people should not merely cease to desire what they have learned to enjoy; but that they should consent no longer to know, what they had ascertained to be true; and should learn to believe as true, what they have discovered to be false; and should persuade themselves to act in a manner which experience has taught them is equally absurd and mischievous. Even therefore if savage life did present itself to the view of a civilized people as a paradise; yet between it and themselves there is interposed a gulf, into which, indeed, many a nation has been plunged headlong, but which none can pass by spontaneous movement.

There may too be those, and perhaps they are more than a few, who, knowing little of Christianity except in its incidental connexion with secular affairs, over which it too often throws perplexity;-knowing nothing of its truth, or its energies, or its beauty; and not knowing, or not considering, that every other form of religion is utterly destitute as well of truth, as of any power to bless, imagine that an equitable comparison between the religion of Europe, and the religions of Asia, would exhibit but an ambiguous advantage in favour of the former. Or such persons may persuade themselves that an innocuous pantheism, upon the bosom of which all consciences might be lulled, would indeed be a happy exchange for the stirring verities of the Bible.

Yet even if it were so, no such exchange can ever be offered to our choice; for Christianity, like civilization, and in a much deeper sense, is a movement forward. Christianity is a system of truths which has

carried the human mind as far in advance of ancient philosophy, as it has of false religion. It is no scheme of vague opinions, which may be indifferently refuted, or admitted; but a progress in abstract truth-and a progress in moral sentiment-and a progress in manners, which, though its future course may be arrested by calamities falling upon the human family, could not be freely renounced but by an act of desperation, fatal to the social existence of the people that should attempt it.

Christianity is a development, and the only development ever yet given, of those higher faculties of human nature, which although they may long slumber, yet when once awakened, will not be curbed by the limitations of time;-they will not; for their scope lies far forward in the field of Eternity.

Christianity, like civilization, may be overborne at different points, or turned from its course; but it must recover its lost ground. It is a guardian power, which has long been carrying the human family, as in its bosom, over a rugged road, and beneath inclement skies; but will not be stayed until it have fulfilled its trust.

We grant indeed that a general decay of religious belief, throughout Europe, is an event which does not want some indications of probability. But if we suppose it to have taken place, its visible effects would every where be those of a turn of tide; or the reflux of a deep current, heretofore setting heavenward (how stormy soever may have been its surface, or sluggish its movement). It would be a reflux towards

whatever is sensual, selfish, frivolous, and ferocious. Like the loss of civilization—the loss of Christianity would be equivalent to a ceasing to know, a ceasing to feel, a ceasing, in the best sense, to live; or the living on a principle confessedly earthly, after a higher principle has been recognised.

At this moment the hold of Christianity upon the convictions, the moral sentiments, and the manners of several of the nations, called Christian, is in the last degree feeble; nevertheless, so long as, even in such countries, the Gospel is yet publicly regarded as true, and so long as its decisions are appealed to as of divine authority, the community, low as it may have sunk in virtue, has still its eye directed upward toward that which is purer and more elevated, as well in faith as in morals, than any thing else around it. Even, therefore, to such communities, the ceasing to be Christian would not be the coming to a stand merely; but the commencement of a descent towards an abyss.

But to a community within which the Gospel has widely diffused itself through the opinions, habits, and affections of the mass, and in which it intensely affects the moral energies of thousands; the ceasing to be Christian would be a dissolution, political, social, domestic: it would be-national death.

In this country every institution which at once fortifies and adorns our social condition, has been constructed on the supposition of a flow and pressure in this one direction;—that is to say, toward whatever is, or is assumed to be, true in religion, and pure

in morals:-every slope in the basement of the political building is adapted to this, and to no other movement of the waters :should they turn, there is not an embankment which must not yield, and add its fragments to the general ruin.

Throughout southern Europe, where an almost stagnant neap-tide of moral feeling has for ages covered the surface of society, the turn toward open Atheism might show itself only in the drooping of heads, this way, instead of that, upon ecclesiastical levels; but it could not be so in England. England, and her affluence at home, and her influence through the world, and her bright cluster of ancient honours; England, and her pure domestic affections, and home felicity, and her generous temper, and her wide philanthropy; England, her power and her embellishments, we may be assured-is fated along with the Gospel. The waters of the sanctuary stand breast high around her, and should they fall off, she herself falls, to rise no more.

In this, if in no other country, Christianity, much as it is dishonoured, yet rules in theology, and is the standard of morals, and gives sanction to law; and, as an arbiter, acknowledged by all, mediates between angry factions. But more than this, it is by far the most profound of the forces now at work within the social system ;—it is a force not controllable by any secular, or ordinary means, inasmuch as, for the sake of it, thousands amongst us, if challenged to do so, would relinquish goods, and life itself. Amid our very agitations it still consolidates its power; and even

spurious zeal, (if there be any) breaks up the ground for its advances. Atheism itself has lately strengthened it by a reaction; while the sudden, and unlooked for revival, in our times, of ancient superstitions, directs a new attention to its simple truths. Christianity comes to our times as the survivor of all systems, and after confronting, in turn, every imaginable form of error, each of which has gone to its almost forgotten place in history-itself alone lives.

In philosophic scorn we may turn from the perusal of the history of Christianity, during its eighteen centuries past, blessing ourselves in a thence-derived indifference towards all religion. But feelings such as these spring from modes of thinking that are loose and unphilosophical. What we should discern in the course of events, on the stage of European affairs, during this lapse of time, is-not so much a series of interested frauds, of imbecile illusions, of fanatical violences, borrowing a sanction from religion; but rather a slow movement, of vast compass, yet tending always towards a high moral end, however remote, and which higher end it is now visibly approaching. We have before us, in this history, a power which, even when most enfeebled or perverted, could lend a grandeur even to folly, and a sublimity to extravagance; which has often imparted the energies of virtue to crimes; which has never visited mankind with a scourge, without bringing up a blessing; and which now at length stands forward in no other character than as the reprover of violence, and of oppression, and of impurity; and as the guardian of whatever is most