animosities, in spite of all our manifold accumulated sins, we are still a Christian people. The heart of the nation is sound. The preachers of infidelity have not been able to corrupt it. In all classes the professors of Christianity are an overwhelming majority; and there has been a great increase, I believe we may say confidently, of real living Christianity in the last thirty years. But what does this prove? If the reason for abandoning the Christian principle of our Legislature, which exists so wofully in Germany, does not exist in England, why are we to abandon it? If we are a Christian people, and if Christianity, while it has been declining elsewhere, has been gaining strength through God's blessing in England, why are we no longer to have a Christian Legislature? Why are we to do that, which the Germans are doing under the compulsion of a dire necessity, but which their wisest men deplore, as the symptom at least of a most disastrous condition, as the breaking of a tie that has endured for a millennium and a half. Is it seemly thus to sweep away that to which antiquity has given such a sanctity, without any call of principle whatsoever, without any pressure of necessity, without any motive of expediency, rather in violation of the ancient principles of the Constitution, and in defiance of manifold expediency, out of what really seems little else than a wanton spirit of dilettante liberalism?

NOTE U: p. 40.

That the admission of Jews into Parliament will unchristianize our Legislature, has been asserted by the opponents of that measure, and strenuously denied by its advocates. Indeed the Bishop of St David's speaks of this argument as a fallacy he is almost ashamed to advert to. "How often (he says, p. 17), has this objection been confuted by the simple observation, that the Legislature, after this measure shall have been past,—will remain Christian, exactly in the same sense, and precisely in the same proportion, as the country itself is Christian!" To me, I confess, this argument, if it had been used by a less subtile reasoner,

K

would have seemed a palpable fallacy. For surely one of the worst modes of determining the characteristic properties of any aggregate is to sum up the characteristics of what is so variable as the majority of its members. Bacon has said, with his peculiar felicity of illustration: "The inferring a general position from a nude enumeration of particulars, without an instance contradictory, is vicious: nor doth such an induction infer more than a probable conjecture that there is no repugnant principle undiscovered: as if Samuel should have rested in those sons of Jesse who were brought before him in the house, and should not have sought David, who was absent in the field." The Christian character of the English nation does not result solely from the fact that the majority of its members are Christian, but from the manner in which Christianity has ever been an essential principle in all its institutions. As a nation we are Christians, because we have a Christian Government, a Christian Legislature, and because that Government and Legislature have hitherto been bound indissolubly to the faith and Church of Christ. This being the case, the presence of a few thousand Jewish sojourners does not modify the character of the nation. Nor would it destroy that character, even if they were far more numerous; as the character of the Athenian democracy is determined by that of the Athenian Demus, without regard to the péroko and the slaves, though these far outnumbered the citizens. A man with a wooden leg is a man, not because the majority of his limbs are of flesh and bone, but because he has the living principle of humanity in him. In our case too all the members are perfect: the wooden leg is merely an external appendage.

On this point Mr Gladstone seems to me to come nearer the truth, when he says (p. 31): "I can well believe that to many, and I freely allow that to myself, it is painful thus to part with even the title of an exclusive Christianity inscribed upon the portals of the Constitution. Yet (he adds) to qualify this title, as we are now askt to qualify it, to surrender it as a universal and exclusive title, is not to deprive ourselves of such substantial Christianity as we may really now possess. Advantage is not

unfairly taken in debate of a word: but when it is said that we unchristianize the Parliament, while it may be true in name,— and I would not deny it,-I must ask, is it true in substance?" Thereupon, to escape the inference which would be fatal to his cause, he has recourse to the same unsatisfactory argument, that the Christianity of the Legislature is to be determined, like that of the Nation, by that of the majority. Yet on the admission of the Romanists our Parliament ceast to be a Protestant Parliament. How comes it that the admission of the Jews is not to produce a like change?

