attempt to exhibit this until, in a later part of this Essay, after showing that, and how, the first Christian church has come to an end in all things relating to the Bible, Immortality, the Lord, and Life, I shall endeavor to show that and how the New Christian Church has come to restore, confirm, and develop the truths of Christianity in relation to these four cardinal subjects.

Let us now look at the last of these topics; the laws of conduct and of character, or of life. Here I would state briefly what I conceive to be the teaching of Christianity, and what I suppose to be the views now prevailing. The teaching of Christianity on this subject may be summed up in the following propositions: 1. That every man should constantly strive to do good and to be good, and to abstain from evil.

2. That he should abstain from evil acts and resist his evil inclinations, because all evil acts are sins against God.

3. That he should do this with the knowledge and acknowledgment that the desire and the power to do so are from God alone, and are God's in him, and do not originate from himself.

4. That this desire and power are given to all men who are willing to receive them, and are so given as to become the man's own, and that therefore he may and should cease to do evil, and learn to do well as of himself.

What then is the relation of existing Christianity to the truths contained in these propositions?

It certainly holds and proclaims the first of them. And the reason of this is, that it is in no sense and in no way peculiar to Christianity. Every system of religion which has prevailed and now prevails in the world, with probably no exception, holds and proclaims the same. And for this reason it is true that every system of religion, until utterly perverted, supplies the means of salvation for those who, with a good and honest heart, obey its precepts of life.

It is obvious, therefore, that the presence of this truth in existing Christianity, is no evidence whatever that it has not died, as Christianity; because this presence is perfectly compatible with the total absence of everything which is peculiar to Christianity, and which causes it to be something more than what may be called the universal religion of heathenism.

This remark would be perfectly true even if we were not obliged to add, that this very doctrine is made less prominent, and less effectual in existing Christianity, than in many heathen systems, by the influence of errors which, in existing Christianity, accompany this truth. This may be better seen when we speak of the other propositions.

The second, for example, is, I suppose, held in some sense, by all Orthodox Christians. But what do Rationalists say of it? How can they admit it? And if they admit it in words, what can they mean by the admission, when very few of the thinkers among them

believe in a personal God, or if they admit this also in words, attach any definite meaning to their words? What else can they believe, than that it is foolish to do evil, because evil leads to suffering; or that it is dishonorable to do evil, because it offends "the dignity of human nature?"

Then as to the third and fourth propositions, the Rationalists, for still stronger reasons, cannot hold them. And the Orthodox, while they certainly hold and strongly assert the third, do as certainly destroy all its value and efficacy, by their precise and positive denial of the fourth proposition; for this proposition, which is of the very inmost essence of Christianity, stands in absolute antagonism to the doctrines of election, of predestination, of salvation by faith alone, and of the limitation of salvation by confining the effect of the atonement to those who were from eternity elected and predestinated to be recipients of it, while all others were predestinated to damnation.

Undoubtedly there are very many among the Orthodox, and perhaps among those who hold to this creed, and use it and think they believe it, who do not in fact believe it. Their minds are, it may be unconsciously, liberated from the influence of a falsity which, wherever it actually exists and operates, must do infinite mischief, by denying all ability to choose, and so destroying all freedom, and therefore greatly weakening all incentive to effort, and all belief in the duty and the hopefulness of effort. So, too, there are undoubtedly many who are classed among Rationalists, who

are protected from its unbelief or its deification of nature or of man, and stand where they do only because they deny the fallacies of Orthodoxy.

But all such persons, whether Orthodox or Rationalist by name and companionship, have been protected and lifted up to a far better heathenism. For what they hold may be an excellent form of heathenism, greatly modified and improved by the indirect influence of Christianity; it may be all, or even more and better than all, that the best and wisest men of old or modern heathenism were able to see; but it is still much less than Christianity.

Thus it is that the end of the first Christian church has come. It has terminated by the decay and extinction within it of those truths, or principles, or doctrines which made this church distinctively different from all which had preceded it. Whatsoever was good and true in any or all of these, it retained and embraced. It gave to all this good and truth new force, new development, and new clearness. But besides doing this, it superadded certain new truths or doctrines which were never distinctly known before, and which harmonized with and gave clearness and force to all that was good and wise that had ever been known, while they were far better and wiser.

These new truths and doctrines constituted the first Christian church, intellectually; and their reception by men, and the conformity of heart and life to them by those who received them, constituted the genuine, essential, living Christian church. These new and

characterizing truths and doctrines have faded away. They are no longer taught to men; no longer offered by the church to its members for their reception into the mind and life. And therefore the first Christian church has come to an end.

Let me again guard against the supposition that I would intimate the decay and extinction within the church of all true and vital religion. On the contrary, I shall endeavor to show in another place, when treating of the doctrine of the Lord, that His coming made that decay and extinction impossible. All of the old religion which was good and wise, was, I repeat, retained and embraced within the first Christian church. And a large portion of this survives the extinction of those peculiar doctrines which were superadded by the church and made it what it was. Perhaps I may illustrate my meaning by saying, that while I believe that there are those now within the church, who could write a discourse upon duty or upon life and immortality, which would be as good as anything which could have been uttered by Socrates, Plato, or Cicero, I see but little now existing in the church which could instruct any of its members how to produce anything much higher, or better than, or essentially different from, what those sages and others of the class whom they represent, might have produced in their day. I say much higher or better, only because I love to believe that the indirect, and perhaps lingering influence of the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, has given to the heathenism they have left behind, a