who, in the name of Jesus Christ, have gone into moral deserts, into those howling wastes of abandoned men in which the world abounds, exploring the haunts of sensual excess, the caverns of the dungeon, and the lanes of poverty, have found that if not weary in well doing, they could set springs of devotion flowing even there; all was not evil; the veriest rocks of the wilderness have melted under the touch of holy and gentle hands. Such If these things are so, -and they are so, - who can have any fears for Christianity? Infidelity has no sympathy with our nature. It makes no provision for the thirst of the soul. It knows no such wants; but such wants there are, and the faith which does not supply them is no religion for man. wants there are, and Christianity, the only faith which satisfies them, cannot be lost. It may at times be overlooked, for it springs apart from the dusty wayside of life. It may be undervalued, for none can estimate it aright but those who have made trial of its power; but, like the element to which our Saviour likened it, it is essential and indispensable; man cannot do without it; and, therefore, it will continue to flow long after the sun has withdrawn his shining, and the stars are pale with age. Having stated what is the foundation of our confidence that our religion shall endure, let us next inquire if there is any reason for those fears which many have, lest it shall perish from the souls of men. There is encouragement in those very fears. For you may observe that nothing is apprehended from assaults of unbelievers without; all the fear is, of unsoundness and decline within; that is, lest men should of themselves abandon it, and let it die. And it certainly is true that it can spread no faster than men give it welcome; it dies if men suffer it to die. Though the truths of Christianity are eternal, religion, which is the feeling arising from the recognition of those truths, may perish, if men will have it so. But for the reasons just given, we are sure that this can never be; the same wants which have made them embrace it through the two thousand years that are nearly past, will make them continue to embrace it, through the numberless years and ages that are yet to come. One reason of these fears is, the extravagance and excess of opinion, to which Christians often go, not those, who use their deliberate reason, and take their conscience with them, but those who speculate with fanciful rashness, and snatch a fearful joy in seeing how far they can venture to go. Such tastes and tendencies always have been found in the Christian world but the experience of all ages proves, that they do no lasting injury to the cause of Christian truth. To those who engage in them, and those who adopt them, serious injury may be done, and for their sakes it is well that efforts should be made to resist them; but those speculations, and the controversies which follow, can no more destroy the existence and power of Christian truth in the world, than the crimson cloud of the battle-field can quench the orb of day. Active and free thought is the element in which truth lives, and moves, and has its being. Let us never, from the fear of seeing things unsettled, hope for a dead, level calm. If the broad ocean were covered with the verdure of stagnation, it would seem more firm and settled than it does now; and yet such a calm would be more fearful to the mariner than the wildest storm that ever swept the sea. Better that the waves should roll, even if here and there a vessel founders. Better, immeasurably better, to see the intellectual elements in motion, than to see them sleeping! Anything is better than indifference. In the most diseased convulsive action of life there is hope; in the repose of death there is none. Neither is the number and variety of religious opinions a sign of danger to the cause of Christianity. It is desirable that men should be of one mind and one heart; but not that they should be of one opinion. If it were so in reality, it would show that their minds are not in action; if they were so only in profession, it would show that they are not free. This number of opinions is owing to the spread of light; in lands of ignorance and darkness all is uniform; but variety comes with intellectual improvement, and increases as that improvement extends. Do I not know as I look on the landscape, now, when the spring comes in the brightness of its rising, over hill and valley, do I not know the cause of all this beauty? At night there is cold uniformity in the aspect of nature, like that which the bigot covets for the religious world. But variety comes with the morning; things which the darkness blended into one, separate and take form, like wax beneath the seal; as the sun rises the lights and shadows increase in depth and number, till every leaf of the woodland shows its own peculiar green. Why fear the time when each man shall have his own opinion? It is not well that one overshadowing system should, by influence VOL. XXVIII. 3D 9. VOL. X. NO. III. 41 or power, keep down the independence of the mind. If men think for themselves, they will not think alike; but they will not give up the right; and God forbid that they should. Another reason why some have fears for Christianity is, that they see no permanency about any sect or party. To every member, or I should say, to every slave of a sect, his own sect seems the whole Christian body. So long as it flourishes, he thinks that all is well with religion; but as soon as it dwindles in influence and numbers, he verily believes that Christianity itself is going down. While such is the feeling of party men, no wonder that there are fears. Still they are uncalled for. By a law of nature every sect seems to live its day, some a longer, others a shorter; still, it is a day that has an end at last. Looking over the past history of religion, you find recorded the names of many whose day is over; they answered a purpose, perhaps a good purpose in their time; but the hour came when they were no longer needed; and when no good purpose could be served by their continued existence, they accepted their death-warrant and passed away. Some are now breaking up, and a cry rises from the midst of them, as if Christianity itself were dying. But is it so? Is the hope of religion staked