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great mysterious organization, a heaven-ordained corporation, which is the medium of communication between Christ and his followers, still clings to the minds of many. The disposition to judaize, to "tithe mint and rue, and pass over judgment and the love of God," has not been exhausted, but has been visible in every age since the days of the apostles. "Lading men with burdens grievous to be borne," "putting yokes upon the neck of disciples," has been done in modern times, and continues to be done, and will probably continue to be done, until a further reformation takes place, or until men become too enlightened to be fit subjects for such spiritual domination.

To step in between the soul of man and his Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, to assume the office of mediator between them, or of arbiter and absolute interpreter, is an act of usurpation so daring and impious as to be incredible, if our knowledge rested on less evi

Luke xi. 42.

† Luke xi. 46.

+ Acts xv. 10.

This in

dence than our own eyes and ears. tervention of man between God and his creatures, is not all confined to members of the papal church. The assumption is not strange in the Protestant world. The gospel is to be preached to every creature; instruction is to be given to every extent that is practicable; those for whom it is intended are to receive it humbly and teachably, exercising all their faculties to understand and digest: but the opinions then formed, the faith then built up, and the working of the affections then excited, the union between God and the soul then formed, are operations wholly between God and his subject man, in which no church or other ecclesiastical agency or office can have any share. The sooner men are made to feel, individually and as masses, the great fact that their eternal salvation depends not upon any church or form of religious organization, but upon their individual reception of the truthnot upon their union with any religious denomination, nor upon their observance of any

upon

forms or ceremonies, or modes of worship, but their individual union with God in Christ, the sooner will Christianity acquire a new progress and surmount the barriers which now retard its movements. When men fully comprehend that the basis of saving truth lies in the teachings of Christ, and that all forms of worship and religious observance are merely means of grace, without any intrinsic saving power, they will begin to look upward at once to Him with whom their peace is to be made, and then to their fellow men of various Christian organizations for aid, for instruction, for encouragement, for discipline, in their struggle to maintain a Christian life. ·

THE THIRST OF POWER ALWAYS HATEFUL, STILL MORE IN MATTERS OF RELIGION.

THERE is no craving of the human heart more strongly written in human history, than that after power. It is no more strongly

100 MISTAKEN IDEA AS TO USE OF POWER.

written in political than in ecclesiastical history but its exhibitions, hateful and mischievous everywhere, are still more so in whatever concerns religion. It is the tendency of human nature, exhibited in every religious denomination, to obtain all the power and influence it can. This tendency in the primitive churches led to their ruin and to the rise of the papal power. Every minister and teacher and church-officer felt that if he had more power he could do more good, not remembering his own weakness, and the corrupting influences of power; not calling to mind that "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty."* God works by human agencies, but He gives no right, and takes away all pretence, of these agencies, or any "flesh to glory in his presence."

the rage to govern,

The thirst for power, infects more or less the mass and the indi

* 1 Cor. i. 27-31.

viduals of every religious denomination; it reaches towards every thing in men's conduct, and every thing in their opinions. Thus men, themselves weak, fallible, and the prey of temptation, strive after a power which does not belong to them, which they have not wisdom to wield, and which, if obtained, saps their morals and ruins their souls. How little countenance is given to church domination by any thing contained in the lives or teachings of Christ and his apostles! How little to forms and ceremonies! The Jewish religion had been one of forms and ceremonies in detail without number; nearly all power was in the priesthood. All this had been perverted and abused to the very utmost extent of human wickedness. The Christian dispensation came and swept off every vestige of these forms and ceremonies and the whole framework of priestly power; it re-enacted the whole moral law, in terms so comprehensive and so simple as apparently to leave no escape to the evasive ingenuity of erring man. It

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