means of its progress, what man has a right to demand of it, and what it in return has a right to exact of him.

Allow, however, that the perfection of the individual is the sole object of Christianity, this subject can never, to any considerable extent, be obtained without the perfection of society. Man has his social side, social faculties, duties, rights, and interests. Leave out these, and his character will want symmetry, fail in completeness. Perfect every individual, and undoubtedly you would perfect society; but it is necessary that the perfection of both be carried along together. Out of society, in a cave or cloister, a part of man's nature must remain undeveloped, or be developed but to wither and die. Man can live and grow only in society. His growth effects a growth of society, and that growth of society reacts upon him and effects a new growth. But, in some states of society, there must be a social growth before there can be, — in relation to a part of the community, an individual growth. Many individuals may occupy a position in the social state that precludes the possibility of the growth of any part, except the animal part, of their nature. These individuals never compose the whole of any community, but their number may be great. Of themselves they cannot rise. The man within them cannot germinate and spring up and expand into beauty or ripen into moral worth, unless watered and cherished by those who occupy a more favorable position. Society bears them down, tramples them in the dust; and may not the clergy urge their claims, and urge them even in loud and earnest tones? May they not point to the imperfections of that social state, where multitudes of human beings, endowed with a noble nature, are by the action of causes which exceed their energy or power to control, doomed to live and die mere animals. And in pointing out these imperfections, may they not direct attention to the discovery and application of a remedy? If they may not, how can they labor successfully for the perfection of all the individuals composing a community?

But it may be objected to this, that it would carry the clergy from the actual to the possible, from what is to what ought to be. We hope it would. The church from its beginning has been strangely inconsistent. In relation to the individual it has always been going from the actual to the possible, from what is to what should be. It never tells the sinner his actual condition must be preserved, that he must indulge in no vision

ary schemes of improvement, that innovations are dangerous, and that it is safest not to depart from the old landmarks. But it always attempts to make him discontented, and feel that his condition is most miserable. And it presents him, too, visions of a better state, and urges him by motives attractive as heaven, and terrible as hell, to gain it. In relation to society all this is changed. Here the actual is approved, and departure from it condemned. 66 Undoubtedly, indirectly, by softening the manners, exalting the sentiments, decrying or abolishing many barbarous practices, the church has powerfully contributed to the improvement of man's social condition."* But directly it has done nothing. It has done worse than nothing. It has generally given its aid to despotism, lent its spiritual ægis to shelter the civil tyrant in his war against the progress of society. Why this difference? In the most favored parts of the world society is imperfect, and its imperfections must in the eyes of a just God excuse many of the imperfections of individuals: why not then labor to perfect it? What, indeed, is the great mission of life, but to go from the imperfect to the perfect? And can it be less Christian to go from the imperfect to the perfect in relation to society, than it is in relation to the individual?

It may be alleged, that, should the clergy bring out the social element and labor for the perfection of society, they would soon lose themselves in a land of shadows, and merely amuse the people with dreams. Be it so, then. Even dreams are sometimes from God. Those visions of something better than what is, which are for ever coming to the minds and the hearts of the gifted and the good, are our pledges of a higher destiny. They familiarize us with loftier excellence, enchant us with a beauty superior to that of earth, and quicken within us the power to do and to endure every thing to realize them. They may never be realized. It may be best that they should not. But the soul's struggles to realize them always make us stronger and better. We envy no one who has them not.

No one ever attained to eminence who did not see mountains rising far above the highest he could reach. There flit before the "mind's eye" of the greatest masters in painting and sculpture, forms of beauty which infinitely surpass their skill to transfer to the canvass or the marble. The immortal sons of

*See on the influence of the Church, Guizot's "Moderne Civilisation en Europe. Leçon vi." Paris: 1828.

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3D S. VOL. II. NO. II.

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song have visions of intellectual greatness and moral worth, of which even their happiest numbers can give us but a faint conception. Yet it is to their daily and nightly communing with these beings of the ideal, to their continual efforts to seize and embody them, that they are indebted for the excellence they attain. It is, in fact, to the soul's power to go off from the actual to the possible, to conceive something greater and better than what is, that we are indebted for all our improvements. The soul goes before the body. It seizes upon heaven while its clog of clay drags upon the earth. well that it is so. It is the condition of all progress. soul then be ever breaking away from the present, seeking a serener heaven, a warmer sun, and greener fields in the future; it is but its effort to return to God, of whom it carries with it, wherever it goes, an inward sentiment and an undying love.

