usurpation of the State. But the Church has never protested, and no nominee of the Crown has ever failed of consecration, for more than three centuries, ever since the law was made. Yet Dr. Pusey is of opinion that the Church of England has not conceded too much to the State. In this particular it would seem that she had; for she has conceded not merely a restriction on the exercise of an Inherent Right but the Inherent Right itself. But that which our author approves, though it does not go so far, amounts to a restriction on the exercise of an Inherent Right. For the Bishops are prohibited from consecrating without the mandate of the Crown. An act of Parliament was required to permit them to consecrate the first American Bishops. Then as to the placing of clergymen. The right of doing so is, in the Church of England, practically given to laymen. The Bishop, it is true, is required to pass upon the matter; but he can only refuse for cause assigned. Of the goodness of the cause a layman is to judge. Surely this is, to say the least, a restriction upon the exercise of an Inherent Right. It having been shown that the exercise of so many Inherent Rights of the Episcopate may be restricted by law, it would be difficult to assign any reason why the same thing may not be done in the case of the judicial and legislative functions. It is designed in future papers to discuss those questions, with especial reference to the lay element. If it be established, that such restrictions may be imposed, it will follow that the Bishops are bound by them when they are imposed. Another subject, upon which something will probably be said, is the expediency of the lay element. Expediency is never a reason for adopting a measure not justified by Church principle; but when the principle is clearly established, it is right to examine the question of expediency. Upon this head, however, it cannot be necessary to say much; since it would be difficult to find in the American Church a Bishop, a clergyman, or a layman, who doubts the expediency of the lay element. H. D. E. MAN is by nature a cosmopolite. He is endowed with the capacity of adaptation to every soil and climate, and suffers nothing, specifically, from transportation. While every species in the brute creation is restricted to its own narrow halitat, from which it never voluntarily departs, and within which its instincts, as exponents of the necessities of its nature, direct its continuance, Man alone knows no geographical limits to his rambles, but compasses both land and sea in the universality of his peregrinations. There is wisdom as well as benevolence manifested in this preferment of human-kind over the brute, nor can inquiry fail to discover the physical necessity of this apparently arbitrary dispensation. Nature provides against no danger so strongly as against the possible confusion of species. It is here that her laws, oftentimes latitudinarian, become inexorably precise. To her the individual is as nothing when compared with the species, and it is more especially to preserve the integrity of this latter, that she asserts her prerogative, as a parent, to establish anomalous laws from which no departure is tolerated. Hence the hybrid in every species is a monster, and, as such, labours under the humane penalty of sterility. He cannot propagate his own deformity, nor repeat his own abnormal constitution in any other organism. He is literally disowned by every species, and bears in his own emasculate nature the shame of a promiscuous ancestry. It was wise therefore that the danger of such assaults upon the unity of species should be removed from the lower order of animals, whose springs of action are founded solely in instinct, and that Man, a being but little lower than the angels, reflective, philosophic, and spiritual, should alone enjoy the privilege of earth's domain untrammelled. GOD gave to Man at creation two wonderful gifts. He gave him an attribute of Himself in that spirit of intelligence which separates him from, and elevates him above all other animals; and He gave him also as an appropriate theatre, upon which to cultivate and exercise this divine intelligence, that Earth he inhabits, from which his body is fashioned, and over which he was made master. His right of eminent domain is therefore absolute, unqualified, and Heaven-born. But there is a command, as well as a permission given him to subdue the earth. By the original doom he is compelled to toil in the fulfilment of this great design, and labour is made a physiological requirement of his nature, upon which health primarily, and life itself reflectively depends. His daily bread is to be wrung from the soil, only as the reward of his daily toil, and encouragement is given him to contend with the operations of nature, and coërce them to his own purposes, by the promise that seedtime and harvest should never fail, nor sunshine or dew be ever wanting. With such a duality of constitution, he draws sustenance and development from two systems, the material and the spiritual. Through his intelligence he communes with the GODHEAD, and aspires to that fulness of the stature of grace, which shall fit him some day to minister in white robes at the mercy-seat. By that same intelligence operating through the curious enginery of his body, he bends and binds all physical energies to the behests of his own will, and makes the very