historical character of the contents and reference of these Seven Epistles; and while he controverts the position of those expositors (as Mede and Vitringa), who, admitting a literal sense, build upon it a prophetical, he maintains not only that these Epistles were written for the edification of the Universal Church, but that, more than this,— "These Seven Churches of Asia are not an accidental aggregation which might just as conveniently have been eight, six, or any other number; that, on the contrary, there is a fitness in this number, and that these seven do in some sort represent the Universal Church; that we have a right to contemplate the seven as offering to us the great and leading aspects, moral and spiritual, which Churches gathered in the name of Christ out of the world will assume." (p. 211.) We think that there may be good grounds for this opinion. It seems very probable that these Seven Churches in particular are addressed, not merely for their own sake, and because there was something in their condition needing correction and reproof (indeed in two of them, Smyrna and Philadelphia, the Lord finds, or at least notices, only matter for praise), but because they are representative, typical churches, foreshadowing the grand characteristics of church life in all ages. The mystical significance of the number seven throughout this book (see pp. 53-59, where Dr. Trench has some good remarks on the point), and the preference of some of these churches to others holding apparently more prominent stations, lead to this conclusion. This, perhaps, is "The reason why Philadelphia is included, and Miletus passed by; Thyatira, outwardly so insignificant, chosen, when one might have expected Magnesia or Tralles. Then, what notable contrasts have we here! A church face to face with danger and death (Smyrna), and a church at ease, settling down upon its lees (Sardis); a church with abundant means and loud profession, yet doing little or nothing for the furtherance of the truth (Laodicea); and a church with little strength and little power, yet accomplishing a mighty work for Christ (Philadelphia); a church intolerant of doctrinal error, yet too much lacking that love towards its Lord for which nothing else is a substitute (Ephesus); and over against this a church, not careful nor zealous, as it ought to be, for doctrinal purity, but diligent in the work and ministry of love (Thyatira). Or, to review these same churches from another point of view- -a church in conflict with heathen libertinism, the sinful freedom of the flesh (Ephesus), and a church or churches in conflict with Jewish superstition, the sinful bondage of the spirit (Pergamum, Philadelphia); or, for the indolence of man a more perilous case than either, churches with no active forms of opposition to the truth in the midst of them, to brace their energies, and to cause them, in the act of defending the imperilled truth, to know it better, and to love it more (Sardis, Laodicea). That these churches are more or less representative churches, and were selected because they are so; that they form a complex within and among themselves, mutually fulfilling and completing one another; that the great Head of the Church contemplates them, for the time being, as symbolic of His universal church; implying as much in that mystic seven, and giving many other indications of the same ;-this also will be accepted, if not by all, yet by many." (pp. 211, 212.) In fact, we cannot read these Epistles attentively, with a competent knowledge of the tendencies and conflicts, the temptations and perils of our own age, without seeing them typified and foreshadowed in the condition of the seven Asian churches; nor will such discernment justly lie under the imputation of bringing to them what we bring out of them. The dangers which these churches encountered, and to which some of them succumbed, were outward persecution, Jewish legalism, Gnostic licentiousness, and worldly prosperity. It would be premature to affirm that the age of outward persecution has altogether passed away. Though the shouts of emancipated Italy are ringing in our ears, we have not forgotten the Madiai. Members of the Evangelical Alliance will have yet fresh in their recollection the sufferings of evangelical Christians in Germany and Sweden. The history of missionary labour in Madagascar, and of the persecutions endured by the native converts, recals the martyr-church of the first three centuries. How much social persecution, even in our own land, may attend the steadfast walk of faith, and assertion of religious principle and conviction, will only be made known when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed. Is there nothing in spirit and principle akin with the conflict waged by the churches at Smyrna and Philadelphia against Jewish legalism, against those "which say they are Jews and are not," "but do lie;" in the assertion of