ing together for good to them that love God; and, rejoicing in hope of the glory of God, can glory in tribulation also, knowing that it shall redound to praise and glory in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It would be a vain and profitless employment of time to speculate on what man might have been if he had not fallen; or as to what man ought to be, under a perfect condition of things in the Church and in the State. We must take man as we find him, fallen from his true position and by nature at enmity with God; and we must regard the provisions, both in Church and State, according to their adaptation to the actual condition of man, and the means they afford for lifting man out of his natural degradation into the true place in which God at the first had set him, and to which those who believe in Christ Jesus shall be ultimately recovered-receiving the earnest of it in a spiritual sense now-receiving the fulness at the resurrection and in the world to come. must be remembered that, as we are in a state of transition from a fallen condition to one of recovery, not only are the means of recovery lowered from the perfect standard to suit this transition state, but the administration of these means is entrusted to men as yet in an imperfect condition—not as though we had attained or were already perfect: nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, walking by the same rule and minding the same things (Phil. iii).

It

But man, though degraded, hath not wholly lost the apprehension and the sense of his noble origin and his glorious destiny; and it is to this latent principle, which the fall hath not wholly extinguished, that the invitations in the Gospel are addressed. We find, in all men, occasional yearnings and cravings after something beyond the present-something more satisfying and more durable than anything that the world can furnish. To such, how welcome is the call-" Ho, every one that thirsteth come ye to the waters". "Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? And your labour for that which satisfieth not ?"- "Incline your ear and come unto me: hear and your soul shall live." And unless these instinctive cravings of mankind be taken into the account, and be brought to bear upon the actual condition of things at the time, those who are responsible for good government in Church and State will fail in their endeavours, and the condition of the world will deteriorate. Individuals may quench ⚫ this light within themselves, and may in their darkness pronounce it to be kindled by superstition in others; but the fact is too general-we had almost said universal-to admit of

such an explanation: the want of this yearning is the rare exception-the presence of it is the general rule; and it is, therefore, to be regarded as an instinct of human nature, common to all men.

And in the historic fact that all wise governors have found it necessary to enlist this principle on their side, by making religion their concern and having respect to the faith which was prevalent among the people at the time, there is a testimony to the depth and universality of the feeling which no thoughtful person will lightly regard, or attribute with the vulgar and the superficial to mere priestcraft. That much of the religion which was so employed was false, will be conceded by every one; but this does not prove that it was wrong to use it, or that the principle appealed to was false. True religion came by revelation, and was only to be found in the line of the faithful: the heathen could not discover it for themselves, but might acquire some imperfect knowledge of it by tradition. The necessity felt by all legislators for consulting the religious feelings of mankind is all that we are asserting; and, if they took the best religion to which they had access, it is all that could be expected of them as heathen.

The heathen legislator, as a man, was conscious of the same need of religion which the people felt; and he must, like them, have recourse to the priests and ministers of religion to receive instruction and obtain mediation: for there never has been a religion which did not acknowledge these two thingsinstruction derived from some higher source, and the necessity of a mediator between us and God; which is one of the many instances of the foreshadowing of Christianity, in its two fundamental principles, of being by divine revelation and in the hands of a mediator. As the legislator himself should advance in religion, so it would be his duty to carry forward the people; and especially to take care that they had free access to those whose business it was to instruct all alike, and to superintend those rites and ceremonies which are both the expression and the sustenance of the religion of a people; and this, which would be his obvious course in any case, becomes a paramount duty in a Christian State; since it not only rests upon the knowledge of the certainty of the religion we profess, and the importance of encouraging it to every wise legislator; but, knowing that Christianity imposes on every believer the duty of confessing Christ before men, the Christian legislator must do so in all his acts, as he will have to answer in the day of judgment for the effect which these acts shall have, not only on the present but also on the future welfare of mankind

-not only on the comfort of their bodies but on the salvation of their souls.

All our readers would, no doubt, reject with scorn the Socialism and Communism of France, and the kindred doctrines of the Owenites and Chartists in England; but the same materialism which, when carried to those lengths, is repulsive, may be so disguised and modified as to become attractive to many. And we have no hesitation in affirming that the Communist doctrines are only the bold and open avowal of principles which are very generally prevalent, but which are not in general followed out into their natural and legitimate consequence-which are, in short, entertained as speculations rather than as principles for the guidance of men and the mischief of these reckless speculations only appears when other men whose conduct is reckless, and who have had no principle to guide them, seek justification and countenance in the sophistries of men more able than themselves, and find a plausible and colourable defence in these abstractions and generalities which were never intended to be reduced to practice. Sophistry in the former and passion in the latter have taken the place which truly belongs to reason,

