tion, and civil liberty. We see the Cantons of the Swiss and other Calvinists of Europe; the Puritans of England infusing into the British constitution, the principles of popular freedom; our pilgrim fathers constructing their free churches, which gave to the world, even before they dreamed of it, the active elements of a free state, too vigorous for the strong arm of foreign power to control. It is the peculiarity of the system we have advocated, that it can live everywhere, under every form of government, and work its way against all adverse interests. At the same time it acts with elastic energy against every abuse of power, and seeks to root out of the human heart the very elements of lordliness and oppression. We believe this "faith" adequate to all the necessities of the human family. There are evils in the personal and civil relations of men, that we all deplore, and we have waited for ages in vain upon legislative enactments to remove them. Their origin lies beyond the reach of legislative control, whether issuing from civil or ecclesiastical courts. The evils to which I allude admit of no direct and sudden remedy. They grow out of the depravity of the human heart and the consequent imperfections of organized communities, and must be left to the applications and influences of the gospel, which alone is found adequate to cure the diseases of the heart, and the evils of social life.

It was obviously not the design of the Saviour to form his church to oppose, in their collective, legislative capacity the great evils of organized society. The gospel embodies great principles, and associates Christians in churches for the culture of social religion, to watch over each other, to form one harmonious family, and from the unity, peace and charity of their sanctified brotherhood, to commend Christ and religion to the world. It was never intended that Christians should war upon the world by edicts, denunciatory enactments, and probably not to advance far in legislative action upon abstract questions of casuistry even within the bosom of the church, except by Scriptural adjudication upon cases of alleged and actual delinquency, and least of all to act on outward civil relations. By assailing the evils of social life, in confederated masses or ecclesiastical bodies, we not only array the world against the church, but raise divisions and hostilities within our own borders.

There are certain evils which no legislative action will cure. Their removal depends wholly upon the establishment of correct moral principles. Such evils the Bible passes in silence, or incidentally presents as the fruits of sin. And yet it discloses general principles, applicable when understood to every case, and as valuable and efficient as direct, positive precepts can be. This is pre-eminently true of ecclesiastical legislation, which is a thing of its own sort, and by Christ himself is restricted to its own sphere. Ecclesiastical legislation against specific, social evils, is, in most cases like lopping the branches of an exuberent tree, which serves only to increase new and more vigorous shoots from the parent

stock. But the "faith" of our adoption strikes at the root of all evil, and by the diffusion of its spirit, we may expect the passing away as by enchantment, the evils of life, till human ignorance, servitude and oppression shall end, and the jubilee of universal liberty break upon the ravished ears of a redeemed race.

"To me," says an able writer, “it seems that either the moral and intellectual changes (desired) must be despaired of entirely, or the chief agent in effecting them must be Christianity-not Christianity in the form of law, concerning itself with outward civil relations, but the Christianity of light and love."

While this position is fortified by history, its origin is found in the peculiar character of our religious sentiments and the necessary eccclesiastical principles attending them.

The sentiments that reduce mankind to one common level as to moral necessities, and subject all alike to the government of a sovereign God, each to render unqualified submission and each to meet the same conditions of salvation; the principles which recognize the parity of the clergy, rejecting all hierarchal distinctions and prerogative and saving virtue of administered rites, and throw upon the people individual and personal responsibility, such sentiments and principles naturally become the foundation and support of civil liberty, or war even unto death against the encroachment of unrighteous oppression. It was the liberalizing influence of these sentiments that gave to Geneva her free church and independent state. And what but these kept alive the indomitable spirit of civil liberty in the Cantons of Switzerland? What but these same sentiments gave to England all the civil liberty she ever knew? What but these laid the foundation of American churches, and ere our Pilgrim fathers were aware of it, gave birth to all the elements of a gigantic civil gov. ernment? These are the sentiments which are not only to emancipate the soul from the bondage of sin, but to give civil liberty to the world. "The democratic extreme," says D'Aubigne,. "issued from Switzerland and France. One of Calvin's predecessors then hoisted the flag which the powerful arm of the Genevan Reformer was to lift again in after years, and plant in France, Switzerland, Holland, Scotland and even in England, whence it was a century later to cross the Atlantic and summon North America to take her rank among the nations." While these sentiments and principles, commending their practical results to the world, would be working out the problem of universal liberty, it is easy to frame a system of church polity, built on sentiments conflicting with these, with great show of popular liberty, and indeed almost of popular licentiousness, which, at the same time shall enact and execute the most stringent laws, taking away substantially every popular immunity and resting all power and property ecclesiastical, in the hands of the clergy, and which shall embody all the elements of the most vigorous and oppressive monarchy, even with its boastful show of popular rights. If the

