lifts them above all ceremonial forms. Religion may exist, as we have seen, altogether apart from Piety; though Piety will, to a certain extent, avail itself of the forms of Religion. Better is Piety without Religion than Religion without Piety.

It ought not to be necessary, after all that we have proved in reference to it, to remind people that Christianity is not to be confounded with Religion, or the Christian Church with misnamed Christian society. This is the mistake into which short-sighted optimists fall, who view things not as they are, but as they imagine they ought to be. Imperfection marks everything in which man is either the administrator or the subject; and has been wisely permitted, that the law of human judgment may be mercy, and the law of human life perpetually renewed effort. With all its corruptions, and all its faults, and all the baseness that is to be found amongst its professed members (and we admit the reality of all with which it is charged), there is no institution upon earth comparable with the Christian Church; there is none works so much good, bestows such solid benefits, spreads such a healthful influence. What proves it to be of God is, that it has never been able to destroy itself. It has stood through dishonours and disasters which must have proved fatal to any merely human institution; and it will stand when all other institutions have fretted into nothingness, and have passed away. Philosophers may dream that it is dying out; some of them confidently prophecy that it will die out and disappear under the dispersing power of their science; and so it will, when the sun has burnt itself up, and the stars

cease to roll, and the blue has faded from the sky, and the infinite shrivels up into the finite, and mind and matter are alike annihilated, and the philosopher stands alone in the void of the vanished universe, proving himself wiser than God, and stronger than God.

If men would but try things by their real unchanging properties, and the foundations on which they rest, they would see that the Christian Faith could not possibly cease to have power as long as human nature continues; for it is founded on the moral qualities inherent in that nature; it derives its power from the felt moral necessities of that nature, which never change; and it pivots upon its fitness to meet the moral demands of that nature. But, even where men have recognised and admitted its Divine character, and wish to act according to its requirements, they have to guard against the common error of substituting Religion for Piety, and of looking for its proper effects from a false and insufficient cause. The advocates of Ritual may argue that it is not resorted to as the substitute for godliness-that it is only the expression of genuine piety already existing, and, as such, is both necessary and befitting. We have shown that it unavoidably becomes the substitute for piety. And, as to its necessity, or its befittingness, we appeal to the character of the acts in which Christian worship consists in proof that neither of these rests upon any ground in its required acts; for what are those acts but prayer, praise, hearing the Word of God, and doing it-the simplest things imaginable, for which only the simplest forms can be required.

One of the most serious dangers connected with an

excessive regard to ritual, beyond the danger of selfdeception, is, that it tends to prepare the minds of men for a return to the corrupt apostate Church of Rome, from which the English nation cleared itself at the Reformation. The most worldly people will have no objection to being religious, if only they may sing their prayers instead of saying them, and substitute the sensitive in worship in the place of the sensible. This predisposes them for the meretricious system of that Church, where their liking for the sensitive may be abundantly gratified. A ceremonial in the place of a spiritual Religion can tend in no other direction. There can be no safeguard, either for the simple Gospel, or for the maintenance of pure moral principle, if men are to be taught to exercise themselves only about Religion, and not “unto godliness.”

Many and multiform as are the spiritual dangers which beset man in his course upon earth-dangers from the pride of life, dangers from the sophistries of passion, dangers from philosophy, falsely so called; dangers from the allurements of the world; dangers from ambition and envy, from covetousness and selfinterest; dangers from the impressions of temporal things; dangers bothfrom worldly success and from worldly disappointments—yet, from what we have advanced and proved, by facts of Nature and arguments of Reason, we think that most of our readers will come to the conclusion at which we have arrived ourselves, that, of all the dangers which man has to fear and to guard against, the most perilous, because the most subtle and the most self-deceiving, are the Dangers in Religion.

CHARITY:

ITS NATURE, RELATIONS, AND LIMITS.

THERE is no Christian virtue that is more universally praised than Charity; but whether its true character be as universally understood, is a question. It gets lauded and extolled to the highest degree by both the religious and the irreligious, and in its right exercise it is, doubtless, worthy of all, and more than all, the honour it receives. Other Christian principles, such as faith, hope, patience, humility, meekness, temperance, are excellent, and deserve admiration; but this, like the virtuous woman, described by Solomon, excels them all, and is, in fact, the crowning grace of Christianity.

It might be supposed that, with the full description given of it, negatively as well as positively, by St. Paul, the nature and right exercise of Charity would never be misunderstood. The reverse, however, is generally the case. In the face of the fact that the Apostle makes the power of discoursing in all languages, both of men and of angels, and the possession of the gift of prophecy, with the knowledge of all mysteries, and faith so great as to be able to remove mountains, and such boundless beneficence as to bestow

all one's goods to feed the poor, and even the sacrifice of one's very life, to be inferior to the grace of Charity, as things all of which may exist without it, and be found possibly in one and the same person; yet it is often confounded with one or other of these, and most commonly with "almsgiving," the lowest of them all. The translation of the word ayan, which strictly means Love, by the ambiguous word "Charity," has unfortunately contributed to this common mistake. Let it be distinctly borne in mind that the sense in which we shall treat of Charity is, in its true and proper sense, of Love-pure love-in its universal operation, as existing, in its essential principle, in the heart of the genuine Christian, and manifesting itself in its appropriate manner, in his spirit and actions, upon all the occasions that call for its exercise. To be judged of correctly, a thing must be viewed as what it is, not as what it is mistaken to be.

The high rank that Charity has assigned to it in the Christian institute shows its transcendent excellence. Its essential necessity is indicated by its being represented as that quality without which all other virtues have no virtue. However good in appearance, or beneficial in effect, any other principles or acts of men may be, they are, without this, only beautiful forms, like artificial flowers, without having in them any Divine fragrance. So important is this grace, that it is made the sole aim and end of Scripture—“ The end of the commandment is Charity" (1 Tim. i. 5). To produce it in the human bosom, and to maintain it there, in its purity and vigour, is its one purpose, as that upon which the order and happiness of all rational