solemn future, which renders duty so urgent and self-denial so easy-the public virtues languish, and the moral grandeur of that empire dies. It needs something of the gospel to produce a real patriot; it needs more of it to create a philanthropist ; and, amidst the trials of temper, the seductions of party, and the misconstructions of motive, it needs it all to give that patriot or philanthropist perseverance to the end. It needs a wide diffusion of the gospel to fill a Parliament with highminded statesmen, and a country with happy homes. And it will need its prevailing ascendancy to create peace among the nations, and secure the good-will of man to man.

The world has not yet exhibited the spectacle of an entire people evangelised; but there have been repeated instances where this vital element has told perceptibly on national character; and in the nobler tone of public acting, and higher pulse of popular feeling, might be recognised a people nearer God. In England, for example, there have been three evangelic eras. Thrice over have ignorance and apathy been startled into light and wonder; and thrice over has an influential minority of England's inhabitants felt anew all the goodness or grandeur of the ancient message. And it is instructive to remark, how at each successive awakening an impulse was given to the nation's worth which never afterwards faded entirely out of it. Partial as the influence was, and few as they were who shared it, an element was infused into the popular mind, which, like salt imbibed from successive strata by the mineral spring, was never afterwards lost, but, now that ages have elapsed, may still be detected in the national character. The Reformers preached the gospel, and the common people heard it gladly. Beneath the doublet of the thrifty trader, and the home-spun jerkin of the stalwart yeoman, was felt a throb of new nobility. A monarch and her ministers remotely graced the pageant; but it was to the stout music of old Latimer that the English Reformation marched, and it was

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a freer soil which iron heels and wooden sandals trode as they clashed and clattered to the burly tune. This gospel was the birth of British liberty. Its right of private judgment revealed to many not only how precious is every soul, but how important is every citizen; and as much as it deepened the sense of religious responsibility, it awakened the desire of personal freedom. It took the Saxon churl, and taught him the softer manners and statelier spirit of his conqueror. It "mended the mettle of his blood," and gave him something better than Norman chivalry. Quickening with its energy the endurance of the Saxon, and tempering with its amenity the fierceness of the Gaul, it completed the amalgamating process of many ages, and produced the Englishman. Then came the Puritan awakening-in its commencement the most august revival which Europe ever witnessed. Stately, forceful, and thrilling, the gospel echoed over the land, and a penitent nation bowed before it. Long-fasting, much-reading, deep-thinking-theology became the literature, the meditation, and the talk of the people, and religion the business of the realm. With the fear of God deep in their spirits, and with hearts soft and plastic to His Word, it was amazing how promptly the sternest requirements were conceded, and the most stringent reforms carried through. Never, in England, were the things temporal so trivial, and the things eternal so evident, as when Baxter, all but disembodied, and Howe, wrapt in bright and present communion, and Allein, radiant with the joy which shone through him, lived before their people the wonders they proclaimed. And never among the people was there more of that piety which looks inward and upward-which longs for a healthy soul, and courts that supernal influence which alone can make it prosper; never more of that piety which in every action consults, and in every incident recognises Him in whom we move and have our being. Perhaps its long regards and lofty aspirations, the absence of

short distances in its field of view, and that one all-absorbing future which had riveted its eye, gave it an aspect too solemn and ascetic-the look of a pilgrim leaving earth rather than an heir of glory going home. Still it was England's most erect and earnest century; and none who believe that worship is the highest work of man can doubt that, of all its predecessors, this Puritan generation lived to the grandest purpose. Pity that, in so many ears, the din of Naseby and Marston Moor has drowned the most sublime of national melodies-the joyful noise of a people praising God. The religion of the period was full of reverence and adoration and self-denial. Connecting common life and its meanest incidents with the unscen realities, and advancing to battle in the strength of psalms, its worthies were more awful than heroes. They were incorruptible and irresistible men, who lived under the all-seeing Eye and leaned on the omnipotent Arm, and who found in God's nearness a consecration for every spot, and a solemn uplifting influence for every moment. Then, after a dreary intervalafter the boisterous irreligion of the later Stuarts and the cold flippancy which so long outlived them, came the Evangelical Revival of last century. Full-hearted and affectionate, sometimes brisk and vivacious, but always downright and practical, the gospel of that era spoke to the good sense and warm feelings of the nation. In the electric fire of Whitefield, the rapid fervour of Romaine, the caustic force of Berridge and Rowland Hill, and the fatherly wisdom of John Newton and Henry Venn-in those modern evangelists there was not the momentum whose long range demolished error's strongest holds, nor the massive doctrine which built up the tall and stately pile of Puritan theology. That day was past, and that work was accomplished. For the Christian warfare these solemn ironsides and deep-sounding culverines were no longer wanted; but, equipped with the brief logic and telling earnestness of their eager sincerity, the lighter troops of this modern campaign scoured

