essentially implies a power in the human mind to act contrary to right, contrary therefore to the Divine mind. Let those who choose lay down that a Wise and Good God may indeed create irrational beasts, but never ought to create a rational being capable of Virtue, and therefore also capable of Vice. But if any persons admit that to create the human race was consistent with glorious Godhead, they ought to see how new a problem at once arises in the government of the world. From the uncontrolled passions and perverted minds of men the most cruel sufferings both to men and beasts have arisen, and still arise; besides, mental agonies most terrible are complicated with it. From these considerations proceed to gentle, loving, and thoughtful natures the most painful doubts concerning Divine Government. primitive expectation of piety was (and perhaps the childish claim still is), that God should interpose, and not permit human folly and tyranny to run to such awful lengths. The oppression is sometimes so peculiar and so lasting, that we can neither wonder nor censure if the sufferers, like Cassy in Mrs. Beecher Stowe's noble epic, cry out, "How can there be any God at all, when these things are permitted?" Mr. J. S. Mill somewhere wrote, that if there be a Divine rule in this world, yet at least things go on quite as badly as if there were no Divine Rule; and indisputable facts give great plausibility to this remark, though we cannot justify it without the enormous concession that the world could go on at all without a God. Nevertheless, here is the true nucleus of difficulty: that human rule, even when bad from every point of view, is allowed to endure and entail lasting evils, moral as well as physical. Ancient Hebrew Psalmists and Moralists confessed that the facts startled and vehemently distressed them. They had supposed that Divine Rule would be supernatural, and then found, like Mr. Mill, only what was natural. The pious have slowly and reluctantly learned that, no more to save a nation from misgovernment than to save a single patient from unwise physicians, does the Divine Wisdom break through any of its natural laws, but uses for its agencies only the human mind itself and the elements in which we live, so that the "carnal" (materialist) or non-religious mind easily fails to see the Divine Rule at all. History is too vast a field for any but the very few; and the explanations which a Bunsen might give, be they ever so wise, are not available to the mass of mankind; but these, at the same time, are happily without a taste of the bitterest dregs from the historical cup. Each of us, according to the extent of our

knowledge, suffers inward pangs from this cause, but finds some remedy in widening knowledge, especially in the conviction that ever since the ages of convulsion, which overthrew in Europe the whole fabric of civilization and knowledge, this Western world of which we know most has steadily worked out an improvement far more than commensurate with the wisdom and virtue of the ostensible rulers and movers either in State or Church.

Beneath the folly of man a deeper and wiser power seems to act, and constantly to carry events onward to a nobler future. Struggle and toil are fore-ordained; but without them there were no robustness of intellect nor of virtue. So too do these difficulties as to Providential Government serve to exercise our faith-a faith which is not arbitrary wilfulness, but is based on intuition or direct perception, convincing us that the Author of man's moral nature must certainly be far better, as well as greater, than man; and again, that the Supreme Mind, which is many ways discerned as acting in this world, does not leave it unregulated, and must have a sublime and harmonious purpose, the knowledge of which would call forth our wondering and devout praise.

And, forsooth, we are to be abashed by being told that faith is not homesprung in our own hearts, but is come to us traditionally, and was originally a silly fetish-worship! We avow that our faith is not new, but is transmitted from age to age-moreover, is improved in the transmission. And why? Because it is criticized, and thereby purified. The very fact shows that, though traditional, it is not the less heartborn and native within us. Of course, in its origin it had plentiful imperfection, and in all these respects its history closely resembles that of Science. Is Science not traditional? If our mathematical books were annihilated, could any genius, even that of a Newton, reproduce by its own force that which thousands of young men now so learn as to know for themselves? Does any Atheist flout these young men by saying that they believe the doctrines only because they have received them traditionally? No one could say this but one profoundly ignorant of Mathematics. So also none could say the like of devout piety but one who is an utter stranger to devotion, one who is talking of what he does not understand. But, again, does the Atheist revile our modern chemists by declaring that their science sprung out of Alchemy, with its many ridiculous beliefs, and its mixture of magic, necromancy, and the doctrine of genii! All of that might be called "fetish," but it does not discredit modern Chemistry. Rude and ignorant man makes his first essays

clumsily, whether in Art, in Science, or in Religion. We learn from our predecessors, yet we need not enslave ourselves to them; we are bound to criticize them in hope of improving on them. Thus we make knowledge our own, and strive to guide it into the path of science. To reproach us as followers of tradition and descendants of a Fetish creed is an imbecile attempt to rob us of the noble boast that Moral Theism is the faith towards which enlightened man everywhere tends; the faith which shall unite mankind in a blessed brotherhood, and sounds forth everywhere Glory to God and Good Will to man.

