Review and Herald, Vol. 18, No. 26. (11/26/1861)

Review and Herald

Nov 26, 1861

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 26, 1861

Address to Advent Believers.

By William Miller

[The following excellent “Address” from the pen of Wm. Miller was presented to the conference of Advent believers, held at Low Hampton, N. Y., Dec. 28th and 29th, and was published in the “Advent Herald” of January 15th, 1848. “During the conference,” says the Herald, “the following address prepared by Bro. Miller at the request of the brethren, was presented by a committee, and unanimously adopted by the conference.”—Ed.]

To the dear Second Advent brethren, scattered abroad, despised, but not forsaken; poor, yet making many rich; discarded by the proud Pharisees of our day, yet not discouraged; cruelly treated for the doctrine you love, and yet holding firmly to your hope of salvation at the door.

We the undersigned, partakers of the same hope, children of the same faith, looking for the same deliverance, loving the same Lord, feeding on the same word, enjoying the same Spirit, suffering the same trials, subjected to like disappointments, and having the same care and fellowship for your welfare and furtherance in the truth—as ye have one for another and for us,—address you by this our epistle, in the way of consolation and advice: knowing that while we may comfort and console your hearts, we are establishing and strengthening our own. For if through many disappointments, temptations and trials, you stand fast in the faith once delivered to the saints, we rejoice in your steadfastness, are comforted together with you and are strengthened even in the inner and the outer man. We thank God always on your behalf, when we hear, as we already have heard, that your and our late disappointment has produced in you, and we hope in us also, a deep humiliation and close inspection of our hearts; and although we are humbled, and in some measure pained in our hearts to see and hear the scoffs and jeers of a wicked and perverse generation, yet we are in no wise terrified or cast down by the adversaries of our faith.

We pray you, then, brethren, to “let patience have its perfect work,” knowing “that patience worketh experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed.”

No, we are not ashamed, for we all know why we hope. You can and will, all of you, from the least of you to the greatest, old or young, when inquired of for the reason of your hope, open your Bibles, and with meekness and fear show the inquirer why you hope in the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. You need not in a single instance refer the inquirer to your minister to give the reason of your faith and hope. We bless God for you, my brethren, that you are all taught of the Lord. Your creed is the Scriptures; your spelling-book is the Bible; your grammar is the Word indited by the Spirit; your geography respects the promised inheritance of the holy land; your astronomy respects the bright starry crown of righteousness; your philosophy is the wisdom which cometh down from God; your bond of union is the love and fellowship of the saints; your teacher is the Holy Ghost; and your professor the Lord Jesus Christ; your recitation room is your closet; your recitations are heard in your prayers, and your songs fill up your vacations. We speak not of rewards, diplomas and degrees, for these are reserved in heaven for us, when these dusty walls of this tabernacle shall be dissolved, and we are called home into the new heavens and the new earth, to a full fruition of that hope of which we are not ashamed.

Ashamed of this hope? No. Ashamed of looking for this hope? No. Ashamed of expecting Jesus? Why, what a question is that! When we look do we not expect? The ministers of our formal churches, some of them, say “they look, but do not expect.” Yet, brethren, we have expected, time and again, and have been disappointed, but are not ashamed.

We would not yield a hair's breadth of our expectations for all the honors of Caesar's household, with all the popular applause of a worldly church.

We exhort you, then, by all the love and fellowship of the saints, to hold fast to this hope. It is warranted by every promise of the word of God. It is secured to you by the two immutable things, the counsel and oath of God, in which it is impossible for God to lie. It is ratified and sealed by the death, blood, resurrection and life of Jesus Christ. You have already had a foretaste of the bliss of this hope, in the seventh month, when every moment you looked for the heavens to open, and reveal unto your anxious gaze the King of glory. Yes, then your whole soul was ravished with a holy joy, when you expected every moment to hear the shout of the heavenly host descending from the Father's glory, to welcome you, a weary pilgrim, to your blessed abode of eternal rest. In that eventful period, where was the world with all its vain allurements and empty show? It was gone. If our Saviour then had come as we expected, no tears would have fallen for a receding world, nor sighs have heaved our breasts for a dissolving earth, with all its pomp, its pleasures, or its praises. All this was then no more to us than is a bubble in Niagara's cataract. God's goodness gave us then a slight repast, like Elijah's meat, that lasted forty days.

