minster Confession of Faith add some new property to the soul of man? God made the soul of man. He did not doom any soul of man to live as a Hypothesis and Hearsay, in a world filled with such, and with the fatal work and fruit of such!...' 13. 134.

(4) The Scotch, believing in a righteous Heaven above them, and also in a Gospel far other than the Jean-Jacques one, swore, in their extreme need, a Solemn League and Covenant,— as Brothers on the forlorn-hope, and imminence of battle, who embrace, looking godward: and got the whole Isle to swear it; and even, in their tough Old-Saxon Hebrew-Presbyterian way, to keep it more or less;-for the thing, as such things are, was heard in Heaven and partially ratified there neither is it yet dead, if thou wilt look, nor like to die!' 3. 36.

:

"These poor persecuted Scotch Covenanters," said I to my inquiring Frenchman, in such stinted French as stood at command, "ils s'en appelaient à""A la Postérité," interrupted he, helping me out.-"Ah, Monsieur, non, mille fois non! They appealed to the Eternal God; not to Posterity at all! C'était différent." 14. 193.

(5) Scottish Puritanism, well considered, seems to me distinctly the noblest and completest form that the grand Sixteenth Century Reformation anywhere assumed. We may say also that it has been by far the most widely fruitful form; for in the next century it had produced English

Cromwellian Puritanism, with open Bible in one hand, drawn Sword in the other, and victorious foot trampling on Romish Babylon, that is to say irrevocably refusing to believe what is not a Fact in God's Universe, but a mingled mass of self-delusions and mendacities in the region of Chimera. So that now we look for the effects of it not in Scotland only, or in our small British Islands only, but over wide seas, huge American continents and growing British Nations in every zone of the earth.' 32. 145.

(6) 'That right and truth, or God's Law, reign supreme among men, this is the Heavenly Ideal (well named in Knox's time, and namable in all times, a revealed "Will of God") towards which the Reformer will insist that all be more and more approximated. All true Reformers, as I said, are by the nature of them Priests, and strive for a Theocracy.'

How far such Ideals can ever be introduced into Practice, and at what point our impatience with their non-introduction ought to begin, is always a question. I think we may say safely, Let them introduce themselves as far as they can contrive to do it!' 13. 141.

'The Theocracy which John Knox in his pulpit might dream of as a "devout imagination," this practical man,1 experienced in the whole chaos of most rough practice, dared to consider as capable of being realised. Those that were

1 Cromwell.

highest in Christ's Church, the devoutest wisest men, were to rule the land: in some considerable degree, it might be so and should be so. Was it not true, God's truth? And if true, was it not then the very thing to do? The strongest practical intellect in England dared to answer, Yes! This I call a noble true purpose; is it not, in its own dialect, the noblest that could enter into the heart of Statesman or man? For a Knox to take it up was something; but for a Cromwell, with his great sound sense and experience of what our world was,-History, I think, shows it only this once in such a degree. I account it the culminating point of Protestantism; the most heroic phasis that "Faith in the Bible" was appointed to exhibit here below. Fancy it that it were made manifest to one of us, how we could make the Right supremely victorious over Wrong, and all that we had longed and prayed for, as the highest good to England. and all lands, an attainable fact!' 13. 208.

་

My friend, if thou ever do come to believe in God, thou wilt find all Chartism, Manchester riot, Parliamentary incompetence, Ministries of Windbag, and the wildest Social Dissolutions, and the burning-up of this entire Planet, a most small matter in comparison.' 14. 194.

'The Covenant, and eternal Soul of Covenants, remains sure to all the faithful: deeper than the Foundations of this World; earlier than they, and more lasting than they!' 19. 152.

VIII.

Cant.

(1) 'The Christian Doctrines which then1 dwelt alive in every heart, have now in a manner died out of all hearts,-very mournful to behold; and are not the guidance of this world any more. Nay worse still, the Cant of them does yet dwell alive with us, little doubting that it is Cant ;-in which fatal intermediate state the Eternal Sacredness of this Universe itself, of this Human Life itself, has fallen dark to the most of us, and we think that too a Cant and a Creed. Thus the old names suggest new things to us,-not august and divine, but hypocritical, pitiable, detestable. The old names and similitudes of belief still circulate from tongue to tongue, though now in such a ghastly condition: not as commandments of the Living God, which we must do, or perish eternally; alas, no, as something very different from that.'

15. 4.

Serene element of Cant has been tried now for two Centuries; and fails. Serene element,

1 Seventeenth Century.

general completed life-atmosphere, of Cant religious, Cant moral, Cant political, Cant universal, where England vainly hoped to live in a serene soft-spoken manner,-England now finds herself on the point of choking there; large masses of her People no longer able to get even potatoes in that serene element. England will have to come out of that; England, too terribly awakened at last, is everywhere preparing to come out of that. England, her Amazon-eyes once more flashing strange Heaven's-light, like Phoebus Apollo's fatal to the Pythian mud-serpents, will lift her hand, I think, and her heart, and swear "By the Eternal, I will not die in that! I had once men who knew better than that! 17. 166.

(2) So too, when the generous Affections have become wellnigh paralytic, we have the reign of Sentimentality. The greatness, the profitableness, at any rate the extremely ornamental nature of high feeling, and the luxury of doing good; charity, love, self-forgetfulness, devotedness and all manner of godlike magnanimity,-are everywhere insisted on, and pressingly inculcated in speech and writing, in prose and verse; Socinian Preachers proclaim "Benevolence" to all the four winds, and have TRUTH engraved on their watchseals unhappily with little or no effect. Were the limbs in right walking order, why so much demonstrating of motion? The barrenest of all mortals is the Sentimentalist. Granting even that he were sincere, and did not wilfully deceive