laid down the bible for the sword, and went at the head of his armed congregation to fight against the other cantons, never doubted for a moment he was engaged in a honourable cause. What is honour worth? "the price of a thing is just as much as it will bring." Zuinglius contended that a civil magistrate (who are not always civil, or clothed with humility) ought to have unbounded and absolute power in religious matters. The rest of the cantons contended that every church should govern itself: but being determined to enforce his dogma on others, he left the pulpit for the battle-field.

The living truths of the Gospel are unmistakeably manifest in the melancholy deaths of Colonel Gardiner, Capt. Hedley Vicars, and General Havelock. Dr. Franklin always said, there never was a good war, or a bad peace. Zuinglius beheld in the fall of the first man, the key to the history of human nature. Before the fall (said he) man was created with a free will, so that had he pleased, he might have kept the law: his nature was pure, the disease of sin had not tainted him; he had his life in his hand. But desiring to be like GOD, he died, and not he only, but all posterity. No one can recal life from the dead, until the SPIRIT-that is, GOD Himself-quickens them. again from death. Where sin exists, it is necessary there should be death. Persons, perhaps, more curious than wise, object that this doctrine renders man thoughtless and dissolute. Whoever believes in CHRIST are assured that all that comes from GOD is necessarily good. Here again a difficulty arises in determining what emanates from GOD, and what from fallible short-sighted man. Zuinglius

was oppressed with melancholy, the middle stage to general insanity all things, in his eyes, seemed turning into confusion, and society in a whirl. He was possessed with the idea that nothing can shew its head, without its contrary rising to confront it. No sooner did his heart concieve hope, than by its side there sprung up a fear.

The life of man here is a warfare: he who would earn glory, ought to attack in the face of the world, and like David, make the proud Goliath, who seems so to vaunt his mighty stature, bite the dust. The Church, he would say, sprang from blood, and by blood must she be restored. The more stains she has, the more Herculeses must we fit out for cleansing the Augæan stable. I have few fears for Luther (he would say), even should he be smitten by the bolts of that Jupiter. Truth is pungent: it is not thought quite safe to flay too delicate ears by speaking it out. As the war question is betwixt the anvil and the hammer, having a few mental Goliaths engaged in denouncing the Anti-Christian struggles which are taking place, we can only wish the gallant defenders of the New Testament God-speed! trusting and hoping their efforts will be successful, and that "murder in mass" which now dishonours the world, will be brought to a speedy termination. Let our ambitious worthies, who seriously wish to know which is the most popular form of government, digest well the following wise saws; the question admitting of a multiplicity of answers:

"That," said Bias, "where the laws have no superior." "That," said Thales, "where the inhabitants are neither too rich nor too poor."

"That," said Anacharus the Scythian," where virtue is honoured, and vice detested."

"That," said Pittacus, "whose dignities are always conferred on the virtucus, and never upon the base."

"That," said Cleotentias, "where the citizens fear blame more than punishment."

"That," said Chalo, "where the laws are more regarded than the orators."

"But that,” said Solon, "where an injury done to the meanest citizen, is an insult to the whole constitution."

So much for the apothegms of some of the ancients. But we have to do with the moderns.

"That," said Pope, "that is the best government that is best administered:" and which keeps constantly before their mental optics peace, love, and good-will to all men in all nations. Providence is daily converting the crimes and blunders of rulers and nations, into their scourges; and accepting as some of its ordinary agencies, the passions and motives of bad men, to give greater impulse to truth they abhor, and to the liberties against which they have combined. No noble sentiment can vibrate in such souls.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MEN FORMED PROGRESSIVELY.-WE MAY READ OUR SIN IN ITS PUNISHMENT.-SCIENCE, TRUTH, OFTEN SEEN TOO LATE.

"THE prosperity of others is the alarm-bell of ambitious. people. Surely, true ambition lives not only in the goods of fortune. Is there no nobler ambition than that of vanity? Is there no ambition of the heart? an ambition to console, to cheer the griefs of those who love and trust us? an ambition to build a happiness out of the reach of fate? an ambition to soothe some high soul, in its strife with a mean world-to lull to sleep its pain; to smile to serenity its cares? Oh! methinks a woman's true ambition would rise the bravest when in the very sight of death itself, the voice of him in whom her glory had dwelt through life, should say-Thou fearest not to walk to the grave, and to heaven by my side.'"-The Last of the Barons.

This is ambition from the sun of heaven, that no cloud can darken. Wherever those angelic attributes and motives reign supreme, long eclipses are unheard of. Men who are mooting great questions that interest man, sure enough will have their eclipses, but they will be temporary and evanescent. What (asks Goëthe) does a religion pretend to? It pretends to govern the human passions

and the human will. All religion is a restraint, a power, a government. It comes in the name of Divine law, for the purpose of subduing human nature. It is human liberty, then, with which it chiefly concerns itself; and it is human liberty that resists it, and which it wishes to overcome. Such is the enterprise of religion, such its mission and its hope.

When popes-who may be found in almost every pulpit-force, seduce, or use any means which are foreign to the free concurrence of man; when they treat him as they would water or wind, as a material power;-they do not attain their end, they neither reach nor govern the human will. For religions to accomplish what they attempt (observes Goethe), they must make themselves acceptable to liberty itself. It is needful that man should submit, but he must do so voluntarily and freely, and must preserve his liberty in the very heart of his submission. This is the double problem which religions are called upon to solve. Singular obliviousness (observes this great thinker), that moral chronology is forgotten; that history is essentially successive. Take the life of a man -of Cromwell, of Gustavus Adolphus, or Richelieu. He enters upon his career, he moves and progresses; he influences great events, and he in his turn is influenced by them; he arrives at the goal. We then know him, but it is in his whole; it is, as it were, such as he has issued after much labour from the workshop of Providence. But at starting, he was not what he has then become; he has never been complete and finished at any single period of his life; he has been formed progressively. Men are