And how can you, or we, give up a hope so full of joy, of holy love, and heavenly anticipation, as is this? The world may frown and scoff; the unbelieving church may laugh and sneer, and try to call us back. They may and will report their slanderous tales to complete our trials, vainly supposing they can wound our pride, and by this means take away our hope, and make us, like themselves, a whitened sepulchre. In all our trials, those who have obtained this blessed hope by the study of the Scriptures, have remained steadfast and immovable among the scoffs and jeers with which we have been assailed.

This, to us, is a source of great joy; and it shows conclusively where our faith is founded and our hope predicated. It is upon the sure word of prophecy, and no other evidence, that we rely. This is our main support, as even our opposers will, and do admit; or why do they in their attacks upon us, first try to show that prophecy is not to be understood, or if it is, that it is couched in such mystical and ambiguous language, that the ignorant and unlearned (as they are pleased to call us poor Bible students, in their mighty clemency), cannot comprehend its true import? Or why do they ridicule us, as a set of fanatical, unlearned heretics in trying to understand the sure word of prophecy, without first coming to our Bishops, or themselves to learn what the original text may mean? Why do they use these and similar arguments in order to overthrow us, if they are not sensible of the fact, that the prophecies of God's word are our main pillar? Why do they, without any discrimination, try to make our sure word of prophecy so dark, mysterious and incomprehensible, and in many instances acknowledge their own ignorance, and then call us heretics, because we search and believe what to us looks clear, consistent, and harmonious, with every part of God's holy word?

But, say they, “time has proved you in an error: unerring time has favored us, and proved what you say we failed to do.”

True, gentlemen, time has failed us in one or two instances, yet you cannot show why. And as you do not show any reason for the failure, permit us to give ours before we take your ground, and deny that prophecy can be understood. Every man of common intellect and information knows that we are dependent in some things on what we call human chronology, for the conclusion of our premises as it respects time. Again, they well know that our most learned and studious writers and historians disagree in the chronology of the events from which we date, some four or five years. It is true that we who have been most efficient in presenting this subject before the public, have chosen, and we think wisely too, the earliest possible time at which these momentous things might be expected to transpire, believing that it would be infinitely better for the souls of our fellow beings to come short of the time rather than to pass over. And indeed, we do not see any goods

reason now, why we should not have done in this matter as we have; for if we had looked only to the very last point of disputed time, and the accomplishment had come before that, or even at that time, how could there have been a tarrying time as the Bible predicts?

How could there have been a time for the trial of our faith and patience, and the purifying and sanctifying of the whole house of the true Israel? If we had not anticipated the time a little, with what propriety could the wicked scoffer, and those who professedly belong to the house of Israel say, “The days are prolonged and every vision faileth?” and what has God said we shall answer this rebellious house of Israel with? With another specified time? No. How then shall we ever silence their cavilling and scoffing, if we can fix no future time? We answer, that is not our work to do. God has promised to do that work. Hark! and hear what the Lord saith. “I will make this proverb to cease, and they shall no more use it as a proverb in Israel.” God will perform his engagements in his own time and manner. We have only to believe, and be patient. But we are taunted with “Oh you have prolonged your vision again and again; and you have failed every time; now wont you give it up, and come back to us? you are not honest if you will not.” When they thus call us dishonest, have we nothing we can say? If we altogether hold our peace, they will be wise in their own conceits, and go and report that they have shut our mouths, so that we could not say a word for ourselves; and thus the cause would be injured. But never fear brethren; God has told you what to say; do as he bids you, and he will take care of the consequences. God says, “But say unto them, the days are at hand, and the effect of every vision.” Eze. xii, 21–25. So we see, God has been in this thing. He well knew into what a straitened place we should be brought. He knew what the rebellious house of Israel would say, and he has given us the best weapon of defense.

The word of God has a sufficiency of all armor, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto every good work. We therefore hope that none of us will try to change the chronology of the visions; for they must fail in all our eyes; and if any vision should be so construed as to fix on another definite time in the future, we cannot conceive how the scripture would be fulfilled, that “every vision faileth.” Let us then be satisfied in patiently waiting for God’s time. But let us be careful that we do not lay off our armor, cease our watching, go to sleep at our post, or be caught in a snare, when the Son of man shall come. It is better to be ready before the time, and wait awhile, than not to be ready when the time shall come, and be lost. We exhort you then with the Lord’s advice, “be like men waiting for their Lord, that when he cometh they may open to him immediately.”

