above himself. All the power that he has in this way is human power, and gives him no superhuman aid. Either he is sufficient for himself, or he is not. If he is not, you bring him not the power he needs, when you only bring him what he already has.

“But these are the divine in man.' When is this Babel speech to end? When you call the tendencies, instincts, aspirations, of man divine, save so far as quickened by divine influences, that is, by the inflowings of divine efficacy ab extra, what do you but identify the human and divine natures, and either declare God to be man, or man to be God? If you identify man with God, what do you, when you demand reform, but blasphemously assert that it is God himself that needs reforming? Do you not also see, that all the divinity you get, by speaking of man's nature as divine, avails you nothing? What in this way do you get that transcends human nature? What do you get that man has not had from the beginning? These instincts, these nobler faculties. of which you speak, are man himself, and, therefore, must needs be with him wherever he is, and as active as he himself. If, with all this divinity in his nature, and as active as he himself, man has been able to run into all the errors, vices, and crimes, and to undergo all the perversions, of which this very society you are seeking to reform is the exponent, what, we would ask in all soberness, is its value? If it has been insufficient to prevent, can it be all-sufficient to cure? Is it easier to cure than to prevent? How much more philosophic is the declaration, "O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thy help!"

Man is, in no sense, sufficient for himself. Strictly speaking, he is not self-moving, for he moves in God. He is, indeed, essentially active, and active from within; but only in conjunction with another activity, not himself, but meeting him ab extra. This applies equally to the most interior emotions of his soul, and to what are more vulgarly called his actions. And, not being himself pure spirit, but spirit in union with body, he can never come into relation, or hold communion, with spirit, save as that spirit, like his own, is embodied. The truth, the power that is to save him, and to be adequate to his wants, must, then, be not truth as pure spirit, God in the unapproachable and ineffable spirituality of his own essence, but truth embodied, instituted,-" God manifest in the flesh." This is the result to which we are driven.

Taking it for granted, now, that reforms are possible only by means of superhuman aid, and that this aid comes to us through some institution, that is, some divinely instituted medium, we may ask, What is this institution? Is it the state? Formerly, not comprehending that it is the truth itself, and not the true doctrine of truth, that saves, and, therefore, holding the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone, instead of justification by the communication of Christ himself, I contended, that the state was the only institution needed. I looked upon Christianity-not always, and, in fact, rarely when it was the precise question before me, but, for the most part, in my theorizing-as the philosophy of life, rather than the life itself, life in its very principle. I sought to make it the basis of the state, and contended that the state would be the only organic body needed for its practical realization. I wished to get rid of the church as a separate organization, not in order to doom men to live without a church, but in order to transfer its chief functions to the state. According to my own thought, the state would have embodied the great principles of the Gospel, and reproduced them in its enactments and administration; while the outward service, the cultus exterior, would have been left, unorganized, to individual taste, reason, and conscience. This view I advocated when I first came into this community, under the name of the unity-not union-of church and state, and it is but at a comparatively recent day, that I have been forced, very reluctantly, to abandon it. But it is unsound, because the state does not embody Christ, and the same fact that makes it necessary to embody the principles of the Gospel to render them efficacious on the indvidual, makes it necessary to embody them to render them efficacious on the state. If, unembodied, if as an invisible kingdom of truth and righteousness, they were too remote from humanity to control the life of the individual, how should they be sufficient to control the state, and compel it to embody them in its laws and administration? I must make them predominate in individuals, before I can make them the basis of the moral action of the government; and yet, to make them predominate in the individual citizen is the great question, and the only reason for seeking to make them predominate in the government.

Appreciating this difficulty, but still groping in the dark, struck with the great power and utility of the church in the middle ages, I said, "We must have a church, a new church,

which shall influence legislators, and the administrators of government." Hence the demand I made for a new church, and my efforts to establish what I called the "Church of the Future." But the Essay was hardly sent forth before my old difficulty returned,-Where is my power to form the new church Can man constitute a church which shall embody Christ? Is Christ unembodied? If so, is there any human power that can give him a body? No. Then, either Christ is embodied, and there is already existing a true church, through which he carries on his work of redemption, individual or social, or there is no redeemer, and no redemption for us. Man cannot raise himself, or construct, without going out of himself, a machine by which he can raise himself. Archimedes said, he would lift the world, but only on condition of having a stand-point outside of it. The fulcrum of your lever must rest on another body than the one you propose to raise. This is as true in morals as in mechanics, for one and the same dynamic law runs through the universe. If we have no stand-point out of man, no point of support in God himself, then have we no means of elevating man or society. Then either there is already existing the divine institution, the church of God, or there are no means of reform.

