which the gospel has diffused throughout the world, to reign there. Would we have Christian governments and nations deprived of those gentler manners for which they are indebted to Christianity, and would we plunge them again in ancient barbarism? No-this is what none would desire; and let that language then be rejected which seems to say the contrary.

But if God ought to be in the State, the first condition, in my view, is that the State should not intermeddle with the administration of religious affairs, summon them before the bar of its Civil Courts, and put them on the shelves of its bureaux; it is not fitted either to comprehend or to administer these heavenly and spiritual matters. If politicians will grasp at the springs of life, their unskilful hands will drain them dry. Soon on the State wanting to make religion a means of government, instrumentum regni, the latter will cease to be a means of regeneration and of life. The Church holds of Jesus Christ, and it is on the throne of the word of God that her prince and bishop holds his seat. It is only in attaching herself to the Prince of life that she will find life; it is not from Cæsar that life comes. I do not believe that civil governments have the right of imposing on the Church things that are contrary to the Word of God; I do not think that they have the right of imposing on her anything whatever, even though it may be conformable with that Word. The State ought no more to impose her commands on the Church, than the Church to lay hers upon the State. Oh, when will the Church-and by that I do not mean merely her clergies and her consistories—when will the Church at Geneva, in Switzerland, in France, in Germany, in England, everywhere, pursue her own proper course, and after so long a slumber, reawaken at last to the noble conviction of her holy independence?

Thus, gentlemen, we must occupy ourselves with the liberty, with the constitution of the Church, but at the same time giving the first place to her faith

and to her life. To remind you of this, is the object of my addressing you. A first declaration made regarding this by one of my colleagues, having met with some contradictions, I thought it my duty to make a second, in the interest not only of doctrine, of the faith, of life, but, understand me well, in the interest of form itself, of the independence, of the right constitution of the Church. A Jove principium, said the Pagans; we desire to be orthodox as well as they. It is not the relinquishment of questions of form that we require, but more moderation in the investigation of them; we would desire that they may not become the thorns that grow up and choke the true seed of life.

It is not this that we dread from the excellent men who have greatly at heart such questions as these. And if I may here pronounce two names—the first that occur to me in the two opposite camps-this is not what we fear from a Grand Pierre,* or a Vinet. These men, matured by faith, by experience, by study, know how in all that preoccupies their regards to give the first place to that truth which is according to godliness, and their works testify to this. These very walls in which we are now met, still vibrate with the Christian and mighty words, pronounced at different times in the course of this year, by the eloquent author of the Christian Discourses; † and it is one of my most profitable and delightful employments to follow him, as in his beautiful writings he leads us down to the hitherto undisclosed depths of the great mystery of godliness, to penetrate into those retreats which he has, so to speak, discovered, and which we find redolent throughout of faith, love, sanctification, and life.

In what followed of this address the author sought to settle more exactly the relations which form bears to doctrine and to life, and, in doing so, he fraternally refuted some errors that he thought he had met with in the estimate of the last Report of the Geneva Evangelical Society—an estimate made not long ago by a friend with a charm of style

+ Dr Vinet.

which every body appreciates.* Under the idea that too much place is given in our days to discussions about form, that questions concerning them ought not to become for brethren a subject of dispute, and that whatever be the Christian charity that accompanies them, some mischief is often the result, the author has thought it better not to communicate this part of the notes of his discourse. He believes, says he in writing, that he cannot better plead the cause maintained in this address to his pupils, than by putting it himself in practice; and he feels himself too intimately united by the most sacred ties to brethren with whom he may differ in some secondary respects, ever to consent seeing in them adversaries whom he ought to refute and combat. "Fulfil ye my joy," says the Apostle, "that ye be like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.” After the discourse delivered by the President at the opening meeting of the Geneva School of Theology, the students were addressed by some other brethren likewise..

Professor Pilet called to mind the words addressed to one of the pupils by his father and his brother, both missionaries, who said to him, "Go to Geneva-there is more piety there." M. Pilet said, that the Directors of the school felt themselves humbled and confounded before God on hearing these words, and could have desired that the President had been charged to contradict them publicly. But at the same time he urged the influence which such words ought to have upon the students themselves.

M. FERMAND, pastor of the Consistorial church of Montmeyzran (Dept. of the Drome), spoke of the revival and of the wants of France, and of the necessity there was for the students devoting themselves wholly to that work.

M. de WattevILLE, President of the Geneva Evangelical Society, said— "This is to me an hour of more than ordinary solemnity. It is now eight years since I have been in Geneva, and have been labouring with the society. Now I am ready to go away, and he who goes away, knows not when he may return. I attach great importance to this school; it may do much good as it may do much harm. I perfectly concur in all that has been said about the supreme importance of doctrine; but I too would add, we must be able to sustain it heartily, with life and with faith. Without that you may be fencers on the side of sound doctrine, but you will never be Evangelists of Jesus. Study doctrines, but let the doctrines become life within you, without which that injunction, Let your words be with grace, will be vain. The usefulness of a servant of God is to be measured by the life which is in him, not by his talents and his ability. Ecclesiastical pre-occupations are unavoidable. There are dangers to be found in them, but there is a safeguard against those dangers, and that consists in your being Jesus Christ's, and he will preserve you."

