his resistance to justice and freedom, as embodied in that Emancipation for the advocacy of which it had rejected Canning. Peel had now become too great and too wise longer to resist this great reform; and Oxford burned its idol on the same altar on which it had worshiped him. In 1865, the greatest English statesman was Gladstone; a man who, as is said of Peel, "was born into Conservatism, reared in it, and stationed to watch over and preserve it;" but like Peel, whose "mind and heart have kindled with an enthusiasm of which he was, twenty years ago, unsusceptible; an enthusiasm of popular sympathy, and in favor of a persuasive justice." And so, to mark symmetrically the relations of Oxford to enlightenment and progress, Gladstone is rejected, as Peel and Canning were rejected in their day. Three centuries ago, Oxford burned Cranmer, and Latimer, and Ridley, on the spot which now she has marked by a monumental shaft. How many years will it be (for even Oxford moves) before the polling-place of the University shall be graced by a new "Martyrs' Memorial," bearing the names of Canning, Peel, and Gladstone?

But we must have done. If we have said anything which seems either to express or to stimulate ill-will against the English people, we are sorry, for we have not meant it. If we are suspected of having unfairly reproduced the statements of the historian, we can only refer to the work itself as voucher for worse than we have said. But, with undiminished esteem for the grand virtues of many of our kinsmen beyond the ocean, we shall be well pleased if any timorous souls who have meekly submitted, as we have, to lingual castigation from English assumption, shall find in these volumes weapons with which to "strike back."

ARTICLE III.-THE POLITICAL PREACHING OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.

Letter from Judge J. S. Black on "Political Preaching," in reply to Rev. Alfred Nevin, D. D. July 25th, 1866.

JUDGE BLACK, of Pennsylvania, will be remembered by some of our readers as one of those unpleasantly distinguished men who a few years ago, in conjunction with a certain James Buchanan, undertook to carry on the Government of the United States. What a mess they made of it will not soon be forgotten, nor the fact that the style of their performance was determined in no small degree by the advice of Judge Black, who, as Attorney General of the Administration, assumed its guidance in constitutional and civil law. The Judge for the past few years has remained in obscurity, with no very strong prospect of being called to repeat his experiments in statesmanship; but being fully persuaded, like Micawber, that there is a field for his great talents somewhere, he has of late "broken out in a new place," and has addressed a series of letters to Rev. Dr. Nevin, upon the subject of political preaching, designed to establish the doctrine (perhaps as a sort of apologia pro vita sua) that religion has little or nothing to do with politics. We are so unfortunate as to have seen only one of these productions (that of July 25th, 1866), and perhaps do injustice to the rest when we say that we see no reason to believe that Dr. Nevin requires any assistance in the discussion. But not having met with any of the Rev. Doctor's replies, we infer, from the tenor of the paper before us, that his argument treats the subject upon general principles; and if this is so, he leaves open the way for us to present some views bearing upon the topic in controversy which are generally too much overlooked in similar discussions.

It is not our purpose to repeat the arguments by which the right and the duty of the preacher to defend the right and denounce the wrong, wherever they appear, in private morals, in

party platforms, or in public legislation, have been so often and so abundantly vindicated. The proposition laid down by Judge Black that "the clergy are without authority, as they are often without fitness, to decide for their congregations what is right or what is wrong in the legislation of the country," and that "they are not called or sent to propagate any kind of political doctrine," if it means anything at all, has been too often refuted to require the further attention of our readers.

We propose merely to examine one position of the Judge, which is frequently taken by the opponents of "political preaching," and which has not yet been so notoriously overthrown as to be totally destitute of influence.

Let us state the proposition in the words of Judge Black :"Christ and his Apostles kept them [politics and religion] perfectly separate. They announced the great facts of the Gospel to each individual whom they addressed. * * * They

expressed no preference for one form of government over another; they provoked no political revolutions, and they proposed no legal reforms. Had they done so, they would have flatly contradicted the declaration that Christ's kingdom is not of this world. *** They joined in no clamors for or against any administration, but simply testified against sin before the only tribunal which Christ ever erected upon earth, that is to say the conscience of the sinner himself. The vice of political preaching was wholly unknown to the primitive church."

