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he was tenderly attached) as possessing the greatest elevation of soul, the largest compass of knowledge, the most mortified and most heavenly disposition that he ever saw in mortal.' Other eminent divines are no less laudatory; and Coleridge regarded Leighton as best deserving, among all our learned theologians, the title of a spiritual divine.' In the first chapter of his Commentary,' Leighton

says:

As in religion, so in the course and practice of men's lives, the stream of sin runs from one age into another, and every age makes it greater, adding somewhat to what it receives, as rivers grow in their course by the accession of brooks that fall into them; and every man when he is born, falls like a drop into the main current of corruption, and so is carried down with it, and this by reason of its strength and his own nature, which willingly dissolves unto it, and runs along with it.' In this single period, Coleridge says, we have religion, the spirit: the philosophy, the soul; and poetry, the body and drapery, united; Plato glorified by St. Paul !''

Arise, Shine (Isaiah 1x. 1).

The day of the Gospel is too precious that any of it should be spent in sleep, or idleness, or worthless business. Worthless business detains many of us. Arise, immortal soul, from moiling in the dust, and working in the clay like Egyptian captives! Address yourselves to more noble work. There is a Redeemer come, who will pay your ransom, and rescue you from such vile service, for more excellent employment. It is strange how the souls of Christians can so much forget their first original from Heaven, and their new hopes of returning thither and the rich price of their redemption, and forgetting all these, dwell so low, and dote so much upon trifles. How is it that they hear not their well-beloved's voice crying, Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away? Though the eyes of true believers are so enlightened that they shall not sleep unto death, yet their spirits are often seized with a kind of drowsiness and slumber, and sometimes even when they should be of most activity. The time of Christ's check to his three disciples made it very sharp, though the words are mild: What! could you not watch with me one hour? Shake off, believing souls, that heavy humour. Arise, and satiate the eye of faith with the contemplation of Christ's beauty, and follow after him till you attain the place of fu enjoyment. And you others, who never yet saw him, arise and admire his matchless excellency. The things you esteem great appear so but through ignorance of his greatness. His brightness, if you saw it, would obscure to you the greatest splendour of the world, as all those stars that never go down upon us, yet are swallowed up in the surpassing light of the sun when it arises. Arise from the dead, and he shall give you light. Arise and work while it is day, for the night cometh wherein no man can work, says our Saviour himself. Happy are they who rise early in the morning of their youth; for the day of life is very short, and the art of Christianity long and difficult. Is it not a grievous thing that men never consider why they came into the world till they be upon the point of going out again, nor think how to live till they be summoned to die? But most of all unhappy he who never wakens out of that pleasing dream of false happiness till he fall into eternal misery. Arise, then, betimes, and prevent that sad awakening !

Idle Curiosity and Useless Contention.

Wise men observe that there is an inbred curiosity in men to know things to come rather than things present, and the affairs of others rather than their own. Yea, we spend much of our time and discourse inquiring what of this man? and what of the other? inquiring of matters private or public, of church or of state; as if, forsooth, all were equally capable to consider of all things; this were to level all men's understandings, which is as absurd and unreasonable as to level a 1 men's estates. Much time is spent in doing evil, much in doing nothing, and almost all in doing nothing to the purpose. Some call this diversion, but we may truly call it distraction; for, certainly, when men are thus employed, they are not at home with themselves, but are like the fool whose eyes are in the corners of the earth.

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It is true, a man may live in silence and solitude to little purpose, as Domitian, who shut himself up in his closet, and there caught flies. One may there be haunted with many noisome thoughts, and such had need to take the advice which was given to one of the ancients, who, being asked what he was doing, answered: 'I ain conversing with myself,' it was replied to him: Vide sit cum bono viro' (See it be with a good man). Such a man may be conversing with worse company than all the world, except he draw in what is better than himself and all the world, even God and his Spirit to converse with.

