it their greatest delight. Oh, how I love thy law! said the Psalmist; and with him will all believers join. They who cannot, are strangers to its excellence, its preciousness; and for them, as long as they continue thus, its great things are written in vain. Seeing, they do not see them; and hearing, they do not hear them. Their hearts are alienated from God, and their affections placed on what he hates and condemns. They do not approve of his law-object to some parts-doubt of others; receive this, and reject that; are pleased with a part, and dislike the rest. Alas! they count it a strange thing. They feel no attachment to it-find no pleasure in it.

Finally; Men count this law a strange thing when they do not obey it. Did they love it, they would fulfil it; but because they hate it, they first cavil with it, and then reject it. These be thy gods, O Israel, said Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which brought thee up out of Egypt; and the people worshipped the calves at Bethel and Dan, though God had forbidden idolatry, and declared that HE brought them up, out of the house of bondage. Thus men still act directly contrary to the will of God as revealed in his word. Some, whilst they profess to know God, in works deny him; being abominable and disobedient. They corrupt his worship; abandon his ordinances; disobey his commandments; and attempt to unite God and mammon: others, not a few, wholly reject this law, loving darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. They consider it a cunningly devised fable, which deserves no credit, nor respect.

These are some of the ways, in which men count the law of God, and its great things, a strange thing. Dreadful folly to do so! Aggravated crime! How justly were the ten tribes punished! And all they who act like them, may look for the divine displea

sure.

FOR THE CHRISTIAN's MAGAZINE.

CHURCH OF GOD.

No. XIV.

Officers, &c.

WE have stated the first requisite in a Christian

minister to be piety; i. e. according to the large theological sense of the term, a principle of true religion, or devotedness of heart and life to the love and service of God in Christ.

We have stated his next qualification to be aptness to teach. This we have shown to contain,

(1.) A good natural capacity; or such a degree of native talent as is susceptible of the proper culti

vation.

Some who have accompanied us thus far, will stop short here, and discover a willingness to dispense with acquisitions which were formerly considered as essential to a well-ordered ministry. Piety," they say, "will keep a man straight upon the main arti"cles of truth; and strength of mind, though rough " and unpolished, will enable him to impart them to "others in a plain but impressive manner. This," they will add," is vastly superiour to the drowsy "discourse of hundreds who have been through college, have studied divinity, and pass for great "scholars."

We protest, once for all, against learned dulness. Little as we delight in solecisms and uncouthness, we

will pardon the maulings of Priscian's head by the club of untutored power; we shall esteem ourselves repaid for an injury to syntax, or for a rugged illustration, by nature's pathos and vigour; when we should lose our patience with solemn insipidity, or doze under the influences of a leaden diploma; nor deem it any recompense for the loss of our time, that we were put learnedly to sleep. Yet, bad as this is, it is still worse to suffer the insipidity without the poor consolation of some literature to qualify it-an affliction of much more frequent occurrence than the other.

But by what sort of artifice do men cozen their understanding into such argumentation as this?" Ta"lent without education is better than stupidity with "it; therefore, talent ought not to be educated!!” Here is a colt of excellent points and mettle; He is worth a score of you dull, blundering jades, that have been in harness ever since they were able to draw; therefore, he will do very well without breaking! It is surprising that so many, otherwise discreet persons, will maintain that to be wise and good in the Church of God, which they know to be absurd and mischievous in every thing else. In fact, talent, instead of being exempted from the necessity of cultivation, is alone worth the trouble, and needs cultivation in proportion to its strength. Talents are born, knowledge and skill are acquired. God creates the one; he has left the other to be obtained by experience and industry. No talent can coin facts; and without facts it will run to waste.--Without information it has no materials to work upon; and without discipline it will work wrong. The

* PRISCIAN, a famous old grammarian. Hence one who violates the rules of grammar, is said to break Priscian's head.

power of doing evil is in exact proportion to the power of doing good. Petty minds produce petty harms and petty benefits. The errours of great minds are great errours, and draw after them deep, wide, and lasting consequences. It is of unutterable moment that they be set right in the beginning. This, in so far as depends upon human exertion, is the province of cultivation, which, of course, makes the (2.) Part, of "aptness to teach."

What ought it to embrace in a minister of Jesus Christ? We may distribute it into two branches; the first consisting in literary acquirement; the second, in intellectual and moral discipline.

When we consider, that the Scriptures are written in languages which have not been spoken for agesthat they contain a succinct epitome of human history, in reference to the plan of grace, from the beginning to the end of time: going backward to the origin of nations, and forward to their extinction: marking, by the sure word of prophecy, the various fates of various people, as well as the principal dispensations of providence toward the Church-that they relate events which cannot be vindicated against plausible objection, without painful research into the phenomena of our globe-that they are full of allusions to the works of God and of man-that they exhibit human character under all its varieties, intellectual and moral; individual and social-that their il, lustrations of truth, and formulas of speech are borrowed from objects equally strange to our habits and conceptions; from the face of the country; from the soil; from the climate; from the governments; from the idolatry; from the literature; from the state of domestic society; from the manners of the East-that the language of prophecy is wholly peculiar; being a system of symbols, which, though as certain in themselves, and as reducible to fixed laws of interpretation as any alphabetical language

whatever, are perfectly unintelligible without the study of those laws- -When we consider these things, it is impossible not to perceive that the study of the Bible allows of the widest range of learning; and that without a respectable portion of it no man can "rightly divide the word of truth."

Acquaintance with the original tongues is indispen

sible.

God has delivered his word to us in Hebrew and Greek, which being now, as they are commonly called, dead languages, are not liable to the fluctuations of a living one. These are the ultimate and the unalterable standard of truth, by which every doctrine must eventually be tried. Excellent versions the Churches have; versions, from which all that is to make us "wise unto salvation," may be learned by the humblest peasant or labourer, as certainly as by the accomplished scholar; versions, undoubtedly susceptible of improvement; but which the licentious spirit of the times gives us very dubious promise of replacing with better. Timeo Danaos-We invariably suspect these amended Bibles, which the Iscariotbands of professed Christianity are labouring, on both sides of the Atlantic, to thrust into the hands of the unlettered and the simple*.

*There is a late most audacious attempt to explain away the whole gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; absolutely stripping it, with the single exception of the doctrine of the resurrection, of every principle which makes it "glad tidings" to a sinner; substituting, in the room of "redemption by the blood of Christ," a barren morality, little, if any better than that of the Pagans, who were "without Christ, without hope, and without God in the worldt;" and straining into the "cup of salvation" the distilled venom of Socinian blasphemy. This fatal draught is handed about with incessant assiduity, and put to the lips of the unthink† Eph. ii. 12.