It

it placed necessarily a term to its own progress. could advance, or aid the advancement of the race, only till it had brought the civil organization in a spiritual point of view up even with itself. As soon as the State embodied in its organization, and in its enactments as much wisdom, intelligence, justice, and humanity, as it itself embodied in its own organization and canons, its mission in regard to civilization was ended. It could work on the State only through the individual conscience, and it could not, without abandoning its ground, make it a matter of conscience with individuals to organize the State for the indefinite progress of the race in relation to material interests. It became, then, a mere parallel organization with the State, having no longer in relation to society an ideal to realize. It had nothing to propose. It could no longer take the lead in civilization. From being the suzerain of the State, it was forced to become, as it has been for three hundred years, its vassal.

In point of fact, for three hundred years the State has been superior to the Church, and it, instead of the Church, has proposed and effected whatever social ameliorations have been proposed and effected. But so long as the old theory of a separation of interests remains, the supremacy of the State over the Church is a monstrous anomaly. It is in theory nothing less than making the low, the transitory, the unholy, superior to the high, the holy, and the eternal. It is making matter, declared to be the principle of Evil, superior to the spirit, declared to be the principle of Good; the body triumphant over the soul; and time over eternity. This is intolerable. It creates a disgust with some for the Church, which makes pretensions it does not justify, and with others it prompts efforts to restore the Church to its former position. But the restoration of the Church to power would relieve no embarrassment. The Church has realized its ideal. To give it supremacy would not be to make it again a Church of the Ideal, and therefore favorable to progress; but to arrest the progress of the race, and to place us back where we were in the fifteenth

century. There is but one method by which Churchmen can recover the dominion of the Church, and that is the reverse of the method they pursue. The Church was supreme, because it had a right to be. It had a loftier ideal than had the State. Now it is not so. The State, the creature of Christian civilization, is more Christian, in fact, than the Church; and whoso would labor for the progress of humanity through any existing organism, must take the State instead of the Church, and be a politician instead of a clergyman. In order that it should be otherwise, the Church must show that she has an ideal, some work for civilization to propose, big enough for men's hearts, equal to their aspirations. Men are now uneasy and confined within her enclosures. They see immense evils obtain in the world, which they would gladly redress. Rich feelings kindle up within them; great thoughts swell in their hearts; a mighty energy is working in their souls; and they would go forth and act, lay hold of the ages, and shape them to the glory of God, and the redemption of man. But they are bound, confined in a narrow dungeon. They rave, they foam, they pull at their chains, beat their heads against the dungeon walls, fall back wearied, exhausted, and die. There is a universal restlessness; men's great souls are seeking some mode of utterance, but find none. They burn to act, and yet are held back. Nothing is proposed equal to what they feel moving and working in themselves. There is no vent for the activity, which has long been accumulating in the soul. It but preys upon its possessor. Hence the deep pathos of our times, the wail of sorrow, heard on either hand, the melancholy, the morbid sentiment, the suicides. In this state of things it is madness, to attempt to revive the Church, on its old platform, and to carry us back three hundred years, to do over again what has already been done.

The remedy will not be found in going back, but in going forward. The Church can rise to power only by accepting the Ideal. It must abandon the distinction it has made between spiritual interests and material inter

ests, a distinction which has no existence in the nature of things, and recognises the fact, that in actual life, spirit and matter are one. The flesh is no more sin than is the spirit, and the soul is no more holy than the body. Man is not tempted and drawn away into sin by his body, for without the soul, the body were dead, and incapable of performing a single function. The soul acts never without the body, nor the body without the soul. One is not the other, but one is never without the other. The action of the one is, so long as there is life, absolutely indistinguishable from that of the other. The action and reaction of each are so harmonious, and one becomes so blended with the other, that in real life, there is for the two but one agent. Man should never, then, be treated as a twofold being, made up of soul and body, but as one simple being, made to live in a body; and through that in intimate relation with nature. He should then be taken as a whole, as one, and identical in all his phenomena, however multiform, various, or variable they may be.

