There is a moral to be drawn from this, even for English statesmen. It is difficult for England, even in the full blaze of knowledge, with all the aids of science, of literature, and of civilization, to comprehend fully the obligations she owes that great man whose distinguished career we have just been contemplating. It was not that he laid down specific rules applicable each to its special object; it was not that he marked out the broad lines of what was best in legislation, commerce, or religion; his was no such fixed and irrevocable scheme, however excellent or harmonious. The grand motive power, which he rescued from obscurity, was an agency partaking in no degree of such cramped, measured, and mechanical appliances. It was not the stately temple that he would rear; it was not the graceful statue that he would exhibit; -objects, however magnificent and noble, yet incapable of selfexpansion or of life. It was a glorious living principle that he inaugurated in England's realm of intellectuality and manly vigour. It was the mighty parent of all arts and all progress. It was an ever-living teacher, skilled in all the paths of knowledge and all the recondite lore of an imperishable philosophy; it was the germ of immortal life, brought to quicken the dulness of humanity; it was the great teacher sent from God.

Here, then, around this divine instructor were grouped the children of God, the offspring of science, the progeny of literature and of commerce. At the feet of this mighty Gamaliel sat the aspirants for knowledge, immortality, eternal life. Here were inculcated the priceless laws of morality; here were laid down the foundations of true legislation; here, above all, was taught truth without error.

Can we wonder at the progress of pupils under such a master? Every learner who recognized the penetrating glance of that Great Teacher would do his best, in whatever way engaged. War or peace, rule or servitude, science or literature, all were amenable to this grand test of life and progress. No occupation so insignificant, no position so exalted, but was brought within the scope of its unerring judgment and its quickening power.

"DO IT WITH ALL THY MIGHT," said the Great Master; and it was well done. It was a law that began with the mind; and that great motive power being conquered, victory over all materialities was certain. And so it has been seen in this great country.

Nowhere have commerce, agriculture, the mighty triumphs of mechanism, and the marvels of science, been so deeply imprinted on the genius of a nation as in England and America. They were brethren taught by the same MASTER, and their progress has been similar.

We are gravely told that "this country cannot reverse that whole relation which it has adopted towards the different religious denominations of the empire, the Roman Catholics included;" and that "Great Britain cannot henceforth, as a country composed of various sects and denominations, limit its patronage and liberality to one."1

This country has done many things much more difficult; and it can do them again. We are not among the Medes and the Persians, though the pompous satrapy of a High-Caste Press strongly suggests the idea. We tell this magnate of oriental swarth, that England knows the difference between a "religious denomination" and a POLICY;-she will respect the former, and treat the latter as she would any other policy. Christianity wants not the patronage and liberality" of the State. Policy in its scarlet stockings does crave them-it has always craved them; and now, good people of England, you know where to look for its special pleader. Aye!—

And Miall too-the man of peace

Takes out his little pot of grease,

To smooth the axle of a car

That brings not "Gospel-peace," but―WAR!

"It was religious hatred," says Bünsen, “which, as Ranke has recently shown, gave that demoniacal fury, Catherine de Medici, the means of attaining her factious aims. It was religious hatred that enabled the king whom she swayed to find willing executioners in the brutal mobs of Paris, Lyons, and other towns, stirred up by the priests.

"In Admiral Coligny and many of his clerical and secular fellowsufferers, France lost the highest ornaments and noblest blood of the land, and at the same time the strongest moral primitive force for the wider development of her mental and political freedom. In them, Christendom forfeited a large portion of her brightest jewels, and the Christian name was branded for everlasting ages, till a full atonement should be made."

Let us never forget that it is to the GREAT PURITAN that we are indebted for the victories by which the LAW OF FREEDOM was wrested from Italian despotism, and for ever secured for ourselves and our children. "Oliver," says D'Aubigné, 66 accomplished an immense work for his times; and England should now raise to him a monument, a triumphal arch with this inscription

"TO THE FOUNDER OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY."

1 66 'Times," December 2nd, 1856.

CHAPTER IV.

ENGLAND'S STAND AND STANDARD.

"The TRUTH shall make you FREE."-JESUS CHRIST.

"Where the Spirit of God is, there is LIBERTY.'

WE have now taken a comprehensive, though by no means minute, view of the numerous despotisms brought upon the world by the spirit of SELF. We have seen it assuming the form of CASTE, Social and religious, alike in India and Italy, in Otaheite and England, in the Church and in the State; taking the aspects of cruelty, of lust, of pride, and partaking of all the evil passions that animate degraded humanity. We have seen this horrible spirit of selfishness invading the sanctuary, putting a ban upon woman, separating those whom God has joined, and, in the name of a merciful Creator, lending its sanctions to torture, to fire and the dungeon, through ages of immitigable suffering. We have seen False Religion, like the sleuth-hound, following the scent of blood over all lands, unwearied, unsatiated, and stanch as instinct.

