into this unitary and universal nation there is nothing left in nature but strife and contention for ever.

'Now, can the sword restore and gather this people? Can a financial law realize the idea of popular unity? Can parliamentary legislation do it? Can a creed, or a series of articles, or confession of faith do it? They have had a long opportunity of doing so, if they are by nature qualified for the office. But it is morally impossible. They have their own respective missions, but this is not the mission of one of them, but of the Law of Divine Order to which an unarticled Faith in Universal Providence gives living birth in man; and this Law will grow and ramify in every mind from the central idea, the unfettered faith, whenever it is planted.

'By an unfettered faith, we mean a common faith in Universal Providence, not expressed in the form of a creed—an invisible, undefined and quickening spirit-point, radiating through the whole sphere of being. It is a faith which embraces every thing as part of the Divine plan, but admits the graduation of all things on a scale of greater and lesser degrees of divinity and value. From this proceeds the Common Law of Order as the outbirth and regulating principle. Any attempt to fetter this common faith by scholastic formulæ destroys its universality and spirituality, and occasions controversy and schism. It is then no longer a common but an articled faith. There is no formal creed in the Bible. A pure, and common or universal faith, is a spirit without body, parts or terms, like the Divine Being, who is its object; and therefore it is not the logical foundation of a structure, but its quickening spirit—that is, a spiritual, not a formal foundation. Law may be expressed in terms, and is, therefore, the true formal basis-the body of which faith is the spirit. But when the radix of the law is a common or unarticled faith, there is the central principle of unity as well as of growth and development for social organization. With this social organization articled faith has no right to interfere. It is a sphere of hypocrisy, for a man may feign to believe an article which he does not believe; and it is also a sphere of controversy and strife. It is therefore unfit for a radix of Catholic organization. It is only for a coterie or scct, and is the real mother of sectarianism and infidelity. The unarticled faith is the mother of the common law of peace and order, and the quickening spirit of the age to come-Charity is the soul of it. Faith is primary, as the quickening spirit; Charity is primary, as the reconciling spirit; Law is primary as the organizing spirit; and with these three all doctrine is innocent, and communion has free scope and ample encouragement for all good offices.'-Pp. 628-631.

To our mind, all men do not seem very much nearer as yet to Mr. Smith's universal faith than they are to the Apostles' Creed; and we have had as yet no evidence that it has the power of working out charity and good morals, at all equal to the evidence we have had in favour of definite Christianity. The same authority which has taught us all that we know of the highest morality and the purest faith, tells us that we are to believe in the Son of God as well as in the Father, and, in fact, whatever may be said about the Bible containing no formal creed, in all the articles of the Christian faith.' That which is rational, to be expressed, must be articulate, though articulation involves the obnoxious item of articles. If the Bible is God's gift, so is the Apostles' Creed and the doctrine it contains; and there is nothing in the whole course of revelation

that need be renounced as untrue, although in its progress it has left behind some things which were temporary. But the clearer day, which we are told is now dawning, is to emancipate us from all articulate faith, while it makes us all believers in a unitary, and, as it seems, Unitarian creed. There are many other things to be said against this view, but for the present, and in this connexion, let it only be said that such a result is a backward step for every man who has had a religion even erroneously derived from the Hebrew stock, for the Jew, the Christian, the Mahometan, and even the present ordinary Unitarian, who, however, has the least faith of them all to lose. Even he will lose, if ever he ceases to regard his belief in the Son of Man as a matter of divine faith. The Divine Humanity, which we reach by the negation of articulate faith, is another thing, a monstrous, diabolical imagination, the system of Antichrist.

