archy. In others it has been encumbered and controlled by the assistance of an aristocracy of counsellors. In others the people have secured to themselves the command of the public purse. In others certain great functions of the executive government are perpetuated in officers not amenable to the crown. In others the paramount authority of law is maintained as distinct from the power of the lawgiver, and subjects and king alike are sworn to maintain a written constitution, instead of binding the subject to allegiance to a personal sovereign. In States which have thrown off the monarchical principle (seemingly, -for, as we shall see hereafter, it cannot be done in reality), the same jealousy and distrust is shewn, by dividing the supreme power among many hands; or by distributing it in rotation; or by making magistrates responsible to the people; or by abridging their tenure of office; or by so hampering the exercise of power with restrictions and counterchecks of supervision, that it can scarcely be exercised at all. And these devices, many of them futile, and many mischievous, proceed alike from a desire to maintain a society in exclusive unity, without any toleration whatever for those frailties in man, and for those sins and calamities which flow from them, which are all exhibitions of the principle of plurality; that is, of discord, dissension, disturbance, disappointment, disorder, and all the other miserable concomitants of falsehood and lawlessness, hatred and wrong. But a Christian, who in the very mystery of the Divine nature, as revealed to him by the Church and in the Scriptures, reads of a provision for the final extirpation of evil, which implies its temporary permission, and even its occasional triumph in this world, will not be less patient, less longsuffering, than the Author of all good Himself. He will indulge no dreams of the perfectibility of the

world, or of the possibility of excluding either vice from the heart of man, or abuse from the exercise of power, or evil from the condition of society. He will endeavour to provide all such checks, and preventives, and remedies, as are compatible with his primary obligations. But he will neither so multiply the restraints from evil as to shackle the motions of goodness; nor will he vainly think of preventing the abuse of authority by destroying authority itself, and fly, as so many have done, from the temporary injustice of a monarchy, to the permanent tyranny of a democracy.

And what is true of the excesses of rulers will apply also to the excesses of subjects. It is indeed one great office-not the only, but a principal office of government, to prevent and correct wrong. And, in impatience of its existence at all, legislators have exhausted their ingenuity in devising regulations of police. They would realise in the present world, peace, order, virtue, happiness, and harmony, in one word, perfect unity; and drive from it all their opposites. And, in this vain attempt have originated theories of absolute despotism,-laws steeped in blood, menaces of physical force, systems of espial and interference with the privacy of life, subversion of domestic relations, and the substitution of the State for the parent, even in the work of education. From the same source have proceeded the idle attempts to check differences of religious opinion by persecution, and the prohibition of free thought; and the far more wicked policy to suppress them, as at present in England, by suppressing the distinctions themselves of truth and falsehood. Under this fruitful head fall the history of penal laws, the theory of national education, the administration of justice, the exercise of spiritual discipline, the economical regulations which regard the morals of a people, the supervision of the press,

and, in one word, the greater part of those questions which relate to the suppression of vice and the encouragement of virtue by the State. And in all of them a Christian will observe the same patience and long-suffering, under the existence of moral evil, as is exhibited in the Divine Being. He will not expect to destroy it in this world, for this is impossible. He will not hastily root out the tares of society, lest he pull up the wheat also. He will not seek to make the perfect distinction between the good fish and the bad, while the net is at the bottom of the sea; but wait till it is drawn to land, at the last great Day. And, while stern and inexorable when absolute necessity requires it, he will be as gentle, as forgiving, as willing to overlook, as equitable in judging, as reluctant in condemning, as the Master whose minister he is. He will deal with vice and moral disorder as one who lives in a system from which the plurality of evil, with all its consequences, cannot be wholly excluded. And he will wait for its final reconcilement with the unity of goodness, in patience and faith, knowing that the system is progressive, and that its perfection must be accomplished only in the whole course of time, and not in any separate portion.

Lastly, the Christian, like the Heathen, will struggle to maintain the principle of unity in the permanent duration of the State. He will desire to frame a society, which, if it were possible, should last for ever. But here also he will make allowance for the principle of plurality,—that is, of change, development, decay, vicissitude, perhaps destruction.

A state may continue to exist, though under very different forms; as the identity of the individual is not lost, though every particle of his bodily frame fluctuates and evaporates. While others would vainly endeavour to fix and petrify society in some one stage of advancement, or under some one form of

constitution; to throw up impenetrable barriers as divisions between castes and classes; to prohibit foreign intercourse, and internal occupations, which may generate new wants and desires, and with them introduce new elements and results into the composition of the state; to confine and limit education; to discourage the natural evolution of wealth and art; and to admit no modification or extension of an original legislation; the Christian, wisely indeed afraid of change, and eschewing innovation, will yet remember that time is an essential element in the condition of all earthly things, and that time implies change and succession, and succession is the principle of plurality. He has before him in the mystery of the Divine Nature-of that Nature to which, strictly speaking, there can be no time, whose Being is an eternal now-provision, nevertheless, for a creation which has a beginning, a middle, and an end; which has to pass through a variety of conditions; in which the Almighty reveals Himself "at sundry times, and in divers manners;" in which the “tree springs up from the grain, which is the least of all seeds;" and "the earth bringeth forth fruit, first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear;" and the Lord, who comes to seek for fruit in His vineyard, comes seeking it "three years." Every thing is gradual, progressive, in movement, tending to some great end, but that end not to be developed till the fulness of time is come. Light, heaven, earth, herb and tree, lights in the firmament, moving creatures to fill the waters, and fowl to fly in the air, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth,-man, lastly, the image of God, and woman, to be his helpmate,--such was the six days' work of an Almighty Being, who could, if He had so willed, have called all things out of nothing at one word, as He said, "Let there be light, and there

was light." And the servant, who is employed in his work of framing or tending a political society, will not think to be wiser or more powerful than his Master. He will pray and labour for its continued existence, but not strive to secure it by contrivances, which would imply that its being was not in time, or subject to change-change both within and without. He will provide room for its expansion, elasticity for its movements, freedom for the play of its members, a power of adaptation to circumstances, an antiseptic principle against a variety of corruptions, strength to withstand a succession of shocks, a spirit to discharge all duties and attain all virtues, a healthiness and power of growth which may enable it to live in any climate of external circumstances; and a hopefulness and faith for his own mind, which may look forward, and backward, and on every side, in tracing its gradual advancement; enjoying the contemplation of its life as an existence of successive generations, and patiently submitting to its death as a dispensation of that good Providence, in whom all things have their issues and fulfilment in some inscrutable good.