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the country, and brought in, company by company, the happy captives whom they intercepted amongst the "highways and hedges." The great glory of this recent gospel is the sacred element which it has infused into an age which, but for it, would be wholly secular, and the sustaining element which it has inspired into a community which, but for its blessed hope, would be toil-worn and life-weary. No generation ever drudged so hard as this, and yet none has worked more cheerily. None was ever so tempted to churlish selfishness, and yet none has been more bountiful, and given such strength and wealth away. And none was ever more beset with facilities for vice and folly, and yet none has more abounded in disinterested characters and loving families full of loveliness. Other ages may surpass it in the lone grandeur and awful goodness of some pre-eminent name; but in the diffusion of piety, in the simplicity and gladness of domestic religion, and in the many forms of intelligent and practical Christianity, it surpasses them all. With "GOD IS LOVE" for the sunny legend in its open sky, and with Bible-texts efflorescing in every-day duties round its agile feet, this latter gospel has left along its path countless specimens of talents consecrated and industry evangelised. Nor till all missionaries like Henry Martyn and John Williams, and all sweet singers like Kirk White and Jane Taylor, and all friends of humanity like Fowell Buxton and Elizabeth Fry, have passed away; nor till the Bible, Tract and Missionary Societies have done their work, will it be known how benign and heart-expanding was that gospel largess which a hundred years ago began to bless the land. Three evangelic eras have come, and two of them are gone. The first of these made its subjects Bible-readers, brave and free. The second made them Bible-singers, full of its deep harmonies and high devotion, and from earthly toil and tumult hid in the pavilion of its stately song. The third made them Bible-doers, kind, liberal, and active, and social withal

mutually attractive and mutually confiding-loving to work and worship together. The first found the English commoner little better than a serf; but it gave him a patent of nobility, and converted his cottage into a castle. The second period saw that castle exalted into a sanctuary, and heard it re-echo with worship rapt and high. And the third blended all the rest and added one thing more: in the cottage, castle, sanctuary, it planted a pious family living for either world-diligent but tranquil, manly but devout, self-contained but not exclusive, retired but redundant with truest life; and in this creation it produced the most blessed thing on earth-a happy Christian English Home.

Never has century risen on Christian England so void of soul and faith as that which opened with Queen Anne, and which reached its misty noon beneath the second George-a dewless night succeeded by a sunless dawn. There was no freshness in the past, and no promise in the future. The memory of Baxter and Ussher possessed no spell, and calls to revival or reform fell dead on the echo. Confessions of sin, and national covenants, and all projects towards a public and visible acknowledgment of the Most High, were voted obsolete, and the golden dreams of Westminster worthies only lived in Hudibras. The Puritans were buried and the Methodists were not born. The philosopher of the age was Bolingbroke, the moralist was Steele, the minstrel was Pope, and the preacher was Atterbury. The world had the idle discontented look of the morning after some mad holiday; and, like rocket-sticks and the singed paper from last night's squibs, the spent jokes of Charles and Rochester lay all about, and people yawned to look at them. It was a listless, joyless morning, when the slip-shod citizens were cross, and even the merry-Andrew joined the incurious public, and, forbearing his ineffectual pranks, sat down to wonder at the vacancy. The reign of buffoonery was past, but the reign of faith and earnestness had not commenced.