anity, as it was of original Christianity. Among the first utterances, and the most emphatic, of the Divine Founder of Christianity was the famous text, "Think not I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword." The Angel-Cry of Christianity in its first announcement was, as it now is and ever must be, "Glory to God in the highest; and, on earth, peace to good-willing men." To all others "there is no peace "-never was, never can be. "No peace, saith God, unto the wicked!"-" First pure, then peaceable."

"After long intervals of peace, wars ever enter the stage," as truly in Religion as elsewhere. In Church as in State applies the sentence of the Puritan preacher," Till the Lord hath created his universal and everlasting peace in the world, men ought to be in readiness, not only to pray but also to fight for the peace of Jerusalem."

(a) Purity before Peace; the World must be made Pure before it can become Peaceable.

When Napoleon the First stepped from the top of the Alps to the throne of France, grasped the throat of the Revolution in one hand and drafted his code of French law with the other, he supposed that the problem of anarchy was solved forever; the ruffian mob held down by force; the higher and better inclined citizens held in by law; the neighboring powers held off by alliances, treaties, and threatened retaliations: this was the First Consul's solution of the problem of peace. But, hardly were his figures concluded and his result announced before the "scarlet robe of France began to drip again with human gore"; all his bonds of force, law, and policy were broken; another revolution projected him from his throne, and raised again “a bloodyfingered Bourbon" to his place. to his place. Insurrections, upheavals, and reactions, in the midst of external prosperity and refinement,-like frequent eruptions from a volcano whose sides are covered with foliage and skirted with flowers,-was for the succeeding half-century the history of the French mon

archy and the French republic. Then came a second great upheaval, shaking Europe to its centre, filling the civilized world with sympathy and alarm; spilling the best blood, expending the richest treasures, destroying the noblest monuments of the once imperial France; and terminating in a "Reign of Terror," which almost repeated the horrors which succeeded the overthrow of the Girondists under the ferocious leadership of Robespierre and his revolutionary accomplices. Hardly had we as American citizens begun to moralize upon the causes of our recent Rebellion, and to consider how to prevent the recurrence of commotion and bloodshed in our own country, when that international and civil conflict of Germany and France burst like a thundercloud over Europe. The whole world, Pagan as well as Christian, was startled by it. Prussia, though victorious, was scathed and scarred and demoralized. And France, the champion of nations, foremost in art, superior in science, exalted in civilization, unrivalled in gayety, polish, and grace; built, as her citizens supposed, upon a foundation of adamant; adorned, as they believed, with imperishable beauty; surrounded, as they imagined, with defensive bulwarks which might defy the armies of the world,-France, as "in the twinkling of an eye," was thrown from her pedestal of grandeur; and so marred was her countenance and exhausted her strength, that it must even yet be generations before she can hope to re-attain her former position of beauty and prosperity.

These and similar events which have been, and are, transpiring in this last half of the Nineteenth Century are not causeless. Neither are their causes, as most men suppose, freaks of Nature or mysteries of Providence. They are not insoluble, except to those who refuse to study them. Their causes are not hidden, except to those who are unwilling to search them out. The inferences which they suggest and the lessons which they teach are designed to increase wisdom in this and all succeeding generations. They are the time-spirited events which, though Sphinx-faced, stand postulating truths for humanity to consider, stating problems

for humanity to solve, enunciating theories for humanity to demonstrate. If humanity will not consider, if the problems are unsolved, and the theories unproved,-then will the voice which in all the past has been thundering them out, wax louder and louder. But whosoever will have courage and wisdom to attend, shall deduce magnificent results, and receive splendid rewards; working out, meanwhile, with the sureness of the stars, a superb destiny for themselves and for human-kind.

(b) A Truth postulated, a Problem stated, a Theorem

enunciated.

Of these "postulated truths" let us select one which is most important:-Purity before Peace. Of these "stated problems" let us present one which is both most difficult and most comprehensive :-First pure, then peaceable. Of these "enunciated theorems" let us press into the foreground one which is most practical and fundamental:- The Church first, and the World second, must be made pure before God will permit them to have Peace. Let us state the matter concisely and consecutively.

