than Washington, wiser than Hamilton, more humane than Jefferson?" "What new form of government or of union have you the power to establish, or even the cunning to devise, that will be more just, more safe, more free, more gentle, more beneficent, or more glorious than this?" And by these simple interrogatories you will be silenced and confounded.

Mr. President, we are perpetually forgetting this subtle and complex, yet obvious and natural, mechanism of our constitution; and because we do forget it, we are continually wondering how it is that a confederacy of thirty and more States, covering regions so vast, and regulating interests so various of so many millions of men, constituted and conditioned so diversely, works right on. We are continually looking to see it stop and stand still, or fall suddenly into pieces.

But, in truth, it will not stop; it cannot stop; it was made not to stop, but to keep in motion-in motion always, and without force. For my own part, as this wonderful machine, when it had newly come from the hands of its almost divine inventors, was the admiration of my earlier years, although it was then but imperfectly known abroad, so now, when it forms the central figure in the economy of the world's civilization, and the best sympathies of mankind favor its continuance, I expect that it will stand and work right on until men shall fear its failure no more than we now apprehend that the sun will cease to hold his eternal place in the heavens.

Nevertheless, I do not expect to see this purely popular, though majestic, system always working on unattended by the presence and exhibition of human temper and human passions. That would be to expect to enjoy rewards, benefits, and blessings, without labor, care, and watchfulness—an ex

pectation contrary to divine appointment. These are the discipline of the American citizen, and he must inure himself to it. When, as now, a great policy, fastened upon the country through its doubts and fears, confirmed by its habits, and strengthened by personal interests and ambitions, is to be relaxed and changed, in order that the nation may have its just and natural and free developments, then, indeed, all the winds of controversy are let loose upon us from all points of the political compass-we see objects and men only through hazes, mists, and doubtful and lurid lights. The earth seems to be heaving under our feet and the pillars of the noble fabric that protects us to be trembling before our eyes.

But the appointed end of all this agitation comes at last, and always seasonably; the tumults of the people subside; the country becomes calm once more; and then we find that only our senses have been disturbed and that they have betrayed 18. The earth is firm as always before, and the wonderful structure, for whose safety we have feared so anxiously, now more firmly fixed than ever, still stands unmoved, enduring, and immovable.

BUSHNELL

HOR

ORACE BUSHNELL, an eminent American theologian, was born at Litchfield, Connecticut, April 14, 1802, and was educated at Yale College. He studied successively law and theology, and, entering the Congregational ministry, was pastor of the North Church, Hartford, Connecticut, 1833-59. He resigned his pastorate in the latter year, but continued to preach occasionally and gave much time to literary work. Bushnell was one of the most eloquent preachers in his denomination, his sermons being noted equally for their charm of style and their originality of thought. On several doctrinal points he diverged widely from the orthodox belief of his day and was accused of heresy, but kept his place, however, in the Congregational body. He exerted a strong influence over the thought of his generation, and did much to modify the general trend of Protestant theology. He died in 1876. Among his more important writings are a Phi Beta Kappa oration, "The Principles of National Greatness (1837); "Christian Nurture (1847); "God in Christ" (1849); "Nature and the Supernatural" (1858); "The Character of Jesus (1861); "The Vicarious Sacrifice" (1865); "Moral Uses of Dark Things "' (1868); "Women's Suffrage" (1869); Sermons on Living Subjects" (1872); “Forgiveness and Moral Law" (1874); "Building Eras in Religion" (1881). See "Lives" by Cheney (1880), Munger (1899).

SERMON ON THE OUTSIDE SAINTS

But in every

"Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons. nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with him." Acts x, 34-35.

T

HIS most grandly Catholic platform of salvation Peter

the apostle derives partly from his vision of the sheet, and partly from the outside brotherhood which his vision of the sheet has prepared him to know and acknowledge; the brotherhood, I mean, of Cornelius. This man is a born Pagan, a military captain brought up doubtless in the superstitions of the Pantheon, who yet gives our apostle to see plainly that he is, in heart, a Christian-a Christian, that is, outside of Christianity. He has been largely known for a long time as a man of prayer, and a thoroughly devout charHe is also discovered and approved by God, before

acter.

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he is by Peter; for God even sends an angel to tell him, “thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God." And as there is always something better coming, when a man gets heaven's endorsement in this manner, word is given him to send to Joppa after Peter, and receive from him a more competent knowledge of these things.

Peter then goes down to Cæsarea at his call, and becomes a guest with him in his house; where he hears the whole story of his faith, and learns apparently about as much from him, as he from Peter-brings out, or matures by his Pagan brother's help, the great banner-principle, from which I am now proposing to speak.

In it he corrects the superstition by which his own apostleship had been disfigured, namely, the Jewish notion of an exclusive right in Israel to the salvation of God; taking the broader doctrine of a salvation everywhere, and for everybody who truly seeks God's light, or whom God's light effectually finds.

Have we no similar misconceptions that require to be corrected? When we assume, as we do, the inexcusable guiltiness, and the certain exclusion from God, of all idolaters, and all the born subjects of the false religions, as in fact we very often do, is not Peter's vision of the sheet as truly for us as for him? Neither does it signify anything in this matter that we can cite so many denunciations of the Old Testament to just this effect against the idolaters; for these denunciations were not made to the idolaters-they never heard of them—but to the people of God, dwelling in God's own light, to deter them from lapsing into idolatry. So when we cite the declaration of the New Testament that "there is no other name given under heaven among men whereby we can be Baved but the name of Christ," do we not fall into just the

same mistake of not observing that it is we who have heard of Christ and known his gospel that are put under this ban of exclusion and not any Pagan people, who have never heard of him, or seen any light but what they have in a way more immediate? Nothing is more certain than that Peter's grand charter-principle forbids any and all such denouncements. If in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted, how many may there be that never heard of Christ and scarcely know God more sufficiently than as the unknown God, who yet are so far right with God and so truly found of God as to be fitly joined with us in the common hope of life? We hope from within the Bible and the Church, and they from without, or on the outside of the same. They compose the Church beyond the Church, the unhistoric discipleship, sprinkled over the world in distant ages and realms of idolatry, who without a gospel have found a virtual gospel by their faith and learned to walk in God's private light. That private light is truth unstated probably even by themselves, beginning at the feeling, more or less distinct, that there is some father of all whose offspring they are, which unknown father loves them and has set them down here in the grand trial of life to feel after him and, if they may, to find him. They are such as have come into the way of holiness by invisible God-help, which God-help way of living is in fact a living by faith. Such examples may not be numerous, and yet they may be more numerous than we think. If they were only such as seek after God of their own motion, they might be very few, but since God is seeking after them-after all men everywhere-it should not be incredible that some are found by him and folded in his fold, which they do not so much as know. A glance also at certain great first principles, particularly the three that follow,