ON A FREE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

[1877.]

"God hath made us able ministers of the New Covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."-2 Cor. iii. 6 and 17.

I

READ the words of the Christian Apostle Paul with high respect, and believe them to express the general sentiment of Christians in the first age. Yet I am not about to panegyrize the first Christians in any such sense as to overlook their failings; nor could I make the writings of Paul a sacred letter without committing the very fault against which his words are a protest.

An old-established and hereditary religion may keep men's minds in bondage, and teach that submission to dogma is a virtue and an essential duty. Whether the dogmas rest on a sacred book, or on sacred officers and traditional authority, is only a secondary question. In either case, minds must have been trained from childhood to accept the book or the system as infallible, if the bondage is to be real. But a religion, which has to make its way by proselyting, cannot dispense with appealing to men's common sense and free judgment. Without this, at most, it might convert a few barbarians into the adoption of an outward ritual and submission to magical sacraments. If the preachers address men who are at all their equals in understanding, they will have to justify revolt against national priests and hereditary religion. They must be prepared to meet the imputation of turning the world upside down. Against those who cried, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians," it would have availed little to reply, "Greater is Jehovah of the Hebrews" or, "Greater is Jesus of Nazareth."

The assailant who claimed of Greeks or Romans to abandon the faith of their fathers, of necessity had to give reasons and arguments appreciable to the hearers; in short, he had to persuade, not to dictate; and if he threatened, he had to point his threats against conduct which the consciences of the hearers condemned. Hence, even if we had no direct documentary proof,

we might justly make sure that the first Christian teachers who met any success among the Gentiles must have reasoned with them from common ground, as equals with equals, appealing to those moral sentiments on which they were agreed, and to the general manifestation of a Divine Spirit in the visible universe. The great moral enormities which the fanciful poets of Greece, or the fantastic and perverse ingenuity of Egyptian or Babylonian priests, had brought into this or that Pagan religion, were a most obvious mark of attack for Christian preachers. So too was the lax morality and degrading vice which the conscience of the Gentiles themselves condemned. The command laid upon a Hebrew prophet served, with slight change, as a charge to a Christian apostle: "Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice on high, to show my people their transgressions, and the house of Israel their sins." Outcry against conduct notoriously evil, was the necessary beginning of the effort for proselyting. "Repentance towards God" went before any exhortation to faith in a Messiah. If ascendancy could be established over the conscience of the hearer, it might avail to attract him into the new Church; but the ascendancy was to be won by exciting aspirations after a higher moral state; indeed, the chief attraction of the Church was, as a society in which those nobler aspirations would be cherished, confirmed, and in some measure satisfied. Converts who had experienced how much richer, nobler, and sounder was the moral thought of their teacher, would naturally be swayed much by his beliefs both in moral controversies and in religious doctrine; but herein they would not consciously renounce any portion of their natural freedom. Freedom is not impaired by reverence for one who is discerned to be wiser; modesty and reverence, rightly directed, build up the moral faculties and strengthen them for independent action, if only a sense of personal responsibility be firmly retained. In fact, it is in many ways clear that no absolute right of dictation was conceded to the first teachers of Christianity, nor was it possible when, as more than once happened, apostles or prophets differed among themselves. Nay, Paul appears to count upon this as ordinary when two or three prophets spoke in succession, for he says (in a passage which is somewhat obscured by the translation in our authorized version)-"Let two or three prophets speak, and let the rest decide between them." Claims of authority did not settle such debates. Private Christians evidently felt themselves free to follow their own judgment. On one side of opinion undoubtedly