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57

AN ATTEMPT TO INTERPRET AND APPLY A PASSAGE OF SCRIPTURE.

THERE are states of frequent occurrence, known to most, if not to all, who have seriously entered on the six days' labour, in which a decision has to be made in relation to some conjuncture or event, while the mind is unable to discern what the decision ought to be,-what the right line of conduct is. So far as the individual is able to look within, and examine his own desires and intentions,-so far as his consciousness extends, he is willing to pursue the path of duty, wherever it may lead, could he clearly see what that path is; but the mind is so lacerated by opposite feelings, and distracted by conflicting thoughts, that the more it dwells on the subject at issue, the less capable is it of arriving at a satisfactory conclusion. Now the Holy Word is adapted to every state and trial incident to Christian progress; and, turning to its sacred pages, the following passage presents itself, strictly applicable, apparently, to the circumstances under consideration:

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'If there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, being matters of controversy within thy gates: then shalt thou arise, and get thee up into the place which the Lord thy God shall choose; and thou shalt come unto the priests the Levites, and unto the judge that shall be in those days, and inquire, and they shall shew thee the sentence of judgment." (Deut. xvii. 8, 9.)

Taking in their order the "matters of controversy" here enumerated, the first may refer to a tender anxiety experienced in the state supposed, lest, by an unwise determination, some holy precept should be infringed; or to the fear, originating in a sincere though imperfect love of purity and goodness, lest some heavenly affection should suffer injury. The "plea on plea" strikingly expresses the specious and mutually subversive reasonings that tumultuously crowd on the thought; and the "stroke on stroke" describes the solicitations to action, in the divided mind, from the incompatible feelings that agitate it; and suggests the bruised and wounded condition that results from being placed, as it were, between two hostile forces, to receive the blows each aims at the other.

Before examining the course of procedure indicated, it may be desirable to glance at the probable causes of the confusion, uncertainty, and irresolution experienced; and endeavour to see why the understanding the eye of the mind-has lost its appointed faculty of distinct vision. This result may sometimes originate in defect of information; the mind not being sufficiently furnished with genuine truths from the Great Storehouse, to discriminate the lesser from the

higher duty between which its choice lies. Right and wrong, those broad distinctions between absolute good and evil on which the conservation of society depends, are always clearly marked; no Christian hesitates between probity and fraud; it is with relative good and evil— which, however, in specific cases, become absolute to him who can distinguish them-that the difficulty exists. But rarely does trial befal any who are not, even intellectually as well as morally, prepared to meet it; the cause must be sought rather in the state of the will; and may more frequently be found in the circumstance that "the sun is up"-the sun of self-love. Some merely selfish purpose has gained admission unnoticed, some feeling that seeks only personal gratification, exaltation, or advantage; and the intellect is dazzled and perplexed by the vain imaginations it excites. Or even if the sun be now declining in the west, the effects of its meridian heat remain in the dense mists of fallacious reasonings that prevent surrounding objects being seen in their real form and just proportions. It is because the spiritual household is in disorder, the lower affections ruling, the higher prostrate, the former struggling to retain ascendency, the latter to resume authority, that the rational mind fails in its office of discerning and judging.

When this "controversy is within thy gates," says the Divine Word, "thou shalt arise." All disturbance and disquietude, obscurity and doubt, care and solicitude, are in the region of the external man alone; above this is light, serenity, and peace! The voice says" Arise." It bids us dismiss the external or selfish considerations that dim the intellectual sight, and silence the tumultuous voices of the lower affections; to quit the exhalations of earth, and breathe the pure air of the mountain-top. "Arise, and get thee up into the place which the Lord thy God shall choose." The place that the Lord "chooses" is that wherein He can Himself be present in the love and truth that are His own. We daily utter the words, "Our Father who art in heaven:" heaven is the place which the Lord chooses, and in which He dwells; not only the heaven of the human race,-the Grand Man,—but in the heaven of the individual-the internal mind. Thither must the thoughts and affections be elevated, and the door resolutely closed to suggestions from beneath. When, then, thus withdrawn from disorderly influences, we are to go "unto the priests, the Levites." To the priests was committed the charge of the tabernacle and the temple, and all the sacred rites by which, under the Jewish dispensation, conjunction was maintained between heaven and mankind; and they thus stood as mediums of communication between the Lord and the body of the Israelitish people. It was they who offered the continual

