to what course they may eventually lead. Their first effect will be a half-disguised opposition to the present Government. A few words of encouragement from one or two party leaders, and the half-laid spirit of bigotry is ready to be again evoked. Evangelicism would, we fear, be found too ready to play over again the oft-repeated losing game, giving into the unscrupulous hands of secular partizans the sacred weapons of evangelical truth.

Most earnestly do we deprecate this ruinous alliance. We distinctly recognise, as the great practical evil of the day, the want of a religious spirit among the leaders of the State. When statesmen shall act, and electors vote, under the deep sense of religious responsibility, we shall begin to entertain brighter hopes for the prosperity of the country. But the true question is, not whether these principles should, but how best they may be brought to bear. Nothing can be clearer than this,-that men of ardent temperament have often mistaken the solution of the problem. It is indeed most melancholy to observe, in reviewing former controversies, how continually religious watchwords have been assumed as the war-cries of contending parties, and how repeatedly Time, the great arbiter, has declared that Religion has been employed

Position after position has been occupied, only to be ignominously abandoned; till men's eyes have become too well accustomed to see the banners of religion waving over retreating armies. This is in itself an unquestionable evil, and one deeply to be deplored. Religion in her proper sphere should surely be the great regenerator of society, the grand Reformer, the instrument of redressing every social evil. Is it not then most strange to find, that, while the world has been advancing towards true wisdom and civilization, religion has so often been made to seem to abdicate her throne, and leave men to think of her aso the main hindrance to bold and energetic measures of reform Reform, we mean, in no technical sense, in no sense in which the highest absolutist may not accept it, if only he be in earnest in desiring the people's good. We ask, then, is not this a strange fact? Does it not exhibit religion in a light every way false and unfavourable? Does it not tend to produce the belief that all high professions are hollow and insincere-the convenient covering for selfish feelings, too mean to be openly avowed? Or, if not, is there not the opposite suspicion that there is something about Christianity which makes men cold, supercilious, and unsympathising, slow to care for the feelings or hardships of others?

Pseudo-Protestant claqueurs and canvassers may give us an indignant negative. Like the buffalo, they see nothing that is not straight before them. The serious thoughtful men, of whom there are hundreds, who have joined in such movements under the deep sense of necessity and constraint; not loving the strife, but feeling as if they could not sit still, without seeking to stem "the overflowings of ungodliness, which make them afraid;" -these men will readily admit that we speak at least a one-sided truth. In sadness rather than in bitterness, they will urge in reply, that these evils must be endured, as the lighter burden of the two, rather than flinch from the assertion of principles most needed when most unpopular. If it be true that events have often taken a course against which religious men have felt bound to protest, and have protested in vain ;-alas! for the country; so much the more need for protests more and more energetic. Peace is indeed a thing to pray for; but truth they dare not forsake.

All honour to their moral courage. All respect to their sincerity. All grateful acknowledgments of their labours in the best cause of the people, the cause of sound religion. In quieter walks than those of politics they have found their rich reward. Strong indeed as our opinions are on the points at issue between us, it has sometimes been an uncomfortable reflection to think how large a proportion of such men are prepared on all these questions to range themselves in the opposing ranks. Nor can we fail to see that many will gladly echo our protest against political Protestantism, who dislike it in their hearts, not merely for its (falsely so called) Conservatism, but far more keenly for its evangelical doctrine. Emphatically, we disclaim such allies. With them we make no common cause. We are reasoning with our friends, on the basis of a common faith, in behalf of principles which we are agreed in valuing, but which they seem to us to injure by their manner of supporting. And, if we dwell more earnestly on their mistakes than on the errors of ordinary politicians, it is because the former are the more fatal, in proportion to the religious character of their authars.

Still there must be somewhere a flaw in the reasoning which leads to such results as these. It is practically useless to speak of the general course of events as having proceeded on principles radically unsound. False principles do indeed often advance, but their progress is either silent and in the dark, or else their pioneers are the torture and the stake. There is a conscious strength belonging to truth: and when we see principles steadily gaining ground, by free discussion, by fair and honest reasoning, we recognise their onward march as the appointed course of the world's history. "There is a tide in the affairs of men," and quite as certainly there is a current. It cannot return; and,

though results are strictly no criteria of truth, it would be hard to maintain that that current runs the wrong way. On the very basis of our belief in a superintending Providence, we recognise his hand in the silent growth of principles; of such principles at least as flourish in the free air of unfettered discussion, and spring up side by side with the nobler plant of evangelical zeal. We watch with interest their present rapid development. There are, no doubt, many unfavourable signs of the times. Yet, we do not hesitate to say, that there are only two circumstances which at all alarm us; the comparatively slow progress which we can possibly make in subduing the gigantic evils which arose in the lapse of slumbering generations, and the infatuation which leads good men to waste their strength, and trifle with their influence, at the very time when the call to concentrated effort is the loudest, and the promise of success the fairest.