Some will say that although we be not concerned in the private affairs of others, or in matters of state, yet the affairs of the church are such as we ought not a little to concern ourselves in them. I shall only say that all truths are not alike clear, nor all duties alike weighty to all, and do not equally concern all persons. Christians may very well keep themselves within the compass of their own sphere. Many things about which men dispute very warmly are of remote relation and affinity to the great things of Christianity. Some truths are of so little evidence and importance, that he who errs in them charitably, meekly, and calmly, may be both a wiser man and a better Christian than he who is furiously, stormily, and uncharitably orthodox. If it be the mind of God that that order which from the primitive times has been in constant succession in this and other churches, do yet continue, what is that to thee or to me? If I had one of the loudest, as I have one of the lowest voices, yea, were it as loud as a trumpet, I would employ it to sound a retreat to all our unnatural and irreligious debates about religion, and to persuade men to follow the meek and lowly Jesus. There is great abatement of the inwards of religion when the debates about it pass to a scurf outside, and nothing is to be found within but a consuming fever of contention, which tendeth to utter ruin. If we have not charity towards our brethren, yet let us have some compassion towards our mother. But if this cannot be attained, I know nothing rather to be wished for, next to the silent shades of the grave, than a cottage in the wilderness. Ah, my beloved, the body of religion is torn, and the soul of it expires, while we are striving about the hem of its garment!

The Difficult Passages of Scripture.

Observe in general, how plain and easy, and how few are those things that are the rule of our life; no dark sentences to puzzle the understanding, nor large discourses and long periods to burden the memory. They are all plain: There is nothing wreathed nor distorted in them,' as Wisdom speaks of her instructions, Prov. viii. 8. And this gives check to a double folly amongst men, contrary the one to the other, but both agreeing in mistaking and wronging the word of God; the one is of those that despise the word, and that doctrine and preaching that is conformable to it, for its plainness and simplicity; the other of those that complain of its difficulty and darkness. As for the first, they certainly do not take the true end for which the word is designed, that it is the law of our life-and it is mainly requisite in laws, that they be both brief and clear-that it is our guide and light to happiness; and if that which ought to be our 'light, be darkness, how great will that darkness be!'

It is true, but I am not now to insist on this point, that there are dark and deep passages in Scripture, for the exercise, yea, for the humbling, yea, for the amazing and astonishing of the sharpest-sighted readers. But this argues much the pride and vanity of men's minds, when they busy themselves only in those, and throw aside altogether the most necessary, which are therefore the easiest and plainest truths in it. As in nature, the commodities that are of greatest necessity, God hath made most common and easiest to be had; so, in religion, such instructions as these now in our hands are given us to live and walk by: and in the search of things that are more obscure, and less useful, men evidence that they had rather be learned than holy, and have still more mind to the tree of knowledge' than the tree of life.' And in hearing of the word, are not they who are any whit more knowing than ordinary, still gaping after new notions, after something to add to the stock of their speculative and discoursing knowledge, loathing this daily manna, these profitable exhortations, and requiring meat for their lust? There is an intemperance of the mind as well as of the mouth. You would think it, and, may be, not spare to call it a poor cold sermon that was made up of such plain precepts as these: Honour all men; love the brotherhood; fear God; honour the king and yet, this is the lan

guage of God; it is his way, this foolish, despicable way by which he guides, and brings to heaven them that believe!

Again, we have others that are still complaining of the difficulty and darkness of the word of God and Divine truth; to say nothing of Rome's doctrine, who taiks thus, in order to excuse her sacrilege of stealing away the word from the people of God (a senseless pretext though it were true; because the word is dark of itself, should it therefore be made darker, by locking it up in an unknown tongue ?); but we speak of the common vulgar excuse, which the gross, ignorant profaneness of many seek to shroud under, that they are not learned, and cannot reach the doctrine of the Scriptures. There are deep mysteries there indeed: but what say you to these things, such rules as these: Honour all men?' &c. Are such as these riddles, that you cannot know their meaning? Rather, do not all understand them, and all neglect them? Why set you not on to do these? and then you should understand more. A good understanding have all they that do his commandments,' says the Psalmist, Psa. cxi. 10. As one said well;The best way to understand the mysteries and high discourse in the beginning of St. Paul's epistles, is, to begin at the practice of those rules and precepts that are in the latter end of them.' The way to attain to know more is to receive the truth in the love of it,' and to obey what you know. The truth is, such truths as these will leave you inexcusable, even the most ignorant of you. You cannot but know, you hear often, that you ought to love one another,' and to fear God,' &c. and yet you never apply yourselves in earnest to the practice of these things, as will appear to your own consciences, if they deal honestly with you in the particulars.

