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therefore if the opinion itself be invalidated, for which purpose a simple denial is sufficient, the futile distinction falls to the ground at the same time. For the fact is, not merely that the distinction is a futile one, but that it is no distinction at all; it is a mere verbal quibble, founded on the use of synonymous words, and cunningly dressed up in terms borrowed from the Greek to dazzle the eyes of novices.

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The second postulate is, that wherever the Son attributes Deity to the Father alone, and as to one greater than himself, he must be understood to speak in his human character, or as mediator. Wherever the context and the fact itself require this interpretation, I shall readily concede it, without loosing any thing by the concession; for however strongly it may be contended, that when the Son attributes every thing to the Father alone, he speaks in his human or mediatorial capacity, it can never be inferred from hence that he is one God with the Father. On the other hand I shall not scruple to deny the proposition, whenever it is to be conceded not to the sense of the passage, but merely to serve their own theory; and shall prove that what the Son attributes to the Father, he attributes in his filial or even in his divine character to the Father as God of God, and not to himself under any title or pretence whatever.'

Collections.

The Ruins of Ancient Thebes.

With a quick-beating heart, and steps rapid as my thoughts, I strode away, took the path to the village of Karnac, skirted it, and passing over loose sand, and among a few scattered date-trees, I found myself in the grand alley of the sphinxes, and directly opposite that noble gateway, which has been called triumphal; certainly triumph never passed under one more lofty, or, to my eye, of a more imposing magnificence. On the bold curve of its beautifully projecting cornice, a globe coloured, as of fire, stretches forth long overshadowing wings of the very brightest azure.

This wondrous and giant portal stands well; alone, detached a little way from the mass of the great ruins, with no columns, walls, or propylæa immediately near. I walked slowly up to it, through the long lines of sphinxes which lay couchant on either side of a broad road, (once paved,) as they were marshalled by him who planned these princely structures, we know not when. They are of a stone less durable than granite: their general forms are fully preserved, but the detail of execution is, in most of them, worn away.

In those forms, in that couched posture, in the decaying, shapeless heads, the huge worn paws, the little image between them, and the sacred tau grasped in its crossed hands, there is something which disturbs you with a sense of awe. In the locality you cannot err; you are on a highway to a heathen temple. One that the Roman came, as you come, to visit and admire; and the Greek before him. And you know that priest and king, lord and slave, the festival throng and the solitary worshipper, trod for centuries where you do; and you know that there has been the crowding flight of the vanquished towards their sanctuary and last hold, and the quick trampling of armed pursuers, and the neighing of the warhorse, and the voice of the trumpet, and the shout, as of a king among them, all on this silent spot. And you see before you, and on all sides, ruins :-the stones which formed walls and square temple-towers, thrown down in vast heaps; or still, in large masses, erect as the builder placed them, and where their material has been fine, their surfaces and corners smooth, sharp, and uninjured by time. They are neither grey nor blackened; like the bones of man, they seem to whiten under the sun of the desert. Here is no lichen, no moss, no rank grass or mantling ivy, no wall-flower or wild fig-tree. to robe them, and to conceal their deformities, and bloom above them. No;-all is the nakedness of desolation-the colossal skeleton of a giant fabric standing in the unwatered sand, in solitude and silence; a silence broken only by the approach of the stranger, for then the wild and houseless dogs, which own no master, pick their scanty food in nightly prowlings round the village, and bask in the sand-heaps near throughout the day, start up, and howl at him as he passes, and with yell, and bark, and grin, pursue his path, and mock his meditations. Old men and boys come out of the village,

to chase and still them, and supply their place; bringing with them little relics and ornaments for sale, and they talk and trouble you. I soon got rid of them, attaching to myself one silent old Arab, who followed me throughout that day, and also when I visited the temple again: carrying a cruise of water, and a few dried dates. I was fortunate in him. He had learned the ways of the traveller, understood your frown, your glance, your beckon, and that motion of the hand, by which you show your wish that he should leave you to gaze alone and unobserved.

There are no ruins like these ruius: in the first court you pass into, you find one large, lofty, solitary column, erect among heaped and scattered fragments, which had formed a colonnade of one-and-twenty like it. You pause awhile, and then move slowly on. You enter a wide portal, and find yourself surrounded by one hundred and fifty columns, on which I defy any man, sage or savage, to look unmoved. Their vast proportions the better taste of after days rejected and disused; but the still astonishment, the serious gaze, the thickening breath of the awed traveller, are tributes of an admiration, not to be checked or frozen by the chilling rules of The 'des masses informes' of Voltaire, would have been exchanged, I think, for a very different expression, if he had ever wandered to the site of ancient Thebes.