Man and nature are made of the same stuff. Spirit and matter are the same at bottom. The basis of the composite existence, termed matter, is not dead atoms, but living substance, endowed with force and perception. This living substance, or these living substances, into which all material bodies may be resolved, are kindred with that substance termed in man soul or spirit. Body is nothing but a continuity of points, each point of which is a living being, acting from its own centre, from its own inherent force, and representing the entire universe from its point of view, and is in itself as immaterial and as indestructible as the human soul itself.* No reason, then, can be assigned, why matter should be more sinful than spirit, or more the cause of sin. One God has created both, and both out of his own infinite fulness of being, and both for the communication of his own unbounded goodness.

This is the doctrine of Leibnitz; but we have advanced, and demonstrated it, in substance, in several of our previous essays. VOL. V. NO. I.

3

Spirit and matter reconciled, declared to be one in the unity of actual life, all interests will become alike. sacred and proper to be consulted. There will be no more lusting of the spirit against the flesh, nor of the flesh against the spirit. Spiritual interests and material interests will be held to be not only inseparable, but indistinguishable. There is no act that really promotes the welfare of the soul, that is not also for the welfare of the body; there is no act demanded by the wellbeing of the body, not also demanded for the well-being of the soul. What is for man's good in time, is for his good in eternity; and the only sure way of gaining a heaven hereafter, is to create a heaven on earth. What is for the good of man, is for the glory of God. All interests are the same, then, in their character, and all acts which are proper to be done at all are religious

acts.

III. The Church of the Future will be based on two great principles; the first, the generalization of the doctrine of the Incarnation, and the other, the unity in actual life of spirit and matter. This makes the service of God and man one and the same service, and the service of man, under the spiritual relation, identical with the service of man, under the material relation. God must be served by our labors for the good of all men; and the good of all men does not consist in a spiritual culture to the neglect of physical well-being, but in their redemption and sanctification under all the possible aspects of their being. The Church of the Future will then propose the amelioration of man under his material relations, no less than under his spiritual relations. Material sufferings will touch it not less than moral sufferings, and oppressions in the State will be as much offences against its laws, as the misdeeds of individuals. Its mission will not be merely that of fitting men to die, and to gain a happier world, but fitting them to live, and to make the earth itself an abode of plenty, peace, and love. It will not enjoin poverty, but justice, and so direct the industrial activity of the race, and establish such laws for the distribution

of the fruits of industry, that all will have a competence, and none any temptation to abuse his possessions, or to rob another.

By uniting all the interests of man, and subjecting them all to the same law, Church and State will ultimately become one, and a new classification of the race obtain. There will not then be a spiritual society, and a civil society, a religious society, and an irreligious society. All society, all association will be holy, for all association will be for the worship of God. The State will become a Church, and legislators and civil rulers ministers at the altar. For then God will not be worshipped by idle hymns, and idler ceremonies; but by those substantial acts of piety and love, which do really tend to the melioration of the condition of all men, especially of the poorest and most numerous class. Men will then be religious by visiting the fatherless and the widows. in their afflictions, and by keeping themselves pure and blameless.

Man is a being who acts, knows, and feels. He is a simple being, but with a threefold power of manifestation. He manifests himself as activity, intelligence, sensibility. Hence there are three ways, in which he can serve and be served. Every man has these three faculties; but in some men one of them predominates; in others another. Those, in whom activity predominates, are what are termed men of action, practical men; those, in whom intelligence predominates, are men of science, whose tendency is to know, to investigate, to be acquainted with the universe, its principles, and phenomena; in fine, those, in whom sensibility predominates, are artists, men, who are attached to the beautiful, who delight in the fine arts, and aspire to ornament and embellish life. Ultimately men will fall into three classes according to this three-fold division.

The men of action have heretofore been too often engaged in war and conquest, or in taking advantage of their more simple brethren. They will hereafter turn, ast they are now turning, their activity into an industrial and peaceful direction. These will be the industrial