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This is no vain boast in behalf of what we hold to be the present form of Christianity. The fact itself is a matter of history, and its causes easily explained. If a graduated scale could be constructed, showing the degrees in which the national intelligence and character have been visibly affected by the direct influence of religion on the masses of the people, and the evils of social inequality thereby corrected, there can be no doubt that while the weakest influence of this kind would be found to have proceeded from the Romish and oriental forms of Christianity, or from the most diluted systems of Socinian or deistical neology, where these have been allowed to act, not merely on the educated classes, or on very small communities, but on a large extent of population, the highest measures of the same effect must be ascribed to what its enemies delight to brand as Calvinism, even where it has been mingled and diluted, as in Holland or New England, and the highest of all, precisely where its purity and vigour have been least abated, as in Scotland.

If a direct comparison is wanted, let it be furnished by the Scotch and Irish peasantry-the two most signal instances in history of whole nations brought almost entirely under the control of certain systems of belief and certain spiritual leaders, yet, how different the moral, intellectual, and social fruits of these contiguous experiments! The very evils which in one case have almost disappeared from the surface, if not from the interior of society, are even now menacing the other with terrific revolution. I have said too that the cause of this notorious difference is easily

assigned, I mean a cause residing in the very nature of the several systems. It is the combination of the doctrines of individual responsibility and private judgment with those of human corruption and gratuitous salvation, that has produced the grand elixir to which Scotland owes her healthful social state; and as the lower degrees of the same influence are found to correspond to less degrees of purity and reform in the maintenance of these same doctrines, it may safely be affirmed, as a lesson even of experience, that this system of belief is demonstrably the best adapted to exert a purifying, healing influence on human society, and thereby to correct the evils flowing from the unavoidable diversities and outward situation and degrees of intellectual improvement, or, in other words, that it affords the safest and the best ground upon which "the rich and poor" may "meet together" and acknowledge that "the Lord is the maker of them all."

If these views be correct, they throw a welcome light on a subject of great practical importance-I mean the necessity of popular religious education, not only as a means of personal improvement and salvation, but also as the grand corrective and perhaps the sovereign cure of the disorders which now prey upon society and "eat as doth a canker." It is not enough to believe that religious knowledge is a good thing for religious purposes, and that it even may supply the want of other knowledge and of general cultivation, where these last are unattainable. We are bound to believe, because experience leaves no room to doubt, that religious education has a social and a

secular as well as an exclusively religious use; and that it is not merely a good thing, but the good thing, the very thing, the only thing, by which the masses of mankind can be extensively and healthfully af fected, so that if, with reference to them, we were allowed to choose between a general intellectual refinement and complete religious training, considered simply as two rival means of social improvement and conciliation, we should still be bound to choose the latter, and to send it rolling as a mighty flood throughout the earth" for the healing of the nations."

The other point which these considerations serve to set in a clear light, is the importance of the ministerial office, in its relation to society at large, as the administrator of this reconciling, elevating, purifying system. It has been said of the English clergy, that they belong to all ranks in society, enjoying free access to each, without thereby forfeiting the confidence of any. Of ministers, even among us, the same thing may be said, or rather, that they properly belong to no class, because their authority and influence are not dependent upon human usages or institutions, but on God's appointment and God's blessing. Let those who seek the office bear in mind, then, that, in more than one sense, they are called or will be called to dispense "the word of reconciliation," first, by reconciling men to God, and then by reconciling man to man-healing the breaches and divisions of society, and rendering the evils which they generate, as few and harmless as they can. This noble end is not to be promoted by a partial and exclusive self-devotion, either to the higher or the low

er ranks, by making common cause, as some do, either with the rich against the poor or with the poor against the rich, but by endeavouring to bring the truth and power of God to bear upon the adverse parties with a moderating, elevating, and uniting influence, and thus preparing all, by mutual forbearance and assimilation, for that better country and those better times when these invidious distinctions shall no longer be remembered, but "the rich and poor" shall finally and forever meet together in the presence of that God who " is the maker of them all."

XIII.

ROMANS 11, 22.-Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God; on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness; otherwise, thou also shalt be cut off.

THERE is something sublime in the constancy of nature. We derive thence our strongest impressions of stability and uniformity. This association has become proverbial in many languages. It is also recognized in Scripture, and in the dialect of common life. But there is another side to this grand picture. The changes of nature are sublime too. Some of these are rare and even recondite. Such as occultations and eclipses. Some are familiar to men in certain situations. Such are the ebb and flow of tides; still more the changes in the surface of the ocean. When calm, it seems immovable; when roused, incapable of rest. Thus it furnishes the most vivid types of life and death. He who sees it in both states, might almost question the identity of the object. But these sights multitudes have never seen. There are other instances of change more universal. Who has not seen the cloudless sky? Who has not seen it overcast? What contrast can be more complete than that between a bright and lowering day? What more un

VOL. I.—11*

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