Again, we exhort you, brethren, that every one may edify and be edified, that ye forsake not the assembling of yourselves together, as often as your situation and circumstances shall permit; that we may comfort and console each other in our trials, be established ourselves in the present truth, and our minds be stirred up to remember that our Judge is now standing at the door. How can we who have taken so great delight in the study of the blessed Bible, again return to the beggarly elements of vain philosophy, and tradition of the fathers? We cannot sit under preaching where the Bible is discarded from the pulpit, except as a text book, and the plainest passages of scripture are mysticised and explained away, our hope in the resurrection of the body taken from us, and the kingdom of heaven preached as in this state of division, persecution and death, and the promise of being caught up in the air ridiculed by the oft repeated slang of ascension robes. These things we cannot fellowship, we will not hear them repeated. We therefore advise you, dear brethren, to hold meetings for prayer, reading of the Scriptures, exhortation and singing, if you may not be able to obtain a lecturer or preacher. And may the Spirit of God bless you with his presence, and preserve you blameless unto his coming.

Again we exhort you, brethren, to be faithful in business. Let every one labor with his hands, in the several callings in which God has placed us, that none of us may be a burden to any, and that we may all of us have wherewith to communicate and do good, for it is more blessed to give than to receive; and that we may none of us give any occasion to our enemies to reproach us with being busy bodies in other men’s matters, or as not providing for our own house. In thus doing we may put to silence the reproaches of those who are seeking every occasion to destroy the doctrine that we rejoice to believe. We may, while we are engaged in our several occupations, be fervent in spirit serving the Lord. If we could not, it would be evidence that we were not engaged in a proper calling; or that our hearts were not right with God. Paul, the great apostle to the Gentiles, labored with his hands that he might not be chargeable to the saints; and what was duty then, will be duty as long as the gospel remains to be preached. And we thank God we have never preached any other doctrine, you yourselves being our judges.

We also beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye be not led about by every spirit; but try the spirits. For every spirit is not of God; and it is now evident that there are many spirits in the earth,—even the three unclean spirits which are working miracles, and deceiving not only the kings but the whole earth. It therefore becomes us to be very cautious by what spirit we are led. The spirit of error will lead us from the truth; and the Spirit of God will lead us into truth. But say you, a man may be in an error, and think he has the truth. What then? We answer, the Spirit and word agree. If a man judges himself by the word of God, and finds a perfect harmony through the whole word, then we must believe we have the truth; but if he finds the spirit by which he is lead does not harmonize with the whole tenor of God’s law, or book, then let us walk carefully, lest we be caught in the snare of the Devil, and fall from our own steadfastness; and so be deceived, and lose the crown for which we are running. Let us follow the teachings of the apostle Paul to Titus, ii, 12, “That denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;” or as Peter tells us in his second epistle, iii, 11, “Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness.” In both cases the context teaches us to look for the coming of the day of God; or which is the same thing, “the glorious appearing of the great God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ.”

There are a few individuals among us who are teaching that Christ has come, and that we were not mistaken in the time, but only in the manner of his coming. Let us be careful, lest we cease from our watchfulness, and so that day come upon us unawares. Remember that the same Jesus will come in like manner as they saw him ascend; and every eye shall see him, and we shall see him as he is, and be like him, when that day shall come for which we look; and then “the heavens being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements melt with fervent heat.” If the one can be spiritualized away, all the rest must of course be spiritualized in like manner; and it would make the whole description of the judgment but a jumble of nonsense. We hope but few will be carried away by such vain trifling with the Bible. If God does not mean what he says, to whom shall we go for instruction? Who has been his counselor, and who has sat in the council chamber of the Almighty? Man is but grass, and the flower thereof fadeth. He is but of yesterday, and his life but a breath. “Cursed is the man who trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.”

Hold on then, brethren, to the sure word of prophecy, for you will reap soon the fruits of your faith, if you faint not.

We would advise and recommend that none be impatient; “Let patience have her perfect work.” “For ye have need of patience, that after ye have done the will of God, ye may receive the promise; for yet (after ye have done the will of God), a little while, and he that shall come, will come, and will not tarry.”

