confound the mighty; the simple, to strike dumb the wise; and things that are not, to supersede the things that are." In rude ages, and amid feudal customs, it has perhaps been no unhappy thing that this image of servitude has been transmitted into the conceptions of faith: it may have touched with some sanctity an inevitable submission, and mingled a sentiment of loyalty with religion. But the _external relation_ of serf and lord is no type of the _internal relation_ of spirit to spirit, which alone constitutes religion to us. To God himself, with all his infinitude, we are not _slaves_; we are not his _property_, but his children; he regards us, not as _things_, but as _persons_; he does not so much command us, as appeal to us; and in our obedience, it is not his _bidding_ that we serve, but that divine Law of Right of which he makes us conscious as the rule of His nature only more perfectly than of ours. To obey him as _slaves_, in fear, and with an eye upon his power, is, with all our punctuality and anxiety, simply and entirely to _disobey_ him; nor is anything precious in his sight, except the free consent of heart with which we apprehend what is holy to his thought and embrace what is in harmony with his perfection. Still less can we be _slaves_ to Christ, who is no autocrat to us, but our freely followed leader towards God; the guide of our pilgrim troop in quest of a holy land; who gives us no law from the mandates of his will, but only interprets for us, and makes burn within us, in characters of fire, the law of our own hearts; who has no power over us, except through the affections he awakens and the aspirations he sets upon the watch. We have emerged from the Religion of _Law_, whose only sentiment is that of _obedience to sovereignty_; we have passed from the religion of _Salvation_, whose life consists in _gratitude to a Deliverer_; and we are capable only of a religion of _reverence_, which bows before the _authority of Goodness_. And in the infinite ranks of excellence, from the highest to the lowest, there are no lords and slaves; the dependence is ever that of internal charm, not of external bond; the _authority_ is but represented and impersonated in another and a better soul, but has its living seat within our own; and in this true and elevating worship, the more we are disposed of by another, the more do we feel that we are our own. This is a relation which the political terms of the expected theocracy are ill adapted to express; and if we have required many centuries to grope our way to this clearest glory of religion, to disengage it from the impure admixture of servile fear and revolting presumption; if it has taken long for us to melt away in our imagination the images of thrones and tribunals, of prize-givings and prisons, of a police and assizes of the universe; if only at the eleventh hour of our faith, the cloud has passed away, and shown us the true angel-ladder that springs from earth to heaven, the pure