The most important truth for Church and State alike to learn, is, that every human event has a human, as well as a divine, cause.

The most important problem of every age, is, to find out what are the causes of its failures and sufferings.

The most important proposition which the logic of history and the facts of to-day are waiting to prove, is,

That the great evil is, not failure or suffering, but the causes of these; and that until these causes are removed, failure and suffering will continue to be in the future what they have been ever in the past,-both the warning and the lesson, the Scourge and the balm, the curse and the blessing of mankind.

One of the most curious facts of history is, that the Natural has been so swallowed up in the Supernatural; Human agency, as a correlation of the Divine, has been so completely lost sight of; Mankind has been so entirely discarded as one of the powers, factors, efficient and morally

responsible forces of the universe, as practically to transform the human race into a complicated machine, all of whose clatter and clang, confusion, tangles, breaks, and disasters are attributable alone to that Invisible Hand which in the beginning invented it, set it in motion, and still drives it on. Theories have been considered rather than facts. Selfconscious freedom, cause and effect, individual volition, the fruits of neglect or wrong, the good results of doing good, and the ill results of doing ill; the praise or blame connected therewith, and the lessons of prudence and wisdom to be drawn therefrom,-all these facts had been overlooked in the intense supernaturalism which has prevailed. Men have delighted to "shirk" responsibility, and to "shoulder" the blame of all calamity and suffering upon the Almighty. When the plague devastated the army of the Greeks before the walls of Syracuse, they said, "The gods are fighting against us," but thought nothing of their camps swarming with vice and all manner of sanitary neglect. When Sparta, Athens, Carthage, Rome, fell, the people said, "The deities are avenging some impiety or some neglected sacrificial offering," but thought not of the licentiousness and luxury which were gnawing at the vitals of their national life, as the worm gnaws at the stem of a plant, until both flower and branches lie withering upon the earth. When Jesus was weeping over Jerusalem, which he saw quaking upon its corrupt foundation, as a city upon the crater of a volcano, the Jews, instead of heeding his warning and "repenting" of their evils, were praying at the street corners, and offering sacrifices in the temple. When the contagion was sweeping through Spain in the last century, the citizens of Madrid persecuted the "innovators" who proposed to cleanse the loathsome streets of their dirt and filth, and spent their time, meanwhile, in consulting physicians, saying mass, and repeating prayers.

The language of old Achilles to the assembled Greeks, inspired, as Homer represents, by the "white-armed goddess Juno," may be taken as the universal language of the past, in all times of calamity and suffering,—

"Ye sons of Atreus, here at once

By war and pestilence our forces waste.

But seek we now some prophet or some priest,

Or some wise vision-seer, who may the cause explain,
Why with such deadly wrath Apollo fires;

If for neglected hecatombs or prayers

He blames us; or if the fat of lambs and goats

May soothe his anger and the plague assuage."

No need to come down to the plagues, diseases, disasters; to the riots, insurrections, and revolutions of which even the nineteenth century is full, and which many-calling them the" inscrutable providences of God "—have been inclined to doctor with fast-days, humiliations, and prayer. No need to cite instances with which all are familiar, in our own age, of both beseeching and blaming Heaven for calamities brought on by the most reckless violation of all sanitary, social, moral, and humane laws. No need to come so near home, or so near the present time for historical illustrations of this almost universal tendency on the part of men to "shirk " responsibility, and to "shoulder" both the burthen and the blame upon God. Happy are we to believe that, though this tendency is still strong and prevalent, the increasing intelligence and better common-sense of the civilized nations of to-day are beginning to react against this old, old superstition, and by their reaction are drawing men into a moral consciousness, both of self-reliance and of self-responsibility. Men are beginning in these days to understand what is the meaning of that old maxim, "God helps him who helps himself"; they are beginning to understand that whether there be "God o'erhead" or not, there is a god of this earth, and that god is man himself,—so absolutely its god, that if he neglects its control, it will fly into chaos; if he neglects to use it wisely for his good, it will use him; and, using him, will play the tyrant, making him both its victim and its slave. In short, men are beginning to learn that there is a humanity as well as a "divinity" in all human events, and that the "rough-hewing" must be done by humanity, while the "shaping" may be left to the divinity.