evangelical freedom, of "the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free," and of deliverance from the bondage of the law through the grace of Christ; against those Romanizers who would impose upon us a yoke which neither we nor our fathers could bear? And while we do not assert nor insinuate that the leaders of the rationalizing movement resemble personally the Gnostic heretics against whom the churches of Ephesus, Pergamos, and Thyatira were summoned to contend, yet fidelity compels us to declare that the false freedom which is striving to break down the authority of God's word is most surely opening wide the gates which will let in licentiousness like a flood. Nor can we overlook the solemn warning and lesson which the church at Ephesus reads to evangelical Christians. A church unweariedly active and patient in works of usefulness, intolerant of evil-doers, sound in the faith, and testing by the word of God the teachers of error, is yet sharply rebuked for her spiritual declension. And who that knows anything of his own heart, and of the history of congregations in our own church, and outside its pale, but will sorrowfully acknowledge that there may be orthodoxy, ministerial fidelity, and zeal, with very little love to Christ himself? We named worldly prosperity as one of the dangers of the church of Christ. On this subject let us hear Dr. Trench : "It is very well worthy of notice, that the two churches which are spiritually in the most sunken condition of all,-that, namely, of Sardis, and this of Laodicea,—are also the two in which alone there is no mention made, either of adversaries from without, or of hinderers to the truth from within. Of the absence of heathen adversaries there has been occasion to speak already; but more noticeable still is the fact, that there neither appear here nor there Nicolaitans, or Balaamites, or Jezebelites, or those who say they are Jews and are not; seeking to seduce Christ's servants, and making it needful for them earnestly to contend for the truth, if they would not be robbed of it altogether. In the coldness and deadness of these churches, which had no truth to secure or to defend from gainsayers, we may see a pregnant hint of all which the church owes to the heresies and heretics that, one after another, have assailed her. Owing them no thanks for what she has gained by them, her gains themselves have been immense; and there are remarkable acknowledgments to this effect made by more than one of the early fathers. Contending against these, she has learned, not merely to define more accurately, but to grasp more firmly, and to prize more dearly, that truth of which they would fain have deprived her. What would the church of the second century have been if it had never learned its strength, and the treasures of wisdom and knowledge which it had in Christ Jesus, in the course of that tremendous conflict with the Gnostics which it then sustained ? Would the church itself have ever been the true Gnostic, except for these false ones? Again, what an education for it were the fast-succeeding conflicts of the two next centuries; and not in intellectual education only, but, as iron sharpeneth iron,' so the zeal of the adversaries of the truth served often to excite the zeal and love, which might else have abated, of its friends. Assuredly it was not good for the Sardian and Laodicean churches to be without this necessity of earnestly contending for the truth. Perhaps they gloried in their freedom from conflicts which were agitating and troubling the other churches around them. But we may be bold to say, that in a world of imperfections like our's, it argued no healthy spiritual life, that there should have been none there to call the truth into question and debate. Misgrowths are, at all events, growths; and if there is a spiritual condition which is above errors, so also there is one which is beneath them, when there is not interest enough in theology, not care enough to know anything certain about God or about man's relation to God, even to generate a heresy. As we read the history of the church, we may perhaps find some consolation in thoughts like these. Assuredly, in reading many a page in that history, we need the strongest consolations which we can anywhere find." (pp. 196, 197.) Assuredly, as we turn to days when controversies which touch the very existence of our faith are raging around us, and the hands from which we looked only for aid are laid upon that divine and holy thing which we love, we need some such consolation as this. Let this fact, that the Sardian and Laodicean churches were not the stronger or the more spiritual from being exempt from the heretical assaults which disturbed the peace of their sister churches, be our comfort. It is not surprising that the ministers of God's word, who are spending all their strength and energy in conflict with worldliness and sin, and who ask for no better