had, who poured on the Savior's head a box of very precious ointment. It hath been told, and shall be told of her wherever the Gospel is preached.

The discussion of this subject suggests some rules for giving. 1. All who can, should give-the poor what they can, the rich what they can. God is equally pleased and equally honored by both. Both, too, equally need the moral influence of giving, and may be profited by it alike.

2. While all are left free to judge of their own ability, all are expected to give up to their means. The self-denial and the sacrifice are main elements of value in the Savior's estimate, and these begin when we press a little on personal convenience. The poor reach this limit, and obtain the benefit and the blessing sooner; the rich, by increasing their gifts in proportion, not as their neighbor's set them an example, but as God has prospered them. The greater the sacrifice for Christ's sake, the greater the blessing.

3. If Christ is honored and pleased by our pious giftsif they are also disciplinary, and parts of a system of means for our religious improvement, then we ought, as Christians, to rejoice at frequent opportunities of honoring our Redeemer, and profiting our own souls. It is as unreasonable and as wicked to complain and be displeased at the frequent recurrence of such calls, as it would be to be angry that we are so often called to the holy sacrament, or to pray and sing praises, and listen to the preached Word.

XV.

CHRIST CRUCIFIED.

For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.-1 Cor., i., 22–25.

JEWS and Greeks, among whom the early ministry of the apostles and their successors was mostly exercised, constituted originally, as they may now be taken to represent, the two great classes who reject, or, receiving, corrupt and pervert the Gospel. And these classes were not, and are not formed chiefly by national customs, and peculiarities, and differences of education. They grow out of the tendencies of our nature, as modified and misdirected by the fall and its consequences. Men, not as Jews, or Greeks, or barbarians, but as men, and fallen men, incline to a gross or material theology, and are instinctively averse to a spiritual religion. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."* This passage of Scripture describes the stronger and the more general tendency, and by far the larger class of persons.

I. All the forms of idolatry, ancient and modern, fall under this comprehensive category of the material and the gross, and each of them proves and illustrates the position here assumed. Their gods of gold, and silver, and wood, and stone-the deification of the planets and the elements-of animals, or abstract principles, with all their religious rites 1 Cor., ii., 14.

and ceremonies, gorgeous, fantastic, or bloody, were only so many expressions of this inborn tendency to go astray from the true God.

The imposing apparatus of ceremonial rites and spectacles, adopted by divine wisdom as the best means of making the eternal verities of religion impressive and effective under the Jewish dispensation, proved insufficient to satisfy the enormous demand for the sensible and the gross by that partiallycivilized and stiff-necked people. For nearly a thousand years after the Exodus from Egypt, their history is largely composed of the story of the idolatries and abominations in which the ruling principle of man's religious nature so uniformly seeks and finds indulgence. This strong tendency to idolatry found at length an effectual antidote in the terrible chastisements of the Almighty, and especially in the dispersion and ruin of the nation by the Babylonish captivity. The principle, however, remained in full force, and it reappeared in the time of our Savior, in the guise of a perverse and most absurd devotion to the forms of the Mosaic system, and the traditions with which it had become obscured, while the true and spiritual import of the dispensation was quite lost sight of. The dogmas and ritual of the system were the chief obstacles to the right understanding and practice of the doctrines and moralities they were designed to inculcate. They clung to the type-to the shadow, and rejected the antitype and the substance. It was in this spirit of obstinate and blind devotion to the institutions of the Old Testament, which they had made something worse than a nullity by their debasing interpretations, that the Jews met the overtures of the Gospel as preached by Christ, and afterward by his disciples. The evidence of miracles, by which the divine authority of the new dispensation was attested, was a special arrangement to meet their religious views and prejudices, and a passport to their confidence. True, however, to their national besetment, and to the besetment of

our fallen nature-ever the same in principle, though greatly various in manifestation-they were disposed to receive the proof instead of the thing proved. They answered exhortations to repentance and faith by a demand for miracles. They refused to admit the kingdom of heaven into their hearts, but were clamorous for demonstrations to the senses. When the Jews demanded a sign from our Savior, and met the preaching of the apostle with the same requirement, it was not for the purpose of obtaining clearer proof of the truth of the Gospel, to help their unbelief, for the Savior had performed a multitude of miracles in their sight; and Paul, in this very epistle to the Corinthians, refers familiarly and repeatedly to the miracles which he had performed among them, so that there was no farther occasion for them as media of proof. But the Jews required them as an end. This was to be the sum and substance of the new religion. They would not admit its claims as a moral and spiritual dispensation. Christ's kingdom was to be earthly-its blessings and privileges were to be sensible, present, manifest, material. The very essence of it was to be in exhibition and form— gross, earthly, and manifest-not spiritual and invisible. This false view, this fatal misapprehension of the character and design of the Gospel, was and is the grand obstacle to the salvation of the seed of Abraham. The vail is yet upon their hearts. They still require a sign, and look for a Messiah adapted to their prejudices and to their grosser nature. They hope for restoration to the Holy Land. Thither they make pilgrimages. They linger about Zion. They weep and gaze on the ruins of the temple.

The Gospel, taking advantage of the progress made under the Jewish system, and of the favorable state of the world, while it retains the substance and the morals of the old covenant and fulfills the law, completely rejects its ritual. is eminently a spiritual system. It enjoins only two simple rites, Baptism and the Lord's Supper; and, while laying all

stress upon their import, scrupulously avoids all particularity as to their forms and ceremonials. A proof of which is the endless controversies on this subject; a great evil, but less, probably, than would have arisen from giving sanction to any particular form. It was probably the design to guard against the universal tendency to rest in signs and outward observances. The Church, however, has obeyed the tendency of humanity, by multiplying and magnifying forms; as witness, for example, processions, robes, incense, relics, pictures, statues, transubstantiation, in which a mere memorial is deified. And the substance has been lost in proportion as the shadow has been honored. Outward forms and observances have proved thus far, and probably are in their nature, antagonists of spirituality.

Every thing, whether in ceremonies, or modes, or dogmas, or traditions, which withdraws the sinner's attention from Christ crucified, or gives consequence to aught but faith and holiness, is greatly liable to produce a measure of the same injury. Make a form, or a dogma, or any peculiarity essential to Christianity, and it becomes a hobby or an idol. In so far, it is likely to usurp the place of Christ. The more insignificant or even ridiculous the claim, the more pernicious the influence. For, by making it essential to salvation, it becomes sacred-an idol. It has the work of Christ to do, and must be invested with divine attributes for the purpose. The mind can not rest without it. The Egyptians worshiped beasts and reptiles, and therefore built the grandest temples on earth.

We are constantly liable to danger from laying too much stress even on sound opinions and proper forms. Every branch of the Church tends to honor its peculiarities too highly. Wesleyan Methodists have really no essential and vital peculiarities, and ought to desire none. Better lose by the proselyting efforts of our neighbors than gain by a hobby of our own. Faith, love, and holiness are the only essentials.