2. The person and office of the Son of God, in carnate in the flesh of man.

3. The inclusion and equality of all mankind in Him as its second and righteous Head.

4. The constitution in Him of a body, the Church, united to Him outwardly and visibly by sacramental ordinances, and inwardly and spiritually by faith and obedience.

5. As regards the outward and visible-the prescription, by divine command, or by inference, of these sacramental ordinances, symbolizing respectively the birth into, and the sustentation of, the new life of man's spirit,—and of an order of men to minister in sacred things.

6. As regards the inward and spiritual,—the effectual entrance of the individual soul by faith into the state of pardon and acceptance, and the progressive sanctification of man by the inhabitation and teaching of the Holy Spirit. Next,

7. The expansion and grounding of the doctrine of the Resurrection of the body, and its supplementing by various revelations concerning the last things.

8. Very numerous directions, too long to specify, concerning uncertain and difficult points of Chris

tian practice in life: some, belonging of themselves to all ages of the Church: others, formally belonging to the times then present, but by analogy reflecting light upon corresponding difficulties in subsequent ages.

9. Warnings against error of different kinds, sometimes pointedly and antagonistically, sometimes conveyed in strenuous and detailed upholding of the corresponding dogmatic truth: thus furnishing an armoury, offensive and defensive, for the Church in all ages.

10. The concluding portion of the New Testament has also dowered the Church with a rich treasure of prophetic encouragement and warning, mysterious indeed, and awaiting future explanation in detail, but in its general scope and tendency of undoubted application: all pointing on to the second Advent of the Lord, and keeping the Church in an attitude of expectation of His appearing.

II. We may add to these particulars, the precious examples of the holy men who wrote the Epistles,of which no page is destitute. No formal treatises could ever have had the effect of such letters, admitting us into the very life and heart of the writer The Epistles of St. Paul, said by Luther to be 'not

dead words, but living creatures with hands and feet,' edify and comfort the Church not only by the doctrines which they establish, not only by the direct words of consolation with which they abound, but also, and perhaps on the whole, principally, by the spectacle which they present to us of a man penetrated with the spirit of holiness, steeped in the love of Christ, living his life in the flesh by the faith of the Son of God: undergoing almost superhuman afflictions and toils in the midst of bodily infirmity and mental depression; with a thorn in his flesh, which is not removed, because Christ's grace is sufficient for him,

In these matters the holy Apostles are the intensified pictures of ourselves: their little words and seemingly trivial remarks gain unexpected weight when the perplexed soul holds the balances of hope and fear, of desire and repugnance: their obscurest sayings leap out into sudden light, when the spirit is walking in dark valleys, where the Father's countenance is hidden.

12. The last use of the epistolary canon which I shall mention is, that of furnishing running comments on various points of the apostolical history as narrated in the Acts of the Apostles. As I write

this, I am quite aware that persons have in cur own time been found, who deny that any such correspondence exists, as will make the Epistles confirm the history. I have read some of the arguments by which they seek to establish their hostile position. But it has ever seemed to me that common sense is all for the received Christian view, while the praise of ingenious subtlety, if worth having, may be fairly conceded to the impugners of that view. Take the arguments of Paley's 'Hora Paulinæ,' and you may apply them to any sober piece of similar evidence in common life they are the considerations by which we are convinced, and upon which we act, day by day. But take example from their arguments,-proceed in their way of attack, and you may thus in a few minutes demolish any plain matter of historical fact. This has been shown over and over again: by Whately, for example, in his 'Historic Doubts respecting Napoleon Bonaparte,' and by an ingenious American, cited in an article in the Quarterly Review for last October, who proved, on Strauss's method, that the Declaration of Independence was never signed. Such weapons may be convenient for partisans, but do not suit fair

dealing people. We do not approve of the poacher's night-hooks and springes, however much game they may succeed in destroying. We look with abhorrence on an enemy who poisons wells and fountains. Give us the weapons of fair and honest men, and we are not afraid of the battle.

In my next paper I hope to begin at once to deal with the Epistles separately. My plan will be to proceed with them, as far as I am able, in chronological order. That adopted in the common arrangement of the canon has been chosen without reference to chronology. It proceeds apparently on consideration of the relative length and importance of the Epistles, giving, however, to St. Paul the preference. After his thirteen was placed the Epistle to the Hebrews, as being, if not by him, an appendix by some hand almost guided by his. Then followed the catholic' Epistles-then the Revelation.

This plan has the advantage of something like system, and is, perhaps, for convenience of reference, the best. But our purpose is a different one. It is, to set before the reader the circumstances under which each Epistle was written, and to try to bring about an intelligent view of the purpose