"He is Governor among the nations; but justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne." "Thine, O Lord, are the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, and thou art exalted as Head above all. Both riches and honour come of thee, and thou reignest over all: and in thine hand is power and might, and in thine hand it is to make great and to give strength unto all." Worthily, so far as language could go, did the greatest of Israel's monarchs, and one of the first of human bards, in these words celebrate the majesty of Him who is Higher than the highest, the Maker, Guardian, and Sovereign of the universe. Religion adopts this description as the groundwork of its sentiments and exercises. With God it begins, to Him it returns, in Him it rests. To Him it traces all blessing, from Him receives direction concerning the aim and course of life, and as its first and last and central principle aspires to "do all things to his glory." Led to Him as the Creator by his works, which it contemplates, reminded of Him as the Almighty Ruler by his providence, the aspects of which it reverently studies, and taught to call Him the Father by Christ, to whose instructions it yields a joyful obedience, it revolves around the Supreme Being as its light and security, through its relation to whom it is safe amidst the world's commotions and blessed in life's decay. The idea of man--this is the other point of departure from which religion will seek its appropriate issues; of man in those attributes which are the universal endowment of our race, and not in the artificial prerogatives which distinguish a part of mankind--one nation, or one class in society; of man the partaker of a common humanity, before whose indestructible capacities, rights and destinies the distinctions of colour, wealth and office fade away, as the glare of night-lamps which shed illumination over a few feet of space before the beams of the sun which enwrap the whole land in their brightness. This idea of man, as everywhere the creature of God, and therefore dependent, everywhere the child of God, and therefore in his nature proclaiming himself of a nobler lineage than if he could show an ancestral register bearing the names of half the monarchs of the earth, as everywhere the _same_ in virtue of his indefeasible possession of reason, conscience and immortality, and therefore entitled to fraternal treatment from his fellow-men,--this idea whence came it? Where did our fathers learn that men were "born free and equal"? From the religion of the New Testament, for centuries a sealed book, and from whose truths when opened the darkness of ages did but slowly disappear. "Equal;" not "free" only,--this latter word might seem to be used with some license of speech,--but _equal_, in the essential gifts and purposes of existence. Christianity by addressing