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you will perceive that the work is finished, and you will perceive that nothing remains but to hear, understand, and believe, the testimony of God concerning His Son.

We have often to distinguish between what ought to be, and what is. If the "Rise and Progress" be taken as a map of the plan of salvation, it points out a very circuitous path to the cross. But if it refers rather to what is than to what ought to be, it rightly describes the track that is trodden by many who are uncertain about their way. One great difficulty about the reception of the Gospel consists in the truth being so simple and so divine. "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord." It would be very desirable that a Gospel preface should be prefixed to the "Rise and Progress," declaring a free, full, and present salvation; while the body of the work would still indicate the path more generally chosen, consisting of various stages of advance, instead of an immediate access to the foot of the cross.

It is much to be lamented that Doddridge, whose piety is so serious and so persuasive, should have fallen upon evil days; when the glory of the Gospel was somewhat obscured; when not only the noble and commanding views of the first Reformers should have become somewhat obsolete, but even the piety of the Puritans was suffering from the admission of a false candour, and the prevalence of semi-rational views.

He who begins with Doddridge would naturally continue and end with the works which Doddridge edited; the Commentary on St. Peter and some other excellent works of Leighton. If asked, what work comes nearest to the Scriptures? we would answer, though with some consideration, and consequently hesitation, The writings of Leighton. He has not the fervid genius, nor the commanding views of Gospel truth, which Luther possessed; nor the clear and philosophic understanding of Calvin; nor that peculiar

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solemnity of Howe, which places the reader upon the verge of eternity; but he has a portion of all the excellencies of the most excellent men, and a very deep infusion of the Christian spirit peculiarly his own. The character of his writings is eminently heavenly and catholic; and these two qualities go together and influence each other. There are no sects or denominations in heaven.

There are some things that require explanation about Leighton, in order fully to harmonise his life, his mind, and his writings. His father stands in great opposition to both his sons; and this must be attributed partly to a principle of revulsion. After making every allowance, it seems strange and still unaccountable that Leighton should join the party that so persecuted and savagely mutilated his father. The fierce dogmatism of his father may have inclined the son to mysticism; of which there are strong indications in a short paper, "Rules and Instructions for a Holy Life" (if it be Leighton's, for it is unworthy of him), and but a slight tinge in his better writings. The first sentence of the Commentary of St. Peter might throw some light upon the workings of Leighton's mind. "The grace of God in the heart of man is a tender plant in a strange unkindly soil," &c. Religion with Leighton was therefore an exotic, and generally under glass. But we have a double task to perform; first, to protect it from unkindly blasts; and, secondly, to acclimate it and give it a hardier character and an out-of-door existence. It was in this part of religious culture that Leighton most failed. His piety seemed too much confined to his closet, and did not sufficiently encounter the ruder influences of the world.

Though latterly an Episcopalian, more, however, from compliance than choice, there was nothing hierarchical or priestly in Leighton's views; he saw clearly there can be no priest without a sacrifice, and as there is but one abiding

sacrifice, the great Atonement, so there is but one abiding Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ. Through their union with Christ, all His people are kings and priests also. There remains, therefore, among them the sole distinction of the teachers and the taught. But that distinction does not divide them into clergy and laity. "All believers," says the Archbishop, "are His clergy; and as they are His portion, so He is theirs ;" in other words, clergy and laity are identical. All believers are God's people, or His laity; and all His people, or laity, are the lot of His inheritance, or His clergy. Leighton is most distant from anything of the spirit of a caste; he felt that all believers are one brotherhood through the Lord Jesus, and that by His death every wall of partition has been taken away.

None have more clearly seen or strongly urged, that holiness and happiness are identical, and that conformity to the Divine character is the sum and end of religion. God must reign; but if He reign without us, and do not reign in us, our wills must be crushed by the Divine will; and we must ever be unhappy till we be conformed to Him.

Leighton beautifully points out the two opposing streams of the World and of the Word. The World knows not God; has no light of its own, but wandering fires; is dark, and in love with darkness; seeks to shut out God, and to make itself its own centre and end. Its maxims, its course of life, are atheistic, not based upon God and immortality, and seeking to shape out for itself a rest and a paradise here below. One irreligious generation bequeaths its maxims and its example to the succeeding one. "The stream of sin," Leighton remarks,

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runs from one age into another, and every age makes it greater, adding somewhat to what it receives, as rivers grow in their course, by the accession of brooks that fall into them; and every man, when he is born, falls like a drop into the main current of corruption,

BEAUTIES OF LEIGHTON.

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and so is carried down with it, and this by reason of its strength, and his own nature, which willingly dissolves into it and runs along with it." In opposition to this stream of corruption, ran a tide of the waters of life in the writings of inspired men. "This sweet stream of their doctrine," says Leighton, "did, as the rivers, make its own banks fertile, and pleasant as it ran by, and flowed still forward to after ages, and by the confluence of more such prophecies, grew greater as it went, till it fell in with the main current of the Gospel in the New Testament, both acted and preached by the Great Prophet himself (whom they foretold to come), and recorded by His apostles and evangelists, and thus united into one river, clear as crystal. This doctrine of salvation in the Scriptures hath still refreshed the city of God, His Church under the Gospel, and still shall do so, till it empty itself into the ocean of eternity." The above passage could scarcely be surpassed either for its beauty of expression, or its deep insight into the structure of Scripture, and the ever-flowing enlargement of God's dispensation of mercy.

Leighton gives a beautiful and complete summary of the answer to the question, "What shall I do to be saved?" Only this. First receive so great a salvation, then love so great a Saviour. And for advice. Remember, this world is but a passing pageant; a procession passing through the street, and then vanishing away for ever. This thought is often recurring to Leighton, and always, no doubt, he found it useful. The more we consider the things of time as shadows, the less we shall be disquieted by them. They are vain shadows in every point of view. Live without care, and care only to please God. He himself will take care of other things. Thus shall thy life become every day less earthly and more heavenly, till heaven itself become thy home. J. D.

(To be continued.)

OURSELVES.

THE SENSE OF SIGHT.

THE appendages to the Eye, and their uses, have been already noticed.*

The Globe, or Ball of the Eye,-the Optical instrument, —is a dense, membranous cyst, filled with transparent media, or Humours, as anatomists term them. It consists of three principal coats. The outermost-the Tunica sclerotica-is white, opaque, slightly compressible, nearly, if not quite, insensible, and very tough or hard, as its Greek name implies. It is perforated behind for the admission of the optic nerve. A portion of the anterior part of it, amounting to about a fifth, is deficient, and its place is supplied by a larger segment of a smaller sphere, called the Transparent Cornea, which renders it more prominent than the rest of the eyeball. This beautiful window is made up of six separable lamina placed one upon the other, united at their edges, having a thin colourless fluid interposed between them. At its junction with the sclerotic coat, the edges of both are neatly thinned off, which renders their smoothness quite continuous.

Immediately within the sclerotic, and adhering firmly to it, is the second coat, the Choroid. It is a soft, dark brown membrane, consisting almost entirely of the blood-vessels which supply the eye. Over its inner surface, and probably contained in the cells of a very tender tunic, is spread a black, viscid substance, called the Pigmentum nigrum, the black pigment.†

*"Excelsior," vol. iv., p. 407.

† Less than half the choroid coat, in the eye of the horse, and that, not the part in the field of ordinary vision, but chiefly the lower portion, is covered with this pigment. In its stead there is a lucid carpeting of a

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