under the control of some powerful institute, which could reduce its lawlessness to subjection, and gradually school it in the principles of self-restraint and obedience to authority. This institute we discover in the department of religion to have been the Church; in that of government, the monarchy. And it was by the co-operation of the two, that ultimately the wild and discordant elements of the world's life were reduced to order and led onward in the direction of true history.

We must not be surprised at the severity and even tyrannical rigor with which the lessons of subordination were inculcated. Learned they must be, at any cost, as the indispensable prerequisites to human liberty. And the miseries of the age are attributable not so much to the spirit of the history of the times, as to the mad and determined opposition of blind lawlessness. The individual must yield to the historic progress of the age, or be crushed beneath its resistless power. Hence was it that government assumed an arbitrary character, which made a reaction necessary in after times.

I repeat it, we must not be surprised at the severity and even cruelty with which the governments of the times were characterized. Even in our own times the principle involved, is approved, and in this age and country finds a practical illustration. The laws of our government are imperious in their demands, and insist upon obedience with the severest of sanctions. Life itself is held to be a subordinate interest. And the government of these United States, mild and humane as it is, will not hesitate to assert its majesty and the supremacy of its laws at the expense, if needs be, of millions of treasure, and rivers of human blood. So too in the family; the child that submits not to the authority therein lodged, lays himself obnoxious to the severest penalty which it is in its province to inflict. The reduction then, of the elements of unbridled lawlessness, as they confronted the institutions of past history, called forth that terrible rigor which the historic page narrates, and it is not saying too much when we declare that milder measures would not have been adequate to the task.

But the lawful design of all government, is to conduct hu

manity to the enjoyment of that freedom which is God's merciful provision for man-to prepare him at last for self-government. Humanity, as redeemed in Jesus Christ, and which we have already seen to be the life of all true history, is in its very nature autonomic, and the design of its progressive workings is to conduct the world to this very estate. All necessary force will be employed to assert its just and righteous claims; nor will it hesitate to surmount opposition at the expense of human life and liberty. But as soon as this is accomplished, then is it the right of the individual to rise superior to the outward restraints of his pupilage, to the extent precisely to which he is prepared for the enjoyment of this liberty. But unfortunately, poor fallible man is the instrument employed for the assertion of the claims of history; and finding himself in the attitude of dominion, the selfish principle still unhappily clinging to his nature, makes him slow to act in obedience to the very laws of which he has been appointed the executor, and accordingly seeks to hold his position of authority even after the design of his elevation has been accomplished. Thus throwing himself in turn, in the way of the history he ministered to promote; and as a necessary consequence, creates the necessity for a reaction, which in its assertion must overwhelm him with revolution and destruction. Such an assertion of the restraint, we witness in

rights of the individual against undue the reaction which took place in the Reformation of the sixteenth century.

We have said that obedience to lawful authority is the first element of human freedom. But this is by no means the measure of its full idea. It is but one side of the living fact, and in its isolated character does violence to the rights of individual man. Together with this then, must be a clear perception of the righteousness of the demands of law, and a full and unconstrained consent-a yielding from free choice. The slave may obey his master through fear of punishment, yet is he not free. A citizen may order his steps in obedience to the law of the State-may abstain from theft, from rapine and murder, only through fear of the penalty, but this does not

make him a freeman. the term, for he finds no room for the exercise of his free choice. He only is free who obeys from a just sense of the righteousness of the demand, and because this demand meets the full approval of his own pleasure.

He is a slave in the broadest sense of

The individual will has its rights, and these must not be ignored if man would be free. As soon as he is prepared by proper discipline for self-government, it is his privilege to enter upon its enjoyment, and to restrain him in this direction is to make him a slave. Such restraint was exercised, which opened the way for the reaction already alluded to. This movement was at first confined to the religious world, but being in its nature truly historical, it gradually extended itself over into the department of civil life, and here too the rights of the individual are asserting their claim to respect.. But unfortunately in both departments of life we have an exemplification of the fact that extremes elicit each other. Instead of seeking to enjoy individual rights in consonance with the claims of objective authority, the growing tendency is to cancel the claims of this last altogether and elevate self-will once more to the position of a rule of action. Remembering as man does, the goadings of oppression to which he was helplessly subjected, he seems to imagine that all objective rule is alike tyrannical, and the tendency, we say, is to cast its claims aside. Like the wayward youth escaping from the restraints of his minority, instead of approving his disciplinary training, even though this may have been severe and even extreme, and recognizing its wholesome precepts as the just rule of subsequent conduct, he rushes over to the opposite extreme, and seeks to escape from all obligation, save only his own willful pleasure. No former oppression, be it never so tyrannical, can justify the rejection of law and authority to the extent that the constitution of our own nature demands.

