effort is required for this. We are not to seek to be like Christ now and then, or in this or that particular time; we are to copy after him, not only on great and set occasions, but in ordinary every day life, in the family, the church, and the world. Martyrdom for Christ may be the work of a day; but conformity to Christ is the business of a life. CHRIST is to be the christian's model. We are to be like him. He only presents to us a perfect model. Whatever we find in him we know to be right. This cannot be affirmed of any one beside. It is only agreement with him that gives force or value to the example of any other. There is, indeed, a lurking feeling in many minds that the very perfectness of Christ renders him unsuitable as the model for man. Paul, or Peter, or James, we may imitate, because they were not perfect; but Jesus we cannot take as our pattern, because he was 'without sin.'" There is an essential fallacy in this; as though the more defective the learner, the less efficient should be his instructor. Who ever thought that the perfect works of the greatest masters were unfit to be studied by inferior artists because of their perfection? The less skilful the learner the greater the necessity that regard should be had to all those lines of beauty formed by such a master hand. Christians should study all the lineaments of the perfect Jesus, and seek to embody them in themselves. Motives befitting the case enforce his example upon us. We cannot point you to an apostle and say, "Paul was crucified for you." But Jesus himself says, "Behold my hands, and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side; and receiving then these proofs of love to thee, let thy love towards me be seen in conformity to my example." In this we have the fullest warrant to expect divine help. "We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." Here is an energy equal to all the requirements of the case; a power of assimilation that can transform the souls of men into the bright and beauteous image of our divine Lord. And when this conformity is complete our blessedness will be perfect too. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like HIM; for we shall see him as he is." Frome. A WORD TO THE SORROWFUL. BY MRS. H. B. STOWE. "It is good for me that I have been afflicted." Why am I thus tried? The question is constantly being asked by one and another. Affliction in the present tense is scarcely ever recognised as a good. As in the wrench of an operation, the nerves of a patient are distracted, and the whole of the vital force is used up in mere endurance, so in affliction. Often the soul revolts and rebels under it; its immediate effect seems to be to increase our spiritual maladies. Persons often say, under severe trials, "I used to think I had some self-control, some patience, some good temper. I thought I had to a good degree overcome selfishness and pride, but these harassments and trials seem to upset all." And accordingly a person, when passing through periods of severe trial, often seems to be growing worse, to be becoming hard, and irritable, and unlovely. A writer has said, "It is not while the storm is driving the ship on the beach that we go out to look for treasures, but when the storm is laid and the sun shines out clear we find the jewels and precious stones which the sea has cast upon the beach." Often in the height of an affliction all comfort is vain, as medicaments in the fury of some diseases. The soul must spend itself, the storm must pass. It may be months, it may be years, before the soul can come to herself enough to look back and say, "It is good for me that I have been afflicted." Nor is the good of affliction often perceivable as the result of one paroxysm, but rather as the aggregate of several. The mechanic who would bring out the clouds and veins of a precious wood, seems to harass and torture it in many ways; and if the wood were a sentient creature, it might well complain as the saw, and plane, and the rude pummice-stone pass successively over it, and each varnish is scraped and rubbed, not till the last touch has been given does one see the full result. So of afflictions. Some are like strokes of the axe and hammer, splitting and rending the heart of the soul; others are wearing, and long-continued, like the slow work of the file and the polishing-brush; and very seldom, under the process, does the soul recognise their use; but after long years, a softened melody of spirit is produced as the result of all. One thing is remarkable of afflictions, and that is that almost every soul feels itself stricken in the precise point where it is least able to bear. "Oh, were it anything but this," "I could bear anything else," are the most frequent exclamations of the hour of sorrow. We would bear very composedly a suppositious affliction,-an affliction so-called, against which our peculiar temperament so fortifies us that to us it is no affliction. But when Omniscience puts forth its hands and touches that vital point, known to God alone, where each is most sensitive, that is real affliction, and the soul shivers under it. We would change our affliction for this or that,-God sees that THIS AND THIS ONLY can serve his purpose. Could a diamond speak, when the lapidary is leisurely filing away its glittering particles, and vexing it with weary frictions and polishing, it might say: "I could bear a good hammer stroke; but, oh, this is wearing my very soul away." Nevertheless the artisan knows that it is not the hammer but the weary polish that the diamond must have to make it glitter royally at last in a diadem. Such are some of the most common, least valued of our afflictions,-a slow, wearing, heart-eating process,an affliction oftentimes known and recognised as such only by God who orders it, and who knows the precise moment when it is possible to let it cease. Then let the soul deeply engrave in its belief this answer to its oftrecurring question, Why am I thus tried? Because this affliction and no other can save thee. The great Father is an economist in all his lavish profusion of riches, but of nothing is he more saving than of the sorrows of his beloved,-not one tear too much,-not one sigh, not one uneasiness or anxiety too many, is the lot of the meanest of his chosen ! "LOVEST THOU ME?" "Lovest thou me?" I hear my Saviour say; . Glimpses of Truth in Popular Errors. BY THE REV. H. DUNCKLEY, M.A. No. 1.