: cordial love in heaven. God may look very stern to us, though his hand is bound up from striking and we will not then go to him as readily as if we had habitually loved him for being merciful without a bond. Reader, it is our aim to inspire you with a love for your Supreme Benefactor. We believe our doctrines singularly adapted to produce this effect, if you are faithful to make them more to you than abstract doctrines. Let them instil the practical principles, and the devout sentiments which are their legitimate product, when held, not as matters of faction, but of conscience and of the heart. So shall you live the life of the righteous, and then, consequently, die the death of the righteous; a death full of hope and peace. You may not pretend to fanatic raptures at the thought; for in fact you may not find life so gloomy, as less cheerful views than yours would make it seem, and therefore you may not be so anxious to leave it. But living a life made happy by unmixed gratitude for its numberless blessings, you will stand calmly waiting for the call of the Father, whom your religion has taught you to reverence, but not to dread, and serenely pass to his higher and better presence. Yea, though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you will fear no evil; for he is with you; his rod and his staff, they comfort you. You will find your religion a good religion to die by, if, yea because, it is a good religion to live by, and you will not give it up. This God, whom we have been taught to call "Father in heaven," and not Trinity, or Triune Jehovah, nor any such hard name never taught by him who came expressly to "reveal the Father""this God," in the language of the Psalmist, "is our God for ever and ever; He will be our guide even unto death." CHRIST THE WAY TO GOD. BY REV. CONVERSE FRANCIS, D. D. PRINTED FOR THE American Unitarian Association. BOSTON: JAMES MUNROE & co. 134 WASHINGTON STREET. AUGUST, 1842. Price 3 Cents. CHRIST THE WAY TO GOD. THERE are few passages in the New Testament more strikingly significant than these words of Paul to the Ephesians, "At that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world: but now in Christ Jesus ye, who sometime were far off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ." We learn the value of some things only by contrast. The evil is necessary to make the good felt as it should be. Have you ever understood the blessing of health so well, as when you have risen from the bed of sickness, and are out again, with vigorous step and keen senses, in the large air and sweet light of God's beautiful world? The first time in your life when you found relief from pain, was also the first time in your life when you thoroughly felt the meaning of pleasure. Without fatigue the sweetness of rest is unknown. Where there is no labor there is no recreation. Thus in the common experiences of life. So also we sometimes learn to estimate the privileges and the power of religion best by contrast. In this way Paul, in the above passage of his letter to the Church at Ephesus, in structs his brethren to value the blessings of their new faith. The difference between what they had been and what they were, they would find to be the measure of that good, which the Gospel of Christ had brought to them. They had not shared even the imperfect helps to be found in "the commonwealth of Israel." Blinded by the idolatry, which sticks fast in the outward and the sensual, they had been strangers to the soul's true life and blessed hope, as these are inspired by faith in God. But now they, who were once so far from heavenly things, were brought into close union with them by the ministry of divine wisdom in Christ, whose blood on the cross had sealed his word of salvation. From such a contrast, so full of striking significance, the Ephesian Christians might learn what gratitude they owed for the holy faith under which they then lived. Now we are to consider that here, in the case of the Ephesians of old, we may find the type or illustration of a general spiritual fact in the human condition. This fact was not peculiar to those whom Paul addressed. It reappears continually wherever man is found, as indeed does every fact which has its conditions in the soul. If we are brought to understand what Christ and Christianity are, we, as well as they of old, must feel the force of the contrast I have spoken of. The recorded history of man's spirit every where, in its passage from darkness to light, from struggle to calmness, from barrenness or scoffing to the life of faith and improvement, is little else than a representation of this contrast. To this religious experiences, rightly understood, bear an affecting testimony. Even when these experiences, as may frequently be the case, are largely mingled with the outbreaks of fanaticism, still there is a germ of vital truth, a central reality, |