corrupting mass of civilized, refined, polite, secularlyeducated ungodliness.

It was no better after the flood. Egypt became the seat of worldly wisdom. Her arts, her pyramids, and hieroglyphics are even now the wonder and admiration of modern learning. Yet Egypt, with all its arts, and science, and wisdom, was foremost in irreligion and rebellion against God, and doomed, the earliest of the nations, to the strokes of Divine vengeance. The Red Sea waves were another fearful lesson, to all ages, of the miserable end of worldly knowledge without the fear of God, and of the fatal issues of a merely secular and godless education.

Let us apply again to our compass, for an answer to the second question. Must rulers and statesmen, rather than corrupt the truth by believing and confessing it, and defiling religion by seeking to spread it among their subjects, give up every attempt to lessen the fearful amount of popular heathenism and ignorance ? This seems to be the sincere and honest conviction of many worthy men. How they can read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and retain such a view, is indeed a miracle. Every ruler, who has governed without openly acknowledging the God of heaven, is there plainly condemned. Every Christian, whether ruler or private person, who does not use all his influence to remove the religious ignorance of those around him, is condemned equally. The people, we are told, are destroyed for lack of knowledge. The truest and best wisdom is the fear of God, and to believe in His word. To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. The rulers of the people are charged publicly to read God's law before the whole congregation in their times of public assembly, that the

knowledge of it may spread through the land. Deut. xxxi. 10. Jehoshaphat is praised for sending priests and Levites to "teach in the cities of Judah, and they had the book of the law of the Lord with them, and went about throughout all the cities of Judah, and taught the people." There are perhaps fifty cases, in Scripture, of rulers praised for helping to spread religious knowledge among their people, and not one where such a course meets with a word of blame. There are perhaps a hundred precepts, exhorting all Christians, without exception for rank, station, or office, to spread religious truth among those around them, and not one where it is forbidden. To say that rulers should not promote the education of their people, for fear that they should be compelled to recognize some religious truth, is just as scriptural and true, as to affirm that Christians ought not to love their neighbours, lest this should require them also to be guilty of loving God with all their heart. One false principle, embraced even by good men, is as dangerous as an unsuspected current to mariners. They may be upright and sincere, they may be earnest and zealous, they may be logical and consistent; but their logic and consistency, like the reckoning of the steamer, will only hurry them upon a reef, where one secret falsehood has been embraced and followed without suspicion. Such, we fear, is the actual effect, on many minds, of the notion that publicly to own God's truth, and act upon the faith of it, is a sin in rulers, though a duty in private Christians. They are like sailors, whose compass is affected by the ship's iron, which in former days, our readers are perhaps aware, led to many shipwrecks. Their modern theory has hindered them from following the plain voice of Scripture; and hence they are in some danger, at this

moment, of departing further from the true line of Christian duty than is the result of mere conscience and common sense in worldly men, when they look upon the mass of fearful and growing ignorance in our land.

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Only let the compass of God's word traverse freely, with no foreign hypothesis to disturb it, and its lessons will be plain. Education, to be wholesome, must be religious, for "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." The government of the land, to be good and right, must be religious. "He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God." The people to be happy, must be instructed in true religion; they are destroyed for lack of knowledge." Prevention is better than cure. Rulers, who are bound to punish crime, are bound still more to help in staying its source, religious ignorance in masses of the people. If they "forbear to deliver those who are ready to perish in such ignorance, He that pondereth the heart will consider it," and render to them according to their neglect of so great a duty. There may, perhaps, be difficulties in the question of details. When Christians themselves are divided and jealous, it is hard for the wisest and most honest government to do its own part aright, without some risk of evil. But to forbid the State to use direct and honest efforts to promote the education of the people, because they will then have to do, more or less, with religion and the truths of God's word, is practically to forbid them to love man, lest they should be also guilty of publicly honouring their Maker. Every step, however imperfect, by which our rulers depart from the profane indifference of Gallio, and approach nearer to the practical wisdom and pious zeal of Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah, should be a cause for real

thanksgiving among all true-hearted Christians. The compass of God's word is here a distinct guide; and though darkness and breakers may be around us, if we follow its guidance as a nation, there may be still hope and deliverance for our guilty land.

Again, we have heard of late of certain prophecies with regard to the fate of Protestantism and Popery. A Roman Catholic lord has favoured the house and the public `with his auguries of the future, formed while gazing on the ruins of a heathen temple on the plain of Marathon, Borrowing from a review of Mr. Macaulay, he ventured to predict the time when some New Zealander, on a broken arch of London Bridge, would sketch the ruins of St. Paul's, while the religion of St. Peter's would still be flourishing in undiminished vigour. How the noble lord reached his conclusion from the premises before him he has not thought fit to reveal. Perhaps he inferred, since heathenism, after being overthrown by the gospel, has revived so clearly in the Romish Pantheon of saints and angels, that the worship of "gods many and lords many" is agreeable to the instincts of human nature, and endued with a power of lasting continuance. Yet surely the suspicion might have arisen, that He who gave the second commandment in fire and flame, and had overthrown the whole hierarchy of Olympus by a tent-maker and twelve fishermen, would be sure to dash to pieces the aggravated abomination of heathen idolatry, of hero and image worship, even when revived under Christian names. The sight of a Mexican Spaniard, by the side of the ruined heathen temple, might have seemed, to a clearer vision than his lordship's, a double augury of ruin. The religion, which has corrupted the gospel of love and peace into a precise copy of heathenism, with its worship of tunics, and wafers,

and crosses, and dead men's bones; a religion which could give birth to the hateful atrocities of Cortez and his followers, the darkest page almost in the world's history, is more sure than even the graceful superstition of Athenian temples to fall at length under the just anger of the Most High.

But does not historic learning teach us, as the noble lord has reminded our country, the strange vitality of the Church of Rome? Has not her most eminent recent convert assured us that "chronic continuance" is one test of a true development,-one proof, therefore, of the claims of Popery to be the only true Church of Christ? Yes, it is true; but the secret is, that both have forgotten the compass, or thrown it away. One of them has tried the Bible, and it has disappointed him. He wished the compass to point straight to Rome, but the perverse needle would settle in quite the opposite direction, to the north, and he threw it away in despair. The other pilot has grown so wise in his political wisdom and historical research, that the compass, he thinks, is needless, and he can prophesy better out of his own fancies, than by looking at the word of God. Sanctioned by their authority, the noble lord speculates on coming centuries, like an augur of heathen Rome, when he boasted of the Eternal City,' and quoted the words of Virgil-'I have given her empire without end.' But the compass would give them, if wise, a clear warning-breakers a-head-from their own glowing predictions. "Because she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow; therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death,* and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire; for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her." The boast of "chronic continuance" is the death-knell