Crown and the English Church to establish uniformity are written in blood. Sanguinary and brutal as were the persecutions of the Church of Rome, Scotland suffered far more from the persecutions of the Protestant Establishment of England-no fewer than eighteen thousand of her truest and best-hearted people being killed in battles, tortured to death, starved, or banished, in this civil (or rather ecclesiastical) war, before the advent of Oliver Cromwell. And yet this was but the natural fruit of their own acts: they had sown the wind, they now reaped the whirlwind. In the days of their power, they enforced the covenant without mercy, and oftentimes at the point of the bayonet. In the days of their weakness, they had to read their sin in their punishment, while the world was taught the great fact,' that wherever the Church and the State go hand in hand together-be the party in power Protestant or Catholic-it will seek to enforce religion by pains and penalties, which can never reach the heart.

The First Epistle of John:

ITS ORIGINAL DESIGN, AND PECULIAR ADAPTATION TO OUR OWN TIMES.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF DR. AUG. NEANDER.

THIS epistle cannot be thoroughly understood, unless we first obtain a correct idea of the scenes and objects of the apostle's labours, and the peculiar circumstances of the churches he addresses. And we shall the more readily perceive its adaptation to all other times, and especially our own, when we have investigated the historical circumstances attendant upon its origin. We say especially to our own times, because this age bears a great resemblance to that of John, as one which, amidst dissolution and destruction, is preparing a new epoch in the development of the kingdom of God; and we shall discover that the obstacles with which John had to encounter prefigured those which still resist the progress of evangelical truth.

After the martyrdom of Paul, the obstacles against which the Christian life had from the first to contend, in the churches of Asia Minor, but which his great personal influence had held in restraint, broke out with increased power. John was invited to supply the place of the great apostle, and superintend the churches; and, after labouring there for some time, issued this pastoral address with especial reference to the many disturbances which so greatly endangered Christianity. These troubles assumed partly a theoretical, partly a practical character; consisting, on the one hand, of errors which

Der erste Brief Johannis. Praktisch erläutert, durch Dr. Aug. Neander, Berlin. 1851.

sprang from a partial, one-sided view of Christian truth, and, on the other, of practical errors, traceable to no such cause. But the errors which the apostle John opposed did not consist merely of doctrinal differences, to which in these days far more importance is attached than they deserve, as we shall find if we test them by their bearing upon Christian consciousness and Christian life; but they all bore reference to that which is the foundation-stone of Christianity itself. And we may learn, therefore, from the apostle's mode of controversy, the importance of keeping in view the often forgotten distinction between doctrinal differences which lead to differences in practice, and those which have no such result.

In the age of Paul, the main point of controversy was the relation between the law and the gospel-the question whether faith in Jesus as the Saviour was alone sufficient to secure for man righteousness and holiness, or whether it was also necessary to keep the law of Moses; but in the time of John, every controversy concerned the person of Christ; and the progress of this controversy made it more and more evident that the full apprehension of Christianity in faith and life depends upon the full apprehension of the person of Christ himself. As early as the first imprisonment of Paul in Rome, the controversy took this direction, as we may learn from the attack made by the apostle upon the false teaching in Colosse. The great point in dispute there was evidently the relation of the person of Christ to God, the universe, and man; and in this we may perceive a second stage in the progress of the great struggle between real Christianity and that which only put on the show, by which Christianity in its true essence would be made manifest. And in our own times, this is the form which the controversy is more and more assuming, as all the life-questions of religious belief are resolving themselves into the one question- What are we to believe about the person of Christ?'

