"Alas for us, we see the Christianity of the church is a very poor thing; a very little better than heathenism. It takes God out of the world of nature and of man, and hides him in the church. Nay it does worse; it limits God, who possesseth heaven and earth, and is from everlasting to everlasting, restricting his influence and inspiration to a little corner of the world, and a few centuries of history, dark and uncertain. Even in this narrow range. it makes a deity like itself, and gives us not God, but Jehovah. It takes the living Christ out of the heart, and transfigures him in the clouds, till he becomes an anomalous being, not God, and not man; but a creature whose holiness is not the divine image, he has sculptured for him self out of the rock of life, but something placed over him, entirely by God's hand, and without his own effort. k has taken away our Lord, and left us a being whom we know not; severed from us by his prodigious birth, anu his alleged relation to God, such as none can share. What have we in common with such an one, raised above all chance of error, all possibility of sin, and still more surrounded by God at each moment, as no other man has been? It has transferred him to the clouds. It makes Christianity a Belief, not a Life. It takes religion out of the world, and shuts it up in old books, whence, from time to time, on Sabbaths, and fast-days, and feast daysit seeks to evoke the divine spirit, as the witch of Endor is fabled to have called up Samuel from the dead. It tells you, with grave countenance, to believe every word spoken by the Apostles,-weak, Jewish, fallible, prejudiced, mistaken as they sometimes were for this reason, be cause forsooth Peter's shadow, and Paul's pocket hand kerchief, cured the lame and the blind. It never tells you, Be faithful to the spirit God has given; open your soul and you also shall be inspired, beyond Peter and Paul it may be, for great though they were, they saw not all things, and have not absorbed the Godhead. No doubt the Christian church has been the ark of the world. No doubt some individual churches are now free from these disgraces; still the picture is true as a whole.

us.

"The Christianity of the Church is a very poor thing; it is not bread, and it is not drink. The Christianity of Society is still worse; it is bitter in the mouth and poison in the blood. Still men are hungering and thirsting, though not always knowingly, after the true bread of life. Why shall we perish with hunger? In our Father's house is enough and to spare. The Christianity of Christ is high and noble as ever. The religion of Reason, of the Soul, the Word of God, is still strong and flame-like, as when first it dwelt in Jesus, the chiefest incarnation of God, and now the pattern-man. Age has not dimmed the lustre of this light that lighteneth all, though they cover their eyes in obstinate perversity, and turn away their faces from this great sight. Man has lost none of his God-likeness. He is still the child of God, and the father is near to us as to him who dwelt in his bosom. Conscience has not left Faith and hope still abide; and love never fails. The Comforter is with us; and though the man Jesus no longer blesses the earth, the ideal Christ, formed in the heart, is with us to the end of the world. Let us, then, build on these. Use good words when we can find them, in the church or out of it. Learn to pray, to pray greatly and strong; learn to reverence what is highest; above all learn to live; to make Religion daily work, and Christianity our common life. All days shall then be the Lord's day; our homes the house of God, and our labour the ritual of Religion. Then we shall not glory in men, for all things shall be ours; we shall not be impoverished by success, but enriched by affliction. Our service shall be worship, not idolatry. The burthens of the bible shall not overlay and crush us; its wisdom shall make us strong, and its piety enchant us. Paul and Jesus shall not be our masters, but elder brothers, who open the pearly gates of truth, and cheer us on, leading us to the Tree of Life. We shall find the Kingdom of Heaven and enjoy it now, not waiting till death ferries us over to the other world. We shall then repose beside the rock of ages, smitten by divine hands, and drink the pure water of life as it flows from the Eternal, to make earth green and

glad. We shall serve no longer a bond-slave to tradition, in the leprous host of sin, but become freemen, by the law and spirit of life. Thus like Paul shall we form the Christ within; and, like Jesus, serving and knowing God directly, with no mediator intervening, become one with him. Is not this worth a man's wish; worth his prayers; worth his work, to seek the living Christianity; the Christianity of Christ? Not having this we seem but bubbles,-bubbles on an ocean, shoreless and without bottom; bubbles that sparkle a moment in the sun of life, then burst to be no more. But with it we are men, immortal souls, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ."