-CHURCH AND STATE. It would well repay a thoughtful man to Investigate the various errors which have led the world away from the truth. And if his own spiritual benefit were the end he had chiefly in view, it would be advisable for him to ask, not how far they contradict the truth, but how far they approximate to and reflect it. Controversy is an excellent thing when we want to batter down the walls of an opponent, but it is less excellent when we wish to correct and fortify our own minds. It is well, perhaps, to handle an error roughly, when our aim is to pull it down from some consecrated throne; but if we wish, as far as may be possible, to extract good from everything, we shall have need of a delicate manipulation, and shall see reason, probably, between it and ourselves, to treat even error with charity and tenderness. For error is not always the exact converse of truth; it is often rather its false and exaggerated shadow; not the very copy of the thing, but a disfigured resemblance which the enemy of all truth would have us accept for the reality. Like a clever utterer of base coin, Satan makes his own image and superscription as much as possible like the genuine impress of heaven. The phrase, "Church and State," is an old formula, now almost, if not quite, obsolete. As commonly understood, it refers to a posture of things which has long since been overthrown. It is racy of priestly predominance and civic degradation. To find the fact which accurately corresponds to the expression, we must wander back to the dark and struggling era which preceded by two or three centuries the birth of Luther. Then, when the mitre stood higher than the crown, and Rome domineered over abject Christendom; when an obscure and ambitious monk belonged to a hierarchy which reached from one end of Europe to the other, and, by appealing to the sovereignty which sat clad in imperial purple on the Seven Hills, could bid defiance to his own liege monarch,-then " Church and State" described, in the actual order of precedence, the existing ecclesiastical and civil relations. Then the Pope and Christendom occupied the first rank; kings and nationalities the second. But that phase of things vanished five hundred years ago. Long before the Reformation the State began to assume superiority over the Church. The vigour. ous life of nations shot up and broke through the frail glass-house enclosure of spiritual power, rearing their tall heads above it. The Reformation itself, by vindicating only one half of a great truth, transferred to the crown the power which had heretofore rested in the tiara, and completed the outward subjection of the church. The English constitution has systematised the ecclesiastical principles of the English reformation, and laid the church, bound hand and foot, in golden fetters, but still bound, beneath the lowest step of the throne. The Church of England has no existence apart from its royal head; it is unable to avow a single truth, to correct a single error, to form the simplest plan for carrying out the design of every christian organisation, to adapt itself in any respect whatever to the changing aspects of the age, and even to elect its own pastors, without the permission of the Sovereign. It is no longer "Church and State," but "State and Church." The formula which was once a badge of pride is now a stamp of degradation. Its use is still permitted, but only as a toy to amuse; an ointment to salve over deadly wounds; a fiction and bitter mockery. But in this antiquated fragment we see the corner-stone of a once stately edifice. If the christian church is to be expanded into an ecclesiastical system, then a relationship of some kind between it and the State is inevitable. Such a system would, if self-consistent, be coextensive with Christianity, and could not avoid centering in some chief bishop or ecclesiastical synod. Such an organisation could not remain isolated from the State. Touching practical life at a thousand points, it would at every point come, more or less, within the province of the temporal power; and as two such powers could not long exist in perfect equality, one would have to be placed in subordination to the other. If the case was brought so far, and the question was simply one of subordination, it would not take a moment to decide whether the State should rule the Church, or the Church the State. The Church cannot be subject to the State without forfeiting its dignity, and committing treason against its spiritual King. In some form or other it must ever be the highest power on earth. Nothing which rightfully falls within its jurisdiction can be made amenable to human law. Its tribunals must be above the tribunals of man. What it commands its children must execute, though fires and scaffolds are in the way; and what it forbids must be eschewed, though clothed with the utmost fascinations of worldly pomp. How then can we render possible the coexistence of ecclesiastical and secular authority? How can the Church retain the first place without crippling the proper activities of the State? By developing the church, according to the principles of the New Testament, on the basis of individual conviction, attachment, and responsibility; by arresting church organisation at that point where it ceases to promote the edification of its members; by rising to a higher sense of church unity than that which is furnished by the rude carnal mechanism of a visible system; in a word, we say it without egotism, by actirg out our views as religious voluntaries. We alone can keep the church, where Christ placed it, above the beck and ban of human governments, without limiting their just sphere. The formula of "Church and State," a misnomer within the pale of the Establishment (i.e., a thing established by, and therefore under the patronage of, the State)-finds the reality which answers to it among the ranks of Dissent. But now that the sovereignty of the Church is destroyed, there still remains, in the union between the Church and the State, as it exists in this country, something which many sincere christians, and many who are christians in no sense, whether sincere or insincere, regard as of the highest value. Dismissing those of the latter class without a word, as looking upon the Church, in the spirit of a Gibbon or a Hume, in no higher light than the convenient tool of sovereign power, we find in the sentiments of the former that which merits