the spiritual and temporal good of every human being who comes within the sphere of his influence. He will remember the example of the Good Samaritan, and be ever ready to render assistance where it is needed, and to give counsel and instruction where he sees it may be given with effect. When he rises in the morning, he knows not what service he may be called to; but he knows that where the Holy Spirit has implanted benevolent desires, the opportunity for gratifying them will not long be withheld; and he has no higher ambition than to be sent on some errand of mercy by the universal Father of all, to relieve the necessities and administer to the comfort of some afflicted member of the great family of mankind.

104

CHAPTER VI.

THE NATIONAL CHURCH THE GREAT MEANS OF

NATIONAL IMPROVEMENT.

BUT though we may, by a careful education, place the young in the path of virtue, and by useful employment divert the adult from the temptations of idleness, the evil propensities of the human heart will never effectually be checked but by the continual influence of those renovating principles which Protestant Christianity brings into action.

When the Great Founder of our religion left the earth on which He had deigned for a while to tread in human form, and ascended to heaven to enjoy again that glory which he had before the world was;-when the Apostles, who, inspired by the Divine Spirit, and consecrated by the ethereal fire to the office of evangelizing mankind, had yielded up their lives for the tes

timony of Jesus,-the Church, which by the convincing power of miracles they had founded, was left as the guardian of the world, and, as the spouse of Christ, was delegated to rear for eternal blessedness those spiritual children whom He suffered to redeem. The Creator, who infringes not in vain the laws which He has stamped on material nature, and shakes not our confidence in their stability by frequent interruption, vouchsafes not to modern evangelists the attestation of supernatural gifts, but sets before His rational creatures the evidence of prophecy, the witness of testimony, and the spectacle of a visible Church. An established form of religion is as a beacon to illuminate the moral darkness of the world, and to direct the course of man from time to eternity. Though religion is a personal concern, yet, if its maintenance were left to the care of individuals, the changes of public opinion or of private caprice would hazard its existence. Unity, which is the casket of truth, would be lost; and mankind, perplexed with error, would seek in vain for the precious jewel, and, forgetting the God who made them, would give themselves over to the indulgence of passion and the government of

self-will. External forms of worship are a standing demonstration of the existence of the invisible Being to whom it is addressed. Those sacred ceremonies, redolent with piety, founded in ages long gone by,-those venerable edifices, reared by the holy zeal of our ancestors, and consecrated by time,-speak with a voice of authority the power of an unseen Creator, and hold up to our observation a memento of the things which are unseen and eternal. "Had Moses and the Prophets, Christ and His Apostles, only taught, and by miracles proved religion to their contemporaries, the benefits of their instructions would have reached but a small part of mankind: Christianity must have been in a great degree sunk and forgot in a very few ages. To prevent this appears to have been one reason why a visible Church was instituted; to be like a city upon a hill, a standing memorial to the world of the duty which we owe our Maker; to call men continually, both by example and instruction, to attend to it, and, by the form of religion ever before their eyes, remind them of the reality; to be the repository of the oracles of God; to hold up the light of revelation in aid to that of nature, and pro

pagate it throughout all generations to the end of the world."* If, then, it appears that the establishment of a visible Church was the design of the Almighty, it is clearly alike our interest and our duty to support it to the utmost of our power, and to exert our energies to bring into vigorous action those beneficial tendencies which it possesses, so that no portion of the good which it was intended to effect may be lost to the world. The love of novelty, so general, particularly among the vulgar part of mankind, the aversion to submission, and the desire to rule, together with the wide spread of what is called the voluntary system, have threatened the subversion of long-established authority, and lessened the reverence of the people for the National Church. We live in days when there is a thirst for knowledge, and a desire among all classes to rise above the level which their fathers were content to occupy. This general movement to go forward, may be a blessing or a curse, according to the character of those who take the lead in the advance. No friend of religion, no lover of their country, is now privileged to stand still; to be passive is to betray * See Butler's Analogy, Part ii. chap. 1.