but dooms-day comes at last to them, in French Revolutions and other terrible ways.—James A. Froude.

THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE.

What did these true Knights of the Cross-these brave Barons of the Reformation-win back for themselves and for their descendants? God's free gift of liberty! The right of all men to read and judge the Scriptures for themselves. But Protestantism had no sooner won back this right of private judgment, than it proved false to the principles to which it had been indebted for its own existence. It at once proceeded to draw up creeds, and to frame articles, and to put forth its own peculiar "Scheme of Salvation," to hedge itself about with ecclesiastical and civil Law, and to erect an infallible Popedom of its own.

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The laws of God are stronger than the laws of men. The church that shall endure the wear and tear of Time, must not be reared on Dogmas which men out-grow; but on the laws of man's spiritual nature—which are laws of God. All Falsehood will ultimately die out. There is no moral darkness but what God's light will penetrate some time. It is not Truth and Right that are everywhere hedged about by the "pains and penalties" of Law. Truth and Right need no such guardians: they can guard themselves. Whatever is Right is reasonable, and whatever is Reasonable is Right. No Institution, no Church, that intends to the divine work of a church, namely, to spiritualize, and instruct, and elevate the moral and intellectual condition of all the People-must hope to stand, if its basis be not strictly Rational-for then its basis will be Right; or if its principles be not expansive-for then it can and will adapt itself to the growing wants, and to the moral and intellectual development of the nations in which it is located.

There are tens of thousands of educated, thoughtful men, who, because they cannot countenance the irrational things which are said and done everywhere around them in the name

of Religion, look deridingly on; and stand aloof from all denominations. In addition to these there is that still larger class, the laboring men and their families, to whom Religion would not only carry Spiritual consolation, but would tend to raise and redeem them, as a class, from the degradation and social thraldom which it has come to be the opinion among us that they suffer agreeably to an ordinance of God. I do not believe this; I hope I never shall believe it. If Christianity has a mission on earth, it is to raise and bless the Poor. is God-like labor, and worthy of the followers of Christ.

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A Church by moral suasion, but by no other means, ought to repress that growing, ever-thriving Sensuality—the natural offspring of Selfishness, which is the basis and root of all degradation, and poverty, and squalid wretchedness, and all the wrong and moral evil which environ us on every side; and to cultivate and cherish that Love—the natural offspring of Education and Spiritual development, which would in the process of time exterminate these giant evils, and establish righteousness and the kingdom of God.

A Church true to these principles, is the true Parliament; the true Magistrate; the true Policeman; the true guide in all things; the truest friend of Humanity; the only representative on earth of God. What the Church of England should have been, the Church of the Future-if it prove worthy of the name of a Church-must be!

It is clear that such a Church must have an all-beneficent God as the object of its adoration; a belief in immortality for its hope; and for its earthly basis, that Reason which commends itself to every man's conscience, and is holy "in the sight of God." For Doctrines, such a church will take its stand on the divine principles enunciated in Christ's Sermon on the Mount. It must seek to be the "light of the world" by addressing itself to the universal feelings, and wants, and yearnings, and inner nature of all humanity. It must be a "city set on a hill that cannot be hid." It is not to 66 destroy the Law or the Prophets," but to "fulfil" the one, and bring about the sublime

predictions of the other. It is not to preach "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth;" but must preach the work of Righteousness, and obtain all its conquests over evil and wrong, by Love. It is not to "love its brethren only," but to love all men and labor unceasingly to do them good. It must not be a pious-looking sham, but a truly pious reality.

It must eschew the sandy foundation of Fable, and Fancy, and ever-shifting Opinion, and build its Temple on the Rock of uncontradictable Truth; that when the rains of Error descend, and the floods of Imposture come, and the whirlwinds of Falsehood beat upon it, it might stand-firmly as the Rock which bears it. Its Religion must be Love to God, and Love to all humanity. It must be the Church of those who have no Church: it must be the friend of the friendless; the support of the weak; it must aim to be the Church of the People. Justice must be its watchword; and the inscription on its banner-Love.