on the existence of any exclusive party? Oh no! These are natural and familiar changes, no more threatening ruin to Christianity, than the breaking up of the ice in spring bodes destruction to the river. They cease to exist, because they have accomplished all the ends of their existence; they pass away because their use is over; and to detain them longer would be as unnatural and impossible as to withhold a corpse from the grave. This is the light in which parties should be regarded. They are not beneficial as many think them, nor are they as pernicious as is often supposed. Each one has its portion of truth; some more, others less; but each one has its part; the portion of truth which it has, is its vital principle, and without it, the party could not live an hour. The errors of the party do not stifle the truth; the truth works under the error, works itself clear, like a living spring; so far from the party destroying the truth, the result is precisely the reverse; the truth prevails over the errors at last, and in time destroys the party. Dying, it gives place to some other, which rises and reigns in its stead; that one, in its turn, shall give place to some other, and the same succession shall go on, till the time arrives when there shall be one fold and one shepherd, and truth shall be the same in every party, the same in every breast. Again. Human creeds and forms of faith are passing by; and as each one is given up, its advocates feel as if all the solemnity of religion went with it. Invariably, when the believer of a creed is compelled by the force of truth to give it up and take the Bible alone for his standard, he feels as if all the solemnity of religion was gone. If it is so indeed, if all his religion was in his creed, and not in his life and spirit, he is in danger, and he cannot find it out too soon. So far as respects his faith, he has made a decided improvement; the former did not answer the purpose of religion to him, and possibly the new one may. So when there is a change in the faith of numbers, whatever the first fruits may be, it is owing to that law by which partial views of truth give way to those which are more extensive and enlightened. It is well that they perish; they might otherwise have remained standing in the way of truth, but now as each one goes, its place is in time supplied with another, not absolutely true, but nearer truth than the former. But why, says the advocate of creeds, may I not regard my creed as containing all Christianity; in fact, as identical with Christianity? Turn to the world of nature, there it is, you have it all before you. Why not regard your scientific descriptions as complete, and say that observers in coming time will have no more to discover? Because, as you well know, those descriptions embrace, not all that there is, by any means, but only all that men have yet learned. And so the creeds of Christian sects embrace, not all that there is, but only all that they have learned. The succeeding age will know more. The creeds of future sects will embrace more light and truth than ours; and as new light is continually breaking from the word of God, we may hope that the world will grow more and more enlightened, till it shines and rejoices in the perfect day. Thus it appears that the fate of creeds and parties is not discouraging. It shows, on the contrary, that Christianity is prevailing with growing light and power. No one dreams that the spirit of man dies, when the frame in which it is for the time embodied sinks into the dust. We believe rather that the destruction of the body is release and translation to the soul. So when the creed in which a portion of Christian truth is embodied begins to lose its hold; when the members of the sect chal lenge, suspect, and condemn each other, till party and creed together become a hopeless ruin, the portion of truth which it possessed remains; it is gathered into the great treasury of mankind; no longer hidden in the dark lantern of a narrow association, it sheds abroad its light to the whole Christian world. It is clear, then, that what are often regarded as indications of the decline of Christianity, are signs rather of its progress; it is throwing off every weight, redeeming itself from human inventions, and preparing to extend and be glorified in the world as it never yet has been. So far from being lost, it will come into nearer intimacy with the human heart. In what forms it will manifest itself in coming time, it is not ours to say. It will not probably manifest itself in new forms, so much as an indifference to forms compared with realities, not such an indifference as is found and sometimes boasted among us now, not the indifference of those to whom religious forms are an unmeaning language, because they have never known the feelings which those forms express; but the indifference of those who are so profoundly impressed with the substance and spirit of Christianity, that if a man's heart is in his religion, they care not in what dialect he prays, whether he stands or kneels in devotion, whether he holds a creed or governs his life by the Scriptures alone they are glad to see any form in which the faith can gain for itself a warmer welcome in any heart. But I do wrong to use the word indifference in connexion with such a feeling as this; it is rather an interest in all forms which breathe the true spirit of those who use them; its watchword is, Christ is preached, and I therein do rejoice. It makes believers friendly to the whole-hearted of every party, it allows them to be unkind and unjust to none. - And now let me ask, have you ever reflected, that when our Saviour likened his religion to a living spring, he compared it to the most durable of earthly things. Fleeting and perishable as it seems, there is nothing more enduring. Many a wayfarer goes to the land where Jesus lived, a region made so sacred by his presence, that men have called it the Holy Land. They look for Samaria, the great city of the kings; they find nothing save the well where Jesus talked with the Samaritan, and see women coming as in past ages, to draw from it in the heat of the day. They find no vestige of Tyre; the city whose merchants were princes, but the same waves welter round the lonely shores, and the fisherman spreads his nets upon the |