tyranny, and caused the sweet odor of the returning Gospel to embathe the soul with the fragrance of Heaven.

Christianity, the most sublime and the most simple of religious faiths, had in its origin set at naught those distinctions of rank, and those claims to spiritual power, to which the world had so long been accustomed to bow. It passed by the Sanhedrim and the High Priest, to select its apostles from the lower walks of life; from fishermen and publicans.

It had, besides, recognized the right of the human intellect in matters of faith, by furnishing to the world a divinely inspired written constitution, adapted to human reason and addressed to individual man. But even this divine system was soon tortured into an engine of tyranny; and, side by side, often at variance, but yet mutually supporting each other, upon the ruins of Roman and Christian liberty, arose those vast systems of spiritual and temporal despotism which for so many centuries paralyzed the human intellect, or confined its activities to the barren dialectics and laborious follies of scholasticism.

It is no doubt true that Europe never sank into the servile and hopeless slavery of the eastern despotisms. A variety of causes prevented this. The diversity of her political and social elements; the free instincts of

the northern hordes who overran the Roman empire; the spirit of ancient liberty taking refuge amid the turbulent activity of free municipalities; the influence of the feudal system, opposed as it was to that tendency to centralization which has ever proved so fatal to the rights of man and the progress of nations; and, above all, the divine spirit of Christianity itself, whose ennobling and emancipating influences no perversion could utterly destroy; all these combined to relieve the crushing weight of spiritual power, and to preserve those seeds of liberty which sprung forth so gloriously under the culture of the Reformers.

And yet at the commencement of the sixteenth century, notwithstanding the discovery of Columbus had awakened the spirit of commercial enterprise, and the invention of printing had given a mighty stimulus to the human intellect; notwithstanding the genius of Dante had enriched Italian literature with its noblest production, and Art had achieved some of its sublimest triumphs under the munificent patronage of Leo III., causes were in operation which seemed to threaten the entire extinction of civil and intellectual liberty.

The feudal system had succumbed to the predominant power of monarchy; standing armies had taken the place of the feudal militia, and for the spirit of

chivalry had been substituted the arts of policy and the machinations of priestly intrigue.

Two vast consolidated systems, mutually jealous of, and yet necessary to, each other, had acquired a commanding influence over all other social and political elements. Monarchy, with its standing armies, on the one hand, the Church, holding in its hands the eternal destinies of man, and asserting a divine infallibility, on the other, seemed to threaten, by their combined action, the entire submission of the last relics of her free institutions. Nothing but a blow struck at the very foundation principles of these vast systems, could suffice to rescue Europe from its perilous condition.

But the seeds of truth, silently deposited by the Word of God, had taken root, and were gradually expanding in the heart of the social system. The time for the new birth had at last come, and Luther struck the blow which, like earthquake shocks, reverberated through Europe.

Language cannot exaggerate the importance of that great event. To say that it gave birth to modern liberty is but a feeble expression. It would be more proper to say that it indicated the principles upon which all true freedom rests - the right of private judgment in matters of faith-the prerogative of the

soul with unfettered wing to cleave the highest heaven the equality of man based on his immor

of truth tality.

Ancient liberty was but the supremacy of a class. English liberty, before the time of the Puritans, was but a matter of disputed precedent. It sought with laborious care, 'mid time-worn records, for evidences of royal concessions, and based itself upon no higher principles than the customs of the realm. Even to this day, a class of writers of no mean celebrity, deem it worth their while to weary their readers as to whether the people of England were qualified, by precedent and law, by royal grants and charters, in resisting the attempt on the part of the Stuarts to establish a despotism like that of Louis the Fourteenth. There is, and probably ever will be, a class of minds that seek thus to measure human rights by musty precedents drawn from the records of a monkish age.

Christianity has placed them on higher grounds, and the Reformation vindicated and restored Christianity.

I have said the Puritan was the precursor of the Pilgrim. They were both the offspring of the Reformation.

When Luther restored the Bible to the common people, and asserted the doctrine of justification by

faith, he announced principles which, developed under the peculiar circumstances of English history, produced the Puritan, overturned her monarchy, and planted free institutions in this New World.

The Reformation in England originated with the Court, and not the people. It was not so much the result of the adoption, by her people, of the principles and faith of the Reformers, as of causes connected with her foreign policy and the passions of her king.

Henry the Eighth asserted the independence of the English Church, with the view of vesting in the English crown the spiritual supremacy of the Pope. Retaining all the peculiar doctrines of the papal creed, he boldly conceived the plan of erecting on their basis a spiritual power, which, united with the temporal, should make the kings of England the most despotic monarchs in Europe.

This great leading feature of the English Reformation must be carefully kept in view, if we would correctly understand the history of religious parties in that country, from his time down to the Revolution of sixteen hundred and eighty-eight. This idea continued to be a favorite one with his successors; and although in the time of Elizabeth, protestant principles had taken deep root in England, and the articles of the English Church contained all the great essen