thing than to give their undivided attention to the work that demands it all, and that fills their whole hearts, should feel inexpressibly perplexed and saddened to be called off by the controversies of the hour. It is not surprising that they should lament this as a most inopportune and barren distraction. But it is not altogether thus. If it be, as Dr. Trench remarks, and as all ecclesiastical history proves that it is, a fact that the controversies through which the church has passed in bygone ages have always issued in bringing her into a clearer consciousness and firmer grasp of the truth under her living Guide and Teacher, so will it be now. The "neology of the cloister" may well afflict men who are engaged in the work of the parish and the pulpit; but it will end only in the surer establishment of the truth. The assaults of to-day upon the atonement, justification by faith, the authority and the inspiration of the Scriptures, will not rob us of our cherished beliefs; and in dying away they will leave us richer, not poorer, than before. In the interpretation of particular words and passages, Dr. Trench has exhibited his usual learning, and sober, discriminating judgment; and in a book in which there are several moot points, has preserved his habitual tone of calmness. and candour. Presbyterians and Congregationalists will not like Dr. Trench's view of "the angel" of each several church,that he is the bishop, in the episcopalian sense of the termthe overseer of the pastors as well as of the people; but even they will find no reason to complain of the tone in which this opinion is maintained. If Dr. Trench be right, the existence of the episcopate in the later apostolic times, as the twelve were gradually withdrawn from their oversight of the churches, and that as a divinely recognised institution, is proved. For ourselves, this appears the most natural, and as harmonizing best with the universal prevalence of episcopacy in the early church. Something very like it is admitted by Neander and the late Dr. Pye Smith,-a plurality of elders in each congregation, with a perpetual president; an arrangement sanctioned by St. John. Even on this assumption, the principle of episcopacy is recognised in the Scriptures to the satisfaction of all lovers of order who know anything of the working of the congregational theory. Whether Polycarp was the angel of the church in Smyrna at the time when this Epistle was addressed to it, is less easy of proof, and not so important, though Dr. Trench has assigned some reasons for its probability, or at least possibility. (pp. 90 -92.) Dr. Trench's explanation of "the white stone" (Rev. ii. 17) is the best that we have ever seen. His view is briefly this. The “white stone" is a precious stone, shining white, namely, a diamond. Now, the mysterious Urim and Thummim was in all probability a diamond inscribed with the holy Tetragrammaton, the ineffable name of God, contained in the folded breast-plate of judgment, the wearer, the high priest, alone being acquainted with the inscription. The symbolical meaning is apparent. The white stone inscribed with the new name, known to none but those to whom the Great High Priest of our profession shall give it, is "some revelation of the glory of God, only in that higher state capable of being communicated by Him to His people, and which they only can understand who have actually received." (p. 126.) For the arguments by which this view is supported we refer to the work itself. Its advantages are, that the symbolism is Hebrew, not ethnic, in harmony with the symbolism of the whole of the Apocalypse; that it corresponds to the "hidden manna" in the preceding clause, equally referring to the wilderness period of the history of God's people; and that it gives a consistent meaning, which most explanations of the "white stone" do not. If there be any objection to this view, it is that yoos is not the Septuagint or New Testament word for a precious stone; and that, in particular, Aíos is the general word for the precious stones in the breastplate of judgment in Exod. xxviii. 17. (Sept.) But the objection is not insuperable, seeing that, as Dr. Trench remarks, noos is sometimes used, in later Greek, for a precious stone, as pos daкTuλiký, the gem in a seal-ring. Our thanks are due to Dr. Trench for this book. It was written, as he tells us in the preface, in much sorrow, under the pressure of affliction. We can wish him no better consolation or strength than that which may be drawn from these Epistles, and from Him whose words they are, and of whom they testify. THE DEPRIVED CLERGY AND THE EJECTED THE Congregational Union has opened a crusade. This year it celebrates the bi-centenary of the ejection of the two thousand ministers from the Church of England in 1662; and it has a right to do so, for they were men worthy to be had in everlasting honour. They were sufferers, most of them innocent |