portion of mankind, cultivators of the earth, artizans, manufacturers, merchants, traders, active business men. The second will be engaged in scientific investigations, all of which will be turned to the advantage of industry and art. The third will be devoted to the cultivation of the fine arts, to adorning our habitations, purifying our affections, and exalting our sentiments.

In these three ways man may serve man, and therefore worship God. They, whose taste and capacity lead them to industrial pursuits, will worship God by tilling the earth, by manufacturing the raw materials, or distributing or exchanging the fruits of labor. They, whose tastes and capacities lead them in a scientific direction, will worship God, by penetrating the secrets of the universe, upturning the several strata of the earth, and learning how nature improves upon her own types, or as they track the divine wisdom through forests, see it unfolding in the violet under the hedge, living in the animal frame, soaring with the eagle, and blazing forth in glory in the sun and stars. All nature will be seen to be full of God, and at each step the man of true science will pause in transcendent admiration. The artist will worship him by communing with the visions of beauty that come to his soul, attempting to seize and transfer them to his marble or canvas, to embody them in column or dome, or give them voice in song or story.

Forms of worship there will be, and forms that have meaning, that speak to the heart, and waken great thoughts, and generous and holy feeling, forms that inspire men's souls, and make them aspire with ever increasing energy to worship God in Humanity. All that industry can do, science can teach, or art inspire, will be done to bring man into harmony with the will of his Maker, and to redeem and sanctify all men. In this work art will take the lead. Man, by the fact that he is endowed with a sensible nature, can be inspired, and it is by inspiration that his progress is mainly effected. God by his providence raises up, at distant intervals, providential men, a Moses, a David, an Isaiah,

a Jesus, a Paul, who admitted by their love into a closer communion with himself, speak to men in those living tones, which make men's hearts beat, and would make them beat under the very "ribs of death," and waken them to a higher life, inspire them to new, and better sustained efforts to realize the Ideal, and make earth reflect the beauty of heaven. Every genuine artist is a being, in whom love predominates; love carries him up to the very principle of things, and makes all things beautiful and lovely to his rapt soul; and speaking from the deep love up-welling from the bottom of his own heart, he can quicken love in the race, and inspire humanity to a more zealous and acceptable worship.

The Church of the Future will place the worship of God solely in the redemption and sanctification of the race, especially the poorest and most numerous class, in loving all men, as we now love Jesus, and doing all that it is possible to do, to raise up every man to his proper estate; in a word, to realize that equality between man and man in his material relations, that we now recognise in his spiritual relations. But it will not be merely utilitarian. It will not be cold and naked and barren. In accepting material interests, it will not become less, but even more spiritual. In making the worship of God consist in the service of man, it will recognise both the necessity and the utility of whatever tends to develop the soul, to awaken generous sentiment, to increase the love of man for man. It will still have its temple-service, which will be solemn, imposing, and inspiring; its instructors, who will disclose the laws of industry, science, and art, instruct men in the proper direction of their activities, intelligences, and sympathies; its preachers, who will make the heart thrill, and kindle a deep and burning enthusiasm in the soul, to labor for the amelioration of the race. All the fine arts will be laid under contribution. Poetry, painting, sculpture, music, architecture, whatever speaks to sentiment, will be pressed into the temple-service, and made to administer to the worship of God, and the amelioration of man.

Protestantism, in its excessive rationalism, in its rejection of sentiment, of inspiration, has deprived the temple-service of nearly all its power. In its churches there are a few dry forms, and much barren logic; very little that speaks to the soul and kindles love. Puritanism knows nothing of the power of love. It has not learned that the road to men's convictions lies through their hearts, and that we are raised to God effectually, only by the purification and exaltation of our sentiments. It places the affections under ban, and regards all emotion as the fruit of the flesh, and is even enthusiastic against enthusiasm, inspired against inspiration. The Church of the Future will follow the principle of the Church of the Past, and adopt a form of service, that shall speak to the sensibility, to man as a being capable of inspiration, of love. But it will purify the form heretofore adopted, and the better adapt it to the awakening of a genuine love for universal man.