We subjoin a few more beautiful passages from Leighton's works:

The prophets had joy and comfort in the very hopes of the Redeemer to come, and in the belief of the things which any others had spoken, and which themselves spake concerning Him. And thus the true preachers of the gospel, though their ministerial gifts are for the use of others, yet that salvation which they preach they lay hold on and partake of themselves; as your boxes wherein perfumes are kept for garments and other uses are themselves perfumed by keeping them. The sweet stream of their doctrine did, as a river, inake its own banks fertile and pleasant as it ran by, and flowed still forward to after-ages, and by the confluence of more such prophecies, grew greater as it went, till it fell in with the main current of the gospel in the New Testament, both acted and preached by the Great Prophet himself whom they foretold to come, and recorded by his apostles and evangelists, and thus united into one river, clear as crystal. This doctrine of salvation in the Scriptures hath still refreshed the city of God, his church under the gospel, and still shall do so, till it empty itself into the ocean of eternity.

All the light of philosophy, natural and moral, is not sufficient, yea, the very knowledge of the law, severed from Christ, serves not so to enlighten and renew the soul as to free it from the darkness or ignorance here spoken of; for our apostle (Peter) writes to Jews who knew the la v, and were instructed in it before their couversion, yet he calls those times when Christ was unknown to them, the times of their ignorance.' Though the stars shine never so bright, and the moon with them in its full, yet they do not altogether make it day; still it is night till the sun

appear.

Every man walketh in a vain show. His walk is nothing but an on-going in continual vanity and misery, in which man is naturally and industriously involved, adding a new stock of vanity, of his own weaving, to what he has already within him, and vexation of spirit woven all along in with it. He walks in an image,' as the Hebrew word is; converses with things of no reality, and which have no solidity in them, and he himself has as little. He himself is a walking image in the midst of these images. They who are taken with the conceit of pictures and statues are an emblem of their own life, and of all other men's also. Life is generally nothing else to all men but a doting on images and pictures. Every man's fancy is to himself a gallery of pictures, and there he walks up and down, and considers not how vain these are, and how vain a thing he himself is.

*Cardinal Pole, as pointed out by Mr. West (Leighton's Works, vol. i. 298). The saying is also qucted by Fuller,

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He that looks on himself as a stranger, and is sensible of the darkness round about him in this wilderness, and also within him, will often put up that request with David, Psal. cxix. 19, I am a stranger on this earth; hide not thy commandments from me '-do not let me lose my way. And as we should use this argument to persuade God to look down upon us, so likewise to persuade ourselves to send up our hearts and desires to Him. What is the joy of our life, but the thoughts of that other life, our home, before us? And certainly he that lives much in these thoughts, set him where you will here, he is not much pleased or displeased; but if his father call him home, that word gives him his heart's desire.

DR. ISAAC BARROW.

