10

The communion of saints was thought of such importance among the early Christians as to become an article of faith; and where the spirit of it is preserved, it is a charming part of the Christian religion. This passage gives us a brief description of it. Paul longed to see the Roman Christians, of whom as yet he had only heard,

that he might impart to them some spiritual gift, that they might be established. His faith would comfort them, and theirs would comfort him.-A. Fuller.

There is none so poor, in the Church of Christ, that he cannot make some addition of importance to our stores.. -Calvin.

What! Paul a debtor! he who had said, 'Owe no man anything'! Yes, we have his own admission of the fact. 'I am a debtor.' And he had a great many creditors, too. I am a debtor both to the Greeks,' &c.; i.e., to all races of men, all castes of intellect, all classes of character. And how vast and manifold his debt! It was, 1. A debt of duties, imposed by the authority of Christ, Go ye into all the world,' &c. (Mark xvi. 15.) 2. A debt of gratitude, -incurred by his having become a partaker of the priceless blessings of Redemption through the Lord Jesus. 3. A debt of benevolence; for if it be a law of nature kindly to point out the road to one who is astray, it must be so pre-eminently to point out the road to heaven to those who are groping after it, and in their error and confusion are taking that which leads to hell. 4. A debt of necessity,—a debt

that must be paid, if he would redeem his own soul from the sternest obligations and the most awful penalties. 'Necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel!" (1 Cor. ix. 16).-Anon.

Duty is debt.-Dr. Sibbs.

The preacher is, as Paul saith of himself, a debtor both to the wise and to the unwise;' he is to prepare truths suitable to the degree of his hearers. To preach truths and notions. above the capacity of the hearers is as if a nurse should feed a child with a spoon too big to go into its mouth. We may, by such preaching, please some of higher attainments; but what shall poor ignorant ones do in themeantime? He is the faithful steward that considers both. Let the wise have their portion, and let these be patient to see the weaker ones in the family served also.-Gurnall.

Gospel of Christ: for it is the

The Thracians had a very striking emblem expressive of the Almighty power of God. It was a sun with three beams-one shining on a sea of ice,

and melting it; another upon a rock and melting it; and a third upon a dead man, and putting life into him. How strictly does this emblem har

·

monize with the apostolic declaration, that the Gospel is the power of God unto Salvation'! It melts the hardest heart into a uniform obedience to the Divine will, and raises those who are dead in trespasses and sins to a life of righteousness. This Gospel will do more to moralize the world in a week, than has been done by all other systems from their first publication. Touch the heart with this, and you break every link in the adamantine chain of rebellion. The efficacy of the ancient systems was nothing. With all their divinities, and sacrifices, and charms, and oracles, they were not able to reform a single village. But the Gospel is the power of God to Salvation.' Consider the number of its convertstheir previous character-the change produced upon them--their holy lives. Of all the names that are emblazoned in the annals of literature and science, where will you find names so illustrious as those of Christians? When we speak of unbounded philanthropy-of zeal for truth-of conscientious dis

6

charge of duty-of solace in trials-of triumph in the hour of death; in all these things the Gospel bears away the palm of glory.-Anon.

Give me a man who is choleric, abusive in his language, headstrong and unruly; and with a very few wordsthe words of God-he shall be rendered gentle as a lamb. Give me a greedy, avaricious, close-fisted man, and I will presently return him to you a generous creature, freely bestowing his money by handsful. Give me a cruel, bloodthirsty wretch, instantly his ferocity shall be transformed into a truly mild and merciful disposition. Give me an unjust man, a foolish man, a sinful man, and on a sudden he shall become honest, wise, and virtuous. In one laver the laver of Regeneration-all his wickedness shall be washed away. Such are the genuine effects of the Gospel upon the heart and conduct. Did any, or could any of the heathen philosophers accomplish such important purposes as this?-Lactantius.

From faith to faith.'-Faith is all in all, both in the beginning and progress of the Christian life. It is not from faith to works, as if faith put us into a justified state, and then works preserved and maintained us in it;

but it is all along 'from faith to faith,' as in 2 Cor. iii. 18-'from glory to glory; it is increasing, continuing, persevering faith; faith pressing forward, and getting ground of unbelief. -M. Henry.

The light of nature shines too vigorously in man for the power of man totally to put it out; yet loathsome actions impair and weaken the actual thoughts and considerations of a Deity, and are like mist, that darken the light of the sun, though they cannot extinguish it: men's consciences, as a candlestick, must hold it, though their unrighteousness obscure it.-Charnock.