elements but as hirelings in his household. There is no presumption in all this, nor any Promethean arrogance which would rob Heaven of its high prerogative. It is simply a legitimate effect of the progressive development, and collective acquirements of the mind, and as such forms a necessary link in the chain of inductive reasoning. The great system of the Cosmos, that "Mécanique Céleste" of suns and spheres and rolling orbs moving on in solemn majesty, will be none the less secure for the researches of a Kepler or a Galileo, nor will the foundations of the round earth be at all affected by the prying investigations of modern philosophy. For all things sooner or later go out into mystery, and even the opulent acquisitions of a Newton amount only to a few more pebbles gathered upon the seashore of Eternity. The pride of race, and the consciousness of superior natural rank is innate in the human heart. The perception of our external relations to the world around us-of the impassable gulf between rational and irrational beings-of the grandeur of intellect as contrasted with the mediocrity of instinct-of the submission of all created beings to Man, in whose presence they seem powerless ;-all these experiences of our daily life force upon us the conviction of a higher character, and a higher destiny. Even if Revelation did not inform us of the part we were created to act upon earth, we have that within us which would still prompt our faculties to employments consonant with their dignity, and calculated to maintain the ascendancy of intelligence over instinct. It needs not the eye of Faith, to perceive the verity of that description of intellectual man, so happily rendered by Ovid, Os homini sublime dedit; cœlumque tueri And the dialogues of Plato and Tully exhibit, more strongly perhaps than any writings in the range of the classics, the earliest glimmerings of that true apprehension of man's high moral calling, which forms the basis of the system of Christian ity. At all seasons, and in all ages of the world, man has felt himself quickened by the spirit of dominion and supremacy over temporal things, and in obedience to that inward voice which is never silent, he has marched onward with the rolling. centuries, from the rising to the setting sun. It is also curious. to notice, how the course of his migrations has been regulated, independently almost of any exercise of will on his part, and that in every age, and in every clime; in every condition of civilization, and in every change of locality, he has invariably bent his steps in a similar direction. This has not been the result of accident or chance, or even caprice, for caprice is only temporary and does not endure; while so constant and persistent a disposition throughout a whole race, under all the varying circumstances of each particular age, and of every shade of mental development, argues strongly in favour of some postulate law of fore-ordination. We find the human race at first as a single pair, occupying the garden of Eden. Driven thence for that "first disobedi ence," which "brought Death into the world," and entailed labour and sorrow through all time upon their progeny, they ushered in the Great Cycle of migration over the Earth. From that moment they are outcasts and moral outlaws, Adam with the doom of toil and sweat upon his brow, Eve with the inexorable burthens, and the agonizing pangs of maternity upon her's. They parted with their immortality on the threshold of Paradise, and became progenitors of an apostate race. Such in brief is the tale of man's origin, and the explanation of his hereditary depravity. We see already foreshadowed, here, the necessity for a mediatorial office to intervene between the CREATOR and His rebellious subjects; to gain the ear of OMNIPOTENCE, and bear to it the repentance of contrite hearts. The scheme of salvation, like that of immortality to man, had its origin in Paradise. Satan overthrew the one, the other he can only interfere with and disturb, but not destroy. In the one case he had man alone to contend with, now the GREAT ADVOCATE stands ready to assist the Christian, sore beset by temptation. It is Mercy supporting Faith. From Mesopotamia, that earliest cradle of the human race, the descendants of Adam gradually spread themselves over Western Asia. Sacred History is minute and precise in its details of patriarchal biography, no less than in its record of the rise and fall of successive nations. Its luminous narratives are at times painfully comprehensive and elliptical, yet preg nant with suggestions to the philosophic mind, and ever provocative of research in him, who would rightly understand the secret springs of human society. The Historical Books are necessarily limited to a description of those tribes and nations, known to the writers, by reason of the direct intercourse between them and the Jews. But it would be wrong to infer from this, that the remainder of the fair earth was but " antres vast and deserts idle," the abodes of solitude, and uncheered by the presence of man. Of a truth, it is difficult to unravel the primeval myths that surround the infancy of nations; when tradition was the only record, and written history had not yet given authenticity to fact. When treacherous memory was the sole repository of human lore, and still more treacherous lips imparted the hue of their own peculiar prejudices to the 1 |