Religion is restoration. In the New Testament there are many passages which speak of the restoration of the image of God to man. These passages imply that that image has been lost.

The image of God stamped on our first parents was not of long continuance. How long we cannot say. The constitution of the human mind involved the possession of a free will. Man was not made to be moved like a machine. He was not a mere creature of instinct. Man had the power to reason, compare, choose. Had he been devoid of these attributes he had not been man.

Probably soon after his creation his character was tested by temptation. The subtle influences of evil were brought to bear on his moral and spiritual nature. He became entangled in the network of the tempter's guile. He yielded to the suggestions of the wicked one. He

fell from the pedestal of his greatness. In his fall he lost the image of God which had been impressed on him at the creation. The exquisite harmony and perfect balance of his faculties was disturbed. His spiritual nature no longer yielded a cheerful response to the claims of God and the law of duty. Morally he had fallen out of the upright. When the pillar in the temple has fallen out of the upright it has lost its power of supporting the weight of the building. So with man. When his moral nature, which is the principal pillar in the temple of the soul, had lost its upright attitude, then he was no longer able to support the weight of responsibility and moral obligation which rested on him. As he reflected the image of God, principle was up and passion was down;

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now, as that image is marred and defaced, passion is up and principle is down. The reign of sin is the reign of passion. Innocence now gives way to guilt, serenity to sadness, joy to sorrow. How great is

the loss! How dreadful this fall! "How is the gold become dim! How is the fine gold changed! The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthern pitchers, the work of the hand of the potter. The crown is fallen from our head; woe unto us that we have sinned."

III.-The image of God restored

to man.

But all is not lost. Divine mercy interposes. interposes. A precious promise breaks forth from the lips of everlasting love. The seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent. Mercy at once commences to lay her plan of wonderful interpositions. Prophets, priests, and kings wait on her train and do her bidding. In the fulness of time God's purposes ripen, and His Son appears. The lustre of heaven gathers about His advent. Angels sing a carol at His birth. He has brought what man has lost. "He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature." "He is the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of His person.' He is the outward and visible representative of the Invisible and Eternal Mind. He is come to reveal God. "No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." "He who hath seen me hath seen the Father." Come, let us gaze on the God-man. The perfect harmony and balance of faculty is again restored in the person of Christ. He is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens. In Him is no sin. The shocks of temptation dash against

Him in vain. He is the second Man, the Lord from heaven. In Him the spiritual is supreme. He is the root of a new race-the head of a new creation-the brother of a new fraternity-the king of a new nation. He has taken hold of a fallen world, and has determined to save it from sinking into hell.

It is through the incarnation, sacrifice, and intercession of Christ that the lost image of God is to be brought back again to man. "In Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." He has taken humanity into association with the Godhead. Christ is destined to gain complete ascendancy over the human race. His kingdom shall be a universal and everlasting kingdom.

It is in loving union with Christ, who is the image of the invisible God, that the lost image is again stamped on our nature.

Christianity is a putting off and a putting on. "Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created Him."

And again, "If so be that ye have heard Him, and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the Spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." The restoration of this image is the great aim and end of the eternal purposes of God in Christ. "For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that he might be the first-born among many brethren." And so sure as God has purposed it, so surely will His Spirit carry forward the eternal purposes

of His grace. The saints of God are conscious of His presence, and of the moulding influence of His love.

"But we all with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory as by the Spirit of the Lord."

This glorious work of restoring the image of God to the soul of fallen man will be carried to a triumphant consummation. Omnipotence is engaged in it. Infinite wisdom is engaged in it. All the resources of the Godhead are employed in this blessed and glorious work.

"The first man is of the earth, earthy the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly."

This is the great work in which the triune God-the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are engaged. In this work angels take a lively interest. For this dignified and noble employment ministers, Sunday school teachers, missionaries, tract distributors, evangelists, and all believers engaged in any way, are permitted to take their humble part. The work shall be done, for Omnipotence has decreed it. May the glorious purposes of divine grace inspire our hearts and enlist our energies. To catch but a feeble glimpse of God's great scheme of love thrills the heart with unutterable joy. Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is."

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THE long time ago of which I mean to tell was a wild night in March, during which, in a fisherman's but ashore, sat a young girl at her spinning wheel, and looked out at the dark clouds, and listened, trembling, to the wind and

sea.

The morning light dawned at last. One boat that should have been riding on the troubled waters was missing her father's boat! and a half mile from her father's cottage his body was washed up on the shore.

This happened fifty years ago, and fifty years is a long time in the life of a human being; fifty years is a long time to go on in such a course as the woman did of whom I am speaking. She watched the body of her father, as was the custom of her people, till he was laid in the grave. Then she lay down on her bed and slept, and by night got up and set a candle in her casement, as a beacon to the fishermen and a guide. She sat by the candle' all night, and trimmed it and spun; then when day dawned she went to bed and slept in the sunshine. So many hanks as she spun before, she spun still, and one over, to buy her nightly candle; and from that time to this, for fifty years, through youth, maturity, and old age, she has turned night into day, and in the snow-storms of winter, through driving mists, deceptive moonlight, and solemn darkness, that northern harbour has never once been without the light of her candle.

