capable of governing themselves. And long before learning was advanced to its highest perfection at Rome, the stern virtues of the earlier Roman character, and with them the republic itself, had disappeared. The most elegant literature, and the most atrocious wickedness, flourished at Rome together.

Such was the experience of the ancient world; and that of the mod ern European world has been the same. Else, why has France been proverbially denominated, "the land of science and of sin ?" And why has plodding, delving, literary Germany produced such hordes of infidels? The truth is, mere intellectual culture, however important on other accounts, has no necessary tendency to improve the heart. So far from this, it rather enables its possessor to sin with a more ruinous influence, and a bolder hand. all this has been illustrated by a thousand experiments, under different forms, and at different periods of the world.

And

A fifth experiment which God has permitted to be tried, in the search after happiness, is that of civil government,-different forms of government, governments great, and rich, and powerful. Civil government is an institution of God, intended for our well being in the present life. It was never designed to be an ultimate source of happiness, either to rulers or ruled; and yet men, in their folly, have been led thus to regard it. And so God has permitted them to try the experiment. It has been tried under a variety of forms; under every form, indeed, which human ingenuity can invent. There has been the patriarchal form of government, and the monarchical. There have been aristocracies and democracies, oligarchies and republics. There have been governments absolute and limited, pure and mixed. Nations great and powerful have risen up, one after another, and spread themselves

over the face of the earth,-the Babylonian, the Persian, the Grecian, the Roman; they have been splendid in affluence, and terrible in power, devouring, breaking in pieces, and stamping the residue with their feet. But have they promoted general happiness, or have they obstructed it? Have they given it, or taken it away? The experiment has been often tried; and the pen of history has recorded the result. In a great majority of cases, the governments of this world have been despotic, arbitrary, tyrannical, oppressive; plun dering what they ought to have protected, and rendering life itself more a burden than a blessing. They have involved their subjects in cruel and almost perpetual wars, bathing the earth with blood, and filling it with the slain.

It is mournful to look back on the experiment we are now considering, and see how an institution of God, which was intended for a blessing, has been perverted into a curse. Nor has the perversion been confined to any particular forms of gov ernment. Free governments and despotic have been alike ambitious, grasping, and oppressive; thus prov. ing, conclusively, that it is vain to look to governments alone to make man happy.

Another experiment which God has permitted to be tried, is that of leaving men, without learning or arts, without any settled forms of reli gion and government, to live as it is called in the state of nature. Infi dels and enthusiasts have long been crying down what they term the artificial modes of life, and crying up the state of nature. Only let civil government be abolished, and the right of property be taken away; let learning and the arts be forgot ten, and man be permitted to roam the common earth in his native liberty, subsisting by the chase, and on the spontaneous productions of the fields and woods; and then he will

be happy. Men in our own time, who reason in this way, do not consider how long, and how often, this same experiment has been tried. It was this state of nature, probably, which filled the antediluvian world with violence, and provoked the Almighty to come out in wrath against it, and destroy it. It was the attempt to live after the same manner, which led to the earliest op. pressions after the deluge. Nimrod was "a mighty hunter," subsisting by the chase, and living after the course of nature; and he seems to have been, for the time, the great oppressor and corrupter of the world. And from that age to the present, wherever we find man in what is called the state of nature, we invariably find him a cruel, ignorant savage. We find him but little better than a brute. Murderous wars, unbridled licentiousness, the immolation of human victims, slavery, cannibalism, exposures of all kinds, and in frequent instances death by starvation or suicide, these are some of the continual, woful attend. ants of what is cried up to us as the state of nature. Let our modern advocates for such a state go and spend a few years with the savages in the interior of Africa, or in the fastnesses of New Zealand or New Holland, or in the deep recesses of our western woods, and the experiment, should they survive it, may perhaps cure them of their mania, and convince them that it is vain to look to the state of nature as a source of happiness.