M. Scherer, D.D., read a very interesting letter on the life and death of Mr Julius Hollard, who had passed his grand examinations in spring before the directors of the school, in a distinguished manner, and who was to have returned in October to defend his theses, but whom God had suddenly called to his rest. He dwelt impressively on this death, which the President had already referred to at the close of his discourse, and called the attention of the students to the grand lessons which it suggested.

The meeting was closed with prayers offered up by M. Reclus, pastor of Orthes (Lower Pyrennées), and two students. †

Exe

November 1846.

DEAR A.,-You are quite wrong in supposing that my late silence has been owing to a dulness and fogginess of mind, induced by this November weather. On the contrary, it is owing to the spirit and liveliness with which I have entered into social life among the créme de la créme of the Corporation of the City of London-of which more

anon.

I am glad you do not think it beneath the dignity of your pen to ask a few questions about the weather. There is a vast amount of nonsense talked about the unimportance of this topic, and the absurdity of making it the first with which to entertain a friend upon meeting; or, if the meeting be only for a few moments, the only one. To my thinking, it is by no means a matter of trivial import. We are more or less" subject to all the skyey influences" physically, as we are morally subject to all social and political influences; and the former are worthy of attention for the sake of our bodies, and, through them, of our souls. Do you know anything, traditional or scientific, about "the Great November Atmospheric Wave?" All discoveries or speculations in meteorology are remarkably interesting to me, not only because it is a field of science which has been, until these latter days, comparatively unexplored, and therefore we may fairly expect to come upon

a great many truths in it; but because it seems probable that discoveries in meteorology will benefit all mankind more directly than discoveries in many other sciences. Mr Birt lately read a paper on the subject of " the November Atmospheric Wave," before the British Association of Science, which I should very much like to see. Some correspondent of the Athenæum suggests that the cause of the phenomenon called "the Indian Summer," and that of our Martinmas Summer and the French petit été de St Martin is the

same.

I agree to all you say about a London fog. It is more trying to the temper than a smoky chimney, or a blunt razor, or a journey by the Eastern Counties Railway. To look at it through a window is very depressing to the spirits, and one of the most discomforting things you can do, next to going out in it.

I had occasion to walk about town nearly all day during one of our late fogs. In the course of the first hour's peregrinations in this vile vapour, my throat and eyes became so sore, that I could neither see nor speak without pain; and I came home so cross that even dinner failed to soothe my irritated feelings. After dinner, instead of writing to you, as my conscience prompted me to do, I sat in an ill temper, with my feet to the fire, reading the newspaper.

I was lapped in stupidity by some article before me; when in came D—, in his usual hilarious state; his face beaming with good humour, and his coat dripping with the fog. Now, what do you think was the object of his visit? Something preposterous you may be sure. It was simply this to drag me out with him (at ten o'clock at night remember) to see the curious effect of the fog in the streets at night, and to walk home with him, to sup and pass the night at his father's house at Hampstead. I "must be so irredeemably wretched alone in these dismal chambers." He" had walked down from the city on purpose to fetch" me, and "coming along had been quite enchanted by the strange supernatural aspect which this London phenomenon gave to all beings, animate and inanimate." It was vain for me to assert that I was not miserable; and that to my mind, at that precise moment, there was

"Nought like the blink o' my ain fireside."

"But the fog!-oh it was worth leaving any fireside to see," he urged. I replied that it was not so new to me as it was to him; that I had been out all day and had enough of it; that I had often seen a fog in London at night; that I had often lost my way, and once very nearly lost my life, by being knocked down by a cab during a night fog; that, in consequence of these circumstances, I begged to decline his proposal, with many thanks, and a good laugh at the singular object of his present furore. You know D- well enough to be sure that he persisted in his purpose. I wish you could have heard his eloquent exaggeration. "If it had been a common fog," &c. "There never had been anything like this even in London, he was quite sure." "In short, there never had been any thing like this anywhere except in Tartarus, or Dante's Inferno, or Milton's hell." "The obscure," was indeed "palpable,"

and not

"Pierceable by power of any torch."

