they differed amongst themselves on any points, there was but one unfailing remedy for their differences-his presence among them. When he appeared, one word from him settled every dispute and caused the cessation of all strife.

Would that there was to be found amongst Christians somewhat of a similar remedy for those differences of opinion which too often cause alienation of heart, if they do not lead further to actual separation of communion. The thought that "the coming of the Lord draweth nigh" might well induce a spirit of forbearance in our dealings with our brethren, knowing that His presence will settle every controversy and silence every dispute. How small, then, will many matters seem which here have divided Christians, because exaggerated far beyond their due proportion of importance. How different will many an ecclesiastical dispute appear when seen in the light of His searching question: "What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way?" and when silent through shame it will be brought to light, as it was at Capernaum "in the house" (Mark ix. 33), that "by the way they had disputed among themselves who should be the greatest."

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The Archbishop of York has, in his annual letter to his clergy, issued through The Diocesan Magazine, written some wise words as to "our unhappy divisions," having respect, however, almost exclusively to differences of opinion amongst those who belong to the National Church. But his words may be usefully applied to the differences which prevail between members of the Church of Christ of whatever denomination, who hold the Head. "There is no room for disquietude because such differences exist. No age of the Church, not even in Apostolic times, was wholly free for them. They have ever existed, and have been more or less manifested, save when the iron heel of an ecclesiastical despotism has crushed out every independent exercise and expression of spiritual thought. Who is there among us who, for the sake of getting rid of our differences and even our dissensions, would wish to see our free and happy England, with all its faults and all its shortcomings, reduces to the spiritual or unspiritual condition of Italy or Spain, and would be content to dwell among a people with rosaries in their hands and scepticism in their hearts ? "

The Archbishop goes on to express his regret that the year that is past has been so fruitful in public discussion of sacred subjects even in the secular press, alluding, no doubt, to the controversy which was taken up in The Times and other papers on the subject of Evening Communions. But his Grace has forgotten that it was his own disapproval of Evening Communion, reported in the secular press, which led to the controversy of which he complains; and moreover, however little the secular press may be suited for the discussion of such subjects, it was the publicity thereby given to his apparent intention to interfere with a liberty formerly conceded to the clergy in such matters, which led to the many protests raised against his expressed hostility to the practice of Evening Communion. There seems, indeed, every reason to believe that one good result of the public discussion of the subject was the Archbishop's subsequent disavowal of any intention on his part to interfere with the liberty which the clergy possess to act as they think right in this matter.

Not the Church of England alone, but the Church of Christ in general, has suffered a severe loss in the death of Bishop Hill on his way to his episcopal superintendence of mission work in Western Equatorial Africa. The sad news, also, of the death of his wife along with him adds to the universal regret which will be felt wherever the Bishop was known and loved. For details we must wait for some weeks, the only additional fact which has followed the announcement of their death being that of the cause telegraphed in one word-" fever." It was greatly hoped that his appointment to the Niger Bishopric would have brought much blessing in its train, reconciling elements which in that region have hitherto been found difficult to unite, and bringing not only mature experience to bear upon mission work, but zeal and devotedness of no common order, to open up an interesting and promising field of work in the great central region of Africa. But we can but bow our heads in patient submission to God's will, which has in this matter purposed otherwise.

It is sad to read of a United Communion Service leading to an Episcopal reproof of a clergyman who was large-hearted enough to give an address at it. The Rev. H. Lindsey Young, vicar of St. John's, Portsea, was announced to give an address at such a service to be held in a Presbyterian Church, and was in consequence warned by the Bishop of Winchester that "the giving of this address will involve an infraction of the Church law." Mr. Young, however, attended the service and wrote to the Bishop. "It is not my intention to commit an illegal act by any proceeding of mine, but it is sad to find that your Lordship can so promptly interfere with my Christian liberty, and that you have not merely allowed the mass for the dead to be set up in this town, but you have also publicly patronised the promoters of this deadly delusion, which, in common with myself, you have sworn to be blasphemous fable and dangerous deceit.'" It is impossible not to sympathise with such a protest as this, whatever may be the Church law as to a clergyman giving an address at a United Communion Service.

The amalgamation of the Irish Branch of the Evangelical Alliance with the Dublin United Services Committee, to which reference was made in our last number, has called forth a strong protest from the Belfast Committee as well as from other influential members of the Alliance in Ireland on the ground that however excellent Home Mission work may be, it does not lie within the scope of the Evangelical Alliance, and cannot, therefore, be carried out by funds raised for the proper purposes of the Alliance. It may be further mentioned that the London Council, as representing the British Organization, were not in any way consulted about the step, but were only informed of it after the amalgamation had taken place. We hope that wise counsels will prevail with our Dublin brethren, and that there may be no breach in the harmony either of spirit or of action which should exist between the Irish Branch and the Parent Society. We hope this all the more, as we learn that the Dublin Council themselves were by no means unanimous in their adoption of this amalgamation.

