of Christ, so often patched and darned that not one thread of the original tissue remains, is yet to be considered as the identical vesture which chance at first allotted to his foes. But, unfortunately for this claim, if it could be even shown that to trace a regular church establishment up to the times of the Apostles, is to prove this establishment the true Christian institution, the absolute impossibility of following up the confused and time-worn foot-prints of ecclesiastical progression which lose themselves at length beneath the rubbish of ancient ruins, would forever render it nugatory and unavailing. The plea of antiquity, indeed, is the refuge of obscurity, and the hope of darkness. Darkness, however, may cover with its friendly shades the ill-omened birds that dwell in mouldering towers; or conceal the predal and rapacious tribes that lurk within the depths of the forest, but it can never become the safeguard or the trust of those who love righteousness and truth. It is to be admitted, indeed, that truth will be always a little older than error; that the genuine will necessarily precede, in order of time, the counterfeit. But the day of the Apostles, even, would be too late a date, themselves being witness, at which to institute for the former the claim of exclusive possession, or adopt indiscriminately every thing entitled Christianity. There were then false Apostles, deceitful workers, errorists, heresies and sects. Falsehood can boast apostolical antiquity at least, and claim on that account to be accredited as truth, with as much propriety as the church of Rome can arrogate, on the same ground, an exclusive spiritual supremacy.

It will be asked, perhaps, here, Has the church of Christ then perished? Have the gates of Death prevailed? Can any church, if not that of Rome, be traced to the apostolic age? We answer, that if the true church of God has not perished, it has been owing, certainly, to no fault or want of effort on the part of Romanism; and that the same history which records the progress of this great apostacy and its persecutions of the saints, records also their existence; their protests against its corruptions, and their sufferings for the truth. It were easier to follow their footsteps, marked by their own blood, than those of the haughty foes who pierced them; and those traces were far more likely to lead us up to the cross of Jesus.

There is no greater or more common error than to mistake a particular organized community for the church of Christ. The figures under which the church is set forth in the scriptures, applied in too many points, and too literally interpreted, have been perverted from their proper meaning. The worldly mind carnalizes every thing that is spiritual, and instead of deriving spiritual thoughts from the material

things employed to illustrate them, mistakes the figure for the fact; adopts a worldly symbol for a religious truth, and chooses the shadow rather than the substance. The figures of a city; a body; a building-under which the church is described, have seemed to convey to many merely the idea of a great system of temporal organization. The continuance of such a system, with its forms and modes of worship, is, with them, the perpetuation of the Christian church. The regular succession and order of the clergy; the established forms of its ritual; its alleged antiquity; immutability, and infallibility—furnish, in their view, all appropriate and necessary evidence of a direct descent from the true and original church of Christ. The externals of religion alone are the objects of their regard: the pageantry of outward ceremonials constitutes their piety, and a slavish subjection to the priesthood forms their chief morality. So imperfect a conception, indeed, have they of the spiritual nature of the Christian institution, that they even give the name church to the edifice in which they are wont to perform their religious rites. Doubtless, however, this appellation is quite as appropriate to the building as to those who are accustomed to assemble in it. Consecrated to God with greater solemnities, regarded with more religious awe, and sustained and adorned with greater zeal, it may be considered at least as spiritual and as Christian.

But the true church of God is something very different both from any particular community, and from the building in which they worship. It is a spiritual house; a divine temple, invisible indeed to eyes blinded with the dust of earth, but whose gleaming turrets, nevertheless, pierce the heavens, and whose hallowed recesses are the abode of the true Shekinah. Its precincts are indeed holy; its mysteries are divine; its priests are kings. It is there alone on earth that God is worshipped in spirit and in truth, and that pure and acceptable offerings are placed upon his altar.

The children of faith alone are God's people. This is a truth, which, however obvious, the great mass of mankind have failed to comprehend. The followers of Jesus have been strangers and pilgrims-the world has never known them, nor acknowledged them. Though attached, perhaps, to all communities, they have been in them merely, and not of them. Born of the incorruptible seed of the word, they have been members of the family of God, nourished by the true bread of heaven, and animated by the same life-giving Spirit. In all ages they have been witnesses for God and truth and righteousness, and have constituted always the true and only lineage of heaven.

The only Christian church-book is the book of life. There alone are correctly enrolled the names of God's elect. There are not found the proud titles of those who have lorded it over the heritage of God, and exulted in the pride of worldly power, and priestly domination. There are not seen the names of the sons of bigotry, superstition, and intolerance, who have sustained the haughty hierarchies of earth, and sought by the fire and sword of persecution to exterminate the saints of the Most High, and enlarge the habitations of cruelty. There cannot be discovered the catalogue of those organized institutions, which, under the name of churches of Christ, have labored only for selfish and worldly aggrandizement,and have not fought the good fight of faith, but waged the ignoble warfare of carnality and crime. But there are seen in letters of living light the names of those who have walked as seeing Him who is invisible; who, born of God and nurtured by the pure milk of the word, have af. proved themselves to be the true children of light; the faithful subjects of a suffering King whose kingdom is not earthly; and the real members of the mystical body of Christ.

The only source of spiritual light and life and truth is the word of God. Of this every child of God is born. By this every child of God is nourished. Through this every man of God is perfected. How wonderful the providence by which it has been preserved—by which it lives and shall live forever! However religion may have been corrupted, this remains pure. However bodies of human or ganization may have usurped the name and the authority of the Christian church, this divine word has created, sustained, and perpetuated the true church of the living God. However the powers of darkness and of death may at any time have, seemed to triumph, this living word has, in the presence of its affrighted keepers, burst the unhallowed bonds by which priest craft and political power had sought to retain it in. the grave, and has arisen to a nobler victory and a more glorious exaltation.

