For ourselves, we have treated the question of church and state so often, so fully, and so recently, in its principle and in its several aspects, especially in relation to our own government, that we know not that we have any thing to add to what we have already said, and we might dispense ourselves from its further discussion by simply referring to the articles, _Independence of the Church_, October, 1866; _Church and State_, April, 1867; _Rome and the World_, October of the same year; and to our more recent articles on _The Future of Protestantism and Catholicity_, especially the third and fourth, January, February, March, and April, of the present year; and also to the article on _The School Question_, in the very last number before the present. We can do, and we shall attempt, in the present article, to do, little more than bring together and present as a whole what is scattered through these several articles, and offer respectfully and even timidly such suggestions as we think will not be presumptuous in regard to the means, in the present emergency, of realizing more perfectly at home and abroad the ideal of Christian society. We assume in the outset that there really exist in human society two distinct orders, the spiritual and the temporal, each with its own distinctive functions, laws, and sphere of action. In Christian society, the representative of the spiritual order is the church, and the representative of the temporal is the state. In the rudest stages of society the elements of the two orders exist, but are not clearly apprehended as distinct orders, nor as having each its distinct and proper representative. It is only in Christian society, or society enlightened by the Gospel, that the two orders are duly distinguished, and each in its own representative is placed in its normal relation with the other. The type, indeed the reason, of this distinction of two orders in society is in the double nature of man, or the fact that man exists only as soul and body, and needs to be cared for in each. The church, representing the spiritual, has charge of the souls of men, and looks after their minds, ideas, intelligence, motives, consciences, and consequently has the supervision of education, morals, literature, science, and art. The state, representing the temporal, has charge of men's bodies, and looks after the material wants and interests of individuals and society. We take this illustration from the fathers and mediæval doctors. It is perfect. The analogy of church and state in the moral order, with the soul and body in the physical order, commends itself to the common sense of every one, and carries in itself the evidence of its justness, especially when it is seen to correspond strictly in the moral order, to the distinction of soul and body in the physical order. We shall take, then, the relation of soul and body as the type throughout of the ideal relation of church and state.