truths. Paradox may be a ground of objection in matters within easy reach of the human mind, but beyond the limits to which our mental powers reach with ease, the greater the paradox the greater may be the truth, and contradiction is the only form in which truth belonging to this higher sphere can be revealed at all.

We may find in this a fatal objection to nearly all creeds. They are so carefully constructed as to present no apparent contradictions. They are too consistent to be true. They are not fair copies of the Bible which they profess to represent, and for the sake of smoothness and polish they have been robbed of truths often quite as important as these which they contain. The compiler of a creed is sure to leave out what seems to contradict his system, even though God may have placed it in the Bible as an important element of eternal truth.

We have found it a most useful exercise, which we commend to our readers, to classify and examine carefully some of these contradictions. The mere habit of looking at both together without further inquiry as to how they could be reconciled, has often brought out in strong relief a truth entirely overlooked before. Their very dissimilarity has brought distinctly before the mind the higher truth in which they both agree; and to secure this result they only need as in a stereoscope to be laid side by side. Moreover, even where this result is not attained, the mere attempt to force into harmonious combination the seemingly discordant statements, the positive and negative elements of the word of God, will at least bring out some views of truth not seen before, or bring into clear perspective important truths of which only the most shadowy outline had previously floated before the mind. We have attempted this with the passages quoted at the head of this article, with what success our readers must judge for themselves. We do not profess to have brought out what no one has discovered before; but we have avoided a very common plan of reconciling apparent discrepancies, and think it impossible to do this without advantage. The ordinary practice is to say: A cannot mean so and so, because B says so and so; and B cannot mean this, when A says that. The result is, the retention of the smallest modicum of truth common to the two. The plan we have sought to adopt is this: A must mean this, for B says that, and vice versa, and the result is, that we explain away nothing that is stated on either hand, but hold fast and amalgamate the whole.

The Saviour has abolished the law, and yet has not abolished it; it is abolished, but not destroyed. A common explanation of the relation between these two statements is, that Christ came to fulfil the law in his own life, that he obeyed it once for all for every one of his followers, and, therefore, they are released from its demands as well as from its curse; in other words, it is abolished for them, but was fulfilled by him. But this would really be destroying the law; for if the law has no relation to us, Christ has destroyed it. This, however, is as much opposed to the teaching of Paul as to that of Christ, seeing that he expressly declares the purpose of Christ's work to be that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us. Another explanation

is founded upon the distinction between the moral and ceremonial parts of the law. The part abolished (the law contained in ordinances) is supposed to be the ceremonial law; the part not destroyed (the law), the moral. But this distinction is thoroughly arbitrary, and rests on no scriptural foundation. Every part of the law is moral in its essence, and every part, even the ten commandments, has something that is ceremonial in its form. Such divisions are quite inadmissible, and by no means meet the case.

There is no difficulty in ascertaining in what respects the law has been abolished. Its outward formal precepts and arrangements have lost their force. Not only is there no temple, but priests and services, ceremonial uncleanness and legal purifications, have all ceased. No sacrifices burn on holy altars. No festivals summon to holy places. No sacred men, on sacred days, in sacred places, now minister to the Lord; the priest, the temple, and the holy day, have ceased to exist. Again, its force, as a law, is entirely gone. No Christian goes, or ought to go, to the Old Testament for the principles or precepts of his life. Whether the law be found in its most concise form on the two tables of stone, or expounded and expanded by Moses at the foot of the Mount, or still further elaborated in the second law, it is no longer binding upon Christian men. Christ might quote some precepts with approval, apostles might require of the Christian that he should obey them, and we may now, to a great extent, make the precepts of the law our rule of life. But not because they are written in the law. Christians often make most egregious mistakes here. If you venture to assert that the ten commandments are not binding, you are met with the exclamation, What, is it lawful to steal and murder, and is the seventh commandment not binding still? To all this, however, we reply, No, it is not lawful to steal and murder, and yet the ten commandments may not be binding. These were sinful before the commandments were heard of, and would still be unlawful if they were forgotten. All that we contend for is, that the rule of life, the arbiter of right and wrong, is to be sought elsewhere, and not in any law of commandments contained in ordinances. 6 The law is not made for a righteous man.' 'Thou shalt,' and 'thou shalt not,' are words of a past dispensation, the signs of that which has passed away. This seems to us, then, the abolition; not only as a series of ceremonies, but as a body of precepts-in other words, as a law it has lost its force, and is completely done away.

