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 gosvel 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 Evangelical 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

through Europe, Christ and Spiritual liberty, Dependence upon Christ and his Truth!

It has been remarked, and probably without exaggeration, that no State so small ever filled such a space in the history of the world, or exercised an influence so great over other nations since the age of the Grecian Republics, as Geneva. All things considered, even those Republics give place to the little Swiss Canton; for the light of the Gospel of Christ has been the hiding and revealing of the power of Geneva. Here it pleased God to set a great fountain, fed by his own Word, at which the nations drank, and from which the water of life was carried far and wide amidst the rage of persecution. Here it pleased God to kindle a fire, at which great and good men of other lands lighted torches, and carried away the flame to kindle other fires, which are to burn till the earth itself kindles in the fires of the Great Judgment. John Knox came to Geneva, and carried this fire into Scotland. The Puritans of England caught it, and made it burn across the ocean, on the rock of Plymouth, over hill and valley, a purer, brighter flame than ever. And in later times, the children of this light have gone back with it to those mountain altars where it was first kindled, but where, meanwhile, it had well-nigh gone out, and there again it is beginning to blaze with a more heavenly glory, because both the altar and the fire are God's, not Cæsar's. We look with hope and confidence to the time when the whole Church of Geneva shall be no more a National Establishment, but Christ's Free Church.

The national part of it, the human, the Cæsar in it, has been evil from the beginning. The Church-and-State Republic has fallen into crimes and inconsistencies of despotism, of which neither Church nor State alone would have been guilty. The connection has produced a brood of evils, a family of serpents, inwardly consuming and self-destructive, as sooner or later it always does. A dreadful progeny

"For, when they list, into the womb

That bred them, they return, and howl and gnaw."

The history of Geneva is singular as containing within itself a demonstration that under every form both of Truth and Error,

the State and Church united are intolerant. The State oppresses the Church-the Church, in her turn, tempted by the State, oppresses those who differ from her, and so the work goes on. At first it was the State and Romanism-the fruit, intolerance; next, it was the State and Unitarianism-the fruit, intolerance; next, it was the State and Calvinism—the fruit, intolerance; in the Canton de Vaud, it is the State and democratic infidelity— the fruit, intolerance. The demonstration is such, that no man can resist its power. Inoculate the Church, so to speak, with the State, and the same plague invariably follows; no constitution, not the most heavenly, is proof against the virus.

John Knox, escaping from the Castle of St. Andrews in Scotland, and compelled to flee the kingdom for his life, found security in Geneva, because there his religion was the religion of the State. If it had not been, he would merely have gone out from one fire, for another fire to devour him. Servetus, escaping in like manner from a Roman Catholic prison in France, where he would otherwise have been burned in person, as he was in effigy, fled also to Geneva; but his religion not being the religion of the State, the Evangelical republic burned him. And thus the grand error of the Reformers in the union of Church and State occasioned what perhaps is the darkest crime that stains the annals of the Reformation. The burning of Servetus in Roman Catholic fires would have added but an imperceptible shade to the blackness of darkness in a system which invariably has been one of intolerance and cruelty. But the man was permitted by divine providence to escape, and come to Geneva, to be burned alive there, by a State allied to a system of Faith and Mercy, to show to all the world that even that system cannot be trusted with human power; that the State, in connection with the Church, though it be the purest Church in the world, will bring forth intolerance and murder. The union is adulterous, the progeny is sinful works, even though the mother be the embodied profes sion of Justification by Faith. God's mercy becomes changed into man's cruelty. So in the brightest spot of piety then on the face of the earth, amidst the out-shining glory of the great doctrine of the Gospel, Justification by Faith, God permitted the smoke and the cry of torture by fire to go up to heaven, to teach