vigilance and preparation. The fortune of the state is involved in the character of its rulers; neither monarchy nor magistracy can stand without it: there is no repose upon the couch of preferment, no dignity in the staff of office, no terror in the sword of justice, no sanctity in the crosier, no majesty in the diadem, unless opinion, rightly constituted opinion, administer to them. its unseen and gratuitous support. Every day, and all day long, a mighty moral inquest upon all that is distinguished and great in rule and station, is sitting on the floor of the nation. By the rapid publicity given to every movement of exalted persons, and by those arts of discovery to which no privacy is inaccessible, all public men are brought before the forum of the multitude, and virtually put upon, their country. There is, therefore, no stability in the system of our polity, but what consists in the sterling worth of our men of station and fortune. We may almost count the years of our probable duration by the number of our Christian gentlemen; and, furthermore, it is the Christian portion of the Christian gentleman's character which gives it all its strength and potency; it is this which contracts the distance between the high and low, by bringing elevated station within the reach of all the sympathies which belong to our common nature; it shows us to ourselves, as in a faithful mirror, associated under a similar allotment of misery and mortality; and in the midst of our artificial distinctions makes us feel and recognise that affiliating cord which draws us together under a common dispensation of sin and sorrow, hope and forgiveness, grace and correction. The ascendancy of the Christian principle in the bosom of the British gentleman, is just now the single principle on which the solid frame of our polity reposes. Let our universities look to this, if they love their own existence, and "would fain see good days." Their own towers will tumble upon them, unless they so order their institutions as to supply the demand which the times make upon them for loyal gentlemen and Christian legislators. Above all, let them consider that they are the great seminaries of the church of a church surrounded by enemies, and on all sides vigorously assailed. Let the Christian gentleman come forth a son of this church; an inheritor and transmitter of its blessings and its graces-a son of the true church, that is, of the busy church, the ministering church of Christ; of her who in spirit recognises only her real and effective agents-her bold expostulators with the high-her faithful teachers of the low; her firm promulgators of evangelical truth, full of the awful immensity of the obligation which, as trustees of deathless souls, they have incurred both towards God and towards man: of that church which, rightly understood, is the depository of the faith once delivered to the saints, warranted by inspiration, illustrated by wisdom, and attested by blood; which stands, in stature, stability, and beauty, pre-eminent in Christendom, purest among the congregations of the devout on earth, most in the spiritual likeness of the temple not made with hands, and most fit to resound with the hallelujahs of the faithful. SECTION XVI. THE SCRIPTURAL MODEL OF A CHRISTIAN Ir is a mistake to suppose that the qualities of the Christian and the gentleman are in parallelism with each other, and that each draws its existence and perfection from a distinct source, -that the one taking its origin from the world and its school of manners, and the other derived from its proper author, work together as coefficients in fashioning the character of the Christian gentleman. The case is far otherwise. The whole composition is fundamentally Christian; the result of that formative grace which renovates the heart, and which, as a refiner's fire or as fuller's soap, purges the thoughts and temper from the dross and scum of their gross adhesions. If we turn our attention to the mere exterior manners, to the modes and habitudes of familiar life, and to those accidents of time and place which are as diversified as the relations of man to man, and which assume all the varieties of physical and moral predicament, it may be that upon them religion has no specific or necessary influence; but if we regard the basis of polite, ness, urbanity of temper, suavity of disposition, and charity of heart, we acknowledge the true gentleman to be the proper product of Christian discipline, and that Scriptural holiness is the mirror before which his character must be dressed, to come forth to the world in the dignity of its appropriate adornment. In looking to this origin of the Christian gentleman, we see how necessary, to the right constitution of his character, is the purity of the source from which it springs;-the dew of its birth is of the womb of the morning, fresh and sparkling with spiritual graces. The dignity of his descent declares itself in his aspect; and his bearing shows him to be of the family of Christ; the tokens of his brotherhood are joy and peace, and all that lights up the believer's countenance: he moves a king and a priest by divine right and celestial ordination: the fashions of the world are at his feet, as mists at the base of Lebanon; they come and go, gather and disappear, while the Christian's heart standeth fast and believeth in the Lord: every movement expresses the beauty of holiness, and gives form and body to virtue: his exterior tells of inward order: he speaks before he utters his voice, and every tone and gesture borrows a grace from a deep and |