There are certain principles of natural religion in the minds of all; which, though some take a great deal of pains totally to eradicate, yet they

can never quite do it; nature is too hard for them: but those principles that they cannot extinguish, they make a shift to lay asleep. Lust is too strong for light. A propension to, and a resolution of, being wicked, are for the most part victorious, generally governing in the minds of men, so that the truths they hold, they hold in unrighteousness.-Howe.

And this is that which is the common character of those that finally perish; they are contentious against that Truth which should have governed

them; and when it should have been as on a throne in their souls, it is shut up as in a prison. They held it in unrighteousness,' and fettered it in chains, and pent it up, and confined it only to the notion of the mind, let it hover only in dark ineffectual notions, and never admitted it to walk forth into their lives and practices, and have that power there which it ought to have had.-Ibid.

As a candle pent up close in a dark lantern wastes away apace, so doth light shut up in the conscience, and not suffered to come forth in the conversation. When the heathen are charged by the Apostle for 'holding the truth in unrighteousness,' the next news you hear of them is that 'they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened ' (v. 21).-Gurnall.

O, it is sad indeed when men's tenets and principles in their understandings do clash, and fight with the principles of their hearts and affections! When men have orthodox judgments and heterodox hearts, there must needs be little love to Truth, because the judgment and will are so unequally yoked; Truth in the conscience reproving lust in the heart, and that again controlling Truth in the conscience. Thus, like a scolding couple, they may awhile dwell together, but taking no content in one another, the wretch is easily persuaded to give Truth a bill of divorce at last, and send her away, as Ahasuerus did Vashti, that he may espouse other principles which will agree better with his corrupt heart. This, I am persuaded, parts many from Truth in these licentious days. They cannot sin peaceably while they keep their judgments sound; Truth ever and anon will be chiding them; and therefore, to match their judgments with their hearts, they have adopted principles suited to their lusts.-Ibid.

An orthodox judgment with an unholy heart and ungodly life is as uncomely as a man's head would be on a beast's shoulders. That man hath little cause to boast that what he holds is Truth, if what he doth be wicked. Poor wretch, if thou art a slave to the

devil, it matters not to what part thy chain is fastened, whether head or foot; he holds thee as sure to him by thy foot, in thy practice, as he would by thy head, if thou wert heretical or blasphemous; yea, thou art worse, in some respects, than they who are like themselves all over. Thy wickedness is greater, because committed in the face of truth.-Ibid.

The sincere Christian is uniform; all the powers and faculties of the soul join forces, and are in sweet accord. When the Understanding makes discovery of a truth, then Conscience improves her utmost authority on the Will, commanding it, in the name of God, whose officer it is, to entertain it; the Will, as soon as Conscience knocks, opens and lets it in; the Affections, like dutiful handmaids, seeing it a guest welcome to the Will, their mistress, express their readiness to wait on it as becomes them in their places. But in the hypocrite it is not so; in him one faculty fights against another; never are they all found to conspire and meet in a friendly vote; when there is light in the understanding, the man knows this truth and that duty; then often Conscience is bribed for executing its office, it doth not so much as check him for the neglect of it; Truth stands, as it were, before the soul, and Conscience will not befriend it so much as to knock, and rouse up the soul to let it in; if Conscience be overcome to plead its cause, and show some activity in pressing for entertainment, it is sure either to have a churlish denial, with a frown for its pains, for bringing such an unwelcome guest with it; as the froward wife treats her husband, when he brings home with him one she doth not like;-or else a feigned entertainment, the more subtilly to hide his secret enmity.-Ibid.

Ministers are guilty of holding the Truth in unrighteousness' when they refrain from preaching on such topics as would condemn themselves. But it is far better to judge ourselves than to incur the sin of being traitors to the Truth. Better, in the language of Bunyan, like Samson, to bow ourselves with all our might to condemn sin

wherever we find it, though we die with the Philistines, than to bring such heinous guilt upon our consciences

by dealing deceitfully with the Word of God.'-L.

God never wrought a miracle to convince Atheism, because His ordinary works convince it.-Bacon.

The

To undertake to prove God's existence seems to be almost as unnecessary as to go about to prove our own. Scriptures at their outset take it for granted; and he that calls it in question is not so much to be reasoned with as to be reproved. His error belongs to the heart rather than to the understanding. His doubts are either affected, or arise from a wish to free himself from the idea of accountableness. The things that are seen in the visible creation contain so clear a manifestation of the things that are not seen, even of His eternal power and Godhead, as to leave atheists and idolaters without excuse.'-A. Fuller.

