There was, however, another class which did not desire this, but desired the contrary; the class which dreaded any disturbance of the old and settled order, deprecated innovation, viewed with indignation any attempt to invalidate transmitted requirements, or modify established usages; the class which insisted that the letter of the law must be punctiliously kept, that the mint, anise and cummin must be scrupulously tithed, that the last gnat must be strained out from every Abrahamic wine-jar.

Now, both these classes of persons were correct in part; in part both were wrong. Both misjudged the nature of that liberty which Christ was to introduce, and the characteristics of that better future which he was to usher in. Yet a good and true idea lay under the expectations of each. right and true Jesus interpreted and retained; false and injurious he exposed and rejected.

What was

what was

Jesus did indeed come to give freedom. It had been foretold of him that he would open prison-doors and give liberty to them that are bound. Yet not an absolute freedom was this to be, not a breaking of all bands asunder, not a casting away of all cords. His coming was to be, indeed, the signal for the passing away of both the law and the prophets, but this passing away was not by any means to be a destruction. They were to pass away only by being exactly and perfectly fulfilled. Not the smallest particle was to pass away by subversion, by abrogation, nor even by relaxation. The law was to bind in the letter until fully accomplished in spirit.

This leads us to illustrate more fully the difference between these two modes of disappearance or passing away.

When plaster is thrown over hills of corn, or scattered over wheat-fields, the white patches are visible for a few days, after which they disappear, and the ground is a uniform brown ora black as before. The plaster is not, however, destroyed, because its end is fulfilled. It is not lost; it is simply transformed. It reappears in blade, stalk, ear and grain. It passes away, but only by absorption into new and more valuable forms. The leaves that strew the forest do not perish. They fall, but it is only to rise again, mounting in the stems they nourish to loftier heights, and spread out in wider amplitudes of growth. The mould cast about our fruit-trees

is heavy, inert, cumbrous; but, sought out and vitalized by the roots, it acquires power and motion and upward impulse, and takes on shapes of glad and living beauty, and wealth of fruitfulness. The great river does not dry up in its course, but pouring on with increasing volume and momentum, instead of failing at its delta, just there where it ceases to be a river, it finds enlargement in the expanding lake or estuary. While as affluent and prophecy the river passes away, as a fulfillment it abides, only with freer scope and larger room. Examples, all these, of passing away by passing into higher and more enduring forms.

Thus it is to take a single example-that the Passover passed away by passing into the Lord's Supper. Thus it is that we still have a propriety and a living interest in all the typical worship of the Old Dispensation, fulfilled and glorified as it is in the spiritual worship of the New. Were the import of these words of our Lord more deeply pondered, there would be fewer of those who "aim to depreciate Christianity by discovering in it as many marks as possible of Jewish weakness and bigotry." It were much better if they would instead turn their thoughts to the nobler object of elevating that older worship by tracing in it the rudiments and promise of Christianity. Was it a day of shadows? Yet shadows are resemblances, and wherein shall the resemblance be found but in the common truths and relations pervading both? By means of an earthly sanctuary and the carnal ordinances growing out of and continually encircling around it, God manifested on his part the same character and government toward his people, and required on their part the same exercises of principle toward himself which he now does under the spiritual dispensation of the gospel. In both alike we see a pure and holy God enshrined in the recesses of a glorious sanctuary, unapproachable by guilty, polluted flesh, except through a medium of powerful intercession and cleansing efficacy; yet to those who thus approach, most merciful and gracious, full of loving-kindness and plenteous in redemption, while in every act of sincere approach on their part are brought into exercise the same feelings of contrition and abasement, of self-renunciation and realizing faith, of child-like dependence and adoring gratitude.*

* Fairbairn (Typology.)

The distinction we have illustrated indicates further the methods to be employed, if moral requirements, in their aspect of penal severity, are to pass away from those who are under bondage to them by reason of transgression. That method is not to take part with the criminal against the requirement. It is not to tell him that the law is inhuman and merciless. It is not to sympathize morbidly with him, as if he were the victim of circumstances and a martyr to civil order. It will not do to say to the inmates of our prisons, "The law displays a retaliatory, vindictive spirit to immure you in these dreadful walls, separating you from your friends and affixing to your person the badges of dishonor." To say that would but make the matter a thousand times worse; worse for the criminal, as well as worse for society. It would encourage him in crime, and so complete his ruin. What we desire is, that the law may pass away from the transgressor as an object of dread and of antipathy. And this is to be effected, not by our destroying the law, but by his fulfilling it. Offenders must be made to see the wisdom, reasonableness, safety, and greater satisfaction of virtuous citizenship, and to surrender their lawless propensities intelligently and freely. They must be led to see that the attitude of society toward them is not that of gratuitous and hostile menace, but of calm justice and necessary self-defence. Something wonderful is it to see how completely the law, as an object of aversion and terror, passes away from the violator of it so soon as he comes into relations with it of right and willing obedience.

