John xiv. xv. xvi. are in no sense sacrificial. The priest had, in ordinary sacrifices, nothing to do with the offering till the blood was shed; he received that, and sprinkled it on the altar. The pоopopa was not a priestly act at all, and this poopopa (oblation) is what we have, even on the writer's own showing, before us here. In the great day of atonement the priest confessed the people's sins on the head of the scape-goat, as representing a guilty people, not as between them and God as priest, but as high priest standing in the place of them all to make their confession. He stood as the guilty person, inasmuch as he represented the people. So did Christ on the cross. He offered Himself, through the eternal Spirit, without spot to God, to be the victim. God made the spotless one to be sin for us. Except as thus representing the guilty people, the priest did not slay the victim, and the offering a victim or himself to God was quite another thing. In no case was the offering of a victim, or surrender of self to God, a priestly act. The statement (p. 307), that "the act of offering or presenting a victim is a sacrifice," is simply a blunder; this was done by the one who offered the victim, not by the priest. I notice these things to clear the ground by Scripture statements; the confusion of the author, by his ignorance of the whole subject, making the analysis of all his statements an unprofitable labour. I have already said a Tроopopa, after the victim had been offered (avapepeo lat) on the altar, is a thing unknown in Sacrifice. We read again: "As the most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, the alone acceptable Victim to make our peace with God, are offered..." (p. 308). Now He has made peace by the blood of His cross. All this subverts Christianity.

....

In result, the propositions of the author are that Christ is to be adored with the profoundest homage in the Eucharist. Secondly: There is "the solemn pleading of that once-sacrificed Body and Blood for ourselves as our only hope of pardon, reconciliation, and grace" (p. 315). As to the last, I have spoken of it. We are pardoned, we are reconciled, we stand in grace, if Christianity be true. This theory is not Christianity,

but denies it. The former proposition requires a little attention. That Christ is to be adored, every true Christian cordially accepts; but the sting is in the tail, "wherever He is." His body and blood, it is alleged, are in the Eucharist. He is where His body and blood are (p. 315), and, consequently, He is to be adored in the Eucharist. It is the common argument for idols, the divinity is present there. In death, though Godhead may hold its title over the body, nor suffer it to see colruption, yet the soul was separate from the body, or i was not death. The Eucharist, let them say what the! will, is a symbol and sign of the dead Christ-a broke body and shed blood. Christ is personally in heaven He is present in spirit in the congregation; as He ex presses it, "In the midst of the Church will I sing praise unto thee." Do they mean to say that He, though in our midst, leads us to worship the signs of what He was when dead. That His body is now to come down from heaven to be broken, for that is what is done in the Eucharist; and that He returns into life before death to be broken and His blood shed, for that they avow is what was doing when He instituted the Eucharist. Christ's place, if we speak of "where" as to Him, is in heaven, sitting at the right hand of the Father, nowhere else. God has said, "Sit at my right hand till,” and there accordingly He sits, nor will He leave it till the time appointed of the Father. Is He present alive in the bread before it is broken, and then does He go through death, there symbolised by the broken bread and the wine to be drunk? If so, then His soul is separated from His body. Or is He not present then, that is before breaking the bread, but only after His body is broken and His blood is shed. Then it is not He in any sense who is given and His blood shed. I can understand well that such enquiries offend them, as they talk of the devout and simple affections of faith. Reverence is our place, the right spirit to be in when one thinks of the Blessed One given for us. But if they invent false and erroneous views, which pervert the truth, which pretend to bring Christ down from heaven, when God has said to Him, as to His person and glorified

body, "Sit on my right hand," it is right to put questions which have no irreverence for Christ, but expose the fallacy of their views, which show that it is a false, pretended Christ of their own imagination-that there can be no such Christ, for He is glorified in heaven, and not now broken and shedding His blood on earth, nor ever will again. If death is symbolised, and partaking of Him in that character-and it certainly and evidently is so there is no such Christ now. He is alive for evermore. In death His soul was separated from His body. It is not so separated now. It is of faith, the moment you use a circumscribed where, to say He is in heaven, and nowhere else, till He rises up from the throne of God-" whom the heavens must receive till the time of the restitution of all things of which the prophets have spoken."

HISTORICAL NOTICES OF SICHEM, SHECHEM-THE SYCHAR OF JOHN IV.

Sichem.-Gen. xii. 6, 7. Here Jehovah first appeared to His pilgrim servant Abram in the land, and promised it to his see. Here was his first halt and altar to the Lord, who appeared to

him.