It is this historical assertion, so commonly and confidently uttered, that we propose to examine, and we design to inquire whether our Saviour and His Apostles did in fact so entirely abstain from all allusions of a political nature, and confine themselves so exclusively to spiritual exhortations, as it is the fashion to declare. We propose to show that both Christ and the Apostles not only preached freely and boldly upon such political questions as were connected with public morality, but even went beyond those limits, and "meddled" with various political and party questions of the day which had no moral or religious aspect whatever.

Let us first briefly review the political situation of the Jew

ish nation, and some of the party disputes which agitated that people at the opening of the Christian era.

The Mosaic law was the "Constitution" of the State, whose whole internal and external administration and policy were regulated by its provisions. The Government was substantially an oligarchy or aristocracy, all political offices and all civil power and dignity being absorbed by the upper classes -the priests, scribes, and elders. This nobility or aristocracy was sufficiently numerous to be itself split up into parties or factions, each fiercely contending for the supremacy, their constant struggle being often attended by scenes of tumult and bloodshed. The leading parties of the State were the Pharisees and the Sadducees; the latter being, so to speak, the party of "strict constructionists of the Constitution," deprecating customs, laws, or observances not inculcated in that instrument, and the former insisting upon the validity and importance of numerous traditionary observances and laws which,-the accumulation of centuries,-were often frivolous, or opposed to the letter or spirit of the Mosaic Constitution. These questions of constitutional doctrine or construction furnished then as now the topics of party strife. They related for the most part to matters of belief or ceremonial observance in the Jewish religion (the "peculiar institution" of the State), which, as all State religions inevitably must, had come to be so identified and intermingled with secular considerations, parties, and politics, as to have substantially lost its spiritual character, and had come to be regarded in scarcely any other light than as a matter of public law. The questions discussed in connection with it, and upon which parties disputed, and often fought with bloody violence, were not as to what was right or moral, but as to what was lawful, and had as little connection with spiritual religion as those questions of a later period respecting the temporal supremacy of the Popes, or the divine right of kings, or the still more modern topics of temperance and slavery. Judge Black, recalling the evil effects of political preaching, describes the merely political character of similar controversies the so called "religious wars" of Christian history, by saying: There was nothing religious about them except that they were hissed up by the clergy.

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*

*

*It was the poli

tics of the church, not her religion, that infuriated the parties, and converted men into demons. * * * The religious difference was a false pretence of the political preachers for the promotion of their own schemes."

The supreme legislative and judicial authority among the Jews was vested in the Sanhedrim or Senate. The members were elective, and its party complexion varied at different times, and over the assembly presided the High Priest, the Chief Magistrate of the nation. Beneath the aristocracy was the mass of the nation, "the common people," "the multitude," as they are called in the New Testament-who were completely under the influence and subjection of their rulers, but who, while yielding to the superior intelligence and authority of the aristocracy, yet viewed them with that mingled feeling of envy, jealousy, and hatred which such a form of government inevitably engenders.

Besides the leading political parties which we have mentioned, or rather within them, were various subordinate parties or factions, more or less affecting the political machinery of the State; and the situation was further complicated by the external relations of the nation. The country having just been conquered by the Romans was held by them as a province, a sort of military bureau being established in it, and its native government, tolerated for the time, being liable to be abolished at any moment. Accordingly, the national authorities and the leading politicians, being in constant apprehension that some rigid "policy of reconstruction" might be applied by the conquerors if occasion should provoke it, were, with a prudence that might well be imitated in similar cases, exceedingly conservative in all their views, and deprecated popular agitations and demonstrations of every kind, having especial dislike of popular orators, "fire-eaters," and haranguers, of whom not a few came forward to alarm them. In this they had the sympathy of the Herodian party, or supporters of the Herodian family, the reigning family of Judea under "the Constitution as it was," and who, as the regular office-holders of the nation, naturally sought to propitiate the conqueror by sustaining his "policy," whatever it might be for the moment, in order if possible to retain or recover their official positions. The peo