It is to this great source of eternal truth that the present reformation would direct the exclusive attention of the religious community, in order that they may fully realize the true nature and the precious privileges of the church of Christ. Believing, that in the extremes of partyism, many errors have been introduced; and that in the collision of partizan warfare much truth has been obscured, it calls upon the people of God every where to extricate themselves from the untoward circumstances in which sectarism may have involved them, and to conform in all points to the divine model exhib. ited in the New Testament. To them, then, as formerly remarked,

it addresses itself under the title of a reformation. Regarded, however, as it stands related to the primitive and uncorrupted or original institution of Christianity, it proposes not a reformation of ary imperfect or corrupt system of this religion, nor an accommodation of the ancient to the modern exhibitions of the gospel; but a direct and absolute RESTORATION of original Christianity, with all its institutions, privileges, and blessings, as clearly exhibited in the apostolic writings.

Adopting the living oracles of heaven as the only authority in religion, it recognizes all in every age who have truly walked by this rule, as members of Christ's church. The society which it creates it desires to form of those who manifest a faithful obedience to the divine commands, and who are united to Christ and to each other in faith and love. It would not claim for it the title of the Christian Church, upon the vain pretence of an apostolical succession in the ministry; neither upon the sophistry of that other miserable figment-a boasted antiquity. It would not thus entitle it, from any slight resemblance in a particular feature, in a single doctrine, institution, or mode of worship; but because of a willing conformity to the requisitions of the gospel as first prescribed by the Apostles; a sincere and heart-felt spiritual union to Christ, and an unswerving purpose to love, honor, and obey Him as the Great Teacher sent from God; the High Priest of our religion; the Lord our righteousness, and the everliving King of saints. R. R.

SKETCHES OF JOHN BUNYAN AND WM. KIFFIN.

BY T. B. MACAULAY.

To the names of Baxter and Howe must be added the name of a man far below them in station and in acquired knowledge, but in virtue their equal, and in genius their superior-John Bunyan. Bunyan had been bred a tinker, and had served as a private soldier in the Parliamentary army. Early in life he had been fearfully tortured by remorse for his youthful sins, the worst of which seem however, to have been such as the world thinks venal. His keen sensibility and his powerful imagination made his internal conflicts singularly terrible. He fancied that he was under sentence of re、 probation-that he had committed blasphemy against the Holy Ghost-that he had sold Christ-that he was actually possessed by a demon. Sometimes loud voices from heaven cried out to warn him. Sometimes fiends whispered impious suggestions in his ear. He saw visions of distant mountain tops, on which the sun shone brightly, but from which he was separated by a waste of snow. He felt the devil behind him, pulling his clothes. He thought that the brand of Cain had been set upon him. He feared that he was about

to burst asunder like Judas. His mental agony disordered his health. One day he shook like a man in the palsy. On another day he felt a fire within his breast. It is difficult to understand how he survived sufferings so intense and so long continued. At length the clouds broke. From the depths of despair the penitent passed to a state of serene felicity. An irresistible impulse now urged him to impart to others the blessings of which he was himself possessed. He joined the Baptists, and became a preacher and writer. His education had been that of a mechanic. He knew no language but the English, as it was spoken by the common people. He had studied no great model of composition, with the exception, an important exception undoubtedly, of our noble translation of the Bible. His spelling was bad. He frequently transgressed the rules of grammar. Yet the native force of genius, and his experimental knowledge of all the religious passions, from despair to ecstacy, amply supplied in him the want of learning. His rude oratory roused and melted hearers who listened without interest to the labored discourses of great logicians and Hebraists. His works were widely circulated among the humbler classes. One of them, the Pilgrim's Progress, was, in his own lifetime, translated into several foreign languages. It was, however, scarcely known to the learned and polite, and had been, during a century, the delight of pious cottagers and artisans, before it was publicly commended by any man of high literary eminence. At length critics condescended to inquire where the secret of so wide and so durable a popularity lay. They were compelled to own that the ignorant multitude had judged more correctly than the learned, and that the despised little book was really a master-piece. Bunyan is indeed as decidedly the first of allegorists as Demosthenes is the first of orators, or Shaks peare the first of drammatists. Other allegorists have shown equal ingenuity, but no one has ever been able to touch the heart, and to make abstractions objects of terror, of pity, and of love.

It may be doubted whether any English Dissenter had suffered more severely under the penal laws than John Bunyan. Of the twenty-seven years which had elapsed since the Restoration, he had passed twelve in confinement. He still persisted in preaching; but, that he might preach, he was under the necessity of disguising himself like a carter. He was often introduced into meetings through back doors, with a smock frock on his back and a whip in his hand. If he had thought only of his own case and safety, he would have hailed the indulgence with delight. He was now, at length, free to pray, and exhort in open day. His congregation rapidly increased; thousands hung upon his words; and at Bedford, where he originally resided, money was plentifully contributed to build a meeting-house for him. His influence among the common people was such that the government would willingly have bestowed on him some municipal office; but his vigorous understanding and his stout English heart were proof against all delusion and all temptation. He felt assured that the proffered toleration was merely a bait interded to lure the Puritan party to destruction; nor would he, by accepting a place for which he was not legally qualified, recognize the validity of the dispensing power. One of the last acts of his virtuous life