general style of this little work. The former are those of a christian scholar; the latter is animated and pleasing. A few more remarks will enable us to give the reader some idea of both.

It is useless to speculate what history would have been, had man not fallen. As it is, the dominant purpose, which moulds it into its actual form, is the merciful design of God to restore man to his lost state. The first effects of the development of this purpose are thus treated by Mr. Wilberforce.

He fell, however; he was cut off from God's outward presence; and God's image within became corrupted and debased. Yet even then he was not altogether forsaken; and the course of his history declares by what means it has pleased God to renew in some measure His lost image, and to give hopes hereafter of its perfect restoration. The end of man's existence since the fall has been to compass this object; and with a view to it, he has had to learn, first, what is the weakness and degradation of his corrupted nature; and, secondly, in what manner he may regain that purity which has been lost.

A promise on this subject was given to our first parents; and as it was a promise, the attainment of which did not rest with themselves, but was to be consequent upon the multiplication of their race, therefore it taught them that the recovery of God's image was to be bestowed upon mankind not as separate beings, but as portions of a family; not as individual subjects of the King of heaven, but as joint members of His community upon earth. Thus arose human society, out of the common expectation of the regeneration of men. Its course was long, painful, and complicated; and oftentimes none but He who sees the end from the beginning could have perceived that it advanced. For if its second stage has shown what great benefits have been bestowed upon mankind by the restoration of God's image through Jesus Christ, yet its earlier state was but a proof that mere human efforts would not suffice for its recovery. For how could human society attain any perfection, seeing that men speedily forgot the object of its existence? From which it followed, that since one half of the human race was weaker than the other, and that in each sex there were differences both in mind and body, all respect was lost for those who, as possessors of an immortal spirit, had as much right as the strongest, wisest, or wealthiest, to their place among the community of mankind. But it was reserved for the Church to loose the fetters of slavery, to preach the gospel to the poor, and to give ❝ due honour to the weaker vessel" in the household of God.

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That such would be the state of society was obvious, even when it took its first departure from the family of the common parents of mankind. From them sprang two races-the sons of God, and the children of men--the respective forerunners of the world and of the Church. The children of Seth built their social life upon that divine system in which they were placed, and lived in expectation of the promise of the world's recovery. Cain and his family were driven out from God's presence, and sought by their own contrivance to supply what seemed irreparably lost. Society arose in both from that family-relation in which God had placed them; mankind

were bound together not by voluntary agreement, but by natural affinity; and the nation was but a wider household. But though society itself had thus a divine principle, yet the contrivances which minister to it-the arts of life, the means of security-these had a human origin, and were produced by the self-interest and necessities of man. Seth dwelt with his father Adam; and when his first child was born, we read of no consequence but the establishment of God's public worship. "Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord." Cain, on the other hand, whose object was to defend himself from being "a fugitive in the earth," built the first city, and called it after the name of his first-born son and the two races continue to run parallel to one another. In the time of Lamech, the seventh from Adam, the powers of human society came to a head-his children were leaders in their several ways to the herdsmen and artificers of the world: "Adah bare Jabal: he was father of such as dwelt in tents, and have cattle. And his brother's name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ. And Zillah, she also bare Tubal-cain, an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron."-Pp. 2-4.

Thus early were the principles of human society and the hallowed rule of heavenly contemplation brought into opposition with one another. Both arise from those natural relations with which God has formed mankind, and from those powers and endowments which He has given. But they speedily took their leave of one another. Yet the happiness of man's life depends upon their moving together with an equal pace; and the complete establishment of Christ's kingdom implies their perfect combination. And the great object of history is to show how these powers diverged from one another, and how they have again been brought to unite their times of meeting are the grand epochs in the annals of mankind.-P. 6.

It was, however, after the deluge that the machinery was put into action, which, while it prepared men to receive beneficially the regenerative power of Christianity, fitted them by several complicated processes to coalesce into one spiritual society-the Church of Christ. To the breaking up the family of Noah at Babel, succeeded the call of Abraham, the first step in the formation of this great spiritual polity. And this event illustrates remarkably the intimate connexion between the course of history and the purposes of God, insomuch that the one cannot be rightly understood without taking the other as the comment.

This promise [i. e. the promise to Abraham] is the great charter of the Church. When Adam lost Paradise, God had promised him, that of the woman's seed should come a Deliverer for the human race. And now the hope was to gain shape and substance, by being embodied in those lasting institutions which have their completion in the Church. The promise makes mention, first, of an earthly inheritance, and then of a heavenly possession; first of a temporal seed, and then of a spiritual progeny; first of that which should be confined to one

nation, and then of that in which all the world should be included. Yet were these several parts of the promise so united, that the one was borne, as it were, in the arms of the other. Before their completion they seemed but one, and since their completion they have been again so blended together, that whatsoever was spoken of the outward, has reference also to the inward blessing. For God's dispensations have been ever thus; what is present and temporal has taken its shape from some more lasting blessing which lay hid within. As the indistinct imaginations of childhood express the weakness of man's knowledge in this present state, and as the ark was a token of the Church, in which men are in like manner offered a refuge from destruction, so was God's dealing with the temporal seed of Abraham a type, that is, an acted prophecy, of what befals his spiritual descendants. Thus does the whole promise of Abraham belong to the Church of Christ. For it was limited from the first to one of the nations of which Abraham was the natural parent-namely, to that nation of Israel, of which, now that men are elected not by birth, but by baptism, the Church of Christ has inherited the privileges and the name. "The promise," says St. Paul, was not made to seeds, as of many, but as of one, and to thy seed," the Church of Christ; that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentile Church.Pp. 18, 19.

