He is one of the trustees of political sovereignty. Of❝the powers that be" he is an item. He holds office, and he holds it from God. He cannot evade his responsibility, however, like the prophet Jonah, he may flee from his post. Until he has exercised to the utmost every privilege which the constitution has put within his reach, he shares in the guilt of every contravention of the will of God perpetrated by our political authorities. Disguise it from himself as he may, his voluntary and deliberate disuse of the rights of citizenship, is the subscription of his name to every law upon the statute-book, and the extension of his public sanction to every wickedness done in high places. He has a talent, and he buries it to the advantage of every wrong-doer. He sides with the oppressor by connivance. He gives his vote for monopoly by silence. The sin of war lies at his door, brought thither by his inaction; and if there be anything religiously offensive in an Established Church, anything displeasing to our Lord and Master, anything subversive of Christian purity, peace, or power, he is, by his position, and by his studied neglect of the duties of it, an open party to its continuance. To such parties we may address a word of kind admonition: O brethren, reflect what it is you do when you commit suicide upon your citizenship! More guilty than the father who suppresses his parental instincts, and avowedly repudiates parental duties, you throw into the treasury of unrighteousness the whole amount of power which you surrender. God has introduced you into one of the highest relationships of temporal life, and you tell Him that you will attend to none of the obligations of your trust.. He has made you rulers, and you leave the people to perish through your indifference. Think of this, brethren, and ask yourselves by what plea you will justify your conduct when called to give up your account.

Citizenship, then, is, according to our view of it, an important social relationship, ordained by God himself, into which men are introduced, as they are into every other relationship, by the laws of Providence. Let us guard ourselves, however, against misapprehension. The boundaries of citizenship in

every country are marked out by human wisdom or by human folly; and all that we would be understood as affirming is, that the boundaries having been prescribed and settled in any given case, each one who is placed within those boundaries is placed there by providential dispensation. The trust is devolved upon him by the Most High. And every trust contemplates the attainment of certain ends, and confers certain rights with a view to those ends. Perhaps, therefore, we may obtain the most comprehensive view of the subject under discussion by considering, first, the objects contemplated by citizenship; then the rights necessary for the accomplishment of those objects, and, in connexion with them, the mode in which, and the extent to which, StateChurches interfere with the exercise of those rights.

The primary and proximate OBJECT contemplated by citizenship is SOCIAL ORDER. Our beneficent Creator wills that men dwell together in peace. He would have all his subjects on earth protected, in their persons, their property, and their liberty, against the aggressions of fraud and force. Civil law is a merciful substitute, in respect of temporal purposes, for spiritual religion; and, until religion shall be universally triumphant, and all the nations of the world be brought into subjection to "the royal law of love," is designed to put a limit upon the external development of evil passions, with a view to prevent the infliction of actual injury. So far as organised physical force is applicable to the maintenance of righteous conduct between man and man, God has ordained that it shall be employed by civil government-not, indeed, as a means of promoting righteousness, but, in compassion to erring creatures, as the means of securing for them the advantage of its results. Were the Gospel victorious over every heart, and were love to God, and, through him, love to man, permanently enthroned thereupon, all men being swayed by the evangelical rule, "Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you," political authority would become superfluous. Inasmuch, however, as the majority of mankind. are strangers to this gentle and effectual restraint, civil government is called in, and the

sword of the magistrate is employed to defend society, and its several members, against such violations of the precept as would infringe upon personal or social rights. Law is designed to guarantee to all its subjects the protection of what they are, of what they may be, and of what they have, from the aggression of the lawless, and, when they are assailed in any of these respects, to supply the tribunal for impartial judgment, and the force requisite for the due execution of it. Government is, in relation to such matters, the conscience of society, or at least acts analogously to it-it passes sentence on the wrong-doer, and follows up that sentence by the infliction of penalty. Its great business is to administer justice. Its primary end is answered when it has secured for every man within its jurisdiction the enjoyment of his own against the trespass of his fellow-man. This done, society becomes sufficiently organised for the gradual development of all its capabilities. Industry puts out her strength. Science hastens to lighten her toil. Commerce unfurls her sails to the winds of heaven. Philosophy abridges the labour of thought by resolving facts into principles. Minds are brought into contact; knowledge accumulates; and nations become prepared for the seeds of revealed truth.

