on the phylacteries of all who deify humanity under the name of popular sovereignty, while they profess to bring garlands to the temple of liberty; and no second motto would have been required for the banners which floated over Paris in the bloodiest days of the first French revolution. It was said, on the contrary, of the despotism of Nero. God calls that his ordinance, and Nero his minister, and bids men obey at their peril, as he will account their resistance treason against himself, and will avenge it accordingly. Does God then set the seal of his approval on the gigantic oppressions of Nero? Does God invest Nero with the jus divinum, and put in his hand a scroll inscribed with those words of Paul," The powers that be are ordained of God?" Precisely so far as the prophecies of the Messiah," led as a lamb to the slaughter," were a royal warrant for Judas Iscariot in the betrayal of Christ. Judas accomplished his crime, consummated his guilt, and went to his own place; and all wicked rulers, whether under forms of despotism or liberty, will render their own account to God.

The war which was inaugurated by the attack on Fort Sumter places the North in a position to understand and appreciate the doctrine of Paul. Hitherto this has been difficult, not to say impossible, and God has had to wink at our partial unbelief in the matter. The struggle of the American Colonies with England set them, apparently, in opposition to constitutional government, and so the world thought as it looked on and watched for the issue. It is at least worth remembering in this connection, however, that the leading Colonial statesmen. of that day took up their stand boldly, on the ground that George the Third and his ministers were the traitors against the British Constitution - the real revolutionists and secessionists, through the gross violation and despotic withdrawal of the most sacred charters, while they, on the other hand, were the real Union and Constitution men. Hence the loyal heart of the English masses, with a well-balanced love of liberty and law, was with them, and rejoiced in their success. Still, as relates to the proper adjustment and due relations of constitutional government and popular rights, it was natural, perhaps inevitable, that we should emerge from that struggle with a bias in the direction of popular rights which should make us

jealous of the prerogatives of a strong government and the too summary execution of law. There was enough, at least, to prepare the way for the unconscious leaven, in a Christian community, of Tom Paine's infidel speculations on the rights of man. Has there not been, for the last eighty years, an element of atheism in our politics?

The present contest is wonderfully fitted to cure us of all that. The seceding States have placed themselves in an attitude of direct resistance to the ordinance of God. To march against them with an overwhelming army, and to subdue the spirit of rebellion at the point of the sword and the cannon's mouth, we maintain to be strictly and peculiarly a religious and Christian course of action. The President of the United States and commander-in-chief of the army of the Union is God's minister in this business, and that with a terrible emphasis; for, as Paul saith, "he beareth not the sword in vain."

There is no necessity, therefore, as Mr. Alger avers, to place religion in abeyance. It would be a fatal mistake to do so. It is a thing greatly to be desired, that we put this whole business on its only true and scriptural basis. That basis is exceeding broad and comprehensive. It is the doctrine of the magistracy, in all nations and in every age; the ministration of God for good, to protect those who do well, and to inflict punishment on evil-doers. Death to all traitors and rebels, is the doctrine; whether they plot, on a gigantic scale, for the overthrow of a national government, or rob and kill on the highway, or murder the innocent in the city or in the field. The whole has one foundation, which is, not human rights or social expediency, but the eternal justice of God and his unrepealed statute. It is greatly to be hoped that we may see this with a clear vision, and have wisdom to turn to account all the lessons which the stern realities of our present position are fitted to illustrate and enforce. One of these is the true character and value of that maudlin philanthropy whose deepest sympathies are awakened for the murderer, and who cocker up, with soft words and sugar-plums and gingerbread, a man with soul steeped and blackened in the deepest guilt this side of perdition, instead of hanging him. They are confederate with evil-doers.

Do we then apologize even, for the unrighteous and oppres

sive administration of civil government? Do we plead the right of Nero to transmit his iron sceptre in perpetuity to his successors, to the utter extinction of the rights of the governed,

an effectual bar to all political revolution? That would be to set ourselves against God, or to think to bind the great wheal of his Providence in the history of the nations. As all things move forward to the final consummation, He will overturn as he pleases, whether in mercy or in judgment; for the enlargement of his Church or the punishment of an ungodly world; - but all for the glory of Jesus Christ;- will dethrone Belshazzar and Napoleon, and break the unconstitutional rule of a constitutional king, with or without the forewarning of the handwriting on the wall; whether by the legions of Cyrus, the cold breath of a northern winter, or the strong heart of a people string for liberty.

men.

