established within men before the external liberty in social and political life can be hoped for. For most true is the sublime declaration, “If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”[55] To every one for whom this sentiment possesses a meaning and significance it would be superfluous to add, what, indeed, is so palpably evident, that the Son makes no one free except in the way that He Himself was, viz., by obedience--a perfect obedience which brings the whole man, with all its passions and affections, as a free-will offering to the Father. The predominant tendency of modern Christendom to a monarchical constitution, as most accordant with the Christian principle of the state, is abundantly evinced in history. The fact is so generally admitted, that it is almost a work of supererogation to adduce instances of it. Not only within the memory of living men, but also two centuries ago, a great Christian monarchy, fanatically possessed and inflamed with the idea of absolute liberty and equality, lapsed for a while into a republic. But in both cases this passing fever of fanaticism soon worked itself out by its very violence, and the foreign and diseased matter was thrown off by the political body. It was out of this crisis, however, that the much-lauded constitution of England arose, with its dynamical theory of the division and nicely-adjusted balance of power, which has reached at present so great a height of practical excellence. Moreover, it is almost superfluous to notice the fact how a second-rate maritime power, which in its very origin was entirely republican, gradually approximated to, and has at last entirely adopted, a monarchical polity.[56] Another state, monarchical indeed, but which, from the fact that its sovereigns were elective, deserves rather to be called a republic, and in some respects was really so, amid the anarchy of party and the feuds which arose out of the elections, soon lost its ancient greatness and splendor, and even its existence as an independent nation. In short, in the whole of Christian Europe, but a few small and uninfluential communities have retained a republican form. As for the republics which have sprung up out of the colonial states in the New World, the very oldest of them are of too recent an origin to allow us to pass upon them any judgment which could be justly and truly called historical. On the other hand, however, the modern Christian era furnishes one remarkable phenomenon of a republican state on a large scale, and of a wholly peculiar kind. And we may adduce this instance as a proof that such a constitution is by no means excluded from the spirit of a Christian polity or its legitimate and historical principle.