This same distinction leads us on to the true idea of both political and religious enlightenment and freedom, and points out how that idea is to be realized. It instructs us that the millennium of political freedom is not to be brought in through the destruction of government; not by communism nor agrarianism; not by the burning of decrees, codes and statutes; not by the tearing down of senate houses and thrones. Political abuses, oppressions, inequalities are surely to pass away, but not through the iconoclasm of mobs. "All the overthrows of all the tyrannies of ancient or modern times were never able to make corruption free. Let changes (of policy or administration) be as specious as they may, the political suffering will only deepen until the personal reform come to redeem the

land." True, abiding freedom can be attained only as men are instructed into the knowledge of that wherein true freedom lies; only as they are roused to the intelligent, hearty adoption of those maxims of industry, frugality and integrity through which alone law ceases to be compulsion by passing into selfcontrol.

And, lastly, this far-reaching declaration of Christ gives us the true conception and method of religious freedom. Everywhere we see men chafing against restraint; against just limitations of human reason and human pride. Everywhere we see restless desire and determined effort to break bands and cast away cords. "Are we slaves," demand many, "that we must be chained down forever by menacing prohibitions, under which the generations have groaned from the beginning? Are we never to outgrow the narrow dogmas, hampering superstitions and craven fears of ignorance and childishness? Never to be done with the rusty, antiquated creeds of our forefathers? Must we ever gasp in the atmosphere of old and smothering bigotry? Is it not time that we assert our majority and break loose from the tyranny of the past?"

There is to be progress. There is to be enlargement of privilege. There is to be increase of spiritual liberty. But this is not to come in the manner which many conceive. There is to be a passing away of prohibition, restraint, dogmas; but this is not to be by annihilation of any just obligation, nor of any truth. Christ, the animating, guiding spirit of all true enlightenment and progress, has purposed that better future when men shall be free from galling yokes. But he it is who "verily" assures us that the ends of law are not to be secured through mere destruction of its outward forms; he is not deceived, and will not be mocked by that pretended superiority to the letter which only veils a lack of its spirit. That independence of restraint for which many sigh, is not born of radi cal resolutions, free-love conventions, nor of hackneyed wholesale denunciations of Calvinism and Puritanism. It comes, and can come, only as the great underlying, ever-abiding principles of civil order, moral precept and spiritual worship are incorporated into the soul; only as men become free in the love of right and of order, in perfected love towards God and man. "In all its sacred constitution," says Huntingdon,* "society

*Aspects of Human Society.

preaches the sacredness of law, and so points with reverent finger from human law to the divine, and to Him in whose breast both have their seat at last. By being servants we become children and heirs. By law we gain liberty. By waiting at the foot of Sinai we are taken up into Olivet and Tabor. The tables of stone lean against the cross. Moses is followed by the Messiah. Beyond the valleys of subjection rise the eternal hills of peace. The years of unquestioning and obedient toil ended, there is proclaimed the great Sabbatic festival, where law is love,, and order is choice, and government is Fatherhood, and the Ruler's will is the impulse of every heart."

Art. IV. PRESBYTERIANISM ON THE FRONTIERS.*

BY REV. JOSEPH F. TUTTLE, President of Wabash College.

THE Presbytery of Philadelphia, formed "about the beginning of the year 1705," "consisted of seven ministers" and a score of churches. This germ in half a century had grown into two Synods, which included ninety-four ministers, and a still greater number of churches. From that time "to the commencement of the Revolutionary War the growth of the church had been rapid and almost uninterrupted."

When the differences between the Colonies and the mother country were "submitted to the arbitrament of war," the Presbyterian Church had become a commanding power in the Middle and Southern States. Although Mr. Jefferson, in his autobiography, did not name the Presbyterian clergy in his account of the means adopted "to fire the heart of the country," we know from other sources that they were prominent in the movement. He says: "We were under the conviction of the necessity of arousing our people from the lethargy into which they had fallen, as to passing events, and thought that the appointment of a day of general fasting and prayer would be most likely to call up and alarm their attention.

*

**

*The Synod of Indiana was formally organized on the 18th of October, 1826. On the fiftieth anniversary of that event the Synods of Indiana South, and Indiana North, met in the First Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis, which occasioned the preparation of this historical sketch.