In coming to this conclusion, what have we done, but to apply to social reform the very principle of individual reform, which all Christians admit and contend for? Do we not preach from all our pulpits, that the sinner is not adequate to the work of his own moral redemption; that he can rise from his state of moral death, only through the new life given him by the Son of God? Is man, confessedly inadequate, through the waste of his moral powers by sin and transgression, to the work of his own individual redemption, yet adequate to the still greater work of social regeneration? Of what are social evils the result? You answer, of our viciously organized society, which perverts the minds, corrupts the hearts, and debilitates the bodies of its members. But whence comes your viciously organized society? What is the cause of that? Does society make man, or man society? Grant, what is undoubtedly true, that one acts and reacts on the other, yet, with holy men, could you have ever had a viciously organized society? With ignorant, depraved men, can you have a rightly or ganized society? How, then, except on the same principle, and by the same power, that you expect individual refor

mation, can you look for social reform? Are not both to be obtained by virtue of one and the same law? Then, if the church be essential to individual salvation, so is it essential to social salvation. But does the church of God still exist? Doubt it not. Is it still living, and in a condition to do its work. Yes, if you will return to it, and submit to it. You may have abandoned the church, but it still exists, and is competent to its work, and all that reformers have to do is, to cease to be "Come-outers," and to return to its bosom, and receive its orders

CHURCH UNITY AND SOCIAL AMELIORATION.

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for July, 1844.]

THE great majority of our wise and liberal politicians, and not a few of our equally wise and liberal clergy, whose god is what they call toleration, profess to regard the division of the Christian world into separate and hostile communions as a very great blessing, and altogether preferable to a state of unity and catholicity; because these hostile communions, these jarring and rival sects, tend, by their mutual ambition and jealousies, to check and restrain each other, and thus prevent any one from gaining the preponderance. In their view, all communions are sects, and one, perhaps, not more or less so than another. There is no true church communion, separation from which constitutes sectarianism, but all communions are alike sectarian; and the aim of every friend of liberty should be, to prevent any one of them from gaining the ascendency, and swallowing up or suppressing the rest.

Now, what is the secret thought of these friends of sectarianism? Why, it is that the Christian church is a disease in the social body, which, since we cannot expel it altogether, we must study to break up, and scatter through the system as much as possible, so that it may not concentrate its virulence on any point? This was avowed to us in just so many words, the other day, by the excellent conductor of one of our city religious newspapers, which bears the name of Christian, and makes more than ordinary pretensions to piety, spirituality, and Christian philanthropy.

Now, what can more completely demonstrate a total want of faith in the church of God? If men believed that the church was founded by God himself, and that the Son of God, who is God, is its head, and always with it, that it was founded by infinite wisdom and love, and must needs be protected by the same infinite wisdom and love, for the express purpose of exercising authority over men, even over their very consciences, could they regard it as a disease, or fear that its power could ever be too great, or in any possible contingency become dangerous? In plain terms, if they believed the church to be God's church, and its authority God's authority, could they possibly believe it necessary to guard against it, to interpose barriers to its progress, and to place restraints on its powers? Of course not. They do, then, really believe the church to be of man, of human origin and growth, and, like all things human, liable to abuse, and therefore needing to be restrained. The age, we are aware, is bold in its blasphemies, and all but boundless in its impieties; but we doubt whether, in its sublime politics, it would dare contend that we should restrain within due bounds the power of the all-wise and merciful God, and that some safeguards against the tyranny of the Almighty should be sought out. Evidently, therefore, the age regards the church as purely human.

Then, again, if these politicians and liberal clergymen believed the church to be of God, to be a divine institution, they would regard as evil whatever tended to break its unity, and for the very reason, that, in breaking its unity, they weakened its power, and impeded its operations. They would see and feel, that, the more they extended the power of the church, the further would they extend the kingdom of God on earth; for they would understand by the church the visible instrument, in the hands of the Redeemer and Saviour, of extending and consolidating his moral dominion over the hearts and consciences of men. Their jealousy of church dominion, and their friendship for sectarianism, both go to prove that they are no believers in the church, that they hold that the church has no office to perform in the affairs of mankind, that it is not needed for their moral progress, but is itself a moral disease, of which it would be desirable to be cured altogether, if possible. And yet, these men would be thought to be pious men, and would take it as a proof of our extreme illiberality, nay, of utter

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