If we endeavour to treat man as a mere animal, and confine our views of society to such things as tend to promote and secure animal enjoyment alone and the well-being of the body-such as food, raiment, or even wealth and luxurious living, to the neglect of the mind-we shall experience continual disappointment. Man being more than an animal, and being endowed with higher instincts and cravings of soul as well as body, these higher wants will put in their claims and exact their rights, and they will be found to be paramount either for good or for evil-for the blessing of individuals and of society, when under moral retraint and directed to that which is virtuous and praiseworthy-and in terrible retribution upon those men or those bands who are so deluded as to pervert or abuse these noble gifts of God to selfish gratification or any sordid purposes. As among the wise, where moral restraints are held in respect, these are found to be the only ones which are effectual, either to meet the desires or to controul the unruly passions of man-so, when moral restraints are neglected, the moral evils which ensue will be found to be the direst of all miseries; and, under the boiling and lashing of this feverish anguish, a convulsive and maniac energy is sometimes aroused, in comparison with which the restraints of decorum and of law would be only

like manacles of tow on the arms of an infuriated demoniac:

"Man's nature is not limited solely to this world, but is formed for higher and more lasting destinies: his moral powers are not mainly, much less solely, designed for a bounded and temporary sphere of action; but here form the elements and infancy of faculties almost unlimited, which stretch into nobler regions, not so much of boundless space as the more congenial and satisfying objects of desire and pursuits of immortality. All notions of government, not of the material but the moral man, which do not recognise those principles of his nature which are the governing motives of his conduct, and by which alone a being destined for immortality can be influenced, will fail, except in a very subordinate degree, to realise the object which civil government contemplated: and this for a very obvious and intelligible reason; for as, in the absence even of revelation, the pantings of the soul after a future state of existence clearly and strongly indicate that this life is only the infancy of its being, so it will, by experience, be found that it is impossible to separate mere human interests from those which have reference to a future and higher state of existence : though it cannot, without revelation, be clearly ascertained that this future state will prove one of moral retribution. Still there is sufficient evidence, from an examination of the intellectual part of man's constitution, to conclude that his faculties in this life are only the prelude to their higher development hereafter; and that, in consequence, all that interests them in this world must have a sensible bearing on similar, though higher, interests of a future state of being. Both our intellectual powers and the objects of their interest in this earlier and inferior state are closely, nay, inseparably, united with their future development and future higher interests; so that they may be viewed as the same, or as one influencing or containing as it were the other, It must accordingly be seen that what relates to this life can only be adequately attained by taking into consideration and influencing those faculties and feelings which evince, by their existence and necessary operation, that the source from which they emanate is eternal and divine" (6).

And the more that men advance in civilization and mental culture the more obvious does this truth become, and the more difficult is it to minister efficiently and satisfactorily to the growing faculties and feelings of this moral principle within. In this, as in all other cases, it is found that subdivision of labour is the only way of surmounting the difficulty of understanding the complex requirements of the body and the soul of man, and regulating the diverse and often competing elements of the individual and the community. Hence has arisen the necessity of assigning these important duties to distinct classes of men-to statesmen who should direct their

attention exclusively to the proper ordering of the affairs of the community or the public, and to ecclesiastics who should occupy themselves with spiritual concerns both among governors and governed; and, by the sedulous inculcation of one invariable system of true faith and sound principle, make their respective duties plain and easy to both. The ministers of religion, devoted to this one pursuit, are presumed to be in possession of all the truth which has been at the time discovered, having fewer cares to distract them, and being in a position of greater impartiality than those who are engaged in secular affairs; and they themselves are among the governed, and have therefore a bias, if at all, on the side of the party which is most in danger of oppression, and thus may minister a check where it is most needed, and yet in a form void of suspicion and without offence, as coming in the abstract form of inculcating religious principle and truths of eternal obligation. Nor should we refuse our assent to this, although a corrupt priesthood may have abused their power, in Heathen and even in Christian times, to purposes which were tyrannical or superstitious. The abuse only proves that there is such a principle in man, and that the exclusive attention of one class of men is requisite to develop and to guide it, the corrective lying in our so profitting by their instructions as to render it impossible that they should mislead or deceive.

In ruder and coarser species of manufacture, one man may perform it all, but it will be a kind of work fit only for rude conditions of society; and so in the earlier ages, those functions which belong to the Church and those which belong to the State were often combined in the same person, the chief being sometimes both high priest and chief magistrate, and the king being at other times also Pontifex Maximus; but the advance of society complicates the duties of sovereignty and of priesthood to such a degree as to render it impossible for one individual properly to discharge both; while the same progress leads the community to require that the functions both of the king and the priest shall be exercised, not for the pleasure of the ruler or merely according to his will, but for the benefit of the community, and therefore under responsibility to secure all possible care and diligence and exactness in the administration-guarding against incompetency, or tyranny, or abuse of power.

Nay, so complicated are the duties and so great are the responsibilities of the ruler in highly civilized states of society that, even when the kingly and priestly functions are separated, one individual, though the foremost of his class, is not found