more trophies than the sword. And it will be found, moreover, that active interference by the Clergy in political matters usually redounds to the injury of the very cause they would serve, as well as to their own. When they use carnal weapons, they will find others more than a match for them. When they take the sword, they will be sure in the end to perish with the sword; and, falling in such a contest, there will be deserved the rebuke of that Pope, who, when he complained because one of his fighting prelates was slain in battle, received his bloody armor with the words, "Know now whether this be thy son's coat

or no!"

And yet the Ministers, who persist in preaching Christ Crucified, are sometimes accused as being behind the times; timorous, afraid of their popularity, dwelling upon abstractions, living in past centuries, and overlooking great interests immediately around them. They are asked, by some excited parishioner, why they do not let their voices be heard on these great topics of the day, so full of moral concern; and are told it is their duty to advert to them; while other Ministers, who enter into them, are characterized as "the living men," "the men of progress," the popular preachers, and those who identify themselves with the interests of the people. If any Minister be afraid to tell his own hearers their sins publicly, or privately, let him be called timid and time-serving, but not because he will not arraign civil rulers in the pulpit, nor dwell there upon social evils far away. The Clergy best discharge their duty by warning men to repent of their own sins, by seeking to save those souls which will survive when the civil contests that agitate the nation shall be buried in the dust of past ages, and by laboring to remove the ignorance, and vice and misery immediately around them. Faith, Repentance, Holiness, love to God, love to man, the Final Judgment, are not abstractions; neither are they pleasant topics to a worldly heart, and hence this new and cunning device of Satan. To preach these truths and duties can never be, to be behind the times, until time is lost in eternity. The true Ministers of Christ will prevent and correct political evils, as far as they may, by making men good Christians, and consequently good rulers and good subjects; and they will also follow in the train of social and civil wrong, pouring in oil and wine into wounds they could not so prevent. But as to converting their pulpits into electioneering uses, or mingling themselves in the civil turmoils and contests of the day, they cannot, they will not. God has called them to higher work and higher duties.

There is, indeed, a preaching to the times which is preaching

for eternity. If there be a public calamity, like that of the fall of the tower in Siloam, or that of the massacre of those whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices, the servant of God may use it for personal reproof and warning to his own people. And he will find a happy model for his guidance in that divine Master, Who, though He stirred up no rage or rebellion against Pilate for his cruelty, took occasion from it to bring home to His hearers their own need of repentance. Here was preaching to the times apart from political preaching. It is in living and moving among the people, and becoming acquainted with their every day wants, and sins and sorrows, that the Minister best fits himself to be their pastor. He may and he will make himself familiar with the affairs of the country, the city, or the village where he dwells; he may, if he choose, quietly exercise his rights at the polls; but all his knowledge of men and things should be sought and used, not to subserve political aims, but to win souls to Christ; even as the physician watches the habits of his patients in their every day life, that he may the better heal their sicknesses. In the world, but not of the world,-knowing men as they are, to make them what they ought to be;-convinced that he has in that Gospel which he has been commissioned to preach, a remedy for every human ill, and anxious to apply it;-so should the servant of Jesus be, so will he be, like his divine Lord and Master.

It is greatly to be feared that the low state of religion among us is owing to forgetfulness of these truths. The old Revival System has died out, and, defective though it was, nothing better has taken its place. Ecclesiastical bodies are rent in sunder, not by theological, but by social and political questions. Great religious societies are torn by factions. Strife and discord reign among the followers of Christ. Neglect of the Means of Grace prevails in rural districts to a degree that might almost startle from their graves the "Sabbath and Sanctuary" loving ancestors of those dwelling there. In many sections houses of worship, once filled, are now thinly attended, or entirely closed, and inquiry shows a large population around driven from their sanctuaries by political "isms," living in entire neglect of the Means of Grace, or assembling in semi-infidel gatherings. "Where twenty vehicles passed my door on the way to God's House many years ago," said an aged man, "not five are now seen, though there are no more Church edifices, and the population is larger." Thus at the General Association of Connecticut, at Middletown, in June last, "A letter from Rev. Charles Durenne, delegate from the General Convention of Vermont, was read. It gave a very discouraging view of the prospects of

the churches in that State. Many have become extinct. The number of church members has been decreasing at the rate of 400 a year. Christian families are moving out, and irreligious families are taking their places."

"The Narrative of the State of Religion in Vermont has the following confession and appeal:-The external and agitating questions of the age, important though they may be, have diverted us from attention to personal piety, from duty in our closets and families, and from direct individual efforts to save souls."

At a recent meeting of the Congregational Conference of Maine it was stated, that in the Churches of that denomination in Maine there had been a decrease of 1653 members from 1843 to 1855.