Between this system and the system of faith there is a necessary and world-lasting war. The pretended toleration of the negative theory extends not to positive faith. In its view, while working forward, every inferior system of faith, every partial negation, is a benefit. Here and there may be found a mind which holds it with the belief that even the central organization of Christianity in the Episcopate, nay, even that its exaggerated form in the Papacy, is a temporary benefit. But let it once triumph, and it will hold every positive believer guilty of high treason against the liberties of mankind, and be only the more bitter against such faith as it cannot afford to despise. And when we venture to look forward into the future, we cannot but be perplexed by the apparent prevalence of this tendency. It is not the only growing tendency, indeed, but there is no doubt of its rapid growth and extensive prevalence. To those who think it contains a living and uniting principle, this is of course an occasion of hope, sometimes of exultation; but the sober Christian is not carried away by such appearances. He knows that it is in religion as in civil government; the mere destruction of an oppressive rule is neither happiness nor liberty. The mob may be itself the very worst of tyrants, and may constrain itself, by its self-tormenting power, to resort to any other tyranny as more tolerable than its own. The mass of Christians, if led to revolt against their appointed spiritual guides, are likely to run into endless excesses, and to find refuge in the most worthless systems, rather than remain in the state of anarchy which they have chosen. They who will not serve the true God in their own land, shall serve other gods

in a land that is not theirs.

Yet our prospects are not entirely without hope. We know that, almost in all times, good men have mourned over the evils

of the age, and have thought that the increase of wickedness seemed to signify that the last days were at hand. The present times are no exception; yet they show germs and rising plants of good, which may be the harbingers of a rich harvest. Looking away, for a moment, from the main question before us, of the principles of belief, we cannot but see an improvement in the education of the higher classes in our own country and in our colonies, which must have important results. The greater care taken of the religious morals of our youth will not be wholly unsuccessful, though it may be in many instances sadly disappointed. The revived energy of our Episcopate at home, and its wonderful life and vigour in the colonies, are signs that Christianity is not effete amongst us, but is still capable of powerful efforts and extended success. And although there are strong symptoms occasionally of the madness of the people, yet there are movements, and quietings of movements, from time to time, which show an increased prevalence of good sense and good feeling in the public in general. It would be as ungrateful and unjust to deny the fact, as it is presumptuous to be over-confident in it. And although it is not an absolutely new symptom, yet the extensive practice of combination for good and benevolent purposes is not to be forgotten. It has its drawbacks. Mistakes are made, money wasted, rivalries and ill feeling produced, and lawful authority opposed; yet there is a good principle at work, which wants to be regulated, not suppressed, and which may in the end work out most important benefits.

But will the moral and spiritual life of man confine itself to the channels marked out for it in ecclesiastical institutions; or will it rather first spread itself in a thousand several streams, and then unite in one flood of public secularism and private freedom in religion? We can only answer that the latter alternative is antichristian, and that if the continuity of religion is to be preserved, as it has been from the very beginning of the world to this day, the Church must by some means hold her own. It seems hardly possible that she should do so unless her action is very much extended, and is brought to penetrate the whole of society more deeply than at present. Christianity must be, as it was at first, more linked with men's daily moral life than it seems to be at the present time. Men must learn to feel the Church more of a home in which they live-a brotherhood to which they belong. And men in general will not feel this, if the Church is concerned in their spiritual life alone, if it has not some distinct and constant bearing on the conditions of their temporal existence. Nor, again, will it be easy to perpetuate the old bond of charity between rich and poor as

such in the coming age. The class of independent operatives and officials, &c. is rapidly increasing in numbers and power; and these in general dislike nothing more than to be held indebted to the bounty of others. If a society, consisting in its great bulk of such elements, and whose other elements are more and more assimilated to the character of these, is to be held together, it must be by some bond of communion, and not of mere patronage and clientship. There must be a reciprocity, and a free interchange of mutual aids, together with mutual respect and mutual confidence. A mere balance of jarring interests cannot be permanent; some principle of conciliation must intervene, to do away with their hostility. The mere success of agitation, in removing partial burdens, is not likely ever to leave the coast clear of grievances. The very change of times will make that a grievance, which a few years ago was a fair arrangement. The principles which are now generally assumed in political economy provide for a perpetual renewal of conflicting interests, and justify every possible indirect invasion of established rights. It is easier to unite men in a common hostility, than in a common advance toward perfection. Hostility implies self-satisfaction, while every real improvement implies self-command and self-denial. Indeed, we are scarce likely to see on earth a state of pure peaceful cooperation; there will be strife, and rivalry, and opposition amongst men. But some states of society are characterised by the one, and some by the other; and it is a matter of most interesting speculation, how far the one or the other is likely to prevailof most interesting practical inquiry, what steps will promote the one, and what the other.

