tinctly than even to the Hebrew; and all nations, shaking off the degrading servitude of Mammon, shall awake to a sense of the "only true and the only beautiful," to a perfect consciousness of the amazing realities of that higher life which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Knowledge, it is said, shall be the stability of those times. Man's soul shall then find food in heavenly things which its celestial nature can assimilate, by which the intellect shall be expanded to its true proportions, and its perfect stature.

To the eye of a living faith, standards of heavenly excellence will be continually present, and men by their contemplation shall be changed into the same image, from glory to glory.

The Roman and the Greek beheld the spiritual world clothed in the false drapery of a corrupt imagination, and yet that communion with something higher and nobler than earth, this gazing upon truth through even the glimmering twilight of paganism, made them giant men-a commonwealth of kings. What then shall man become, when the false shall be stripped away, and in the noonday of Christianity he shall live in the unveiled presence of the sublime, the beautiful, and the true? Then also shall such themes be presented for poetry and eloquence, such subjects for the historian and the artist, as shall surpass all the former experience of earth.

Between us and that dispensation of the fullness of times, lie all those mighty and thrilling events, which on the prophetic record cluster around earth's closing scenes. The oppressive institutions of this world, the whole vast overshadowing fabric of Satan's dominion, must be overthrown, crushed in sternest conflict, stamped into powder by the hot indignation of infuriate millions, and old things shall pass away.

Who shall tell what convulsions shall attend the deathagonies of old systems, what frantic mirth shall hail the birththroes of the new era ?

The thrones of despotism will not fall except in the shock of battle, and the phoenix of new political structures can only arise out of the conflagration and ashes of the old. Before

Liberty shall obtain her final triumph, the sun, the moon and stars in the political heavens may be hurled down to be extinguished in blood. Earth seems ripening for disastrous change in all her great divisions.

The Mohammedan crescent appears to be peacefully waning now, but its final setting may yet be amid the flash and roar of universal conflict, when other standards may also be trodden down.

And how is the Romish hierarchy to be peaceably removed? Incapable from its very nature of reformation, it must be torn up and abolished utterly. Twined as its roots are with the very foundations of the social fabric, how can they be wrenched gently away? Yet between us and that brighter era of which we speak, lies the destruction of the "Man of Sin."

Again, the lost and scattered sons of Judah and Israel must also be gathered to their own, before the fullness of the Gentiles can come in, and the purity and the elevation of a Christian civilization prevail over all the earth.

In these spirit-stirring events, these closing scenes of the great drama of six thousand years, the mind will find a stimulus utterly unknown to the age in which we live.

Then, when there shall be one faith and one God over all the earth, when prophecy shall be history, and one song shall employ all nations, shall Greek and Roman fame be eclipsed by the splendors of Christian genius, and all that Christian intellect has yet accomplished be surpassed by those, who shall ascend to loftier elevations, and walk by those fountains which flow from the throne of God and the Lamb. Stimulated by the presence or the memory of those scenes at which we have glanced, and quickened by uninterrupted communion with the Invisible, man shall reach the highest excellence of which an earthly state is capable, and language itself be refined and spiritualized, so as to become the fitting vehicle of the soul's nobler imaginings.

As much as the grandeur, the beauty, and the magnificence of the real spiritual world surpasses the dim shadow

which the ancients beheld, so much shall the efforts of a sanctified genius, enlightened by the teachings of the Infinite One, exceed the sublimest achievement of Grecian or Roman mind. Perhaps, on the very theatre of ancient song, the national mind of Greece and Italy, awakened and baptized by the Spirit of God, shall yet send forth loftier and sweeter strains than ever floated over the Adriatic or breathed among the islands of the Egean. From Judea's repeopled hills some Miriam may send up songs of deliverance; some Deborah astonish the world with a second battle hymn, and the harps of David and Isaiah be strung again in Zion. Then too, perhaps, in our own Saxon race, poets shall arise with more than a double portion of Milton's spirit, and the world be bound by a more potent and yet a holier spell, than that which Shakespeare wove. When the weak among men shall be as Milton and Homer, and Plato, and Socrates, and Demosthenes, and Tully, and all men become not only pure but intellectually great by association with the Spirit of God.