If this be the case, then, how can it be true that it has not been destroyed? There is no difficulty in understanding the words of Christ, 'I came to fulfil,' and most expositors take this expression as the measure of the other, and thus avoid the less obvious part of the subject. No exception we think can be taken to the ordinary interpretation of the words-namely, that, as a whole, it was strictly obeyed by Christ, whilst all the symbols and types which pointed to the Messiah received their complete fulfilment in his life and death. As the representative of a humanity, which was bound to obey the law and yet had broken the law, he both obeyed its precepts and paid its

penalties, bore its curse and merited its blessings. And this he did exclusively and entirely as man's representative. He paid its penalties that they might not be exacted of us; bore the curse that it might not fall on our heads; merited the blessing that we might receive it; and obeyed its precepts, not, as the common interpretation runs, that we might be exempted from them, but that we might learn from him the lesson, and receive from him the strength, to obey it too.

This last we regard as the Saviour's unmistakable meaning, that he was not about to exempt his followers from obedience to the law, but to teach them and help them to render the truest obedience; and it is this that we wish to place side by side with the apostle's words, 'He has abolished the law.' A simple and general explanation strikes us at once if we accept Paul's own definition-love is the fulfilling of the law; for if the whole law is fulfilled in this, Christ, by his perfect work and the gift of his Spirit, has made it possible for us to render the only perfect obedience that ever was rendered by man to the law of God; and thus the abolition of the law has led to the fulfilment of the law in its highest sense, and the only sense about which God ever cared.

But the fulfilment of the law even in us does not stop with the vague and general notion of love. There is a special fulfilment secured by the gospel of the most minute of the special precepts which have been abolished. All the minor details of the Mosaic law are grouped around a peculiar law of sacredness. The most prominent object was to keep distinct the holy and the unholy; and to effect this an arbitrary and artificial sanctity was established and enforced for a time. Sacred men and sacred places, sacred days and sacred deeds, constitute the marked pecularity of the law as distinguished from the gospel. This is all abolished, but how is it fulfilled? There is no difficulty in answering this.

The sacred place is gone: The hour cometh, and now is, when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet in Jerusalem worship the Father.' Yet surely Christ does not teach that no place is sacred to the Lord. He cannot mean that the Jewish temple gave currency to a delusion and proclaimed a lie. On the contrary, he has unfolded what the temple set forth in symbol, that the whole earth is sacred now that the curse is removed, and all places equally are holy ground. Cathedral or conventicle, palace or peasant's home, city or closet, green fields or groves, all possess the same sanctity. God meets with them that love him as readily in one scene as in another, and does not 'Make a more delightful stay

Where churches meet to praise and pray.'

The sacredness of the temple taught that the place where God meets with his people must be holy. Christ confirms this lesson, and teaches farther that that is everywhere. The shutting up of the temple was the consequence of its own teaching, the accomplishment of its own design, and thus the law was by the same act abolished and fulfilled. Again, the sacred order, the priesthood, is gone. We take it for

granted that no reader of this magazine supposes that there is any analogy or connexion between the pastor of a Christian church and a Jewish priest. No doubt the work performed by a Christian 'minister' is sacred work, but it is sacred because he is a Christian, not because he is a minister, and it is not a whit more sacred than the faithful service of the humblest and most obscure of the disciples of Christ. Have the priests of the temple, then, no representatives in the Christian. Church? They are not represented in Christ; for he is simply the antitype of the high priest. Yet they must also have their place in the Church of the New Testament, for we may assume it as an invariable rule that everything which can be regarded as an essential institution of the law, will be reproduced in a higher form as an essential element of the gospel also. There is at all events no exception here. The priesthood is fully represented. The high priest is Christ; the priesthood generally is the universal priesthood of Christian men. No sacred order is set apart from the rest to the service of God, just because all Christians are set apart from the world to do the work of the Lord. No special caste monopolizes the ministry, because all in their several places are alike ministers of God: ye are a royal priesthood.' Abolished the priesthood may be in all its narrow limitations, but it is abolished only to be realized in its fullest and most glorious sense, for God's own priests are now through Christ all God's people. He has made the priesthood co-extensive with his Church; and thus again is the law by the same act abolished and fulfilled.

