Humanity is not only capable of indefinite intellectual advancement, but it is immortal and redeemed. In these lights, piercing as the terrible crystal, all brief and accidental distinctions fade away. Mankind are hastening to dissolution, and to that final account which their probation implies. Meanwhile, the rich and poor meet together: the Lord is the Maker of them all. In the attributes which confer true greatness on man, the Emperor and the grey pilgrim are alike. The Divine Teacher saw, in the meanest and most remote child of Adam, a gem, for the recovery of which He was willing to descend into the depths of want, and shame, and vicarious agony; capabilities like an angel's; a glorious nature, ruined indeed, but recoverable; an immortal spirit, created to survive all terrestrial things, and for ever to see God; a prize of sufficient value to awaken mysterious contention between the armies of light and the powers of darkness. If we look at humanity (in any humble measure) as He looked at it, every man within the reach of our bounty will be acknowledged a brother and a neighbour. There is one system of religion, and but one, that triumphs in stooping to the lowest; in selecting the darkest ground (to borrow an allusion from a writer of former days) for the delineation of its fair and radiant characters. My Bible tells me that God "hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us." The slave, dragged by avarice from his native continent, and weeping over his chains; the convict, exiled from his indignant country; the longdisinherited wanderer, who still waits for "the Consolation;" the erring disciple of the false prophet; the poor savage, who "sees God in clouds or hears Him in the wind;" the heathen man, whose heart is strangely warmed with desire for a teacher; the sunburnt child of the desert, who accounts the white man sacred and inviolable ;— all are included in one brotherhood, dear to Christ, and dear to us if we have sat at His feet, and imbibed the spirit of His universal love.

It is, in fact, obvious, that the lesson we are studying has a special bearing on human need and sorrow. Christianity does not ignore nature. It has no Gorgon glance, to make man's heart like a piece of the nether millstone. This is the dreary achievement of certain modern schemes, which presume to rival a heavenly religion. Their practical malignity convicts them. But the aspect of the Christian religion on the needy, the helpless, and the miserable, indicates its catholic spirit; for "man," universal man, "is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward." In every disclosure of a fellow-creature's suffering, this matchless faith teaches me to find a claim on my compassion, and a new motive to effort. It bids me study the example of Jesus, and learn from Him who are to be the objects of my first bounty.

In the wounded and helpless traveller between Jerusalem and Jericho, one instance of misfortune is put for all. Calamity has a

voice which the heart can hear. The deep character impressed on this present life enforces that appeal. There is a universal yearning for a calmer, happier state. This is troubled, preliminary, already

vanishing away. "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." An Apostle supplies a perpetual reason for sympathy when he says, "Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body." To-morrow I may need the kindness which I am to-day able to show to another. There is a community in grief. Here is a path which all must tread. The pestilence may breathe death into the palace, as into the cottage. Lightnings and tempests do no homage to the greatest or the wisest. Hades opens its everlasting gates for men of every rank; and, at our very feet, (as though to force an unwelcome lesson on the most careless,) "the house appointed for all living" receives the ashes, soon to mingle in undistinguished ruin, of heroes and captives, of slaves and tyrants. "There" (in the language of patriarchal elegy) "the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master."

Life, abbreviated to a span, bears also the indelible marks of sorrow and calamity. Its days are both few and evil. But, in the arrange

ments of that wisdom which can draw even from such a source a revenue of manifold good, the contemplation of suffering, and the efforts to relieve it, are among the means of our moral discipline. It may require the sacrifice of much time and feeling to explore the habitations of grief; "to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction;" to go through the hospitals and infirmaries that grace our land; to enter into the case of those who have sustained reverses of fortune, and whose sadness is the deeper by reason of many a remembrance of other days; and to smooth the pillow of death. But "it is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting." Among the benefits thus obtained may be reckoned a just estimate of things. The illusions of prosperity are here scattered. We see of what life consists. And if these revelations do not serve to detach lingering affections from earth, and to wing them for the sky,—if the perils of virtue, the rigours of adversity, the downfal of greatness, the tears of beauty, the prevailing restlessness of a suffering and dying race, do not concur with higher influences to disenchant the mind,-what can reconcile us to the admission that we are here but "strangers and sojourners, as all our fathers were?"