"It was positively disgraceful in any one not bed-ridden, to remain in the house on such a night." He became more indignant as he enumerated the

nights on which I used to go forth to see effects of moonlight, or the milky way, or an aurora borealis. He was scornful when he recollected my going out on purpose to see some new fireworks on the 5th inst. And now, I

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would not rise from my chair to see an atmospheric effect, which would bring before my very eyes the most wonderful creations of poetry; and all, because, forsooth, I had taken up the absurd, popular delusion that a fog was a disagreeable thing!" There is no resisting D-, you know, when he becomes fanatical on any point. I consented to victimize myself by going a little way with him; and what is more, I refrained from laughing at him, and tried to be poetic and see things from his point of view. The fog, though by no means so extraordinary as he represented it to be, was certainly worth seeing. At that hour most of the shops were closed with the exception of the cigar divans, eating-houses, and gin shops, so that the only lights proceeded from these and the street lamps. There was a slight wind from the east which came in fitful gusts; now causing an undulating motion in the thick fog which filled every space as far as we could see, above and around us, and now allowing it to remain still as frozen steam, if you will accept such an Hibernian simile. I did not find it so difficult, as I had previously supposed it would be, to fancy myself in the Stygian shades, or in Dante's Inferno. Milton's Hell it did not recall to my mind. The mysterious horror and vast vagueness of that does not come from atmospheric density, causing all objects therein to appear indistinct and variable, although he speaks of the "palpable obscure." It seems to me to arise rather from the blackness of night over an infinite extent of shapeless continents, and over boundless seas of dim, lurid fire, from which issue occasionally ghastly flames revealing the huge forms of the fallen angels, clearly defined in a space quite deprived of atmosphere, not made shadowy and vague in form by the thickness of the air around. It is some time since I read Paradise Lost, but that is the idea of Milton's infernal regions which I have formed. Am I

right or wrong? As we walked along the Strand, the darkness of the night and the thickness of the fog rendered the houses on the opposite side invisible. All sounds were very much deadened, and every object that was near enough to be seen was strangely distorted. For instance, a large object looming through the fog at ten yards distance, which appeared to me very like the dismantled hull of a phantom ship floating idly on a cloud, turned out to be a Chelsea omnibus standing still while the driver and the cad were fortifying the inward man with purl at a beer-shop. What, at a short distance appeared to be

"A dreadful giant, horrible and high."

sized girl by boa, she havsnugly beneath

dragging by the hair of her head an unfortunate captive Princess, proved, on coming close, to be a fond father bearing on his shoulder a little boy and leading a good the two ends of her ing her arms tucked her cloak. A tall spectral figure that with "martial stalk," slowly and solemnly approached us, was a policeman, that, on close inspection beneath a lamp, bore no resemblance to Hamlet's father. A little boy who was squatting down to peep through a hole in a cellar window, I mistook for the veritable frog of La Fontaine in the act of vying with the ox. We had to warn several cabmen off the pavement, which they and their horses had mistaken for the road; we saw one or two slight accidents, but none of any consequence; and when I returned home after leaving D- I could not deny that a London fog must be very wonderful, and a little alarming to foreigners. A Frenchman told me the other day that "Londres" was superbe, riche, et infiniment grand, but he added with a face of horror, mais, Monsieur, vos brouillards sont epouvantables-cela fait un effet parfaitement inconcevable. Ils me rendent furieusement bête et maussade."

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I knew you would sing an Io Puan when you heard of the beautiful way in which Le Verrier discovered the new planet. How proud all you mathematicians must be. Even such of you

as do not meddle with Astronomy, and those who do, if it be only to calculate solar eclipses, will begin to think calculation a much finer thing than mere observation. "Sic itur ad astra," as old Taylor used to say to a little boy, when he had achieved a sum in com

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pound proportion. However, you people who swear by the multiplication table and the law of gravitation, must bear in mind the old proverb, that seeing is believing." Le Verrier would have found few, except among the highly scientific, who would have believed in the exact position of the planet, solely upon the strength of his calculations. It would have been vain for him to demonstrate that the planet ought to be there, unless some discerning eye saw that it was there. Le Verrier heard that his planet had actually been seen, so soon after his announcement of the result of his calculations, that he has not experienced the difficulty of convincing men of the truth of a theory. When first told that his planet had been discovered, and that in every respect it verified his prediction, he must have felt somewhat like Columbus on that night when he first saw the lights on Guanhani, and felt that all men would now perceive that his life-long theory was correct. There is a discussion among the members of the French Institute concerning the name which should be given to the new member of our system. Some are for calling it Janus, which is shortsighted, as it may turn out to be a misnomer by the discovery of a planet still more distant. Others are for calling it Neptune. Why it is not easy to say, unless it be to preserve a uniformity in the nomenclature of the solar system which appears to be quite unnecessary. Would it not be well to call it Le Verrier? There is scientific as well as poetic justice in that, and I still retain a school-boy feeling of indignation when I remember that America is not called by the name of its discoverer. By the way, have you seen in the newspapers that the Genoese, not long since, laid the first stone of a monument to' the memory of their immortal fellowtownsman. On this occasion, all classes of men, civil and religious, rich and