whole race collectively, but a man can do much for his country. There are times when his country makes great demands upon him. It is necessary that patriotism. should be an affection of corresponding depth and energy to meet the emergency. Not only are the feelings with which we regard our family and our country natural affections, but they are moral sentiments. He who possesses them, comes up to our conceptions of moral duty, and he who is wanting in them, inevitably forfeits the esteem of his fellow men. Where would Abraham, the father of the faithful, have stood in the estimation of all posterity, had he hesitated to arm his household, and rescue his brother Lot and his family from captivity? Where would he have stood in his own estimation, if he had suffered his kinsman to wear out his life in bondage, when he had the means to restore him to his liberty and his possessions? And this is doubtless the very purpose for which such a powerful sentiment as patriotism has been im-. planted in the human breast, to lay the foundation of nationality, to guarantee that mutual defense which nationality is intended to insure, by something more efficient and impulsive than a mere conviction of expediency. It is intended to protect the stranger when he wanders beyond the boundaries of his country, with the whole moral and physical force of the nation to which he belongs, that those who molest him may feel that they are violating the most sacred of ties, and rousing against them the most powerful impulses of human nature. There have been times when the fate of whole conti nents, and the history of long ages have seemed to depend on the power of this imponderable force in human nature. There was a time when Asia poured itself in a mass upon Europe, when the myriad armies of Oriental despotism seemed on the point of trampling out the only spark of freedom that then existed in the world, when the question seemed to be-Shall the most gifted people that God has ever formed in the mould of humanity, be blotted out of being, or suffered to fulfill its glorious mission of enlightening, refining and entertaining mankind, of elaborating and perfecting Art, Science and Literature? Was Europe to be overwhelmed by Asiatic barbarism, and finally this new continent, then unknown, to be but a repetition of the dreary and stolid dominations which brooded over the East through the uncounted ages of the past? This was the question which was decided at Marathon, Thermopyla and Salamis. Upon those great struggles the verdict of nations and ages has set its seal, and every human heart which has beat upon those consecrated precincts, has felt that every drop of Grecian blood there shed, was the purchase of countless blessings to mankind. the Twelve hundred years after, the same question came up for decision in the heart of France, when the Crescent and the Cross were arrayed against each other for supremacy of Europe. For once, the indolent soul of Eastern repose was fired to phrenzy by religious fanaticism, and like the outbursting of a volcano, the Saracens had overrun some of the fairest portions of the globe. Art, science, civilization, withered before them like a parched scroll; the labors of centuries were swept away as if by an inundation; whole provinces were laid waste, and ancient cities were reduced to a heap of smoking ruins. The northern coast of Africa already owned the sway of the Impostor of Mecca. Spain had fallen under his power. The flank of European civilization had been turned, the outposts had been driven in, and a Moslem army was assembled in the very centre of Christendom to strike the final blow for the subjugation of the world. Where was the hope, where was the rescue of Christianity itself, except in the fiery valor and iron determination of the Christian army which fought before Tours, under the leadership of Charles Martel? Gibbon, who surveyed this field of strife with a philosophic eye, assures us that it was then and there decided whether the Koran or the Bible should be expounded in the Academic halls of Oxford and Cambridge; whether Islamism or Christianity should thenceforth be the religion of the Western world? The third legitimate use of war is to vindicate and maintain the great principles of civil and religious liberty. Hard as it may seem to reconcile with the naked precept, "Resist not evil," there have been emergencies when the very existence of true religion and civil liberty has seemed to depend on an organized, armed and martial array, on the power of valor and the sword. Such was the era of Antiochus Epiphanes, to the religion of Moses. Sacerdotal apostacy, political treason, and foreign oppression, had combined to exterminate the only true religion from the face of the earth. The high priest himself, who wore the consecrated garments of Aaron, had become a Pagan, and an idolater; the disgusting orgies of Bacchus were introduced into the streets of Jerusalem; the holy vessels of the sanctuary were purloined by the apostate ministers of religion, and sold to the heathen; every part of the temple was polluted; the statue of Jupiter was set up upon the high altar, and for three years and a half, the smoke of the morning and evening sacrifice ceased to ascend. Tall bushes grew up undisturbed in the very courts where the sacred tribes had been accustomed for so many ages to worship God. Not only so, the mad tyrant issued a decree for the utter extinction of the Jewish religion. Commissioners were appointed, whose duty it was to seize and destroy every copy of the laws of Moses, or to defile its pages with obscene representations of their own idolatrous worship. Wherever they came, death was the penalty of the least manifestation of allegiance to the religion of Jehovah, or of a refusal to offer sacrifice to those who were no gods. The worship of the true God seemed about to be blotted out from under heaven, and the very trunk of the tree upon which Christianity was afterwards engrafted, seemed about to be wholly rooted up. And when the aged Mattathias, surrounded by his valiant sons, rose upon the sacrilegious invaders and smote them to the earth, and breathed anew the sacred fire of patriotism into the breasts of a prostrate and disheartened people, restored their nationality, reëstablished their independence, and reinstated the religion of Moses, and the worship of the temple; is there any advocate of non-resistance who can tell us how it could have been accomplished in any other way -- ? Again, another crisis in the world's affairs occurred in England during the reign of Charles I. During the middle ages, the most important changes had taken place. When the Roman empire was broken up, Christianity was the religion of a sect. When the darkness of the middle ages was past, and Europe was reorganized into states and nations, Christianity had become the religion of a continent. The Gospel contains within itself the germs of all social, as well as individual progress and perfection. It lays the foundation of political liberty and social equality; and where it is allowed to carry out its own principles, it secures them both. But amidst the barbarism and misrule of the middle ages, its main reform had been overlooked. It was the separation of the ecclesiastical from the civil power. Partly by design, and partly through the force of circumstances, the Western church had become united under one head, and that head had acquired great political power. The different governments of Europe, weak in themselves, and liable to constant revolutions, were glad to avail themselves of the mediation of a power which was respected by all. But from mediation, the Popes gradually assumed the position of absolut authority, and finally of a paramount dominion over all Europe, and kingdoms became their provinces, and monarchs became suppliants at the foot of the Papal chair. The first to throw off this vassalage, was Henry VIII., of England. But he vacated the Papal chair in England merely to mount into it himself, and a layman and profligate became the head of the English church. It was something to be freed from a foreign ecclesiastical domination, but the complete amalgamation of church and state was a dangerous experiment. Henry, |