stewards of the most high God, ye are robbing him, and justifying your fraud. You must change your opinions, feelings and practice. Then the blessing will come. Heaven's windows shall be opened. There is a glorious river of blessing on the other side; but it cannot get through. The curse has closed the flood-gates. Repentance and obedience will open them. That is the design of this day. Let it be the beginning of changes in us, and it will be the begin. ning of changes in God's dealings with us.

VIII.

CHRISTIAN UNION.

BY REV. STEPHEN H. TYNG, D.D.,

RECTOR OF ST. GEORGE'S (EPISCOPAL) CHURCH, NEW YORK.

"Whereas there is among you envying, strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?"-1 COR. iii. 3.

THERE are many very important principles of truth laid down in this divine testimony, which deserve our most serious consideration. The fundamental principle evidently is, that unity is a mark of true religion;-and that unity in true religion is the work of God, the mark of God's people, and the proper object of pursuit, for those who would honor him and build up his spiritual Church. On the other hand, divisions among the professed supporters of the Gospel are represented as carnal in their origin and influence, and conformed only to the will and habits of men, in the course to which they lead. It is unity in religion, of which the Apostle speaks, other subjects being wholly excluded from the consideration. And it is unity especially, in the religion of the Gospel, other shapes and forms of religion being equally shut out of view. This religious unity among men, is the end, to which the real operation of the Gospel tends. And wherever the Gospel rules alone, unmolested and unperverted by earthly influence, and the corrupting plans of men, the actual result of its operation, is this unity of which the Apostle speaks. Wherever there are seen and found, divisions in opposition to this Christian unity, and envying and strife attending upon these divisions, and arising out of them, they are, and they are to be considered, the evidence of the interference of another power, entirely diverse from that of the Gospel, and operating in direct opposition to it. If among any bodies of professed Christians, or within any such body separately considered, there be divisions, envying and strife, we are therefore authorized to say of them, "they are carnal, and walk as men."

The Saviour's purpose and prayer for his disciples was, that they might be one. One, in the strictest and most entire sense, in which intelligent and independent beings could be united;-" as thou Father in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.' That his real disciples are therefore one, and must always be one,

in the sense to which his mind was directed in this prayer, cannot be doubted, without questioning his ability to accomplish the result for which he prayed, and thus unsettling the whole stability and prospect of the Gospel and the Church of God. That his Gospel is really adapted and competent in the ministration of the Holy Spirit, to produce this projected unity, can no more be questioned, without denying the Saviour's ability to frame an instrument, competent and adapted to attain the end which he desired and proposed. But what is the testimony of facts in this case? Has this Gospel ever produced among men, anything which may be considered as the unity here specified? Is there such an unity within our reach, as a visible and practicable object of pursuit? These are questions involving much that is of great practical consequence to us. As such, I would consider them.

I. What is this unity in religion to which our text refers, and the opposites to which it so severely reproves ?

It is most evidently, not a mere intellectual unity, an agreement, however perfect, in every view of religious doctrine; that is, an entire uniformity of religious sentiment. Such an unity as this, is not possible among unequal minds. Unless every single mind is supposed to have attained an entire, and an equally perfect view of religious truth, it is impossible to imagine an entire uniformity of religious sentiments pervading them. Every step in the progress of spiritual study and acquirement opens, not only new truths to view, but also, which is a fact of equal consequence, new relations of actual truths to each other. There is an intellectual perspective, as well as a physical one; in the opening of which, as the mind proceeds on its journey in science, the whole landscape continually changes; distances, proportions, relations successively come forth to view; past impressions are relinquished, and new ones are received; judgments formed upon partial consideration are renounced, and general convictions including and modifying them in every variety of shape are formed. There are involved in the very progress of the mind in the study of the Gospel, new conceptions of truth, and varying conceptions of the truth every day.

"Light after light, well used, they shall attain."

Even the angels above cannot be said to agree in a perfect intellectual unity. They are ever studying, learning, mutually imparting, and mutually acquiring. They are of necessity therefore, changing their conclusions, and their views of truth, the partial for general, and the superficial for deeper, at every step. If this were not so, learning and study would be idle, and without an object. It cannot be said of any inferior minds, unless we suppose them to be perfectly equal in their powers, and in the progress of their attainments, that they can thus perfectly agree. While anything re

mains to be learned, new conclusions, perhaps very different conclusions, are still to be formed and to be expressed. An omniscient mind alone can understand all truth. "The unity required in the Church," says Bishop Stillingfleet, "is not an unity of judgment and apprehension among the members of it, which though it be their duty to endeavor after, yet it is no further attainable by man's endeavors, than Adamic perfection is. And unio Christianorum in this sense, is one of the jewels belonging to the crown of heaven."

