I will not enter into the question whether the Liturgy has done wisely or not in thus imitating the Scripture; but I do contend that, in point of fact, there is this resemblance between them.  St. Paul’s Epistles, in particular, although it is true of other parts of the Scripture also, contain, as does the Liturgy of our Church, a great many passages which, if taken either universally or even generally as containing a matter of fact, will lead us into certain error.  Is it, therefore, so very certain that we do wisely in so interpreting them?

With regard to our Liturgy I need not follow up the question now; but with regard to St. Paul, it is certain that he, in many parts of his Epistles, chooses to represent that which ought to be as that which actually was:  he chooses to regard those to whom he is writing as being in all respects true Christians, as being worthy of their privileges, as answering to what God had done to them, as forming a church really inhabited by the Holy Spirit, and therefore being a true and living body of due proportions to Christ its Divine head.  Nor does he trust exclusively to the common sense and conscience of those to whom he was writing to interpret his language correctly.  He might Lave thought indeed that if he wrote to them as redeemed, justified, sanctified, as having all things new, as being the children of God, and the heirs of God, and the temples of the Holy Ghost, any individual who felt that he was none of these things, that sin was still mighty within him, and that he was sin’s slave, would neither deny his own conscience, nor yet call St. Paul a deceiver; but would read in the difference between St. Paul’s description of him and the reality, the exact measure of his own sin, and need of repentance and watchfulness.  But he does not rely on this only:  he notices sins as actually existing; he mingles the language of reproof and of anxiety, so as to make it quite clear that he did not mean his descriptions of their holiness and blessedness to apply to them all necessarily; he knew full well that they did not:  but yet he knew also that, considering what God had done for them, it was monstrous that they should not be truly applicable.

But why then, you will say, did he use such language? why did he call men forgiven, redeemed, saved, justified, sanctified?—­he uses all these terms often as applicable generally to those to whom he was writing;—­why did he call them so, when in fact they were not so?  He called them so for the same reason which, made prophecy foretell blessings upon Israel of old, and on the Christian church afterwards, which were fulfilled on neither:—­in order to declare, and keep ever before us, what God has done and is willing to do for us:  what he fain would do for us, if we would but suffer him; what divine powers are offered to us, and we will not use them; what divine happiness is designed for us, and we will not enter into it.  Let us ponder all the magnificence of the scriptural