waits, and knows that his despised sentences will one day be aurea sententiæ. They will be esteemed as fine gold; his thoughts, mocked at by man now, will be the stepping-stones of improvement. Solitarily as he works he is the Architect of an Age! It is this which invests all the Martyrs of Science, and those other martyrs nobler still-the martyrs for civil and religious liberty, with so high and transcendant a lustre. Thus especially is it with Galileo, whom we may call the Huss of science, if it be not better to call him the Columbus. Of Science he was the prophetic-the evangelic man. And why does the mind revert to him so affectionately? Is it not because his life struck the hour? It was the time of the trimming or kindling of the lamps in the great temple of knowledge, and he, like a priest, held aloft the tapers. How our breast shakes with the deep human emotion, when we read the history of this mighty spirit, the serene and heavenly old man, whose eyes were darkened by looking at the stars-blind-bereaved of his young pious daughter, -seventy years of age, dragged to the tribunal chambers of the Inquisition, subjected to the extreme torture of the rack and the rope, naked, defenceless, there upon his bare knees before his inquisitorial judges. Yet was he an Arthitect of the future age. How much does Europe and the world owe to his sagacious and penetrative soul? In his great maxim, that "we cannot teach truth to another, we can only help him to find it," is contained the germ of all knowledge, and the foundation of those future inductions which have won the faith of the world. And our times witness for us, too, the existence of men before the age; of men, whose minds are engaged in sketching the maps of the future. Almost all the intellectual labour of the present day is sparkling ; great in disconnection and disassociation, the mechanic age has scarcely dawned. The want of the world is system; this is the most difficult Utopia to colonize or people. To learn the power of combination, to mount by combination to independence and worth, this must be the economy of society, the subject of future effort. All the efforts of the friends of the people should be directed to the methods by which the resources of labour may be unfolded, and the energies of labour compacted together. We have hitherto seen but the diseased side of combination in the socialisms and communisms by which men have in alternation, deceived and been deceived. It may with much certainty be prophecied, that Communism has no relation to the future; it is a modern disease which the reactions of society will cure. Class legislation with all its evils, results from the selfishness of an Aristocracy; Communism from the selfishness of Democracy for it is unmingled selfishness; it is a chapter from the great book of Utilitarianism-Benthamism. Man is regarded as a brick in a great building; his affections, his hopes, his ambitions, are to be meted and measured out to him, if such things or thoughts are to occupy any share in his attention at all. The space is gone-the subjects seem untouched. The gardens of Utopia spread away before us, and upon our table are lying the hand-books of many guides who would conduct us thither; man pants after the perfect-he strives to realise a nobler life than the present; to the distant, to the prophetic, every teacher of worth in our age bends his eye. Every true soul is striving to liberate himself and groaning earth, from the evils incident to our very imperfect state. Some architects are striving to build a more perfect health for the body, to give to it wholeness, the happy play of all its functions and its powers. And is not this the idea we form of any Utopia? What can we conceive beyond wholeness? Equilibrium? It is this which makes love and justice one. It is this which brings to the individual or social spirit, repose that highest word. The remedying of one social or individual evil is an approximation to that state; where every power of man has its own free legitimate healthy play; where goodness comes and moves without an effort or a constraint. At present, human nature is sorely perplexed with its multitude of guides. Truth is one, and simple. Oh that one would in this day simplify it, and show its identity; oh that men could feel it, and instead of carrying about with them a being shaken at all points and from various batteries, that the rays of truth could fall as the blessed flakes of beautiful light, penetrating, subduing, moulding. Christianity is that influence, that light, that power; it is that wholeness which the world needs, which man waits for; it is the Architect of the Age, of Ages. There is no building well without it; it absorbs all good; the machinery of all benevolence, all virtue, all power depends on its genius and spirit, for motion and success. The spirit of christianity is alive; and mighty, for it is the spirit of Eternity. And now that the spirit of man may receive liberty, intelligence, religion, health, what is needed but that the old forms in which God's word has been immured and enshrined should be unclasped; that its permanent power, free from the transient robe and chain, may move forth the apostle of peace to the heart, the herald of good things to come. Thus may the age be balanced and blessed. If man is to be aided in his future development, it must be by christian truth, not the infusion of any new truth, but the presentation of the old, free from the swaddling bands of error in such a manner, that its adaptation to the universal heart of man shall be felt and professed! 39 ALGERNON SYDNEY, a guide to the people ALLISON, SHERIFF, quoted or referred to 197-199, 341, 347 illustrative of the social state of large towns Spitalfields weaver Electoral servility 370 the Sisters Spencer 325 Britton Abbot Joseph Austin |