The sacred days have also ceased. Sabbaths and festivals, pentecosts and passovers, have all, in a certain sense, passed away. This is clearly expressed in the apostle's injunction, Let no man judge you in respect of a festival, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days.' It is true that the Christian Church, with one consent, still sets apart a seventh day for the public and united worship of God, and in doing this is following the example of apostolic churches, and can appeal to the sanction, if not to the example, of apostles themselves. But we no longer attach any peculiar sanctity to the seventh day, the only day to which sacredness is ascribed in the word of God. And though the custom of the disciples and the early Church to assemble on the first day of the week is clear and undisputable, and our practice therefore has all the support which such an example can give it, there is not a syllable in the New Testament in which that day is referred to as a sacred day in the Mosaic sense of the term. What (we fancy some reader exclaiming) has Christianity taken away from God his sacred day? Is not this robbing God? Stop a moment, gentle reader, we think we can turn the tables. We do not believe that the Christian system robs God of any sacred time, as we shall presently show. But if the Sunday be the only sacred day recognised by the Christian Church; if this be the true and only substitute for, not sabbaths only, but the Passover and the Pentecost, the new moons, the feast of Tabernacles, the great day of atonement, the sabbatical year and any other times that were pronounced sacred under the Mosaic law; then the Christian does give less time to God than the Jew, and we repeat the

question, is not this robbing God? Moreover, we ask again, can that be a correct view which leads to the conclusion that the sanctity of time was more fully recognised by the law than the gospel, and that life is less sacred, and a smaller number of our days belong to God now than before the Saviour came? As we understand the teaching of the New Testament, Christ has abolished times and seasons, and taught us not to observe days, and months, and times, and years:' not to diminish, but to increase the number of our holy days; in other words, to exhibit all days as holy to the Lord, and to bring us to regard our whole life as not our own, but his. We do not think that the New Testament represents the Sunday as less the Lord's than Christians generally believe it to be. But if we read it rightly it teaches plainly that the other six days of the week are far more the Lord's than most Christians imagine, and that he has a claim on those days, which is not properly recognised even in the Church of Christ. This again, though not the explicit, was yet the implicit doctrine of the law itself. The sacred seasons taught the holiness of time; Christ has developed their meaning by exhibiting the holiness of all time. They taught that days could be and should be consecrated to God; Christ has expanded the truth they embodied, and shows to us, who follow him, that every day in the life of a holy man is alike holy to the Lord. Thus again is the law unfolded in the gospel, and Christ by the same act has abolished and fulfilled.

Lastly, the same principle may be discerned in the abolition of sacred deeds. Apart from the minute precepts with reference to the actions of every-day life of which the law is full, we find constant injunctions as to the performance of acts of peculiar sacredness. Ceremonies for cleansing the unclean, journeys to the great assemblies, and the frequent presentation of thank-offerings, peace-offerings, and burnt sacrifices, must have occupied no small part of the life of every Jew. These have been all abolished, and what has been substituted? Where shall we look for the sacrifice and service of Christian men? Not merely to his hours of devotion, his prayer and praise, though these stand justly highest in the estimation of every believer. Christian service, as we understand the gospel, embraces every act of life which a Christian performs 'to the glory of God.' He 'presents his body a living sacrifice;' 'whatsoever he does he does it heartily, as unto the Lord;' and this is the highest ideal of worship and sacrifice of which we can possibly conceive. The Christian does not perform fewer sacred actions than the Jew, but more. No act could be sacred to the latter but those which were prescribed; every act may be sacred to the former, if he himself be sanctified, and seek in all the glory of God. Thus again, though the law has passed to give place to the gospel, it has only been abolished as the bud ceases to exist when it opens into the flower. The particular is absorbed in the universal; the exception becomes the rule; and the law by the same act is abolished and fulfilled.

This subject, doubtless, admits of being pursued into further details. But we have written enough, we hope, both to exhibit the