civil liberties of this country shall ever pass away, they will die through the preliminary and insidious working of corrupted religious principles. And if they are to live unto the light of better days, evangelical religion will herald them to the world.

3. We should earnestly contend for the faith because the only satisfactory evidence of being in the true succession of Christ's disciples, is to be found in the possession of the truth, and in the blessing of God upon its ministrations.

The kingdom of Christ consists in the establishment of moral principles, in truth explained, recognized and embraced by redeemed men. His church is to be found only where these principles are known, where this heaven-born truth is found. "The Bible, and the Bible only," says, Chillingworth, "is the religion of Protestants." The Bible is the divine charter on which the church is founded. These oracles of God become the confession of our faith and our common law. Where these are found, embraced and defended, their spirit cherished and their purposes carried out, there are the divinely ordered elements of Christ's kingdom, there is the true church of God. There, I repeat, is the divine charter on which the church is founded, and if the blessing of God rests here, the evidence is complete and irresistible, that here lies the true succession. The divine right thus secured, is transferred, not as senseless heraldy, by will and deed, not by human hands imposed; but whoever have the Bible, embrace its essential truths, submit to its laws, cherish its spirit, and execute its purposes, they inherit its immunities and succeed to all the honors and powers of the only apostolic church.

Here is a right derived from God; the succession of a spiritual Christianity, which can not be resolved into mere externals, nor secured by seals, rites, keys, from any or all of human investments, from which everything spiritual has fled. Who would look for the succession of a Christian church and a spiritual ministry in the hordes of merciless and profligate monks, or in the beneficed and secularized clergy of England, and deny it to Baxter, Cranmer, and Bunyan, holy men of God, valiant for the truth, persecuted for righteousness' sake, and doing wonders in the name of Christ. With equal propriety might Bonaparte, wasting on his ocean-rock, and his wandering family, be recognized as the ruling powers of continental Europe, to the rejection of its rightful sovereigns. As soon regard the asphaltic slime-pits, immersing the fallen towers and palaces of Babylon, as the living city of millions. As the Apostle to the Gentiles declared the evidence of his commission to consist in the truth proclaimed, and not in ordinances administered; and as the church is based upon the truth, so she expects her ministry to be accredited of God, not in ordinances, not in baptisms, confirmations, and indulgences, but in their ministrations of truth.

The true church demands for her ministry the attending and attesting symbols of the Holy Ghost. She is never satisfied with

the worshipers of a formal Christianity, that talks more of the Church, its" services, covenant mercies." its liturgy and shadowing rights, than of sin, of justification by faith, the sovereignty of God, or regeneration and holiness of life. The kingdom of Christ requires ministrations that shall abase the soul with the consciousness of its own guilt and wretchedness, and that shall exalt God alone in the work of its renewal and reunion to himself. With such qualifications and such a succession we are satisfied. We have here a living, divine right, a true Christian succession. And without this inspired truth and God's blessing, where can that succession be found?

We are happy to recognize as Christians, and to find our fellowship with Leighton, Sherlock, and Tillotson, valiant for the truth, and powerful amid the profligacy of courts; or with Massillon and Bourdaloue, rebuking sin on the throne. And no less do we rejoice to commune with Fenelon in exile, persecuted, yet radiant in the charity and glory of Christ; with Oberlin, warmhearted amid the mountain snows of Switzerland; with Felix Neff on the icy Alps, and with Owen, Bunyan, and Doddridge, and Pearce, and Fuller, and the humble followers of Christ everywhere, girded with his truth, and gathering the credentials of their office and their spirit from the attending grace and renewing power of God.