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But away, reader, away! come with me; step over that fallen capital; put your foot on that fragment of a cornice; clamber over those masses of enormous stones; now stoop, and enter this obscure and darker part of the ruin. The roof here has never fallen in; and here are two rows of pillars, with faded colours on them-the columns are, but the colours evidently are not, the ancient Egyptian; you may distinctly trace the outline, on two of them, of such heads as are still to be seen in the rude paintings in Coptic churches: on one, too, you may see an inscription in red paint, of a like colour: it records the names and meeting of some humble, persecuted Coptic bishops, who once held their unostentatious council here, in a secluded spot, which served as a shelter and retreat for the worship and service of the true God, and the instruction of their flocks. Yes, in the solitude of these ruins, a weak small sect, who, having little strength, yet kept Hist

word, have read the gospel of Christ, have bowed and wept before the throne of grace, and have sung the song of Moses to the ancient accompaniment of the loud cymbal! Here, even here, where the priests of Pharaoh have sacrificed, and where Babylonian revellers may have stalled their foaming horses, spread their silken carpets, and drank from their golden wine-cups, after fulfilling what they knew not to be the will of the Most High!-[From Scenes and Impressions in Egypt and Italy.

St Peter's in Rome.

St Peter's, however, must be visited and revisited alone. I have been in it at morning, noon, and as the shades of evening dimmed without obscuring, every object. The confessional of St Peter, with the lamps which burn around it, placed, as it is, in the centre of the crossing naves of this mighty temple, belongs, in its aspect, so entirely to all that is grand and solemn in the general and most majestic character of the idolatries of all ages and nations, that could you place here the Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman of ancient times, the Parsee and the Brahmin of this, they would fall down and worship; and you feel, as you offer thanks for instruction in that revealed word which gives a spiritual freedom to your thought, which permits you, in towns or deserts, in tumultuous occupation or the stillness of the night, to erect an altar in your mind, and raise a temple 'not made with hands' above it, a gratitude which is, perhaps, the sweetest and most satisfying feeling our spiritual nature is capable of indulging. We should all-all of us have been idolaters, but for that light which no man could now have the mental strength to ridicule, had it never shone to give him an illumination of mind for which, in the fullness of his pride, he is not willing to confess himself, as he is, under a vast and increasing weight of obligation.-[From the same.

Probable Arguments.

Probable arguments are little stars, every one of which will be useless as to our conduct and enlightening; but when they are tied together by order and vicinity, by the finger of God and the hand of an angel, they make a constellation, and are not only powerful in their influence, but like a bright angel to

guide and to enlighten our way. And although the light is not great as the light of the sun or moon, yet mariners sail by their conduct; and though with trepidation and some danger, yet very regularly they enter into the haven. This heap of probable inducements, is not of power as a mathematical and physical demonstration, which is in discourse as the sun is in heaven, but it makes a milky and a white path, visible enough to walk securely.

....... A scruple is a little stone in the foot; if you set it upon. the ground, it hurts you; if you hold it up, you cannot go forward; it is a trouble when the trouble is over, a doubt when doubts are resolved: it is a little party behind a hedge when the main army is broken, and the field cleared; and when the conscience is instructed in its way, and girt for action, a light trifling reason, or an absurd fear hinders it from beginning the journey, or proceeding in the way, or resting at the journey's end. Very often it has no reason at all for its inducement, but proceeds from indisposition of body, pusillanimity, melancholy, a troubled head, sleepless nights, the society of the timorous, from solitariness, ignorance, or unseasoned imprudent notices of things, indigested learning, strong fancy and weak judgment; from any thing that may abuse the reason into irresolution and restlessness. It is indeed a direct walking in the dark, where we see nothing to affright us, but we fancy many things, and the phantasms produced in the lower regions of fancy, and nursed by folly, and borne upon the arms of fear, do trouble us. But if reason be sti parent, then it is born in the twilight, and the mother is so little that the daughter is a fly with a short head and a long sting, enough to trouble a wise man, but not enough to satisfy the appetite of a little bird. The reason of a scruple is ever as obscure as the light of a glow-worm, not fit to govern any action; and yet is suffered to stand in the midst of all its enemies, and, like the flies of Egypt, vex and trouble the whole army.-Jeremy Taylor.

A Mexican Idol.

Some writers have accused the Spanish authors of exaggeration in their accounts of the religious ceremonies of this, in other respects, enlightened people; but a view of the idol under consideration will of itself be sufficient to dispel any

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