intercessory prayer before us, hesitate to acknowledge it as a powerfully subordinate source of the Church's strength. Ichabod might almost have been written upon her for her glory had nearly departed-when men of worldly policy tampered with her purity, and strifes and divisions brake her in pieces. But there have been noble things done since, by the combined efforts of large portions of the Christian community, which indicate what a mighty influence for good a thoroughly united church would exert on the mass of mankind. The Reformation from Popery, the most glorious event since the introduction of Christianity, was, to a considerable degree, the united work of the children of God that were scattered abroad. The London Missionary Society, the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Tract Society, and some other kindred institutions, have, by the catholicity of their constitution, opened up common channels, into which the several sections of the church might bring their enlightened efforts, and thereby diffuse the river of the water of life over our own and other lands. But these have been but earnests, and indications of what that unity, which the Saviour prayed for, would effect. It is no utopian dream-a thing to be desired rather than expected-to believe that the time will come when the church will possess that unity of exhibition and of action of which we have been speaking, that then infidelity will be driven from one of its refuges, and the world, now unbelieving without a cause, will have a clear palpable proof that the Father has sent the Son and that Christianity is divine. The old sarcasm of the unbeliever, derived from the disjointed and disorderly state of the church, will be silenced; the repulsive aspect, which divisions have given to Christianity, will be effaced, and her native loveliness be restored; a mighty stumblingblock, in the way of the diffusion of the Gospel, will be removed; and Christians, being united to each other in heart and hand, will come, with a moral might such as the world has not experienced for ages, to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty. The brief but bright description of the churches given by James Montgomery, will then be realized" distinct as the billows, but one as the sea." Meanwhile, God, in the signs of the times, is calling upon all the friends of the pure Gospel truth to make it manifest that they are one. The religion of Christ, in our land, is powerfully beset by a bold reviving Romanism on the one hand and by a subtle, busy, well-organized infidelity on the other. Both would, in a great measure, be disarmed and driven back, were the ranks of evangelical Protestantism to re-unite and move forward under the impulse of an all-pervading spirit of unity. Let the churches hear the words of the Genevese Reformer whose love of union was as the love of life:-"Keep your smaller differences, let us have no discord on that account; but let us march in one solid column, under the banners of the Captain of our salvation, and with undivided counsels form the legion of the cross upon the territories of darkness and of death." Infidelity in its Various Agencies. TRUTH and error, good and evil, are propagated in the world by the same instrumentalities; "and no marvel, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light." The most powerful means in accomplishing the greatest good, are made the most effectual ministers of the greatest evil. Infidelity fights truth with her own weapons. Aaron casts down his rod before Pharaoh, and it becomes a serpent; and the magicians of Egypt do likewise with their enchantments. The die that gives the impress to the genuine coin, is employed to stamp the counterfeit. The poison and the healing waters flow through like channels. And it is not more common for good men and bad men to walk on the same roads, ride in the same carriages, and sail in the same ships, than it is for God's truth and the devil's lie to pass through the same medium. We do not reckon the air less precious as the gift of heaven, because men send through it curses as well as blessings. And the agencies for disseminating truth are not a whit less valuable because some men use them for propagating falsehood. The good and the evil |