such a proposition there can be no dispute, for every believer in the Bible must at once accede to it. But the question is, whether these occasional and extraordinary manifestations were erected into a systematic doctrine for the Church, and handed down as a part of her creed with the same solemn and abiding authority, as the acknowledgment of the Trinity, the incarnation, and the atonement, and the sacraments, and the ministry, and in a word, the principles of regular and constant belief and practice; so that Christians are bound always to expect miracles from the bones and handkerchiefs of the saints, and are authorized to fulminate anathemas against those who think such wonders were only intended to be rare and occasional.

The distinction, brethren, is all-important, and therefore I am anxious to make myself perfectly understood. Permit me, therefore, to enlarge upon the idea, by a brief sketch of the divine dispensations, with relation to the point before us.

In the infinite wisdom and goodness of God, the glorious gospel of his salvation, through our Lord Jesus Christ, was provided for our fallen world; and the knowledge of his truth was given at various periods of the history of man, marking what may be called epochs, or dispensations; to each of which a system was attached, forming successive developments of the same great plan, and suited to the various stages of the mighty work, which the Almighty, by his own right hand and holy arm, stood pledged to perform.

Of these dispensations, the patriarchal was the first, lasting from the fall of Adam until the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt. The Mosaic dispensation was the second, lasting from the giving of the law and the erection of the tabernacle in the wilderness, until the organization of the Church of Christ on the day of Pentecost. The Christian, or Gospel dispensation, so called by way of eminence, was the third and the last, which is to continue until the second coming of our

Lord, and is now supposed, by many, to be near its termination. In each of these dispensations, there was the same fundamental truth, and the same gracious purpose. The difference lay in the various degrees of their development. And perhaps nothing can so beautifully express their unity and their distinctness, as the language of our blessed Saviour, where he compares them to the blade, the ear, and the full corn in the ear, carrying on the analogy to the time of his second advent, by saying: "afterwards he putteth in the sickle, for the harvest is come."

SYSTEM.

Now, each of these dispensations had its wonders, and its The wonders were granted in order to demonstrate that the system was of divine obligation, worthy of all faith and confidence; but the system was the regular instruction in truth, both theoretical and practical, by which mankind were to be brought out of darkness into light-out of the bondage of Satan, into a blessed subjection to their heavenly King. The system of the patriarchal stage was very simple. The revelation was handed down by oral communication from father to son: the eldest of the family was charged with the office of priest and judge: the only preparation for religious rites was an altar, and the only ordinances were sacrifice and prayer, to which, in the time of Abraham, was added circumcision. But the wonderful works of God in that first stage of the world's history, were doubtless abundant; although the brief outline of Scripture mentions but a few. The judgment of Cain, the translation of Enoch, the building of the ark, and the miraculous obedience of the wild beasts enclosed in it, the dreadful deluge, the destruction of Babel, the confusion of tongues, the conflagration of Sodom and Gomorrha, with other miraculous events, formed no part of the SYSTEM which we call patriarchal, but were occasional exhibitions of the tremendous power of God, granted in order to awaken

men from their awful lethargy, and lead them to seek the truth, which could alone make them wise unto salvation.

The same distinction is plainly shown, in the second, or the Mosaic dispensation. The wonders that attended its first establishment were stupendous, for not only Egypt and the surrounding nations, but Israel also was sunk in idolatry, and needed the manifestation of all these wonders, to convince them, that the God of Israel was the only living and true God, whose was the kingdom, the power, and the glory. The system as now instituted, had the immense superiority of a written record of the divine Word, instead of the former uncertain oral tradition; together with a special tribe and family for the priesthood, and a magnificent tabernacle for the worship of God, and a multitude of ceremonial rites, full of a spiritual meaning, and calculated to prepare the Jewish people, and through them, the world, for the still distant day of the promised Messiah. After the system was perfectly established, the wonders ceased; although we find them partially and rarely recurring, the most remarkable period of miracles being allotted to the ten tribes, during the ministry of Elijah and Elisha. These ten tribes, you remember, had separated from Judah and Benjamin. They thus deprived themselves of the advantages which belonged to the regular system, and fell into awful idolatry; and we may reverently imagine that this may have been in part the reason, why they had so much more of the extraordinary manifestations of divine power, because, being destitute of the authorized priesthood and tabernacle, their deplorable condition needed them so greatly.

Precisely on the same principle, the Christian dispensation was established in the midst of wonders, commanding, as before, the assent and obedience of mankind to the system of the Church. And now the ordinances of circumcision and sacrifice were changed into baptism and the holy eucharist, the

restriction of the priesthood was removed, and the office was put under a spiritual law suited to all families and all nations; to the written revelations of the Old Testament, were added the inspired histories, epistles and prophecies of the New; Jew and Gentile found the partition wall broken down from between them; and from the elementary rudiments of the Mosaic dispensation, was produced the finished and complete system of the Gospel.

And here, by the way, brethren, from the Saviour's comparison of the various developments of his Church, to the growth of the wheat, we may learn the character and value of religious forms and ordinances. It is true, indeed, that after our world has accomplished its present course, these forms and ordinances will give place to a still more spiritual system. It is equally true, that even here, if taken by themselves, they are of no more importance than the chaff which is separated from the grain in the threshing-floor. But while the Church is still on earth, still growing and ripening for the heavenly harvest, she can no more attain her proper maturity without forms and ordinances, than the grain in the ear can grow without its husks. They may be counted as chaff by and by, but in our present state they are an indispensable part of the divine system.

But this is a digression, for which I should crave your pardon. Let us recur to the main argument, in which I designed to explain clearly the difference, between the SYSTEMS which the Lord had mercifully granted to mankind, and the wonders which were performed in the establishment of those systems. For nothing is more necessary to a clear idea of the Roman Catholic error, in this and many other points, than a just apprehension of the fundamental distinction, which I have been endeavouring to explain. And you will readily see its importance, when we come to apply it to the cases recorded in the sacred history.

You remember, for instance, the marvellous occurrence which took place during the passage of the Israelites through the wilderness, when a brazen serpent was made by the divine command, and put upon a pole, and every one that looked on it was healed of the bite of the fiery flying serpents. Now we find that this very image was carefully preserved until the days of the good king Hezekiah, who broke it to pieces, because the children of Israel burnt incense to it. And he called its name Nehushtan, (4 Kings xviii. 4) which signifies, a piece of brass. Why did the pious monarch condemn the conduct of the people, and destroy the image? Because its history belonged, not to the system of religious truth, but only to the wonderful events by which that system was established. zekiah drew the distinction well and wisely. The works of God were to be reverenced as He would have them reverenced, and not in some other way of man's devising. And the system of God's truth is to be preserved as he has delivered it, and not to be either enlarged or diminished, to humour human indifference, or human superstition. And therefore when the people took the brazen serpent, which belonged to the miraculous establishment of the Mosaic dispensation, into the forms of worship which belonged to the system itself, they sinned grievously, and the king did most rightly in taking the temptation away.

He

The same principle, brethren, will apply to the case which Dr. Wiseman has brought forward, as a justification for the relic-worship of the Church of Rome. "Eliseus," (or, as we usually call him, Elisha,) "died, and they buried him, and the rovers from Moab came into the land the same year. And some that were burying a man, saw the rovers, and cast the body into the sepulchre of Eliseus, and when it had touched the bones of Eliseus, the man came to life, and stood on his feet." (4 Kings xiii. 20, 21.) The uses of this miracle we are not told. How far it instructed Israel and even Moab,