From the commencement of this counter movement in history, to the present time, the tendency is in the direction of this extreme, which we may call libertinism. Its spirit has acquired new strength as it has progressed, until in the present age it

has assumed the palpable form of bald individualism, or in other words, radicalism, whose aim and effort are to bring all institutions subject to individual caprice, and to measure all right and rule by the standard of private opinion. This is attended with its natural concomitant, a spirit of negativism, which, with its fanaticism, ever stands ready to wage war upon every thing besides which yields not to its ridiculous demands. It is in its own nature rash, unthinking and precipitate, and seeks to carry its ends in the midst of confusion and excitement. It substitutes private notions for past experience, and recklessly seeks to repudiate all obligation to past history, as though it were not in fact the very capital which gives it any weight or right indeed to exist. Just as reasonably might the mathematician affect to turn with contempt upon the elementary branches of his science, and seek to repudiate his knowledge of the multiplication table, as something that is weak and puerile, and whose assistance he no longer needs.

It will be impossible at this time, to attempt anything more than a very cursory notice of the indications which are discoverable in the world around us, of this lamentable tendency. The recent revolutionary movements on the continent of Europe, are here fully in point. It must not be supposed that because the reactionary movement set in several centuries since, that all nations are equally prepared for self-government; all are not equally advanced in the march of civilization and enlightenment. And until each one reaches the age of majority, it were wise to content itself in the state of pupilage. I am well aware that at the time these revolutions broke out, they were by many regarded as altogether hopeful-as the harbingers of universal emancipation, and the speedy elevation of man to the eminence of freedom, to which God is gradually conducting him in the process of the world's history. But a careful examination into their true spirit will readily expose their premature and radical character. They were not the outbirth of the true spirit of liberty, else would their overthrow have been vastly more difficult. The very fact that the movement for the most part was only partial-that it commanded

in the several countries in which it showed itself, no more power and energy than were exhibited, proves conclusively that their disciplinary training was not yet complete. And this may be fearlessly affirmed. For if it be true that God is in history, and that it is but the revelation of his will as regards man-if it be true that the design of this history is to reclaim man from the miseries of spiritual bondage and elevate him at last to the capability, as well as to the enjoyment, of selfgovernment, how is it possibly conceivable, that the ultimate affirmation of this design can fail, after all preparatory progress has been completed. Dare we impiously say that God has begun to build, and is not able to finish-that his arm may lead man to the very portals of the temple of liberty, but there grows impotent, and has no power to conduct him in? No verily. Had these nations accomplished their disciplinary training, and been prepared for self-government; so sure as there is truth in history as the work of God's providence, and strength in his right hand, would they have been lead, triumphant over all their enemies to the enjoyment of this Heaven intended portion for man. God was not in this revolutionary movement, hence its failure. Its advocates felt the weight of rigorous discipline, and were captivated by the harmony and beauty of our free institutions, and sought to make our privileges their own, but they were like the youth in his teens aspiring to the prerogatives of manhood.

How very different was the reformatory movement of the sixteenth century? When the chord of true liberty, in matters of religion, was then struck, it vibrated in the hearts of the great mass of the religious world, and finding themselves waked up to a sense of the lawful rights, for the enjoyment of which they felt themselves prepared, no opposition sufficiently potent could be commanded to repress their uprisings. It was a world historical movement. God was in it, and it overwhelmed all opposition. So also in the American Revolution. There was no self-will, no rebellion against the rights of law and just authority. At first indeed, there was no disposition on the part of the colonies, to sever their allegiance to the mother