ect, in the end, of shutting up
the mass of men from their Maker?--here is there a High Priest passed
into the heavens--the only Priest whom the evangelistic Protestant
recognises as really such--to whom, in his character of Mediator between
God and man, all may apply, and before whom there need be felt none of
that abject prostration of the spirit and understanding which man always
experiences when he bends before the merely human priest. Is
self-righteousness the besetting infirmity of the religious man?--in the
scheme of vicarious righteousness it finds no footing. The
self-approving Pharisee must be content to renounce his own merits, ere
he can have part or lot in the fund of merit which alone avails; and yet
without personal righteousness he can have no evidence whatever that he
has an interest in the all-prevailing imputed righteousness. But it is
in the closing scene of life, when man's boasted virtues become so
intangible in his estimation that they elude his grasp, and sins and
shortcomings, little noted before, start up around him like spectres,
that the scheme of Redemption appears worthy of the infinite wisdom and
goodness of God, and when what the Saviour did and suffered seems of
efficacy enough to blot out the guilt of every offence. It is when the
minor lights of comfort are extinguished that the Sun of Righteousness
shines forth, and more than compensates for them all.

The opinions which I formed at this time on this matter of prime
importance I found no after occasion to alter or modify. On the
contrary, in passing from the subjective to the objective view, I have
seen the doctrine of the union of the two natures greatly confirmed. The
truths of geology appear destined to exercise in the future no
inconsiderable influence on natural theology; and with this especial
doctrine they seem very much in accordance. Of that long and stately
march of creation with which the records of the stony science bring us
acquainted, the distinguishing characteristic is progress. There appears
to have been a time when there existed on our planet only dead matter
unconnected with vitality; and then a time in which plants and animals
of a low order began to be, but in which even fishes, the humblest of
the vertebrata, were so rare and exceptionable, that they occupied a
scarce appreciable place in Nature. Then came an age of fishes huge of
size, and that to the peculiar ichthyic organization added certain
well-marked char