INTRODUCTION.

THE duties which we owe to the State of which we are citizens form the last, but not the least, portion of a Christian's obligations. Christ, when he commanded us to "render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's," gave us a lesson on this topic that ought never to be forgotten. And St. Paul did but echo the command of his divine Master when he gave us the precept, "Fear God, honour the king." The injunction of our Lord derives a peculiar meaning from the circumstances of the case, and the very coin used as the tribute money. This was the Denarius, in value about sevenpence-halfpenny of our money, paid by the Jews to Rome as an acknowledged tribute. "He saith unto them, Whose image and superscription is this? They say unto him, Cæsar's;" that is, the Roman emperor Tiberius. -his coin. And we may here trace out a deep and neglected point in the consideration of this question. Whose is this image? The head of Cæsar. Whose is this superscription? Caesar's; that is, it contained his name lettered around the head. The Jews impressed their own coin with no head, nothing but the pot of manna, or the vine, or the sheaf of corn. They appropriated Roman coin to pay the tribute, thereby acknowledging Caesar's power-thereby answering the question. Christ, looking on the Roman Denarius, said, "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's." Give Cæsar that tribute you have covenanted to pay him; give God that tribute of immensity due to the King of kings. Christ would not mix up his religion with earthly politics. He would not allow them to say truly, as falsely afterwards they did of him, that he forbade to give tribute to Cæsar. He would not allow them to say he mixed up with his religion fleeting views of temporal policy. Cæsar, said he virtually, is your prince, and may demand his tribute. The coin is the king's. Your religion properly and solely belongs to God. He plainly intimates that the money belonged to Cæsar. right had its rise in their own act of submission to the Roman government, which had obtained an hundred years. He tells them to render to their ruler that which was their ruler's, and to their God that which was due to God. Both principles he declares distinct, and commands their separate discharge.

This

The duty to the sovereign is justly deducible from this, and

that which is due to the King of kings. Submission even to a Pagan emperor is here enjoined in matters aloof from religion. Nay, Josephus informs us, that when the Jews were made subject to the Romans (though it was by conquest), twice a-day they offered up sacrifices for the life and safety of the emperor. When carried away captive into Babylon, what was the injunction from the King of kings? "Seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the Lord for it, for in the peace thereof ye shall have peace." (Jeremiah xxix. 7.) How much more powerfully, then, does this reasoning apply to our natural and spiritual prince, our sovereign. The two great principles, "fearing God and honouring the king," are united in adamantine links; the lover of his God will be loyal to his king from positive injunction from his his God. A positive injunction from heaven forces the Protestant Church to the latest hour of her earthly being to inculcate love to the sovereign. Attached to the best principles of constitutional loyalty, it is her pride that that constitutional loyalty has been unwavering. Not, like the Papist, dividing it with a foreign power-not, like the Dissenter, who is semi-loyal at the best, swearing allegiance to but one of the two great principles of constitutional loyalty; dividing from the Church, and adhering to the king only as a temporal sovereign; not uniting with us in the principles on which alone true loyalty is based, CHURCH AND KING-Severing from what is an integral point with every good and loyal subject in the empire-dividing, nay, repealing, the holy union of these in the realm of England's head in Church and State, our present Protestant sovereign. We then must, good and loyal Churchmen, remember, that by the sovereign we are secured in our civil rights and privileges, and in the quiet and peaceable possession of what is our own; and what is more than this, the Edict of Toleration, that protects us in the free practice and exercise of religion. If St. Paul, when the powers of the world did not favour Christianity, could then exhort to pray for kings and all in authority, that, under their protection, they might lead quiet and peacable lives in all godliness and honesty; now, when kings and princes are nursing fathers, and queens the nursing mothers of the Church, shall we not, with added energy, supplicate our God for them?-praying that it will please him to confirm and strengthen our youthful Sovereign in all goodness: to make her, even as an angel of light, to discern between good and evil, that she may know how to go in and out before this great people; that he will give her the united affections of her people, and a heart to study and seek their good all the days of her life; that he will give her counsellers around her throne, holy

men, that may strengthen regal piety nnd promote the sovereign's intentions to forward all goodness, faith, virtue, temperance, holiness; and that God may grant her, and her princely consort, a long and prosperous life, and that their posterity in the royal Protestant line of Guelph may endure for ever, and their throne as the days of heaven.

Our tribute to God is not to be paid in this world's currency, but in the nobler mintage of the mind--in rendering unto God that tribute of entire devotedness that is his due-deeply infixing within us his image, and from that image's all-holy splendour framing our mind-currency. And if a temporal monarch claim just honour to his image, inscription, and edict, what honour is due. to him who fills the eternal throne, whose basement man cannot describe, nor can the rapid speed of angel encircle. The eternal and Almighty Lord of the spirits of all flesh, and of whatever other singular varieties of being are extended through the infinity of his will, what tribute can be paid by such a speck in being as man, worthy of One thus glorious, thus omnipotent? None. But yet the voice of that omnipotent has commanded man to render unto him the homage of his heart: "My son, give me thine heart" has been the bland and gentle tone of him who shakes all nature by a word. Men might hesitate, as the heathens did, and deem the God above them cold and unaffected with feelings unto man from the very immensity of his nature. The providence of the Christian God extends over all his works, and he demands from all the tribute due to their Creator, and in our case doubly due, for we have to render fresh tribute of admiration, since it is, by unutterable mercy, our peculiar privilege to enjoy the grace of a Redeemer.

