A WORD FOR THE PRESENT TIMES.

Ir is the feeling of every heart that the times are peculiar and alarming: the solid earth seems, as it were, heaving beneath our feet, and its firmest fabrics reeling to and fro. The opinions, habits and prejudices of ages, like the broken mists of morning, are every where dispersing; disclosing to every eye the unveiled reality of things. Objects can no longer gain importance by obscurity, nor magnitude by imaginary distance. The factitious distinctions of society, useful as they have been, cannot abide this great disclosure, to hide their want of reality any longer; and even their utility will not serve them for a covering. Usurpation, oppression and corruption must now hear themselves called by their own names; all human influence and power submit to common inspection the title deeds of their supremacy. In a world so much accustomed to be governed by a name, to be mastered by an idea, and overruled by fictions, fearful beyond description are the changes that must attend this great undoing: it is like taking away the huge buttresses and cumbrous pillars of some antique building, whence the spectators shrink away, and even the workmen tremble, in doubt whether the edifice will stand or fall. The hand that raised the social edifice alone knows the mighty secret of its foundations; if it will stand without the adventitious props by which men have

supported and, in a measure, disfigured it; or whether the time is come in which He designs that it shall fall to pieces and be a ruin. The child of God has much to think and much to fear, in such a time as this; but I cannot believe that he has much to do; I cannot believe that he, at least, is to put his hand to the adventurous work, or mix his voice in the multitudinous cry. Well were it whispered in the ears of some who call themselves by the name of the Lord, "What dost thou here Elijah-return on thy way to the wilderness do the works of thy holy calling without fear; deliver my messages and anoint my chosen, and leave to me the care of my altars, and the maintenance of my covenant, the putting down of Ahab and the setting up of Jehu.

Still less can Christian women have to do in the noisy current of this world's politics, except by that unperceived but commonly irresistible influence, which animates or discourages the active spirit of man. And whatever be the case in a world beyond our influence, I am happy in believing that among religious women, no remonstrance is required upon the subject; to the extent of my observation all is as it should be; the weight of female influence in the religious circles is all on the side of quietness and conservation, submission to the things that are, and divine reliance for whatever is to come.

More deeply interesting still to every Christian bosom, is the condition of the church of God; little less agitated, and perhaps nothing less alarming, than of society at large. In the externals of religion, in all that is human in it, the church shares fully the political revolution. Names no longer carry weight; creeds and formularies, and conventional usages, are

losing all authority; the learner is the critic, and the teacher not seldom the candidate: every one must now have a better reason for a thing than that his minister says it, or his church enacts it, or his forefathers had it so. With the superstitions and formalities, the impositions and corruptions, which will not be able to confront the matter-of-fact tribunal of the present day, how much will be sacrificed that is important to religion, although extraneous to it, is another secret of Omniscience: how far the interests of the invisible church of Christ will be affected by the maintenance or destruction of any, or of all ecclesiastical establishments, we may have our opinions, and must have our fears, but it is only God that knows. And here again we may surely say to every believing soul, "In quietness and confidence shall be your strength." Let us beware how we answer, "No-but we will flee upon chariots and upon horses," or we will turn round and fight our enemies with the weapons of this world's warfare. In naming, however, the church of God, I mean rather that fold invisible, that inclosure so obscure to mortal vision, but to the omniscient eye so definite, which is neither within the establishment nor without it; which can be designated by no name of man's inventing, nor entrenched by any lines of human circumvallation; which is wherever a true believer is, a living member of Christ's mystical body upon earth, and is not any where beside. Respecting the state of the true church at the present time, there is much difference of opinion. Some think it is spreading like a green bay-tree planted by the water courses, extending its roots throughout the earth, and about to overshadow the whole human

race they see nothing but promise in the extension of knowledge and the spirit of inquiry, and the increase of religious profession and exertion. Some, on the other hand, take all this seeming good for evil, think vital godliness is on the decline, its spirit lowered by diffusion and tainted by admixture; that the religion of Jesus, instead of being the growing leaven of a Christianised world, is about to be again cast out and persecuted by the confederate powers of darkness. I do not wish to decide between these opposite opinions; every attentive listener must be impressed with their discrepancy, even in the language of our pulpits: I have sometimes thought of the same pulpit: as if there was a more than ordinary confusion in the minds of pious men, as to what our real condition is. God has his purpose in all this and when his children can no longer see their way, it is their time to stand still and see what the Lord will do. Let the future be his: my observations respect only the present, the tangible, perceptible present; that which we all can see, and all can do, and all are responsible to do aright.

It cannot be denied, I think, that in our church, at the present time, although there is an increase of light in respect of its diffusion, there is a diminution in its intenseness. The few bright lights of other days, that fixed all eyes and drew a charmed circle round them, into which nothing profane might enter; where the world came not in, because there was nothing to allure them, and the church went not out, because the world refused them; these brilliant candlesticks of a contemned altar have given place to an indefinite number of lights almost as indefinite; while our spiritual teachers are multiplied on every

side, the learner has rather to find his way through them than by them, so indistinct and various are their indications; and while the true disciples of Jesus are multiplied also, the profession of religion has become so indefinite a thing, that if He is still known of his sheep, as undoubtedly He ever must be, it is of him only they can be distinctly known.

Whether this condition of the church is a better or a worse one, or why, or for what end God has been pleased to bring us to it; whether it is a token of his grace for gifts improved, or of displeasure for those gifts neglected, I cannot take upon me to decide our opportunities have been unexampled, our advantages over all other nations incalculable: great, indeed, must have been our improvement of them, to bring us to the former conclusion: in contemplation of our duties at the present crisis, it may be as well to keep our minds in suspense at least upon this point, lest we grow supine in too much admiration of our condition.

Be all this as it may, the fact is so, that while the number of Gospel ministers is so greatly increased, and the preaching of the truth so much extended, the difficulties of those who desire to hear it were never greater than at present. Time was when we had only to choose whether we would hear an evangelical preacher, or whether we would not; and if we would, the term had so definite a signification, with some differences equally well defined, that in choosing it we knew what manner of doctrine we should hear, and might fearlessly commit ourselves As a class, evangeto its influence. Not so now. lical preachers are no longer distinct and no longer uniform of the most distinguished every one has a