troubled, and the hills be carried into the midst of the sea; though our house be not so with God, and the fig-tree do not blossom, and our heart and our flesh fail; shall any or all of these things separate us from life and the blessing? "Nav, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded,"-I am persuaded that that song of persuasion is the heritage of all who are made the righteousness of God.

VI. But besides affirming that these two counter-imputations carry inevitable and complete effects with them, it remains to affirm also that the second of the imputations is itself an inevitable effect of the first: "God hath made him that knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." This is the design of Christ's being made sin, namely, that we might be made the righteousness of God. The similar correlative design of Christ's "being made a curse," is brought out in terms exactly analogous: "Made a curse for us, that the blessing of Abraham might come upon us, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Gal. iii. 13, 14). And the same thing is set forth in the more general formula: "Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich" (2 Cor. viii. 9). This, indeed, to use the language of the geometrician, is just the general theorem, embracing numerous special cases, of which the doctrine of the counter-imputations is perhaps the most important. For if, instead of the general term “riches,” we read" righteousness," and if, instead of the general idea of "poverty," we take the special idea of "sin," then the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ stands in this, That he who was righteous was, for our sakes, made sin, that we, through his being made sin, might be made the righteousness of God. And again: if for " riches," we read the "blessing," and for "poverty," the "curse," the general theorem presents the case in Gal. iii. 13, namely, That the Blessed One is made a curse, that we might receive the blessing. And so, if by "riches" is meant "life," and by "poverty" is meant " death," then, We know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was the Living One, the True God, and Eternal Life, yet for our sakes, and in our room, he died, that we, through his death, might have life,and might have it more abundantly. Be it in the general case, or in any special aspect of it, the design is in this same manner uniformly set forth, and set forth as that which is surely and infallibly accomplished. Being God's design it is successful,not the design only, but the result. For the work of the Lord is perfect, not breaking down in the middle, but reaching the

Repentance and Faith saved from Antagonism. 381

goal, that goal, or reλos, or end spoken of, when it is said, Christ is the reλos of the law to every one that believeth (Rom. x. 4).

For, as inevitably as when Christ is made sin he is made a curse, and wrath and death assail him; and as inevitably as when we are made the righteousness of God, life and the blessing come upon us; so surely, intermediately between these two inevitables, there is another, namely, that they for whom Christ is made sin are infallibly made the righteousness of God. He denies the counter-imputations who denies that the second follows necessarily from the first. He misconceives the whole arrangement. For, in reality, the counter-imputations are not so much two transactions as one. The exchange of places is one indivisible evolution. It is not effected in the movement of one of the parties, but in their mutual transposition. It is a reciprocating movement; and when the reciprocation fails, the movement ceases utterly.

Hence it follows, that in giving our consent to be made the righteousness of God, we give our consent to the Son of God being made sin. It is impossible to break in upon this transaction in the middle of it. We must acquiesce in it as it is-one great and perfect whole. We must begin with it at the beginning. For herein is that saying true, "He that entereth not in by the door, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber." Now, the cross is the door-the gate of righteousness. For no other Christ is made of God unto us righteousness, than Christ made sin for us.

And hence the irrefragable guarantee for the penitence of him that is made the righteousness of God. Blessed is he to whom the Lord imputeth no iniquity, but imputeth righteousness without works. But when I kept silence, my bones waxed old. Then I said, I will confess my transgressions. I will lay my sin on Jesus. I will contemplate him made sin and by confession of sin, I will acquiesce in his being made sin, and accept him as made sin for me. "And thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin" (Ps. xxxii).-On any other scheme, repentance and faith contradict each other.

Hence, also, the vital and organic harmony between the justification of him who is made the righteousness of God, and his sanctification in all manner of holiness. For whether sanctification be regarded as the believer's duty or God's gift, it is placed on a footing of inviolable safety by these counterimputations of sin and righteousness. To him for whom Christ has been made sin, and who is therefore made the righteousness of God, the appeal surely must come home with resistless force of obligation when it frames itself in terms like these. How uprightly, how gracefully, how righteously should "the

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Righteousness of God" conduct itself, in all holiness and righteousness, before him all the days of our lives! And when overwhelmed by a sense of inability to answer this appeal as its intrinsic force demands and prompts, how blessed to bear in mind that holiness is God's gift as well as our duty; and that when we stand before him as ourselves "the Righteousness of God" in Christ, God's own interest in God's own Righteousness acting righteously, may be heard imparting at once a guarantee of faithfulness and a thrill of power to the voice of majesty and grace that conveys the assurance: "I am the Lord thy God that doth sanctify thee."

μ.

The Home Life of Sir David Brewster. 383

IX.-GENERAL LITERATURE.

The Home Life of Sir David Brewster, D.C.L., LL.D,, M.D., Principal of the University of Edinburgh, and Corresponding Member of the Institute of France. By his Daughter, Mrs GORDON, of Parkhill. Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas.

