THE

RETROSPECT.

It is now upwards of twenty years since the attention of the Church was earnestly recalled to the study of unfulfilled prophecy-a subject which, though it has numbered among its expositors, at various intervals, some of the most celebrated writers and brightest ornaments, distinguished both for learning and piety, of their day, yet constituted so neglected and unvalued a portion of the treasury of truth, that, when it was revived at the period we refer to, there arose an almost universal outcry, both from ministers and people, against the presumption of such an undertaking. It was vain to cite the names of Sir Isaac Newton, Mede, Bishop Newton, Faber, with others equally renowned for soundness of wisdom and research, as some apology for resuming the object of their investigations; and had the individuals whom God selected as pioneers in the pursuit of those truths, which ultimately were developed by the

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renewed enquiry which we allude to, been men of a facile and ordinary mould, the enterprise itself must have yielded, at least for that generation, to the storm of prejudice with which they were assailed, and been abandoned in limine; and those glorious expectations which now gladden the hearts of thousands must have remained still involved in the obscurity of prophetic mystery.

In contemplating the condition of the Church at the period in question we are alike astonished at the ignorance which then prevailed of her own ultimate destiny, and at the immense progress which she has since then made in the comprehension and belief of the revealed purposes of God. The Reformation had introduced into the Protestant Churches a form of evangelical truth, which, whilst it was based upon reality, possessed also the tendency of destroying all concern for the catholic interests of the Church, and limiting the regards of men, as it would fain restrict the operations of God, to the accomplishment of their personal sanctification here, and final salvation hereafter. The constitution, nay, the very existence, of the Church, as an organized body, and consequently all God's dealings with her in that character-her aspect and relation to the worldher origin, progress, and eternal destiny-her vicissitudes of spiritual light and woful darkness

-the mighty convulsion of the world which she was destined to go through, in her passage to that eminence of honour and glory to which all Scripture testifies she shall attain-were all lost sight of and merged in a spiritual selfishness, which could not frame itself to the embracement of any larger or loftier theme than man's personal safety -a degree of spirituality so low that it is difficult adequately to express its insignificance. Some idea of it may, however, be formed by contrasting it with that noble sentiment uttered by the apostle Paul, when he exclaimed, in the largeness and fervour of his heart, "I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh."

The style of preaching and teaching which this sickly condition of the people drew from those who ministered to them spiritual instruction was the opposite of that which is catholic in truth, high in principle, and pure in doctrine; so that for the last century the most renowned ministers in the Church, putting aside, as dry and unprofitable to their hearers, all high and noble discourse of God's eternal purpose expressed in the way of doctrine, addressed themselves almost exclusively to that action of the Holy Spirit upon a man's own soul which develops itself in spiritual frames and feelings-being satisfied with what

constituted, in the phraseology of the day, experimental preaching. The evil was not in addressing the spirits and consciences of men, but in excluding and disparaging those higher truths of doctrine without which the effect of such appeals degenerates into sickly sentimentality, and the consciousness of the standing, and sense of the mutual obligations and dependence, of membership in Christ, are sacrificed to the pride and separateness of self-sufficient individualism.

It is, therefore, not to be wondered at that, when a more wholesome and nervous style of preaching was introduced into the Church, she should be found ignorant of the first principles of her faith; and that the enunciation of the truths so long disregarded should be received by a large majority of Christians, both ministers and people, as though some new and dangerous heresy were propounded-truths which, nevertheless, had been so carefully preserved in the formularies of all constituted Churches, and which are so obviously interwoven with the foundation of our faith, that, until controverted and obstinately denied, their denial was scarcely credible.

Had not the Almighty, by His merciful device of depositing sound and wholesome doctrine in the form of creeds and liturgies, thus preserved His truth, it is not, perhaps, too much to assert

that, from the absence of the ministries originally constituted by the Head of the Church, from the laxity and ignorance of the teachers who have succeeded them, and from the want of the Holy Ghost exercising His active office as in her early days, she would have lost almost every principle of truth which knits her and binds her together

as one.

Appeal to the inspired volume cannot heal divisions in faith and doctrine, since no heresy was ever invented that its advocates did not attempt to rest on scriptural grounds; and, in the absence of authoritative and well-instructed teachers in the Church, one man's opinion may be as valuable and decisive as another's. It is true that the holy Scripture is the record of the works of God, the exponent of His mind and will, and the revelation of His purposes; but though Paul writes to Timothy (an ordained minister) that "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness;" yet another apostle distinctly refers to those who are unlearned and unstable (not wicked and wilful) as wresting the Scriptures to their own destruction.

We conclude, therefore, that the Bible, which men are so ready to cite, and so frequently pervert for the sanction of every crudity, is not alone