burnt offering, and kept up the perpetual fire. The Lord, whose inmost essence is love, has His more immediate presence in principles of love and goodness; and in the inmost region of the human mind, good from Him, and directed to Him, is ever present, and, so to speak, in the effort to descend into the lower faculties, and to bring the whole mind, from inmost to outmost, into harmony with itself. Love and goodness are the highest channels of communion between the finite spirit and the Infinite God. They are the "priests." But love to the Lord dwells in love to the neighbour, as its proper form and embodiment. The priests are “ Levites," and as such they represent derivative affections of charity, full of healing influences that soothe excited passion, and dispose the mind to tender, unselfish desire for the welfare of others. These priests and Levites are to operate within the heart opened for their reception, that the affections may be brought into harmony with the Divine will. But as in the Lord love exists in the most intimate and indissoluble union with wisdom, and as man only truly becomes man in proportion as he receives from Him goodness and truth in conjunction, so must these two heavenly principles be united in every orderly operation of the mind. Unenlightened charity often defeats its own benevolent intentions, and fosters the disorder it would rectify, the misery it would redress, the discord it would heal we are to go also "unto the judge that shall be in those days, and inquire." Truth derived immediately or remotely from the Word of God, only truth, can decide between conflicting desires and sentiments, or can shew us the "path of life" and guide our steps aright; and a measure of it, adapted to his necessities, is dispensed to every Truth accepted in the understanding, acknowledged in the will, adopted in the life, thus seen, loved, and lived,-forms the conscience, as "the judge that shall be in those days;" and to act from conscience, that is, from charity according to the degree of truth possessed, is all that is required of any man, Christian or heathen. It will be observed that the first application is to the "priests the Levites;" that to the "judge" is the second in order. When truth is primary, the judgments pronounced are cold and condemnatory, hard and unsympathising; but when filled with love and charity, it will "shew a sentence of judgment," adapted to human frailty, and practicable to human infirmity. The case having been thus submitted for decision to the principles of goodness and truth in the internal man, it remains only that we "do according to the sentence which they of that place which the Lord shall choose shall shew" us; and if humbly obedient, the sentence, whatever it may be, will ultimately become an answer of peace."

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60

CHARACTER.

BY THE REV. JOHN HYDE.

THE formation of character is the great occupation of life; and every action is its partial expression. By character I do not mean reputation, which is only character as estimated by others, but the peculiar qualities and powers as originally bestowed at birth, modified by education, and impressed by habit, which constitute each person's individuality. Whether clearly defined by the adoption of distinct affections or motives of action, and set principles or modes of action, or loosely diffused, diluted, and indeterminate, yet every man possesses a character or individuality. It may be clearly marked, and in that case the person is stable and to be relied upon; or it may be vague and desultory, and in that case confidence is impossible, for dependence might only provoke disappointment. It may be amiable, and therefore to be loved,-powerful, and therefore to be respected,-mean, and therefore to be despised,—or selfish, and therefore to be shunned.

For the moral quality of his character each man is responsible; and, consequently, in the formation of his moral character each man is free. Because man is free to improve, improvement is possible; and because improvement is possible, improvement becomes a duty. The neglect of this duty involves a double personal injury:-one, the confirmation of the disposition to neglect, and the other, the supplanting of the otherwise improved condition by its opposite condition of deterioration. The loss of the good and the acquisition of the bad, the absence of the flowers and the presence of the weeds,-must ever follow upon neglect of cultivation. If man were only as a sheet of paper, upon which character was to be written, neglect might result only in the absence or negative of good character, and the loss would be single. But man is more than this: he is as soil gifted with powers of productiveness, to which, indeed, productiveness is a necessity. He cannot avoid, he cannot prevent it. Cultivation results in a double benefit:in the improved value of its productions, and in its increased power of yielding products of still increasing value. Neglect results in a double injury:in the rank worthlessness of the weeds that the soil generates, and in the increased power of yielding products of still increasing worthlessness. Cultivation must result in making the wilderness blossom as the rose, and bloom as a paradise: neglect, in changing fertility into desolation, and making a poison-swamp feculent with contagion and pestilent with death. The richer and the deeper the soil, the more

aggravated the desolation. As neglect of improvement is so pernicious, the duty of improvement is the more obligatory; and as the duty is so obligatory, instruction on this subject is most important.

Two processes are continually going on in man, neither of which can be arrested, and according to which his character is formed. There is one process by which all surrounding objects, circumstances, and occasions act upon the individual; and another process by which the individual acts upon all surrounding objects, circumstances, and occasions. Both these processes are incessant in activity; but in the one the individual is the patient, and in the other the agent. The one process affords to the individual the elements out of which character may be formed, and the other process affords the expression of the character he is forming. The true formation of character lies between these two processes, in the selection by his voluntary rationality of those elements he prefers. Such as is the selection, such will be the character. Mentally, it will be as the sum of the thoughts and the modes of thought he chooses and appropriates. Morally, it will be as the sum of the affections and the genus of affections that he prefers and indulges. Vagrant thoughts, like sturdy and idle beggars, may and will intrude; but the householder, man, is not compelled to receive them into his home, provide them a seat at his table, and adopt them into his family. Vagabond affections, like dissolute and depraved slatterns, may seek admission and entertainment, but the householder can turn them from his threshold, and not embrace them as his own. According as the householder receives or dismisses such wanderers, must his character be determined. But in their reception or dismissal he is free to act. So is it with man in the reception and entertainment, or in the rejection and avoidance, of thoughts that are degraded, and affections that are impure. These two processes, above referred to, may be termed influent and effluent, while the middle operation may be styled the formative. This nomenclature I adopt only as a convenience, to aid in elucidating and fixing my meaning, and will readily relinquish it for a better.

The influent process. Man is born into the world with strong hereditary tendencies to the false and to the evil. This hereditary predisposition is not only a bias to evil and falsity generally, but in each individual, to some particular predominant evil or falsity. The heat of self-love and the love of the world, like a baleful and malignant fire, warms into vitality and action the thousand predispositions of men to evil. But the specific mode and form in which each individual manifests this generic tendency, is determined by the particular ruling predisposition he

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