characters, under the common designation of Christians,— then the necessity of change and accommodation cannot but be apparent and felt. But if the Church is regarded as composed of spiritual men,-men who, though in the.world, are not of the world,-the same constitution of government which was adapted to its spiritual character in the days of the Apostles, will be no less suitable for it now. This leaves us with only one question- What was the apostolic constitution of the Church? That is our only safe, our only legitimate model; and in determining it, approved example and explicit precept are of the same authority. Wherever we find the former, we in effect find the latter; unless we are prepared to admit that the Apostles either enjoined what they did not intend to be practised, or saw practised, with their approbation, what they had not enjoined.

I cannot pass from this part of my subject without an observation or two on the importance of such inquiries. It has many a time, I am aware, been over-rated; and it always is over-rated, when aught that is external is either substituted for what is internal, or is contemplated in any other light than as a means to an end. But the propensity to underrate it is still more prevalent. It is the fashion of the times to make light of it; and all who bend their attention to it, or write or talk about it, are set down as mere "tithers of mint, and anise, and cummin; "-a rather unfortunate allusion, it may by the way be noticed,-inasmuch as while the Saviour says of "the weightier matters of the law,” “These ought ye to have done," he immediately subjoins, even as to this contemned tithing,-" and not to leave the other undone."* But seriously; the constitution of the Church, though not an end, is a means to an end. The end is its own spiritual edification, along with the advancement of the great interests of divine truth, the glory of the divine Name, and the salvation of a guilty world. The Church was instituted for these ends, and her constitution was adapted by divine wisdom to their attainment. In all other cases we estimate * Matt. xxiii. 23.

the value of the means by the magnitude of the end. So should we here. Contempt of the end is involved in contempt of the means. We value highly a good system of civil government. But the value we attach to it is not on its own account, as a mere matter of skilful arrangement, and regular subordination, and political display; it is for the sake of the ends which government in civil society is intended to answer, which are felt by all to be of the highest temporal consequence, -the security of person, property, liberty, and life, and the promotion of general comfort, prosperity, social confidence, and happiness. We value the means, because we value the end; and we esteem that scheme of government the best, and appreciate it accordingly, which is in theory best adapted for working out these ends, and whose practical efficiency corresponds with its theoretical excellence. Why should Christians, while they are so sensible of the value of good government in the State, smile at the very mention of the order and government of the Church, as if it were a matter quite unworthy the serious regard of a devout and spiritual mind? Whatever our divine Master has reckoned it worth his while to command, it must surely be worth our while to obey: and they who are not aware of the intimate relation between the constitution of the Church and her spiritual, which is her only true prosperity, must be very ignorant of the tendencies. of general principles, and must have glanced over the pages of her history with a strangely unobservant eye. These externalities, we are often told, are not religion. Granted. But are bread and water of no value, because they are not life? If they contribute to sustain life, then life is the measure of their value and in like manner, though outward institutions are not religion, yet, if they contribute to promote religion, religion becomes the measure of their value.

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When I expressed my surprise at the manner in which the question of Establishments has sometimes been discussed, I did not intend to allege that no appeal was ever made, in their behalf, to the Bible. The appeal has been made; and we are now to consider with what success. It is very rarely

that we meet with attempts to press the New Testament into their service. The argument most commonly resorted to is derived from the Old, and is briefly as follows:-There was a national Establishment of religion among the Jews :-that Establishment, all believers in revelation grant, was instituted by divine authority:-in the principle of the thing, therefore, there can be nothing wrong:-and why, then, may not a Christian nation imitate the example, and give to the religion of Jesus Christ the privilege that was given to Judaism? I waive, for the present, all comment on the objectionable and mischievous phraseology of a Christian nation, and go directly to the consideration of the argument. To the question, then, Why may not the example be imitated? I would reply by observing—