Still another experiment which God was pleased to try in ancient times, and which seemed to promise most of all, was that of withdrawing his own people from the rest of the world, and organizing them as a community by themselves. Possibly this experiment began to be tried before the flood; for we read, in that age, of "the sons of God," as distinct from "the daughters of men." After the deluge, the ex

periment was entered upon more effectually. When idolatry had begun to prevail extensively, and the knowledge of the true religion was likely to be lost, God called Abraham out of the land of his fathers, and brought him into Canaan, and instituted a church in his family, of which he was to be the visible head. He took this church into solemn covenant with himself; gave it new revelations, rites, and ordinances; and separated its members from the world around, that they might be a holy people unto the Lord. These transactions on the part of God were of solemn interest, and of the utmost importance to the world. Considered as a means of revealing the Savior to come, of keeping up a knowledge of him in the earth, and of drawing and binding sinful men to him, the only foundation of the sinner's hope, too much importance can not be attached to the church in the family of Abraham. But the members of this church came ere long to regard it, not as a means, but an end; not as a help to bring them upon the right foundation, and keep them there, but as itself the foundation. They came to trust to it, and to the privileges connected with it, as a ground of hope. "The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these." And now it became necessary for God to show them, by actual experiment, that they were trusting to a broken reed. Their church gradually became corrupt. It became so corrupt, that after repeated and long continued reproofs and corrections, after reforms and relapses, revivings and backslidings; the patience of God was exhausted with it, and the great body of its members went into utter and irretrievable apostasy. They were cut off and cast off for their unbelief; their holy city and temple were demolished; and all those things in which they vainly trusted and gloried were taken forever away.

All other experiments having been tried, and failed, the way was prepared, in the providence of God, for the grand source of light and hope to the world to be more fully exhibited. The true and only foundation, which had so long been typified and promised, was now to be laid. The great Son of God made his appearance in our flesh; he dwelt here on the earth a course of years; and having done and suffer ed all that had been written of him, he laid down his life a ransom for sinners. By his sufferings and blood he made a full and sufficient atonement for men; he laid a firm foundation of hope; and now all are invited to come and build upon it, and partake the provisions of his grace. Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters." "The spirit and the bride say, come; and let him that heareth say, come; and let him that is athirst, come; and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely."

When the invitations were first sounded forth, and set home by the power of the Holy Spirit, great multitudes at once embraced them. They came and builded on the sure foundation, and found life and peace. The word of the Lord had free course and was glorified. The church of Christ was rapidly increased, and the gospel of salvation was soon published throughout the greater part of the then civilized world.

When the corner stone of Zion had thus been laid, and men in such numbers had builded upon it, and found peace to their souls, it might have seemed that it could never be forsaken. The experience of past ages had shown the vanity of every other foundation; present experience was teaching the blessedness of this; and why should men any more stray away from the fountain of living waters, and hew out to themselves cisterns that could hold no water? Why should not all

come together to the feet of Christ, and learn experimentally the blessedness of those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are cov ered?

Such may have been the reasonings of the recent converts, in that primitive, prosperous age of the church. Such may have been the expectations at that period indulged. It might have seemed as though the wanderings of restless man were over, and as though,-the great source of light and hope being found,-it would be forsaken no more forever.

But man's inveterate opposition to Christ and his gospel had not yet been fully exhibited. He had not yet ceased to pursue happiness where it never could be found, and in the search for it, to try experi ments, and seek out inventions. The vain experiments which have been permitted and tried since the coming of Christ, and (what is stranger than all) within the pale of his own church, remain to be considered.

The first of these was that of multiplied rites and forms. The Christian rites, as instituted by our Savior and practiced by his apostles, are few, simple, and highly appro priate. They significantly set forth some of the more important truths or facts of the gospel, and seal and bind upon those who receive them, the obligations of the covenant of grace. But the apostles had not been long dead, when a disposition began to show itself to increase the ritual of our religion, and render it more acceptable to Jews and Pagans, by the addition of new ceremonies. And this course of things went steadily on, until both the nature and form of Christianity were entirely changed. Baptism soon came to be regarded as regeneration. It was that which cleansed the soul from sin. A rite of such momentous import must, of course, be preceded by a long process of prepar atory observances. It must be ad

ministered only on the great festival occasions, and under circumstances of profound secrecy and mystery. It must be followed, too, by a train of superstitious rites, such as the sign of the cross; the anointing with holy oil; the white robe, as a symbol of imparted purity; the crown of garlands, in token of victory; and the administration of milk and honey, to show that the subject of it had become spiritually a babe.

At the same time, or a little later, the Lord's Supper began to lose its commemorative character, and to be represented as a literal sacrifice of Christ. The elements, after consecration, were believed to be changed into his body and blood; of course, the administration of this ordinance became a scene of awful interest. The transmuted elements were reverently worshiped; they were trust ed to as Christ; and the deluded votary, when he had received them, verily believed that he had received the Lord Jesus. And not only were the primitive sacraments of the New Testament obscured and perverted by superstitious rites, but new sacraments were invented, and new rites added, borrowed mostly from the Jewish and heathen temples, till, as we have said, both the nature and form of Christianity were changed, and the whole converted into another kind of religion, and another foundation of hope. The experiment of rites and forms was now complete, and the results of it were soon visible. It was found that the spirituality, the vitality of what was called the Christian religion was gone. It was no longer a pure fountain of living waters; an unfailing source of happiness to man. Its professors could no longer say with Paul: "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ." The influence of the perverted system was rather to corrupt, than to purify; rather to perplex and distress the anxious soul,

than to fill it with light, and love, and joy.

