Dead, Yet Living.

THE cedar is most useful when

upon their pleasure, and they communion with God, and howwill give to an interview with ever much he loved his brethren Him such moments as may not in the ministry, he would not be otherwise occupied. Such forego a regular meeting with Christians rarely grow in grace, his heavenly Friend for an or make themselves felt in the earthly companion or fellowchurch, or in the world, by emi- laborer. It would be well for nence in godliness. the steadfast piety of Christians, Dr. Ashbel Green, pastor of if such habits were more general one of the Presbyterian churches in the churches.- Watchman and in Philadelphia, and previously Reflector. President of Princeton College, was a Christian of another type, He was a man of method, and adhered almost inflexibly to habits he had formed after mature reflection. His hours of private devotion were sacred, and he dead. It is the most productive would not set them aside for when its place knows it no more. any claims of business or friend- There is no timber like it. Firm ship. Dr. Murray gives a very in the grain and capable of the striking incident in connection finest polish, the tooth of no inwith this habit. He was visiting sect will touch it, and time itself Philadelphia, and Dr. Green sent can hardly destroy it. Diffusing for him to consult about some a perpetual fragrance through matters connected with the New the chambers which it ceils, the Jersey Historical Society. Dr. worm will not corrode the book Murray called early in the mor- which it protects, nor the moth ning, about nine o'clock, and Dr. corrupt the garment which it Green gave him a cordial greet- guards,-all but immortal itself, ing; but as soon as the business it transfuses its amaranthine quamatter was arranged, he frankly lities to the objects around it. said: "My devotional reading is Every Christian is useful in his not yet concluded; I shall be life, but the goodly cedars are happy to see you at another the most useful afterward. Lutime;" and added in parting, ther is dead, but the Reformation "may God bless you." lives. Calvin is dead, but his

The circumstance left a deep vindication of God's free and impression on Dr. Murray's mind, sovereign grace will never die. for he had been accustomed to Knox, Melville, and Henderson hold familiar intercourse with are dead, but Scotland still rethis venerable father in the mi- tains a Sabbath and a Christian nistry, and this was the last time peasantry, a Bible in every house, he saw him on earth. He felt and a school in every parish. that Dr. Green lived in intimate Bunyan is dead, but his bright

spirit still wakes the earth in its can only convey an idea to the "Pilgrim's Progress." Baxter is mind of this distance by the fact dead, but souls are still quickened that light, which travels twelve by the "Saint's Rest." Cowper millions of miles in a minute, reis dead, but the "golden apples" quires not less than ten years to are still as fresh as when newly reach us! Just let any one try gathered in the "silver basket" to take in the idea. One hour of the Olney Hymns. Eliot is would give 720,000,000 of miles; dead, but the missionary enter- in one year, then-8,760 hoursprize is young, Henry Martyn this gives 6,307,200,000,000, is dead, but who can count the and this multiplied by ten gives apostolic spirits who, phenix-like, 63,072,000,000,000. This, achave started from his funeral cooding to Professor Bessel, is pile? Howard is dead, but mo- the nearest fixed star to the sun. dern philanthropy is only com- And all astronomers confirm the mencing its career. Raikes is correctness of Professor Bessel's dead, but the Sabbath-schools go calculations. But this distance, on. -Rev. James Hamilton.

The Depth of Space

great as it is, is nothing to be compared to the distance of the Milky Way. Sir Wm. Herschel says that the stars or suns that compose the Milky Way are so IN 1837, Professor Bessel, of remote, that it requires light Germany, commenced a series of going at the rate of 12,000,000 astronomical measures for get- of miles in a minute, 120,000 ting the exact distance to the years to reach the earth. And fixed stars a thing that had he says there are stars, or rather never been done. The instru- nebula, five hundred times more ment which he used, in connec- remote! Now make your calcution with a powerful telescope, in lation: 120,000,000 years rehis experiments, was called an duced to minutes, and then mulHeliometer (sun - measurer). tiply that sum by 12,000,000, After three years' hard labour, and the product by 500. What he was so fortunate as to obtain a an overwhelming idea! The parallax, but so very minute that mind sinks under such an overhe could hardly trust his reputa- whelming thought; we can't tion upon it. But after repeated realize it; it is too vast even for trials, and working out the results human comprehension. David he was fully satisfied that he says, Psalm ciii, 19: "The Lord could give the true distance to hath prepared his throne in the 61 sygin. But who can compre- heavens, and his kingdom ruleth hend this immense distance? We over all."

Preached before the New York and Brooklyn Foreign Missionary Society, auxiliary to the American Board of Foreign Missions, tn the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, (Rev. Dr. Cuyler's.) on Sunday evening, November 22d and in the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church, (Dr. Crosby's,) Sunday evening November 29th, 1963.

