great enough, it might seem, to tempt the highest Christian ambition; and yet, my brethren and sisters, in concluding these discourses I see opening before us a career still greater than that. If we follow the apos

tle in his Christian life by his Christian faith, we shall not only be imitators of his Christianity, but also of his apostleship. Paul, I said just now, is an apostle only because of his being a Christian; but we, in the path which I am inviting you to enter, and myself with you, if Christians indeed, we shall be apostles in our turn. For we also have doubt it not!— our apostolical mission. It is not the mission of the first century; it is that of the nineteenth. The point of duty now, is not to bear the gospel to Gentiles, but to clothe it anew with power in the sight of Christians. The gospel has been lowered in the religious awakening of our epoch, because the world has not seen between the life of believers and that of unbelievers a difference proportioned to the difference of their principles; and the question is to render visible before all eyes, faith's reality and power. "The salt hath lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted?" This insoluble problem it is now time to solve; and its solution, the true apostleship of the epoch, can be given only by the works of God's children, our contemporaries; let me say, rather, by the works of the people of God in our day. It is not the business of one man, were that man a Saint Paul; it is the business of an entire people of brethren. Is it asked, What would Saint Paul do, were he alive to day? I know not; but that is not the question of the day. The gospel abides, the means suffer change. Perhaps there is not to-day, in the plans of God, any task prepared for a Saint Paul; but there is one pre

pared for a Christian people having Paul's spirit: and it is this people which I labor, so far as in me lies, to form or to awaken by these discourses.

One could say that Saint Paul himself enters into this thought. He writes not only on this one occasion, "Be ye followers of me;" he writes, "Be ye all followers together of me," by which he provokes a collective invitation. Not that one Christian entirely alone cannot do much for the cause of that practical apostleship of which I have just been speaking to you;

he can prove by his example, as did Saint Paul by his, that the gospel exacts nothing which may not be realized; and this would be taking away the most formidable obstacle which the truth encounters in upright hearts. But, in order that this proof become clearly visible and truly decisive, it must be furnished not by some exceptional or isolated individuality, but by an organic body, whence it breaks forth at once in every member, and in the relations, also, of the members one toward another. I say designedly an organic body, not an organized body; for I am speaking of that natural unity which is engendered in the necessity of things, by the common principle of life,—not of that factitious uniformity which, through the choice of the human will, is produced by a common administration. The people whom I call, is neither an association, nor is it even a new church; it is a spiritual people, freely yet necessarily united, within by the life of the Spirit, and without by the life of good works. Saint Paul called it before me, in those beautiful words which contain the sum of all these discourses: "The grace of God, that bringeth salvation, hath appeared unto all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts,

we should live soberly, and righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for the blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify us unto himself to be a peculiar people, and zealous of good works."1

Christians! followers of Saint Paul! the characteristic of the gospel throughout is reality! Let us express all, and say, it is the incarnation. The Son of God, that Living Word, had his incarnation in the Son of Man. It is necessary, also, that the revealed word have its own incarnation in a people of God, in whom every one may see practised that which we preach, and lived that which we say. Behold! behold the contemporary religious work, greater than that of an apostle Paul, and which alone has promises of spiritual renewal for Christianity! Behold here the sole hope of renovation— spiritual, ecclesiastical, even political and social — after which the world sighs from every quarter! May, I say not my voice, but God's voice itself, of which I know well that I am only the feeble yet faithful echo, speak to the heart of the children of God who hear me; and "in the day when God shall gather together his army,” -and is not this day coming on?-may his people arise like "a willing people, adorned with holiness," and "his valiant youth offer themselves unto him like the drops of morning dew!" 2 Amen.

1 Titus 2: 11-14. Literally, a zealot of good works, as the Jews were "zealots of the law."- Acts 21: 20, literal version.

2 Ps. 110: 3.

FATALISM.

"IF the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”John 8:36.

As every people has its own moral atmosphere, so, too, has every generation; and this atmosphere is dif fused at the same time over all civilized nations. The air which they breathe is impregnated, as it were, with certain maxims peculiar to the age, which men do not so much accept as feel, and from the influence of which no one can withdraw himself, except by a resolute act of resistance. Such resistance is rare; and it is not in the power of reflection alone to render a man capable of it. Men of reflection, that is to say, those who turn their minds back upon themselves in order to study man in the individual, — pilosophers, if they aspire to rise to the heights of human knowledge, — poets, if their aim is to descend into the depths of the soul, since they possess, after all, as their field of exploration only the common basis of human nature, can never discover within themselves, how far soever they may penetrate, anything save that which is in man, and more especially in the man of their epoch. More truly men than other men, and more truly of their age than their contemporaries, they feel, yet more than

1 This discourse was delivered at Paris, April 2, 1848.

others, the general movement; and it is only on this very condition that they govern and direct it. In them the characteristic spirit of the age attains to its highest power. After this, having become revealed to itself, it descends again from those kings of men to the multitude from which it sprang, and, clothing itself in popular forms, goes forth to strengthen in the mass that moral condition which gave it birth, creating firstaccording to the character of the epoch-sometimes a healthful support, sometimes, alas! and more commonly, a temptation fraught with peril. For, in this world which "lieth in the wicked one,"1 the successive forms borrowed by imagination and reflection appear to be so many means which the great Adversary wields, each in its turn, against our feeble race.

Let us apply this remark to the times in which we live. The prevailing doctrine in the intellectual movement of the epoch, is known, in the language of the schools, under the name of pantheism. To lay open this doctrine, would here be out of place; and you will presently see that the unwonted ground on which I place myself for a moment, is with me but a transition necessary in order to reach a discussion more closely conformed to the object of this discourse. Let us limit ourselves by saying that pantheism, by subjecting feeling to pure intellect, and by unreservedly yielding to that need of unity which acts upon the intellect, fears not with contemptuous disregard of good sense and of evidence to abolish the distinction established in all time between the human mind, nature, and the Creator, confounding in one these three great substances. As regards the choice of that one into which

1 The correct translation, we think, of 1 John 5: 19.