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The next experiment of the church, in its departure from Christ, was that of strengthening its form of govern ment. The original form of church government was confessedly of a free, republican character. In the language of Waddington, an Epis copalian, "Every church," in the apostolic age, was essentially independent of every other. The churches, thus constituted, formed a sort of federative body of inde pendent religious communities, dispersed through the greater part of the Roman empire, in continual communication and in constant harmony with each other." Such was the form of church government, which the apostles, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, bequeathed to the churches. And this form of government was continued to them, during the period of their ear. liest and greatest prosperity. But as the life of religion began to decline, and a spirit of ambition and worldliness came to be exhibited, more especially in the higher ranks of the clergy, a desire was felt that the government of the church should be modified and strengthened, so as to place more power in the hands of its officers. And now there began to be a marked distinction between the bishop and the presbyter. And above the bishops, there soon came to be archbishops, metropolitans, exarchs, and patriarchs. And above them all towered, at length, the Pope of Rome. A great variety of inferior officers were also created, of which we hear nothing in the Scriptures, and for which there was no necessity, except in the pride of their superiors. Meanwhile, the individual churches were merged in great confederated communities, and their rights, liberties, and independence were swallowed up. This course of things went on, till more than half the churches in Christendom were united in one stupendous

hierarchy, over which presided, or rather reigned, the proud Bishop of Rome.

And what was the result of this grand experiment? Were the clergy more learned, holy, spiritual, faithful, as they rose in power? And were the churches better instructed, and better governed? better governed? Were they quickened and edified, and "walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the confort of the Holy Ghost," were their numbers multiplied? No, but the very opposite of all this was the result. The clergy became worldly, aspiring, domineering, contentious. Their principal study was, not who should be the most eminent in wisdom, in grace, and in spiritual gifts, but who should be the greatest. The people were instructed, not in the holy truths and precepts of the gospel, but in the rites and forms,—the added ceremonies and superstitions of the church. Knowledge, of course, decayed; piety languished; while ignorance, error, and every form of corruption and wickedness prevail ed. Such was the recorded result of the experiment now under consideration, showing that inventions and additions in the government of the church are no substitute for the light and influence of the gospel.

A third experiment tried in the church, in search of some other foundation of virtue and happiness aside from the gospel, was that of monachism. A considerable portion of the church, as early as the third and fourth centuries, worn out with persecutions, and tired of the corruptions prevailing in the world, determined to abandon it forever. They heard a voice crying to them: "Come out from the world, and be ye separate ;" and this they understood in the literal sense. They retired, therefore, into deserts and solitary places, subsisting upon the barest necessaries of life, and gave themselves up to indolence, seclusion, and contemplation. These

hordes of monastics were, after a time, formed into communities, and rules were given for their observ ance; rules which, it was believed, would prevent all disorders, and render the subjects of them holy and happy. This experiment was tried under different forms, and by vast multitudes of human beings, for a long course of years. Indeed, in some of its forms, it has continued to the present time. And what has been the almost invariable result of it? Has monkery secured to those who have practiced it, virtue and happiness? Has it been to them a source of peace? So far from this, in almost every case, it has proved a source of intolerable corruption. We would not say that there have been no pious monks. We would not say that the seclusion of monas. tic life has not been favorable, in some instances, to the promotion of piety. But this the voice of history constrains us to say, that the monastic establishments generally, have been the very hot-beds of vice, where corruption and wickedness, in their basest forms, have luxuriated. In some periods of the church, the monks have been among the vilest and most troublesome of men, the abhorrence of both kings and priests, and nuisances to the common people.

Averse to the method of salvation by Christ, men have tried the ex periment, at different times, of adulteration and perversion; of adding something to the pure gospel, or of taking something away. Some new principle must be introduced, the better to solve a mystery, or explain a fact. Or some new observance or penance must be added, to render the foundation of hope the more se cure. Or the morality of the gos pel has been thought too severe, or too lax, and the standard must be made higher or lower, must be rais ed or depressed, to suit the preju dices and the fancies of men. Philosophy, too, has often thrust herself