BY THE REV. ROSWELL D. HITCHCOCK, D.D.,

PROFESSOR OF CHURCH HISTORY IN THE UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK.

THE FINAL TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY.

"AND I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me."-ST. JOHN 12:32

Our Lord was crucified on Friday, April the seventh, in the year 30. On Wednesday, the fifth of April, he stood for the last time within the venerable precincts of the Jewish Temple, and in the hearing both of Jews and Gentiles, pronounced his last public discourse; a discourse which John alone of the evangelists has reported, and of which our text may be looked upon as the grand culminating utterance.

The lifting up here spoken of, has doubtless a double reference: First, to death by crucifixion; and secondly, to the glorious exaltation which was to follow. Greek proselytes,

representing the Gentile world, had asked to see Jesus, that they might learn about the kingdom which he had come to establish. In two days more, the Founder of this new kingdom would be hanging dead upon the cross. The faith of these inquiring Greeks was liable to be rudely shaken by an issue seemingly so disastrous. To enable them to withstand this shock, our Lord not only accepts, but emphasizes the impending agony. His path, he assures them, will be no defeat, no disturbance even of his plans. Lifted up to the cross, he will thence be lifted to the right hand of the Father, and from that heavenly height, will carry on triumphantly his redeeming work. Nor need it be thought strange that death should thus be made the gateway to life, to glory, and to dominion. Such is the universal law. The corn of wheat must be buried in the ground to rot and perish, or it bears no fruit. Man himself must die unto self and sin, in order to live unto God eternally. Much more, then, must man's Redeemer die, in order to the assumption of his regal power. It is as though our Lord had said: Be not troubled when you see me lifted up to the cross; for in this is the beginning of a kingdom, which shall spread from heart to heart, from race to race, and from century to century, till it completes at length the conquest of the globe.

And so the meaning of our text is plain. It does not teach the doctrine of universal salvation. It does not say that every single member of the human family will certainly be saved. The drawing to himself, which Christ promises, is not a compulsory, but a moral drawing, which may therefore, of course, be resisted, and rendered of no avail. As a matter of fact, palpable to every honest odserver, multitudes of men, stoutly withstanding this divine attraction, have perished and are now perishing in their sins. But the Gospel shall prove no failure. Suited as it is to the necessities of all men, and sincerely offered to all, it shall save all who embrace it. Nor shall the number of those embracing it be small. That cross of agony and shame reared on Golgotha, shall never be overturned. Men of every race, and clime, and dye of guiltiness, shall be drawn towards it, and subdued by it. Every thing else on earth shall totter and fall away; laws, customs, institutions, religions. But this shall stand unshaken amidst the nations. Jews and Gentiles, wise and foolish, high and low, bond and free, shall gather round it. High looming amidst the civilizations and the centuries, it shall stand and draw; working slowly, it may be, but working ever surely till its work is done, and great voices are heard shouting back and forth athwart the heavens, that the kingdoms of this world

are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever.

Christianity thus stands committed to the achievement of universal dominion. Its founder puts it forward into history as the universal religion, fore-ordained to universal prevalence. For those of us who worship Christ as Good, this prophetic assurance of final victory is enough. Our lines might be much thinner than they are, our march much slower, our trophies fewer, and still we should not be disheartened. We shouid still stand fast by the ancient bond, which gives Christ the heathen for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession. Generation after generation might succeed to the arduous succeed struggle, and still the Church would keep her camp-fires burning, never doubting that the time will come, however distant, when her camp-fires shall be killed, and her banners shake, on every hill-top from the rising to the settingsun.

But if this be true of the Church in her instinctive loyalty to Christ, it is equally true that the asserted Divinity of Christ is itself on trial. If the religion which he established falls short of universal acceptance, if it encounters civilizations superior to it, if it comes into contact with races of men which it cannot conquer, then the pretensions of its Founder are brought to shame. Scattered and partial triumphs will not suffice. Either Christianity must subdue all things to itself, or be routed entirely from the field. If it do not everywhere ultimately prevail, then it is not what it claims to be, and ought not anywhere prevail.

Setting aside therefore, for the present, the promise of its Founder, which is decisive only on the assumption of his divinity, it becomes necessary for us to entertain, an independent ground, the question, whether Christianity is likely thus to prevail. We shall have to ask ourselves whether there be anything inherent in the system itself, or anything in its past history, prophetic of universal dominion. This we know has been again and again denied. In the second century it was denied by Celsus, who took the ground that different races and nations are preconfigured to different religions, and that consequently the expectation of universal diffusion for any single religion, is a foolish dream. Christianity is thus confuted at the start by the glaring absurdity of its aim. Its insane ambition of universal conquest brands it as an imbecility and a cheat. A skepticism similar to this of Celsus in regard to the ultimate universal prevalence of Christianity, exists in our day. There are those amongst us, affecting philosophy,