cross consummated the system of sacrifices by manifesting its essential spirit, and passed within the veil into the inner shrine of God, drawing all earnest hearts to him in the faith and love that reconcile man with God, and appropriate the great atonement. Now the Christian looks to Jesus as the author and finisher of the faith, and from God, through him, derives religious truth and spiritual life. He is the priest of the new and better theocracy, even of the kingdom of God of old set up on the earth, and claiming all nations and men for its subjects. But has the kingdom no visible hierarchy, no ritual, no, sanctuaries? Is there to be no appointed order of visible worship? Our reply is, that all service of God upon Christian principles is worship under the Divine kingdom, and men are left free to make such arrangements as may tend most effectually to impress upon them their duties to God and man, and their relations to the spiritual world. Hence, the Christian congregation of worshippers, the prayer, the Gos pel lesson, the hymn, the sermon, the memorial - signs of Christ, baptism and the Lord's Supper, expressive exhibitions of Christ, as the way of purity and union. Hence, too, the exaltation of the uses of daily life, and the hope of the rise of a social order more worthy than any that has ever appeared of Him to whom, as the mediator between God and man, the founder of a Divine kingdom upon the earth, we look for light and consolation. Hence the growing longing for a Christian civilization, the weariness of letter creeds and cold formalism, a civilization that shall be the embodiment of Christianity, and present man in true relations with nature, his neighbor, and his God. Not in vain was that theocratic ritual devised, not in vain did Moses rule and Aaron minister. Their system embodied a truth that cannot die, and their ritual implies principles of civil and religious order that are permanent as the word of God. Man is a social being, and the spiritual religion of the New Testament was never intended to make him a solitary ascetic or an enraptured egotist. The hierarchies that have striven to build up the kingdom of God upon the Jewish basis, have accepted a great truth with a great error. They have acknowledged that there is a Divine order to be followed by human society on earth, and that the service of God is the foundation of social union. But in their attempt to set up a ritual sacrifice, and by consecrated bread to repeat the sacrifice of Christ, and feed men thus with the food of angels, they have made a mistake, whose extent will be understood only when the true doctrine of life, individual and social, is carried out, and men shall learn to connect with their daily bread a life that breathes of God and blesses man. Till a truer civilization comes, the priestly hierarchy will remain. Till then let it remain. For if earth presents to us nothing better than idols of gold and military glory, we prefer to kneel at the shrine of Aaron, and win the blessing of the pontiff who wears his robes and aims to repeat his sacrifice. We wish not the old hierarchy to disappear, until a better order prevails or is recognized. The worship of physical comfort and social luxury that characterizes our time, the deification of Nature, not under the forms of the heavenly host, or of sacred birds and beasts, but of mechanical and chemical forces that promise men wealth, is a base idolatry, far too base to meet the yearnings of hearts raised above the clod. Who that thinks and aspires is not heart-sick of our present civilization, and its idols of gold and slavery and war? Who does not feel glad that our financial age, in its mighty effort to subject all things to its sway, has found itself so baffled by the old hierarchy, and that the line of Aaron, for lack of a nobler order, still keeps its power unbroken by the host of materialists who in literature, philosophy, trade, and legislation have threatened to be the Titanic fathers of a new and rebellious world? Strangely the tiara of Aaron shines now from its new possessor. Pius the Ninth was of late the central man of Christendom, and may be again. Of him and his policy we never formed any enthusiastic hopes. In that office the man must always be mastered by the system, and his strength or his weakness be guided by a power inexorable until overthrown. For more than a thousand years, that wonderful system has pursued its prescribed course, bearing in its path all varieties of talent, disposition, and fortune. The mighty Gregory the Seventh, who brought emperors in humility to his feet, and the feeble Urban the Sixth, whose life was a petty quarrel for ascendency; the accomplished Leo the Tenth, pattern of scholar and gentleman, and the monster Alexander the Sixth, union of beastly lust and demoniac hatred; Julius the Second, who led his army in person, and Paul the Fourth, whose life was penitence and prayer; Gregory the Thirteenth, who reformed the astronomical calendar, and Urban the Eighth, who obliged Galileo to abjure. his doctrine of the solar system; the last Gregory, whose policy was hostile to all science and reform, and the present Pius, who was hailed as the hope of freedom and humanity; —all have been subservient to the same iron system, and they are fond dreamers who look for any departure from the established Papal doctrine. The Pope remains, and will remain, until a mightier power than he rises to supplant him. Let him remain, at once a landmark of the former days and a measure of the power which a truer ministration of Christianity must equal and surpass, in order to be faithful to its high mission. The Roman Pontiff will fall as soon as true Christianity is presented in a mode as efficient as his hierarchy. Let real Christianity have free course, and go forth to its work with its weapons of heavenly temper, overthrowing prevailing evils, and building up individual and social life after the standard of the true living temple. Let that divine humanity, which gave Jesus his consecration on earth, and exalted him to his place in heaven, bring on the reign of the Heavenly Father, and establish the brotherhood of men. Let a pure and living and genial Christianity be preached to our congregations, and applied to our daily lives. Let "Holiness to the Lord" be engraven upon its brow, and as it goes forth upon its march of truth and peace and love, let it bear upon its breastplate, not the names of exclusive tribes, but of all nations of men; and as it moves upon its consecrated path, holier light shall shine than ever blazed from the golden candlestick, and more thrilling harmonies will be heard than ever came from the golden bells that encircled Aaron's stately robes, and sounded as he walked his round of mystic sacrifices. IV. SAUL AND THE THRONE. AMONG the Hebrew fathers, we have thus far considered the Lawgiver and the High-Priest. Our task at present is with the King, - with him first in the regal line, and by no means last in regal energies. We cannot better introduce him than by recurring at once to the scene in which he was greeted with that loyal shout which has welcomed monarchs to the throne for ages, from the days of Saul to those of Victoria: "For all the people shouted, and said, 'God save the king!"" The place is Mizpeh, forming with Bethel and Gilgal the judicial circuit of the Hebrew Judges. Here, years before, the sage and prophet Samuel had been inaugurated as the Judge of Israel, and other events of high importance had taken place. Three parties now present themselves, each of whom must have a passing notice, that we may understand the unexampled spectacle, the people who hailed their king, the person thus recognized, and the prophet who presided over the meeting. The people, — the multitude who compose that excited assembly,-who are they? Descendants of the slave tribes whom the great lawgiver led out of |