In consistency, then, with that respect to which we have admitted that they are personally entitled, we must seek to assail the positions of our friends with the weapons of calm reasoning. For this, indeed, is what is most required. The opinions held, however erroneous we might consider them, would never of themselves produce so strong a feeling of regret. Were they sustained by solid argument, by large and comprehensive views, by that candour and moderation which indicate that the mind has traversed the whole subject, sounded its depths, surveyed it in its varied lights, we might still differ, but should be neither sorrowful nor indignant. As things are, our friends of whom we speak, seem on these points to shrink from every thing like definite analysis of their principles. When they think that they are reasoning, they are for the most part declaiming; declaiming, no doubt, in an argumentative form, and often with much show of logic but they have few complete syllogisms. They usually prefer what Aristotle calls the ῥητορικὸς συλλογισμός—the Enthymeme, with its suppressed premise, as the convenient refuge of unconscious fallacies. Some one isolated idea is taken up, in which at first there may often be much truth; and to this alone their eyes are for the time open. It possesses the mind; and let the forms of their speculations be ever so much varied, it is always recurring the key-note of the melody, lost for a moment by a temporary modulation, but sure to return to close the strain. Hence, we are continually presented with a cloud of imagerybroad statements and unqualified declarations-rhetorical exaggerations and popular appeals the only point neglected being that on which the soundness of all the rest depends, the proof of the fundamental principles on which so much stress is laid.

The times call for severer criticism-for more rigid analysis of our assumed premises. We invite them to join us, in endea

vouring calmly and candidly to determine what is the true line of duty at this moment for a Christian citizen to pursue?

It may, perhaps, secure for our remarks a more favourable consideration, if we state distinctly, that on the two kindred questions, of the Maynooth Grant, and the endowment of Popery in Ireland, our views, on the whole, coincide very nearly with those of our present opponents. We have never been able to see how a Protestant majority could consistently apply, in either form, the revenues of the State for the support of a creed which they hold to be radically unsound. All the reasoning on the other side seems to us to evade the vital points. They have no solid ground to rest on, without boldly laying down the position, that State Endowments ought to be shared proportionally among all sects and denominations. If the advocates of the Maynooth Grant, and its inevitable corollary, the endowment of the Irish Roman Catholic Church, are prepared to retreat from the principle of an Establishment, and fall back on this new position, we can appreciate their argument. We have then three parties in the field on what is called the Voluntary controversy. But few probably among the friends of Establishments would hesitate, between the two alternatives, to prefer the system of Voluntary Churches to this of universal endowment. That the State should recognise the necessity of a Christian ministry, as the only efficient instrument for the instruction of the people, is thought by many a sound and irrefragable principle. An Established Church is with them in theory a national blessing. But for State-recognition of a vague something called Christianity, whose essence is supposed to be moral precepts severed from all distinct statement of doctrine, few have any desire. They know of no spiritual chemistry, which can decompose a hundred different schemes of doctrine, and find one and the same essential element as the basis of each. Rather than this, they would be content, if need be, to forego the advantage of a national profession of religion, and think it far better that the State should negatively decline to acknowledge Christianity, than positively represent it as giving an uncertain, varying, if not unmeaning, sound.

Having said so much, we may perhaps escape the suspicion of the Maynooth heresy, when we broadly deny that the question is in any strictness of language to be called a religious one, or one that will at all warrant the systematic introduction of religious topics. It rests on Scriptural principles. True: but so, in one sense does every question of politics, as well as every question of personal conduct. The point for consideration must be, whether its connexion with Scripture is so close and distinct as to place it on peculiar ground. We cannot perceive it. That Popery is itself repugnant to the plain sense of Scripture, is to

our Protestant judgment a clear and obvious fact on the very face of the inspired document. But where do we find as clearly or undeniably, or with anything approaching to this clearness, the principle that it must of necessity be wrong to vote money for the education of the Roman Catholic clergy? We believe the principle to be correct; this is our opinion, our inference from a collation of various passages of Scripture. We find in one place a statement of the errors of Popery; in another, that it is right for governors to promote the cause of truth: in a third, that no doctrine can be really beneficial but that which includes the assertion of the vital points of Protestantism; in a fourth, that no motives of expediency can justify a departure from the straight path of principle. These and other separate passages we compare together, and from the comparison arrive, by reasoning and deduction, at our practical result. Now, what we insist on is, that such a result, being purely inferential, liable to all the uncertainties which attend every process of human intellect, can never in propriety of speech be elevated to the rank of a religious belief. The strong sense of the importance of the subject—the all but irrepressible desire to interpose to prevent what seems a fearful evil the fear of divine anger lighting upon the nation on account of national sin:-all such feelings are in themselves strictly religious, the fruits of spiritual life in the heart. Still, the subject-matter with which they have to deal the fulcrum on which the lever rests-is, we repeat, a simple matter of opinion. When the Homeric deities took a place in the chariots of their favourite heroes, the pace was determined, not by the dignity of the stranger, but by the powers of mortal steeds. So, if religious feelings are to be applied to political affairs, their efficiency must be measured, not by their own strength, but by the amount and clearness of the evidence for the principles on which they have to work. Let us feel ever so keenly the peril of endowing Popery, if it be a national sin: still, our belief that it is so being a mere inference, we are bound to act, not up to the measure of our excited feelings, but according to the strength of our inferential reasoning. That reasoning is not demonstrative. Very many who set out from precisely the same data, have arrived at opposite results. From all which it follows, that the state of mind with which we regard such controverted questions of political ethics, must be something altogether different from that which befits the Christian student or teacher, in dealing with the subjects of direct revelation.

We can imagine the indignation with which some at least will receive these announcements-indignation, mingled, perhaps, with a kind of bewildered astonishment. But in one word, we beg our readers to bear in mind, that in all that we have said of inferen