creed and the Christian's law, he could give to the terms of that creed and of that law, no higher meaning than he assigns to his own rude moral code, and to the simple religion he has received from his fathers. His ideal would not be changed by a change of names. Every man's ideal of excellence, whether he be savage or civilized, Christian or Pagan, Jew or Mussulman, is measured by his spiritual progress, and must be as different as is the degree of that progress; and that difference would remain the same, although all might come to bear the same name, and nominally profess to worship the same God. This is a consideration of which we should never lose sight when we cause past generations or the less civilized portions of the present generation to pass in review before us. Each must be measured by its own ideal, acquitted or condemned as it comes up to it or falls below it. The savage should not be tried by the ideal of a Fenelon, the ages before Christianity by that of the Christian, nor the early ages of the Church, by that of the nineteenth century. Those who in the infancy of Christianity gave to love to our neighbour all the meaning in their power, are not to be condemned because it falls short of the meaning we can give it, any more than he who is just commencing simple arithmetic is to be condemned for not being able to solve the more difficult problems of the higher branches of mathematics. It is also very important to bear this consideration in mind whenever we attempt to estimate the service Christianity has rendered the world. We are exceedingly prone to underrate that service. We look back and down upon ages which seem to us sunk in vice and crime, in barbarism and wretchedness, without reflecting that it is to Christianity that we are indebted for our advance beyond them, and for that moral elevation from which we look down upon them. It' is because Christianity has been long at work, strengthening, purifying, exalting, that is, educating the mind, that we of the present, are able to see as low and comparatively worthless, what wise and good men in their day in the past saw as elevated and ennobling. When it was first disclosed by its Author, the world could not take in those loftier ideas of excellence which are common to our times; but it contained the very spirit of progress, and it constantly exerted itself to bring the mind up so as to perceive more and more of its worth; and, had it not been for the influence its exertions have had in setting us forward in our career of improvement, we have no reason to suppose that the ideal of this age would have been superior to that of the age of Nero. And this superiority is not trifling. In examining the monuments of the moral grandeur of the past, we are very likely to shed over them something of that purer and stronger light which belongs only to the present. When we meet among the ancients the same terms that are in common use among ourselves, we ascribe to those terms something of that deeper and fuller meaning which we alone can cornprehend, a meaning which was not, and which could not have been, suspected without that additional growth of mind which it has taken Christianity nearly two thousand years to effect. In fact when it is our object to discover, not the worthlessness, but the worth of past ages, we almost invariably ascribe to them a degree of wisdom and moral grandeur which is theirs only as it is thrown over them from our own more truly enlightened minds. If we guard against this too favorable estimate, common to the wise and the good, who read almost every thing by the benevolent light of their own pure and gifted minds, we may easily satisfy ourselves that our ideal of excellence is almost infinitely superior to that of the age in which Christianity was first proclaimed. Individuals then, indeed, might have stood out from the great mass, the representatives of the future rather than of their own times; but the age, taken as a whole, was immeasurably below the one in which we live. The advance has been great, has been, if we view it rightly, almost miraculous. Christianity has not been wanting to its mission; it has thus far fulfilled it nobly. Indeed, it is refreshing to the philanthropic soul to dwell on the progress Christianity has effected. It has enabled us to take broader views of the right. Love to our neighbour means vastly more than it did. We have learned also to give to the term neighbour a broader meaning; we begin to comprehend something of that parable of the good Samaritan, so simple, touching, and sublime; and in proportion as we comprehend it, any one, albeit our bitterest enemy, to whom we can be useful, becomes our neighbour; and, as the means of usefulness open to us, as we see new methods -- and opportunities of benefiting inillions, the term neighbour comes to mean a greater number. He cannot help thanking God, who observes how this age has enlarged the neighbourly feeling and multiplied the number of neighbours. National prejudices are fast yielding to the influence of constantly increasing international intercourse; sects, classes, and parties are gradually losing something of their asperity, as they come to mingle with one another, and to know one another better. Indeed, sects, classes, and parties become brothers, nations become families, and a quarter of the globe a neighbourhood. Men become less and less vain of factitious distinctions, titles, and decorations, and more and more ambitious to appear in the simple dignity of human beings. And this dignity of human beings means vastly more than it did formerly. Human nature, or that which passed for human nature, was formerly a small affair. It was, we suspect, no better than those, who, to show their superiority, speak slightingly of human nature, have pronounced it. What history presents us for human nature, is, in most instances, nothing but that part of our nature which we possess in common with animals. In