you how completely the idea not only of a separation is involved in these appointments, but of a separation for the very purpose to which the Brahmin is devoted. The priest is dedicated to the service of the Unseen Jehovah. He is to enter into His presence, to hold awful converse with Him. His separation, is never for an instant spoken of as having another object than this. A gross animal taste, a disposition to honour visible things and bow before them, is characteristic of men generally; the elect people are taken from the surrounding nations, that they may be emancipated from this slavish tendency. Yet the Jew is reminded that he is liable to it like other men; that he must be cut off from it; that he must look upon himself as intended for intercourse with that which the eye cannot tell him of. The priest explains the end of the nation's existence. It is expressly declared that the tribe of Levi is taken instead of the firstborn of all the families of Israel.

Here you see one very clear indication of the principle which Hindoo society embodies. And this principle is not less characteristic of the later history than of the earlier. True the people began in process of time to mix with the nations round about them, and to adopt their habits. But the wise man always warned them, and the fact proved, that hereby they were destroying themselves. When they forgot their covenant, when they no longer looked upon themselves as a chosen, separated people, above all when their

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priests lost sight of their own vocation, and the purpose of it, feebleness, division, subjection to their neighbours, followed of course. The fact does not change in the least degree from one generation to another. The only change is in the increased knowledge which the Jews obtain of the reason and ground of the fact. This progress is very remarkable. The prophets told them more and more distinctly, that they required to be circumcised in heart; that the separation must not be merely from surrounding people, but from an evil and corruption in themselves; that if they remembered the covenant of their God, and clave to Him, they would overcome not merely the Moabites and Edomites, but a perverse, grovelling habit of soul, which was the cause of their idolatry; that if they forgot this covenant, they would sink first under the yoke of their own inclinations, then under that of Nineveh or Babylon. The more you read the Old Testament prophets the more you will see that amidst all the various circumstances which surround them, amidst all the different methods of instruction which they are taught to adopt, this is their great burthen. But is there not a change in the New Testament? Did not our Lord destroy that separation which the teachers of the old time had been so careful to establish? Did not his coming put Jews and Gentiles on a level? We must not permit vague phrases of this kind to hide from us the fact that our Lord, so far from obliterating the principle for which the Jewish nation had testified, asserted

it, established it, expressed it for the first time in all its clearness and fulness. That, He said, which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven. In this language he gathers up the very meaning of the old dispensation; shews us what a truth was involved in every part of it; how every part had been a preparation for the full revelation of this truth. His coming was, no doubt, to destroy the barrier between Jew and Gentile; but not till that barrier had been proved to have its justification in the very condition and being of man, in his relation to God and to the world. If there is a flesh in man, by obedience to which he becomes degraded, sensual, idolatrous, if he naturally is obedient to this flesh, and can only attain the rights of a spiritual creature, when the Lord of all raises him above his nature, above himself, then we can understand why a whole nation should have been called by its position in reference to other nations, by its strength and weakness, righteousness and sins, by the experience of all its individual members, to set forth this mighty fact in which the eternal destinies of mankind must be involved. And this testimony we hold is not, and cannot be, obsolete. The Christian Church claims to be a body of twice-born men; claims to be a witness of that mighty privilege which men have of conversing with the Unseen and Infinite, as well as a witness of the tendency which there is in man to be merely animal and sensual,

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The Christian Church claims a set of ministers who shall represent the spiritual glory and privileges of the whole body, shall be instruments in overcoming the low and grovelling propensities of its members. Here, then, is a principle which is as characteristic of our faith as it is of the Hindoo, which has scareely moulded Oriental society more than it has moulded the society of modern Europe.

II. It is impossible to separate the belief in the superiority of the Brahmin to other men, from the belief in his relation to Brahm. Technically we may call one a political, the other a theological idea; practically, the former may, for a while, survive the latter. But in any serious investigation of the grounds of the religious system they must be contemplated as identical. Brahm is Wisdom or Light: the Brahmin is the reflexion of this Wisdom or Light. Such a view of the divinity, and of the way in which man is related to him, is found in different modifications among all those people who are members of what is called the Indo-Germanic stock, and, perhaps, in some who do not belong to it. While creative Will, Command, Sovereignty, Separation from man, are the attributes of Him whom the Arabian proclaimed to be the one God, Persians, Greeks, Goths, each recognized Intelligence, an Intelligence communicable to man, and quickly involving human worship, as the object of their reverence. But long before this reverence had taken any definite form among these people, hear how

strongly it was expressed by those Hebrew sages who seemed to live for the assertion of the Mahometan truth: “I Wisdom dwell with Prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions. I am Understanding; I have strength. By me kings reign, and princes decree justice. By me princes rule, and nobles, and all the judges of the earth. The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth: while as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When He prepared the heavens, I was there: when He set a compass upon the face of the deep when He established the clouds above: when He strengthened the fountains of the deep: when He gave to the sea His decree, that the waters should not pass His commandment: when he appointed the fountains of the earth: then I was by Him as one brought up with Him; and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him; rejoicing in the habitable part of His earth; and my delights were with the sons of men."

Here we have the origin of the universe ascribed to Wisdom; kings and judges are said to rule by Wisdom; Wisdom is said from the first to have had her delight in the sons of men. Is this an isolated passage; the dream of some particular writer, who had perhaps been instructed