such importance was this part of apostolical discipline held, that it is enjoined in general precepts like any other great head of Christian duty, "to distribute to the necessity of saints, and to be given to hospitality;" and it is set down as a mark of those widows who are to be taken into the number, "that they have lodged strangers;" and of a bishop it is required, as an indispensable quality, that he should be given to hospitality; and to all it is often enjoined, as to the Hebrews," that they be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.'

of the doc

new trine of this in oration oc

the

casioneth at

times a he

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my cause of its novelty;

Sometimes, in casting my eye back over The review what I have written, and considering the doctrine which I have dared to advance opposition to the universal practice of Churches, I have felt a fear come over mind, as if I had been guilty of presumption in daring to interpret God's word, upon this subject, for myself. But the more I have been led to study it, by the opposition which these ideas have received, the more I have been convinced of their truth. The passages which have been quoted against them, have, upon deliberate study, turned out to be in their favour; and the instances which have been given of deviation, have always proved to be deviations in excess, not in defect, of the standard of faith and self-denial. Moreover, in making those researches into the primitive appointments of Messiah, and practices of his Apostolic ser

but oftener

indignation

of those

who would

vants, many new convictions have been brought to our mind concerning the office of the pastor, and the office of the preacher, which differ from the approved notions as widely as those which we have set forth of the Missionary. So that, silently, we have come to the strong and steady persuasion that this is but a silver age of the Church, taken at its best, and that the golden age is yet to come; that we are not perfect, any more than our fathers; that we should learn to believe in our imperfections, and welcome any one who will honestly declare them to us.

Sometimes, on the other hand, I have been at the daring tempted to indignation and wrath, that the institution and appointment of the great head of tamper with the Church should have been so widely desolemn ap- parted from in these modern times, and being pointment; honestly and plainly stated, should find so little

the Lord's

favour in the eyes of a generation which prideth itself in the evangelical character of its missionary undertakings. And that, instead of going about to seek men who were advanced in faith to the height of the undertaking, they have gone about to reduce the undertaking to the measure of an ordinary faith, and have attracted to the service many who were hardly fit for a pastoral care in the Church at home, much less for laying the foundation of Christian empire abroad. But most of all hath a holy indignation risen within my breast, when, to keep up the popular glory and renown of their work, which they should be ever rectify

ing by the word of God, they should be content rather to obliterate and annul that part of his holy word which is able to give them counsel. It is instructive of the self-exaltation of man to hear with what cool indifference they would consign to uselessness those immortal counsels which our Lord gave for the conduct of Christian Missionaries, in order that they may have the field open for their own infallibility. They would break through all rules and laws of interpretation, and to a passage whose every word and sentence breathes immortality, they would give a temporary application, destroying its obligation, losing its comfort, and abolishing its promises to the evil-entreated messenger of peace; all because it contains in its bosom two clauses which were necessary to make it useful and applicable to the time which then was, as well as to the times which were to come. Against this I have argued by an analysis of the passage, against it I have protested by an appeal to the apostolical times, in the hope of being able to prevail by argument and appeal; though, I confess, with slender hope in a time when names or periodical organs of opinion have obtained almost the whole authority in the Church.

those times

But if there be left in the Church any rever- because it ence for the Holy Scripture, any love to the applied to words of Christ, any superiority to the things as well as to of sight, and trust in the good promises of God, any memory of her past triumphs, or any hope of future victory, by these I do entreat the

our times.

Church to hesitate how she discredits this portion of the Holy Scripture, because it applied to those times no less than to all other times. For upon the same principle she would annul every word of the Sermon on the Mount, which was suggested by Jewish errors, and was given for the abolition of Jewish errors; and every parable, and every rebuke, and every exhortation, and every instruction of the Lord, which all sprung out of the occasion presented to him, and applied to it with far more exemption of every other occasion than the passage before us; which, if it be distinguished by any thing, is distinguished by this, from most other of our Lord's discourses, that it will not apply, cannot by any showing be made to apply to that occasion, but bursts all limitations of time and place, and writes its own superscription to be, to the Church universal upon the earth. There are some pas sages in our Lord's instructions which apply only to a particular time and condition of things, such as that spoken at the Last Supper, of which we have given a commentary above, and which can never come to be applicable again, because the Son of Man can never again be removed by the hour and power of darkness from the power of protecting his Church. But when any man would rob the Church of any of the Lord's sayings, which the first Apostles were glad to catch from oblivion, rather than to convey to it (of which their zeal we have seen an instance quoted from the Missionary charter,

1 Cor. ix. 11., and may see another, Acts xx. 35. in Paul's discourse to the Elders of the Ephesian Church), then, that man should be indicted as guilty of high treason to our king, who liveth upon earth only in his words,-of sedition against his kingdom, whose laws are the words of our everlasting King.

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Foolish men! vain, ignorant, and foolish Upon the men! they know not what they do, in their same vicious haste to annul the precious words of Christ; nei- interpretather understand they the nature of the words of would disChrist which they would annul. The glorious disannul words of Christ were not for one occasion, but every thing for all occasions; not for one race of men, but uttered,for all races of men; not for one age, but for all ages of the world. And yet, in that which he said, there was always something local, temporary, and occasional, enough of the present time and present manners, for it to lay hold of the feelings of the present audience. But because the eternal truth which he spoke, had around it the drapery of the times, did it thereby become temporary? We, whose souls are educated in time, being of yesterday, do smack of time in all our thoughts and speeches, except wherein we are guided by revelations of eternity; but He, who was from eternity, the same yesterday, today, and for ever, partaketh not, and cannot partake, of the same infirmity. The truth which He spoke, is truth metaphysical, that is, truth independent of the conditions of time and place, applicable to all times and places, and equally applicable when time shall be no more.

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