ISAAC BARROW (1630-1677) was the son of a linen-draper of London. At school he was more remarkable for a love of athletic exercises than for application to his books. He studied for the Church, and was made a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1649. But perceiving, at the time of the Commonwealth, that the ascendency of theological and political opinions different from his own gave him little chance of preferment, he turned his views to the medical profession, and engaged in the study of anatomy, botany, and chemistry. After some time, however, he resumed his theological pursuits, devoting also much attention to mathematics and astronomy. In 1655, having been disappointed in his hopes of obtaining the Greek professorship at Cambridge, he went abroad for four years, during which he visited France, Italy, Smyrna, Constantinople, Germany, and Holland. At the Turkish capital, where he spent twelve months, he studied with great delight the works of St. Chrysostom, which were composed in that city. Barrow returned to England in 1659, and in the following year obtained, without opposition, the professorship for which he had formerly been a candidate; to which appointment was added, in 1662, that of professor of geometry in Gresham College, London. Both these he resigned in 1663, on becoming Lucasian professor of mathematics in Cambridge University. After filling the last of these offices with great ability for six years, towards the end of which he published a valuable and profound work on Optics, he resolved to devote himself more exclusively to theology, and in 1669 resigned his chair to Newton. He was subsequently appointed one of the royal chaplains; and in 1672 was nominated to the mastership of Trinity College by the king, who observed on the occasion, that he had bestowed it on the best scholar in England. To complete his honours, he was, in 1675, chosen vicechancellor of the university; but this final appointment he survived only two years, having been cut off by fever in the forty-seventh year of his age. Barrow was distinguished by scrupulous integrity of character, by great candour, modesty, disinterestedness, and serenity of temper. His manners and external aspect were more those of a student than of a man of the world; and he took no pains to improve his looks by attention to dress. On one occasion, when he preached before a London audience who did not know him, his ap pearance on mounting the pulpit made so unfavourable an impression,

that nearly the whole congregation immediately left the church. Hơ was never married.

Of his powers and attainments as a mathematician-in which capacity he is accounted inferior to Sir Isaac Newton alone-Barrow has left evidence in a variety of treatises, nearly all of which are in Latin. It is however, by his theological works that he is more generally known to the public. These, consisting of sermons-expositions of the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Decalogue, and the Ductrine of the Sacraments-and treatises on the Pope's Supremacy and the Unity of the Church-were published in three folio volumes a few years after his death. His sermons continue in high estimation for depth and copiousness of thought, and nervous though unpolished eloquence As a writer,' says Dugald Stewart, he is equally distinguished by the redundancy of his matter, and by the pregnant brevity of his expression; but what more peculiarly characterises his manner, is a certain air of powerful and of conscious facility in the execution of whatever he undertakes. Whether the subject be mathematical, metaphysical, or theological, he seems always to bring to it a mind which feels itself superior to the occasion; and which, in contending with the greatest difficulties, "puts forth but half its strength."' He composed with such care, that in general it was not till he had transcribed his sermons three or four times that their language satisfied him. The length of his discourses was excessive, seldom occupying less than an hour and a half in the delivery. It is recorded, that having occasion to preach a charity sermon before the lord mayor and aldermen of London, he spoke for three hours and a half; and that when asked, on coming down from the pulpit, whether he was not tired, he replied: Yes, indeed, I began to be weary with standing so long' An excellent edition of Barrow's Theological Works, in nine volumes, edited by the Rev. A. Napier, with a Memoir by Dr. Whewell of Trinity College, proceeded from the Cambridge University press in 1859.

The Excellency of the Christian Religion.

Another peculiar excellency of our religion is, that it prescribes an accurate rule of life, most agreeable to reason and to our nature, most conducive to our welfare and content, tending to procure each man's private good, and to promote the public benefit of all, by the strict observance whereof we bring our human nature to a resemblance of the divine; and we shall also thereby obtain God's favour, oblige and benefit men, and procure to ourselves the conveniences of a sober life, and the pleasure of a good conscience. For if we examine the precepts which respect our duty to God, what can be more just, pleasant, or beneficial to us, than are those duties of piety which our religion enjoins? What is more fit and reasonable than that we should most highly esteem and honour him, who is most excellent? that we should bear the sincerest affection for him who is perfect goodness himself, and most beneficial to us? that we should have the most awful dread of him, that is infinitely powerful, holy, and just? that we should be very grateful to him, f.om whom we received our being, with all the comforts and conveniences of it? that we should entirely trust and hope in him, who can and will do whatever we may in reason expect from his goodness, nor can he ever fail to perform his promises? that we should render all due obedience to him, whose children, servants, and subjects

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