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My dear Friends, to me it seems that the Church of the Future-spring up where it will, or however named—should collect the Pariahs of Society into its bosom as its first care.

I have already intimated that it should, in my opinion, proclaim a Religion which has long gone out of fashion—a Religion which has Reason for its basis; brotherly love, and equal jus_ tice in all things—on earth as in heaven-for its temporal aim ; "the stone which the builders rejected" for the chief one of its Temple; a God of perfect Justice and Goodness and Truth, for its daily and hourly worship; that it must be a Church of refuge for the Infidel-a cosmopolitan communion—an Educated working Church, for an Educated working world-in which there is honor for its elders,-a rational discipline for the young a means of Salvation (without let or hindrance) for all. I would have a Church, then, which should deserve to be National, a Religion which none but the utterly selfish, and those who profess to pride themselves upon being irrational, could discountenance or reject—a church for all, but, in the first instance, more especially for the Poor who have no

church, and thousands upon thousands of them no education, no God!-Edward N. Dennys, London.

GOD'S VOICE NEARER THAN THE BOOK.

It is perhaps God's will that we should be taught, in this our day, among other precious lessons, not to build up our faith upon a book, though it be the Bible itself; but to realize more fully the blessedness of knowing that He himself, the living God, our Father and Friend, is nearer and closer to us than any book can be; that his voice within the heart may be heard continually by the obedient child that listens for it; and that that should be our Teacher and Guide in the path of duty, which is the path of life, when all other helpers-even the words of the best of books-may fail us.-F. W. Colenso.

TOLERATION, AND STUDY OF the Bible.

At the Reformation it might have seemed at first as if the study of theology were about to return. But in reality an entirely new lesson commenced; the lesson of toleration, the very opposite of dogmatism. It implies in reality a confession that there are insoluble problems upon which even Revelation throws but little light. Its tendency is to modify the early dogmatism, by substituting the spirit for the letter, and practical religion for precise definitions of truth. This lesson is certainly not yet fully learnt. Our toleration is at present too often timid, too often rash, sometimes sacrificing valuable religious elements, sometimes fearing its own plainest conclusions. Yet there can be no question that it is gaining on the minds of all educated men, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, and is passing from them to be the common property of educated and uneducated alike. There are occasions when the spiritual anarchy which has necessarily followed the Reformation, threatens for a moment to bring back some temporary bondage, like the Roman Cath

olic system. But on the whole the steady progress or toleration is unmistakable. The mature mind of our race is beginning to modify and soften the hardness and severity of the principles which its early manhood had elevated into immutable statements of truth.

Men are beginning to take a wider view than they did. Physical science, researches into history, a more thorough knowledge of the world they inhabit, have enlarged our philosophy beyond the limits which bounded that of the Church of our Fathers. And all these have an influence, whether we will or no, on our determinations of religious truth. There are found to be more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in the patristic theology. God's creation is a new book, to be read by the side of His revelation, and to be interpreted as coming from Him. We can acknowledge the great value of the forms in which the first ages of the Church defined the truth, and yet refuse to be bound by them; we can use them, and yet endeavor to go beyond them, just as they also went beyond the legacy which was left us by the Apostles.

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The strongest argument in favor of tolerating all opinions, is that our conviction of the truth of an opinion is worthless unless it has established itself in spite of the most strenuous resistance, and is still prepared to overcome the same resistance if necessary. Toleration itself is no exception to the universal law and those who must regret the slow progress by which it wins its way, may remember that this slowness makes the final victory the more certain and complete. Nor is that all. The toleration thus obtained is different in kind from what it otherwise would have been. It is not only stronger, it is richer and fuller. For the slowness of its progress gives time to disentangle from dogmatism the really valuable principles and sentiments which have been mixed up and contained in it, and to unite toleration, not with indifference and worldliness, but with spiritual truth and religiousness of life.

Even the perverted use of the Bible has therefore not been