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stances of

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authority of Mosaic institutions, the cherished grounds of Jewish supremacy in the Church, made it the policy of polemical Judaism to undermine his influence, even by outbidding him in what they thought his advantage over them—viz., freeing religion from burdensome conditions. To have the lead of the new faith, evidently rising to dominant influence in the communities of the empire, and to keep in view thus the means of perhaps accomplishing the never-abandoned national hope of supremacy, was a necessity that overruled all other considerations. Accordingly, we find the Judaising teachers, by the time of the later Epistles, strangely changed in their teaching from advocating bodily austerity-the extreme development of the restraint on meats and drinks and days-and become the leaders in a libertine interpretation of "the liberty of Christ," representing it as freedom from all law, social and moral. By this doctrine, so well adapted to lay hold on the originally more corrupt Greek, Roman, and Asiatic Christians, they were evidently succeeding in leading Christian communities on to seditious notions. Hence the strong inculcation which we find in the later Epistles of the duties of social subordination, "obedience to the powers that be," as "ordained of God," and the marked change to stern teaching of the moral law in place of the early proclamations of freedom from the law of ceremonies. (See Stanley's Apostolic Age.')

18. To understand well the value of the leading creeds of Councils the Church as conclusions come to at famous assemblies of producing the eminent men of their times, and to appreciate the weight creeds. of that authority as a proper guide of opinion, would need extensive historical matter of illustration of the same kind; exhibiting the peculiarities, mental, moral, political, &c., of the leading persons in those councils-the political difficulties of the times, and the state of morals-the particular history of the deciding council-the facility of comprehending each other's language, and sympathising with each other's sentiments, which existed-and the private interests which were moving influences in the plan or the conduct of the discussion. The first great council-that of Nice-is itself a large study of this kind. Many later councils have the strongest likeness to the political

parliaments or states-general of modern days, for the kind of moving causes which they recognised or concealed.

Social Conditions to Faith.

19. Among the things which influence an individual's habits Freedom of spirit. of thinking upon the essentially emotional subjects of religious faith, are included, besides moral habits affecting his willingness to think justly or at all of these things, and his natural peculiarities, spiritual or physical, affecting his capability or propensity in dealing with them, the peculiarities of his social condition, which may either confine the range of his religious thoughts, or constrain them to take some special direction. A condition needful to faith, to affectionate universally-sanctifying thinking on the things of Christ, is accordingly freedom of spirit—freedom from the oppressive confinement of overbearing society, and freedom from too great trial of heart.

the 18th

20. The state of intellectual society in France which was France in produced by the "philosophers" of Louis XV.'s time, exer- century. cised such a social oppression upon all conversation respecting questions of revealed religion, that few had the courage to talk anything but scepticism on the subject. Some in the leading ranks of society in France are understood to have practised Christian worship in such secrecy as idolators in Israel occasionally had to keep. Where the whole talk of educated persons upon the subject which cannot be extruded from mankind's conversation, was matter-of-course scepticism enlivened by universally appreciated sallies of wit against "the old superstition," faith must have become nearly an impossibility to the many. That habitual spontaneous arising in the mind of emotional life - controlling thoughts upon the facts and assurances communicated in the Bible was prevented, by the mind being already filled with borrowed thoughts and sayings, with which the philosophical part of society was perpetually flooding the public ear as the only true wisdom. To break through the confinement of such an overbearing weight of authority, constantly imposing itself and zealously

circulating its representations, would have needed a degree of independence, or rather originality and courage of thinking, which is very uncommon, and was at that time shown by but a few thinkers in Europe. Hume's learning days fell in the brightness of that misleading light; and it is not unreasonable to connect with that the early bent of his intellect. He did not retain in maturer life all his first philosophical notions, nor wish to propagate his peculiar theories as the philosophers did. Even his clerical contemporaries were at least so far kept down by the dominant voice of scepticism; and if some of them even joined in the light talk of his school, all were less outspoken on behalf of what they believed the truth than a state of society, in which truth has the popular side, would think natural. Perhaps the infidel school of the Encyclopædists arose out of the same want of freedom to think which it afterwards imposed upon the thinking world. They had been educated in the schools of the Jesuits, in which their thoughts were confined to reason always to a dictated result; while the training in reasoning which they received, of course exercised them in the desire to have all freedom, and induced as well as prepared them to throw off confining guidance; and they, as is common, sought their first freedom in bounding away into the region of theories antagonistic to that in which they had been imprisoned.