This intellectual equality, without which there can be no intellectual uniformity, would not be desiruble, even if it were possible. Its necessary result would be a tame and uninteresting identity of minds, constituting the whole race in fact, but a single individual. It would destroy the chief beauty of the intelligent world; breaking up that whole variety of construction and display, which in minds as in matter, forms a yet more glorious harmony, from the very diversity in which its individuals shine. It would close that opened heavenly way which now directs

"Our knowledge, and the scale of nature sets

From centre to circumference, whereon

In contemplation of created things
By steps we may ascend to God."

As it annihilated the beauty, so would it overturn much of the mutual benevolence of intelligent beings. It would constitute an entire independence of minds upon each other; making all to know as much as any; calling into being an indifference to others, and a selfish satisfaction and complacency, for which no uniformity of sentiment, or agreement in opinion could ever be considered an adequate compensation. Vainly, therefore, do men strive for, and insist upon, this perfect similarity of opinion and judgment, as the intended unity of the Christian Church. Had this been the point divinely proposed and appointed, the Bible would have been a simple catena of articles, like the Ancient Creeds; articles to be imposed upon all, and to be received by all; articles without which there could be no salvation; less than which would have been infidelity, more than which additions of man's device. God be praised, his blessed Bible is no iron mask like this. It is full of divine instruction, with which the diligent soul shall be made fat. But its blessings are to descend only upon those who read, and study and meditate; who are not only learning, but also coming to the knowledge of the truth. And the discovered width and depth of the stream of light and knowledge, is regulated by the distance we travel along its heavenly banks, and the zeal with which we attempt to ford it ; presenting unceasing encouragement to those who labor to understand, and to stand perfect in all the will of God.

This religious unity is as evidently, not a mere external, apparent unity of profession and name, a oneness of temporary discipline, and outward type. Such an unity as this, an universal form,

without a co-ordinate entire intellectual unity delighting to express itself through this form, would be an intolerable burden. ward union of form is the creature of mere earthly power and arrangement, and it must perish and pass away with the earth from which it springs. It may be valued as an expression of truth, for the inferior purposes to which it may be made subservient, and which it is able to promote. But it cannot justly be considered as anything beyond an incident, however occasionally of increased importance, in the spiritual and abiding system of Gospel truth. The very condition of man upon earth renders the actual perfection of such an outward union in discipline and appearance, excluding all variety, utterly impossible. The changes in human genera tions and circumstances, as man passes on through successive steps in the history and destiny of his race, must continually tend to break it up. To say that these necessary changes only break up certain less important parts of this discipline, but leave its fundamental substratum of authority and requisition still entire, is an assertion wholly arbitrary, and a weak begging of the whole question. If God has appointed an entire oneness in the circumstances of outward religious discipline, as man's absolute duty under the Gospel, as he did under the Law, it is not for man to speculate upon the comparative importance of its various impositions. The bell and the pomegranate are of as much importance, and clothed with as much authority in such a system, as the Temple and the veil. The Jewish system of religion was necessarily local. And any Judaizing of the Gospel, to cramp it up in an unyielding outward shape of ministration and observance, of equal necessity localizes and limits it. No mere outward imposition, unless it be of the simplest character, can be unvaryingly preached to every creature. Had this external uniformity been the Lord's plan of oneness for his people under the Gospel, he must have laid down exactly, the outward system, to which it might be possible to conform all the generations and nations of men to whom his Gospel was to be proclaimed. And wherever such an arrangment of ordinances had been established and proclaimed by him, the very omission of every point beyond it, becomes the strongest declaration that in this relation, such points were merely incidents and not essentials. This our God and

Saviour has done, in setting up a living ministry of men to preach his word, and two outward rites as marks and professions of those who embrace it. Beyond this, men may go in the expediency of circumstances, not in the authority of absolute imposition. The attempt to carry out such an outward system in every possible application, and make a mere uniformity of circumstances and outward condition, the desired oneness of the Church of God, has been Satan's imitation of the spiritual kingdom of the Lord, and the spiritual communion over which he reigns, in that perfection of his craft for man's destruction, the system of Anti-Christian Rome. All such impositions, set forth and received as the required unity