where it would beautify, they degrade whom it would elevate, they enslave whom it would make free indeed, giving the stone of Superstition instead of the Bread of heaven, and the gall of Bigotry in lieu of the waters of everlasting life, covering this fair earth with the funeral pall of Fanatic ascetism, dooming the honest, the virtuous, and the free, to earthly contumely, as fitting preparation for the fires of Tophet, or consigning others to monkish solitude and celibacy, privation and gloom, as initiatory to entrance on the Ark of sectarian election and safety, destined to career amidst the deluge of human desolation, over the fiery billows of heavenly retribution.

What is Christianity? Few, simple, and emphatic are the words which describe its essence and characteristics; LIGHT: LOVE. It is Light because it is the Revelation of a Father God; the brotherhood of man, God's child; human duty and destiny; well doing, salvation; wrong doing, retributory chastisement; a Heaven of purity and bliss beyond the grave. It is Love, because it points out the means of spreading that light, and of participation in its joyousness; those means, practical reverence and imitation of Christ Jesus the Lord, who embodied in his life and death, the pure and perfect Morality, which inspired of Heaven, he inculcated as the Guide and Directory of existence, its consolation, encouragement, strength, and power, the fittest and only true preparation for that Home of holiness and happpiness beyond and above the reach of death, pledged by Almighty Love to its human offspring in the Resurrection of their Elder Brother to glory, honour, and immortality; that Home into which shall be finally gathered, through the Grace of God, the redeemed millions of every clime and of every age. Enlightening the mind, hallowing the affections, consecrating the life, rendering all time holy, making every day, and not merely one in seven, a Sabbath to the Lord, every house an altar, and every human soul the Temple of its worship, commingling faith with obedience, hope with trial, consolation with bereavement, Heaven with earth, time with eternity; blending usefulness to man with reverence to the Universal Father, rendering coincident virtue and happiness, wrong doing and misery, benevolence and adoration, purity of thought and perfection of character, the Christianity of Christ would realize that Commonwealth of humanity, knitting man to his brother, and blending both in common discipleship to the Saviour, prefigured so beauitfully by the Angel band, in

that hymn of holy rejoicing in the future triumphs of the Cross, "Peace on earth, good will to men, Glory to God in the highest."

What are the appropriate instrumentalities for the dissemination of these principles, for most surely promoting their reception by the mind and heart of human kind; the furtherance, permanency, and consistency of their practice in the lives of the creatures of God; their enthronement in the understanding their soul-felt reverence and personal obedience? They partake of the characteristics of the Religion they would render universal; Light, and Love. "Knowledge must run to and fro and be increased" or ever the halcyon days of Prophecy can be witnessed upon earth. The Scriptures truly aver, "The wise man is strong, yea, a man of wisdom increaseth strength." Principles to be embraced must first be promulgated, must first be known, and thoroughly appreciated. The light which is hiddden under a bushel, which is not dispersed, might as well be darkness, so far as human welfare is concerned. Diffusion must precede reception. Education must supplant ignorance; instruction scatter the seeds of information; the murky midnight of Sin give place to the dawning of reformation, the Day Star of personal goodness. Those groping amidst the baleful shades of iniquity must be sought after, and rescued from its degrading allegiance, in compliance with the law of Christian kindness, through obedience to the commandments of Christ, in exemplification of the spirit of Christ.

How may these instrumentalities be brought into most efficient operation? By Legislative authority; by Ecclesiastical and Civil Police; by force and threat; penal enactment and sacerdotal espionage; anathema and denunciation; angry invective and fierce reviling? Or, by Home visitation; by walking, as did Jesus, among the people of Judea, a brother amongst brethren; the utterance of words of kindness, encouragement, persuasion, in the Cottage or by the way side; messages of Peace; acts of assistance, deeds of mercy; the School; the Mission to the hovels of penury, disease and misery; Light, and Love, in word and deed all embracing, all conquering, Christ-like, God-like? Which mode is the best calculated to succeed; which most worthy of success; which most adapted to human nature; which most accordant with the character and mission of Jesus the moral and spiritual Regenerator of mankind; which most in unison with the government, dispensations and designs of

God? Were the reply to be sought for in the byepast history and efforts of Man, Fear, and Force would hold the pre-eminence; Law and Penalty, vengeance and vindictiveness, with threats of endless Hell, must take the credit, or the blame. Appeal to the Gospel of the grace of God will produce a different rejoinder far. No greater contrast can be conceived than between Christ's spirit of Love, its power to uproot ignorance, vice, misery, and "draw all men unto him," and thus to knowledge, virtue, truth, purity, and Heaven, and the means which the records of the World testify as having been commonly employed by secularised Religious systems and earthly Governments, to keep the people in order, compel them to obedience, and drive them to goodness. Light and Love have not, hitherto, and universally been the guiding principles to action whether of Individuals or Families, the School or Society, the Church or the World, in Civil Government or Ecclesiastical Polity, and the World has been well nigh weighed down by the consequences of its folly, abandonment of the great polar principles of genuine progress, enlightened freedom, and lasting happiness, for the brutalizing and degrading influences of despotic rule.

