have arisen between the national movement and the development of modern culture in general, on the one hand, and religion, and in part its advocates, on the other, a discord evident to all observers, and not seldom publicly avowed. May I be permitted a few

words on this subject?

Politics are the leading interest of the age. We do not lament it, for they furnish a serious and dignified pursuit, and offer many questions for solution. But politics, as well as every other intellectual expression of secular life, require to be connected with the deepest of human interests, viz. religion. (11) If, however, this connection between secular and religious life is anywhere important, it is so in Germany. For here, more than in any other land, are the history and nature of the people so closely interwoven with the religious interest, that the relation of the national movement to Christianity cannot but be regarded as the vital question of the nation, and that which will be all-decisive of its future. Hence the variance and discord between the two become all the more ominous and momentous. Not that religion prescribes any definite political faith. Certainly the religious sentiment stands in direct opposition to the revolutionary spirit which, even according to the judgment of one so well-informed as Guizot, threatens the future of our whole social fabric. For religious opinions necessarily include the recognition of law, while the revolutionary spirit is the contempt of law. (12) This is however, not a political, but a moral antagonism. In

questions purely political, religion belongs to no single party; it is neither monarchical nor republican, neither absolute nor constitutional. And that, because it is only religion, and not politics. But it is the guardian those everlasting and

of the sanctuary of law, and of divine appointments which form the immovable foundation of our whole temporal life and social condition; the advocate of those eternal truths, of those eternal moral principles and rules by which even political science must be guided and enlightened if it would form a political creed, or choose a line of procedure based upon the relations and necessities of fact and justice.

We have evidently entered upon a new era of culture. However widely separated modern times may be, from those middle ages which the invention of gunpowder and the printing-press consigned to the tomb, this new era is at least as widely separated from that which preceded it, by the freedom of the press, the steam-engine, and the electric telegraph. The change has extended not merely to the separate departments of external life; it is a universal change, because a change in the spirit of the age. But God, whose spirit pervades the history of all nations and of all periods, rules even in the midst of this change. And we would recognise His government in the progress of the several ages, and in the increased responsibilities which He therewith lays upon successive generations. At the same time we cannot shut our eyes to the dangers which threaten to annihilate

the harvest of the past, and to render vain the efforts of the present. The dangers of our times are undeniable. A restless unhappy spirit of passion and scepticism is lurking behind the progress of the present, for the prey of the future. It must be conquered not by external force, but by intellectual power, and especially by that greatest of intellectual powers, religion; and it is not by any external arrangements, but by the spirit by which it is animated, even by the spirit of religion, that the progress of culture can alone become a blessing to mankind. It is our part to infuse religion into the present movement, and thus to unite it to a power which will both give an impulse to its efforts, and make them blessings to the world. On the other hand, the advocates and promoters of modern culture should know, and impress upon themselves the fact, that all this progress, as well as all natural development in general, bears within itself the seeds of death, and is without abiding value or true moral worth, unless combined with those eternal and vital forces which spread themselves over all the changes of this mortal life, as the heavens do over the earth, and from which this life must receive its inward strength and blessing. Hence, I repeat it, the combination of religion with modern progress is the vital question of the day for Europe, and especially for Germany.

Such, then, is the position and importance of religion, that it should be the animating soul of all efforts, even of those of secular life. It has been such at all

times, and such it will ever remain. If even other religions have been possessed of such power that their decay has been accompanied by the decay of a nation's life, how much more is such a power inherent in Christianity, to which no reasonable being, even though not a partaker of Christian faith, nor a believer in revelation, would fail to award the palm above every other religion with which the world has been acquainted!

LECTURE VII.

REVELATION.

LL religions have appealed to revelation.
The fact that mankind has demanded a

divine revelation, is itself a testimony to its being needed. Christianity, by declaring itself in favour of a revelation, merely declares itself in favour of religion.

(1.) The necessity of revelation shall be our first

consideration.

Revelation is demanded by the very constitution of the reason. It is a twofold need-a need of our

thinking mind, a need of our moral nature.

How far is it a mental need?

It

We are made for God; we are to seek and to find Him, to enter into fellowship with Him. But that we may attain unto Him, He must first advance towards us-must testify of Himself, and offer Himself to us; in other words, must reveal Himself. is true that we all have within us a consciousness of His existence, a natural knowledge of God, which is further developed by His testimony to Himself in creation and in providence. But to this natural revelation, a positive and historical one must be added.