mended to them by the judgment and the example of the best people they knew! It were as unreasonable as it is uncharitable to apply hard names to such people, and to charge them with the guilt of wilful schism,

The facts of the case stand thus: Three hundred years ago began the system of separation. It began in a time of great religious excitement, and when crying evils existed in the Church. Some of the Separatists lamented the supposed necessity they were under, and declared that their real desire was only to purify the Church of their nation, and to pluck up tares which had been sown during those ages wherein men slept. Their followers were less conservative than themselves. New reasons were found for new separations from the old body, and for subdivisions among the separated portions; until now, the denominations among English-speaking people are numbered by hundreds, holding all shades of opinion, from the teaching, largely Catholic, of the Westminster confession, down to the sect of yesterday, whose Christianity is so comprehensive that it can find place in its eulogies for Rousseau and Voltaire.

The thing done was wrong, and great evil has come of it; yet not all the evil that might have come. Some of these bodies, originally ortho

dox, have surrendered their faith in the Holy Trinity, the essential, foundation truth of the Bible, but others hold it with the utmost constancy.

Some, after casting away the Church, have lost faith in the Bible, and value it chiefly as a code of morals; others, and their adherents are, thank God! in the majority, read it and teach it, privately and publicly, and that in the version put forth under the authority of the Church of England; moreover, they spend large sums of money in its publication and distribution.

We know that much that is good is effected by their ministrations. The knowledge of Christ and the love of Him come to many sinful men by their teachings. Saintly men and devout women, not a few, are among their followers. We hear, perchance, a song of Zion; it is a stranger hand that sweeps the strings; yet the melody is the old, familiar Psalm of Saints, and every chord in our Christian sensibilities vibrates in harmony with the well-struck note. There is often, between us and those who follow not with us, a community of trust, of hope, of aspiration, a likeness of experience in spiritual joys and sorrows, which proves that they, as we, are led by the Spirit of God, and that whatever may be the error of the sect or religion which

such an one professeth, in that sect or religion the truth is so dispensed as to lead the sincere follower into the ways of life.

In all this we admire the wisdom and the mercy of God. He appoints in nature ordinary means and channels, and yet there are occasions when life may be maintained without them. I may not tempt the Lord my God by obliterating an artery, so experimenting upon the natural resources of the body; but yet, when an aneurism exists, and the artery is tied, the life-blood is found to circulate by indirect channels. I may not causelessly deprive the babe of the nourishment provided for it, yet many a motherless child has been reared by artificial means. It seems to

be a law in the universe that while God's ordinances are fixed, and while they can never be violated without more or less injury resulting, yet are they not so absolutely fixed but that necessary ends may be attained by means other than those regularly appointed.

God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children; and yet, by an interposition of mercy, He restrains and limits the heritage of sorrow ; He obviates, somehow, the worst consequences which should follow on the sin. He makes up, as it were, to the children whose heritage was cast away by an ancestor, not all that was lost,

but so much as may save them from the most ruinous consequences of that act of the fore father.

We have need to distinguish between the rule of duty and the rule of judgment. The rule of duty binds us absolutely. We to whom it comes must not tamper with it. If we presume to violate it, we must expect nothing less than the full penalty. But the rule of God's judgment, although oftenest it coincides with the rule of duty imposed on us, may not be invariably the

same.

We are bound to obey the law; but the judge regards equity as well as law. He is not bound to enforce all the penalties of a broken law, when, in His infinite wisdom and mercy, He may discern mitigations and excuses.

LETTER VII.

CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY.

"Satisfied! Satisfied! the spirit's yearning
For sweet companionship with kindred minds,
The silent love that here meets no returning ;
The inspiration which no language finds;

Shall they be satisfied?"

- Unknown.

The

OUCHING the sort of intercourse we may hold with Christian people of various names, we have an example directly to the point, by which we may be guided. In our Lord's lifetime, there was a wide separation between the Jew and the Samaritan. latter was not in the communion of the Jewish Church, and worshipped elsewhere than on the hill of Zion. Moreover, while he received in common with the Jew the books of Moses, he rejected the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Now, an occasion arose where our Lord was called on to decide what we may call the Church question, mooted between the Jews and the Samaritans. The woman at Jacob's well perceiv