Is not the Lord your God with you, and hath He not given you rest on every side?—Now set your heart and your soul to seek the Lord your God: arise, therefore, and build ye the sanctuary of the Lord God.

WE come now to the third and most important particular on which we proposed to insist, namely, that the direction of a nation's energies to the advancement of true religion, is in clear accordance with the revealed will of God, without the sanction of which, however agreeable to reason and political expedience, we might have hesitated to urge such a measure as a matter of positive duty.

The great question, it must be remembered, between the supporters and impugners of establish

ments, is, how far religion may lawfully be made the subject of general legislation; how far human wisdom and authority, exercised as they ordinarily and officially are by earthly rulers in prudential arrangements for the public welfare, may be safely applied to its dissemination and maintenance in any particular nation. It may be clear that Christianity deserves the sanction of rulers and legislators, from its evident tendency to promote the public good; and that humanly speaking, it requires such support, from the indifference or hostility of mankind at large as to the reception and retention of the boon: but if God, in the general course of His dispensations, or in the express declarations of His word, has forbidden such an application of the ordinary resources of human power and wisdom; if He has determined that His cause shall stand alone, disdaining all external aid from the arrangements of human society; our duty is clear-we must render to God the things which are God's, and refuse to Cæsar a prerogative which he does but usurp.

Is this then the case? Far otherwise, in both particulars. And here I cannot but observe the great injury which has been done to the cause of true religion by the wish to make it more spiritual— by which I mean not more spiritual in relation to its hold on the heart, for that is impossible, but more independent of external and sensible objectsthan He has made it who knoweth our frame, and remembereth that we are dust. This notion that the senses, the suggestions of natural reason, the means whereby in their daily transactions, men are

accustomed to surmount difficulties and attain benefits are unworthy of being employed in the service of Christ has led, under different forms, to the most mischievous delusions in doctrine, the wildest absurdities in practice; to the neglect and torture of the body by the ancient ascetics; to the fanatical violation of common decency and duty by the first founders of some of the most respectable religious societies now known amongst us; to the denial of all benefit in the sacraments, in a standing ministry, in public worship, and the observance of the sabbath; to the rejection of the scriptures themselves as weak and beggarly elements, in competition with the suggestions of a vain and perverted imagination. Yet I know not whether even these opinions and practices, extravagant as they were, must not be deemed consistent and rational, in comparison with those which allowing the importance of order and unity in general, and reverencing the standing ordinances of the Christian faith, yet forbid the application of those means, which, to the common sense and judgement of mankind as exercised on all other subjects, appear most effectual to their maintenance

and extension.

The Christian church is a spiritual society-a congregation of faithful persons collected from a sinful world.-But how collected? Faith cometh by hearing by hearing the word of God.-Hearing supposes a preacher: and the preacher must be sent. Yet when human wisdom and authority would ordain the means whereby every district of a kingdom shall be furnished with opportunities of hearing

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the word, and a preacher be permanently provided for each, still subject to the divine law as to his qualification for office, they are silenced at once.— This is God's work: they cannot meddle in it without injuring His cause and provoking His displeasure. Power, and prudence, and riches, and intelligence, the concentrated force of the nation's energies, may be laudably employed in the public defence; the distribution of justice; the regulation of commerce; the maintenance of order; or even the direction of general education; here, it would be madness to depend on individual and discretionary effort: -but in the spread of the gospel, the Christian instruction of the people, all is the reverse. It must be left wholly to the voluntary endeavours of detached and independent societies, moving as the secret providence of God shall direct them.-Whole districts may be unsupplied with the means of salvation; may remain so for ages; may lose the means they have possessed, and so be plunged into the grossest ignorance and vice-the magistrate, the legislature meanwhile, are only to stand still and look on:-their wisdom, as applied to such a case, is foolishness with God; their power weakness; their touch impiety and pollution.

This, (for observe it is not against the corruption of Christianity by the state, but against the right of the state to interfere, under any circumstances, that the modern argument against establishments is directed,) this is the position in which Christian governors are placed towards their subjects.-Sergius Paulus, the proconsul, for instance, might, as