the deep and beetling brow; how the voice clarified and strengthened by holy excitement thrills and falters with pathetic concern as the speaker approaching the climax of his argument, and the culminating point of his practical appeal, sets forth the momentous destiny that awaits his hearers, and the infinite contingencies of human conduct; hearken to his searching wistful entreaties, his jubilant lyrical congratulations; note the intense attention, the signal stillness, the breathless hush and general conscious sensation of relieved intentness when his last words have been spoken, and the stalwart figure, hot and flushed, and filled with passionate feeling, sinks back into the pulpit seat-and you cannot but feel that you have been listening to no inadequate presentment of Christian truth; to no unskilled or unworthy preacher of the wonderful words that can make wise unto salvation.

Admirable and excellent as are the discourses contained in the volume before us, it is certain that they do not exceed the average quality of Dr. Legge's public ministrations, but exhibit very fairly his method and style; most of them relate to those leading cardinal points of doctrine and belief to which it was his delight strenuously to address himself, and with which he grappled with all the zest of the skilled dialectician; with all the wise eclecticism of the student; and with all the seriousness of a faithful pastor of souls. They are conspicuously marked by the lucid and methodical arrangement; the simplicity and completeness of expository statement; the orderly sequence of cumulative thought; the fresh and idiomatic diction; the vivid and pictorial rhetoric; the teeming illustrative learning; the occasional musical strains of fancy

and

and feeling; the direct and highwrought peroration-to which we have before referred as characteristic of the pulpit efforts of this gifted, beloved, and eloquent man. And here on finally recurring to our many grateful memories of his living presence, on rising from a renewed consideration of his career and character as depicted in even this meagre memorial sketch, and of his intellectual and oratorical achievements as partially presented in these published discourses, we are more than ever impressed with the independence and humanity of his religious ideas; the freedom, the true spirituality, the catholic largeness and warmth of his inward life: and a conviction presses itself very urgently upon us that estimable, even loveable as he was personally; brilliant as were his public abilities; rich and available as were his scholarly resources; it is in the other rarer aspect of progressive thinker and teacher that he may be remembered and emulated with the deepest and most enduring advantage by his younger survivors in the ministerial office, who will extract and appropriate all that is most valuable in his example if they but follow him in seeking to conform their representations of scriptural doctrine to the exacter views of an advanced intelligence and to the merciful temper of that exhaustless Christianity which is wider than all the churches, however expansive; fuller than the creeds, how deftly framed soever they may be for the arrest and imprisonment of truth; more liberal, humane, and benignant than the noblest institutions by which men in their wisdom and benevolence have striven to express and apply the precepts of the Redeemer and the spirit of the Kingdom of Heaven.

O. M. N.

AND

JESUS did not very often use the whip. He is here represented as doing so most vigorously. To some minds He scarce looks like the mild and gentle Saviour in this instance. But we think there is no incongruity between the gentleness of Christ and the proceeding recorded above. To shew this, and to draw out a few lessons is the object of this paper.

We will then try, then,

First-To gain an idea of the case as it presented itself to the mind of the Master.

Well, what do we see? The outer court of the temple is filled with the tables and stalls of the exchangers of money, and sellers of doves, &c.; the latter for use in the sacrifices of the approaching Passover. This had been done with the consent of both the rulers and people of the Jews. No doubt very plausible arguments were used in favour of the custom. It was convenient to many to be able to purchase necessary things upon the spot, and to exchange the shekels. We see that they are driving a good trade. Evidently the traders well pleased with the ar

are

rangement.

But the Son of God, when He sees the motley throng, and beholds the bartering and selling, is wroth. Whatever may have been the reasoning by which those interested in the affair sought to uphold and defend the custom, He does not admit them to have force. I think, however, we shall find the chief reason for the conduct of Christ in the implied character of the men, and of their transactions. He calls them thieves.' Not that all trading is thievery. No! Trade is one of God's ordinances for the good of the race. Honest trading is pos

sible.

Honest traders, as a class, exist. But in this case, Jesus, who knew these men through and through, saw that they were sordid, selfish, dishonest men, who were moved in all their trade-transactions by an unprincipled love of gain. He recognized in them reckless devotees of the God Avaro. He knew that no pious sentiment stirred their breasts, and moved them to exchange those shekels, or to sell those doves. He knew, if they could take an advantage by extorting exhorbitant prices or exacting extravagant interest, they would,-they did. He knew that because they found it to pay well, therefore were they there. I think Christ would have dealt more gently with them, if they had been simply misled or misinformed men. they were shrewd, cunning knaves. They knew what they were about. They were making money, without any high-souled concern as to the how, and they were doing it in the temple.

But

ac

Moreover, was not all done under the cloak of religion? Are we not offering every facility for enabling the people to worship God ceptably in His temple ?' Thus would they add to all the rest the villainy of hypocrisy. This more than any other feature would kindle the indignation of the Master. Still have we ringing in our ears the words He once uttered to the arch-hypocrites - the Scribes and Pharisees: Woe unto you! how will you escape the damnation of hell? He hated with burning hatred hypocrisy. And when He saw, as here, the sordid love of gold, and the worship of mammon finding shelter under the very eaves of the temple, He could do no other than

make the whip, drive them out, and overturn their tables.

