THE necessarily restricted limits of this article, will allow of hardly anything beyond a cursory view of the subject it is intended to discuss. For the sake of condensation, therefore, the writer must omit many observations that appear to him essential to a full consideration of it. For the sake, also, of usefulness, he has chosen to pursue a practical, rather than a speculative line of remark, and to glance at the existing aspects of Christianity in their connection with the present, rather than in their relation to the past.

The subject, then, is the aspects, not of science, or commerce, or literature, but of religion. Religion is the brightest emanation of God. As an embodied principle or conviction, it is the true dignity of all rational natures; as a remedial scheme it is the weal of universal humanity; as an institution, it is the glory of the nations, and the world. It is the source from which, in the judgment of all right-minded men, each succeeding age derives its most enduring historic interest. It is the highest, because it is the unerring standard of all true social and national progress. Society falls or rises in the scale of whatever can enrich and adorn it, just as a true religious faith finds a refluent or an onward course.

With what feelings, then, may we look upon the religious developments of our own times? Is the existing condition of Christendom such as may justify a tone of gratulation and triumph? Has the action of events, and the lapse of time, elevated or lowered the religious states of society? Does a calm view of the present invest the future with hopeful anticipations, or humiliating disappointment? Looking at the existing agencies, or at what may be called the outworks of Christianity, a massive and powerful apparatus meets the eye, vastly more imposing than the church has ever wielded since the world began. Its organizations are found in almost every variety of form and degree, and in

every quarter of the globe. Its temples are rapidly accumulating; and in many cases are the noblest structures of the city, the town, or the village they adorn. The public teachers of religion have increased to a mighty army; whilst ten thousand important tributaries have given to the stream of religious literature the depth and majesty of an onflowing river. The institutions which have for their several spheres of operation the evangelization of the nations,— the circulation, the wide world round, of the sacred word,-the Christian tuition of the rising race, with all the collateral instrumentalities, - each exists on a more gigantic scale, and stretches over a vaster breadth of ground than has any parallel in the records of religious history. Viewed as monuments of the moral might of Christian combination, and as a system of means by which God is working out the purposes of his providence and hastening on the enthronement of his divine Son, the religious agencies of our times are clothed with a moral importance that must carry dismay to the heart of infidelity, whilst it nerves the friends of truth with buoyancy and hope.

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The existing agencies of religion, however, form but the exterior of the subject under consideration. present business is not so much to describe the architectural beauty and majesty of the temple, as to set forth the spirit and piety of the worshipper within; to consider, in a word, the distinctive peculiarities of the prevailing religious life. Viewed

doctrinally or practically, it must be admitted there is in the religious world much of enlightened and vigorous Christianity. No small number are there in the churches of godly men, whose religion is an earnest conviction wrought into the soul; and so wrought as to have gathered all the strength of a fixed principle and a distinctive habitude. With meek simplicity it blends the attributes of lofty conception and calm adventure. It resolutely grasps the verities, whilst it deeply imbibes the

Divine spirit of the Bible. It is too holy to hold fellowship with iniquity, too honest to receive a bribe, and so impregnably fortified by the broad shield of truth as to quail before no antagonistic forces, and to shrivel beneath the action of no moral storm. A sprinkling there is at least, in every section of the ranks of Evangelism, of men thus strong and rich in heavenly succours, and in the energies of a glorious religious manhood. They stand like goodly cedars among the trees of the Lord's righthand planting; and, as the stalwart oak, which the blast of no tempest can disturb, they come out of every disciplinary ordeal more illustrious monuments of the grace of Heaven. These are the men, whose matured and heroic piety would have ranked them with the most sainted of our noble-hearted forefathers, rendering them equal to all the emergencies of the times in which, to be a disciple of the cross, was to swim against the tidal stream of popular opinion, and often to atone for that discipleship by an act of compelled immolation upon the altar of popular fury.

There may be found in Christendom, also, no small amount of doctrinal and practical godliness, developing, it is true, no such qualities of breadth and power, but which, in all essential points, is sound and scriptural. It is solid, but not vigorous; pure, but not brilliant; and healthy at the roots, though it spreads forth no majestic branches, and assumes no stately mien. It is a genuine but comparatively hidden substratum or view of piety, threading in its manifold directions the fraternity of the faithful.

Such, however, are not the distinctive qualities of the great aggregate of our modern Christianity. Much of vigorous, pure, and earnest godliness as may permeate and refresh the various churches of the land, it is a mere modicum we fear, as contrasted with the amount of spurious profession and lifeless form.

