In opposition to which, this passage declares, that the very design of God in election is to make us holy. In fact, in choosing us unto eternal life as the end, He has chosen us unto faith and holiness as the way that leads to it; as is elsewhere expressed by the Apostle-" God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth." (2 Thess. ii. 13.)

The expression" before him" shows that holiness is here spoken of as to its perfect consummation, as it refers to that future time when the redeemed shall stand before Christ, displaying that completeness of moral beauty which is indicated in the book of the Revelation by their being clothed in white robes. This phrase might also be explained in the sense of their being holy in His estimation. To be thus holy and without blame, is necessarily to be morally pure and spotless, and entirely free from the slightest blemish or taint of sin. We should ever look upon this state of moral perfection as the highest personal distinction that awaits us. We speak of glory and immortality, and the blessedness of a future life, as privileges, and so they are; but holiness is the greatest distinction that God can confer upon His creatures, for this is a resemblance to His own nature. And what a glorious privilege to be "holy as God is holy, to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect,"-to be "holy and without blame before Him," who chargeth His angels with folly, and in whose sight the very heavens are not clean!

(To be continued.)

THE FUTURE OF MEXICO, FROM A CHURCH POINT OF VIEW. Michel Chevalier's Mexique. Paris. 1863.

WHAT man has done, man may do ; and as, in the hands of an inferior race, the table land of Mexico became the seat of the most flourishing empire in the New World, we may certainly augur favourably of its future, when it once gets a settled government, and has at last a short breathing time from its many revolutions. There must be something genial in the soil and climate; and this adaptation of the country to man is no small thing to start with. Iceland could never be the home of a powerful nation; even the Norseman, with his vast energy, his wonderful power of adapting himself to different climes, has degenerated there. But "Mexico is a glorious climate-the unhealthy coastline excepted, for which future culture may do much to mitigate its unwholesomeness... when men shall have become more intent on subduing the earth, and less on subduing one another; -and it must have a glorious future before it."

"These new

lands have not yet done their work," says the philosopher who thinks he has the key to the earth's riddle in his own theory of final causes; but without insisting that the world must last until every country has had its turn, and set its mark on the page of history, we always feel that (humanly speaking) this dispensation would be incomplete, did things come to an end while so much of the vast western continents remains a blank. Mr. Bates, (in his Amazons,) speaking of the unsuspected delights of tropical climates, and how full the sense of life and enjoyment is for those with whom they do not disagree, hazards the opinion, that "that great race that is to be" will be an intertropical race, (preserved, we suppose, from the degeneracy which has befallen the Aryans in India,) occupying the great river basins of South America, and doubtless stretching north to Mexico. But to come back to sober realities. It was not likely Mexico would do much under Spain. Dependence (terribly different from the free genial relation of England and Australia, for instance) did not tend to bring out its resources. It was worked by the Spaniards solely for Spain's advantage. Dependence is like protection; it may suit the childhood of a state, but it never helps it in asserting a bold progressive manhood. And Spain was always a cruel stepmother, not an affectionate parent encouraging the spontaneous efforts of her dependencies, and guiding them tenderly and considerately. She did not even leave her colonies alone-treatment which some hold to be the next best thing to judicious guidance; while many, believing apparently that colonies come into the world full grown and fully developed, hold it to be far better than any guidance, however judicious. She fretted by continual interference, just where interference was sure to do harm. To take one instance in Mexico, where cotton is indigenous, and was manufactured in a variety of ways long before the arrival of the Spaniards, the old cotton trade still flourished Jate in the 17th century; the province of Puebla especially was full of factories; and a large quantity of goods was exported to Peru, which province sent out wine and other productions in exchange. Some persons, interested in putting a stop to this cotton trade, represented to the Court of Madrid that it gave the English and Dutch an opportunity of smuggling in Chinese stuffs; and so, instead of increasing the vigilance of its custom-house officers, the Spanish government limited the traffic between Mexico and Peru to two ships' cargoes a year (a cargo not to exceed 200,000 ducats in value). By and by only a certain quality of goods were admitted; and before long all trade between the two colonies was prohibited. No European country has been faultless in its colonial relations. Our own headstrong conduct lost us the United States; and the French Antilles have a sad tale to tell of "experiments in governing," each more ruinous than the one which preceded

it. But surely, if we have the merit of first throwing overboard the old restrictive system, the Spaniards can claim the honour of having been far more thorough protectionists than either we or the French ever thought of being. Take this instance of suicidal policy. Because the banana, with little labour, produces a larger amount of food than any other vegetable, they tried to prohibit its culture, "with the view of making the natives more hardworking." Many of their absurd restrictions were in this way enacted through regard for the welfare of the Indians. Thus, if the wine trade of Peru was ruined, and the vines through Mexico actually rooted up, it was done "because the drink was found too heady for the Indians,”—though there was a strong suspicion in many minds, that the desire of forcing a market for Spanish wines had at least as much to do with the whole policy as care for the native race.