In what quarter of the earth mind shall then reach its fullest development, is a question which cannot now be accurately solved. From lands now sunk in the depths of heathenism, may spring giant minds that shall contend for superiority in literature and art, with those nations who are now most favored with civilization and religion.

The far East was the land of science and elegant learning when Europe was inhabited by savages, and under the influence of a Christian faith she may regain her ancient supremacy, and the fires of genius burn with purest splendor on the very spot where first they were kindled.

Emancipated Africa may yet cause earth to thrill with an eloquence of which the colder western mind is incapable; she may yet be regarded as the land of poetry and art, and demonstrate the great truth that God has made of one blood all the nations of the earth.

If, however, we are to form our opinions of future results from the character of present events, we should expect that the Anglo-Saxon mind would hold over all the earth a controlling

influence. Its star is now evidently in the ascendant. Its power is a conquering power, and it gives no indications of weakness or decay. It rises over the nations like an unebbing tide, higher, stronger, further on with every heave of the restless wave. If such anticipations are to be realized, then, perhaps, there are other reasons than those which spring from national vanity, which should lead us to look to America as the land where the intellect of man shall reach the culminating point of its greatness. I cannot but believe that we already possess more of those influences which promote the growth of mind than any other people. The vastness and magnificence of the features of our scenery give strength and boldness, and expansion to the soul. The intense activity produced by the genius of our institutions, brings mind every where into sharp conflict with mind, producing mutual growth; and small though the influence of faith be upon the national character, there is in the United States more of true spiritual religion than in any other nation on earth.

We only need, then, as it would seem, the intellect of the country to be fully pervaded by the religious sentiment, until the genius of the land shall feel the influence of a heaven-born faith, to cause the American mind to stand forth proudly preeminent in science, literature and art. If ever our country obtain on earth an enduring fame as a cultivated nation, that reputation will be based upon a Christian literature, a Christian science, and a political structure drawn from the principles of the Gospel. Thus only shall we become even intellectually great.

The principles which have been stated, by an unavoidable inference, should place the American scholar by the side of the minister of the Gospel. Their task in its general features is the same; to elevate, expand, and refine the national mind by the power of truth; to devote the measureless influences of a cultivated mind to the bringing of his country under the power of a quick, strong faith in the realities of the spiritual world, until this great country, in all its vast concerns, shall live and move under a solemn sense of the presence of the

invisble, of coming retribution, of an overshadowing heaven, from which even now angels come down and sweep past us on their errands of love, ministering to the heirs of salvation, and from which the sleepless eye of God looks down on the children of men.

ARTICLE II.

EXPOSITION OF MATTHEW 16. 18..

By REV. CALEB CLARK, Truxton, N. Y.

Matthew 16: 18. "And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter; and apon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

THE first point to be ascertained in the exposition of this passage, is, the import of the phrase "my church." Does it mean the whole company of saints who are, and will be, redeemed by his blood out of every kindred and tongue, and people and nation," who constitute the "church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven?" or does it mean "the visible church," the company of professors of Christ's religion on earth, who are entitled to the privilege of being called his church? The latter certainly: for he speaks here of what he was doing and would continue to do on earth. Consequently he does not speak of the redeemed church in heaven, but of his church to be built up on earth, by believing his doctrines, and following his institutes and ordinances.

But the phrase, "I will build my church," demands more particular investigation. Oixodounow, the word in the original Οικοδομήσω, text, translated "I will build," does not necessarily imply that Christ was then about to begin a new building, which before had no existence; but may mean that he would continue to build it in extent on a broader foundation, and to carry it up in height uutil he should bring forth the top-stone with shout