of a grateful heart, or to breathe the sighs of a contrite spirit, before the altar of our Father and our God.

Again, let us pass onward, and see whether the same page of history which gives us so much comfort, does not give us also very solemn warnings on very solemn subjects. I have said that we seem to think that we possess a free and pure worship by a sort of right, or as a privilege which cannot be taken from us. Yet how do we know how long this may last, if we show ourselves unworthy of the blessing? I know that there can be nothing more idle, if not more impious, than for us to affect that we can read the mystery of all God's dealings with the world, or to draw hasty and unauthorized inferences from facts. Yet it may be as guilty to shut our eyes to the light, as to strain after things beyond our vision. This, at least, is certain, that it can neither be safe nor right to shut our eyes to facts, to the very facts which may be sent as warnings. The time was, that all the northern coasts of Africa, and a large portion of Asia, rejoiced in the light of Christianity. But where is their joy, where their crown now? The name of Christ may not be named in a large portion of these regions, or it may be

named only by trembling slaves at the beck of cruel masters. It is not for man to say that this was a judicial infliction of the Almighty; but is it for man to say that it was not? Is the light of the Gospel a blessing beyond all price? Is sin hateful in the eyes of God? of God? Is the blotting out the light of the Gospel the most fearful curse which he who knows our wants, our fears, our weakness, our sin, and their only remedies, can picture? There the light was,-there the sin was, and thence the light is gone. I forget not the awful warning against those who interpret the calamities sent on others in an envious and unkind spirit. But he who gave the warning, said not that the sufferers of whom he spake were not sinners, that they did not deserve their doom, and did not receive it by God's sentence. He warned us against supposing that judgments sent on others may not be sent on ourselves against judging so clearly of other men's sin, and so blindly overlooking our ownagainst supposing that sooner or later unrepentant guilt will not suffer-against hoping that, except we repent, we shall not likewise perish. I will not, may not, dare not speak of our own moral and spiritual condition, or apply this to ourselves. This only may be said, that the Book

of Life contains no promise of the preservation of any particular branch of the True Vine, which will flourish in eternal youth, though branch after branch may be cut off because it is rotten, no promise that the light shall shine for ever in any particular country, that the goodness of the cause or the evil nature of those who helped to put it down, are no securities against the judgments which have been often sent on the corrupters or despisers of the truth, and often wrought by the very worst men as instruments. Does not the page of Church history, then, which contains the record of the fate and fall of the African and Asiatic Churches give us a warning which, whatever be our reliance on our own spiritual excellences, we shall do well not to neglect, remembering too that, fenced in as we imagine we are by civilization, and that mighty engine, the press, they will not avail us for an instant against the decrees of God, or prevent barbarism and ignorance from again covering the land.

But, in another respect, Church history will read this age a lesson which every age wants; will lead it, I mean, to a due appreciation of its own position in the scale of moral and intellectual improvement. It is a foolish and mis

chievous practice to run down the merits of the age in which we live, which, doubtless, has its own peculiar merits. But it is as mischievous to keep our eyes on those merits alone, and not to humble ourselves, as we ought, by looking at the merits of other ages and other men. We are accustomed, for example, to talk with infinite complacency of the dark ages, and to rejoice in our own superior light. But a familiar acquaintance with Church history might, perhaps, make us pause, and allow, that although we have our proper gifts, the dark ages had theirs. The task of erecting a brilliant superstructure is a great one undoubtedly, but it may be doubted whether the laying a solid foundation, one on which a hundred superstructures may successively be raised and brushed away, is not the work of a yet higher class of mind. The dark ages created the created the great institutions of this country in politics, religion, and literature. By a few broad and grand principles in Politics, springing from a deep acquaintance with the human heart, they laid the foundations of happiness for centuries of years and millions of men. In Literature they have given us, the elder Universities of this land, those noble institutions from which piety and learning and sound

knowledge have been dispensed through the land, and by which that peculiar and characteristic feature of this country, the English gentleman of middling station, has been for so long a period formed. Calumniated as they are by base slanderers now, I feel that it is the highest boast and the best confidence of this institution, that it rests on the same grounds as they do, that it springs, as many of them did, from Churchmen, and that it is formed after their pattern. Calumniated as they now are, I can breathe no warmer wish for its prosperity and its usefulness, than that centuries hence men may speak of it, as they speak of them, that the base may hate it, as they hate them,-and that good men may thank God for the existence of a real seminary of sound learning and religious education.

In Religion, let us turn our eyes to the glorious fabric which rises in its proud magnificence above us, and forms with its kindred temples, a constant monument of the powers, the genius, and the piety of the dark ages. They who reared them did not sit down to count the exact cost of glorifying God; they did not number exactly how many the holy roof would cover; they knew that

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