the elect strangers of the dispersion-"Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed;" the term being that employed by the persecutors, and constituting the principal element of accusation. "Christ came into the world to save sinners," even the chief, and among the chief sinners grew up this name given to His followers, and derived from His own. What, indeed, more appropriate than to name after Christ that body of men of whose creed Christ was the core; of whose prayers Christ was the plea; of whose praises Christ was the burden; of whose preaching Christ was the theme; of whose life Christ was the pattern; of whose actions Christ was the law; of whose hopes Christ was the foundation; of whose hearts, indeed, Christ was the one occupant? What more natural than to term Christians the people who learned from Christ as prophet, and bowed to Christ as king; who looked up to Christ as advocate, and forward to Christ as Judge; who enjoyed pardon through Christ's blood, and sanctification through Christ's Spirit; whose weekly holy day was Christ's or the Lord's day; who "named the name of Christ" in their sacred rites of baptism and the Lord's Supper; who regarded the presence of Christ as the glory of their assemblies, and anticipated fellowship with Christ as the crown and consummation of spiritual bliss? Thus the name arose as a matter of public convenience or necessity, in consequence of the numerous accessions to the church at Antioch, and the special prominence which the name Christ had in all their own services, and in their intercourse with the population swarming around them, in those theatres and baths, or thronging those mag

nificent colonnades-the resorts alike of business and gaiety.

And is not the title appropriate still? He was Christthe anointed One; they, too, have "an unction from the Holy One." O that those who bear it verified it in everything—so living, speaking, and acting in the spirit of Christ, as to compel the world still to "take knowledge of them," and to name them after Him whom they so strikingly resemble-Christians, because of their avowed and visible connection with Christ. Are not they rightly called Christians whose life springs from their being in Christ, whose ambition is to be like Christ, whose work is for Christ, and whose hope is to be with Christ for ever? Who then of those who "call on this name " would say "I am of Paul," or "I of Apollos," or "I of Cephas?" let every one say-I am of Christ, and never forget that he has said it. Let the coinage of other titles cease—

Let names and sects and parties fall,

And Jesus Christ be all in all.

May we not anticipate the time when names assumed from leaders, or taken from forms of government and ritual, or drawn from points of history or from local origin and predominance, shall merge in this grand catholic designation?

Yet strange it is that the other name of the Redeemer should give title to a class of men whose history has been notorious for audacious intrigue and villany; that those who have named themselves from Jesus, should have been distinguished by unparalleled chicanery and the most subtle and delusive casuistry, so that Christians called

after Christ shrink from Jesuits who have so vilely appropriated the name of Jesus-nay, who style themselves the Society of Jesus, as if they were bound to Him by a closer tie, or were self-devoted by a deeper consecration. Strange it is to use this pure and loving name as identified with men whose arts and ambition have so often troubled Europe; who have wielded the highest and most dangerous power without being suspected; whose versatile genius has had innumerable modes of action and forms of diplomacy; sometimes editing learned tomes, and sometimes compiling disgusting and prurient directories; equally at home in drawing a will and penning an erudite and ponderous preface; as well skilled in negotiating an expedient marriage as in contriving an opportune death; holding the royal stirrup while they are grasping and giving away the crown; creeping when they dare not walk; now the wriggle of the snake, and now the spring of the panther; ready at any moment to obey orders to betake themselves to any region, no matter how distant, and carry out any policy, no matter what peril and labour it involve; drudging in the kitchen when they may not discourse in the library; assuming the livery of a menial, if it is not convenient to wear the robe of a confessor; making a wife their tool or a concubine their decoy; controlling education with a witching devotedness to youth; outwitting the sharpest and defeating the boldest; spreading a net whose invisible meshes catch and hold the stoutest and most wary; most charming when they are most malignant; smiling the most serenely when their purpose is most deadly; "which devour widows' houses,

LUTHER AND LOYOLA.

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and for a pretence make long prayers;" banished from every country, and yet found at home in each of them; persecuted, and still thriving when to all appearance extinct; detected, but never disconcerted; often counterworked, though always in the end unbaffled; permitting a defeat in one quarter, to secure a greater triumph in another; furnished with a hundred eyes, and putting forth a hundred arms; all things to all men; possessed, in short, of a craft and might which kings could not cope with, and before which popes themselves have helplessly trembled. Luther and Loyola represent progress and check, action and reaction, in the same epoch of the ecclesiastical world.

D

IV.-SAUL IN CYPRUS.

ACTS xiii. 1-12.

THE world was yet in the shadow of death, though light had shone upon Judæa. Idolatry and polytheism were everywhere—vice and misery-life without peace, and death without hope. A thousand altars smoked in honour of a thousand divinities, and the richest fruits of genius were images and temples. There were gods of the hills, and gods of the valleys; gods of the streams, and gods of the groves; gods of the earth, and gods of the ocean; gods of the sky, and gods of the underworld of death. The sacred sculptures bore upon them the oak of Jupiter and the myrtle of Venus; the eagle of Juno and the owl of Minerva; the trident of Neptune and the bow of Apollo; the lance of Mars and the wand of Hermes. There were erroneous and conflicting notions of duty-dubious and degrading ideas of destiny. How shall a sinner be just with God, was a question which could not be solved, and the relationship of man to futurity was unbrightened by life and immortality. That there is no God at all, but highest nature working divinely and impersonally, was the thought of some; that everything is God, or a necessary evolution of his nature and a portion of him, was the dream of others. That the present system is bound up in fate, was the conjecture of one class; that it is the offspring of chance, and without super