more sympathetic consideration. They shudder to think of an entire sever ance of the Church from the State, not because religion cannot flourish as well without worldly patronage as with it, but from a conviction that the State needs the purifying influence of a connexion with the Church. The State which does not publicly recognise, legislate for, and uphold religion, appears to them something worse than a piece of gross heathenism,-it is atheistic,-it amounts to a national confession that there is no God. So far from religion being put thus quietly aside, and left to work its way in the families and sanctuaries of the land, without ever being mentioned in the legislature, it is asserted that it ought to be placed in the highest seat of power, that its spirit should control every act of government, that it should be the mistress of the laws, the foundation of the throne, and the palladium of the State. It is not necessary to instruct Nonconformists in the inconsistency and mischievousness of such reasoning; but it may be useful to observe that it rests upon a basis of truth. The end it aims at is, in the main, a right one. There ought to be a union between the Church and the State, but it ought to be one which harmonises with their respective principles and tendencies. It ought not to be a union which degrades the Church while professing to honour it, and which, under the pretence of bringing the State under the influence of religion, really endorses its impiety. The only proper union between the Church and the State would be effected if all who compose the State were likewise members of the Church. The two would then centre in the same person; they would be rooted in the same convictions, sentiments, and will; they would necessarily be harmonious in their development; they would, in fact, be only different activities of the same agency, different functions of the same individual. Such a thorough religiousness of the State would not carry us a single step towards a legislative union between it and the Church; on the contrary, it would render such a relation unnecessary, if not impossible. We should have carried the idea of that union beyond the bondage of the letter, and realised it in the freedom of the spirit; ceasing to be an outward pretence, at best an act of forced homage on the part of the. State, and too often merely a price paid for license to work unrebuked all "uncleanness with greediness," it would be a spiritual power, a living influence, a moral reality. Such a union between the Church and the State is but part of a reconciliation which has to be carried throughout the whole extent of practical life. The material and the spiritual, things seen and things unseen, this world and the next, have to be harmonised and made one in the experience of the christian. The work which we have to do consists in bringing both these departments of present activity beneath the same principles and the same motives, so that the "life we now live in the flesh," a life comprising manifold duties which have neither to be evaded nor indolently performed, "may be a life of faith in the Son of God." The world unites these things in its own fashion; serves Mammon during the week, and God on Sundays; or makes compensation for occasional delinquencies by fasting and long prayers. The christian, though he is both fervent in spirit and diligent in business, does not always see how the world and religion coalesce in true piety. He fancies there is some latent contradiction between the two; that the world is a necessary evil, and business itself a sort of modified sin. We are surely not wrong in ascribing this to a piety which is deficient either in intelligence or vital power. The truth which is in us should sanctify everything we do, and that which conscience tells us cannot be thus sanctified, should be eschewed. Within our hearts let the "Church" and the" State" be neither separated, nor yet united by a mere outward, carnal bond; but let them be one by blending together in the depths of our moral being, and then we shall have within us a model of what will some day be realised in the world when "all shall know the Lord." Tales and Sketches. THE NIGHT AFTER CHRISTMAS. "Draw the shades, Rose." A fair young girl stepped lightly within the damask curtains, and with soft hands drew the shades. "Shall I ring for lights, mother?" "Not yet," replied the mother; "firelight will be pleasant awhile." The coal, as if hearing its praises, began immediately to play pranks. It shot up pyramids of flame, whirled them round in curling eddies, darted them forth at the jolly fire-set, and even went so far as to shoot its glances through the halfopened closet-door and crack its jokes at the shining silver. Rose tried to finish the point of a carnation-leaf by the ruddy light, but soon gave it up, and sank into the velvet couch to build air-castles. Mrs. Malso dropped her knitting of rich worsteds, and gave herself up to the comfort of her luxurious chair. A violent gust of wind shook the blinds, and made the windows rattle. "We shall have a cold night of it," said Mrs. M "Yes," said Rose. What difference could cold make with her? "Is it not almost teatime, mother?" "Your father has not come yet. Well, Peter, what is wanted ?" "There is a woman down stairs, ma'am, who wishes to see you." 66 No, ma'am, she did not say." "You may ask her up; but stop, I dare say it is a beggar. I will go down." She stepped quickly over her velvet carpet, and bidding Peter light up, she went to the kitchen. Near the door a woman was standing. She was poorly dressed in a faded calico and a thin shawl; for so cold a night it was very thin. "Have you any business with me?" asked Mrs. M-, in a very business-like manner. The woman hesitated, attempted to clear her voice, then replied, "I was told you were rich here, and was advised to come and see if you could help me a little; I am in trouble." "Well, I have had nothing but beggars here for the past week, it seems to me," said Mrs. M-, not at all pleased; "I have given away all I have to give. Why don't you work? You look pretty hearty, it's much better than begging. How many children have you?" "One, and she is sick." "Well, you are well enough, I dare say. I cannot give any more; I believe it only encourages idleness." As the woman turned to go, the light fell on her sorrowful and careworn face; but she either could not, or would not, speak. |