nians, manly Romans, and swart Egyptians. So with our love and longing for pastoral life. War cannot quench it, plague destroy it, walls build it up, civilization out grow it, or Time rob it of a title of its pristine freshness. We meet with it on all sides. Homer sings of it, Theocritus transports us to it, Virgil reproduces it, even cockney Horace, must needs, like Falstaff, babble a bit of green | fields. Our old ballads preserve it fresh for us, as sprigs of lavender in homeliest of clothes-presses. Gentle Spenser hymns it; sickly Pope cannot escape the enthusiasm; even town-immured Phillips struggles in the smoke and brushes his wings by green hedgerows. The more corrupt society the stronger its influences on the pure-minded. We are perpetually dreaming of it. A smell of new-mown hay, and we are no longer masters of ourselves, a bleat of lambs in the street, and we are ankle deep in dewy grass. Art delights us with its pencilings, science gives direction, zest, and marvels to it, Nature herself wooes and wins by a thousand sweet enticements; and above all, it breathes upon us in purest fragrance in tenderest pictures from the Holy Word. In nature we find our Eden again, our desired Arcadia 'For Nature never did betray The heart that loved her.' All the feverish longing that man's heart has felt these thousands of years for his lost inheritance, comes back afresh and clusters round this pastoral thought. Again will we fleet the time carelessly as in the golden world,' sadness smoothed from our brows, and sunshine settling like glory upon our eyes. Yes; He knoweth our frame, He remembereth all our desires. He will sanctify all in us that is noble and dignified. And here Christ steps in, softly, not breaking our vision, whispering, 'I will be thy shepherd.' Straightway the Eden behind, is before, and we are in our happy earth-heaven, and the Past is an eternal Now. What a Christ our Shepherd. train of bright and peaceful images cincture us as we think of the Godman in this aspect. What a crowd of joyous thoughts patter through our brain with simple childish feet. How this begrimed city life of ours dwarfs, dwindles, and dies away from us, like a serpent's skin. What a rending is there of the Gordian knots of creeds and customs, an overturning of money-tables and all that is unjust and unchristian. How free is the sceptre of this Shepherdking. The world is our pasture ground. Holy Ganges, glorious Danube, rushing Amazon, mighty Missouri are our watering grounds. Clouds weep for us, winds blow, waters flow. All things are obedient to Him and work together for our good. The very stars and planets sweep in their mystic dance above us to reflect the harmony in which we move beneath His guidance. Yea, even in all this plenty, there is yet manna from heaven, so that we live not by bread alone. But it is scarcely the greatness or the glory that charms us most in all this title suggests. We see in it Christ's work begun and completed; we sorrow in the beginning and exult in the ending. For wild waywardness and fierce unrest is exchanged quiet, even, liquid peace, sunshine unclouded, calmness unbroken. He came to seek and save the lost sheep, endured perils and dangers for us, clomb the high mountains our sins had piled up as barriers between Him and us, trod the barren and prickly wilderness, and delivered us from the cloudy and dark day that scattered us abroad. Nor will He rest until we be found. There is no chiding, smiting, nor recrimination; He bringeth us to the fold upon His shoulders rejoicing. High heaven, in pure love to Him and us, breaks into higher raptures and louder hosannas. Our past is brightened and redeemed, The Shepherdhood of Christ. and our future is secured. Hence- tenderly and well, and will lay down forth there shall be no want for His life for them. There shall be us. He who fed five thousand no divisions amongst them. All the with a few loaves and fishes will sheep of other folds shall come into never suffer us to want so long as ours. The Greeks who by the seawe follow Him and trust Him. Green shore saw the darkness of the pastures and mossy invite our weary crucifixion, and said, Surely the frames by their coolness and beauty. God Pan is dead,' shall find him He will lead us beside the still alive and more beneficent in Christ. waters. No whirlwinds shall The believer in the Sybilline oracles frighten us, no Niagaras boom upon shall come from seven-hilled Rome our ears. All shall be clear and and yellow Tiber, for to Him it shall placid as Leman with her sweet truly be redeunt Saturnia regna. The sister's voice. Still as an Indian rude worshippers of Thor and Woden, prairie, when, as travellers tell us, the painted Briton, the Persians, there is no sound of bird, or beast, Puritans of the old world, and the or wind, or man to break the still- warm-hearted children of the South ness. How sweet for the tempest--all shall come. There shall be tossed, the heavy-hearted. We may one fold, and one shepherd. Fair not hear God's voice, saying, 'It is time! Thrice happy king! bright I; be not afraid,' in the rush and golden age! fury of the storm, but we can feel Him when the storm is gone and His bow is set in the cloud. Silence is God's dwelling place. When grief breaks over us, or Death visits us, and we are sorrowful, if we will but be hushed and humble we may see and feel God then in the still waters of the soul. Only when the sea is smooth as glass does there float upon her breast the starry image of heaven. He will lead gently those who are in travail and sore tribulation, not like our worldly friends, who too often add stripes to our misfortunes. And the young lambs, the pure, innocent treaders out of the sweet wild thyme, He will carry in His arms, warm from rude winds and hungry wolves, safe from thorns, devious wiles, and alluring retreats. There shall be no absorption of self, no loss of personality. The sorrowing mourner too often doubts whether his lost one will not be lost for ever, nameless, and unknown. But not so. He calleth his sheep by name. He has a tender solicitude in them all; they know Him and gather round Him. There