How many lives she has saved by this candle, or how many a meal she has won by it for the starving families of the boatmen, it is impossible to say; how many a dark night the fishermen, depending on it, went fearlessly forth, cannot now be told. There it stood, regular as a lighthouse, steady as constant care could make it. Always brighter when daylight waned, they had only to keep it constantly in view, and they were safe; there was but one thing that could intercept it, and that was the rock. However far they might have stretched out to sea, they had only to bear down for that lighted window, and they were sure of a straight and safe entrance into the harbour.

Fifty years of life and labour-fifty years of sleeping in the sunshine-fifty years of watching and self-denial, and

all to feed the flame and trim the wick of that one candle! But if we look upon the recorded lives of great men and just men and wise men, few of them can show fifty years of worthier, certainly not of more successful labour. Little, indeed, of the "midnight oil" consumed during the last half century so worthily deserved the trimming. Happy woman-and but for the dreaded rock her great charity might never have been called into exercise.

But what do the boatmen and the boatmen's wives think of this? Do they pay the woman? No, they are very poor; but poor or rich, they know better than that. Do they thank her? No. Perhaps they feel that thanks of theirs would be inadequate to express their obligations; or perhaps, long years have made the lighted casement so familiar that they look upon it as a matter of course. Sometimes the fishermen lay fish upon the threshold, and set a child to watch it for her until she wakes; sometimes their wives steal into her cottage, now she is getting old, and spin a hank or two for her while she sleeps; and they teach their children to pass her hut quietly, and not to sing and shout before her door, lest they should disturb her. That is all. Their thanks are not looked for, scarcely supposed to be due. Their grateful deeds are more than she expects, and as much as she desires.

How often in the far distance of my English home I have awoke in a wild winter night, and while the wind and storms were rising, have thought of that northern bay with the waves dashing against the rocks, and have pictured to myself the casement and the candle nursed by that aged, bending figure. How delighted to know that through her untiring charity the rock had long lost more than half its terrors, and to consider that, curse though it may be to all besides, it has most surely proved a blessing to her.

You, too, may perhaps think with advantage on the character of this woman, and contrast it with the mission of the rock. There are many degrees between them. Few, like the rock, stand up wholly to work ruin and destruction; few, like the woman, "let their light shine" so brightly for good.

APOLOGETIC LECTURES ON THE SAVING TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY. By C. E. Luthardt, Doctor and Professor of Theology. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 1868.

THESE lectures were delivered in Leipsic about two years ago, and have gone through two German editions, from the second of which they have been translated into English, and are now published by Messrs. Clark in a neat volume of three hundred and seventy pages. The subjects of the ten lectures are, the Nature of Christianity-Sin-Grace-the God-Manthe Work of Christ-the Conclusion of the Work of Redemption, the Trinitythe Church-the Holy Scriptures-the Church's Means of Grace - and the Last Things. To these lectures notes are appended, which fill another hundred pages. The volume is the same in size and price as a previous one by the author on the Fundamental Truths of Christianity. Not having seen that volume, we could judge of its character only from the testimony of other Reviewers, who often mislead those who

rely upon them. But now, having made personal acquaintance with Dr. Luthardt, we believe the highest encomiums passed on the work are fully deserved. The Saving Truths of Christianity are here set forth in what we think to be a Scriptural form, and they are discussed and illustrated and defended with a candour, a clearness, and a force which prove the author to be one of the wisest, soundest, and most devout of modern theologians. Both in the matter and in the method of presentation the volume is admirable, and we should be glad to show its great excellence by giving numerous quotations from it.

In speaking of the person of Christ, in whom we have the supreme manifestation of God's grace, Dr. Luthardt notices the fact that ever since the First Advent the question, Who is Jesus Christ? has been unceasingly agitated; and he observes that when Christianity would express in the ighest and most honourable terms what she knows of Christ, she calls Him the God-Man. But is He really

such? The Christ of history, it is declared, does not correspond with the Christ of doctrine. The church teaches another Christ than what He really was; that He was not the God-Man, and therefore must not be thus thought of. Let us now hear the statement of our author.

"The doctrine of the God-Man combines two sides into a unity-the human and the divine. We will consider both : and first the manner in which Scripture presents them to our notice. Nothing is more certain than that Jesus was man in the full sense of the word. It is a complete and perfect human life which the Gospels portray. Not externally only, but in His heart of hearts, did Jesus lead a human life. He experienced all the emotions by which we are moved. Sorrow and joy, love and anger, zeal and fear, moved His soul as they do ours. He was no celestial appearance hovering about the earth. He was a corporeal man who lived a human life on earth among men; who was angry with one, loved others, and called some His friends. The misconception of His countrymen pained Him; the enmity He encountered was a deep grief; the love and fidelity He met with were a comfort and refreshment to Him; to pour out His burdened heart in prayer to His Father, or to know in His hours of sorrow that brother-men were near Him, was a need felt by Him as it is by us. The world of sensations which depress or raise our spirits acted in their full variety on His also. And even the darkest and hardest thing in our life-the conflict with sin-did not leave Him untouched. He had to encounter temptations-temptations to abandon His work, to avoid His sufferings. These did not approach His outer life alone; they drew near to the depths of His soul. It was within that He had to defend Himself against their attacks, and to oppose them, that sin might not draw Him within its sphere. This is the point where the paths of His and our life diverge. For if anything is certain, it is this-that Jesus allowed sin no entrance into His inner life," &c., &c. -pp. 91, 92.

After expanding this truth as it is attested by the evangelists in their portrait of His life, the Doctor observes that the sinlessness of Christ being established, the other tenets of church doctrine concerning His person are but