Perverts to 21. Perhaps we might fairly connect with the same social Romanism. repression of free thought on religious things many of the

cases of what are called perversion to the Church of Rome which have occurred in the higher classes of English society. Most of the "converts" in that rank from Protestantism have been females. How many of them were individuals who from early life had been as much taken possession of, their thoughts, sentiments, and anticipations as much engulfed in a closely-confining artificial life of gaiety first, and family interests afterwards—from which religious reading, and perhaps all but frivolous or enervating reading and knowledge of the ways of ambitious life, was absent-as the upper French society a century earlier was held in possession, and its thinking imprisoned by the philosophers? To not a few of them it is

likely their first thoughts on Christianity, causing them any emotion-that is, their first thoughts of faith-were experienced in the new excitements they had removed into, and they were not perverts from any faith, never having had freedom, or enough of it, or strength of mind to form a faith, a habit of religious thinking for themselves.

ment of

22. Within the range of Christian profession, and especially Sectarian and politiwhere greatest diversity of profession might be assumed as cal confineindicating greatest freedom of thought, the same repression of thought. thought by dominant social influences produces an imitative or dictated faith as little respectable as the imposed scepticism of the last century. In times of party excitement, few have ever had freedom to think except within the limits and even the very form adopted by their section-a thinking mostly by book, hardly knowing diversity of expression. Of course, it is no merely religious disability, being only part of the general law of social control and confinement, which produces the phenomenon, exhibited by all political parties, that all facts of a political kind present themselves naturally in the importance and logical connection which suit the particular opinions of the thinker's party. A religious example of social repression of thought, and of the harm done by it to the comfort of faith, is supplied by the history of artificial codes of morals. The practice of certain customs or abstinences as essential to a religious character, is a frequently recurring peculiarity of religious sects or coteries. Widely, in America, membership in a temperance society is the essential and sufficient stamp of religious worth. To question the sinfulness of dancing, reading a novel, or seeing a play, would offend or perhaps shock not a few religious teachers in the Church or in the family in our own country. Preceptive restrictions of this kind imposed on the young, with the argument of authority alone, have the effect afterwards of obstructing the comfort of faith's thoughts, when seeking to enjoy themselves in the spiritual largeness and freedom of the Saviour's gladsome service of all holiness, in the same way as prejudices of other kinds, grown part of personal nature, render truth when it is perceived less comfortable, though they may not

Heathen society.

Technical. education.

suffice to exclude it. As these peculiar artificial points of conduct have no general, though sometimes a personal, connection with the spirit of Christ's service, advancing experience of His service, and of personal requirements of discipline, rejects the feeling of their importance; but yet, long habit of reverencing them, combined, perhaps, with the religious feeling of filial loyalty to the teacher, makes the conscience uneasy in not giving obedience to them—and in the mental contest they have a hardening effect, not designed by those who taught them. They are related to the "letter which killeth," not to the spirit which giveth life. Sometimes they have had a "killing" effect on Godward thinking; for it is this kind of moral confinement-the "inventions" of men's welldesigned but ill-executing zeal, and not the divine dictations of preceptive morality that produces those rules of "too strict upbringing," emancipation from which proves so often a fatal crisis in life.

23. Social confinement of thought is the main hindrance to the conversion of highly civilised heathen peoples. Actively protecting the lifelong habits of thought from the aggressive influence of Christian truth, society all but prevents conversion in adults; and both the growth of personal habits of heathen religious and moral thought has to be forestalled, and the social pressure of those habits to be evaded, by taking the young into Christian homes to be trained up in the way in which they should go. Such is the rule of conversion in India.

24. An education which has confined the perceptive and appreciative faculties to one class of objects must confine and may reduce the power of appreciative thought in essentially different things. Minds developed closely on the study of solely physical cause and effect, such as most of the clever mechanic class in England, and not a few medical men who have had a purely technical education, are said to be materialistic in their turn of thought. Even the faculty of being charmed by pictures and music is lost by most of our labouring population in the same way-capacity being starved by diversion of the thoughts to perfectly different occupation.