The above shows what are the natural results where the preachers of religion give up the doctrine of " Jesus Christ and Him Crucified," for any of the exciting topics of the day. Spiritual barrenness and desolation are sure to follow.

Our cities gather not one-third of their population into any house of God. Romanism has marked and mapped out our land for a possession. Missions have a divided and feeble sup port. And where are the Clergy? Many of them leaders in the agitation that has rent asunder societies and churches; many of them stirring up their people to contests with evils afar off, to the neglect of evils greater near at hand; many of them seldom urging the soul-saving doctrines of the Cross, but catching up every popular topic of the week, to give a re-hash to the people on the Lord's day of that upon which they have already fed to loathing and surfeit; while the Pulpit has so lost in dignity and power, that Candidates for the Ministry are everywhere decreasing in proportion, and the cry is for laborers for the harvest. Who does not see the cunning device of the adversary in all this!

Will it be said that the picture is not correct, if intended for the Clergy of our own Church? It is conceded that they have not sat for the portrait, though for some among them it will be found a likeness, or with features of resemblance. Our Clergy, as a body, thank God, do preach Christ Crucified, do deal with present evils, do abstain from political topics; nor are we yet rent by any strifes, save those purely theological. Perhaps it may be said of us, that it is because we have not life enough to fight, and care not for civil evils, so that we may but maintain our dignity, and secure our good livings. Certainly, however, we have as yet no very inviting example in the results of clerical interference with political and social contests, among those

of other names, to tempt us to engage in the fray. On the contrary, there is enough that is saddening among them to awaken our truest sympathies and deepest anxieties. If one word of entreaty and warning might be heard by the thousands of ministers of other names now engaged in political strifes, we would beseech them to forsake them, and return to the preaching of the Cross. We believe, that if not a man among them would ever again open his lips upon such themes, but devote himself to the winning of souls to Christ, and the building them up in faith and holiness, it would be better for the country, better for our civil and social interests, better for the cause of Christ, better for themselves in the day of judgment, and that to the resolution to do so, openly expressed, all the people of GOD would say, Amen.

Nor are we without danger of being drawn into the vortex, and, indeed, we have already enough of the mingling of the political and the religious to render the note of warning needful. We have, as yet, few clerical demagogues, evangelists of new Christs, apostles of progress, platform orators, et id genus omne. But let us beware. We are surrounded by infection. We can hardly live in the midst of it without danger. Let us remember that the holy and the good are the salt of the land; that the prevalent in prayer avert God's anger from it; that righteousness exalteth a people; and let our Clergy ever be laborious in their proper sphere, peaceful, preaching and acting as if they felt that the Gospel was the remedy for every ill, and the great morality was love to Christ. Let us remember our solemn Ordination vow, to give ourselves wholly to our office, so that, as much as lieth in us, we would apply ourselves wholly to this one thing, and draw all our cares and studies this way, laying aside the study of the world and of the flesh.

ART. III.-COUSIN AND THE PRINCETON REVIEWER.

NOTHING is more certain than that the taste and the talent for the highest metaphysical speculations are not universally diffused among men. Nor is it by any means certain that the taste or the inclination to engage in such speculations is always accompanied with the talent requisite for their successful prosecution. Nay, all our observation leads us to suspect more and more a contrariety between the two; so that where the one is found the other is not likely to exist at all-and never, except in those rare instances which mark the philosophical genius who has been sent to us-as once in an age such men are sent -to clear up old difficulties, solve the newly raised problems, and advance and extend over new regions of science the domain of human comprehension. Even among those whose names are conspicious on the page of the history of philosophy-few, very few comparatively have written with any insight of the things concerning which they wrote. Most of them have done but little if anything more than ring new changes upon old words-the common stock in trade of all metaphysical speculators. They seem to assume that the words most commonly occurring, and which constitute the technical terms of the science, are like the terms and symbols of an algebraical equation, to be used without any necessary knowledge of the thing for which the term stands, with no recognition of the fact that everwhere else, except in Mathematics, there may be, and most likely is, some inadequacy between the term used and the object represented by it. In the Calculus, for example, it makes no difference what is the concrete object for which the terms used may stand. The x, y and z, &c., may stand for a certain number of men, horses, masses of granite, stars and planets in the heavenly spheres, or whatever else may become the object of thought and discrete quantification, and it makes no difference with the mode of procedure, or the certainty of the result. We exclude from the scope of our calculation all the matter that constitutes these objects individuals in logical quantity, and regard them only as units, the last element of discrete quantity. But everywhere else, except in the mere science of numbers alone, the object of thought, be it what it may, enters into the scope of our reasoning and investigations, not as a unit only, a mere something having objective individual