At Shalem in Shechem.-Gen. xxxiii. 18-20. Jacob returning from exile, bought a field of Shechem, spread a tent, and built an altar to El-elohe-Israel.

Gen. xxxiv. And, ere forced by the sin and treachery of his sons to move on, he gathered all the strange gods which were in their hands, and the earrings, and buried them under an oak. XXXV. 4. (Was it about this time that he dug the well?)

Shechem-Gen. xxxvii. 12, 13. Joseph's brethren, after his dreams, fed their flocks here. He went thither (ver. 14) seeking them.

Jos. xxiv. 32. It was his (Joseph's) burying-place, on a shoulder (or Shechem) of Gerizim. Deut. xi. xxvii.; Jos. viii. Moses ordered six tribes to stand, as to God's blessing the obedient people.

Shechem-Jos. xx. 7, xxi. 21; 1 Chr. vi. 67-in Ephraim was a city of refuge for the manslayer.

Jos. xxiv. 1. Was Joshua's final rendezvous, for his charge to the people.

Jud. ix. City of Levites though it was, strange wickednesses were wrought as to God and as to man there.

Jud. ix. I. As a kingdom had here been first attempted, so here David's and Solomon's kingdom was divided. 1 Ki. xii. 1, 25; 2 Chr. x. 1.

506

No. XXXI.

REMARKS ON "CHRISTIANITY AND MODERN PROGRESS, BY THE REV. A. RALEIGH," ETC.

ALLOW me to draw your attention to a recent publication which professes to give grounds for harmonizing Christianity and modern progress. Such a production ought to produce pain and sorrow, and be dealt with in the spirit which such sorrow will, through grace, engender.

Still I feel, as it has been brought under my eye, that I ought not to pass it over.

No one, of course, is strictly responsible for it but the author; still as it is an address from the Chair of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, at its annual meeting, it acquires a weight which a mere individual discourse would not have. It shows the tone of the dissenting mind-what finds utterance from the lips of those whom it sets in its high places and in the chief seats of its teachers. It shows us to what point the dissenting body is come in the conflict now going on between faith and unbelief; how completely the high and holy ground of possession of the truth by divine revelation is abandoned, to look for tolerance from the infidel reason of man without God in the world. It is, in fact, a humble supplication to the infidel to be allowed to have share in the inheritance of truth-admitting they have it in their sphere, and craving the admission that the Christian has it in his.

The infidel reasoners are far enough from troubling their heads about the petitioners; as Dr. Raleigh admits, they turn up their noses with contempt at the evidences of Christianity. The air, he tells us, is weary with their repetitions of scorn at Christian creeds. But Dr. R. begs for quarter. If they have scientific facts, Christianity has historic facts.

No doubt it has facts far better proved than any other facts of history, as every sober mind admits. Science has no such facts really. What are called the facts of science are merely the general laws deduced from phenomena or appearances; many, of course, I admit, adequately proved; but which, when of importance to our subject, are not really facts. Nobody, unless some rare German, for I have known such, doubts of the astronomical system, demonstrated by the laws of a principle we call gravity. It is admitted because it accounts for the phenomena. I admit, if you please, as a fact, that the earth goes round the sun. Hence when these laws are known, calculations can be made, as to what will happen if all goes on as usual. In a word, appearances, accounted for by general laws, enable man's mind to draw mental consequences, that is, to calculate the ordinary succession of phenomena.

In natural science, facts have another place. They are observed in their present existence, and what is observed, and that only, is a fact. These facts are then generalized. Not into laws, such as the law of gravity, but into general principles of causes, or rather similarity and successions of forms. Be it that all animal being is reduced to cellular atoms. I have nothing against it. I leave science in possession of its facts, and the gradual development of theories connected with them. The uniformity of succession of facts may be adequately ascertained. Harvey may find that nothing had living being which was not previously in an egg, and sufficient instances may be found in various forms of being to justify a general conclusion. It may or may not be adequately investigated to justify the conclusion that the fact is universal. In these cases I dare say it is. Still the conclusion is not a fact. It is sufficient to make a science, for classification, and for man to act on and to learn by.

So geology, though facts are much less accurately ascertained, still we may say a general succession of formations in a certain order is pretty well ascertained. Sufficiently so to classify, though with defects and difficulties, and to form a science. Now no Christian has the slightest interest in combating these facts, nor, if done