In the first place, because, unfortunately, such imitation is, in the nature of the thing, impossible.-It is a case that comes not within the range of the imitable. The only imitation possible must be on the part of God himself. He must repeat his own act. The Jewish constitution was a theocracy, in which Jehovah assumed to that people a special relation,- —a relation which he never sustained to any other portion of our race, the relation of their King,—himself conducting the administration of their government, by a system of supernatural interposition, and immediate manifestation of his presence and authority. Who but Jehovah himself can imitate this? He must select another Abraham,-make of his seed a nation,-separate that nation to himself as a peculiar people,-and, regarding the community, collectively considered, as his Church, institute for it the ordinances of an exclusive worship, as well as prescribe for it its civil constitution and laws. To talk of imitation, in a case so thoroughly peculiar, or to call that imitation, in which the very essence of the thing imitated is of necessity wanting, is the height of absurdity. It must be God's doing, not man's. The Jewish was a temporary system, instituted for special ends; and, these ends being once accomplished, it was never meant to be, and it never indeed can be,

repeated. If, as an exception to this representation, we are referred to the period of the kingly government in Israel, and to the official conduct of some of the good kings as a laudable example for crowned heads in other countries: we reply, that the institution of the kingly government was not a cessation of the theocracy; inasmuch as the kings were originally selected and nominated by Jehovah himself,-who still, on many occasions, continued, by direct interference, to control the affairs of the nation ;-and, moreover, that the kingly office in Israel was, like the priestly, typical; the one prefiguring the sacerdotal, and the other the royal function of the promised Messiah. The wicked character of many of the kings is no more a valid objection to the typical nature of the one, than the not less wicked character of many of the priests to that of the other. But,

Secondly, Not only is imitation, on this account, out of the question, but the very attempt, to imitate, under the Christian dispensation, is in direct contravention of the intimated will of Jehovah, and a frustration of his avowed designs.— The ancient dispensation, although containing, in its typical ritual, the elements of evangelical truth and of spiritual worship, was yet, in itself, comparatively carnal and worldly; and the national Church of Israel (for such we grant it to have been) was, through the whole period of its continuance, (though with frequent fluctuations, and occasional intervals of comparative purity, on which the mind reposes with plea. sure, like the eye on oäses in the desert) in a state of great mixture and corruption. It is not for us to insist on knowing why such a constitution was then adopted. We have to do only with the fact; and the fact is beyond question. Nor is it less unquestionable, that, in anticipating the future kingdom of the Messiah, the prophets invariably represent it as, when it should come, introducing a radical change,-a state of things more pure and spiritual; in which there were no more to enter into the Church "the uncircumcised or the unclean,"-in which "the wicked were to be shaken out of it," in which "her people were to be all righteous." It

was, in a word, to be a spiritual kingdom, whose subjects were to be children of Abraham, not by birth merely, but by faith,-" born not of blood, nor of the. will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God,"-spiritual subjects of a spiritual reign.-Such, in conformity with all that had thus been intimated by prophetic testimony, is the declaration of Jesus in the passage before us:-"If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered unto the Jews: but Now is my kingdom not from hence."-I am aware that some modern millenarians have interpreted our Saviour's expression, not as retrospective, but as anticipating a period to come, when the character he had just given of his kingdom should cease to belong to it; when it should assume appearances and attitudes more worldly; when his servants should fight, and that, too, under his own visible and earthly banner :-the amount of all which is, that his kingdom should be most worldly at the period of its highest and brightest prosperity a sentiment at variance with all the lessons taught us in the divine word respecting the true glory of the New Testament reign, which consists not in worldly pomp and power, but in holy spirituality; the glory of the Church advancing as her spirituality increases, and the perfection of her spirituality being the meridian splendour of her glory. The words are more truly interpreted, as contrasting the present with the past, the spirituality of the new covenant reign with the worldliness of the old; the "chosen generation, the royal priesthood, the holy nation, the peculiar people," being no longer, as formerly, one particular separated tribe of men, but true believers of every kindred.—What, then, is their conduct, who insist on our adopting the national constitution of the Jewish Church as a precedent for our imitation? Do they not wilfully go back to the worldly and corrupt state of things, that has "waxed old and vanished away?" Do they not take that for their model, which he by whom it was instituted has set aside? Do they not give preference to the "beggarly elements," and choose the introductory and