Again, the works of men are insignificant compared with those of God. It is one of the strangest anomalies in human nature, that those who have the greatest admiration for human works, and honour the genius which produced them, fail to honour God in His works, and, surrounded by a universe of beauty, speaking everywhere of its Author, are "practically atheists in the world." Why do multitudes who believe in human priests not believe in Christ, "the High priest of our profession?" Why do they honour the ambassador, yet contemn the monarch, and neglect the message? Alas! many compliment religion in the persons of its ministers, who yield no obedience to its claims; they are interested in the preacher, but reject the Gospel he proclaims. When the human teacher thus stands between the soul and God, the ministry becomes a snare and a curse. Yet many confide in a priest, who will not trust in Christ, and ask absolution from a fellow-man who will not seek forgiveness from the Lord.

The productions of the most gifted genius will not bear comparison with the works of nature. If you worship genius, you ought a thousand times more reverently to honour the infinite wisdom of God. Is the painting you so much admire equal to the landscape it professes to represent? is the painted flower equal to the flower in living beauty? is that pictured tempest to be accepted as equal to the thunder and lightning of the Almighty that sky on canvas to the constellations of heaven? that marble statue to the organism and majesty of the living man? that magnificent temple to the planet with its infinite variety of beauty and life? If you admire the productions of the architect and the sculptor, have you no reverence for Him who piled the heavens, the earth, and has, through ceaseless generations, preserved and governed them? If a picture commands your breathless admiration, or a statue that so simulates Nature that it seems to lack only life, have you no admiration for the living organisms which Nature exhibits in such measureless variety?no reverence for the God who breathes into all men "the breath of life," who is the fountain of universal being, whose energy has been ceaselessly at work ever since the Creation, and whose presence makes itself felt with resistless force in the most distant regions of the universe? If you so honour the poet, painter, architect, and sculptor, that you would, were it possible, collect their works in a Pantheon, is there no honour due to the God who made them-who was the author of all their powers, and of whose intelligence their genius was but a spark? In such a state of mind you need not pity the deluded Pagan. The greatest of all idolators is he who honours genius, yet worships not the Being who conferred it. And if you so admire the works of

Shakespeare that you linger over his pages with unwearying delight, that to your eye age cannot wither nor custom stale" his "infinite variety," how is it that you turn away from the direct inspirations of Almighty wisdom,-wisdom which reaches us through no polluted or perverted channels, but pure and perfect from its infinite fountain? How is it, in short, that you do not study the Bible? Shakespeare's poems were the production of a genius which God created, but which in its earthly use was imperfect, wayward, earthly, and often defiling-thinking little of its lofty origin or the high purpose for which its Author lent it; but the sacred writings are the productions of God Himself. Will you degrade prophets and apostles to the level of a Shakespeare? nay, place them lower in interest and attraction? When you consider the themes of the Bible, the divinity that breathes in its pages, the purity of its ethics, the world-wide reach of its sympathies, its solution of all the great questions of the soul, its disclosure of our inner life and of the world to come, its histories, biographies, prophecies, promises, its revelation of the Father, its adaptation to human needs, its power over the conscience, its unequalled simplicity yet its profound mysteries, the sublime heights to which it points us, the peace and divine character it imparts to its believers, and the blessed immortality which it proffers-when you consider all this, can you read the works of man and neglect the Book of God? admire the works of the servant, and neglect the productions of the Master? That idolatry is the worst which pays homage at the shrine of transcendent human genius, and yet is blind to the direct inspirations of the Author of all genius.

We care not to censure your admiration of heroes. A reverence for the great and good is an instinct which, rightly directed, promotes human progress. We imitate what we honour. Happily, the Church has its heroes as well as the world, men of "whom the world was not worthy;" and the Bible has the the record of many heroes, that we may follow their goodly example. But, we ask, how it is that you can admire inferior heroes, yet turn from the truest hero the world has known-one who blends in His character all human and divine perfections in symmetry and completeness, who was the purest spirit that ever breathed on earth, whose name has hallowed with immortal interest every spot He visited, who gave Himself, in infinite compassion, for the sins of men? Is not the character of Jesus incomparably superior to that of every man? Were not His self-sacrifices and sufferings for us beyond those of all others? Are not the benevolence, the unselfishness, the purity, the unworldly simplicity and heavenly beauty of His character without a parallel? How, then, can you admire a human hero,

and turn away from the hero of God's redeeming mercy? Is not your hero-worship a delusion and a snare while you are aliens from Christ and His salvation? Those who appreciate His infinite beauty may constantly love to trace out and admire His character in others; for all human goodness and greatness will appear to them emanations from Him, reflections of His beauty and greatness. But those who honour the beautiful and the gifted in man, yet turn away from Him who enshrines in Himself all perfection, who is the fountain of all goodness, truth, and beauty, are as infatuated and guilty as the idolater who pays homage to the sun, and forgets the God who kindled its fireswho worships everything which God has made, yet neglects their infinite Maker. Human genius is of little worth, except as it leads us nearer to its Author. Man becomes something to us as he tends to make God everything to us. "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted of?"