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT OF TRUE RELIGION.

VIII. THE CHRISTIAN THEOCRACY.

By the side of the great principle of power and right on the part of the civil magistracy, the New Testament develops another great principle,-namely, that Jesus Christ is Himself a King, and that all true Christians are His subjects. In the same pretorium, and in the face of the same Roman authority, whose power He declared to be from above, even while it sat in judgment upon Him, our Saviour declares also that He Himself is a King. But how are such things compatible,-the acknowledged dominion of the Romans on the one hand, and our Saviour's monarchy on the other? This He Himself immediately explains when He adds, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world then would my servants fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now is my kingdom not from hence." Such was His answer. But what is contained in it? Is Jesus Christ merely a nominal King, or a King in Heaven only, with no rights, no realm, no subjects on earth? If His servants are not to fight for Him, what means has He for securing His authority, attaching His subjects, and subduing His enemies? These points we learn from the remark which He subjoins to the answer which He gave to Pilate. Having answered that He was a King, He immediately adds: "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice." His rights, then, are those which belong to a witness of the truth," His realm is " the truth," his subjects are "those who are of the truth," His government is " His voice," that is, the power of the truth.

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Now co-ordinating these two facts, both of which thus appear to be integrant principles of the Gospel, first, that all powers that be are ordinances of God; and, secondly, that Christ is a King Whom all ought to obey, Whom all who are of the truth do obey, and Who rules by the power of the truth, we can easily discover the form of the Christian theocracy. Thus, on the one hand, we see mere power ever flowing down from God, and always investing itself for the time being in the actual government. Nor are we to wonder if the outgoings of this power be sometimes directed to wicked designs, though its source be divine; for God gives only the power, not the form. Nor, even in the case of a wicked magistrate, could his power be prevented from coming from God but by miracle; for it is an universal law that all power is of God. But while, on the one hand, we have thus the power descending and manifesting itself in the government: we have, on the other hand, ascending and manifesting itself in the conscience, the voice of Christ witnessing for the truth, and for its own authority in all and over all. These, then, are the elements of the Christian theocracy-a divine power coming down through the few who govern, and bearing on the many, and a divine voice rising up through the many, and directed to the rulers. And now what is the ultimate form of such a commonwealth?

From the very nature of these elements, it follows that the voice must always eventually give the form to the power. In all cases whatever, it ever is and must be so. Even in an autocrat or absolute prince, it is still a voice that gives a form to his power. It is his own voice, indeed. Still it is a voice, and so it ever must be in all cases whatever. For power is not a thing which has a form of itself; it is essentially formless and indefinite; it is a spirit which can manifest itself only by embodying itself in something else-in some form, in short. A voice on the other hand, is always a definite thing. It is always some particular truth— always some form. This distinction is, indeed, pointed at by revelation itself, when the power is said to be of God, the voice to be of Christ. For God is the Formless, the Infinite, the Universal; Christ is the Form-possessing, the Definite, the Individual.

We see, then, how a Christian theocracy, or a Government in harmony with the spirit of the Gospel, may be constituted. From the Christian revelation respecting power, it follows that Christian people must ever submit to the powers that be. And if these powers already act according to the forms which the voice of Christ expresses, all is right. The Christian theocracy in that state is already fully

developed; and there ought to be on the part of the people not only obedience but silence, or if a voice at all, then the voice of assistance and of mutual gratulation only. But if the "powers that be" bear upon the people in forms which are not in harmony with the voice of Christ-if they are oppressive-then all who hear that voice are called upon as Christians to utter it and maintain it until the time come when the many are convinced by their witnessing, and the Government conforms to what is right, which every Government must do sooner or later, else a power will arise in some other quarter, which Christians will feel to be from God, and will join and obey.

We see, then, wherein the Christian or later theocracy differs from the Jewish or former one. In the former, God gave directly the form as well as the power. I gave the very laws and ordinances, as well as the magistrates. In the later, he gives only the magistrate. He calls upon Christians to give the form, to frame the laws and institutions, the voice of Christ being given for guidance. And in this change are we called upon to admire the deep insight which it displays beyond what immediately appears. For under the old theocracy, where the form was given as well as the power, Christianity never could have become an universal religion, at least not till there was an outward uniformity over all the human family. Society could never have advanced in civilisation under it. In fact the Jewish theocracy was designed chiefly for fixing and preventing. It was also intended for one people exclusively. But the theocracy described as Christian is, as it needs to be, capable of universal application, and admits of every variety of form. It is at once beautifully calculated to develop human nature and civilisation by that exercise of reason and conscience, which it calls for; and to adapt itself to every successive change which society undergoes, as it advances in the scale of intellectual development and moral excellence.

