mountain-side, gazing on the temple towers which were bathed in the evening light, and telling of the time when the young pigeons should try their first flight from the summit of Moriah, instead of fluttering in death on the altar of sacrifice; and when the husbandman should plough up the foundations of the sanctuary, finding, through the gospel, that his own heart was a holier place.—What is included in this question,— whether religion can be supported by free will, and not by dues? To ask it is to doubt whether God has vivified the human heart with a principle of faith, and whether man be not really made to grovel with the beasts which perish, or, as the only alternative, to pursue shadows till the grave swallows him up like a pitfall in his path. It is to suppose that by mere accident alone has the northern barbarian been found watching for signs in the driving clouds; and the western Indian looking abroad over the blue Pacific; and the Persian hailing the sunrise from the mountain-top; and the Greek lawgiver waiting upon the voice of the oracle; and the Christian child praying at the knee of its parent. It is to question whether there be more in a sunrise than yellow light, or in a pestilence than so many dead, or in a political revolution than a change of actors in an isolated dramatic scene, or in the advent of a gospel than the issuing of a new and fugitive fiction. It is to deny that every man needs sympathy in his joys, and consolation for his sorrows; that he ever questions whence he came and whither he must go; that he ever feels the weight of his own being too vast to be sustained without reposing on Him who called it forth. It is to question whether there be faith on the earth, except within the pale of two or three churches; whether, for the rest of the world, the sea does not raise its everlasting voice, and the starry host hold on their untiring march in vain. It is to question whether the decrepid can truly worship in the aisles of our churches; or the lordly care for the things of the Spirit, unless those things are joined with worldly pomp. It is to pronounce the apostles profane in their fishing and tent-making, and foolish in their fully-justified reliance on the faith and charity of their disciples. It is to declare Jesus wrong in saying that to the poor the gospel is preached, and that his kingdom was not of the old world,—belonging to the formal Judaical dispensation. It is to put his gospel for correction into the hands of the prelates who legislate for its security, and who predict its permanence, if it be sustained by the means they prescribe,— by gifts and offerings wrung from the reluctant; by endowments, by bounties of first-fruits and tenths, by tithes and oblations. To question whether religion can be supported by free-will instead of by prescribed dues is to libel man, to doubt the gospel, and to stand with a sceptical spirit amidst the temple of God’s works.