and absolutely the divine institution. Turn some arbitrary ritual element in front, whether Romanistic or Calvinistic, and make it the divine, and you invert the truly divine method. This always turns the moral elements in front,the rights of faith, the rights of reason and of charity; and the ritual follows as a fitting and shifting vestment. The spirit, in short, dominates, the form serves; and it was Calvin's great error and is, alas! by no means an exto forget this fundamental law of the divine, which we can ever only alter at our peril. tinct error of Protestantism While claiming this divine freedom, without which truth can nowhere live, it becomes us at the same time to remember that the highest freedom is always bound fast in moral law. This, the essential spirit of Puritanism, ist eternal, whatever may be the temporary character of its dogmatical or ecclesiastical machinery. These may perish, as they seem in many of their forms decaying; but the earnestness, righteousness, purity, and resoluteness, which were the highest meaning of Puritanism, and the really valuable growth of Calvinism, can never decay without moral and social ruin. Amid all the expansions and refinements of modern thought and life, let us hope, therefore, that we shall never lose these genuine elements of the Calvinistic spirit; but while we open our minds to the higher and more comprehending expressions of divine truth that meet us everywhere, and learn a nobler wisdom and tolerance amid all our differences, let us, at the same time, always remember that there is no strength of good save in the gospel of old, and no real dignity or beauty for human life, save in Him "who did no sin." LATIMER. In the English Reformation we contemplate a state of things peculiar and unexampled; we do not see, as in Germany, a mighty spiritual movement sweeping for the moment all before it, and headed by one who gives voice and direction and triumph to it; nor yet, as in the Calvinistic Reformation, a great reconstructive organization of the doctrinal and social elements which had been disturbed and set in motion; but a complicated action of distinctly political as well as religious forces, the former frequently crossing and impeding the latter, rather than contributing with them to one grand result. This characteristic of double action, of the working of political as well as religious influences against the Papacy, goes far back into English history; and the political opposition is, in truth, the earlier, and in some respects, the more powerful influence. All along from the Conquest, such an opposition marks like a line of light the proud history of England, the grandest, because the richest in diverse historical elements, that the world has ever scen. On from the memorable struggles of the reign of Henry II., when the political and ecclesiastical interests stamped the impress of their fierce contention so strongly on the English character, Rome appears as an alien and antagonistic power in the country,as the threatening shadow of a concealed enemy, against which the higher and healthier national life is continually |