specimen in Paris. Some of our traveled popinjays come back from Europe, talking about the superb order of Paris. They talk about the splendid postal system there, and the splendid civic systems. They tell us that you can walk through the streets there, in the middle of the night, in any direction. The police arrangements, they say, are so complete, that one is perfectly safe. They represent everything as being orderly in the highest degree there. When they go away, they are proud of our democratic government; but when they return, they are full of admiration for autocratic governments. "Look," they say, "at the condition of New York city? What kind of a government is there there? What safety is there there for a man's reputation, his money, or his life? All is misrule and discord in that city. Here is self-government for you," these aforesaid popinjays say, "and there is autocratic government: give me that. Give me a government where there is order and peace; where the great ends of society are perfectly served; and where there is safety for life and property and reputation."

Is that the only thing, then, in this world that is good for anything -the safety of reputation, the safety of property, and the safety of life? The least valuable thing in this world is life, frequently. If you could only make a good selection of men, there would be nothing so good as killing, in this world. The trouble is that promiscuous killing generally goes from the bad toward the good. But the earth is burdened with worthless population.

Now, that which the autocratic government of a European city accomplishes, is this: it takes away from its citizens the drill of thinking. It deprives them of the opportunity of learning how to take the responsibility of organizing order among themselves. And that which is an apparent blot upon democratic institutions (and it is a difficulty; it is a penalty; it is a pain) is, that it does not immediately accomplish as good ends as an absolute and aristocratic government. There is less personal safety; there are more, I was going to say, "jobs," under a democracy than under an autocracy. But this last I take back: there are more "jobs" under an autocracy than under a democracy-though it will surprise you to hear me say it. There are are apparent advantages in an autocratic government. But in the long run, a population that has been brought up under democratic rule (I am not speaking of our party phrase, but of the broad philosophic sense of the term democracy) in the long run a community brought up to think for itself, to organize for itself, to take the penalties of it, to bear the evils which accompany it until they become unbearable, and then to cure them, and so to cure them that they shall not break out again-in the long run they are superior in intelligence, in genius and power, to a generation of

men that have been brought up in the puppet order of Paris, which some men so covet and want.

But these men, without manhood in themselves, do not miss it in other people; and so they go to foreign cities, and come back and brag over them, and dispraise our own cities. Not that there are not evils that go along with self-government; not that there are not monstrous evils under a democratic government which wait long, that the sword under an autocratic government cures quick-for the sword does cure diseases quick. But while it cures the diseases, it destroys citizenship. On the other hand, citizenship here is saved while the evils are waiting long to be cured by the citizens themselves. A republican government in a hundred points is weaker than an autocratic government; but in this one point it is the strongest government that ever the sun shone upon that it has educated a race of men that are men. And it is to make men that the world was built-though you might not suspect it by the specimens.

If, then, your conception of municipal government is a city, wound like a watch, in which all the elements are simply meant to go with absolute regularity; if what you want is government like a watch which runs just so every day from year to year, in the same temperature, without variation, never changing, and keeping perfect time, then an autocracy is what you want. But if you want a government that shall develop human nature, and make it fresh, and various, and always new and progressive, then you cannot have one of these regulated governments. You must let men find their own way, and bump their own heads, curing the bumps; you must let them fall into mistakes, and learn by falling into them to keep out of them; and by and by, when enough have done it, by coöperation they will cure the evil. Sometimes the constitution breaks down before the cure can be established; but where there is a constitution that can bear the strain, and the cure is established, it is a glorious cure. And give me strong men rather than strong cities.

Secondly. We see, in the light of these principles, the contrast actually existing between Judaism and Christianity. When the Israelites were brought out of Egypt they were slaves. The great principle which Moses undertook to inculcate was righteousness. Righteousness means acting according to a straight line, as it were. He laid down ordinances and laws which regulated every part of every man's conduct in the nation. Those ordinances and laws went into men's dwellings, and into their industrial occupations. There was an autocracy established in Church and State; and their religion and patriotism were one and the same thing. It undertook to pervade everything. Every day was marked out, and every hour of every day,

for worship. The particular place where they were to worship was pointed out. They were instructed how they were to worship, and what they were to worship with. Not only were they instructed that they were to worship with certain elements, but they were instructed how those elements were to be prepared, running into the most extraordinary minuteness, until men were perfectly meshed and webbed by provisions for doing everything right. And as long as they were very low and weak, this economy carried them up, and educated them until, if they could escape they would be benefitted, but if not they would be injured. That which is the best thing for a child when he is fourteen years of age is often the worst thing for him when he is twenty-four. Clothes that are a very good fit for children when they are six years old, are a very bad fit for them when they are sixteen years old, and must be let out, or they will split out in every direction. The Mosaic system was one of rigid laws. The Christian system was one without any instrumentation; without one single institution appointed rigorously; without one single point that represented the precision and imperativeness of the Mosaic institution. Our Lord instituted a spiritual kingdom, and put the stimulus upon men to develop reason and conscience and spirituality, and left them to do it in perfect freedom.

