It is of the nature of roads and gates to be narrow or strait, relatively to the countries through which they pass, and the fields into which they lead. Anybody who has had an open prairie or a broad ocean for his only path- without bounds or track, without obstruction too, but also without reason for going in one direction rather than another,must know what is the significance of this language which says, "Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life;" and how necessary and blessed it is, that revealed religion presents us not absolute and general principles, universal precepts and abstract truths merely, but specific facts and concrete and personal ties, presents us, in Jesus Christ, a door and a way, a definite track and guidance; and, in place of absolute statements touching the importance of duty and truth and charity, gives us a schoolmaster and pattern and guide to lead us, by patient obedience and by the influence of sacred usages and customs, to the final goal of a spiritual life and character. Christ insisted upon personal discipleship; his chief disciples magnified the part that the Master himself had in his own religion. They seemed bent on fastening attention on the personal history and events in the life of Jesus. Christ uses the word "I," with a frequency and significance that no other moral and religious teacher ever practised; and it is the chief distinction between all other systems of religion and Christianity, that its founder dares to speak, and claims the authority to speak, from his own personality, as from the throne of absolute truth. There is no more egotism in his use of the word I, than there is in the sun's eternal claim to be the light of the world. Christ does not distinguish between himself and the precepts and doctrines and commandments he imposes. He says distinctly, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." "I am the resurrection. and the life." "I am the light of the world." "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." He announces himself as the Son of God, as Immanuel. He asserts powers and authority which are either enough to convict him of the greatest arrogance and presumption known in all history, or else to place him in a position of rightful spiritual pre

eminence such as the Church and human nature for nineteen centuries have accorded him. And it is precisely this priceless fact of the appearance of a Being made in our own likeness, and yet claiming to be the Son of God, and to speak with divine and final authority, and sealing that authority with miracles, which has made the gospel of Christ the religion and the inspiration of the nineteenth, as of all preceding Christian centuries. God, speaking by the man Christ Jesus, endowed with plenipotentiary powers, has made the Christian Church, sustains the Christian Church, and is the eternal rock against which the gates of hell will never prevail.

And, after all that humanity owes to the gospel, it is this blessed narrowness of the road, and straitness of the gate,that is, the definiteness, certainty, concreteness, and personal characteristics of a revealed religion, in contrast with the abstractness, vagueness, and coldness of natural religion, that is a special source of disquietude, alienation, and disgust to some of our modern illuminati. They seem to forget that. revealed religion is not a substitute for natural religion or a supersession of it, but an addition to it, or superstructure upon it; that it is not substituting spectacles for eyes, but adding telescopes to vision. And as to the narrowing influences of it, who ever heard that the surveyor, the mapmaker, the road-builder, narrowed the geography of a tract of country, by making it accessible and fixing its points of compass? It is from an everlasting confusion of mind, in which the ends and aims of Christianity are confounded with the ways and means, that this modern prejudice against the narrowness of a revealed faith has derived its support. Christianity is not distinguished in its ends and aims from most other religions, the best of which propose union with God and goodness as their final purpose and result. It is wholly peculiar only in its method; and it is its method, and not its aim, which is really deserving our fixed attention. It proposes to bring people to God and goodness, to heaven and eternal life, by uniting them to Jesus Christ, through the study of his life and character, and the keeping of his pre

cepts, learned diligently and systematically in that special school which he opened and called the Christian Church.

When we complain of our common-school system, that it only teaches arithmetic, and spelling, and grammar, and therefore, being very narrow in its scope as compared with the teaching of nature and life, ought to be abandoned, then, and then only, may we reasonably talk of abandoning Christianity, because it is the common-school of babes and children in the knowledge of God, adapted to human nature and mortal circumstances.

