CHAPTER IV.

Junction of the Arve and the Rhone.

THE junction of these two rivers, the Arve and the Rhone, is one of the pleasantest excursions in the neighborhood of Geneva. You go out of the gates of the city towards France, and you follow the course of the Rhone from country seat to country seat along its borders. The banks increase in height until they become craggy and precipitous, and from the overhanging cliffs you gaze down into the deep blue swift water at your feet, and you can at one view almost trace the river's course from where it issues from the city and the lake to the point immediately beneath you, where the brawling, furious, muddy Arve rushes into it. The Rhone is the biggest river, but the Arve is very pertinacious. The Rhone is majestic in its depth and volume, and as swift and graceful as an arrow in its flight; but the Arve is shallow and noisy, and makes a great sand-bank in the effort to come into the Rhone with as great space and pretension as possible. The Rhone is as clear and delicious an azure as the lake itself, almost as deep and bright and transparent a color as that of the heavens reflected in its bosom; but the Arve is as muddy as Acheron, and as cold as death. The Rhone comes from the crystal sleeping lake, the Arve from the restless grinding glaciers.

The Arve endeavors to rush into the Rhone almost at right angles, and to mingle its muddy, turbulent current with the crystal depths of the lake-river; but the Rhone refuses the mixture, and flies on by itself, so that the Arve is also compelled, though much mortified, to keep on its own side, being able to unite with the Rhone only in little eddies or ringlets, like the tresses of a fair-haired girl beside the curls of an Ethiopian. One hardly knows how the Rhone is able to conquer, but the

two rivers flow on without mingling, so that you have the cold mud on the one side, and the clear crystal on the other. From the commanding height, where you stand above the banks of the Rhone, you see with the utmost clearness the play, the sport, the coquetry, aversion and conflict of the waters, the hatred of amalgamation and annexation on the one side, and the desire for it on the other.

But you feel that the Rhone is clearly in the right, while the Arve is an impudent intruder. The Arve is the child of Night and Frost, while the Rhone is the daughter of the Day and of Sunshine. The Arve roars, discolored and angry, from its black ice-cavern, to the music of the Avalanche; the Rhone shoots, like a river of foaming light, from the quiet bosom of the lake, amid the busy hum of industry, to the song of the mountain breeze. The Arve strides sullenly like a beetle-browed villain; the Rhone dances like a mountain-maiden. Nature has forbid the banns between the two rivers, and all that the Arve can do is in vain, for his offers and his menaces are both rejected, and he has to pass on in cold and single blessedness.

Now, here is a curious symbol of many things; but I have thought that it shadows forth very fitly the forced union sometimes attempted between human philosophy and the word of God. Philosophy is meant to be the handmaiden, and not the partner, and wherever the marriage is attempted, all goes wrong. Human philosophy apart from revelation is almost mere mud. It has its origin in the debris of creation, amidst frozen glaciers, in the uncertainty of death and chaos, and when it would force its muddy guesses into competition and union with. the Divine Word, the celestial stream refuses the connection, and flows on in its original purity and independence. A man may stand on the banks of the water of life, and drink and fill his pitcher only from that side, and then he has the truth pure and fresh from heaven. Or he may go where the philosophy and the truth are coquetting and conflicting, and he may drink of both together, and fill his pitcher with both together, and then he has generally as much mud as clear water, though he often thinks he has drawn up the truth much clearer than he who drank only of the crystal stream. Or he may go clean on

the other side, and drink only of the scientific, metaphysic mud, of the cold stream of human guessings and rationalism; a melancholy sort of drinking, to which, however, men become so much attached, and get their taste thereby so completely perverted, that the mud seems a sweeter and more wholesome draught to them by far than the clear water.

