Now here we have two different cur- The germ of mischief in the former rents of reaction against the common- creed is, that while it reasserts truly the placeness, the utilitarianism, the vulgar foundation of national independence and tendencies in modern politics, from the popular liberty in the will of God, and apmost opposite points of view; that of the peals to the truly supernatural character popular revolutionist who has a vision of of the discipline and aid by which the God vindicating national independence weak exile is enabled to overcome all but and popular freedom, and "rights of impossibilities in realizing his dream, it so man," to the nations, by the weak arms identifies this faith with a popular formula of a few patriotic dreamers; and that of as gradually to transfer the patriot's allethe intellectual moralist who has a vision giance from the divine will that sanctions of the divine government as something liberty, to the external condition of attaininfinitely searching, true, and strong-a ing it. Thus, instead of making his su divine Word, "whose name is faithful pernatural trust the safeguard and limit, and true, whose eyes are as a flame of as well as the strength of his liberty-forfire, and out of whose mouth goeth amula, he makes a god of the cry itself; sharp sword," able to sift all hollowness, and thenceforth nothing can be more inpunish all half-heartedness, and smite down all corruption, and who believes that human government should either be an earthly image of this, or should not exist at all. The revolutionary creed as to earthly states is in some sense the reproduction, under the modifying influence of Christian modes of thought, of the Greek and Roman view of states and nations. It attaches the same kind of divine sanction to the genius, unity, and independent development of the nation, and claims the same kind of inherent right for the voice of popular government. Mr. Carlyle's is in some sense the reproduction, under the modifying influences of scientific ideas, of the Jewish view of states and governments. It lays the same exclusive stress on the spiritual qualifications of the governing power, on the degree in which it truly represents the searching word of God; and passes with the same neglect over all the rights of the governed, except the right to be governed well.

Both these opposite phases of political discontent are sound only so far as they attest the foundation, the one of nations, the other of governments, in a world above that of geography and of parliamentary elections; and unsound in this, that the revolutionary creed too soon merges the God of nations and peoples in the national or popular will-in other words, merges the superhuman in the human; while Mr. Carlyle's creed avowedly merges the separate life of nations and peoples in what he calls the divine "order of the Universe"-in other words, merges the human in the superhuman; and both errors, as all history shows, end in pretty much the same abuse.

satiable and superstitious than his worship of popular rights. He believes in them absolutely, however extravagant, however exercised, however abused. He satiates his soul on them, in the imagination that he is still leaning upon God. If there be any grievance, the divine remedy is "more liberty, more power for the people." The formula expands and becomes infinite in his eyes, even eternal, as he contemplates it-an idol to which all must be sacrificed. That very sense of the supernatural which was before a divine strength and spur, becomes now a fatal and almost diabolic scourge; for the insatiable hunger of the temperament that is formed to live in the supernatural world, when fed on a human formula, must lead to the worst extravagance of popular conceit and delusion, nay, often of popu lar cruelty. The revolutionary creed, while it professes to found national and popular liberties in the will of God, too soon puts them above it, frees them from all divine limits and restraints, while claiming for them a decisive sanction, and ends either with shelving the supernaturai side of politics altogether, or, if unfortunately retaining it, with retaining it only as a degrading superstition, which gives a certain preternatural venom to political passions. So it happened that, amid the crash of all true government in the Paris revolutions, the hungry craving for some deep and eternal principle of free, equal, and fraternal government got so strongly embodied in the insatiable rage of murderous passions.

Let us, now, attempt to point out in a few lines what has been the real light which the Christian faith and Christian history has cast on the principles of nation

the bond of national unity had but little conscious reference to the national genius or national characteristics; it was almost entirely based on the unique historical discipline and government by which the nation had been educated. It was the divine task or purpose assigned to a nation which constituted in the eyes of the Jews the foundation of its national unity, and they were not accustomed to reckon characteristic genius or endowments amongst their qualifications for fulfilling that task or purpose. In the book of Revelation this teaching as to the foundation of national life and unity is extended to the other nations of the ancient world. Each is seen to have had a definite place and function in the divine plan of education for the human race. But the Hebrew prophet clearly regarded national life, at least up to the spiritual phase of it, as a poor tool or instrument in the hands of God, without independent and intrinsic value of its own. He hurried over all the long ages during which the uncon

al life, unity, and government; and when we speak of Christian faith and history, we wish distinctly to confess our belief that Christian faith truly understood includes a very large contribution from the results, not only of Greek and Roman, but of Teutonic life and thought. What the Hebrew revelation really completed was the unvailing of the life and character of God to Man, and of his spiritual power in Man. This revelation was to be the eternal center and stay of all true life, political, social, moral, to all the nations of the earth. But it was left for other nations, especially Greece and Rome in the first ages, and the German race in later centuries, to elaborate those human capacities for the gradual development of science, art, law, literature, and commerce, without which the splendor, variety, and intellectual wealth of the universe could never have been revealed at all, though they had proved fruitless of human good, and even of permanent human enjoyment without this spring of eternal life at the center. The revelation of the eternal cha-scious development of national character racter and relations to man which was completed in Christ, gave, we believe, the one absolute center to all the various radiating lines of human development-but the center only. It was not till this central power had permeated all the brilliant fruits of Greek art and thought, and of Roman skill in organization, and of German meditative sentiment, that any approximate estimate could be formed of the general scope of the Christian faith. As light is not adequately known till we see it shining through a variety of different media, and bringing out in each its own color, so the "light that enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world" could not be adequately understood, even as men may understand it, until it had chastened art and deepened literature, and widened the spirit of law, and spiritualized science, and given to all that new elasticity which an eternal foundation alone can give. Of course much, very much, of this still remains to be done. In politics especially, except at rare intervals, this eternal center has been hidden out of sight, and sometimes utterly forgotten. But still we have seen and learnt enough to form some estimate of the relative place which the Hebrew and the Classical view of politics should assume in the ma tured Christian faith.