The age, in its religious, as in many other aspects, is marked by many grave and growing defects. Those who have watched with anything like care the peculiar influ

ences at work, cannot fail to have observed the action of two powerful elements, both affecting in its essential attributes, and in no partial degree, the religious life of the times. Their importance demands a moment's consideration. One of those elements may be found in the prevalence of pernicious doctrine; or rather, of two distinct kinds of doctrine, which are strongly tinging with their own complexion the religious tendencies of the people. On the one hand, is the doctrine of those who, repudiating everything that bears the name or semblance of philosophical analysis, demand an unquestioning subscription to whatever ecclesiastical authorities, in the plenitude of their wisdom, may propound, as the essentials of religion and the rule of life. On the other hand, and in direct antagonism to this, is the doctrine of those who assume a supercilious disdain of all formal institutes, and, resolving rather to believe nothing than to believe too much, arraign every proposition presented to them at the bar of pure intellect. These are opposite and conflicting positions, and yet are both productive, though by a different mode of operation, of the same pernicious results. The one elevates human teaching to a level with the Bible, and the other makes the Bible dependent upon the decisions of the human understanding. In each case there is a virtual subordination of that Divine word, which is the only source of evangelical and saving truth. The obvious ultimatum of these two kinds of doctrines is, in the one case to the most absolute form of superstition, as seen in the spread of tractarian or semi-Romish theories and the reviving energies of the Papal power; in the other case, to infidelity, in its multiform features and degrees, as exemplified in the prevailing tone and quality of much of our popular literature. These errors are among the most clearly developed characteristics of the times, as is manifest to all who have made the times to any extent the topic of their thoughts. Each day are they securing a more extended currency. Their spheres

of action are not exclusively in the halls of scepticism, or among the flock of the priest. They are found, though in more modified forms, yet in forms too palpable to be misunderstood, in many protestant and evangelical portions of Christendom. It were difficult, indeed, to fix upon the spot where we should find no traces of their footprints, and no victims of their moral poison. Now, the prevalence of these errors is evidently incompatible with the growth among the people of a pure and living Christianity. Is a religion, for example, founded upon a blind, unquestioning acquiescence in the dogmatic teaching of the church, likely to possess a single quality to entitle it to the name? Should we expect to find in it any other than the properties of imbecility and feebleness; or, in the professors of it, any other than a race of religious dwarfs? Would it not develope vastly more of partizanship than of piety, more of reverence for a creed than of devotion to the cross? And what more than this is a large amount of that which, in these modern days, passes current for Christianity?" Lacking those deep moral convictions of truth and duty, which are produced only by a manly and prayerful exercise of the reflecting faculty on spiritual themes, much of that which now assumes to be religious in its character is in all points essentially defective. It is superficial, tortuous, and ephemeral; and its defects are rendered still more apparent by contrast with what is strong and beautiful in the religious life of those over whose entire being religion is the presiding principle. The only property, indeed, in a religion fashioned in the mould of ecclesiastical forms and institutes, partaking in any measure of a germinant tendency, must be that of a blind superstition, which, if it once take firm hold of a man, knows no limits except in the last stage of rank Romanism. It is not less easy to trace the influence upon religious character of that other form of error, which makes the belief or rejection of any religious truth dependent alone on the verdict of pure intellect. It is well known that

every step of the human intellect in its uncontrolled exercise, is to further developments of scepticism. It is peculiar to it from its perverted and darkened condition, to repudiate every Christian truth that may oppose its tastes or outstrip its comprehension. Elevate it to the office of supreme judge, and how many of the pure and sublime verities of Christianity are likely to pass unrejected the decisions of its tribunal? Is any one essential Bible truth likely to share a better fate than those established forms which, with such incredulous and proud disdain, it spurns from its consideration and belief? And how does the occupancy of such a position and power by the intellect harmonize with that humility and teachableness of spirit so inseparable from a saving reception of religious truth? The Gospel of Jesus, whilst it ignores no one attribute of our mental manhood, does most emphatically demand that we bring to the study of its holy principles the meek, ingenuous docility of a little child. To deny to the intellectual faculty any office in connection with Christianity, were to misrepresent and degrade the entire Christian system; but who does not see, in view of the reasons just specified, that to constitute that faculty the final court of appeal, setting aside the authority of conscience and the exercise of the moral affections, is to lay the foundation of a scepticism which shall gradually fritter away all that is vital and authoritative in religious truth and duty, and ultimately to lose itself in the labyrinths of confirmed atheism.

The prevalence of such error must operate injuriously upon the religious faith and character of the age. Wherever its influence shall be felt it must poison at their very fountainhead the streams of scriptural piety. Spiritual desolation and blight cannot fail to follow in its track. It can be productive only of a religion scathed and smitten in all its parts; a religion reduced from the native nobleness of its form to a lifeless skeleton, having no pulsative power, no bloom of beauty, no heart of heavenly and glowing affections. Espou