Christianity recognizes natural religion fully, and without the least jealousy. Nay, if the image gives any comfort to its exclusive friends, she stands upon it as a dwarf on a giant's shoulders. But natural religionists are proud enough to think they can do without revelation. They think the giant is tall enough without the dwarf. But where would natural religion be but for the whispers this dwarf has dropped into the giant's ears? All that natural religion now knows, and in the pride of which she abjures revealed religion, — all that is definite, satisfactory or binding, she has really learned from the Church of Christ. And, when told this, her answer is, "Be it so; but, having learned it, why should we still keep our Teacher?" Why should the climber of Mont Blanc not dismiss his guides, and fling down his ladders, at the top of the first precipice? Because there are other precipices before him. And those who think they have learned Christianity out, and got to the very top of the eminence occupied by the Master and Saviour, will in due time discover their mortifying mistake. We verily believe that, to desert the Divine Guide whom God has sent to lead us safely through this new and unexplored country, is to invoke the loss of our way, to plunge into darkness and cold, and probably ruin. Christ is the way, and he will continue such to the most advanced disciples, who will only feel his moral and spiritual superiority more the closer they come to him, the more nearly they imitate him. The greater our spiritual sensibility, the finer for us the revelations of his character, and the fuller for us the measure of his inspiration. We should

believe that branch of the Church destined to wither, that severed its connection with the true vine; and the sooner it withered the better, for its fruit could be only ashes, and its seed barrenness.

Let us not think meanly of the revelation with which God has lighted up the once gloomy and unattractive halls of natural faith. Look reverently upon that grandest monument of time and history, the Christian Church, founded on the living corner-stone. Honor, support, and uphold those venerable and significant forms, which only the precipitate and prosaic could long undervalue, the Lord's Supper and Baptism, which have been the very wings by which the Holy Dove has made its difficult way down the centuries, rites which are to the gospel what marriage and legitimacy are to society, true sacraments, to maintain which every Christian should lend his enlightened and grateful support. Let those who despise the forms that hold civil society together, the legal instrument, the proper official signature, the prescribed seal,- forms by which we hold our property, - deride the conventional character, the temporary importance, the superstitious value, put on the sacred rites of the Christian Church. They have a significance, a value, and a providential destiny which scoffers and scorners will finally learn to respect; and nothing claiming to be a Church of Christ will, we predict, long continue to bear that name, or even to desire it, which has outgrown faith in these symbols. Let us not neglect or misunderstand the relation which the simple forms have to the holy spirit of our religion, nor think ourselves wiser than he who built the Church on his own broken body.

ART. VIII.-REVIEW OF CURRENT LITERATURE.

THEOLOGY.

DR. FURNESS has added to his series of original and striking studies of the Gospels, by a trauslation of remarkable felicity and skill from a writer of kindred spirit, but of views often quite different from his own. The work of Dr. Schenkel, which has received this high testimony to its excellence and value, represents a style of moderate and pious liberalism, more familiar, we apprehend, to the German mind than to ours. It is also distinguished by a limitation and precision of aim, implying a certain modesty of judgment, and helping to keep the subject itself free of dogmatic assumptions and false expectations. It states frankly, at the outset, that we have not the materials for a Life of Jesus, only for a Portrait. Renan has failed in his representation of the character, in aiming at too great completeness in the history. Of that character we have a "clearer image" in Mark than in either of the other Gospels, and along with it a more fresh and almost a first-hand narrative: the writer refers,. with much confidence, to the Urmarcus, or original Gospel, differing considerably from the present form, as the real first authority for the portrait he seeks. Matthew and Luke represent successive stages of a "literary reconstruction" of the narrative, in which the primitive outline is already somewhat disguised; while there is an "insurmountable difficulty" in accepting the fourth Gospel in any sense at all that makes it of much value as an historical authority. In fact, the most prominent critical feature in the work is the extremely positive, clear, and decisive argument decisive, we mean, as to the writer's own conviction against the genuineness of that Gospel; together with his protest against the "bigoted sophistry" which attempts to foreclose the argument by an appeal to religious prejudice.

These points indicate the writer's general position, which is maintained with good ability and the best of temper; also with an easy, ample, and familiar scholarship, too rare in popular works of this

The Character of Jesus Portrayed; a Biblical Essay. With an Appendix. By Dr. DANIEL SCHENKEL, Professor of Theology, Heidelberg. Translated from the German edition. With Introduction and Notes, by W. H. FURNESS, D.D. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 2 vols. pp. 279, 359.