'See here,' says Mr. Robinson, 'I hold a Bible in my hand, and you see the cover, the leaves, the letters, the words; but you do not see the writers or the printers, the letter-founders, the ink-maker, the paper-maker, or the binder. You never did see them; you never will see them; and yet there is not one of you who will think of disputing or denying the being of these men. I go further. I affirm that you see the souls of these men in seeing this book, and you feel yourselves obliged to allow that, by the contrivance,design, memory, fancy, reason, and so on, you perceive. In the same manner, if you see a picture, you judge there was a painter; if you see a house, you judge there was a builder of it. In this manner examine the world, and pity the man, who, when he sees the sign of the wheat-sheaf, hath sense enough to know that there is a joiner, and somewhere a painter; but who, when he sees the wheat-sheaf itself, is

so stupid as not to say to himself, 'This had a wise and good Creator'!

The true philosophy of Nature is a religious philosophy--that is, a philosophy binding us to God. Nature, rightly studied, must disclose the Creator, but the sights which we see are according to the spirit that we bring to the investigation. Standing within a cathedral, and looking through its stained and figured windows towards the light, we behold the forms and colours by the light. Standing outside, and gazing at the same windows, we see nothing but a blurred and indistinct enamelling. Thus the soul, standing within the great cathedral of God's material world, and looking through it upward to the light, beholds the meaning of its forms and colours; but standing without, and studying Nature in detail, not with reference to the light pouring through it from God, but for itself alone, there is nothing better seen than the mere material enamelling. The meaning of a transparency can be seen only by looking at the light, or in the direction of the light which is shining through it; not by looking upon it from without, in an external or reflected light.-Dr. Cheever.

And yet it must be granted that no mere creature, not the angels above, nor the heaven of heavens, are meet or able to receive upon them such characters of the Divine excellencies, as to be a complete, satisfactory representation of the being and properties of God to us. They are all finite and limited, and so cannot properly represent that which is Infinite and Immense. And this is the true reason why all religious worship, or religious adoration of them, is idolatry.—Dr. Owen.

Nature has perfections, in order to show that she is the image of God;

and defects, in order to show that she is only His image.-Pascal.

They glorified Him not as God.'It is better-more honourable to God -to deny His existence, than to deny His perfection. There is no wise man who would not rather have his memory rot, than that he should be accounted infamous; and who would not be more obliged to him that should deny that ever he had a being in the world, than to have it said that he did indeed live, but that he was a sot, a debauched person, and a man not to be trusted.-Charnock.

tinguish between our glorifying God, and our enjoying Him, yet these two things are most manifestly coincident, and only notionally distinct. For, in this our fruitive acquiescence of will in Him consists our highest veneration, our most practical, significant acknowledgment and testimony concerning Him as the highest, the most absolute perfect good, - in that we seek no further, but take up our final rest in Him. This is to give Him the proper glory of His Godhead-to glorify Him as God.-Howe.

It is scarcely credible that the human mind originally worshipped inanimate objects directly. It is highly probable that all such objects were at first regarded as peculiar manifestations of the real Deity; fitted especially to display His attributes to man, and to make the most forcible impressions of His agency. In process of time, however, they began to be considered, especially by the ignorant multitude, as being really gods: and the worship originally addressed to a being supposed to be manifested by the symbol, seems ultimately to have been rendered to the symbol itself. The stock and the stone, intended at first to bring the real Deity before the senses, took at length the place of the Deity, and became in the end the real objects of worship.Blair; Dwight.

It is intolerable to make that which is God's footstool, the earth, to climb up into His throne; to set that in our

heart which God hath set beneath our feet. This is worse than if a queen should fall in love with the little image of the prince in the palace, and slight the beauty of his person; and as if people should adore the footsteps of a king in the dirt, and turn their backs upon his presence!-Charnock.

In God all creatures live and move and have their being. As no man of reason will talk to a corpse, nor dwell and converse with any one without respect to the soul that doth animate him; so no man that is spiritually wise-so far as he is so-will once look upon any creature, much less converse with it, or fall in love with it, barely as a creature separated from God that animates it; for this were to fall in love with a carcass. And herein you have the very difference between a carnal and a spiritual life. The carnal man doth see only the carcass of the world, and is blind to God; but the spiritual man seeth God in