which it gives to the word of the testimony. Yet we hold these bright and exhilarating views of the Saviour to be unspeakably precious—the manifestation of which He Himself tells us1-a most refreshing cordial to the spirit of a believer; and of which we have no doubt that, if analysed into its ingredients, it will be found, that it consists not merely in the greater force of evidence wherewith we are made to behold the Saviour, but in the quickened facility and power of conception wherewith we are enabled to set Him more vividly or impressively before us. Nevertheless we should distinguish between the conception and the faithbecause while the one may be a minister of sensible comfort, it is the other which is the guarantee of our salvation. The man who, to repair the insufficiency of the word, would bring down Christ from heaven, but exemplifies the man, who, as if to make up for the same insufficiency, strains but ineffectually to frame some graphical or picturesque idea of Him there. The danger is, that he may compass himself about with sparks of his own kindling, or walk in the light of his own fancy or his own fire. Let him keep then determinedly by the word which is nigh, rather than by the imagery wherewith he peoples the distant and lofty places which are away from him. from him. He who has conception but not faith, will at length lie down in sorrow. He who has faith, but from the want of conception walketh in darkness and has no light, is still bidden

1 John, xiv 21.

trust in the name of God and stay upon His word. He who conceiveth may have sensible comfort; but, with or without this, he who believeth is safe.1

Faith and conception may be so disjoined, that the one may be strong and never give forth a stronger exhibition of itself, than when the other, faint and feeble is utterly unable to figure aught of the unseen and eternal things which are above. It may trust in the name of the Lord, even when the Lord himself is shrouded in darkness from its view. It may stay upon God, even when the light of God's endearing and paternal countenance is not shining in its wonted force of manifestation upon the soul. The light of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ may be hid for a season in deepest obscuration— yet during the whole of that season may the spiritual mourner, even in the midst of heaviness and discomfort, be fixed and settled on the certainties of the word; and this he may prove, if not by the raptures of a seraph, at least by the obedience of a servant―evincing by the toils and the sufferings and the sacrifices of his daily and devoted walk, that he can stake the world and every interest he has in it on the truth of Christ, that he could give up all for Him, that He could die for Him.

Yet while the primary and most essential requisite is our belief in the objects of faith, let us not undervalue the enjoyment and the spiritual good which lie in the luminous conception of them. Conception may lead astray, bringing us into con1 Isaiah, 1, 10, 11.

verse with mere things of fancy. But conception deals with the true as well as the fictitious, brightening and enhancing our view of unseen realities. and thus bringing us into clearer and more intimate converse with the things of faith. To be gifted with such a faculty, even to be visited though only at times and intervals with such illumination, is an inestimable privilege to the Christian wayfarer-as conveying to his soul the glimpses and foretastes of his coming glory in heaven, and so yielding him a refreshment and strength for the fatigues of his journey through this lower world. There is a felt ecstacy in this transcendental light, like that which the apostles experienced when they beheld the transfiguration of our Saviour, and exclaimed it is good to be here. How to attain or find our way to this light is a question therefore of deepest practical interest to all who make a real business of their eternity; nor are we aware of aught more interesting in the economy of the gospel, than that connection which it reveals between the plain duties of the Christian life, and the highest attainments, be it in grace or in knowledge, of the Christian experience. The way to get at the light after which we aspire, is to work for it. It is to deal aright with the word which is nigh unto us, and to do aright with the things which are nigh unto us. Whatever the sublime mysteriousness may be of those higher manifestations which shine on the soul of the advanced Christian, there is no mystery in the initial footsteps of the path which

leads to them. flights of an imagination labouring to realise Christ in heaven, and failing as signally in the enterprise as if the attempt had been to bring Christ down. from heaven. It is by a humbler but more solid pathway-an every-day walk with God in the bidden obedience of the gospel-that path of the upright which as the shining light, shineth more and more unto the perfect day.1.

It is not by the transcendental

Ver. 10. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.' Because in the Old Testament passage whence the quotation is taken, Moses makes mention both of the heart and mouth, Paul does the same, attributing to each such functions as are severally proper to them-as belief to the heart and confession to the mouth. It is true, that by our modern idea, the heart is the seat of the affections; and we should ascribe belief rather to the mind, which with us is the seat of the intellect: And hence the inference of many commentators is, that the belief of the New Testament-unlike to what it is in the common sense of the term,-is a thing of feeling as well as mere faith; and that the consent of the will as well as of the judgment, formed a constituent part of it. We, however, are more inclined to think that the ancients, whether Hebrew or Greek, did not proceed on the discriminations of

1 For Scriptural intimations of this connection between duty and discernment, see John, xiv, 21; Acts, v, 32; Matt. vi, 22; Matt. xxv, 29; Isa. lviii. 5-9; Psalm cxix, 100; xxv, 14; 1, 23.

our recent philosophy; and that the heart with them being equivalent to the whole of the inner man, might be the seat of all that proceeded therefrom and so both of the emotions and the intellect --and this without merging the two into one, although they should emanate from the same fountain; and so we read of men understanding with their heart, nay of laying up in their hearts1-making the heart the seat of memory, even as is done by ourselves in the vulgar phrase of learning by heart. Still in point of just and sound metaphysics, we hold faith to be an act of the understanding alone; and that though affection may be both an immediate cause, and as immediate a consequent of the same, it is never properly an ingredient thereof. We confess ourselves not partial to this confounding of the various functions and faculties of the mind which are really distinct from each other; and we confess our preference for the views of those, who conceive of faith that, however it may have sprung beforehand from the desirousness of a heart visited with moral earnestness, and prompting both to prayer and to enquiry; or, however it may issue afterwards in the feelings and desires of holiness-yet that faith in itself is an act of the mind purely intellectual, the judging of certain testimonies or certain propositions that they are true, the simple credence of such statements as are laid before us. We fear of any view different from this, that it tends to embarrass or to darken 1 Luke, i, 66.