There were only two ports in the whole country, Acapulco for the Eastern trade, Vera Cruz for Spain; and only two Spanish towns, Cadiz and Seville, were permitted to trade with Mexico. Once every three or four years a convoy, called "the fleet," sailed from Cadiz, carrying goods which had been previously sold to some dozen Mexican houses. When "the fleet" arrived, a grand fair was held at Xalapa, for every one was interested in the cargoes, seeing that native manufactures were almost entirely prohibited. Indeed, except what they made at home, and what they got by smuggling, which throve here as in every other Spanish dependency, all manufactured goods came from the mother country. On the other side, the trade to Europe was limited (so long as Spain held Mexico) to one ship yearly-" the galleon" of 1500 tons. "The commercial regulations," says M. Chevalier, "were framed and arranged in that worrying spirit which sets itself the impossible task of foreseeing everything; and which, stubbornly and ruinously consistent, ends by denying free-will to the governed." But Spain was not jealous of foreign traders only; no stranger was allowed to travel in the country. So late as when Humboldt wished to visit the South American provinces, he had to go to Aranjuez and get a special royal permit; and M. Lucas Alaman, a recent Mexican writer, regrets that the great German traveller was permitted to gather the materials for his "political essay on New Spain," inasmuch as his book helped to bring on the war of Independence "by giving the Mexicans an overweening idea of the riches of their country." It is surely a little premature for England and France to force upon China and Japan the so-called axiom, that no country has a right to cut itself off from the commonwealth of nations, when, till within a few years ago, one of the "European powers" showed as restrictive a spirit as the Prince of Nagato himself.

One great hindrance to the growth of the colony was the almost entire absence of any decent schools. Mr. Bates, in his Amazons, gives some amusing notices of the state of education in Brazil. In a school which he examined, they seemed still to be taught the old trivium, and nothing more. With childishly rudimentary notions of physics and geography they united a training in rhetoric and dialectics, which insured their fitness to become good lawyers at any rate. In Mexico things were much worse. The Jesuits had done a great deal to keep up the educational standard. M. Chevalier, though he is throughout anti-Popish, as becomes an ex-Saint-Simonian, and quondam pupil of the late père Enfantin, (indeed no recent French work shows the dark side of Popery more than does this, in a quiet philosophical way,) thinks the Jesuits "promoted the cause of civilization in Mexico," and that their suppression was an evil for Spanish America; "for," says he,

out here they would have confined themselves chiefly to missionary work, and have acted as admirable intermediaries between the native and the European." Here again our author agrees with Mr. Bates, who often passed the ruins of Jesuit mission villages, and says the Indians lost in these Fathers their best protectors, and the only men patient enough gradually to civilize them. One of the first acts, we may remark, of the Congress of Independence, sitting in 1813, was to readmit the Jesuits, "that Christian instruction may be secured to the youth, and that zealous missionaries may be provided for California and the northern frontier." When Charles III., in 1767, abolished the Jesuits, he replaced their seminaries by schools; but they were very poor ones. Their literature too must have been limited, when every book, besides running the gauntlet of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, and being further examined by the Inquisition, had also to pass the Council of the Indies. Hence books on America were very rare. The Council disliked publicity; and " Clavigero, a harmless ecclesiastic, had to get his history of Mexico translated into Italian, and published in Italy." The Indians were worse off. If the tales about them are true, they had a very fair national system of education when the Spaniards came. The nobles, indeed, were admirably taught all the learning of their time. But the Spanish plan was to depress these nobles as far as possible: hence the foundation of native colleges, to replace those about which Bernal Diaz tells us, was violently opposed by the Government; and the descendants of the caciques, deprived of any interest in life, forced each to live within the circle of his own village, were permitted, or rather encouraged, to sink to the lowest level of the native population. All the teaching they got was a little catechizing from the priest. Still, dark as they were in Mexico, they saw some sparks from the mighty fire which had burst out in our British Colonies.

After that, the Government (instead of taking the good advice which one of the viceroys gave, and settling the Spanish provinces as monarchies under young Spanish princes) grew fiercer and more restrictive. They actually put in irons a man who received a French newspaper in the way of general business. The Indians were in fact dealt with and managed like children; the very laws for their protection being adroitly turned against them. The creole population was systematically kept down, all high offices being reserved for Spaniards born; of the nine bishoprics, all but one were held by Spaniards at the time of the war of Independence. These Spaniards clung together; and it was policy of the home government to keep the two classes of whites separate in feelings and interests. Such a population was naturally ripe for revolt. Spain was not taken unawares; more than one viceroy had memorialized government on the dangerous and unsatisfactory state of things; but Spain under Ferdinand VII. was not likely to mend matters; and the liberal party, full of exaggerated notions of their country's wealth, and the ease with which it would right itself financially, raised their standard in 1810. Iturrigaray, the last viceroy, had been deposed by the Spanish party, on a charge of heresy, but really because he was a friend to progress; and the Spanish-born viceroy had behaved so insolently as to make an appeal to arms absolutely indispensable.

We do not mean to go through the events of the insurrectionary war. It is remarkable for the number of priests who were leaders on the popular side. Hidalgo, who headed the first outbreak, Matamoros, Morelos, and several more, forsook their parishes, to fight the battles for freedom. The cruelties on both sides were frightful, though in this the Spanish had rather the superiority. At last independence is won, not by the sword, for the tide turns strongly against the insurgents; but by the conversion of a creole, Iturbide, who sees that the minds of his countrymen are for liberty, though their arms cannot conquer it. Iturbide proclaims independence, and staightway brings every one over to his views. He makes himself Emperor into the bargain, and holds the office till the rise of Santa Anna, in 1829. M. Chevalier's justification of Santa Anna is one of the weakest parts of the book. The simple facts, that Mexico lost during Santa Anna's time more than half of her land to the United States, and that she became bankrupt and impoverished, whereas under Spain she had always had a large surplus revenue, are enough to condemn his administration. The wretched state of the country, and the certainty that the United States would sooner or later swallow up the rest of it, led to the French expedition. France went, as M. Chevalier is at great pains to prove, not for selfish ends,