It is

Let the

Of course we would not lose sight of the practicable. But where does the practicable end? Till the limits of thought be discovered, and the depths of love be sounded, no one can tell. Man has within him powers which have slept from creation; and who is prepared to say what he may not achieve, when they shall be once awakened and put forth in all their energy? Certainly we would not lose ourselves in the ideal, nor indeed do we think there is much danger of doing it in this materializing age. There may be epochs when men are too much engaged in building castles in the air, and in peopling them with the creatures of their own imagination. But ours is not one. We are too much engrossed with the outward, the tangible, the material, to be in much danger of losing ourselves in the ideal. We say, then, let the clergy bring out the social element of Christianity, and direct their attention, and that of their congregations, to the work of perfecting society. Let them take generous views of what society ought to be, and of what it may be. And if they turn out to be dreamers, let them not lose their self-respect. We would rather dream with Plato, than reason with Hobbes and Machiavelli.

We trust we shall not be misinterpreted. We are not urging governments to attempt to realize the crude projects of mere day-dreamers. We are among those who are willing that government should move "slowly and surely," never departing from a settled line of policy without urgent and satisfactory reasons. We are not now speaking of the duty of governments, but of the clergy as educators of the people. In

the education they give, we would have the clergy connect the present with the future. We would have them educate the people with special reference to progress both in the individual and in society. We would have them preach the progress of humanity and of society, progress in the spiritual and in the material order, turn all minds and hearts towards it, convince them of its practicability, and kindle a deep and becoming enthusiasm to effect it.

If, however, we may be our own interpreters, we would not have progress preached to the detriment of order. We yield to none in our love of order. Order is heaven's law. But order, except in a very incomplete sense, is nowhere as yet attained. Disorder now reigns in the individual and in the social state; and this is the reason why we desire progress, which, if it be progress and not retrogression, is only a continued approach to order, a continued effort of man and society to place themselves in harmony with the universal order which is God. Nor would we have progress so preached as to arouse angry feelings. We want no indignation, no condemnation. Jesus Christ came not to condemn the world, but to save it. The Christian ministry can follow no example but his. It will indulge no bad feelings itself, and it will avoid as much as possible the arousing of any in others. Love is the dominant principle of all good education, whether for old or young; and love is the lever with which the clergy must raise man and society to their destiny.

*

In contending that the clergy should labor more directly for the melioration of society, than they have hitherto done, we by no means forget the excuse, if not the justification, of their past conduct. It is easy to perceive the reason why this world has entered so little into their instructions. Christianity was like "leaven" deposited in the mighty mass of religious notions generated by the Grecian and Oriental worlds. For a time it must be concealed, and seem lost; and it was only after ages of silent and secret working, that it could succeed in leavening the "whole lump." Those religious notions, which Greece and the East had given the world, must therefore for a long time be predominant; and the history of the Church proves that they did reign for a long time, and that some of

*

See "

Mélanges Philosophiques, par Théodore Jouffroy." Paris: 1833. Article, "Du Bien et du Mal."

them have been very powerful down to our own times. The Grecian world was indeed human, material, social. But its religion was from the East, from Egypt and India, and there all is mysticism. Not all, perhaps, but mysticism predominates there, gives its character and direction to men's thoughts, feelings, and pursuits. From them mysticism passed into the Church, sometimes reigned, or nearly reigned in it, and at all times tinged its doctrines and exerted an influence over its practice.

Now what is the view which mysticism gives us of this life, of this world? In the eyes of the mystics, this world is not worth a thought or a wish. The earth is a "wretched land," unable to "yield us any supply." Sublunary bliss is impossible. Man sees around him only the spectacle of sin and misery. His life is a continual warfare. He obtains not a morsel of bread, not a covering for his body, without a war with matter. Nothing is obtained without an effort, and all effort must end in fatigue, and generally in disappointment. Man's condition here is that of punishment. Every thing is opposed to his well-being. The body with its wants, society with its importunities, its petty ambitions, its vain pursuits, its friendships, its sorrows, its temptations, its vices and crimes, are for ever interposing between the soul and its good, rending it away from God, and compelling it to sigh and seek in vain for repose.

With this view of man's earthly mode of being, how could the thought of laboring for it find admittance? Life was death, and society the grave. We were not placed in this world to live, but to endure. It is not our home. We are strangers and sojourners here. We are pilgrims, seeking a city whose maker is God, as though God were not the maker of this as well as of all other worlds. Here all is toil and fatigue; and what would we have religion to be but a star of hope to guide us over "life's tremulous ocean," to the haven of everlasting rest, to our eternal home, where all our toils will be over, where there will be no more fatigue, where the soul may repose for ever beneath the sun-light of the Lord? What is life, what is the world, that they should detain us here? Scorn them, deny them, think only of heaven, only of gaining a blissful "mansion in the skies."

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This view of life, of this world, of the true object of pursuit, though it has never completely triumphed in the church, has always made the grand staple of its sermons, exhortations, prayers, and hymns. With this view, it would hardly seem a