fied curiosity. It is the surest and most permanent ground of continued intellectual and moral advancement, superior to the vulgar stimulants of avarice and ambition, in the degree of its effects, as it is more lasting in its operation, and more excellent in its kind. In this most of all are men deficient. Childhood is full of it—but as the boyish questioner is too often unable to find an answer in himself, and is seldom aided by his elders, and is thus compelled to postpone his satisfaction till experience shall have made him wiser, he grows up to a forgetfulness of his own queries, in a familiarity with all wonders, which impairs his perceptions, and he becomes blind indeed. Still Nature is full of mystery, overshadowing and alluring to him who contemplates her aright; and he who has not sometime felt that the humblest flower asked him questions, he could not answer, and that the origin, and growth and decay of an affection was an enigma he could not unravel, may be deemed almost hopeless for growth and for good.

I have already intimated that while nature contains ideas and principles which she discloses to the soul that is fitted to receive them; the sentiments which she expresses to us are often the original creations of our own feelings, and are found in nature because they are first found in us. The second condition then must obviously be a harmony of our Spirit with the Spirit of the Universe. I do not speak of a coincidence of our will with the Supreme will, or a correspondence of our affections with His Laws, or an obedience to the laws of matter-though the latter would be a valuable auxiliary to this attainment, and the former its highest and completing form-but of a harmony of our temper with the general aspects and, as I may say, feelings of Nature. Doubtless she speaks a various language-she has a voice of sympathy for the saddened and the mourning, gently rebukes and recalls the erring, and with fine and delicate influences heals the broken hearted. But the conflicts of the passions are alien and uncongenial-she withdraws from such, like Astraea to an upper sky of peace and rest. response, for to them she is a stranger. In the heart which is The proud and the vain find no the dwelling of sensuality and earthliness, her wings are clogged and her bright plumage tarnished, by its foul and pestilent mists. But she resides alway with the pure, the meek, and the holy. She loves best a gladsome spirit, and he who has issuing from his own breast a stream of deep, gentle, joyful feeling, who is full of the tender impulses of humanity and quietly fulfilling VOL. VI. No. 19.

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all the offices of love, shall find her dwelling within him, as light and music in a gushing fountain.

It may not be amiss to hint at a few of the reasons, which seem to attach something of peculiar worth to this Love and Study of Nature, though he who possesses the love, and has made any attainment in the study, can hardly need them, and he who has not, may not readily apprehend their pertinence or feel their force.

Man has not too many sources of enjoyment, and he may not in honesty of heart, turn away from any indication of one, till he has fairly tried it; though the discipline which leads to it may be peculiar, and require even that the thoughts and feelings be remodelled, old principles displaced and new ones awakened in the soul. A greener vegetation may shoot up from the decayed and moulded trunk. The gratifying of this love of nature furnishes a real enjoyment, as he who feels it well knows, and which he who has it not, cannot deny. It is pure too, for it is communion with the pure. Nature stands in her main forms and energies, as God made her-perfect. The elements work freely and harmoniously. The taint of sin is not there, "the trail of the serpent" has not passed over them, the images of nature cannot defile. And being thus pure and perfect, they aid to cherish the sense of beauty, and establish the principles of taste in the mind which contemplates them. Nay, the cultivation of taste is but a developement of the idea of the perfect, which idea, when man meditates on himself, he finds not at all, or only by contrast; while he finds it in nature direct and manifest.

In the character of every individual man, from the various principles running through it, all of which modify and influence. one another, almost any one may be selected, and under certain limitations, fairly considered as the type of the man; and this because there is an essential affinity among the principles of human thought and feeling, by which those of the same kind are allied and made to coalesce. A true relish for simple beauty is seldom joined with habits of sensuality, for they are of diverse natures and will not blend. The feeling of compassion usually associates with itself, mildness, patience, forbearance. Thus a Love of Nature, by the peculiar sympathy which exists between them, attracts to itself, and sustains, and strengthens all the "finer issues" of our being-pure and steadfast affection, a preferring attachment to the true, the generous, the noble, a

reverence for order, and a sense of dependency, a delicate sentiment of beauty and propriety diffusing itself over all objects of human regard, a fondness for the social, the domestic, the homebred. The Lover of Nature can hardly be an undutiful son, he can hardly fail to be a better father, a more obedient subject, and a holier Christian. Indeed all these gradations of character are but stages, high yet subordinate, in the education. of man for the higher and spiritual duties of religion. The character thus formed is fitted to apprehend and embrace religious truth-there is a correspondence, and a tallying of one with the other. A man thus trained is more likely, other things being equal, to become a Christian, and having become one, he is more likely to be true and faithful, because he has auxiliars to his spiritual life, which none other has, and which make his sight the stay and upholding of his faith. "The Angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him," is verified to him in another sense than that of protection. Nature, a sealed book to the sealed mind, becomes as "the mountain full of chariots and horses of fire" to the opened eyes of the servant of the prophet-her rebukes, and warnings, and encouragements and consolations are every where around him-in the stable mountain, and the fleeting cloud, the falling dew and the unheeded and down trodden weed.

ARTICLE V.

EXPOSITION OF THE LORD'S PRAYER, MATT. 6: 9-13, AND AS APPENDIX, 14, 15.