Then have we done the will of God in proclaiming the year 1843? We could have done no better with the light we then had. The seventh month also was for the purpose of filling up these prophecies, which could not be accomplished while we had a future time in view. For instance, how could our faith and patience be fairly tested, while we had definite time to hold on to? A man might believe in the time of 1843 and the seventh month, and pin his faith on the arguments of men, and yet have no real faith in God. As long as we can lean on man for any support, we are always prone to do it. In all the history of the past, when God has wrought deliverance for his people, he has brought them where no human wisdom, strength, or foresight, could help; and where nothing but faith and patience could sustain. Then God has wrought deliverance, and “his own arm has brought down salvation” for us. And in this last trial, and the greatest deliverance of all, will he not deliver in his own way? It therefore becomes us to stand fast in faith. We know that when 1843 passed, many went back and walked no more with us. Their faith was tested. So likewise it was in the seventh month: the faith of many then failed. And so will it be, and so must it be. For [Mal. iii, 18], “In the day when the Lord of Hosts makes up his jewels, then shall ye return and discern between the righteous and the wicked,” &c. Why? “For the day cometh that shall burn as an oven.” It had not come when the test was made. No.

Rev. xxii, 11: “He that is unjust let him be unjust still; and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still; and he that is holy, let him be holy still.” And what shall follow? “And behold I come quickly.” Quickly, after what? Any one may see it is quickly after the test is made, which tries the real characters of men. O foolishness, says the Greek, the Infidel, and Pharisee. Yet it is truth; God tried Abraham, Moses, David, Daniel, and the three worthies with such a test, and they were not ashamed to own their faith to, or before a scoffing multitude, and persecuting kings. So we must be tested, and if the two trials we have passed are not sufficient, the next will be blood.

Preserve us Lord from falling from our faith and from our blessed hope. And come Lord Jesus, Oh! come quickly.

IN THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

ThERE the verdure fadeth never, and the odors never die; There beneath unwilting blossoms, piercing thorns may never lie; Music, softer and diviner, than from earthly lyres has rolled, Through angelic utterance breaketh, and from quivering chords of gold.

Like a dove of snowy plumage, brooding on her leafy nest, Peace in sacred beauty resteth, deep in every saintly breast; Hope hath found her dazzling splendor, of her grandest day outshone, While through every bosom thrilleth, joy that sense hath never known.

Tears that trembled on the lashes in affliction's keenest hours, Were as dews of summer evenings on the thirsty lips of flowers; Gleaming crowns adorn each forehead by the thorns of sorrow torn, And he wears the whitest raiment who the heaviest cross hath borne.

When was the Sabbath Instituted?

SOME have contended that the Sabbath was not instituted until the law was given to Moses at mount Sinai. But there are serious difficulties in the way of this belief. In the second chapter of Genesis, after having given an account of the creation, the sacred historian says: "On the seventh day God ended his work which he had made: and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." Now, if any part of this narrative is to be construed literally, the whole of it must be; and if we may not venture to deny or explain away the account which Moses has given of the creation, then we may not deny or explain away this unequivocal statement respecting the original institution of the Sabbath in Paradise. The blessing and sanctifying of the seventh day is mentioned in connection with the first seventh day in the order of time, and it is so mentioned as most forcibly to impress the reader that the Sabbath was then instituted. God's resting on the day is given as the reason for its sanctification; and it cannot be supposed that this reason existed two thousand five hundred years before the institution. We conclude, therefore, that the Sabbath was enjoined immediately after the close of the work of creation.

This opinion is corroborated by some facts recorded in the Scriptures. There are frequent and early notices of reckoning by sevens. Noah observed a period of seven days in sending the raven and dove from the ark; the term week is used in the contract between Jacob and Laban; Joseph mourned seven days for his father; and Job and his friends observed the term of seven days.

Nor is it in the sacred volume or among the Jews alone that such facts are found. Nearly all the nations of antiquity were acquainted with the weekly divisions of time. The Assyrians, Egyptians, Indians, Arabians, and, in a word, all the nations of the East, have in all ages made use of a week of seven days. And we find that these nations not only divided time thus, but that they regarded as holy the very day which had been sanctified as a Sabbath, although they had forsaken the true worship of God. Homer, Hesiod, and Callimachus, say, "The seventh day is holy." Theophilus of Antioch says, respecting the seventh day, "The day which all mankind celebrate." Josephus asserts that, "no city of Greeks or barbarians can be found, which does not acknowledge a seventh day's rest from labor." And Philo says, that "the Sabbath was a festival not peculiar to any one people or country, but so common to all mankind, that it might be called a public and general feast of the nativity of the world." These authors, who lived in different ages and were of different nations, cannot be supposed to have written thus in order to please the Jews, who were generally despised and persecuted; and this universal reverence for the seventh day cannot be accounted for upon any other supposition than that the Sabbath was instituted at the close of creation, and handed down by tradition to all the descendants of Adam.