And this last remark opens to our view the ULTIMATE OBJECT of citizenship. All the lines of God's providential dispensation, as far as it has to do with this world's affairs, converge upon one focus-the spiritual redemption of our race. This grand and gracious design runs through, and gives significance to, all his ordinations. Civil government is intended to secure peace to society, or, in other words, to make the social state a possible and a highly advantageous one, by the systematic administration of justice between man and man. But the advantages thus secured, are secured not merely for their own sakes; they are valuable in themselves, but they are especially valuable as ancillary to the progress and triumph of divine truth. In the Apocalyptic vision we are told that "the earth helped the woman"—the temporal is made subservient to the spiritual. And the history of our own country affords a vivid illustration of the ripening fulfilment

of this prophecy. Our greater social security than that of most European kingdoms has afforded us leisure for the cultivation of the sciences and the pursuit of commerce. And what has been the result? Christianity has availed itself of our advantages and of our enterprise: has multiplied our Bibles by the steam-press; has promoted benevolent combination by our penny post; has followed our ships to every foreign shore; has, in short, obtained a purchaseground for all her efforts, upon the inventions and improvements which human ingenuity has succeeded in bringing into play. Would that this were the only side of the picture exhibited by the political history of Great Britain. But, alas! it is not so. The Church of Christ has been worried, torn, scattered, by malignant and ambitious passions; and where she was justified in looking for a guardian of her liberties, she found, in every instance, her bitterest oppressor. The State, which, in as far as it has secured social order, has unquestionably proved useful to aggressive Christianity, professedly aiming to further it by direct and unwarranted intermeddling with its authority, has been the most formidable impediment in its path. Centuries of persecution, more or less severe-centuries of nominalism, more or less prevalent—have testified how deplorably religion may be hindered by the misdirected action of political power. Viewed in connection the one with the other, the two sets of national experience go far to show how closely the main design of God in regard to our race is associated with the movements of civil government; how, within its own legitimate sphere, every righteous act of magistracy does something towards levelling a road for the Gospel; and how, mistaking its own functions, and listening to the counsels of an impious ambition, it may retard the glorious cause it was intended to ad

vance.

We may now with the greater advantage pass on to a consideration of the rights of citizenship, and the violation of those rights by Established Churches.

Rights are in relation to their objects: and as are the objects so must be the rights. The proximate object of

citizenship is the maintenance of society by the protecting agency of justice; the ulterior object arrived at through the medium of the primary one, is the victory of revealed truth over every heart. The responsibility of citizenship must be measured by these its ends-the privileges of citizenship must be co-extensive with the responsibility. And, in order that they may be so, the following conditions are absolutely necessary-private judgment, the free promulgation of it, and the legitimate results of that promulgation. We shall see how State Churches interfere in each of these respects.

Private judgment is the first and most indispensable right of citizenship. Deprived of this, or crippled in the exercise of it, responsibility ceases. What I am required to do I must have the opportunity and the means, first, of knowing accurately, then of performing efficiently; and what is truet of me, is true of all who occupy a like position with myself. The body of citizens in this land are, as we have already seen, the rulers of the land; and since every act of political rule operates powerfully and on the large scale, whether men intend it or otherwise, in favour of, or in opposition to, the Church of the Redeemer, it follows in natural sequence that every citizen, placed as he is in so delicate and critical a position, should be left entirely untrammelled by State arrangements to form his opinion as to his peculiar duties. His acts, in that relationship which he sustains, ought to harmonise most fully with the ultimate object they are intended to work out. What God has spoken in his Wordwhat principles of practice He has enjoined—and how these principles may be best brought to bear upon society, he ought to enjoy the most unrestricted liberty of determining. If he is not free here, he is but a tool in the hands of others; a serf, rather than a citizen; a slave, and not a ruler.

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And now, take this country as it is; survey it narrowly; calculate the various and potent influences which the Established Church can bring to bear, to warp the opinions, political and religious, of those who have possession of the franchise, and say whether its existence in our midst is