The duties of Christians towards their earthly rulers may be also illustrated by a view of the first institution of regal authority. We are sometimes told by the disaffected, that the royal power itself was granted in vengeance to the Jews, and intended as a curse; but first, it must be remembered, that royalty was far older than Saul, and that it had been long previously under the especial protection of God. Yet there are those who maintain the democratic view of the case, and refuse to believe in the divine origin of civil government, notwithstanding every possible sanction from holy writ. It never was viewed as evil in itself, but the position of Israel then was a holy theocracy, where the arm of God visibly interposed in their behalf, when the Lord their God was their king. We can easily conceive that the best form of mortal power was inferior to divine. We can easily conceive a nation sinning grievously when this the visible arm of God was over them, directing their laws, when it became cla

morous for an earthly sovereign, unheeding the divine. The kingly power was not then inflicted as a punishment on men; but the original demand for it by Israel, at that peculiar and momentous crisis, when the Lord of Hosts was their visible leader and sovereign, was sinful. But, to the king, the word of the apostle is, "honour him." The king is to receive honour, as the great visible director of laws and ordinances; he, in a manner, may be said to hold in his hand the delegated power of heaven, and though subject, from his uncontrolled position, to numerous temptations, the king ought to remember that he is to exhibit that order of life, that regularity of morals, and that devotedness to God that may spread wide among his subjects the virtues of the throne. He must rule in the fear of God, and keep no one next his person who does not exhibit the same fear. His power is sustained by the book of God; woe be to him if he do despite to the sacred book. Woe be to him if such madness be his as to hearken to men who would sap the very pillars on which the kingly throne is based. But let us not be mistaken, we hold that even then there is an honour due unto his office, which his subjects must respect, and by the humblest means of earnest remonstrance and respectful entreaty they must endeavour to show their sovereign their sense of his high office, and their feeling that it should be as an holy thing. That the kingly crown should blaze like the high priest's pectinal with lustre, beautifully significant that he is the ruler from the Most High. To us the kingly authority is the great source of liberty, and in its meet direction we trace the numerous benefits that surround our happy land. We are not ruled by an arbitary power, but every one of us enjoys the liberty in all matters of an appeal to persons in his own sphere of being and action. And when we trace the evils of that dreadful period, when it pleased heaven to deprive us of our sovereign-when the butchered monarch laid his head upon the block in preference to sacrificing the Established Church-when the scaffold streamed with the blood of Strafford, Laud, and other noble victims-when they became sacrificed to a spirit of puritanical cant blended with republican sentiment-when the new power instantly became more absolute than that which it had deposed-we must feel assured, that in supporting the crown we uphold prosperity, right, and religion. The sovereign, in this country, is the head in Church and State, as far as his office is concerned; and though we give not to him the power of ministering either God's word or sacraments, we allow him that prerogative which we see to have been always given to all godly princes, in holy writ, by God himself, that they should rule all estates and degrees

committed to their charge by God, whether ecclesiastical or temporal, and restrain with the civil sword the stubborn and evil doers. Such, then, being the king's place in Church and State, we must pay him fitting honour. We must render to him the allegiance of the lip and the loyalty of the life. We must do this on the double ground of the civil and the ecclesiastical authority which he possesses. We must do it as a civil and a religious duty-as an edict of man-as an ordinance of God. All Protestants holding no divided allegiance, but being united on this principle, must be as loyal to their king as devoted to their God.

With them must dwell, in beautiful union, the earthly lustre of loyalty combined with the holier and more heavenly allegiance to the King of kings and Lord of lords. The good subject to the heavenly Ruler cannot fail to be such to the earthly, and most assuredly will draw from the higher principle inducements not to neglect the inferior. He may sorrowing see the kings of the earth, at times, not realizing their important stations and duties-not coming up to the mighty requisitions demanded of them; but he will mourn over them with no evil feeling. The mourning of David over Saul, will be his; but he will remember it is written, "Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people," and he will throw the veil of Christian charity over the failings of the mighty. He will be free from all hatred to the office that, in itself, will command in his sight veneration. Finally, he will be full of eyes within, and delight, with those gifted creatures of God (in the Apocalypse), in rendering all glory where spotless rule, unerring wisdom, and supremest Majesty resides, exclaiming, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come."

We have felt a more than ordinary interest in reverting to the writings of those eminent prelates who brightened the reign of our last female sovereign, to adduce lessons for our guidance under our present Queen. The character of Anne was one, which, while it had its faults, was yet eminently good; she was, indeed, "a nursing mother" to the Church, and her personal unaffected piety-her sense of duty towards her people-her care for their spiritual welfare-justly entitled her to that enviable appellation, "The Good Queen Anne." It was under the reign of Elizabeth that the Reformation was firmly established; it was under that of Anne that the most energetic attempts were made to render the machinery of the Church coextensive with the increased population of the kingdom; and we look forward to a similar series of exertions, on a still larger scale,