If additional proof of this early institution of the Sabbath is needed, it may be drawn from the manner in which it was revived in the wilderness. Before the children of Israel came to mount Sinai we find them voluntarily making provision for the Sabbath, by gathering on the sixth day a double portion of manna. "And all the rulers came and told Moses. And he said unto them, this is that which the Lord hath said: to-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord." "And it came to pass, that there went out some of the people on the seventh day to gather, and they found none. And the Lord said unto Moses, how long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws? See, for that the Lord hath given you the Sabbath, therefore he giveth you, on the sixth day, the bread of two days." The rebuke How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws? implies the previous appointment of the Sabbath; and the positive assertion, the Lord hath given you the Sabbath, ought to settle the question in any mind disposed to understand the sacred historian.—Sub. Vindicator.

What Day of the Week do the Scriptures Designate as the Sabbath?

By Sab. Vindicator

To this question, it might be supposed that every person who has any acquaintance with the subject would readily reply—The seventh. We are aware, however, that efforts are made to render this a difficult point to determine. We shall, therefore, make a few remarks upon it.

It is plainly recorded that the Creator, after laboring the first six days, in which he completed the work of creation, rested the following day, which was the seventh in the order of creation. This particular day God therefore sanctified and blessed. “And God blessed the seventh day.” When the law was given at mount Sinai, the observance of the seventh day was commanded; and the manner in which the fourth commandment is expressed, shows beyond a doubt, that one particular and definite day was known to Israel by this name. Consequently, they needed no instruction as to what day was intended. This is observable in Ex. xvi, 22, where the sixth and seventh days of the week are mentioned by their ordinal names, as a subject with which the people were familiarily acquainted.

In this place, also, the seventh day is declared to be the Sabbath. There can be no reasonable doubt but that the day which in the time of Moses was known as the seventh day, was the same in its weekly succession with that which is called the seventh day in Gen. ii, 3. If the seventh day mentioned in the fourth commandment was not the same day of the week mentioned in Gen. ii, 3, as some profess to think, it must be perfectly inexplicable, that no intimation is given in the history of those events that another seventh day was intended in the fourth commandment than the one mentioned in the institution of the Sabbath, especially since both are recorded in the same appellation in a direct series of events. But what removes all obscurity from the subject is, that God has positively declared that the day which he commanded to be observed in Ex. xx, is the same on which he rested at the close of the creation. “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” This language is definite; and while it assures us that the day here commanded to be observed is the same in its weekly returns with the day on which God rested, it assures us against any derangement of the week, or loss of time which might have been produced in the long lapse of time from the creation, by the general apostasy from the true worship of God. Had the true Sabbath been lost, it was certainly restored; and the day then known as the seventh day received the divine sanction. The same remark is applicable to the subject during the succeeding history of the Jewish nation. Had the weekly Sabbath fallen into total neglect, and the day of its regular recurrence been forgotten, our Lord Jesus Christ, by giving his divine example in favor of the day known by the Jewish nation as the proper seventh day of the decalogue, has settled the question conclusively, down to that time: so that the day known in the New Testament as the Sabbath, was the seventh day in regular succession from the creation of the world. A perfect uniformity among all the nations in the known world, as to the days of the week, both before and since the advent of Christ, is a further testimony, that no derangement of the days of the week has ever taken place. Indeed, it will not be pretended that the account of time has been lost since the introduction of Christianity. Since that period, the Jews as a people have maintained a perfect uniformity in the observance of the ancient Sabbath, though scattered through every nation of the globe; and the Christian church, in all its divisions, has been known to observe either the seventh or the first day of the week; and for a considerable length of time, both of these days. So that we are as certain that the day now known as the seventh day of the week, is the same with that enjoined in the fourth commandment, as we are of any fact, for the knowledge of which we are dependent on the testimony of mankind.

