for ever. But now thy kingdom shall not continue." Such a gross violation of Jewish constitution, in its most important and fundamental principle, utterly disqualified Saul for continuing the chief magistrate of the nation. The attempt was again made by King Uzziah. He went into the temple to burn incense, and was smitten with leprosy upon the spot. So scrupulously did God himself preserve the political reform introduced into the Jewish commonwealth. Still, however, Judaism was a national religion, and the ecclesiastical establishment was upheld by the civil power, and their temple was the great rallying point of patriotism as well as piety. And at that period of the world it is doubtful if the true religion could have stood alone. When Christ came, the world was ripe for another and still farther reform, the entire separation of the civil from the ecclesiastical power. Indeed, it followed from the spirituality and universality of his religion. The Saviour of the world could not be the author of a national religion. It could have no central abode or temple on the earth. Its author was soon to be exalted to heaven, and rule his church from the invisible throne of truth. His kingdom could not identify itself with any earthly dominion, for then it would have been shaken by those revolutions which, in a few years, crumble the thrones of the

widest monarchies. Its kingdom was the soul of man, under all forms of government, equally subject to its sway. The word went forth from the lips of Him whose word shall never pass away, though heaven and earth were dissolved, "Render unto Cæsar the things that be Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's." This most important principle, when once established, enabled the kingdom of Christ to co-exist with all the kingdoms of the world. There was no point, so long as the church restricted itself to that sphere in which its founder intended it to act, in which it could come in collision with any earthly government. Cæsar might be king or emperor, elected by the people, or reign by hereditary right, still the duties which were owed to him interfered not with those spiritual obligations which were due to God. Thus was Christ's kingdom calculated to be universal. So long as the Christian church was in a minority, and a persecuted sect, this principle of the separation of church and state was carried out by the force of circumstances. The only power which the church could exercise was a spiritual one. Her first place of meeting was an upper room. Her first preachers were illiterate fishermen, and her first converts were accounted the offscouring of the earth. For the first three centuries their churches were, for the most part, the apart

ments of private houses, and sometimes their devotions went up from caves and tombs. Their bishops were, in a majority of cases, honest, but plain and unpretending citizens, who gave some part of their time to the superintendence of the humble affairs of a despised and persecuted sect.

But the conversion of a Roman emperor changed the whole aspect of their condition. From a persecuted sect, they became a dominant religion; but it was by the sacrifice of the whole reform which Christianity itself had introduced, the separation of church and state; and it carried the world back to where it was before the advent of the Redeemer. Jesus had said, "My kingdom is not of this world." But his followers, as soon as they had the opportunity, as eagerly seized on temporal dominion, as if they were the followers of some ambitious conqueror, whose only object was the subjugation of the world. When the church had once got its grasp upon temporal power, it pursued with steady aim the enlargement of its influence, till it absolutely crowded the emperor out of his throne, and the successors of the apostles, whom their humble Master forbade to suffer themselves to be called rabbi even, became temporal princes, and one of them at this moment reigns in that city which was once the mistress of the world.

What tongue can tell, what imagination can conceive, the mischief which this violation of a fundamental article of the constitution of the Christian church has occasioned to the world? It annihilated and reversed, not only the reform introduced by Christianity, but likewise that of Judaism itself, and carried back the world into the despotism of Egypt, where king and priest were identical. For the effect is the same, whether the priest usurps the throne, or the king usurps the priesthood. Both are crimes of equal magnitude against the welfare of mankind. How criminal and dangerous the all-seeing eye perceived to be the consolidation of the civil and sacerdotal power, we learn from the history of King Uzziah. We read in Chronicles of him, that, "when he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction; for he transgressed against the Lord his God, and went into the temple of the Lord to burn incense upon the altar of incense. And Azariah the priest went in after him, and with him four score priests of the Lord, that were valiant men. And they withstood Uzziah the king, and said unto him, It appertaineth not unto thee, Uzziah, to burn incense unto the Lord, but to the priests, the sons of Aaron, that are consecrated to burn incense; go out of the sanctuary, for thou hast trespassed, neither shall it be for thine honor from the Lord God.

Then Uzziah was wroth, and had a censer in his hand to burn incense; and while he was wroth with the priests, the leprosy even rose up in his forehead, before the priests in the house of the Lord, from beside the altar of incense. And Azariah the chief priest, and all the priests looked upon him, and behold he was leprous in his forehead, and they thrust him out from thence; yea, himself hasted to go out, because the Lord had smitten him. And Uzziah the king was a leper unto the day of his death." Such a crime was it in the sight of God, even in the twilight of the Mosaic dispensation, to consolidate the royal and the priestly offices, the civil and the sacerdotal power. And yet

this was the very thing which was done under the superior illumination of Christianity, not indeed by the intrusion of the civil magistrate into the sanctuary, but by the priest's mounting the throne. Christianity, however, contained the elements of its own redemption. It was essentially intellectual and spiritual in its nature.

The very principles of association in it were faith,—a free assent of the understanding, and a voluntary allegiance of the heart and life. These things lie not in the sphere of human compulsion. The citizenship of the kingdom of God did not descend, like that of the Jewish commonwealth, by hereditary succession. In the language of the Saviour, when