There is another thing which these two streams, the Arve and the Rhone, at their junction, may symbolize, and that is the streams of Romanism and the gospel in Geneva and Sardinia. The stream of Romish superstitions, born at the foot of frozen glaciers in the caves of pagan antiquity, rolls on, furious and turbulent, striving to be acknowledged as the gospel, and usurping its place. But the gospel cannot unite with it, and flows on, undisturbed by it, a pure river of life. The people who drink of the stream of Romanism, and live on that side, are lean, poor, and ignorant. They love their own stream to desperation, muddy and gravelly as it is, and cannot endure the other; though sometimes a single drink at the other operates to. open their eyes and change their whole heart and life, insomuch that the authorities are afraid of it, and pass severe laws against using it, or circulating or selling it. If any of the priests get to tasting it, or become attached to it, and attempt to declare their preference, it is said that the others, if they can catch them, shut them up and send them to Rome, where they have a way of curing them of their appetite for pure water. Meantime the mud flows on, and the stream just now is evidently increasing and getting more turbulent. But the gospel stream flows on likewise, and will do so for ever.

CHAPTER V.

The Truth of Christ and its Defenders in Geneva.

GENEVA ought to be the cradle of the finest race of ministers of the gospel in the world. There is no place in the world, where all admirable influences of nature do so conspire to aid the influences of divine grace in building up a noble character, and giving firmness, independence, and an ardent love of truth. But how strikingly does the history of the Genevese church show that all natural and human advantages will prove worthless, when divine grace is suffered to die out of existence, and the truth ceases to be kept in love. The danger to Geneva at first was from the prevalence of Socinianism, which indeed has had its day, and has been "as the dry rot in the flooring and timbers" of the national church and republic. But now the crisis of danger is from the Resurrection of Romanism; the indifference of the national church, its want of love for and interest in the truth of the gospel, and the kingdom of the Redeemer, greatly increases this danger. The dependence of the National Church upon the State makes the crisis more difficult. Socinian error holds its place in Geneva mainly by the secular arm. Were it not that the National Church is salaried by the State, its pulpits would soon be occupied by men preaching the truth as it is in Jesus. And if the National Church were evangelical, there would be comparatively little to fear from the progress of Romanism. Romanism increases in Geneva, as it does in our own country, by emigration. Fifty years ago there was not a single Roman citizen in Geneva; now not less than twofifths of the population of the Canton are Romanists. At this rate, therefore, between the execution of their own plans and the indifference and carelessness of those who ought to be on their guard against them, they may, at no distant period, gain a ma

jority in the city, and so in the councils and government of the Republic; and if this should be once accomplished, farewell to the freedom of the Genevese, farewell to their long enjoyed religious privileges. Should this be once accomplished, Rome and the Jesuits may rule here even as they do in Sardinia; but such supremacy could not be gained without conflict and bloodshed.

The possibility of these things, and the gradual approach of them, do fill the minds of good men and lovers of their country with great alarm-and well they may. It would be a fearful day for Geneva, when Romanism should gain the ascendency in her councils. Meantime there is a knot of precious men, a circle of noble soldiers of Christ, gathering close around the standard of the cross, and doing all in their power to prepare for that conflict, which seems inevitable. There are no finer minds, nor better spirits, nor more resolute Christians, than in the circle of D'Aubigné, Gaussen, Malan, and others, who are lifting up the standard, while the enemy comes in like a flood. The Evange lical Theological Seminary is a strong citadel for Christ, a school of the utmost importance, both in its position and its influence.

Geneva has seen great revolutions, but has had great men to carry her through them. Near a thousand years ago the country was held as the entire possession of Ecclesiastical Sovereigns, temporal and spiritual in one; next came the reign of ducal despots, then the light of a religious reformation, then a republican and religious freedom, in which the world wondered at, and sometimes imitated the great sight of a Church without a bishop, and a State without a king; then came the fires of the French Revolution, next the gloom of infidelity and the coldness of a spiritual death; lastly, a simplicity of equal and representative citizenship, and a fresh, healthful, spiritual awakening, in the glow of which Geneva is again producing MEN for the world. God is causing the little republic to live not unto itself. Great voices come from it, the voices as of kingly spirits throned among the hills, striking deep responsive chords in the heart of other nations. And now from the bosom of the mountains, on the eve of a great new universal conflict between Rome and the Church of Christ, the watch-word and the battle-cry is given out