The perusal of this volume has been to us a source of unfeigned delight. Mrs Gordon bas admirably executed her sacred task, as was indeed to be expected by every body acquainted with her writings and great literary abilities. She has very successfuly escaped the Scylla and Charybdis which usually threaten so seriously in the case of such a task as this when undertaken by one so intimately related to the subject of the memoir. We shall say no more, than that we are not reminded of her relation to Sir David Brewster otherwise than we find it uniformly a pleasure to be. The gracefulness of the work in this respect is complete.

As the title indicates, this work is confined to the exhibiting of Sir David Brewster's "Home Life." His scientific life and labours are left to be traced, no doubt, by some distinguished successor in the walks of science. What arrangement, if any yet, has been made in this regard, we have not been informed. An arrangement in every respect satisfactory, it will be extremely difficult to light upon. Probably it will be a joint undertaking, and indeed to do full justice to it, we suppose it must be so. Since, in the meeting of the Institute of France, the whisper went round, "Is that boy the great Brewster?" almost to the day of his death, at the age of eighty-six, Sir David's days were spent in one ceaseless round of contributions to science in some of its most profound departments; and we doubt if there be anything on record to parallel that wonderful and so prolonged series of discoveries which came forth so regularly that, as is said of miracles, that they would cease to be miracles if they became common,-these discoveries almost ceased to awaken wonder. It is almost startling to find, in the early pages of this volume, a narrative of Sir David's interview with La Place; and thus to find the brilliant evening of the author of the Mecanique Celeste blending into the early morn of one whose career has carried forward the discoveries of science beyond all that La Place could have anticipated. Our country has been privileged, in God's providence, to possess in Sir David Brewster a Nestor among the kings and in the commonwealth of science, unspeakably more noble than the aged hero whom, under that venerable name, Homer sang. Long may his memory be warmly cherished; his footsteps, alike in science and piety, carefully trod; his brilliant discoveries brilliantly followed up; and his name a watchword for all that is counted genuine and grand among the higher academics of our land!

It would be out of place to give extracts from a volume which our readers will feel intensely desirous to read in its completeness for

themselves. They will find it eminently readable and amazingly interesting. Moreover, on scientific subjects they will also find it most instructive. For even the "Home Life" of Sir David could not possibly be written without shewing us the man of science at home. In science, it may be said, he lived and moved and enjoyed his being; and we are made to overhear him in his study, and with his microscope, exclaiming in reverence and delight, "Good God! how wonderful are thy works!" It is eminently gratifying to find that like Newton, Chalmers, Herschel, Faraday, and, blessed be God, many more great men of science,-he counted his science a thing of darkening smoke and blindness, if he could not see the bright shining of Infinite Intellect in it and behind it. And we cannot too gratefully glorify the grace of God in him, when we find him on his peaceful bed of death, listening with delight to the perfecting of God's praise in the lips of his little daughter comforting the honoured old man's faith by whispering: "Just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me." Yes we have redemption in his blood who in all things hath the pre-eminence, who is the First of Authors, the Prince of Geometricians, the Head of all humble men of Science, and who, we doubt not, will, in the lands of the eternal redemption, preside over Assemblies of discoverers, where science shall not want her votaries "nor God want praise."

Blindpits.

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M.

Three Vols. Edmonston & Douglas, Edinburgh.

When wearied with a severe spell of study or composition, we betake ourselves occasionally, we confess, to a work of fiction, in order to relax and to recover mental tone. In this way we have come across "Blindpits," and we have been greatly pleased with it. Poor Miss Boston! how we have liked the strange, bizarre old lady. "Miss Boston was a single lady, and ugly; or, to put it more euphemistically, plain-looking. She had a very long razor-like face, with a long snub nose lying down the middle of it; her hair was sandy in colour, her eyes light grey, her chin sharp and projecting, her mouth small and round, it might have been pretty in another situation, but inserted like an eyelit-hole below the big, rugged nose, it looked simply ridiculous. Add to this a sallow complexion, in which the ravages of small-pox were distinctly visible, and you will comprehend that Miss Boston could not be described as eye-sweet. She was tall, slight, and elegantly made in person, so that strangers walking behind her turned round in passing to look in her face: it was enough, no one looked twice, and Miss Boston knew it." It is wonderful how fine a character our author developes out of this. Then Barbara,-Who would not praise her in the gates? "Barbara never forgot any of those little attentions, the remembering of which is so much more than the things themselves, and gives a kind of fictitious bloom even to life on the wane. She excelled in diffusing a cheering comfort round her; there were no loose ends in her housekeeping, and she had taught common things to a series of girls with such marked success, that she deserved a testimonial as a good servant of the state; and, farther, she kept sight of them in after life, and was always ready with help and advice, which she did not