It is not sufficiently considered, that Christianity is a dispensation of justice, from first to last, not less than of love; and that an administration from which justice was omitted, would cease, at that very point, to be, in any proper sense, an administration of love, involving infinite confusion in a world of fallen Does not Jesus say "For judgment I am come into the world?" It will be found, accordingly, whether we regard the concurrent voice of prophecy, or the great facts of the world's history, that the sword is continually unsheathed simultaneously with the proclamation of the Divine mercy, and the vengeance of God upon the wicked walks in the same great highway with his loving-kindness to the elect. The whole creation. groaneth and travaileth in pain together, and must do so to the end. Great tribulations must precede the final regeneration, and, in measure, prepare the way for it. Wars and rumors of wars; earthquakes in divers places; the sea and the waves roaring, and men's hearts failing them for fear; all these, and many more things of the like kind, will be the harbingers of the coming of the Son of Man. The new song in heaven, by the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the living creatures and the elders, ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, will celebrate God's terrible judgments upon the wicked; and the opening of the seals by the Lamb slain will be the signal for the going forth, not only of the white horse

bearing the crowned conqueror, who is no other than Christ, but also, as following in his train, of the blood-red war-charger, the black horse of famine and the pale horse of death; while the stars will fall from heaven, and the heaven itself depart as a scroll.

Let us consider well, therefore, our position in this conflict, in which the States of a great Confederacy, suddenly and violently rent asunder after a united and unparalleled history of almost a century, are ranged in hostile sections, and meet, as met on the plains of Marathon, the Persian and the Greek, for mutual slaughter. It is not, on our side, a war of passion or of conquest, for the infliction of injury or the avenging of our own wrong; but to maintain the ordinance and institution of God against those who are insanely and wickedly plotting its overthrow. It is God's crusade for government and the authority of law. Our mission is invested with a holy majesty, and it must not be dishonored by the petty strifes of political factions, the purblind aims of peddling philanthropy, or the poisonous venom, as wicked as it is poisonous, of sectional prejudice and jealousy and hate. Let us rise to the full dignity and sacredness of our position, remembering that the cause is God's, to vindicate his ordinance against men who trample it down; and ours, not alone to preserve our national existence, with all its inappreciable blessings, but to learn, as no past circumstances of our history could possibly teach us, the absolute necessity and religious duty of implicit obedience to the higher powers.

All things truly great on earth grow to their fulness and strength by slow degrees, and through multiplied perils and roughness and storm. In no one instance is this more emphatically true than in the rise of communities and states and empires. England counts the centuries of her history, as we count the decades of years. The Boston of to-day is the growth or two hundred and thirty years of singular experiences, and now it stands alone in its character, as in its history. Minerva, springing full-grown and full-armed from the head of Jupiter, could never find a counterpart in the history of our own or any other nation. The oak-tree, bowed and torn by many a storm, and hardened by a thousand winters, is a fitter em

blem. If God is purposing to set upon our head the crown of a higher wisdom and a maturer manhood, through sorrows and tribulations, without which no nation has ever been truly great or wise, we will enter, without fear, into the dark cloud, which shines toward the coming age, like a golden flood.

ARTICLE IX.

SHORT SERMONS.

"The Sabbath was made for man."- Mark 2: 27.

It was made for man in Paradise; for special praise and worship and holy meditation, and bodily repose. It was enjoined by recorded statute at Sinai "Remember the Sabbath-day;"— which statute is just as binding now as any other one of the ten commandments. Modified in some respects, commemorating the resurrection of the Lord, it stands, to-day, in all the binding force of the Divine ordinance; "made for man," by God in his unchanging love and wisdom; that the groaning and travailing creation may rest; that man, leaving, for a time, his farm and his merchandise, may be reminded how soon he must leave all forever;— that families may be taught out of the Holy Scriptures;-that the Gospel may be preached for the conversion of sinners and the spiritual enlargement of the church, and the children of God may rejoice and sing praise in pleasant anticipation of that better "keeping of Sabbath" of which this is an emblem and a pledge.

"All unrighteousness is sin." — 1 John 5: 17.

THE word used here to express sin is áμapría, which in classic Greek means a missing of the mark, as when one shoots an arrow, or throws a spear or javelin. It is an error, blunder, or failure in trying to accomplish a given end. So a primary idea of sin is a mistake, and so all unrighteousness is a blunder. It is a violation of selfinterest. He who seeks to gain any desirable end or supposed good by violating the law of right, misses his aim. His policy is bad and his process foolish, and so the Scriptures call him a "fool."