That the Christian tone of our parliamentary debates must needs be lowered by the admission of Jews, was maintained with cogent force by the Bishop of Oxford in his masterly speech on the second reading of the Bill, a speech by which it is probable that the majority against the Bill was considerably augmented, and which, like his speech at the meeting of the National Society, was an important benefit to our Church. On this head it has been replied, that the entrance of a few solitary Jews could hardly exercise any material influence, and that we are not to suppose that more than half-a-dozen will be returned. To this argument, which compromises its own cause, so far as it rests on the ground that very few are affected by the exclusion, it is a sufficient rejoinder, that, according to the rules of all good breeding, the presence of a single individual, holding a different persuasion, will check the free expression of the sentiments from which he differs. Indeed the presence of one would be a stronger restraint upon a gentleman, than if parties were nearly balanced. But when we take account of the peculiar advantages which the higher class among the Jews possess for rising in the political world, and when we call to mind how these have been exhibited of late by the presence of two Jews, if not, as has been said, three, among the ten members of the Provisional Government in France, while several, I know not how many, have been acting a conspicuous part in the recent politics of Germany, we may doubt whether the number of Jewish members of Parliament would indeed be so very insignificant.

Moreover there is a further important consideration. It has been said, that the declaration by which religious Jews are excluded from Parliament, has not availed to exclude avowed infidels, such as Gibbon and Bolingbroke. Now of course no declaration can exclude those who do not scruple to lie in making it. But is that a reason for rejecting all such declarations? Is it a reason for rejecting the use of words, and the confidence in them, that some people follow Talleyrand's maxim of using them to conceal their thoughts? At all events the declaration is so far effectual, that, if an unbeliever were to enter Parliament now, he would be incapable of avowing his infidelity. Every member of the Legislature is bound by his declaration to promote the interests of Christianity, or, at the very least, to refrain from injuring it, either in deed or in word. Should any be shameless enough to do so, the outcry which would be provoked, could not now be represt by a protest that We are not Christians here. But if this restraint, which the principles of our Constitution. impose upon covert infidelity, were removed,-and, when Jews are admitted, I see not how any form of enmity to Christianity could long be excluded from our Legislature, any more than from the French and German,-it may be that some, which may now be latent, would find vent. How much there may be, I have no means of judging. In former periods of our history, we know, there has been much. Possibly there may be less at present. If so, let us be thankful. But at all events let us abstain from creating any encouragement, or any facilities, for its utterance or its increase.

Some people indeed, taking up the slang of the day, may object, that the cause of truth and honesty can only be promoted by our getting rid of every kind of sham, and therefore that, if there be any latent unbelief in our Parliament, it ought to be uttered boldly and unhesitatingly. But what should we say to the Board of Health, if they were to order all the cesspools in the country to be uncovered, lest we should affect to be cleaner than we are? This whole mode of thought is utterly fallacious, from not duly recognising the great struggle in our nature,

the constant presence of evil, which good at the utmost can only suppress, never wholly expell. Are laws useless, because they cannot eradicate the seeds of evil, but only repress their grosser manifestations? Are manners useless, because they can only restrain the vicious from exposing their grosser vices in the sight of day? O, we need every check, every help, for our frail, tottering virtue and all are too few. We all need them individually; and we need them no less nationally. Nor are they falsehoods, or shams, but rather props and pillars of truth, which keep us from falling headlong into the snares of the Father of lies. We are not made to walk naked in heart and mind, any more than in body; and if we did, we should be falser than we are. Αιδώς has ever been a chief support of Truth, as of every other virtue.

NOTE V: p. 47.

Thus Horsley, in some interesting Letters on the prophecies concerning Antichrist, which were publisht in the British Magazine for 1834, says (p. 135): "I confess, I am not so well satisfied as you seem to be with that interpretation of Rev. vi. 12-17, which finds the accomplishment of that vision in the suppression of idolatry by the Christian Emperors. I think it cannot be understood of anything less than the final overthrow of Antichrist by our Lord at His coming. I admit, that darkness in the sun and moon, and a falling of the stars, are images in frequent use among the prophets, to denote the overthrow of empires, or the fall of mighty potentates. But in this passage of the Revelation these images are amplified to the utmost."

NOTE W: p. 50.

A fashion has grown up of late, to apologize for, and even to extoll, the former French Revolution, on account of the benefits, such as those mentioned in the text, which have resulted from it. But this is much as if a person were to fall in love with