When we consider the contradiction which the lives of some authors on religious subjects form with their writings, may they not be said somewhat to resemble the workmen employed in building the ark? These infatuated men spent years in preparing an asylum from the deluge, without practically believing that it would ever take place. While they were mechanically employed in working for the salvation of others, their labour made no provision for their own safety. The sweeping flood descends, but the builders are excluded from the very refuge which they have assisted in providing!

How different was the conduct of our Apostle? His exhortations in this, as in all other instances, derive great additional weight from the consistency of his conduct with his writings. The philosopher Seneca, composed his excellent book of Ethics, in the same city, and nearly at the same time, in which this Epistle to Timothy was written. He suffered also a violent death under the same Roman emperor with Saint Paul. In the writings of the philosopher are many beautiful passages directed against the vice we have been considering, and no one ever inveighed more pointedly against the luxurious indulgences to which riches are applied. Yet Seneca, first the disciple of the abstinent school of Pythagoras, and afterwards of the self-denying sect of the Stoics, made himself, by his inordinate desire of amassing wealth, the richest

man in Rome, and by his passion for splendour, the most magnificent.

This inconsistency of profession with practice at once illustrates the exact difference between speculation and conviction, conceit and truth; and serves, without any other arguments, which, however, are not wanting, to demonstrate the real character of Seneca. Though acquainted probably with the religion of Jesus Christ, and not improbably with our Apostle himself, from his near connection with Gallio, one of Saint Paul's judges, yet he can never be considered as its convert and trying them by the testimony of their lives, we are obliged to conclude of these two martyred moralists, that Paul lived a Christian, and Seneca died a Heathen.*

* Gallio was eldest brother to Seneca, and uncle to the poet Lucan.

ON THE GENIUS

265

CHAP. XV.

OF CHRISTIANITY, AS SEEN IN
SAINT PAUL.

HAD a sinful human being, ignorant of Christianity, labouring under the convictions of a troubled conscience, and dreading the retribution which that conscience told him his offences merited, had such a being, so circumstanced, been called upon to devise the means of pardon and acceptance from an offended Creator, how eagerly, in the hope of relieving his tormented spirit, would he have put his imagination to the stretch! How busily would he have sharpened his invention, to suggest something difficult, something terrible, something impossible; something that should have exhausted all human means, that should put nature to the rack, -penances, tortures, sacrifices, all Lebanon for a burnt-offering, thousands of rams for an atonement, rivers of oil for an oblation; - still concluding that he must perform the act with his own hands, still expecting that himself must be the agent of his own deliverance !

But when a full offer of peace, of pardon, of reconciliation, comes from the offended party, comes voluntarily, comes gratuitously, comes,

not with the thunders of the burning mount, but in the still small voice of benignity and love, — free love, benignity as unsought as unmerited ;when the trembling penitent is assured, in the cheering words of our Apostle, that he shall be "justified freely through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus," when he is assured that all that is demanded on his part of the compact is, to accept the propitiation made for his sins, through the forbearance and tender mercy of God; - when he hears that to him, and not to him only, but to all who will accept it on the offered terms, of faith and repentance, this previously inconceivable proposal is made; — who would doubt that, overwhelmed with joy and gratitude at the report of a world redeemed, he would eagerly fly to lay hold on an offer, not only beyond his hope or expectation, but beyond his possibility of conception?

Yet is not the fact too often directly the reverse? His pride had suggested to him, that if some difficult thing were to be done, he should have done it himself, if something were to be suffered in the way of hardship and austerity, or something achieved in the way of glorious enterprise; something that should be splendid in the act, which should bring renown to the doer, then his natural powers would be set at work, his energies exerted, his emulation kindled, for he would then become the procurer of his own reward, the purchaser, or rather the rightful possessor, of a heaven of his own earning.

But while God, by a way of his own devising, by a process of his own conducting, had made foolish the wisdom of this world, and baffled the vain and impracticable schemes of impotent man, for effecting his deliverance by any conception or act of his own, does not man's unwillingness to partake of the offered mercy look as if his proud heart did not choose to be freely forgiven, as if his haughty independence revolted at a plan, in which, though he has all the benefit, he has none of the merit? Does it not seem as if he would improve the terms of the treaty as if he would mend the plan of salvation, and work it up into a kind of partnership scheme, in which his own contribution should have the predominance?

But it will be urged, men do not say this: we reply, they do not profess it in words; but do not some say it virtually, when they practically decline the terms; or, if they do not entirely disbelieve them, give at least a reluctant, and partial, and qualified assent?

With the genius of Christianity, with its peculiarities, with its applicableness to the wants of man, the whole soul of Saint Paul was singularly imbued. His acute mind, his lofty qualities, his penetrating spirit, and his renovated heart, entered profoundly into the character and essence of the Gospel. His mind was a transcript of divine truth; his life an exemplification of it. What he conceived intimately, he imparted