That the Word, which was in the beginning with God and was God, and through which all things were created, became flesh, constitutes, as John says, the peculiar nature of the person of Christ. The one thing which distinguishes him from all that has ever appeared in the history of man is this, the union of the divine essence with all that human nature embraces-the humanizing of the divine essence in order that human nature might be fitted to reveal the life of God. And as the very essence of the person of Christ is founded on this, so also is that of Christianity, the express design of which is to raise to a divine life; in fact, to deify all that is human, according to the original destiny of man to be the image of God. A right view of Christ as the Word become flesh, is also essential to a correct apprehension of the entirely new character which Christianity gives to life, that is, of the peculiar nature of Christian ethics. As, then, it was impossible to understand what Christ was without recognising this union of the divine and human in his person, two errors arose amongst those who failed to hold fast the completeness of this union, and gave undue prominence to the one side or the other. But errors so thoroughly opposed to each other as those which on the one hand saw only deity, and on the other only

humanity, in Christ, are powerful witnesses to the central truth in which they originated; for the appearance of Christ could only have produced on observant minds such different impressions in consequence of its being unparalleled in the history of man. There were some who, whilst they acknowledged that he was a man endowed to an extraordinary degree with divine gifts, could recognise in him nothing higher than humanity. Others, in opposing this view, fell into the opposite extreme. To them the divine glory shone so brilliantly in Christ, that everything human vanished before it, or seemed to them an apparition, a mere form assumed, in order that the divine nature might show itself to man. Nor were these the only errors which John had to refute; between them there arose another, apparently reconciling them, but only apparently; for, whilst it embraced the errors of both, it did not fully recognise either the humanity or divinity in the person of Christ. This was the view of Cerinthus. He taught that Jesus was a man in no respect different from others, but that when he was set apart to his Messianic office by his baptism, the heavenly redeeming Spirit, which was something entirely distinct from himself, descended upon him, and became united with him; in this way he neither left out the divine nor the human, but he failed to grasp their unity, regarding them as entirely distinct from each other, and only connected in a casual and external manner. Such a theory neither recognised the divine as becoming human, nor the human as glorified by the divine; and, therefore, no less than the others, obscured the true meaning of the person of Christ and of the new creation, which he the God-man, the redeemer of humanity, came to accomplish. In opposition to all such mutilating of the person and work of Christ, the apostle John felt himself called upon to bear witness, from what he had seen and felt, to the life of Christ as one in which the glory of the only-begotten of the Father had been revealed to him, as it shone forth in his whole earthly career.

It will be easily seen that these same opposing doctrines are renewed in other forms in the present day; and, therefore, that this epistle of John is not less fitted for our time than for his own. There are some who perceive in Christ only an enlightened man, who was the most perfect teacher of religious truth that ever appeared in the world, and who has given us the best pattern of human life. To such men Christianity consists of instruction, moral legislation, and moral example; they deny that there was anything supernatural and divine in the life of Christ, and regard him as only different in degree from the noblest of the race; they trifle with the evangelical history, and explain it away till they have brought everything within the circle of ordinary experience, and therefore neither understand nor acknowledge the great moral changes, which Christ has produced in the world to a degree impossible to any but to him, and which distinguish Christianity from all other spiritual powers that have ever operated amongst men. The glory of a divine life, transforming everything in man, is hidden from them; and Christianity, in its peculiar essence, remains an undiscovered secret.

There are, on the other hand, those who see at once that such an interpretation does violence to the narrative of the life of Christ which the gospel contains, and higher ideas shine before them in the history of that life. But these are veiled in ethereal drapery, and come into no intimate connexion with the present visible world; the historical appearance of Christ is treated as wanting reality, as though it were only a passing tale, invented to reveal that which is divine. The Christ of history becomes to them little more that an apparition, as he was believed to be by the Docetæ of old. Thus some want an ideal Christ, others an every-day Christ to suit their low material views; some desire only the spirit, others only the letter, and thus both are lost, for only when united can either be truly preserved.