It does not argue any defect in the Jewish economy, that it should not have answered when applied to societies and spheres of action for which it was never designed. It only argues man's imperfection, that he should have ever thought of so applying it. How illogical to argue that, because there was a Moses in Israel, therefore there ought to be a Pope in Christendom. If, indeed, the Pope could accredit his pretensions as Moses did his authority by palpable miracles seen and believed and felt by all, then whatever the reasons and semblances to the contrary, we should be obliged to believe that the scheme of the old theocracy subsisted still, and should feel called upon to look up to the Pope for law in all things, as the Israelites did to Moses. But while the attempts of the Court of Rome to get up miracles, show its conviction of their necessity, the actual want of genuine miracles, destroys altogether the analogy between the papacy and the theocracy, and leaves the Pope's pretensions wholly unaccredited. If they be just and warrantable it can only be because the voice of Christ decides in their favour; for that is the only standard of appeal as to any form of government under the Christian dispensation. But who that listens to the voice of Christ, and to that voice exclusively, believes in the Pope?

The theocracy, after the purely Christian model, is what every Christian ought to strive for. What this model is, I have endeavoured, in the preceding remarks, to delineate, and beg here to recapitulate in a single sentence. God gives the power; the people (guided by the voice of Christ) must give the form-not, however, by rebelling against existing forms, but by witnessing for such as are more just, more holy-the State consulting for what is just, the Church for what is holy.

But if this principle be true, there ought, in strict propriety, to be as many forms of Christian government as there are of Christian society. Pervading all there ever ought, indeed, to be an unity of spirit, because the voice of Christ is one, and the general principles of reason and conscience are everywhere the same; but this unity of spirit must be invested in as many varieties as there are peoples in different states of civilisation, else all cannot be equally well suited. In order to this, the just and the holy, the State and the Church, must be formed into varied appliances. An uniformity over all in ecclesiastical arrangements, then, can only be best when society shall have become uniform in other respects likewise.

We see, then, what a fine display of catholicity true religion exhibited, in

reference to civil government, at the advent of Christ and the commencement of the Gospel era. The people of God were no longer reckoned children, to be regulated and guided, in every particular of conduct, by a positive precept. The age of the manhood of the Church is now arrived. The law is no longer announced in so many set phrases addressed to the outward ear. The law written on the heart-reason and conscience, Scripture and grace, co-operating and mutually assisting-must now develop the laws and institutions of the Christian era. And thus man, in following Jesus in the regeneration, and under Him resuming the image of God, is not only "renewed in the inner man to righteousness and true holiness," but is even likened to God in this, that each Christian man, in the little society of which he is a member, is called upon to be a little Providence within his own sphere, to discover his special gifts, and to exercise them for the enlightenment and well-being of the circle through which his influence extends. Plainly, therefore, by the advent of the Messiah, humanity was greatly exalted in all that relates to society and the economy of this world.

Foreign Intelligence.

FRANCE.

(From our own Correspondent.)

PARIS, January 16, 1894. Nor the wild, mad hurricane of a hundred years ago, but something deeper, something below the crust of society, undermining stealthily, and every now and then blazing forth in some hideous form, and, repressed for the time, amassing strength for the next outrage. A hundred years of human experiments. Failure is written on them all, and deep disappointment reigns in the various domains. How could it be otherwise when God has been left out? The peril is extreme. Men are no longer illiterate, schooling is obligatory; but what do they read? Abominations fertile in political madness and in social ruin. A lower stratum and yet a lower is noticed in the would-be political and social reformers, till they come down to the old theories of wholesale murder, and to effect their purpose make a cat's-paw of the first willing criminal who has nothing to lose. Such is the down-grade movement which finished the year 1893 with an explosive bomb in the Chamber of Representatives, and began 1894 by the Government response of a silent but widespread raid on Anarchists, known or suspected. A man once said that " were he accused of carrying off the towers of Notre Dame, he would immediately take flight." Is it for a similar reason or for something less imaginative, that a member of the Reclus family, whose name was on the list of arrest, has fled? Or did he really compound the explosive that was to have effected a French "gunpowder plot?" That men issued from so austere and respected Protestant parentage should have turned away from God and taken refuge in anarchism, hewing scientifically, for themselves and for their thousands of readers, broken cisterns, which can slake no thirst but increase it violently, is a source of much sorrow. The one who is accused is Paul, nephew to the geographer.

It is no new thing, though it is perhaps more striking in the form it takes, for the world in France to give credit to Protestant morals for being on a far higher platform than others. Years ago, "honest as a Protestant" was a proverbial saying in many parts, while Protestant and Puritan were synonymous in the mouths of the light-minded scorners. In the present day of more open and out-spoken vice the outcry is louder, and its natural effect is to attract towards Protestantism many men of superior worth, education and mind, to make common cause against the desperate invasion of open immorality. Many families of Roman Catholic origin bring their children, on this account, under Protestant influence; and an action in common is tacitly entered upon, irrespective of creed or no creed, by thinking men of the upper strata of Parisian society, to further and promote Sunday rest from work, to