We have marked the same diabolical spirit, clad in the spotless robe of Christianity, casting out to the winds and the waves the bodies of Christ's people; tearing from the grave the decaying corpses of His saints, and committing them to the flames; feeding the fire with living women, to gratify the avarice and the pride of an insatiate priesthood; and practising, alike in Papal Italy and savage Otaheite, the shameless gratification of lust by an organized institute. But, on the other hand, we have contemplated an antagonistic spirit—a spirit full of beneficence, of mercy, and unselfishness; free as its opponent is slavish, generous as its antagonist is niggardly, and invigorating as its great enemy is debilitating. We have seen Christianity as of Christ-selfishness as of man: the progeny has resembled the parentage.

All that raises man, all that ennobles humanity, is ranged on one side; on the other, all that debases Christianity and desecrates Christ. Is this fearful struggle of opposing principles, we ask, still going on? Has not intellectuality, has not civilization, closed the barriers that keep in at least one of the contending hosts? Far from

it. They have lent and they are still lending their countenance
to that sinister party of political religionists which, in this as in all
lands, is struggling to make slaves of free men, and machines of the
human mind. Taste the seductions of false pride-the bait of
riches, and the glozing artifices of the heart,—all these are at work
as busy auxiliaries in this bad warfare. It is by trampling on true
goodness, by sneering at that experimental active piety which is the
very essence of Christianity, that these attacks are incessantly made.
These are the teachers of Christendom, forsooth!—the intellectual
medicists of fallen humanity, who, in their vain practice, strive
"To silver and to gild the ulcerous sore,

Whilst foul corruption, rotting all beneath,
Infests unseen.'

These are the physicians whose invigorating nostrum is, to administer medicine to a corpse, and whose practice is to dignify galvanic spasm with the name of LIFE!

These are the hebdomadal ablutionists whose spiritual tank is every Sunday thrown open for the purification of human naturethe true priesthood of the High-Caste Font-the New Baptists of the Religion of Taste-who graciously condescend to treat man as a child. These are the great Museum Doctors of Divinity, who would

Pour water on his hands. If they be white,
No matter for his heart-that must be right!

These are the great benefactors of the poor blind HunchbackJester of our back streets, who, emerging from the atmosphere of stale cigars, and led by Frilled Sagacity, receives into the alms-tin of his sympathetic, can-tinkerous, quadrupedal guide, the orts of a dignified belligerent sympathy.

These are the celestial GEMINI! in whom England recognizes the same dastardly spirit that chained one archbishop to the stake, holding up another as the scoff of grinning fools. The two pictures of Caste are identical.

66

"Happy, happy, happy pair!

None but the brave,

None but the brave,

None but the BRAVE deserve the FAIR!"

This is the new "Holy Alliance," which vouchsafes to direct the Christianity of this great country--measures out the amount of its piety per day,-regulates its "respectability,”—and turns on the action of its new Moderator Lamp of Divinity;-so much oil,— so much light! Let no man mistake.

We have already entered upon that great conflict in sections, which will ere long coalesce into two great masses. The struggle

CHRISTIANITY ON THE DANUBE.

437

will be as widely carried on as the principle is great. Christianity will not draw back to satisfy false harmony: its action, like its Author, is continuous. Hence there is no man of sound judgment and clear forecast who does not perceive the inevitable advent of religious troubles on either bank of the Danube. It is in this point of view that grave complications are yet in store for this country. A guarantee has been given by the Sultan in favour of equal religious toleration within his dominions. What will be the result? Undoubtedly the rapid fall of that spurious Christianity now slumbering in Wallachia, Bulgaria, and Servia. These people will inevitably advance in commerce, in the arts, and still more in a vigorous and vital Christianity. What then? The great highway of Austria runs through these provinces, and her influence will be powerfully felt along that great artery of commerce. It will be in her power to throw impediments in the path of the legitimate enterprise of a people reinvigorated by the settlers of the West, and renovated by THE TRUTH. Sooner or later her whole energies must be put forth to keep down a heresy so perilous to her policy and so close to her very door. Can she afford to allow religious freedom, or permit toleration in the Danubian provinces ? She cannot she cannot do so in her Italian possessions-she will not do so in Wallachia. If she really permit this, it is certain that a journey of a few dozen miles beyond her southern frontier would bring emancipation, political and religious, to thousands of her most energetic population. Shall she prohibit such emigration, or will she demand the extradition of these Bible-readers? There is no question but the provinces of the Danube may become some of the richest, most energetic, and most practically Christian in Europe. Their movement may be vigorous, commercial, and virtually autonomous. With the nominal headship of the Sultan, with an easy system of taxation, with rich agricultural products, and ultimately with a healthy municipal action pervading their chief towns, the result is obvious; viz. the life and vigour of a prosperous colony.

The question then arises, will the guarantee of the Moslem, in the face of Austrian influence and threats, be honestly, practically, and independently applied? With the preponderating influence of the Greek Church waning in these lands; with that of its rival irresistible in Austria on the North-of Italy, France, and Spain in the West-what power remains but England to maintain the vital integrity of the treaty? Let statesmen be well assured that the future of Turkey will represent the future of Christianity. The labours of the American missionaries in Bulgaria are producing their effects. It is impossible that this advance in pure religion