Rev. J. M. Neale, D.D., Warden of Sackville College, Fourth Edition. London: J. T. Hayes, 5, Lyall-place, Eaton-square." among the highly-educated classes of our fellow-countrymen. All such tastes and tendencies have, we need scarcely say, their uses as well as their significance; and we have seldom felt more indebted to these mediæval tastes, than on perusal of the little poem entitled as above: "The Rhythm of Bernard de Morlaix, On the Celestial Country." This poem is, as the translator in his preface informs us, a portion extracted from a much longer one (Latin, of course), "De Contemptu Mundi," written by the said Bernard de Morlaix, in the twelfth century, he being a monk of the celebrated French Abbey of Cluny, then at the height of its reputation, grandeur, and influence. A large part of the poem consists of a bitter satire on the fearful corruptions of the age, for which reason it found favour with, and was first printed by the Reformers of a later day (at Basle, in 1556); but "as a contrast to the misery and pollutions of earth," continues the translator, "the poem opens with a description of the peace and glory of heaven, of such rare beauty as not easily to be matched by any medieval composition on the same subject." It is this opening description of which Dr. Neale has given, in the tiny publication before us, a beautiful free translation, "so free as to be little more than an imitation," he himself observes; but this would appear, on the whole, to apply to the manner, metre, and arrangement, rather than the matter of the composition; though we do find from our own limited knowledge of Latin that some ideas present themselves in the translation which are not to be found in the orignal (to which we may refer later); and one allusion to the Lord as the son of Mary, the offspring of the sacred Virgin, is omitted from the English rendering, possibly from a fear of offence to Protestant ears, though we think in this case a needless one, as it is a simple assertion of fact, without any apparent tinge of the Mariolatry which is repugnant to our feelings and convictions, Some portions of the original work have already found their way into various English collections of hymns, Dean Trench having some years since printed an extract from it, in a collection of Sacred Latin Poetry, the greater part of which Dr. Neale reproduced in English in his "Medieval Hymns;" and the peculiar favour which these verses of Bernard's met with from the public, together with his own admiration of the composition, have led to his translation and publication of this much longer extract. Nor do we think that the translator overrates the merits of his original, as we hope shortly to show by a few quotations. There is a purity of feeling, and at the same time an intelligence, in the ideal perceptions and descriptions of Heaven which we are here presented with, to which we might not easily find a parallel in the writings of any popular Christian writer before the time of Swedenborg, to say nothing of the great mass of writers subsequent to his day; and indeed the point which chiefly interests us in this "Rhythm of the Celestial Country," is the testimony it offers as to how late the period was at which many of the worst corruptions of Christian doctrine took their rise; much of what is commonly supposed to pertain inseparably to Christian orthodoxy, having for very many centuries had no more connection with the faith of the Christian Church under the First Dispensation, than we are willing to accord it with the faith of the New Christian Church under the Second Dispensation. The poem opens thus: "The world is very evil, The times are waxing late; Be sober, and keep vigil, The Judge is at the gate. The Judge that comes in mercy, The Judge that comes with might,— To terminate the evil, To diadem the right. When the just and gentle Monarch Let man, the guilty, tremble, For Man, the God, shall doom. Arise, arise, good Christian! Let right to wrong succeed; Let penitential sorrow To heavenly gladness lead. The light so new and golden, The light that is but one!" Further on we find the following beautiful passages : "Brief life is here our portion, Brief sorrow, short-lived care; And martyrdom hath roses For virgin souls abound. There grief is turned to pleasure, Such pleasure as below No human voice can utter, No human heart can know. And after this world's night, * * And there is David's Fountain, The health that hath no sore, The life that hath no ending, But lasteth evermore!" His yearning towards this heavenly home the poet thus tenderly expresses: "For thee, O dear, dear Country! Mine eyes their vigils keep; For very love, beholding Thy happy name, they weep. The mention of thy glory Is unction to the breast, And medicine in sickness, And love, and life, and rest. O paradise of joy! Where tears are ever banished, And smiles have no alloy; Beside thy living waters All plants are, great and small, The cedar of the forest, The hyssop of the wall." Another beautiful descriptive passage follows, in which the magnificent imagery of the book of Revelation is brought into play; and then the singer passes from the contemplation of the outward glories, to a strain on the subject of the inner spiritual joys of his heavenly fatherland: "Jerusalem the golden, With milk and honey blest, What social joys are there; What radiancy of glory, What light beyond compare! |