This is a reflex benefit; and he who receives it is thus afresh drawn to minister to suffering humanity. The Christian profession is adorned by an observant and discriminating sympathy for the afflicted. My "neighbour" is poor and needy; or he is solitary, and oppressed by the sensibilities of a stranger in distress; or his griefs are aggravated by the consciousness that he has brought them on himself. These are the gloomy conditions of life on so large a

scale, that a system which applies the needed reliefs and consolations may assume to be the benefactress of human kind. Christianity does all this; and, in pursuing her designs of unfathomable love, she secures the agency of all her genuine disciples by blending duty and privilege. Each lover of Him "who went about doing good" is made the lover of his brother too. The poor man is my "neighbour," though I may have all the flocks that whiten the plains of Kedar. Nay, the very disparity, which creates my opportunity of befriending him, demands that I should own the relationship. It is clear that the world turns, with more than Persian adoration, to the rising sun of prosperity: let me humbly follow my Master, who "gives not as the world giveth." When my bounties are spread, let me call in "the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind; for they cannot recompense me;" but (O amazing grace!) I "shall be recompensed at the resurrection of the just." Let me not be " forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." Let me convince the poor wayfaring man that he has, at least, one friend, who loves him for the sake of his Saviour. If I have little to give him, I may lighten the pressure of his solitude. And is the pillow, already wet with tears, and burning with the fever of incumbent disease, also planted with thorny remembrances? Here, then, is an object that claims a deeper sympathy. God forbid that my besetting selfishness should find its plea in professions of indignation against sin! Is it not enough that for me, a sinner, the Redeemer came down from the bosom of the Father?

Thus far we find no limit to a Christ-like benevolence. And, if oceans intervene, this angel-spirit will still seek out the sons of want and of affliction. It is an evidence of our degeneracy, that misery at a distance produces little concern. As we rise out of the ruins of our fall, the irrational fallacy is detected. The heart is put right; and then no syllogism is required to show that sorrow is no less sorrow at the distance of thousands of miles than at our own door. The question for the practical Christian is, Can I by any means reach the distress? and he hails, with more than scientific interest, those applications of modern skill which bring distant lands nigh, and already open a highway for the spread, among all nations, of the blessings which follow in the train of Christianity.

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But we may not close the page of St. Luke until we have drawn from it yet another instruction. If remoteness might seem to palliate indifference to the happiness of some classes of our fellow-men, what shall be said of others whom passion or prejudice would urge us to call our enemies? If this extreme case is included in the story of the Good Samaritan, the last barrier is broken down.

"Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy." The former part of this citation is the law of God; the latter is a strange instance of adding unto His pure words, on the part of daring Jewish casuists. Perhaps it may be taken as an example of perverse inference from those passages in which the Israelites were required to execute vengeance on nations 2 Y

VOL. VII.-FOURTH SERIES.