MOMIERS.

By this name certain religionists of the so-called Evangelical party have been designated in Switzerland, and some parts of France and Germany, since 1818. They appear originally to have borne a considerable resemblance to the Methodists of Great Britain; for like the latter, they at first embraced no tenets distinct from those of the Established Church, and were only distinguished from its members by a more habitual indulgence in devotional contemplation and religious exercise. But they did not long continue to harmonize with the preachers of the establishment. One of the most vehement of the party, in a pamphlet published in 1818, accused the latter of denying the divinity of our Saviour, and of a thorough backsliding from the doctrines of Calvinism; and the Geneva clergy (la venerable compagnie) having, in the view of allaying asperities, passed a resolution prohibiting any theories of the doctrinal points of religion from being propounded in the pulpit, and having counselled the clergy to avoid disputed points as much as possible in their discourses, the smouldering embers of their hostility to the Established Church burst into a flame. They now began to attack the clergy in the pulpit and in pamphlets, accusing them of having abandoned all gospel truth, and denying their right to be regarded as ministers of the establishment. But

all their efforts to bring the latter into contempt were unsuccessful: the Genevese remained faithful to their pastors; and in the year 1835, the Momiers possessed only about two hundred adherents.

In the other parts of Switzerland, however, and more especially in the canton de Vaud, the zeal of these sectaries was attended with more success. After a few years' toleration of their preaching and proselytising, during which it was alleged that the Momiers had sown the greatest discontent among the inhabitants of the canton, the government at last saw the necessity of interference, and in the year 1824 promulgated some vigourous ordinances to put them down. These enactments, as might have been expected, failed of their effect. The enthusiasm of the Momiers was redoubled: they were now surrounded with the glory of martyrdom; and many who had before viewed their zeal with indifference or contempt, now deeply sympathised in what they could not but regard as an undisguised attack upon the liberty of conscience. In consequence of the general disgust that ensued on their promulgation, these ordinances were at first gradually relaxed, then suffered to be dormant, and at last repealed in 1831. Since that period the number of Momiers has gradually diminished; and in 1839, the clergy of this canton resolved by a large majority to revert to the ancient regime of the church.

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CHAPTER XVII.

CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS IN BEHALF OF CHRISTIAN MODERATION

"THERE is nothing in the world more wholesome or more necessary for us to learn than this gracious lesson of Moderation, without which, in very truth, a man is so far from being a Christian that he is not himself! This is the centre wherein all both divine and moral philosophy meet-the rule of life-the governess of manners-the silken string that runs through the pearl chain of all virtues-the very elliptic line under which reason and religion move without any deviation, and therefore most worthy our best thoughts-of our most careful observance."-Bishop Hall.

"May we all of us, in our respective stations, become more disposed to provoke one another unto love and good works, and less disposed to backbite and devour one another for our opinions-may Christianity have its root in our hearts rather than in our heads-may it shew forth its fruit in the purity and integrity of our lives, rather than in the vehemence and subtlety of our disputes. In a word, may the time at length come when every individual in the church and out of the church, Trinitarian and Unitarian, may love his own heresy less than Gospel charity."-Bishop Watson.

First, Since the best and wisest of mankind, thus differ on the speculative tenets of religion, let us modestly estimate the extent of the human faculties.

A modest estimate of the human faculties is an inducement to moderation. After laborious investigations, probably with equal degrees of knowledge and integrity, men arrive at opposite conclusions. This is a necessary consequence of imperfection. Human reason, weak and fallible, soars with feeble, and often with ineffectual wing, into the regions of speculation. Let none affirm that this mode of argument begets an indifference to the acquisition and propagation of religious truth. To declare that all tenets are alike is an affront to the understanding. The chilling hesitation of scepticism, the forbidding sternness of bigotry, and the delirious fever of enthusiasm, are equally abhorrent to the genius of True Christianity. Truth being the conformity of our conceptions to the nature of things, we