This does not argue that Christianity should not have days; but they are not to be "Thus saith the Lord" days. It does not argue that there should not be institutions; but they are not to be rigorously authoritative or obligatory institutions. They are to be institutions such as we shall have found to be useful, and which we shall therefore use, not because they are imposed upon us, but because they are useful. Christianity lets us have all manner of helps. But liberty is the essential element of it. Institutions, ordinances, creeds, churches, priests, all manner of imposed helps, Christianity ignores as obligatory. It permits them if men want to use them; but it takes the ground that if they do use them it is because they choose to, and not because God obliges them to. Christianity has infinite liberty of appropriation; but it is not under obligation to have a church, nor a Sabbath, nor a creed, nor any other thing. It is free.

Judaism was a system of precise institutions. Christianity is a charter of liberty. Judaism brought men up a certain way, and could not go a step further. Then came Christ, and unfolded the supernal manhood of God in the flesh. And from that point human nature sprang up, and sprang out. And if Christianity had been kept to this its fundamental idea; if its principle of liberty, its stimulating power, its conception as to the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation, had been its main force, we should have been advanced a great many ages beyond the point at which we are now.

In the third place, the reason why Christianity has not done more, is because this principle of life has been largely ignored. Christianity fell into the old tendency very speedily of providing for men, and not leaving them to provide for themselves. It undertook to order men's worship through its Church-the great medieval church, which is the most sublime, elaborate, and astonishing system of organization that the world was ever cursed with: blessed, they say; cursed I say Christianity, enshrined in this vast catacomb of mazes and labyrinths, has stood right in the way of itself. It has undertaken to do again, by old barbaric instruments, what it should have outgrown, and what the world is fast outgrowing. And spiritual liberty was deposed, and ecclesiastical despotism took the place of it.

Now, if I were going to have either, I would have Judaism. The old Jewish system of religion was the nearest to sublime natural religion of any system in the world; that is, it came nearer to the aspects of material nature than did the superficial moralities and refinements that grew up under the great medieval system, and are embodied in it. I should prefer Judaism, pure and simple, to Romanism, pure and simple. It is more manly, more natural, more divine, more stimulating.

I remark, fourthly, that this is the fundamental difference between all hierarchal churches and all democratic churches, or churches of the common people. One of these modes of organization attempts, in a ministerial way, to provide for every act of worship, for every ceremony, for every belief, for every routine, for all government. The other of these modes of organization inspires men to provide these things for themselves, and lets them have liberty to do it.

Oftentimes I hear men say, "I do not believe in Congregationalism, it leaves everything so untied, so hap-hazard. It has no government, no process of order. Men, under it, do not know exactly what to do, and do pretty much as they have a mind to. I believe in a church that just divides the year up, and divides all the chapters of the Bible up so that there shall be a certain portion of Scripture to be read every day; so that when a man gets up in the morning, he shall not be at a loss what to do, but shall only have to see what day it is, and then look and find the passages of Scripture that he is to read, and the prayers that he is to say, and directions as to the other duties he is to perform It is pleasant to have everything arranged for one in that way." It is very convenient; but is it better for a man to be baptized into a specific system, and never take off his swaddling clothes, and have a nurse to take him up as a babe and carry him through life, and never have anything to think about, nor anything to do; never be obliged to vex himself with responsibility; but lie brooded and sucking all through life? There are a great many who have that conception; and

any church that comes near to that; that is to say, any church that does everything for a man; any church that takes from a man the necessity of thinking for himself, and thinking till his head aches; any church that takes all perplexities out of a man's way, so that he is never annoyed, but is always easy-any such church just suits them. But no true church should undertake to mechanically organize life so as to supersede or cover down this fundamental principle of God's word—the necessity of every man's organizing his own life. Such churches are very much in vogue. And far be it from me to undertake to say that there is not a liberty on the part of men to organize such churches. Humanly speaking there is such a liberty. What I am pointing out is this: that the educating power of such churches is not so great as the educating power of those churches which seem to be far more scattered and disorderly-but seem so only because the principle of individual development does drive men asunder more than the principle of an organized government, and because this principle of personal liberty makes men strong and robust.

This principle is more valuable than the simple idea of orderthough I recognize the order, and well know that the distribution of both elements is desirable. Order, the habit of coördinate acting, is important; but it is not sufficient. There need to be, in addition to this, the principles of individual opportunity and individual obligation.

Fifthly, this question takes hold of the difficulties which men find in the Bible. People often say, "I cannot believe that that is a revelation, because nobody seems to know what it teaches. There are infinite diversities among believers of the Bible as to the doctrines which it contains. A revelation from God, it seems to me, must settle something. How can the Bible be God's revelation when it is so full of obscurities; when it is so full of doctrines that are enigmatical; when there are apparent contradictions in it; when there are historical collisions in it? It cannot be from God; for if it were it would be perfect." Would it? Was not this material world from God? and is it perfect? Did not it begin in germs? and did not these germs go through all forms of development-that is to say, from the lowest stage of imperfection clear up to the highest? And is not that the peculiar characteristic in the world-germination, and development all the way up from the lowest to the highest point? And is not that, if I may so say, the trade-mark of God-early imperfection, and late, selfevolved perfection?

If, therefore, there was to be a divine revelation, do you suppose that God would have begun by making every thing so plain at the beginning that men should have been saved all the perplexity of finding out the truth for themselves? Is it not more likely that he would have