The priests of the new Church will be those, who approach the nearest to God, those who best understand the works of the Creator, are best qualified to direct the activities of the race, and who have the most enthusiastic love for their brethren. They will be directors of the people, of all consciences, because they will prove themselves the most able, and the most worthy; because they will be those, in whom the power to act, to know, or to love, manifests itself in the most striking degree. They will be listened to and obeyed, because their words will carry conviction and create love. This is the true conception of a Christian priesthood. Men will not enter the priesthood to gain a livelihood, but because they are burning to do a work for humanity, which they cannot do without entering it. They will be more powerful than ever were the priests of the old Church; but their power will be in their inherent superiority, not in an artificial sanctity ascribed to their persons; not in the laying on of the hands of the presbytery; nor in any formal consecration. They will be God-ordained, God-commissioned, and they will speak as God gives them utterance; and their words will be

with power, because they will be words of truth and love.

IV. Such will be the Church of the Future. It will not be a destruction of the old Church, but its fulfilment. It will be the Church of the past, enlarged, modified, and converted into the Church of the Future. It will be an organization for the more full and perfect realization of the Christian Ideal. Christ is to it all that he has ever been. Jesus is its founder, and its aim is still the realization in actual life of the principles of the Christian Revelation; but these principles more generously interpreted, and seen in a broader generality. The Ideal will still be the Christian Ideal, and it will be a true Christian Church, as true for the future, as the old Church was for the past.

This Church recognising the unity of all interests, of spirit and matter, will place no term to its progress. Covering man's whole activity, its Ideal will ever hover before it. It will gradually absorb the State, and abolish the double organization of mankind; it will supersede the necessity of a religious organization and a civil organization; and as the service of God and the service of man become identical, Church and State will become one. There will then be no clashing of rival claims, no war of hostile powers. The government of God and the government of man will be identical.

By spreading over all interests, extending to all activities, intelligences, and sympathies, the Church will command the direction of them all; and as its Ideal is the redemption and sanctification of the race, it will impose upon the consciences of individuals, and of legislators and rulers, the religious duty of directing them all to the production of that love and reverence for all men, which have heretofore been paid to but one man. Always then will it have a work for civilization to propose, and therefore always a work which will enlist the sympathies of the human heart. Therefore it will always be the Church of the Ideal. It will always aspire, and kindle the aspirations of the race. It

will then be forever a kingdom which the saints shall possess, and of which there shall be no end. It shall become a really Catholic Church, a Church truly universal, and finally gather the vast family of man into one universal association; when wars will cease; all tears be wiped away; hatred be no more; and man labor side by side with his brother, in peace and love, for the glory of God and the progress of humanity.

The time has come for the new Church to be formed. The old Church has done its work. It has no work for us; nothing to propose but a certain routine, which has no power to excite our sympathies, or to command our respect. It has ceased to aspire. It has no words of authority. Men laugh at its puerile duties, and its idle threats. It does not direct the action of society; nor does it presume to make it a religious duty for legislators and rulers to shape the laws and the administration of the government, so as to effect, in the most rapid manner possible, the moral, physical, and intellectual amelioration of the race, especially of the poorest and most numerous class. It declares all men equal before God, and yet tolerates, nay, upholds the grossest inequality before society; it declares poverty a virtue, and riches a sin, and yet gives the chief seats to the rich, and baptizes their means of gain. It declares that the poor are blessed because theirs is the kingdom of heaven, and frowns upon all measures likely to be effectual in securing them the possession of that kingdom on earth. It has no Ideal. It looks back and sighs merely for its lost dominion. It has no blessing to pronounce on the young prophets of God, who start up to gain a more glorious future for the race. They are, in its estimation, seditious fellows, disturbers of the peace, profane levellers, disorganizers, abhorred of God, and rejected of man. For them no word, no look of encouragement. It excommunicates progress, and pronounces a curse on whatever is advanced, whatever belongs to the Ideal. Humanity will not, cannot tolerate this, but will return neglect for cursing, and pass on, leaving the dead to bury their dead.