We add one more consideration: that while man and his works must perish, the names of heroes be forgotten, and their monuments crumble to dust, paintings rot, statues decay, temples fall in ruin, the noblest of human writings cease to be read, the earth and all the works that are therein be burnt up,— since to perish is the law of their being-man's soul will not perish, but is destined to immortality. It is, then, folly to be feeding it with "husks," instead of "the bread of life;" pleasing it with the phantoms of earthly beauty, and hiding from it things immortal and divine. We have to do with the unchangeable and the everlasting, as well as with the present and passing life. The "word of God abideth ever." When all other names and writings are forgotten, the Scriptures shall "shine as the brightness of the firmament." "Christ abideth ever," the Saviour of man by His "precious blood." Heaven "abideth ever," and its open gates invite us to its joy. Holiness and blessedness are now within our grasp, if we will accept them as the gift of God's infinite grace. These are things of imperishable interest and unfading glory. They will remain the same when all mundane things are forgotten. Turn, then, from the things that "perish with the using," and seek unfading and eternal good. While you are playing with the toys of earth, and plucking its fading flowers, the precious time is wasting in which alone salvation can be attained; and if you persist, you will hereafter bewail your folly. Away, then, with everything that hinders the salvation of the soul. Seek the forgiveness of sins and the renewal of your nature. Clasp the Bible to your bosom as a priceless jewel. Make Jesus the hero of your admiration, and the example you copy. Tread in

His steps, "who went about doing good." Then you shall become holy and blessed and though you may not attain to emimence on earth, you will become a true hero in the esteem of heaven and the universe-an associate of heroes, one of those who "follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth," who are "like Him," and "see Him as He is." Man is nothing. Christ everything. "Cease ye from man." Let Christ be "all in all."

STOUGHTON'S ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY.* CONSIDERING how much interest attaches, and must necessarily attach, to that portion of ecclesiastical history which Mr. Stoughton's new work embraces; how in it are to be found the germs of some of the most important controversies of our own times; and how great the influence which the illustrious men of those days have exerted upon the religious life of our own and of all subsequent times, it is surprising how little attention comparatively has been bestowed upon the subject. Students, of course, have made themselves acquainted with the lives and works of the great divines of the period, and earnest Christian men have fed their love and devotion on writings singularly rich in elements both of Christian instruction and spiritual impulse; but, after all, these form but a very limited circle, and to a large body even of intelligent readers the ground traversed by Mr. Stoughton is to a large extent a terra incognita. Nothing could more clearly have revealed this than the extraordinary position taken and the wild assertions made by many of the Evangelical clergy during the Bicentenary controversy. Influenced by a blind zeal for Church principles, they became assailants of those whose memory they ought to have been most careful to guard, from the fact that in their day they had sought to maintain the very position in the Establishment to which they have themselves succeeded, and identified themselves with the party who profess admiration of Laud, and his successors in Charles the Second's time, whose one aim was to expel from the Church all of Evangelical and really Protestant tendencies. Undoubtedly there were also, on the opposite side, those who fancied that the Nonconformists of the seventeenth and the Dissenters of the nine

* Ecclesiastical History of England, from the Opening of the Long Parliament to the Death of Oliver Cromwell. By John Stoughton. In Two Volumes. London: Jackson, Walford, and Hodder.

teenth century were in close agreement; but this error was not committed by any who were entitled to be regarded as representative men. In a lecture delivered in Manchester during the agitation, this was very distinctly pointed out. "What" (the lecturer asked) "were the principles of the Puritans who then had power? and who are their modern representatives in this country? With one portion of them I humbly hope that we can claim alliance; but with the more numerous and powerful section of the party there are others who can boast a closer affinity. If you were told that there was then a large class of religious men attached to Episcopacy; liking a Liturgy, but hating everything that savoured of Romanism; zealous for the maintenance of Calvinistic doctrine and clinging to the National Church, but desirous for its reformation and purity; where would you find their modern antitypes? Where but in the Evangelical party in the Church of England? Like them, they have learned their theology in the school of Geneva-like them, they are determined foes of Popery in every form-like them, they feel the great value of the preaching of God's Word, and reject the figment of sacramental efficacy-and, as if to make the parallel more complete, as the modern party has its Simeon trustees, so those old Puritans had what were called Feoffees (broken up by Laud at the suggestion of Heylin) to do a similar work in that day, and by the purchase of advowsons, &c., to supply many neglected parishes with faithful ministers of Christ's Holy Gospel. I cannot pay Canons Miller and Stowell a higher compliment than to say that they are the legitimate descendants of that portion of the Puritans of 1640."

In the heat of discussion, of course, such statements received but little attention; and even such a man as Rev. J. B. Marsden, who had himself done so much to secure the honour due to the Puritans, was carried away by the spirit of his party. Of course the great body of excited partizans treated them with utter contempt. They were bound to defend the Establishment, and they were, for the most part, so ignorant of the real facts of the case, that they supposed this could only be done by assailing the Puritans and Nonconformists.

We hail, therefore, most cordially such a book as that of Mr. Stoughton's, giving us in a more accessible form than that in which we have hitherto possessed a full, continuous, and impartial narrative of the religious movements of that most important

era.

In some respects his book stands alone. We have, of course, Neal's "History of the Puritans," and other works of a similar class, but they are not up to the advanced state of our knowledge of the times. They are certainly not written in that dispassionate and impartial temper which, happily, has now be