the individual, we see the animal before we do the man. It is not in childhood or youth that we see the peculiarly human faculties predominant, but in mature age. So is it with the race. It has a growth of its own,-laws of developement precisely analogous to those of the individual. The animal propensities are developed first, and it is not till childhood and youth have passed away that they cease to be predominant. Up to the present, history has been concerned only with the childhood and youth of mankind. It has not yet presented us the full grown man of a ripe age; and surely it is no great stretch of charity to absolve those who are acquainted only with the weakness of childhood, or the fiery, impetuous passions of youth, from any very aggravated offence in pronouncing human nature a worthless thing. He who had never seen any human beings except children before they could walk or talk, might very innocently infer that to walk or talk does not pertain to human nature, unless he should happen to reflect that he can do both, and that there was, however, a time when he could do neither. We could pardon him who had seen the human body only when wasted and distorted by disease, for smiling to hear us talk of its beauty, its symmetry, and its vigor; but his smile would not be less the smile of ignorance, because we could absolve him from guilt. So it may be with those who form their estimate of human nature from acquaintance merely with its infancy, imperfect developements, or its diseases. Their estimate will be natural, but hardly just. There may be more things wrapped up in human nature "than is dreamed of in" their "philosophy." Although up to the present, the animal in our race has predominated, the man has not been wholly out of sight. There have been, at all times in all nations, exhibited proofs, that we have within us higher powers, something, weak and half suppressed it may have been, - that is for ever looking towards the infinite and craving the perfect. Individuals in all ages have appeared, to enlarge our conceptions, and give us higher ideas of the capabilities of our race. And these individuals are not now, as they once were, held as prodigies, as exceptions, but as an earnest of what all may become, as a sort of first fruits, the sure pledges of the glorious harvest to follow. We do not now look to the multitude on whom tyrants have trampled, whose holy breathings are repressed, whose cries for liberty are stifled by misguided priests, to learn what human nature is, and what man may be; but to the Aristideses, the Socrateses, the Platos, the Confuciuses, the Pauls, the Alfreds, the Fenelons, the Penns, the Miltons, the Lockes, the Hampdens, the Howards, the Washingtons, the Lafayettes. This new mode of judging human nature has been introduced by Christianity, and is not the least of the proofs that it has been faithfully executing its mission. The effects of this new mode of determining what human nature is, and what man may be, are not small. Man assumes a new dignity, and enlists purer and nobler feelings in his service. Love to our neighbour takes a deeper and broader meaning. It is no longer a mere instinctive feeling, or the cold and formal obedience to a positive command; but a reverence for human nature, a heartfelt conviction of its worth, a kindling desire for the lofty excellence it may attain, and the power to devote one's self unreservedly to aid it in accomplishing its destiny. It not only takes in a broader horizon of worth, but it discovers new and more effectual methods of promot It involves new ing the good it sees, desires, and wills. duties, and duties immeasurably more comprehensive. The greater worth we discover in human nature makes us feel a deeper and a more abiding interest in every individual who shares it. In the poorest, in the most worthless, the most abandoned, we do not now see the vile sinner alone, but a lofty and deathless nature, that links him with the world of spirits, and gives him the image of God. The duty of preaching the Gospel to the poor has always been admitted, and considered one of the most important of the duties enjoined by Christianity; but the higher estimate we now form of human nature, gives to it a fuller meaning, and makes it, as Jesus declared it, one of the most striking proofs of the divinity of his mission. It now means something more than merely proclaiming to the poor the facts of the Gospel, and efforts to make them submissive to their unfriendly condition; it now means proclaiming to the world those doctrines, inculcating those principles, that make the poor, as a class, feel that they belong to the common brotherhood of humanity, have the same rights, the same duties, and in themselves the same image of God requiring to be developed, as the rest of mankind. Alms-giving, which once meant giving money, food, clothing, or shelter, to some few of the poor, now means infusing into the whole body of the poor, that moral tone, moral courage and energy, that will enable them to elevate themselves to their proper level in the social scale. We are unwilling to dismiss this topic without a further remark. If we do not misread the signs of the times, this duty of preaching the Gospel to the poor is about to be felt as it never was felt before. The great doctrine of the fraternity of the human race, is beginning to make itself believed and comprehended; and hundreds and thousands are lamenting the low, degraded, and suffering condition to which so many of their brethren are sunk. There are those, who do not believe that the condition of the poor as a class, or that social policy of which they are the victims, is approved by the Deity, or that it is irremediable by human agency. In a word, there are those, who see no necessity for so wide a disparity in the condition of members of the same community, and brothers of the same family, and who are exerting themselves to lessen it. No one can mistake the |