Commerce, as Mr. Smith justly observes, is not communion:'Still commerce is not communion; but it is the root of it-the earthboring and earth-seeking root; an emblem of all that earth symbolizes, without heaven and the hope of it; the prose without the poetry of existence; the wealth without its enjoyment, and without the moral beauty that renders it amiable to the beholder, or anything but an object of envy to the poor. But it is not an evil in itself. It is a root without its plumule, until the moral principle of communion be raised upon it. We say moral principle of communion, to distinguish our idea of it from that mechanical principle of community, which has been taught by many in modern times from the inspiration of the age. Community thus taught is an immature development of the idea; but being forcible and mechanical, it rather destroys liberty than promotes it. There can be no real liberty in society established by artificial means; for man is a moral being, the apex of the pyramid of creation, and can only find his element in the higher atmosphere of moral, intellectual, and spiritual enjoyment-a voluntary being, and therefore never to be made happy under any system of artificial constraint, which prescribes a routine that interferes with the exercise of his own mysterious and sacred individuality. With this individuality communion does not intefere; it is the end and object of terrestrial redemption. The communion of the saints is an article of the Christian Creed, and, what is

more, the last article but one, the penultimate, and the one that is associated with life everlasting; and what holier and happier idea of life everlasting can we have than pure and perfect social communion?

How is this to be attained? It begins with a common faith. There is no other root for it either in time or eternity; there is no other way to it but through this common faith. All the revolutions and reforms and repealing of taxes, all the electioneering trickery and manœuvre of party, are vain and worthless without this. They may go on to eternity without improving the condition of man, or making life more desirable, except perhaps to the few who make the many their slaves. There is no real progress, no real alleviation of burden, no genuine repeal of taxation, unless it be felt on the heart. The poor labourer in the heyday of his strength twenty years ago could carry a quarter of grain; his master has now repealed one half of his taxes, and gives him only half a quarter to carry ; but he is oppressed with the load. Is this a real or a nominal repeal? And who can say that any repeal of taxation that has yet been granted to us in this tax-repealing land of mechanical reform, is real or merely nominal? We do not presume to answer the question, because we cannot tell whether the burden on the heart of the pilgrim of life, in this middle age of the nineteenth century, is greater or lighter than it was in the middle age of the tenth century. It is the pilgrim's burden that we judge by, not by the pounds, shillings, and pence, or the labour value of wheat; and judging by this burden, we feel assured that that only can be esteemed a real deliverance to the world which promotes the social communion of nations and individuals; and can this be effected either in public or in private life without a common faith? We trow not. We little value any attempted reform that has not this for its basis. Its financial or commercial value we do not dispute; but its moral value is a vulgar fraction.'—Pp. 620–622.

Wild as he is, this writer is right in dethroning l. s. d., and in denying any living power to the merely financial system of government which estimates everything by money. He does not pretend to tell us how it is to be, but his universal and absolute morality, and his faith in the cooperation of all to a divine purpose, are to be sufficient to unite mankind in one great society; and such is now the aim of the Secularists, some of whom, at least, preach a morality which in general fully comes up to the standard of Christian public opinion, though not of real Christian doctrine and life. Witness the letters signed F. W. N.' in the 'Reasoner.' They maintain, and as a general rule are able to maintain, that virtue is its own reward in the present life, and that there are reasonably sufficient motives for good morals within its compass. They look to raising the moral tone of the most numerous class of society as the means of increasing its power, and finally establishing an order of things in which its will is law. In such a community they think that man might live more happily than at present, and that virtue would be the rule, vice, if it still existed, the exception, and misery next to impossible. They believe that all this good is only delayed by man's quarrelling about creeds, and differing as to religious observances. They think men need scarcely settle whether there be any God or no, before they attain to the sum