is loving mutual trust. For this Good Shepherd is no hireling. Not because He hath His hire careth He for the sheep. He loveth them Christ our Shepherd. How it consoled and gladdened the early Christians when fierce persecution scattered them like a flock, they have left us precious memories and testimonies on their rings and seals. And how, when hunted and driven by cruel masters to the catacombs, by faith they could murmur In pace as they thought of His guardianship, Roma Sotteranea-the underground Rome of the Dead, has revealed in hundreds of paintings and basreliefs of the Good Shepherd with his rejoicing burden,-upon roofs beneath which the faithful were wont to worship and on the tombs in which they rested in His arms. How blessed an image to the Waldenses, driven with their barbes, or pastors at their heads to wander from their homes and churches into strange lands, climb dangerous rocks, and even take up arms to fight for their happy valleys. To our own Covenanters, hunted, butchered, betrayed, to those in all time who have suffered for the truth, to the martyr at the stake, the victim at the block, the unhappy in the prison; to the missionary in the hot glare of an Indian or African sun, to the poor negro in his servitude and sweltering rice-swamps, to you, to me, to all men. Christ our Shepherd. Shall we then look for other guardianship, trust to other friends, desire other companionship? I fear we too often fly to barren earthly wastes where there are naught but prickly cactuses, to thickly-trodden highways, where there is thrown up mire and dirt, to broken cisterns and dried up wells, when we might lie down in green pastures and be led by still waters. ARMINIUS: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. CHAPTER I.—HIS REPUTATION, AND THE TIMES IN WHICH HE WAS BORN. The bitter intolerance of the age immediately succeeding the Reformation is still remembered, though many of the controversies which inspired it are forgotten. The scho AMONG the passions by which the opinions and actions of mankind are swayed, religious hatred holds a marked pre-eminence. It has a character at once singular and unique. There are a bitterness and a per-lastic jargon about the divine decrees versity about it that are unexampled; is no longer popular, supralapsarian a strength and a weakness peculiarly and sublapsarian schemes of preits own. The very worst of men destination are not our bones of are moved by it, for it always allies theological strife, but traces of the itself with more or less of igno- old fierce spirit are discoverable. rance and prejudice; the very best Cropping up in some form or other of men may not be free from it, for amid the developments of modern it sometimes assumes the form of religious thought are the yet unhigh conscientiousness and ardent solved problems of fate and freewill, zeal for truth. In tenacity of life of the sovereignty of God and the it is almost without a parallel among liberty of man, of destiny and rethe traditional hatreds of the world. sponsibility, of law and grace; and International jealousies linger when side by side with them reappears the rivalries which instigated them something of the old antagonism. are swept away, political obloquy But the odium theologicum does not survives the generation which gave confine itself exclusively to chamit birth, the severity of churlish pions in the arena of controversy. criticism may extend beyond the Where the vexed questions of theyouth of the bard by whose unfledged ology and metaphysics are held in rashness it is provoked, but sooner abeyance, or scarcely apprehended, or later the virtues of a great people, the ghost of ancient prejudice still the sagacity of the statesman, and haunts the mind. There are persons the genius of the poet are recognised. who, without understanding their But the stain of suspected heresy principles or even inquiring into seems to be indelible. The cleansing their history, never hear the names waters of Time flow on, and leave it of certain religious teachers but untouched. The brand of the so- with an involuntary shudder, and called schismatic is a mark of infamy, turn away from the advocates of and by no charity of pious hands their doctrines with pious horror can we hope to see it removed. To be and holy scorn. The rival divines reputed heterodox in the Protestant whose names stand at the head of church is to commit the unpardon- the two great divisions of the reable sin which neither profound ligious world are regarded with a learning, nor transcendent virtue, similar and a common injustice. nor life-long endurance of the penal Allusion to Calvin is to some sug anathemas of the saints can ever gestive only of the burning of be expected to atonc. heretics in the market-place, the cursing of Anabaptists, and the | Puritans were not careful to speak consigning to perdition of reprobate soft words of their opponents, and babes a span long. The name of being zealous Calvinists, they hesiArminius is to others the synonyme tated not to assert that an Arminian of a proud and impious self-will 'was the spawn of a Papist, and that deifies our poor fallen human constructively, yea eminently, a nature, seeks its own praise at the thief, a traitor, a murderer, a heretic, cost of the peace of the church, and a false prophet, and whatsoever attempts inits presumption to darken soundeth infamy and reflecteth upon the glory of the Eternal God. men.' 