But our preacher gives the bright as well as the gloomy view of the question, and then encourages the humble Christian to contemplate the hour of his departure, and the house appointed for all living.

When you think of the grave, remember that Jesus himself has been there, He who is all your salvation and all your desire, how far did he carry his humiliation! He desended into the lowest parts of the earth. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so the Son of man was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. He not only died, but was buried, according to the Scripture. And hereby he not only said, See how certain my death is; but, are you afraid to enter the grave? I will go in before you, and render it safe and attractive-yes, the Lily of the Valley, and the Rose of Sharon, was laid there, and has left a long perfume. Whenever I am committing the remains of a believer to the tomb, I seem to hear the angel saying, "Come see the place where the Lord lay." *

* *

* *

*

p. 346. The souls of believers are in their bodies, as the lamps of Gideon in the pitchers: at midnight the pitchers are broken, and the lamps shine forth, and the victory is obtained. This, to drop the metaphor, this is the ground of consolation taken by the Apostle: "And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness. p. 349. Finally, Remember, to complete your comfort, that what you resign to the grave will not only be restored, but infinitely improved. As Egypt was compelled not only to allow the Israelites to depart, but to send them away enriched; and as Cyrus not only gave up the captives from Babylon, but ordered them to be helped with silver and gold, and with goods, and beasts, beside their own freewill offerings to the house of God; so will it be in the resurrection. Believers will not only leave the grave as they entered it-they will be, not only delivered, but exalted; they will not only have life, but have it more abundantly. p. 353.

The resurrection body of the saints is thus strikingly pourtrayed. Such subjects painfully tell us that we at present only know in part; but even partial knowledge is to be welcomed with gratitude, as preparatory to perfect knowledge. Our preacher has wisely confined himself to the statement of the sacred oracles on this interesting topic.

There are two ways by which the Scripture elevates our conceptions of the resurrection body. The first is, to compare, or rather contrast it with the body we now have. "So is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption "-Not only incapable of defilement, but of dissolu tion, of declension, of injury: impassive, immortal. "It is sown in dishonour ; it is raised in glory."-No longer composed of base elements, subsisting_on gross supplies, subject to the same laws with the beasts that perish, employed in low and degrading toils and pursuits. "It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power."-No longer fatigued with a little exertion, and requiring long insensibilities of sleep, and frequent returns of food, to renew its strength and keep it fit for action: but capable of serving him in his temple day and night, without languor, and without repose. "It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body"—not a spirit but spiritual. Not spiritual in its essence, but in the refinement of its senses, and indulgences, and functions, and use. For "there is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body."

The second is, to hold forth the conformity it will bear to the body of our Saviour. "And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul;

the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterwards that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy and such as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly?" "It doth not yet appear what we shall be; but this we know, that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." And this likeness takes in the body as well as the soul, What a body was that, which after his resurrection could render itself visible and invisible at pleasure; which walls and doors could not exclude; which moved with the ease and expedition of thought; which ascended up on high without impulsion; which to Saul, and at noon day shone above the brightness of the sun; in which he is now worshipped by all the angels of God; and in which he will judge the world in righteousness, and reign for ever and ever! But this, O believer, is the model of thy destruction. "For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself." pp. 355-357.

Mr. Jay, however, rests not in statement or prediction, but endeavours to bring home what he has advanced, by appealing to matter of fact. The subsequent paragraph of this sermon furnishes a fine specimen of our author's style.

And let this animate you when looking towards your own grave. And surely some of you must be thinking of it. Your complaints, your infirmities, your years must lead you to ask, How long have I to live? Well! if you are a Christian, you have every reason to think of it with resignation and pleasure. God says to you, as he did to Jacob trembling on the confines of Egypt, "Be not afraid to go down: I will go down with thee; and I will bring thee up again." He will watch over your sleeping dust, and he will bid it rise. If it be trying to part with your companion the body, remember it is only for a time; and it will be restored to you in the image of God's Son. Say then, "I am not following cunningly devised fables. I build upon a rock. It is true, sin takes away my health and breath, and lays my body down in the grave. But I hear him saying among the tombs, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead yet shall he live; and he that liveth and believeth in me shall never die. At the sound of this, I take courage and go forward. I am not stumbling over a precipice, uncertain where I shall fall, and not knowing that I shall ever rise. I descend into the grave by a gentle flight of steps, leaning on my Beloved and my Friend-I choose to die. It is Thou, my God, my Saviour, who callest me; and I give up my life into thy hand, assuredly persuaded, that Thou art able and willing, and engaged to return it."

This is not empty declamation. I have taken the very language from the lips of a dying saint. I stood by-and after she had surveyed her reduced and wrinkled hands and arms, she ended her address and life too, few moments after-with the words of the sweet Psalmist in our British Israel:

"Oft have I heard thy threat'nings roar,

And oft endur'd the grief:

And when thy hand hath press'd me sore,
Thy grace was my relief.

By long experience I have known

Thy sov'reign pow'r to save;
At thy command I venture down
Securely to the grave.

..

When I lie buried deep in dust,

My flesh shall be thy care;

Those with'ring limbs with thee I trust,
To raise them strong and fair."

:

pp. 359, 360.

But we have done yet must we be allowed to express our earnest hope, that although our author designed this volume as a legacy to his flock, his valuable life may be long spared, to add many a codicil to this his will and testament.

By

Jacob; or, Patriarchal Piety: a Series of Discourses.
Rev. JAMES CRAIG, A. M., Minister of St. James's Chapel.
Edinburgh: 1827. 12mo. pp. 303.