In this connection, we would remark, that the sabbatical law does not appoint a seventh day, but the seventh day. It is but a flimsy subterfuge to pretend that the fourth commandment enjoins only a seventh part of our time to be kept holy. The people of Israel never so understood the law of the Sabbath; and their uniform conduct ever since shows that they understood it to mean the last day of the week, and that only. It will be admitted, that had the Jews, in the days of Moses, proffered the rest of the seventh day, under the pretext that they had rested on one of the preceding six days, they would have paid dearly for their presumption. If, then, their sense of this precept was correct, no person in any age has a right to understand it in a different sense, for a law cannot have a contrary or a double meaning. While the terms of that precept remain the same, its meaning must continue the same. It is true that the law which enjoins the observance of the last day of every seven, does as a consequence enjoin the seventh part of our time; but it is still the seventh day in its proper order that it requires, and not merely a seventh part. And it should be remembered, that Christ hath said, “not one jot or tittle shall in any wise pass from the law;” and that the most awful penalty is denounced on him who dares to explain away its proper meaning.

It is obvious, also, that if a seventh day, or any one day after six of labor, be all that is required by the law of the Sabbath, the seventh or last must still be that day, from the fact, that to change it without divine authority would be to change the length of the week, and violate God’s established order. And as in the first instance it would be sin, time would never change the character of that act. A wrong never will become a right by our persisting in it. As it could not be changed without sin, so the sin must ever remain until repented of and retracted. It should be remembered, likewise, that by an admission that a seventh day, or a seventh part of our time only is required, all argument for a change is effectually silenced; for if any good reason existed for one day more than another, the more seventh part must be abandoned.

OLD TESTAMENT DONE AWAY.

By J. CLARKE

WHAT an idea! Is it done away that God created the world? Is the history of the prophets done away? James tells us to take the prophets as an example of patience, &c. How can we do this, if it is done away? Are the prophecies done away because fulfilled? Is it not as necessary for us to know what prophecies related to Christ, as it was for the apostles to know them? Is it less necessary for our faith in Christ to be informed on these points, than it was for the followers of Christ in the first century?

DONE AWAY! Did Paul think so when he exhorted Timothy to study to show himself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth? Why does Paul say that all scripture is profitable, if it is done away?

Are the five books of Moses done away, containing the only history of the world in that early period? Is it done away that there was a flood, a tower of Babel, confusion of tongues (the present time of confusion of tongues, and ideas, and religions, would to heaven it were done away!) a faithful Abraham, a life-saving Joseph, a meek Moses, an oppressing Pharaoh, a divided Red Sea, saving one, and drowning another, army, a forty years' journey in the wilderness?

Is it done away that there was a people of God tossed to and fro for many hundred years, whose history is made up of captivities and conquests, of mingled joy and sorrow? Are the dealings of God with them less interesting to us than to them? Their prophets and wise men, may we not study their history, emulate their virtues, and avoid their errors?

DONE AWAY! Is the prophecy of Daniel done away, reaching down to the resurrection of the dead? And is it not as necessary for us to have the first, as the last, link of the chain? And in the whole work of redemption, is it not as necessary to understand the first steps under the Mosaic economy, as the last under the present dispensation?

Can the person who has only read the New Testament, have as comprehensive a view of the work of redemption as he who has studied both Old and New Testaments? Can he who only sees the antitype, as well understand allusions to the type as he who has studied both type and antitype?

No; he who has studied thoroughly the Old Testament is as much better prepared to receive the truths of the New, as the land ditched and subsoiled is prepared for the seed, than the half-ploughed field of the drone. And this is probably the reason why so few are deep-rooted and substantial christians. This is the reason so few understand the connection of God's word. They have rejected the foundation of all, because, as they blindly assert and believe, the Old is done away!

Think of a child's regarding the five fundamental rules of arithmetic done away because he had progressed to the square root. DONE AWAY! Why, his teacher would ask him, Are you not using these rules at every

turn in your arithmetical studies?

But I desire to convince, not to chide. I have no right to step beyond this point. My heart has not charity enough yet to bear as I should with all the snaky forms of error we meet at every turn. It is so strange that errors are loved and hugged to the bosom as so many dear, invaluable gems of perfection! O, how dear are these old, antiquated notions; not old, either; for many of them have been gotten up within my own recollection. I was taught by my parents in childhood that the law was the test of sin. Now my father is much grieved that I should go back to the law, which has been done away, as he infers, by Christ. But adieu to human wisdom, and the traditions of the fathers. Let us confess with the prophet that both we and our fathers have sinned and done wickedly. O, for patience.

J. CLARKE.

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