I think may by us be well hoped for, even though they know not Christ, because, not knowing him, they have yet been serving him. If the animate and inanimate creation, devoid of reason, shall receive their share in the redemption because they have testified in their irrational way to the coming Redeemer, why much more should not likewise those rational creatures, who have, by well fulfilling the law of their being, and standing fast to the truth of things, have their reward in the same redemption? But, to return.

I believe, in like manner, that the relation between master and servant doth in like manner shadow forth the lordship of Christ over the creatures. For, taking this relationship in its general aspect, and not as it is in those countries where Christianity hath redeemed it; take the master and proprietor of a large household, who have been bought with his money-for example, Abraham-and what have you but a multitude of souls brought into subjection unto one soul, notwithstanding their natural liberty and equality? He hath power over them to life and death; they eat of his bread; their labour is his, their gains are his all that are born in the house are his. At such a picture but not so a wise

infidelity writhes in rage; reflecting man, who hath reverence for the ordinance of God; not so an enlightened Christian, who can study and understand the typical character of all things. Our evangelical Chris

tians do take as great offence at this as the infidels themselves, but it is their ignorance which I am now seeking to enlighten. I say, then, that such a family and household-in which are vessels to honour and vessels to dishonour, some standing in the favour of their master and some obnoxious to his punishment, elect ones and reprobate ones, some adopted into sonship, some freed men, and some bondsmen under the lash-is the type, the standing type, over all the world, of Christ, the Lord both of the election and the reprobation, having bought them all with the price of his own precious blood, and nourishing them all with his own bountiful providence; yet not hindered by this generosity from making distinctions, and adopting some into the liberty of sons, leaving others under the bondage of slaves. And this, which is the true interpretation of the mystery of Divine Providence in so ordering things, is likewise at once the guide and the comfort of those souls which in such inequality are stationed; teaching one who is a master that there is no iniquity in having many servants, or even slaves, under him, and that it would be altogether an error for him at once to set about emancipating them; that such a feeling is not true benevolence, but insurrectionary wilfulness, the same which makes our Universalists dissatisfied that Christ should have under him both elect and reprobate persons. This was what the infidels of France were guilty of at

the Revolution; and, like every great practical falsehood, it led to ruin and dismay. On the other hand, one who is called to be a slave will be exceedingly comforted by the reflection that he is not thereby dishonoured of God or Christ, but brought into the closer fellowship of Christ's condition, who took upon himself the form of a slave: that he is not precluded thereby from rising into the highest honour with God; but, on the other hand, is in the way to that preferment; seeing Christ, for taking upon himself the form of a servant, and enduring the cross therein, has received a Name above every name. So the soul that is called into the condition of a slave, and put to the torture there, ought to look upon itself as brought most near to Christ, and in the way of the highest exaltation, even as the Apostle Peter teacheth us in his first Epistle. Ah! how, for want of light in these matters, doth society groan, and its wickedness abound! If thus servitude were interpreted, how comforted, how joyful, would servitude be! If thus lordship were interpreted, how careful, how observant, how discriminative, how patriarchal would lordship be! But as things now stand in the church, with ministers-and I speak particularly of Dissenting ministers in this remark-with ministers who, instead of thus interpreting servitude as a great ordinance of God for preaching unto the church subjection unto Christ, do speak of it as a condition precluding or pre

venting men altogether from being Christians; who, in handling the slave question, do handle it rather as French republicans than as Christian ministers-whom I have heard myself frequently say, how can they be Christians so long as they be slaves?-I say, while this state of profound ignorance and rebellious feeling exists among us, what can we expect, but that such a ministry will work more and more to the dissolution of all the bands of social life, which the Christian religion hath established upon better promises, and not dissolved; that they will hasten the bringing in of that liberal or dissolute spirit, which is now wrestling hard for the sanctuary and the throne?

It is from the same Divine source that the providence of God in respect of kingdoms receiveth its justification, as in respect of families; and it is by looking at the most arbitrary and absolute governments in the light of natural predictions and representations of the future kingdom of Christ, that a wise and holy man obtaineth for himself comfort, in the midst of all the tyranny and oppression which they have inflicted. These stern ordinances of Providence are all brought into subjection unto Christ. As the infirmities and sinfulness of flesh did only prove his righteousness the more triumphantly, as death and corruption did only shew the life and immortality that was in him the more conspicuously, and all other the evil conditions of fallen man did only serve to dis

play the grace and love of Divinity, and to distinguish the God-man from every other man; so, say I, that the ordinances of law and government and kingly power, notwithstanding the arbitrariness and injustice with which they have been most frequently administered, do only bring out more clearly the occasion for righteous judgment and lordship, while they are overruled in some sort to shadow forth the very form and feature thereof. I do not here undertake to discourse of the kingdom of David and of Solomon, as it was written by Samuel in a book, and laid up before the Lord-which is the true type and resemblance of that kingdom which Messiah is to constitute over the Jewish people, and, through them, over the whole earth-because this properly belongeth to the head of Revelation, concerning which I do not at present entreat; but with respect to the universal empires of Babylon, and Persia, and Greeceespecially of the first under Nebuchadnezzar, which hath been, as it were, the model of universal empire ever since, and the continual excitement of that up-stirring ambition in the breasts of men-I believe, that, though Satan did reap his harvest from these ambitious undertakings, God did overrule the enemy, and restrain him unto the manifestation of the one kingdom which the one nation under the One King is yet hereafter to hold. And on this account he hath brought that one nation into subjection and cruel bondage under all these