'Malignant and Arminian' was the only charge the famous Triers recorded against some of the Episcopalian clergy whom they summarily ejected from their livings. A century later, so great was the terror, and so deep the prejudice with which Arminian opinions were regarded, that John Wesley says, One might as well cry "mad dog" Nor as to call a man an Arminian.' and Popery were twins, that Arminius was a Dutch heretic, that the influence of his views upon the religion of England was prejudical to spirituality and life, that holiness Possibly no one is entirely free from partiality or prejudice in the estimation in which he holds these great masters of theological science. But a fair and candid interpreter of the systems of faith associated with their names would not, one might think, accept the hasty caricature of the partisan, and the inferences deducible therefrom, as just delineations either of the character of the men or the spirit of their teachings. Yet with respect to Arminius it may be said that he is usually misunderstood and misrepresented, and that not by the ignorant and unin-gical opinions. That Arminianism formed alone, but also by those who profess some acquaintance with eoclesiastical history and the progress of religious thought. By some of his own countrymen-amongst whom the prophet looks not for honour-is scarcely possible with belief in Arminius is known as Holland's unpropitious star, as the great schismatic who convulsed the reformed churches by his heresies, as the ambitious divine who sought to pile up for himself a pathway to fame on the ruins of Dutch Protestantism. Bishop Hall, who attended the synod of Dort, and whose moderation was reputed to be as remarkable as his genius, speaks of Arminius as a wise man who did not know the worth of peace, a noble son of the church who in coming to light ripped the womb of his mother, and he asks, 'What mean these subtle novelties? If they make thee famous and the church miserable who shall gain by them?' The good Bishop, further, conjures Arminius by the most solemn considerations to remember himself, and as if he were a wild beast of some new Apocalyptic vision to remember, also, the poor distracted limbs of the church. The his opinions;-these are charges openly repeated, or gravely insinuated, in the present day by a writer who otherwise is of the most Catholic spirit, and who singularly enough has confessed himself anxious to promote the union into one denomination of all evangelical Baptists. It For the complete vindication of the character of Arminius we must turn to his life and writings. may be too much to expect that all imputation of deadly heresy will be removed from every mind by an enlarged acquaintance with his personal history, with the times in which he lived, and the works he has left behind. The shadow of suspicion that follows his fame will not vanish before the first breath of dawn. But an impression not unfavourable to the memory of Arminius will certainly be made by the thoughtful study of his life. The story of his trials, the exhibition | had but four years to live; Knox, in of his calm, courteous, and manly spirit will, we may hope, soften down the asperity and mitigate the harshness of his censors. The record of his patient and searching inquiries after truth, of his plain and distinct avowal of his opinions will, we are assured, win for him the sympathy of all earnest men and the respect of even his warmest opponents. Moreover, the attempt he makes, whether successfully or not, to show that the divine plan of salvation is in perfect harmony with the facts of consciousness, with man's moral freedom and consequent responsibility, we may learn to accept with gratitude as a valuable contribution to theological science. For God has some word of truth to unfold by every distinguished servant of the church, and though we do not 'glory in men,' we still remember that all things are ours,' and all religious teachers, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas' of the early church, or Luther, Calvin and Arminius of the Reformation. They were stirring and eventful times in which Arminius was born. It was the year of grace 1560. In that very year Philip Melancthon died. In the same year, also, the Protestant churches of France, at the Conference of Poissy, pleaded for freedom of conscience before Charles the Ninth, Catherine de Medicis, and the princes of the realm, and were defeated by the artifice of the Cardinal of Lorraine, who, dividing in order to conquer, embroiled the Lutherans and Calvinists in a quarrel about the Augustan Confession. Henceforth the tenets of Calvin became the creed of a distinct party. The year previous, Philip the Second, then King of Spain, of the Two Sicilies, of Milan, and of the Netherlands, re-issued a most cruel edict for the entire suppression of heresy and schism. Zwingli had long since expired on the field of battle; Luther, fourteen years before, had died at the town of his birth; Calvin, worn down by excessive toil, the vigour of his days, was completing the religious reform of his native land; Latimer and Ridley, five years before, had perished at the stake, and by the death of Mary and the accession of Elizabeth to the throne, the hopes of English Protestantism had revived. The spirit of the new era was working in the civilized world, when Arminius was ushered into life. On all sides the Reformation was advancing. The yoke of Rome had already been thrown off in many lands. Everywhere light struggled with darkness. The pure word of God was winning its way through Europe. Close in the track of religions came civil liberty. The human mind, emancipated from priestly thraldom, claimed its sacred and inalienable rights. Nowhere was the conflict more fierce and strong than on the soil of the Netherlands. Throughout the whole extent of the country the people were leavened with the principles of the Protestant faith. Placed between two nations in both of which the Reformation had taken root they were stimulated to freedom and independence alike by the Lutheranism of Germany, and the Calvinism of France. But the influence of the latter predominated, and with it grew up a bold impatience of the tyranny of Rome. Philip determined to root out this rank element of Protestantism. The most severe measures were adopted. The sovereign who boasted of his clemency before all the world established in his beloved Dutch provinces the worst horrors of the Inquisition. Spanish troops were detained to overawe the populace. The sword of persecution reddened with innocent blood; the fires of martyrdom glared over the land; the earth was heaped over the frail forms of women buried alive. It was inevitable that sooner or later a terrible retribution should arrive. The year that saw the birth of Arminius saw the beginning of the Nemesis of revolt. |