What, in comparison with this are all the investments of a gorgeous pontificate, the regal prelacy, robed, mitred, and enthroned in scarlet on the seven hills, drunk with blood, and claiming the prelatical empire of the world? Or what the pretensions of that less consistent system, that has no higher title to its boasted succession than the stained sceptre of a profligate usurper, or the feeble arm of a gay woman?

4. The faith we have defined is the grand instrument of conversion to God and sanctification for heaven.

While we refer to the agency of the Holy Spirit the salvation of every soul that believeth, and would, in no way, abridge the sovereignty of God, we are never to regard the work of saving men irrespective of such means as are adapted to the nature of the mind, and consistent with our moral agency.

Man may indeed be passive as to that mysterious act performed by the Holy Spirit in regeneration; yet, at the same time, active and voluntary, as a moral agent in view of the law, interest, and duty. It is in view of truth that he reflects, is convinced of sin, repents, believes, and seeks conformity to God. And whatever is involved in that sublime work of the soul's renewal by the Holy Spirit, there is no violence to our nature, nor suspension of moral agency. The scriptures declare, that it is by the truth that the Spirit regenerates and saves, and so obvious and so essential is the intervention of truth, that the very power of the Spirit is made to rest here. "The truth shall make you free. Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth." "God hath from the

beginning chosen you to salvation through the sactification of the Spirit and the belief of the truth." We have no authority for asserting that the Spirit renews and saves but by the truth. At any rate, we find the territory of all spiritual religion extended only as the truth has shed its heavenly light; and with the glorious prospective of man's salvation in view, we are summoned to the work of preaching the gospel to every creature.

I advance upon this position, and ask, where is spiritural religion found, where vital godliness, where revivals of religion, but where the faith of our adoption is known? Revivals of religion are the fruits of this faith; not such as are wild, fitful, and evanescent, wrecking the best interests of society, and bringing in fatal delusion; but such as are deep, solemn, pure, and lasting in their - results; that enlighten, elevate, and refine the aspect of society.

These truths pour a flood of light on the mind, and kindle the fires of the judgment around the heart; they awaken the powerful sensibilities of the soul, summoning to an audience with death, God, and eternal scenes; they leave no refuge, no rest, but the Rock of Ages, no hope but the love of Christ.

This is the truth the Spirit honors; it is the fire and the hammer that break the rock; the arrow of the Almighty that drinks up the spirit; the source of peace and joy.

This faith, as we view it, is incorporated with the history of piety and all pure religion. Everywhere we see it verified; ye are saved through the sanctification of the Spirit and the belief of the truth; the truth shall make you free.

Men are not the mere passive recipients of grace; but they are saved by being taught, persuaded, drawn by motives of truth and righteousness; in view of testimony they believe; of sin charged upon them, they are convinced; before God, a sovereign judge, they fear, tremble, and with conscious freedom and responsibility, submit to his authority and the conditions of grace. With Christ a substituted sufferer and Saviour, and the Spirit to sanctify, with the pledge of protection and support, heiven in view, they press onward to the skies.

5. This faith is the grand source and security of all benevolent efforts. The greatest achievements of good in this world-the most signal moral revolutions have been found in connection with this system of faith. This faith presents, in their true light, the clashings of contending interests, the violent onsets of passion, the sweeping of insatiate ambition. Not a hill, nor a valley --not an ocean, nor a stream, but speaks of revenge and war. To fill every relief, there rise disease, derangement and death, while the great mass of mankind are crowding in one broad, deep, and unbroken column to hell.

Amid all this gloom, desolation and death, the system we advocate presents redemption by Christ-free salvation. It rises the solitary star of hope in the horizon of unbroken night. The charity it breathes and enkindles, looking out upon the sickly