providing the sick with such religious instruction and consolation as will, in his opinion, be most useful to them.

"We should say the same of government. Government is not an institution for the propagation of religion, any more than St. George's hospital is an institution for the propagation of religion. And the most absurd and pernicious consequences would follow, if government should pursue, as its primary end, that which can never be more than its secondary end; though intrinsically more important than its primary end. But a government which considers the religious instruction of the people as a secondary end, and follows out that principle faithfully, will, we think, be likely to do much good, and little harm." - pp. 275, 276.

[G]. Part I. Chap. iii. § 3. p. 166.

"Theirs" (the New-Testament-writers) " is a history of miracles; the historical picture of the scene in which the Spirit of God was poured on all flesh, and signs and wonders, visions and dreams, were part of the essentials of their narratives. How is all this related? With the same absence of high coloring and extravagant description with which other writers notice the ordinary occurrences of the world: partly no doubt for the like reason, that they were really familiar with miracles, partly too because to them these miracles had long been contemplated only as subservient measures to the great object and business of their ministry—the salvation of men's souls. On the subject of miracles, the means to this great end, they speak in calm, unimpassioned language; on man's sins, change of heart, on hope, faith, and charity; on

the objects in short to be effected, they exhaust all their feelings and eloquence. Their history, from the narrative of our Lord's persecutions to those of Paul, the abomination of the Jews, embraces scenes and personages which claim from the ordinary reader a continual effusion of sorrow or wonder, or indignation. In writers who were friends of the parties, and adherents of the cause for which they did and suffered so great things, the absence of it is on ordinary grounds inconceivable. Look at the account even of the crucifixion. Not one burst of indignation or sympathy mixes with the details of the narrative. Stephen the first martyr is stoned, and the account comprised in these few words, They stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.' The varied and immense labors and sufferings of the apostles are slightly hinted at, or else related in this dry and frigid way. And when they had called the apostles, and beaten them, they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go.'* 'And there came thither certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium, who persuaded the people, and, having stoned Paul, drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead. Howbeit, as the disciples stood round about him, he rose up, and came into the city: and the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe.'t Had these authors no feeling? Had their mode of life bereaved them of the common sympathies and sensibilities of human nature? Read such passages as St. Paul's parting address to the elders of Miletus; the same apostle's recommendation of the offending member of the Corinthian Church to pardon; and, more than all, the occasional bursts of conflicting feeling, in which anxious apprehension for the faith and good behavior of his

*Acts v. 40, 41.

+ Acts xiv. 19, 20.

converts is mixed with the pleasing recollection of their conversion, and the minister and the man are alike strongly displayed; and it will be plain that Christianity exercised no benumbing influence on the heart. No: their whole soul was occupied with one object, which predominated over all the means subservient to it, however great those means might be. In the storm, the pilot's eye is fixed on the headland which must be weathered; in the crisis of victory or defeat, the general sees only the position to be carried; and the dead and the instruments of death fall around him unheeded. On the salvation of men, on this one point, the witnesses of Christ and the ministers of his Spirit, expended all their energy of feeling and expression. All that occurred - mischance, persecution, and miracle - were glanced at by the eye of faith only in subserviency to this mark of the prize of their high calling, as working together for good, and all exempt from the associations which would attach to such events and scenes, when contemplated by themselves, and with the short-sightedness of uninspired men. Miracles were not to them objects of wonder, nor mischances a subject of sorrow and lamentation. They did all, they suffered all, to the glory of God."- London Review, No. ii. p. 345.

[H]. Part II. Chap. ii. § 2. p. 229.

"First, as to proximity of time, every one knows, that any melancholy incident is the more affecting that it is recent. Hence it is become common with story-tellers, that they may make a deeper impression on the hearers, to introduce remarks like these: that the tale which they relate is not old,

that it happened but lately, or in their own time, or that they are yet living who had a part in it, or were witnesses of it. Proximity of time regards not only the past, but the future. An event that will probably soon happen, hath greater influence upon us than what will probably happen a long time hence. I have hitherto proceeded on the hypothesis, that the orator rouses the passions of his hearers, by exhibiting some past transaction; but we must acknowledge that passion may be as strongly excited by his reasonings concerning an event yet to come. In the judiciary orations there is greater scope for the former in the deliberative, for the latter; though in each kind there may occasionally be scope for both. All the seven circumstances enumerated are applicable, and have equal weight, whether they relate to the future or to the past. The only exception that I know of is, that probability and plausibility are scarcely distinguishable, when used in reference to events in futurity. As in these there is no access for testimony, what constitutes the principal distinction is quite excluded. In comparing the influence of the past upon our minds with that of the future, it appears in general, that if the evidence, the importance, and the distance of the objects, be equal, the latter will be greater than the former. The reason, I imagine, is, we are conscious, that as every moment, the future, which seems placed before us, is approaching; and the past, which lies, as it were, behind, is retiring; our nearness or relation to the one constantly increaseth as the other decreaseth. There is something like attraction in the first case, and repulsion in the second. This tends to interest us more in the future than in the past, and consequently to the present view aggrandizes the one, and diminishes the other.

"What, nevertheless, gives the past a very considerable

advantage, is its being generally susceptible of much stronger evidence than the future. The lights of the mind are, if I may so express myself, in an opposite situation to the lights of the body. These discover clearly the prospect lying before us, but not the ground we have already passed. By the memory, on the contrary, that great luminary of the mind, things past are exhibited in retrospect; we have no correspondent faculty to irradiate the future; and even in matters which fall not within the reach of our memory, past events are often clearly discoverable by testimony, and by effects at present existing; whereas we have nothing equivalent to found our arguments upon in reasoning about things to come. It is for this reason that the future is considered as the province of conjecture and uncertainty.

"Local Connection, the fifth in the above enumeration, hath a more powerful effect than proximity of time. Duration and space are two things (call them entities, or attributes, or what you please) in some respects the most like, and in some respects the most unlike, to one another. They resemble in continuity, divisibility, infinity, in their being deemed essential to the existence of other things, and in the doubts that have been raised as to their having a real or independent existence of their own. They differ in that the latter is permanent, whereas the very essence of the former consisteth in transitoriness; the parts of the one are all successive, of the other all coexistent. The greater portions of time are all distinguished by the memorable things which have been transacted in them, the smaller portions by the revolutions of the heavenly bodies: the portions of place, great and small, (for we do not here consider the regions of the fixed stars and planets,) are distinguished by the various. tracts of land and water, into which the earth is divided and