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Henceforward the empires of the world had a double end to serve. Besides the general one of preparing mankind to become the spiritual subjects of the kingdom "which shall never be destroyed," they had to preserve or punish, to enlarge or purify, that peculiar people, which was the germ in which the future church was contained. And we may trace the nomad descendants of Abraham, taught the arts of settled and civilized life by the Egyptians, inured to war by the Canaanites, chastised and purified by the Assyrians and Babylonians, preserved by the Persians when likely to merge in the tribes of their conquerors, catholicized (if one may so speak) and infused as a leaven among the Gentiles by the influence of the Greeks, and finally, when their mission was completed, and the scaffolding was to be taken away by the aid of which the spiritual temple was built, destroyed as a nation, and dispersed by the Romans. It would far exceed our limits to investigate the part which each nation successively has played in introducing Christianity. The inquiry indeed would include the whole history of civilization,-an element which obviously had very great influence in paving the way for the gospel, from which it has, in its turn, received the most important assistance. We must content ourselves with extracting the words in which Mr. Wilberforce briefly sums up the purposes accomplished by the first three empires of Nebuchadnezzar's vision:

The grand object of history has been stated, in these pages, to be the development of those means by which the lost image of God may be recovered. Prophecy declared, from the first, that this would be obtained through a gift to be bestowed upon one chosen people,

NO. II.-N. S.

Prophecy next took a wider range, declared what should be the general combinations of human society-the four great forms of worldly empire, and that they should minister in some way towards the full attainment of this heavenly blessing. The gift, indeed, was to be a gift of God, yet was human instrumentality to concur in its extension. And the first two empires had in reality done their part in this great design. The first, by early concentrating the wealth of the East, had afforded the means of setting forth the spectacle of the latter days in the middle theatre of the world. The second had acted as the preserver of that chosen people, through whom God's blessing was to be given. And now the third was to supply its portion, by providing an universal language, and by so extending the intellect of man as to enable him to do more justice to the communications of Heaven.-P. 92.

The Roman empire, by combining all the rest, and infusing a principle of unity through the known world, formed a broad platform for the spread and elevation of the last great kingdom; which it was made instrumental in rearing, as well by the fury of its persecutions, as afterwards by its patronage and fostering care. The last offices of the Roman power to the Christian Church may be told in the author's own words.

Constantine may afterwards have attained to deeper and better thoughts, but in this manner was he first determined to implore succour from the Christian's God. And thus was the spectacle again brought round, of which in the days of Nebuchadnezzar there had been a short-lived example. There had then been the promise of an union between the majesty of human rule and the supremacy of God's dominion, the chief of human beings calling on his subjects to join with him in honouring that God whose prophet he had learnt to reverence. In the hour of that first monarchy's highest ascendency, it had touched upon the Church of God, and such sense of inferiority had been the consequence. It had seemed as though the two might ally; as though that human system, which had so long dissevered itself from the religious principle, had met it again and recognised its master; as though Noah's prediction, which spoke of the widespreading power of man as taking up its abode in God's Church, was at once to be consummated. But such meeting was but for a season. It was not given to that empire, which had been originally reared by the children of Ham, to be the immediate prototype of Messiah's kingdom. The prophecies had gathered themselves into shape and order, but they passed away for one of the days of heaven. now, when a thousand years had elapsed, and when those empires had run their course, which were announced at the previous era, the same combination of circumstances reappears. But now the world's dominion has centered in the race of Japheth, ere it comes in contact with that spiritual principle which had been enshrined in the family of Shem. And, as at the former epoch, it is the earthly power which requires the Church's aid. Nebuchadnezzar found contentment from the Jewish prophet; and so the world-pervading might of Christianity is invoked by an emperor who feels how hollow and unreal a security

And

is the purple of Rome. The Babylonish monarch, the foremost man of that era at which the first empire came to its height, and from which the course of the three following was distinctly viewed, is himself chosen to behold the vision which foreshadows the course of God's coming providence. And this analogy gives great confirmation to a circumstance which historical evidence distinctly testifies, that when God's dealings had an end, and the destined career of the four empires was completed, it was, in like manner, to the possessor of the sovereign state that the vision was revealed, which indicated the nature of their consummation. For this was the declaration of the first christian emperor of Rome, just as, a thousand years before, the vision of its greatness had mixed with the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar. "As I was meditating," says Constantine, "on my situation, and imploring God's help, this wonderful vision was presented to me. Mid-day being a little past, I saw with these eyes, in that part of the heaven just above the sun, the figure of a cross of light, and with it these words, By this prevail. And when I much doubted, Christ appeared to me the selfsame night in a dream, and ordered me to form a standard like that which I had seen, and to employ it as my defence against my enemies."-Pp. 248-250.

[The Labarum.-Constantine in the ship of the commonwealth, rowed by an angel, carrying the labarum, or standard of his Christian profession, in his hand. It consists of the two Greek letters X and R [P], with which the name of Christ begins. The phoenix on his hand indicates him a refounder of the Roman state. From an ancient coin.]

Henceforth then, with one short exception, we see its princes bringing their power and honour into the Church of Christ. Constantine declared, that while he recognised those bishops who had authority from God for the Church's inward conduct, he felt that, for its out

The reader will have remarked this symbol on the cover of our "Christian Remembrancer."