Of nicely calculated less or more."

And in the spirit of that higher philosophy which was in their hearts, if not on their lips, they gave all they could to God's glory, knowing that what is so given is not given in vain. Vain it has not been. No! the human heart is not always dead, nor always cold to the higher and holier emotions. Day by day as the unceasing anthem has fallen on the charmed ear, and nave and choir have unfolded their awful perspective to the astonished eye, the heart has swelled with answering emotion; and if an earthly as well as an heavenly book could have registered all the penitent sighs, the remorse, the love, the kindling rapture of devotion, which these holy temples have called forth and witnessed, the lowest of all the low, the Utilitarian himself, might be led to doubt, if he believed that there is another world beyond the sky, whether even the riches lavished on the abbey and the cathedral were not spent wisely and well.

But enough of this. The page of Church history tells us this of the dark ages, and so leads us to see that if other ages had their proper gifts, they had theirs. I draw no com

parisons, but this I

say,

that those ages created,

others criticise-they moulded, others alter--they made the old garments, others sew the new patches upon them.

And this leads me to make one more reflection on this part of my subject, namely, that an acquaintance with the great merits and excellencies of every age, obtained in a spirit of sincere piety and real philosophy, places us in a far better condition of mind for the future as well as the past. We feel—not as insulated integers, but-as constituent portions only of that Church of Christ, that communion of his people, which began when his kingdom was first set up on earth, and will go on for evernot petty brooks flowing in feeble loneliness apart, but parts and portions of that mighty stream which is flowing down onwards towards eternity. Thus we feel, as we ought, that as they of the old time cared for us, so ought we to care for those who will come after us, that the blessings "We from our fathers had in trust,

We to our children will transmit, or die.
This is our maxim, this our piety,

And God and nature say that it is just."

So far I have endeavoured to point out the kind of moral and practical lessons which we

may derive from Church history. Let me now endeavour to suggest by what modes it may assist us in matters of opinion. There is, in good truth, no way so certain to lead us to truth, no way so certain to lead us to fixed, calm, and Christian views in divinity, as the study of it by the way of history. If we take up a "system of divinity," whether in the shape of a body of articles, or a regular treatise, comprising a discussion of all the great points of the Christian covenant, useful and necessary as such things are, each in its own way, yet it cannot be but that they present all these great points to us in a controversial view, and with a controversial air. This surely cannot be desirable. Our concern with the great doctrines of the Gospel covenant, is to govern our hearts, lives, thoughts, and words by them, to bring the whole man into subjection to those awful truths which God himself revealed to us in order to teach us how we are to live here, and how to live with him hereafter. Can it be well that our first acquaintance with them should be by considering them as matters of fierce and angry dispute, on which mighty spirits have been engaged on both sides, and urged for their respective views all that genius, and eloquence,

and thought could supply-that we should look at these holy truths as exercises for the intellect and the passions rather than guides of life? Yet this must be the result of our looking at them first in systems of theology, when we go beyond the volume of Scripture. On the contrary, if with the Bible in our hands, we follow down the stream of history, we are enabled to see the successive steps by which human perverseness misrepresented first one great doctrine and then another. We see how it became necessary for the Church in successive ages to reduce the Gospel doctrines to a system; and to present in that unattractive-nay! in the yet more repulsive guise of a controversial form, those pure and holy truths which were intended to exalt, and cheer, and guide man in his mortal pilgrimage, but which the bad ingenuity of an Arius or a Pelagius converted into sources of falsehood or error. We go on, for a time, with true comfort and joy, in the light of truth and peace, watching the effect of the great doctrines of the Gospel on the hearts and lives of mankind; and even when the tide of error sets in, our eye is firmly fixed on the truth, and we watch its conflicts and struggles, with deep sorrow indeed, but with no anxiety, because we

know that the God of truth will watch over it, and when the assaults and the wiles of its enemies have died away, will bring it forth, in its first strength and its first purity, to light and life again.

He then who should wish to study divinity with profit, would do well to commence his studies, at least, with Church history, in order that all may come upon him in its natural form that Scripture may stand at first in its own natural loveliness, and not confined within the limits of a system of man's invention ; and that, on the other hand, he may not mistake the Church by supposing that it was at her own desire, or for her own purposes, that creeds and confessions were, at first, drawn and required; but that this indispensable check and guide was provided gradually only, and as human perverseness and human obstinacy necessarily required the controul.

Let us now look to the singular use of Church history in giving us the aid of the wisdom and experience of other men and other days on great matters. In questions relating merely or principally to the concerns of this world, to philosophy and to politics, although some men may think that the light of their own