Only on the truths, the great polar principles of the pure and undefiled religion of the Son of God, can the sacred foundation be laid, on which, by mutual effort and combined agency, the brethren of the Lord may build up the holy and blessed superstructure of individual, family, and social enlightenment, peace, purification, freedom, happiness, perfection; making glad by its divine effulgence every human heart, and bowing every soul to its all holy, sanctifying, and redeeming power. If the Son of God make us free, we shall be free indeed." If Man embrace, in reality and very truth, the great principles of Christ, that God is a Father, the universal Father, then, all tyranny must cease, its existence and perpetuation, in any of its Protean shapes, being a flagrant wrong to the child of heaven, the destined denizen of the skies, a mockery of, and an insult to the Great Parent Spirit; then brotherhood stands out as the revealed purpose of the Father; equality of privilege the chartered right of all, and their freehold of rejoicing for evermore. Light and Love constitute the nature and essence of the Infinite One, the characteristics of his government; of the religion to which they gave birth; the heaven which it unfolds to the hope of man; and the pathway of moral goodness, of personal excellence which conducts to its fruition of bliss unspeak

able. Kindness is the Divine Law, and should be that of the creature also. Salvation is the end of the dispensations and Providence of God, and should likewise be the preparatory effort of the children of men. Mutually dependent as they all are for encouragement, knowledge, comfort, improvement, virtue, happiness, it should be their holy and blessed work, ever to hold in practical remembrance the soul expanding principles of the Saviour of the World, "One is our Father, even God; one our Master, even Christ, and all we are brethren." "No man liveth to himself." We are all members one of another." Remember those in bonds as bound with them." Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep."

66

RIGHT VIEWS, RIGHT LIFE,

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THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST JESUS, THE LORD.

JESUS CHRIST said "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth." That truth, he said, would "make his disciples free," and "free indeed;" and it would "sanctify them." "He was the light of the world;" and they that "followed him, would not walk in darkness, but would have the light of life." He often spoke of light and darkness, as expressive of truth and error, knowledge and ignorance, good and evil. He brought "light into the world ;" and if "men loved darkness rather than light," it was, he said, "because their deeds were evil." They who believed in the light, and trusted that they possessed the light, were to "take heed that the light which was in them should not be darkness." In illustration of the same doctrine, our Lord also spoke of trees, and the fruitfulness of trees. "Either make the tree good," he said, "and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt." "For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil; for of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh."

So long as these passages shall remain upon record, they will testify to the world, that it was a great leading doctriné of Jesus Christ, that Right Views were Right Life.

And do we not admit the reasonableness of the principle in every thing relating to human affairs?—in the execution of the humblest, and the most ingenious piece of mechanism ?-in the treatment of a disease, and the amputation of a limb? in all the pursuits, employments, and professions, which diversify this chequered state of being, from the cottage to the palace, from the peasant to the monarch? Do not right views in the workman, lead to good workmanship? Do not right views in domestic affairs, lead to right domestic management? Are not right views, right practice, in the physician, the surgeon, and professional man? Are not right views, right policy, in the statesman ? Can any thing morally wrong ever be politically right? Are not right views, right laws, in senators? And are not right views, right administrations of those laws, in governments, magistrates, and judges? No sane man, I should imagine, could for a moment doubt it.

And should not the same principle be true in religion? It is equally so, and equally indisputable. But let us test it, by certain religious opinions, presenting a contrast to each other:

Liberty of conscience, then, in religion, is a right view. The dictation of human authority, on the other hand, is a wrong view. And they produce very different effects. The one presents to us a mind that is free; the other, a mind that is enslaved. The free mind is at ease, and enjoys serenity; it is conscious of its own intellectual dignity; it is in the best frame to exert its energies in the search after truth, and, therefore, in the fairest way to receive light, and to go on continually increasing in light. The other is cramped, and dwarfed, and degraded. It has no opinions of its own, and has no proper conviction of truth. It is full of prejudice, and remains in ignorance and darkness. What it professes, it obstinately maintains, and bigotry, intolerance, and a persecuting spirit, mark its career. Liberty of conscience tends to make men upright. Authority, or tyrrany over it, can make them only hypocrites. The one has a deep veneration of God. The other would impiously usurp his prerogative, and even go beyond it; for God forces not conscience, but leaves it perfectly free. With the one, peace and good will are ever found. With the other, nothing but strife and bitterness, envy and animosity, all uncharitableness, and every evil thing.

It is a right view, that our faith should be adopted from