the natives. One evil is the disunion among Christians, which is well known in India; for they can read our lives, whether they can read our books or not; and there is inconceivable force in the retort adduced by the preacher :Yes, at this very moment they will say, "You are discussing the introduction of religion into our schools, and you have not, after 1,800 years' enjoyment of it, so far agreed upon its essential tenets, as to have been able to introduce it as a national doctrine into your own schools in England; yea, even as to those elementary fundamentals level to the apprehension of little children."

The great cause, however, has been the want of correspondency of Christian practice with Christian precept in India. Christianity, he says, is at the bottom of this; not because we have not sufficiently avowed it, but because we have upheld it with unhallowed hands, professed it with deceitful lips, dishonoured it with inconsistent lives. It is not a foreign nation that has to be Christianised, but ourselves; and India will become Christian after England is. Well might a lady who sat under such a touching appeal, in passing the plate, strip her fingers of two valuable rings, and give them as an offering: so great and beautiful is woman's sympathy when the right chord is touched! Truly, we are dead while we live! The whole tendency of religion is toleration and freedom; it alone lays deeply the only foundation of liberty, which are the principles of benevolence, justice, and respect for human nature. The spirit of liberty is not merely, as multitudes imagine, a jealousy of our own particular rights—an unwillingness to be oppressed ourselves, but a

respect for the rights of others, and an unwillingness that any man, whether high or low, should be wronged and trampled under foot. Now, this is the spirit and genius of Christianity; and liberty has no security, any further than this uprightness and benevolence of sentiment actuates a community. Thus, religion is the soul of freedom, and no nation under heaven has such an interest in it as ourselves. But

"Where's the kindred mind?—

Where's the heart at leisure from itself,
To soothe and sympathise?"

If England speaks at all now, it is only through the mouths of her cannon. When one's heart boils up with indignation against war, it may be well to remember, that the deliverance of our ancestors from the house of their spiritual bondage, was effected by "plagues and by signs, by wonders, and by war." Let us not be obdurate to the truth, that those who rose up against tyranny, were themselves deeply tainted with the vices that tyranny engenders.

"Were half the power that fills the world with terror,

Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals and forts.
The warrior's name would be a name abhorr'd,
And every nation that should lift again
Its hand against a brother, on its forehead

Should wear for evermore the curse of Cain:
Sagacity and self-command are our best arms.

-LONGFELLOW.

CHAPTER XXV.

GOD WORKS SLOWLY AND SIMPLY.-STRONG MEN HAVE ENERGETIC MALADIES.-DUTY AND HAPPINESS IDENTICAL.-INTEMPERANCE AND IMPROVIDENCE THE GRAND SOURCES OF CRIME.

LET us defend freedom against the attacks of high aristocratic and despotic principles, and at the same time defend the very foundations of society against the fury of a wild enthusiasm, which usurps the name of religion. Let us (as the Honourable Sir James Mackintosh elegantly observes), aim to draw from the storehouse of philosophy weapons wherewith to repel a phantom that has assumed the name. We may venture to affirm, that unless our ancient opinions and establishments can be vindicated upon philosophical principles, they will not be long able to maintain their place in the affection and veneration of mankind, from which they derive all their strength. The frequent hostility of speculation and practice have been fatal to science and mankind. They are destined to move harmoniously, each in his own orbit, as members of one grand system of universal wisdom; guided by one common law, illuminated from one common source, reflecting light on each other, and conspiring by their movements to the use and beauty of one grand whole. There is a false philosophy which condemns all our institutions to destruc

tion, which stigmatises all our most natural and useful feelings as prejudices; makes vain efforts to implant in us principles which take no root, because foreign to human. nature; and would extirpate those principles which sweeten and ennoble the life of man. The general character of this system is diametrically opposite to that of true philosophy: wanting philosophical modesty, it is arrogant philosophical caution'; it is rash, it is headstrong, and fanatical. Instead of that difference, and, if I may so speak, that scepticism and cowardice, which the first lesson of philosophy teaches, when we are to treat of the happiness of human beings, we find a system dogmatical and boastful, heedless of everything but its short-sighted views, and intoxicated with the perpetual and exclusive contemplation of its own system of disorder and demonstrations of insanity. This is not the philosophy which Cicero calls " Philosophiam illam matrem omnium benefactorum, benique dictorum;" for its direct tendency is to wither and blast every amiable and exalted sentiment, from which either virtue or eloquence can flow, by holding up to the imagination an ideal picture of I know not what future perfection of human society. Such a philosophy must be in perpetual variance with practice, because it must wage eternal war with truth.

We still live in an age when it is present drowning not to swim with the stream. Our present listeners resemble the boys in the Heart of Mid-Lothian, who pushed away the lady's guineas with contempt, and insisted on having the white money. They preferred the silver with which they were familiar, and which they were constantly pass

ing about from hand to hand, to the gold they had never before seen, and with the value of which they were unacquainted. Highly lacquered brass is gold to the million: not so to the lonely Ishmaelite hunting his way through the wilderness.

"Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it; any thing but live for it." Freedom of conscience is rife enough where conscience is convenience. The vaulting liberty of a false theology, when held in sincerity, invariably overleaps itself, and falls on the other side. It is verily a liberty which gendereth to bondage. Surely there is a middle heat-a via media betwixt the withering and collapsing ice-house, and the suffocatingly depressing and stifling hot-house. Consistent Puseyism can find its desiderated infallibility in Rome only; and to this complexion their apostolicity of creeds, on the authority of the English Church, to this terminus they must come at last; and then, surely, they will be frosty and wintry enough to their heart's content. As to the over combustible fiery ones, spiritual mountebanks drunk with fanaticism, they will burn out of themselves; and if not, possibly they will take a jump to the opposite extreme, and may become allied to as consistent and respectable a body as we have "the Friends." GOD'S secretary within us teaches us that the Universal Church has no head but CHRIST; and that the power arrogated by Popes, councils, and bishops, is gross usurpation; and of all crimes against society usurpation is the blackest.

We have daily confirmed two great principles, that GOD works slowly, and GoD works simply. We shall