the further we recede from its source. In the present century, the passing of two momentous measures, has done much to expedite the process of political secularization. The first is Catholic emancipation, the second the disestablishment of the Irish Church. The passing of the first of these measures, by admitting great numbers of Dissenters to the exercise of political privileges, was eminently calculated to weaken the power of the Church. It was after the union of Ireland with Britain in 1801, that the Pitt ministry first attempted to gain admission for Catholics to Parliament and the offices of State. The measure was regarded almost universally as subversive of the Constitution, and the king refused to countenance it as being inconsistent with his coronation oath. Almost every year it was again brought up, but invariably rejected by large majorities both in the Commons and the Lords. At last in 1821 it passed the Commons, but the Lords rejected it, and it was not till 1829 that Peel and Wellington carried the Bill through both houses of Parliament. Such is the resistance with which a measure designed for the benefit of Dissenters was so recently met; but the spirit of liberty, which ultimately secured its reception, has been rapidly gaining ground, and within the last few months its presence and vigour have been clearly indicated in the successful issue of the second measure, the disestablishment of the Irish Church.

By this, the principle which would subordinate ecclesiastical to civil interests, and which would mould the Constitution to complete conformity with the popular will, seems to have received a national recognition. If we examine the reasons that suggested the measure, we shall find that it was grounded solely on the dissent of the great majority of the Irish people from the principles of the Established Church. Three centuries ago the Church would have persecuted all who did not conform to her teaching, but now she must lose her State connection as the

result of that want of conformity. It required a strong impulse to construct a measure which struck so effective a blow at the very root of the English Constitution; it required a strong impulse to induce the English Parliament to deprive a sister Church of her revenues, and to place her on an equal footing with the sects; it required a strong impulse to reconcile a majority of the British Peers to the passing of a bill which appears so suicidal; but the impulse was found in the will of the English people, and its object has been attained. Had the English Commons under Henry VIII. proposed so daring a measure, he would have indignantly driven them from their seats and locked the door of the House; had they done so in the reign of Elizabeth, she would have admonished them to confine their discussions to subjects within their sphere; had they done so under Charles I., he would possibly have demanded the persons of some of the leading statesmen. They have done so under Queen Victoria, and the impractical rhetoric of some English Peers, or the gloomy forebodings of some antiquated Tories, is all that has opposed the destruction of the Established Church in so extensive a portion of the British Isles. And so the principle of Church and State connection has virtually passed away. The Court can no longer protect and endow any one form of religion, for the Court has no prerogative apart from the Parliament, which seems to be steadily pressing towards complete religious equality. Amid the excitement of a party struggle, and swayed by the commanding eloquence of a party leader, some members may have imperfectly apprehended all that was involved in their act; but if their suffrages should at some future time be solicited to remove from its State connection the Church to which the affections of many are still devoted, what could be urged in its support? No longer able to advance the principle which they have so unblushingly destroyed, the House of Commons would be silenced by the simple dictum "remember the Irish Church."

C

And now the Church of England is no longer the darling of the Court, but the servant of the people, and as soon as she ceases to engage their affections and to merit their support, her fall is clearly inevitable. A few years, we firmly believe, will wrest from her clergy the figment of political authority they still possess; a few years, and she will occupy the same platform as the sects of England, and the secularizing of politics will then be complete.

I have spoken of the decline of dogmatic theology and the increasing aversion to creeds; I have referred to the growing distrust in the miraculous and the substitution of natural law; I have traced the decay of ecclesiastical authority by the expansion of liberal principles—and now what think you of the spirit of the age? Do you recog

nize in those who would remove or alter the foundations on which our faith has been reared, the advent of the scoffers of whom Scripture tells us that they shall come in the latter days; do you foresee in the spirit which would explain the wonders of Revelation by the discoveries of Science the decline of faith upon the earth? Do you discover in the fall of ecclesiastical authority the dominance of a secular spirit? If so, you infer, from the redness that has overspread the social firmament, the near approach of storm and confusion and anarchy-but if you can see in the spirit of the times the fiery element from which truth shall emerge more pure and lovely than before, the self-same redness is like that which tinges the western horizon on the eve of a brilliant and unclouded day.

3. M'A.

TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.

A land of sun-light ever falling clear

Across the lake of life,

Where fairly ranked the shadowed shapes appear
Not stricken into strife.

I. FAUNUS.

Slowly amid the spacious world's splendour

A child in wonder strays,

Whose large eyes flashing ever backward render
The brightness of the days.

O'er plains that dimly in the distance fade,
Through gloom of glimmering wood

He moves, and as the lyre young Hermes played
Expressed its master's mood,

So his exulting voice and every gesture

With cords of life's love bound,

Clad as with riches of a varied vesture

The dim earth lying round.

And in that first warm flush of human feeling

That knew-but not to sever

The woe of Nature's vastness won its healing,

Fulfilled its dumb endeavour;

Till, mastered by the breaking wave that bore it,

The marvellous life of man

Sank down before the world to adore it,

Rapt into wonder wan.

And strength, not strange but straight from nature drawn,

Fashioned fair limbs and features

To the soft wildness of the musing Faun
And blameless woodland creatures.

Dawn's glory fades; men toil beneath the heel

Of darkened Power endued

With lordship of the plain :-through thickets reel A hot-eyed satyr brood.

II. APOLLO.

Fallen the Son of morning from his place,
And after him in turn

Snatches the flaring pine-torch of the race
A youth whose pulses burn

To drive their tide with all its mortal beatings
Through the world's every vein;

Not covering of the face but human greetings
To sky and earth and main.

He plants his steps as among things not strange,
His orbed eye flashes through them,

And poised upon the wild chord's throbbing range He sings himself into them.

Yet a far-hidden sadness chills the state

Of splendid glance and tone,

Wrapped in the folded mantle of grey Fate,

Upon a supreme throne:

Darkness above, and darkness writhes beneath.

Howe'er with scornful gaze

A Pythian's pride may watch the gleaming death

Sink in that knotted maze

Of the worm's fulness, yet the evil thing

Dead, dieth not forever.

And, stained with loathed gore, the Archer-king

Serves by a northern river,

Till desperate Youth, to scatter shadows thronging

About the land of light,

Waves that wild flame with which the Orient strove

To illumine lingering night.