tianity is the most blind, both to the facts and to the reason of the case. "The light shineth in dårkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not," is a truer picture, and from a higher authority. Is it reasonable to expect that the Period of its conflict with Heathenism should bear the choicest fruits of its unadulterated spirit, or that those from whose hearts it was expelling the gross darkness of the Pagan worship, should reach its most spiritual truths, and walk in its divinest light? Does it belong to the moral nature of man to be the subject of such rapid and perfect transformations, to empty the mind completely of one set of influences, and receive at once the entireness and purity of another, — and, without a long term of intermediate mixture and struggle, put off the Heathen or the Jew, and exhibit, like a new creation, the truest symmetry of Christian development? And what are the facts? Do the Gospels, or do the Epistles of St. Paul, exhibit a more spiritual Discipleship, as we approach the person of Christ; or present a Model in the Churches that had an Apostle for their guide? Christ's life was passed without the conversion of a single soul; and when he died, the Jewish peculiarity had yielded to the Christian Idea of the Kingdom of God in not one single mind. In fact, the work of conversion, even in the Apostles themselves, took place after the death of Christ; and only when no longer Jewish notions could be made to cohere with a Messiah in the skies, did they gradually, and by necessity, adapt their conceptions of his Mission to his now spiritual and heavenly state. The Resurrection

and. Ascension of Messiah are usually represented as having their sole objects in the evidence they afford of human Immortality;— but in the actual History of Christianity, the first purpose they served was to spiritualize the views of the Apostles; - for with one who dwelt no longer on the Earth, all his relations to his Church must be of an inward, heavenly, and immortal nature, and all Jewish apprehensions were disengaged from his person as he ascended to God, above all temporal connections. Still, however, did Judaism endeavor to fasten itself on as a necessary adjunct, even to spiritual Christianity; and those who had come nearest to the fountainhead of Truth, the personal companions and disciples of our Lord, were not the first to emancipate themselves from exclusive and unchristian views. Stephen the Martyr, in mind and character the evident prototype of Paul, had the first glimpse of the catholic nature of the Church of Christ; and St. Paul, who alone in the Apostolic Age conceived aright of the Universality of the Gospel, not in peace and triumph, but against controversy and resistance, proclaimed the essence of Christianity that which rises above outward differences, and unites souls by an inward tie-to be, not a Righteousness with which any thing external can interfere, but "the Righteousness of God, proceeding out of Faith."

Or, are we to look in the Churches founded and taught by St. Paul for the purity and perfection of the primitive Christianity, for examples of evangelical Unity, and humble submission to Apostolical

Authority? The Epistle to the Romans exhibits the Jewish and the Gentile form of mind looking upon Christianity from different positions; and the two partial views in bitter animosity threatening destruction to each other. The Epistles to the Corinthians exhibit schisms in Doctrine, immoralities in Practice, Factions organized under Leaders, a perilous observance of Idolatrous usages, proving a very imperfect emancipation from the Polytheistic sentiment, and the most open contempt of the Authority of the Apostle. The Apostolic Age exhibits no Church Models, no uniformity of Faith and Sentiment, no gentle reign of Truth and Love, with quiet submission to legitimate Instructors, no perfect realization of Christian Communion to serve as an example and a standard for successive ages, and by the claim of its Beauty and Repose to awe and silence the disturbing outbreak of individual Thought. These are not the Pictures which Christian Antiquity presents in the Epistles of St. Paul; nor will peace ever be restored to the Church by the endeavor to go back to a primitive Uniformity, that never existed. But the real Picture which that Age presents is full of the lessons of a true Peace for our present times;-it represents an attempt by Paul to combine a unity of Spirit with the utmost diversity of Forms, Sonship to God and Brotherhood to Christ with the freest varieties of national and intellectual differences, and it exhibits an Apostle claiming no authority to settle controversies, to reduce to one common formula modes of worship, or inequalities of speculative view, but leaving every

man free to be what he pleased, provided only he preserved uninjured the sentiment of Christian Love, and found his Rule of conduct, not in an intensely concentrated regard for his own Rights, but in the sympathy of the Christian spirit. The practical direction of the Apostle to the conflicting elements of the primitive Church was, to yield every thing external for the sake of a common sentiment of fellowship with Christ. The rule of "the Successors of the Apostles" is, to make every thing yield to the external Uniformity, and to let the unity of the Spirit and of Love pass for nothing, without the outward symbols of agreement. These are the great lessons we collect from a study of these Epistles:that there never was a perfect realization of a Christian Church, that only a Uniformity of the Christian, Temper can gradually produce that Realization; and that, meanwhile, he is working against Christ who adopts any other aim, than a desire for this inward unity of spirit and moral purpose, as a Christian Rule of conduct.

We saw, in the last two chapters, how St. Paul would not permit those Corinthians, who argued a question of Practice on the abstract ground of their individual knowledge and enlightenment, to avail themselves of that plea; that not even on a subject so little doubtful to a Christian as that of Idolatry, was Knowledge alone a safe guide; nor should Christian love forget the traces of Polytheism that might linger involuntarily with the weakest brother; and in his recurrence to the subject of this tenth chapter, he evidently fears, that those who violated Love

were in imminent danger of violating Knowledge too, and that a slight and vaunting estimate of a temptation overcome, gave no security that they were never again to fall beneath its power. Here then we have in a primitive Church, with an Apostle at its head, — what indeed we might reasonably have expected, the distinctly announced danger, that, over the Christians of a heathen city, Polytheism might yet regain its sway. It is difficult to realize how thoroughly Polytheism was incorporated with the life of the Ancients. Every familiar salutation invoked the gods; the commonest utensils for household use were wrought in symbolic shapes; all the forms and courtesies of social life were associated with acts of worship; and even the daily meal had first been offered in sacrifice.

St. Paul, in guarding the Corinthians against this atmosphere of insensible temptation, compares, in this respect, the primitive Christian with the primitive Jewish Church; and warns the former that the lapse into Idolatry made by the Jews, when under the most signal guidance of God, was an example of what might happen again to a people who, if under the same guidance, were also under the same temptations. The opportunities which the Heathen Worship supplied for the gratification of the sensual and licentious passions, were in both cases the moving temptations to Idolatry; and in a city proverbially so corrupt as Corinth, the Baal Peor of old might be too closely paralleled by the Aphrodite of the Greek. Their external protections were the same, and the inward vices that had seduced the