hand-watered by the dews of heaven-protected from the incursion of the spoiler-and altogether possessing such a largeness of blessing as might once have seemed to prove the Divine determination to render it all permanent. The laity and their rulers, conscious of their high distinctions, became-strange as the expression may be, and more strange the infatuation it describes-vain of their religion; jealous, intolerant, and haughty; and, to all spiritual sin, adding every sensual enormity, till the measure of their iniquity was full.

All this time they were the chosen guardians of the law of God-of a rule forbidding all evil, and enforcing all good. And this was the church which at length crucified the Lord of Glory! To say that these men acted under judicial blindness, neither alters the facts of the case, nor, in any degree, excuses their guilt. They acted under no compulsion, but that of their own indulged passion and appetite.

If it be meant, indeed, to be covertly understood, that no parallel guilt can occur under the Christian economy, it may be well to remember the early pollutions of the church of Christ. We are accustomed idly to talk about the purity of primitive times, as though the Apostolic age were a pattern to all succeeding ones;

which we must be content to admire, but quite despair of equalling. How contrary is this to that most authentic of ecclesiastical annals, the Acts of the Apostles, as illustrated in the Apostolic Epistles, and in the Revelation of St. John !

The fact is legible on the very cover of these records, that the Gospel was no sooner delivered into the custody of mankind, than churches, planted and nurtured by the Apostles themselves, degenerated, in a few short years, into lukewarmness, strife, heresy, secularity, and all the practical atheism of the then obsolete Theocracy. A fresh lesson was thus gathered, on the insecurity inherent in every religious community, against error and crimeso far as its affairs were administered by mankind.

After this, examine the history of the church from the first century down to the present period; and it will be found to be one story, infinitely varied, but essentially the same a description of the world's steady determination to retain the forms of Christianity and to crush its power.

We are fully aware of the jealousy and impatience which begin to ferment in the bosom of any nominal believer, when he feels that

his own church-whether established by law or opinion, and in any division of the civilized world-has its share of suspicion and disgrace. But, in truth, we all need humbling. We must endure to have our own native territories invaded-the sacred soil, as we fondly term it; and which, as we dream, sacrilege itself would never dare to approach.

This was precisely the popular feeling in the days of the Theocracy. Its subjects were the chosen generation, the royal priesthood, the peculiar people; so at least they thought themselves, and such they really were, as far as they obeyed their Divine Sovereign. This limit to their pretensions, however, they refused to acknowledge; and nothing so keenly exasperated this people, as the declaration of their own faithful prophets, that “he was not a Jew which was one outwardly." Worse than this, the sacerdotal order were the first to silence and persecute any teacherthough bearing, like themselves, the undisputed credentials of Heaven-who ventured to define the difference between a formalist and a believer.

In their own persons they would have resented, as an intolerable offence, even a look which threatened them with insult; but,-to

shew the universal inconsistency of human nature,-while they exposed a brother-dignitary to the hisses and execrations of the populace, they offered their own sacred character as a panoply against attacks upon themselves. They sat in Moses' seat; and, in their own case, insisted upon the honours due to his successors.

But, to enter more directly into the subject as concerning ourselves, who are now-I speak of our own enlightened and privileged country

as the garden of the Lord, let me remind the reader, that a question, addressed by Jesus Christ to his earliest followers, has, of late, been often repeated: "When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" Whether this appeal were made in reference to his final advent, or to some intermediate manifestation of his person or power, is not our present inquiry*.

* On a subject open to so much discussion, as the one alluded to in the text, the Christian world will, of course, hold various, and probably irreconcileable, opinions. The most beneficial use of the doctrine will certainly be, to consider the Advent of Jesus Christ as always near to ourselves; for " yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him." The reader is recommended to study the subject in Stewart's 'Practical View of the Redeemer's Advent;' where inquisitive speculation is merged in the author's desire to teach the servants of their God and Saviour how

Supposing, however, that he were, at this time, to appear among us, and to visit the villages, towns, and cities of our domestic empire, in order to examine the spiritual character of their inhabitants, how few might those be, who would have any "confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming!" Yet Yet ages have rolled away since the dawn of the Reformation; and it is become cause of public exultation, that we are walking in the noon-day light of its glory! We look aside upon the communion we have deserted, with a kind of compassionate contempt, as centuries behind us in the progress of intelligence and moral energy; while, among ourselves, "the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth!"

It is, nevertheless, at this very point of selfcongratulation, that a serious mind pauses and trembles. Every national religion, whether connected with the state or otherwise*, will

they may welcome his appearance. It is too well known, that many professed advocates of spiritual religion have echoed the derisive clamours of its enemies, on a question which might at least teach wise men to be serious.

* As in the case of the United States of America; where the religion of the mother country is nationalised in its episcopal, and liturgical, and also in its congregational forms, although not recognised by law, except in a few of the States, and there only on general principles. But formality and barren orthodoxy are understood to prevail in