No common endowments are requisite for the skilful analysis of
human character. We admire the knowledge, the sagacity, the
talent for classification, exhibited by Theophrastus and La Bruyere,
and by others, not perhaps inferior to those celebrated names in
the personification of moral principles and the accurate delineation
of their respective features. But theirs was comparatively an
easy task.
A man of average acuteness will not often fail in
the attempt to bring together the various manifestations of any
one virtue or vice, and to produce them thus embodied under
the form of a living agent. In the course of a few years, any
man, who carries an observant and discriminating eye in his
converse with the world, will have his memory stored with the
specific symptoms of avarice, of sensuality, of vanity, of hard-
heartedness. If, therefore, he desire to give a picture of avarice,
with all its loathsome features and lineaments, he has only
to collect and put together the scattered traits which have come
under his notice, in cases wherein the operation of that prin-
ciple was indubitable. Accordingly, he depicts the vice under
that concrete, vital, corporeal form, which constitutes the tho-
rough-sped miser, practising all those griping arts, and stooping
to all those villanies and meannesses, which he has witnessed
in several individuals, whose hearts have been purged, by the
love of money, of all good and honourable sentiments. But
a creation of this kind, the result of abstracting from many
individuals, and incorporating in one, the several appearances
under which any vice or virtue may discover itself-such a
creation, we remark, is a work of no great difficulty. It is
nothing, when compared with the hazardous task of taking
some one particular man, who has played no mean or simple

part in the multifarious business of life; disentangling the complexity of motives by which he has been actuated; assigning each action, or rather portion of an action, to its proper class; ascertaining the predominant influence, where the mind has been tossed to and fro by a thousand conflicting sentiments; and fairly deducing the true character of the man from a comparison instituted on so large a scale. This is, indeed, a task of extraordinary difficulty and peril-periculosa plenum opus alea ;and to accomplish it to any great extent, or with absolute certainty, is obviously beyond the power of earthly intellect. What man has diligently explored the folds and windings of his own heart, without detecting in it such a mass of inconsistency and contradiction as baffles his most honest endeavours to understand it? Again and again we take very important steps, without being ourselves able to ascertain the commanding motives by which our decision has been effected. An impulse, an emotion, in a critical minute, owing to purely physical causes, and "brief as the lightning in the collied night," may nevertheless have given a bias to our conduct, and determined it on this side instead of the other, in opposition to the weight of sound reason, and to the ordinary bent of our passions. We cannot ourselves account for our own proceedings: we stand aghast at folly, or are amazed at wisdom, in which we cannot recognise ourselves and in our attempts to solve the mystery, we look about in vain for the moral motives by which we have been impelled.

Now, if such be not seldom the exceeding difficulty of investigating the principles even of one's own conduct, how arduous an undertaking is it to dissect the heart of a fellowcreature; to lay open the secret springs of his passions and conduct, and to weigh his actions in a just balance! It is impossible to read without a smile the grave prosings of those sapient historians, who assign, with the most undoubting confidence, the reasons by which the great actors in public life have been determined in every part of their career; and who can exhibit to the credulous reader, through their magical microscope, the very hair which has turned the scale in every momentous affair from the Deluge to this present day. Unhappily for these seers, letters and documents are continually coming to light, by which their talent for divination is utterly discredited, and the causes to which they have traced events are shewn to have exercised no influence in the production of them, and perhaps to have been themselves begotten in the brain of the historian.

Our readers will, perhaps, be ready to apprehend that our

remarks tend to introduce a very dangerous and distressing uncertainty into our judgments of human conduct. But nothing can be further from our purpose. We thoroughly acquiesce in that apophthegm of Infinite Wisdom; "By their fruits ye shall know them." We doubt not that the inner man, the prevalent tendencies of every individual, are commonly thrown out in such, plain and palpable symptoms, that it will be easy for one who is fairly read in the diagnostics of the mind, and has had competent opportunities of observation, to estimate the character of any person, who does not possess extraordinary power of concealment. What we reprobate is, the hardy and reckless empiricism which decides peremptorily on data altogether insufficient; and will rather foist in any motive for what is done, than leave the deed unaccounted for. What we recommend is, a great modesty in proposing a solution of such abstruse problems as the conduct of men seen at a great distance, perhaps only at one point, and through a misty medium; and a great caution in meting out the portions of praise and blame, to which actions so dimly and partially contemplated may seem entitled. A more complete acquaintance with the subject might pour confusion on our fine-spun theories, and reverse our panegyrics or our censures. And let it be remembered, that such an exercise of ingenuity, as we have been animadverting upon, is not quite as harmless as what is related of a fantastic artist, who, happening to unearth the nose and one toe of an antique statue, immediately set about moulding the rest of a human form, in perfect adaptation, as he conceived, to these precious relics; and then pronounced his handy-work an exact likeness of the original, and claimed the universal suffrage of mankind to his wild conceit.

But we must turn from these general remarks to what they were designed to introduce to our readers-if, indeed, they are not already acquainted with it—the little work which gives a title to this article. We have no hesitation in pronouncing Mr. Craig's "Jacob" a very valuable addition to our shelf of practical divinity. This is a sentence deliberately and honestly given ; and it will be re-echoed, if it have not been anticipated, by the public. In delineating the character of the venerable Patriarch, Mr. Craig has produced a work of much beauty and interest; rich in acute remark, that argues profound self-knowledge, and no small experience in the conflict of nature with grace; powerful in its application to the conscience; fragrant with devotional unction; and faithfully developing the scheme of the Gospel, and the nature of true religion, without a taint of party feeling. This