From Tholuck's Commentary on the Sermon upon the Mount. Translated by J. Torrey, Professor of Languages in the University of Vermont.

[CONCLUDED FROM PAGE 238, VOL. V.]

The

VERSE 12. The petitioner passes to his spiritual wants. mind that contemplates itself in the sight of God, becomes first of all conscious of its debt of guilt, and prays for the remission of it. In literal opposition to this prayer of christian humility stands that of Apollonius of Thyana, who was accustomed to

pray : ὦ θεοὶ, δοίητέ μοι τὰ ὀφειλόμενα, Ο gods, may ye give me that which is my due.-The general church in its controversy with the Pelagians very properly appealed to this petition, in order to prove the universality of sin, and its continuance even in believers. To this, if we may credit the testimony of Jerome, c. Pelag. L. III. c. 15. the Pelagians gave the unsuitable reply, that the petition is offered by the saints-humiliter but not veraciter. Not so Luther: "We are to remark in the third place, as it is here expressly pointed at, the poverty of our miserable life. We are in the debtor's limits, completely [bis ueber die Ohren] involved in sin, etc."-But a difficulty arises from the fact, that to this petition, as it seems, a condition is annexed, which renders it, under certain circumstances, incapable of being heard. In fact, the appended clause, os xai ἡμεῖς ἀφίεμεν, has made great difficulty for the interpreters in every age. This clause admits of being taken directly in the strict sense, that the measure of the divine clemency will always be determined according to the measure of our own. Several of the fathers, therefore, employ this interpretation to alarm such as use the prayer with an unforgiving spirit; and, as Chrysostom remarks in a certain place, many an offerer of the prayer in the ancient church has been induced, through fear, wholly to suppress the petition.2 Others, however, according to Augustin, struck upon the awkward expedient of supposing that by the debts, which we should remit to our neighbor, are to be understood pecuniary obligations. Chrysostom, and Luther in the exposition of 1518, understand the petition altogether in the sense of Luke 6: 38: "With the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again." Chrysostom says: "God maketh thee master of thy own sentenceas thou judgest thyself, so will he judge thee." And Luther, Ps. 109: 14. "His prayer, in the sight of God, will be a sin—

1 Philostratus vita Apoll. L. I. c. 11. Opeλóueva has here the sense as it is evolved in Plato de Rep. : διενοεῖτο μὲν γὰρ, ὅτι τοῦτ ̓ εἴη δίκαιον τό προσῆκον ἑκάστῳ ἀποδιδόναι, τοῦτο δὲ ὠνόμασε ὀφειλόμενον. The New Testament phrase ἀφιέναι τ. ὀφειλήματα, it is well known, is Aramaic. The Greek would understand the phrase only as synonymous with aqiέvai τaxçέα, (yet x980s has also in the classics the moral signification" trespass.")

2 The anonymous writer in Stephen le Moyne: tavra déywv, uvθρωπε, ἐάν οὕτω ποιῇς (προσεύχῃ) ἐννόησον τὸ φάσκον λόγιον, φοβερὸν τὸ ἐμπεσεῖν εἰς χεῖρας Θεοῦ ζῶντος !

For when thou sayest 'I will not forgive,' and yet standest before God with thy precious pater noster, and repeatest with the mouth: forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors, to what does it amount but to this: "O God, I am thy debtor, and I also have a debtor; now if I will not forgive him, do thou also not forgive me; I will not obey thee, though thou dost already pronounce me forgiven. I will sooner forfeit thy heaven and every thing, and take up my everlasting abode with the devil." A great many expositors show themselves upon this passage quite at a loss how to proceed. Several, like Zwingli, endeavor to remove the edge of the expression by saying that there properly lies in the words only a publica Christianorum professio, not an oratio-a public profession, not a prayer. Also Luther, in the smaller catechism, says "it is a vow to God." Others, as Calvin, Chemnitz, say, the words are properly to be taken as an admonition [commonefactio] to forgiveness-an admonition, however, as it should seem, resting upon the assertion that God's clemency to us, is to be according to the measure of our own, and it is precisely this which creates the difficulty. Periculosam-says Maldonatus-nobis videtur Christus regulam tradere, male enim omnino nobiscum agetur, si non aliter nobis Deus, quam nostris nos debitoribus, peccata remittet -" a dangerous rule Christ seems to give us, for ill would it fare with us, if God should forgive us our sins only as we forgive our debtors." To avoid the difficulty, therefore, he seizes upon a distinction, which is also introduced by several of the protestant Interpreters: it is not a rule (regula) which is here given, but a condition (conditio)-not a parity (paritas) but a likeness of manner (similitudo rationis).

=

This is perfectly correct. 2s, derived from the relative pronoun ös, of which kind, like the Lat. ut from quod, like uter from quuter, where the t takes the place of d, as also in set, aput. Now this comparison expresses nothing directly respecting the measure in which the two things compared correspond to one another; the likeness may be more or less strong, and hence too our lexicons at the word as give similiter as a definition; yet it may without doubt also be used in the case where, in expressing one's self accurately, ooov would be employed.1 So also the less concise τοιοῦτος stands for τοσοῦτος, and, in

1 Vid. Passow, s. v. ds, p. 1127 of the 3d ed.