that had filled up the measure of their iniquities. In this, however, they were but the ministry of God's wrath; and, be it ever remembered, on tribes from which they had received no injury. It was clearly foreseen that any alliance or association with the Canaanites would be contaminating to a people whose glorious calling it was to be "holiness unto the Lord." Long had the crimes that polluted that fair and flowery land attracted the anger of the Most High; and now, the utter destruction of the seven tenant-nations being decreed, it seemed good to His wisdom to use such a ministry, that Israel might be the more impressively taught to abstain from idols. It was an awful exhibition of His rectoral justice, in regard to those who proved themselves irreclaimably given up to the enormous sin which insults His purity while it assaults His throne. But retaliation of injuries which we have received, and a spirit of malevolence toward hostile parties in general, derive hence no countenance. The only parallel case must be one in which apparent humanity to others is perilous to our own virtue and salvation, and is, moreover, clearly opposed to a revealed and definitive law of God. As to some other canons which refer to surviving idolatrous nations, such as the severely restrictive one in Deut. xxiii. 6,-they are to be understood as conveying a warning, in Orientalisms of impressive phrase, against any national compact or correspondence with these; the reason of such prohibition being found, doubtless, in the Lawgiver's prescience, that as corporations they would be in all ages the deceitful and implacable foes of Israel. Yet examples prove that even Moabites might come over to the Jewish faith, and worship in the congregation; though, it appears, they might not be registered with the Israelites. They who look at the deeper harmonies of truth will not readily believe that this law forbids offices of humanity toward individuals of the hostile nations. That it does not prescribe reprisals, or anything like a vindictive temper in regard to inimical parties, may be safely inferred from the context, which expressly forbids hatred toward "an Edomite," or "an Egyptian."

Injunctions of the above class, political, or judicial, or (in a word) based on any other than perpetual reasons, are not to be applied beyond their due limits. The misanthropy that flies to them for its pleas is rebuked by Jesus Christ, not only in His discourse with the self-justifying lawyer, but also, and most emphatically, in the sermon on the mount. The Scribes and Pharisees who sat in Moses' seat were entitled to honour in the Sanhedrim and other councils, but not in the schools of doctrine which they founded. They had neglected to compare scripture with scripture. They did not look at the scope and connexion. Some Lethean cup had made them forget such sayings as that of the wise man,-"If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink." These teachers were confounded when, with authority of truth and grace, Jesus said, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father

which is in heaven: for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." Written in lines of eternal light, this blessed law appeals to the Christian of every colour, clime, and age. Have I an enemy on this earth? He is my "neighbour." It will be a Christian triumph if I can win him over, as the heart of the Jew was doubtless won by the Samaritan. Let me seek grace to forget his injuries, to consider my own failings, and to requite evil with good. Is he my oppressor? In protecting and vindicating myself, I must guard against a restless, unforgiving, unrelenting zeal. He that sitteth in the heavens will in due time abase the proud, and "beautify the meek with salvation." (To be concluded.)

MISCELLANEOUS COMMUNICATIONS.

"PRAY FOR THE PEACE OF JERUSALEM."

AN APPEAL FOR UNITED INTERCESSION, WITH SPECIAL REGARD TO THE APPROACHING CONFERENCE,

METHODISM, in its essential principles and spiritual results, is the work of God. It was brought into existence, and is still sustained, by the preaching of the Cross and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Connexionally, as well as individually, it is in God "we live, and move, and have our being." As a people, we possess nothing but what He has given us; and we can do nothing but "through Christ which strengtheneth us. To the mass of its faithful people Methodism has not only given a creed, with a name and place in the visible church; but it has been the means of imparting a new and blissful life to their souls. Yet its course, hitherto, has been "through fire and through water." Considering the factions from within, and the opposition from without, with which it has had to contend, we may regard its existence as matter of astonishment. "If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, now may" our "Israel say; if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us; then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us: then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul: then the proud waters had gone over our soul. Blessed be the Lord, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth."

The past year has been a year of storm, conflict, and bereavement to our beloved Connexion. Various Societies have been rent by division; our meetings for the settlement of church affairs, usually peaceful and happy, have been perversely turned into scenes of debate and tumult; and thousands of our unsuspecting people have been, by selfish and designing men, estranged from the Ministers who were honoured of God in their conversion, and from ordinances which had aforetime proved "spirit and life" to their souls. Some parties, once forward to confess that, under God, they owed their all to this system, have trampled on its discipline; have slandered, and even endeavoured to starve, its ministry; have calumniated, and laboured to ruin, its Missions to the Heathen; and have sought to make the entire Connexion a proverb and reproach in the earth. These