As we have said, in the Hebrew nation

and intellectual power, and of dim-sighted ignorant religion, was going on in the early world, as mere preliminary notes to the great revelation of God's kingdom. This was the end of the ages, the point on which all the lines of history converg ed. The Greeks and Romans, on the other hand, had of course no such conception of an eternal purpose connecting all the nations and all the ages in its many folds. But they had a clear belief in various forms of divine genius endowing them with, and developing, their most characteristic national gifts, directing their national destinies, and so limiting these gifts, as they conceived, by the law of race, that they would be endangered or perish with the loss of political independence.

Such were the supernatural and the natural view of national life and unity; the one resting exclusively on a divine law imposed upon the nation, and a divine testimony committed to it; the other, mainly on similarity of organization, common powers, common tastes and habits, and common tutelary deities. The one was a unity conferred by God's overshadowing purpose, the other by the community of human talents. It is not difficult to see how these conditions of true na tional unity are blended in the life of modern nations. The divine and the hu

highest experience, or it will never pro- | yet it is scarcely possible to express how duce its best fruits. The "right of the strongly we feel that not only the greatnobler" to govern is indisputable where ness of the English nation, but the future it is recognized; but if it be not intimate- course of English theology and faith, dely and heartily recognized, then it is not pend on the relation between that faith to those who thus fail to recognize it the and our national life and government. In right of the nobler at all; they do not other countries the fresh impulses of a acquiesce in it as having a claim over their new grasp of truth have often preceded a consciences, but for other reasons. The practical regeneration in the life of the actual government of God in man is but people. In England this has been seldom a touch, a sway, an impulse given at the the case. Truth does not gain a living very center of our purposes and wishes; hold on the life of our nation till its and so a national government that is not power is wanted in aid of some practical in constant and close intimacy with the reform. The Reformation here was an nation's wishes, character, and habits, can administrative reform rather than a result not wield over it the noblest influence. of changed national conviction; when it And it must often, like God's government had been completed, the new faith gathitself, permit national sins and evils to ered force in aid of it, and arrested the ripen which it feels keenly, unless it can return of the tide. Again, the religious gain the true coöperation of the national movement which marked the Puritan will in exterminating them. Revolution grew as it were in the wake of the political conflict, being in great measure called into popular life by the need of a spiritual weapon equal to so rare an emergency. And so it may be again. We may find that the vulgar morality of a slipshod parliamentary government is becoming intolerable; that if the country is not to lose her place among the nations, some higher standard of political life must be raised and battled for. And then it will be suddenly found that our theology has been as dim and formal as our political morality, and that the two are vitally connected. In waiting for such a time, we are sometimes tempted to lament the decline since the period of Cromwell's protectorship; to speak as if the political faith of the nation were incapable of ever reaching the same level of strength and sincerity again. But Cromwell's age was one of almost abject reli ance on the words and letter of Scripture; and the religion of the time was therefore necessarily narrow and Judaizing, and unjust to the various culture handed down to us from the classical nations, and the habits of Saxon ancestors. It would be idle to expect that this phase of national faith could pass away, and be replaced by one resting on the broader foundations of the whole divine education of the ages which had gone before, without a long intervening period of vacillating opinion, external creeds, and dogmatic indifference, telling as much on the political as on the theological atmosphere.

But it does not follow that a true national government ought to follow tardily in the wake of popular opinion, but that it ought to guide and control it. For the government should be the highest existing form of the national conscience and intellect, should be able to feel to the full the spiritual power derived from the unity and freedom of the nation, and to direct the line of its further progress. If it can not guide the nation right, it should at least refuse to guide it wrong: it should throw the responsibility on others. A deep belief on the part of the national government that every one of its acts is clothed with the authority of the nation, and will go to determine the question of national decay or national progress, should certainly give something. of that distinctness of purpose to its government which the greater ancient statesmen had in higher degree than the modern. Yet Pericles, when he prayed that no unsuitable word might drop from his mouth in the assembly of the people, mainly felt the heavy responsibility of shaping the outward destiny of Athens; he could not have felt, at least in the degree in which one of our English statesmen might feel it, the responsibility of more or less forming the inner temper of the national characterof giving it nobleness, sincerity, and fixity of purpose on the one hand; or, on the other, of multiplying the number of vacillating fancies and feverish excitements, or selfish impulses, which infest it.

We have now finished what has proved, we fear, a somewhat tedious discussion; VOL. LII.-No. 4.

Still the springs of political faith remain. Dr. Newman used to preach that

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the English race, with all its great quali- | brought back to feel and know, as well as ties, has no vivid sense of the supernatur unconsciously obey, the Eternal Will in al. This may be in some sense true; but which the unity of the nation is centred; by the deep English love for that Order, and by the same craving we may be political and social, the roots of which brought to realize it as vividly, and less travel far and wide into the spiritual world, fanatically, again. we have often already in our history been

From the British Quarterly.