slave trade, and willingly paid ten millions of that every money, fetter might be broken and the oppressed go free? Though there is too little care for the temporal benefit of men, is it not also a fact that every benevolent enterprise of the present day has Christians for its chief originators, and derives from the Church its principal support? Though many, in professing zeal for religion have sought only their own worldly ends, are there not also many, whose lives are one consistent course of self-sacrifice for the good of others? Might not such names as Howard, and Wilberforce, and Fry, and Gurney be multiplied to a prodigious extent from among those whose means have been inferior, but whose labours have not been less eminent though their record has only been on high? Would not such persons confess that the motives which impelled them in their career of philanthropic toil were drawn from their Christianity, and where are the rival candidates for the crown of benevolence, which any philosophical or social school can furnish? If, as you say, religion has often

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been employed for the purpose of keeping down the great masses of men, we might tell you of multitudes in the lowest grades of life to whom it has imparted a moral dignity which no earthly sceptre could bestow, who while engaged in menial offices feel that they are members of a "royal priesthood," and engaged in the immediate service of the King of kings, whose humblest hovels are anti-chambers of heaven, who hold conscious and habitual intercourse with God himself, who feel the universe their home, who know that "all things are theirs," and esteem the Christianity which has given them such wealth and dignity and joy, a possession which, poor and despised as they may be among men, they would not surrender for all the riches and dignities the world could confer upon them. And though the dissensions among Christians are manifold, yet we might tell you that beneath those external differences which so much attract your notice, there is a true, spiritual unity, binding together all sincere members of the universal church, which takes no

notice of rank, or country, or condition, which recognises a brother in the humblest menial and the outcast beggar and the despised negro, which without unfitting any for the stations they occupy, and without interfering with social distinctions, makes the peer rejoice to feel on a level with the peasant, and the Englishman to grasp the hand of the Hottentot or Chinaman, feeling that whatever may divide them, their mutual love to Christ is a stronger bond uniting them, and that they are fellow members of that household of faith, of which He is elder Brother and the Head.

All this and much more we might urge, but we forbear. Let it be granted that all you say is true,-that the Christian church is corrupt in every part, that the principles it promulgates, the spirit it exhibits, the effects it produces, are not such as should commend it to your approval. We saylook at "THE MAN CHRIST JESUS." We ask you to believe not in this creed or in that, not in one particular version of Christianity, not in the church, our own

or any other, but we do with all earnestness say, believe in Christ. All churches are in some degree corrupt, for though some must be nearer to the truth than others, human infirmities will develope themselves in all associations of fallible men. Confessions of faith, and statements of doctrine, are liable to error, for however near the light they are but our reflections of it. Look away then from what is so defective, where truth itself is often deformed by exaggeration in its details and is always more or less mixed up with what is false. Cease to criticise ourselves, we are too conscious of imperfection, but examine with the most searching scrutiny Him to whom we point as the founder of that practicable, safe, and permanent, because Divine Socialism, which alone can drive away selfishness and oppression from the earth, and make all men brothers,-Behold "THE MAN CHRIST JESUS!"

See him who "thought it no robbery to be equal with God," dignifying our humanity by assuming it, and rendering poverty, toil,

and sorrow sacred, by taking part of the same.' Contemplate our Divine Hero fighting the great battle of the human soul, taming the wild beasts of appetite, strangling the serpents of sinful suggestion, rolling back the tide of moral corruption, himself untainted by the defilement he came to remove, and, as the victorious champion of the noblest Freedom, offering to liberate all who are spiritually enslaved! Meditate on the completeness of a character in which no virtue owes its lustre to surrounding blemishes, but which like his garment, is woven without seam throughout.' There is no sternness in his purity, and no fanaticism in his piety; his humility never sinks to meanness, his dignity is never deformed by pride; he is courageous without rashness, tender without weakness, generous without ostentation, and zealous without display. Prosecuting the noblest enterprise of which this world has ever been the theatre, he was never so absorbed in his own majestic toils or excessive grief, as to be unmindful of the mean affairs and inferior woes of those

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