take of it; and that we must not look to any subsequent light thrown upon it by the later pages of the New Testament. Such an axiom seems to me to limit the power of comparing Scripture with Scripture, and to compel us to narrow our views of New Testament revelations by the bounds of Old Testament truth, instead of enlarging our views of Old Testament truth by New Testament revelations; nor can I assent to the reasoning which would shut off the word to-day from the latter part of the clause and unite it with the former, though, of course, I admit that it might be done. It seems to me that the story of the thief, and the story of the rich man and Lazarus, are written in the same gospel that they may throw light one upon the other. In the latter story we have unquestionably brought before us the condition after death (and evidently soon after death) of two spirits, Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, and the rich man in hades. Now, what is the meaning of Lazarus going to Abraham's bosom? A little consideration, as I believe, of the reasoning of St. Paul in Gal. iii., will show us. There St. Paul tells us distinctly that the promises of God were made to Abraham and to Christ, and that the law was meantime ordained until Christ should come. In this interval, then, to belong to Abraham was to be within the covenant of God; as since the coming of Christ to belong to him is to be a sharer in the blessings of the covenant. To go to Abraham's bosom, then, would naturally mean to be at rest within the covenant of God: a form of expression which would be adapted for this interval between the times of Abraham and the coming of Christ, and one to pass away when that interval was gone. And now that we find Christ again at the very moment of his finishing his Father's work and triumphing by death over him that had the power of death, speaking of another believer passing out of the world, shall we be deemed to go very far astray, if we say that, in using the language he did, he meant to teach us that the spirits of those who had departed in true faith, were now by his death not to be removed into his Father's presence indeed, but to be lifted up to a higher platform of waiting happiness? That an immediate effect was produced by Christ's death on the saints who had died in faith is evident by the account of the resurrection which St. Matthew alone records. Why may not Christ on that very day have opened Paradise and admitted that sinner who had owned him on the cross into its blessedness ? As to the locality of Paradise, it is but little that we can understand, but it is clear that Christ in his way to the Father is said to have passed through the heavens, and in his exaltation to be set far above all heavens; so we understand that there are several localities which go by the name of heaven. While then we strictly maintain that admission into the Father's presence, and the full glory of redemption is not yet, and cannot be yet, yet it has seemed to me that we may with reverence speak of the saints as admitted into Paradise, and that the place into which St. Paul went is this same Paradise. The grand truth which I have ever thought we must guard as most essential is, that whatever may befall the redeemed after death, their full blessedness cannot come upon them before these two things, the change of the vile body into the likeness of Christ's glorious are THREE years since, on the first appearance of this admirable work we spoke highly of its merits, as our judgment dictated. The issue of a second and enlarged edition, proves that thoughtful men beginning to despise the scare-crow cry of "heresy," and to recoil from the grim dogma of orthodoxy on the future of the impenitent. Mr. Denniston's book is every thing that a Christian scholar can desirethoughtful, reverent, logical, conclusive. Let it have a rapid sale, for the truth's sake. "The first part has been entirely re-cast and considerably enlarged, thus supplying, it is hoped, a more suitable contribution to the radical truth in the Christian system, that, however protracted and terrible the retribution awaiting the wicked at the judgment day, there is yet no real immortality for sinful men apart from fellowship with God's Christ as dying for them and living in them." The Young Christian Armed, or the Duty he Owes to God. A Manual of Scripture Evidence, Faith, and Practice for Youth. By the Rev. Charles Hole. London: Longmans, Green, & Co. THIS book is a granary of seed thoughts. It says a great number of suggestive and excellent things, which are worthy of all praise; but we regret that so accomplished a man as the author should fail to see that our race is only mortal — that there is no future life out of Christ and that, consequently, everlasting suffering is an absurdity and impossibility, even though we durst admit the idea that God would inflict it upon any creature, which most certainly, we neither can nor will. "Who art Thou that Judgest?" A Letter addressed to One, but applicable to Many. By Joseph Stratford. London: Kellaway and Co. OUR judgment of this fine letter was given in February. We recur to it now for the purpose of saying that it has reached a second edition. We hope the friends of truth and charity will circulate it largely. Christ or Wollaston? A Reply to Wollaston's "Christ or Plato ?" By J. A. Hamill. Melbourne. AN elaborate exhibition of orthodox anger, which can neither be pleasing to God nor profitable to man. If Australia can produce no stronger soldier in the bad cause of religious error than the writer of this pamphlet, we sincerely congratulate her as on the road to a glorious future. THE RAINBOW: 3 Magazine of Christian Literature, with Special Reference to the Revealed Future of the Church and the World. JULY 1, 1874. ENGLISH MAN'S MORTALITY. NGLISHMEN are not sufficiently aware of the high position which John Milton, throughout his prose writings, assigns to his countrymen, as compared with the other inhabitants of Europe;-not, indeed, set forth in the fulsome style which modern journalists adopt, who have little else in sight but the advancement of material prosperity, but having reference rather to that solidity of faith and impatience of spiritual tyranny which has placed them, during many centuries, so "Glorious John" affirms, habitually in the van of moral reformation. He even fetches one of his earliest illustrations from the era of that wise and civil Roman, Julius Agricola, who preferred the natural wits of Britain before the laboured studies of the Gauls." It is well known, at the present day, that the knowledge of the English tongue is an indispensable element of polite education in Russia; but it is from John Milton we learn that, more than two hundred years ago, "the grave and frugal Transylvanians sent out yearly, from as far as the mountainous borders of Russia, and beyond the Hercynian wilderness, not their youth, but their staid men, to learn our language and our theological arts." "Who but the Northumbrian Willibrode," he asks, "and Winifride of Devon with their followers were the first apostles of Germany? Who but Alcuin and Wicklyff, our countrymen, opened the eyes of Europe, the one in arts, the other in religion? Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live." 66 Why else was this nation chosen before any other, that out of her, as out of Zion, should be proclaimed and sounded forth the first tidings and trumpet of reformation to all Europe? And had it not been the obstinate perverseness of our prelates against the divine and admirable spirit of Wicklyff to suppress him as a schismatic and innovator, perhaps neither the Bohemian Huss and Jerome, no, nor the name of Luther or Calvin had ever been known; and the glory of reforming all our neighbours had been completely ours." Areopagitica et alibi. U " How bitterly John Milton's hopes for his countrymen were frustrated, we need not stay to chronicle; and how he had to retire within himself, and leave his fair fame to be stained by the guano-droppings of the succeeding owl-population," as Carlyle has it;-this also is matter of history. But the summons which he had already sent forth upon the winds is ringing still; and that summons is a challenge to English manhood, wherever found, to rise en masse and expose without further compromise the false game which for centuries has been played with the popular conscience, to the scandal of Christianity and to the dishonour of Almighty God. Surely now, if ever, we have the opportunity put into our hands of redeeming his chivalrous hopes, that "the glory of reforming all our neighbours may yet be completely ours." Yes; the two hundred years since Milton's time have brought us round to the epoch of another uprising of the national will; and this time, though we may not startle Europe by beheading a prime minister, a bishop, and then a king, it is due to our illustrious progenitors in the Faith that we make clean sweep of every cobweb, deception, and pitfall, which has hitherto ensnared the uneducated mind, and at the same time lay open to the gaze of the sublimest ambition a Christian mission which shall make all the powers of darkness start to their feet, a mission, Pauline in its embrace, and Miltonic in its scorn of fraud or favour,—a mission which none but a Cromwell would have ventured to conceive, and which none but Englishmen seem prepared to execute. Here an oft-quoted passage from the Areopagitica forces itself on our memory, and craves brief hearing, before we advance to the allotted theme of this essay; for it is our cordial belief that Milton's language may be read in the light of the present day more hopefully even than in that of his own :-"Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam; purging and unscaling her long abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means; and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms." Sects and schisms did arise; of this there can be no doubt; but, over and above them all, certain cardinal truths again took their place in the English conscience, never again to be entirely smothered. Even in the lower walks of natural philosophy and commercial enterprise, we have often been struck with the number of literary projects issuing from the brains of men, who, having fought under Oliver, resumed, at the Restoration, the position of peaceful citizens. But the mental activities of the nation had begun to assert themselves long before the war was at an end; and it was the perilous year 1643, a year in which we were actually "at push of pike," a year in which the triumph of the king's party appeared to culminate more than at any other period;—it was this year that was signalised by the appearance of that remarkable book, "Man's Mortalitie," which fell like a thunderbolt into both the belligerent camps. Vested interests under various forms and titles became instinctively aware of the presence of a disturbing element. The question arose then, as it has since done, how best to silence the intruder without provoking public controversy; and so great a hold had superstition still on the popular mind that the feat was in due time accomplished. It is true that the leading men made the best of their opportunity, and in the true spirit of Sir Walter Raleigh, struggled gallantly to break the fetters of Spain and Rome; but while the doctrine of disembodied ghosts was constantly set forth as an almost essential part of Gospel truth, and the judges of the land continued to hang men and women as witches, the thinkers found themselves foiled by the vis inertia of indifference and contempt, and the Restoration gave the finishing blow to the crop of Republican errors by subjecting even the prose writings of John Milton to a temporary eclipse. That temporary eclipse we rejoice to know is now passing away. Time has tutored us all. And at this hour, whoso hath eyes to see may plainly discern that the polemics of Milton and his associates ready stand, waiting, like Samson's foxes, so soon as the Philistines' harvest shall be fully ripe, to run in and set the field on fire. Hitherto the chief prominency in these remarks has been given to the name of Milton, not because he was the author of the book which we have undertaken to examine (though in the main he accepted it), but because, in concert with his imperial friend on the Protectoral throne, he was the soul of England's second Reformation. But it is now time to deal more specifically with the treatise in hand, and to trace as best we may its flickering and fitful influence on the succeeding age. The title ran as follows: "MAN'S MORTALITY: or a treatise wherein is proved, both theologically and philosophically, that whole man as a rational creature is a compound wholly mortal, contrary to that common distinction of soul and body :that the present going of the soul into heaven or hell is a mere fiction, and that at the resurrection is the beginning of our immortality, and then actual condemnation and salvation, and not before. With all doubts and objections answered and resolved both by Scripture and reason;-discovering the multitude of blasphemies and absurdities that arise from the fancy of the soul.' And divers other mysteries, as of heaven, hell, Christ's human residence, the extent of the resurrection, and the new creation. Opened and presented to the trial of better judgments. By R. O. Amsterdam. Printed by John Canue, A.D. 1643." |