Second. Let us shew that there is nothing in all this at all inconsistent with the general character of Christ. True He was meek, and gentle, and loving. He was these in infinite perfection. But he was a man. He was a perfect man. He had, therefore, a keen sense of right and love of honesty. He had a profound respect for Jehovah, and for all things and places connected with Him. In the deeps of His soul He reverenced truth and consistency. With all the force of His being He adored God, His character, His law, His worship; and He knew that that temple stood as the divinely appointed symbol of the Divine being, that it was consecrated to His high praise, and that services of glorious significance were there offered to Him. He knew that there prayer, in a hundred forms, was to go up to the Most High. To Jesus it was, then, a consecrated place the spot where heaven and earth met! He felt that honesty and purity alone became the place where God's honour dwelt. But now, behold! the sacred precincts are overstepped by the unhallowed feet of unlawful traders; yea, a horde of religious rogues and swindlers. Passing strange would it have been if Christ had not been aroused by such a scene as was presented in that temple yard. The meekness and gentleness of Jesus were not sentimental weaknesses and imperfections of character; they were principles which could and did blend with the equally right elements of honest, manly and stern indignation, and anger at wrong, which would burn, too, with an intensity proportioned to the enormity of the wrong, Jesus loved, but His love was under the control of a correctly balanced will, a highly sensitive conscience, and a righteous judgment. There is such a thing as the wrath of the Lamb. May neither reader nor writer ever know by experience what it is.

Third.-Let us deduce a few

lessons.

1st.-Anger is right under certain circumstances.

We may do well to be angry; we may be angry and sin not. Sin in all its forms must be an object of intense disgust to every rightly constituted mind. If we be not aroused to indignation thereby it indicates a serious defect of moral character. I believe we, as Christian men, ought to feel and exhibit resentment against wrong doing. Indignation ought to burn within our breasts towards every form of evil which presents itself, and especially so when it assumes the character of pious fraud. We may be angry with men for sinning, especially when, as in the case under consideration, it presents itself in most aggravated and revolting aspects. We may, and we ought, to utter words of earnest and faithful remonstrance, and even severe denunciation.

2nd. We shall do well to be very cautious in our use of this right. There is so much of danger lest the anger degenerate into sin, that we do well to be most careful. There are three things which render it allimportant that we should exercise rigid caution. There is, imperfection of knowledge; the power of selfishness, prejudice, and passion; and limited authority. Every one knows that he is in constant danger of infringing proper limits by reason of the operation of one or all of these. We often think we are right in denouncing this and the other thing; but afterwards we discover that either the thing was altogether different in moral character to what we had imagined, or we find upon close examination that there was in our anger a very large preponderance of mere personal feeling, or come to see that we have really infringed upon the prerogative of the Lord, the Judge. It is well every way that our right to be angry and to express that anger by word or whip' is limited.

we

In the Master there was no danger. He had unlimited authority, and He was absolutely free from all warping

and impurifying influences and motives. He had authority, and He knew how and when to use it. He knew perfectly when to be stern. When He was angry it would have been criminal supineness for Him to have been anything else. There is an anger of principle as well as of malignant passion. The one is as ennobling as the other is degrading; the one as right as the other is wrong. The anger of Jesus was in every sense of the former kind; ours often partakes of the latter quality. While, then, the example of Jesus shews that we may be angry, and sin not, indeed, that to refrain from anger under some circumstances would be to sin; yet, we

ENGLISH

247

do well to bear in mind our imperfections, and hence learn to be sparing of the whip.

3rd.-What a warning to all implicated parties.

I fear there is now a good deal of this huckstering carried on under the name of religion. Because it is profitable, because men can 'turn a penny,' because their connection with religious societies gives them a certain status among men of the world-therefore they thrust themselves within the pale of the church. Let such men beware lest He who drove out the offenders from the temple of Jerusalem cast them forth from His presence for their hypocrisy.

THE eminently pious and learned Richard Sibbes was born about the middle of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The reign of Elizabeth embraces one of the most important and extraordinary periods of our national history. It comprehends nearly the whole of the latter half of the sixteenth century. It was then that the British mind unfolded in its grandest aspects and sublimest forms. Philosophy, Poetry, Theology, Pulpit and Forensic Eloquence, all flourished under the vigilant eye and the stimulating auspices of the great Virgin Queen. Elizabeth herself was a woman of no ordinary mind and no common attainments. Point forth six of

the best given gentlemen of this court,' says Roger Ascham, and all they together shew not so much good will, spend not so much time, bestow not so many hours, daily, orderly, and constantly for the increase of learning and knowledge, as doth the Queen's Majesty herself. Yea, I believe, that beside her perfect readiness in Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish, she readeth here now at Windsor more Greek every day than some Prebendary of this Church doth read Latin in a whole week.

Amongst all

the benefits that God hath blessed me with all, next the knowledge of Christ's true religion, I count this the greatest, that it pleased God to