This epistle is also directed against practical errors, which we must distinguish from those of a theoretical nature, such as we have noticed. There were some who, in their consciousness of redemption received, forgot that believers must always feel the want of continual redemption, and seem to have lost sight of the fact that sin was still clinging to them, and that they could only be freed from it by constant selfconsecration to the Redeemer. Others hoped for forgiveness without throwing off their sins, and thought it possible to be pardoned without obtaining complete sanctification in communion with Christ. Forgiveness of sins, like belief itself, was to them only something outward, and lost its true inward living importance; and there grew up in consequence a mechanical world-Christianity, always an easy affair, which made Christianity a matter of custom, just as in the churches established by Paul it became simply hereditary, handed down from generation to generation. Both these errors John found it necessary to oppose by upholding Christ as the Holy One,' who came as a redeemer to found in men a kingdom of holiness, who is always working in men, redeeming and sanctifying, so that as they never cease to want a redeemer, they are continually purified and sanctified by him. The recurrence of these practical errors in our day must be too evident to all to require notice in detail. Nor will it be difficult to see how well this epistle, written to counteract the errors of John's own age, is adapted to meet the spreading errors of our own.

Supplementary Chapter au the Judians of British Guiana.

DURING a residence of a few years in the country of the red man, we became deeply interested in the attempt to ascertain what efforts had been made for his Christian instruction. Circumstances occurred that occasioned a voyage up the Essequibo, where we made the acquaintance of Mr. Bernau, who, under the auspices of the Church Missionary Society, has long laboured amongst these wandering tribes. From

him, and subsequently through his published narrative, we gathered the principal facts narrated in this paper. Little is known in what is paradoxically called the Christian world of the labours of its most devoted servants; and a glance at our periodical missionary literature will convince any one that the men who are really doing the great work seldom appear in print narrating small marvels. We know several hard-working men who are never seen in print, and we have heard from their lips the reason assigned, that when they write they wish good and bad to stand out in such truthful relief that it may be read where it was written, a test all published letters cannot stand. True heroes are very quiet men. They believe; and therefore they do not make haste. But as Milton finely says, there is to be a resurrection of names as well as of bodies, and thus society, though it pay slow, will be sure to pay real, homage to its true benefactors.

How little fuss have the Moravians made, and yet their work has been nobler, and will be more durable, than the mighty toil of those who raised the Pyramids. Ascertained a tribe more wretched than another, a country more inhospitable than another, or a people more hopeless than another, there to a certainty, in advance of philosopher or merchant, was found the Moravian missionary. Long before Exeter Hall stimulants were administered, or the dubious applause of excited crowds received, the unostentatious Moravian was quietly at work in the deadly swamps of British Guiana, among the apparently irreclaimable Indians. As early as 1738 four or five Moravians were living among these Indians; not settled, but like our Moffat in the earlier part of his labours, following them from place to place, carrying their cassada bread for life's support, their hammock on their backs, sleeping at night as the Indians slept, in the woods; learning their language, and, until then, talking by signs and by love into the heart of the savage. 'No wilderness,' says one, appeared too frightful, no road too dreary, no Indian hut too remote, if there they might but hope to find a soul ready to receive the gospel.' After thirty years' almost ineffectual labour, insurrection broke out among the slaves; the rising Moravian settlement at Pilgerhut' was destroyed; two of the missionaries fled to Europe; two remained, and died of fever, brought on by harass and fatigue.

6

Later still, on the banks of the Corantyne, the river that divides British Guiana from Surinam, or Dutch Guiana, two other leaders of this forlorn hope, Odenwald and Daehne, commenced their labours among the Carrabees and Arrawaks. Very little success attended their exertions: the Indians conspired to destroy the new settlement called 'Sharon;' they could not comprehend the mystery of the white man's quiet residence and imperturbable labours. Doubtless they meant to reduce them to slavery as they had the blacks; and so they resolved to burn the settlement and kill the missionaries. Odenwald was fired at and seriously wounded while preaching, but recovered, and returned home, leaving the solitary but large-hearted Daehne to pursue his work of faith and labour of love alone. Nothing could daunt this brave man-nothing provoke him into an expression of bitter