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Joshua,' clothed with the sins of our whole life; there will be no distance to soften them, no past to obliterate them. Nor is there any way but one by which the guilt of them can be wiped from the soul of man, or the recollection of them removed from the memory of God.3

1 See Zechariah iii. 3.

2 Now! it is gone, our brief hours travel post,

Each with its thought or deed, its why or how,
But know, each parting hour gives up a ghost
To dwell within thee-an eternal now.

COLERIDGE.

I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions, Isaiah xliv. 22, and will not remember thy sins, Isaiah xliii. 25. To forget, from defect of memory, is the infirmity of human nature; to forget, by an act of the will, belongs to God alone:

Auswendig kann der Mensch

Alles lernen, was er will,
Moses Bücher, die Propheten,

Und die ganze heil'ge Schrift;
Aber was er weiss, vergessen,
Wäre es eine Sylbe nur,

Das ist nicht in seiner Macht,

Und kein Arzt kann das Gedächtniss

Reinigen von seinem Aufsatz.

NOTE Z. Page 108.

We believe that the mental eye is as incapable of seeing the whole truth of any one of the wondrous works of God, as the physical eye is incapable of fixing on the sun in its meridian splendour. We believe that the clear and full perception of any of the great truths, which are now hidden from us, would dazzle or upset our reasonable faculties, much in the same manner as happened in the wellknown instance of Archimedes, who, when the long-sought demonstration of a geometrical problem flashed unexpectedly on his mind, jumped out of the bath, and ran about the streets of Syracuse, like a madman, exclaiming, “I have found it, I have found it." We believe, that if we saw ourselves as we are, our freedom of action would be destroyed;

1 Come subito lampo che discetti
Gli spiriti visivi, sì che priva

Dell' atto l'occhio di più forti obbjetti;
Così mi circonfulse luce viva

E lasciommi fasciato di tal velo

Del suo fulgor, che nulla m'appariva.

DANTE. Paradiso, Canto xxx.

"should

for, as Bernardin de St. Pierre says, we dare to make a single movement, or stir a single step from the place we are in, if we saw our blood circulating, the tendons pulling, the lungs blowing, the humours filtering, and all the incomprehensible assemblage of fibres, pumps, valves, currents, pivots, which sustain an existence at once so frail and so presumptuous?" We believe also, with Haller, that if we could see the manner in which the mental operations are carried on, the way in which the mind acted, and was acted upon, our freedom of will would be destroyed. Thus we believe that reason, the boast of the philosopher, that reason by which he tries and condemns the works of Omnipotence, would be instantly annihilated, did any one of those works present themselves to his mind without the softening veil, which God, in mercy to our weakness, has graciously thrown over the operations of his hands.

NOTE A. A. Page 109.

From the indolence inherent in our nature, man is ever ready to lay hold of the first

excuse he can find, to free himself from the trouble and responsibility of working out his Own salvation. This prevailing infirmity Popery has not only turned to account by forbidding its followers to think for themselves, but has encouraged it by allowing it to put on the garb of humility and faith. The slothful Protestant servant, having no cloak thus conveniently provided for him, is obliged to seek one in the sophistry of his own mind, and, having no accommodating ministers to take his soul off his own hands into their especial keeping, he is content to let it take its chance. On the bed of death, however, the soul will often feel its deluded and forlorn condition. The covering of God's Holy Spirit is the only covering which can counteract the chill of death.1 The right hand of God is the only sure support which can uphold the sinking soul at the moment of its dissolution, for it then feels that it must cast off the cloak of self-delusion, that it must

1

66 They cover with a covering, but not of my Spirit."Isaiah xxx.

2 With some, indeed, this fatal cloak clings around them to the last, and becomes the winding-sheet of the soul "dead in trespasses and sins."

then let go the arm of flesh, and that "wretched and miserable, blind and naked,"1 it must stand alone before the throne of retributive justice.

NOTE BB. Page 110.

It must not be supposed that we are insensible to the mischief inflicted on the cause of vital religion by the strifes and dissensions, the "vain babblings," "and oppositions of science falsely so called," the heats and animosities which have at all times disturbed the peace of the christian church. But we must be permitted to affirm, that there is still a more deadly evil than religious intolerance, and that is-religious indifference, which, not satisfied with seeming what it really is, seeks to clothe itself with the mask of christian toleration. If the contortions, which we sometimes witness on the features of the living, are frightful to behold, still more appalling is the placid mockery of life on the face of the dead; most frightful is it to behold the cold and soulless corpse of religious indif

1 Revelations iii. 17.

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