desire, their love, already so great, must "abound more and more." Nor would he be satisfied with an ignorant or disorderly piety

their love must manifest itself more and more "in knowledge and judgment:" in knowledge, by perpetual acquisition; in judgment, by a practical application of that knowledge.

How little, in the eyes of the sober Christian, does the renowned Roman who, scarcely half a century before, sacrificed his life to his disappointment, at this very Philippi, appear, in comparison of the man who addressed this Epistle to the same city! Saint Paul was not less brave than Brutus, but his magnanimity was of a higher strain. Saint Paul was exercised in a long series of sufferings, from which the sword of Brutus, directed by any hand but that of Paul himself, would have been a merciful deliverance. Paul, too, was a patriot, and set a proper value on his dignity as a Roman citizen. He too was a champion for freedom; but he fought for that higher species of liberty,

"Unsung by Poets, and by Senators unprais'd.”

Was it courage of the best sort, in the Roman enthusiast for freedom, to abandon his country to her evil destiny, at the very moment when she most needed his support? Was it true generosity or patriotism, after having killed his friend, to whom he owed his fortune and his

life *,- usurper though he was, — voluntarily to leave this adored country a prey to inferior usurpers? Though Cæsar had robbed Rome of her liberty, why should Brutus rob her of his own guardian virtues? Why not say to the Romans, as Saint Paul did to the Philippians

"Though I desire to depart, nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you?" This would have been indeed patriotism, because it would have been disinterested. Was not Saint Paul's the truer heroism? He also was in a strait between two events, life and death. He knew what Brutus, alas! did not know; "that to die was gain ;" but, instead of deserting his cause, by a pusillanimous self-murder, he submitted to live for its interest. The gloomy despair of the Stoic, and the cheerful submission of the Saint, present a lively contrast of the effects of the two religions on two great souls.

It is a coincidence too remarkable to be passed over in silence, that Saint Paul was directed by "a vision from heaven" to go to Philippi; that Brutus was summoned to the same city by his evil genius. The hero obeyed the phantom; the Apostle was "not disobedient to the heavenly vision;"- to what different ends let the concluding histories of the devoted suicide and the devoted martyr declare! Will it be too fanciful to add, that the spectre which

* At the battle of Pharsalia.

lured the Roman to his own destruction, and the vision which in the same place invited the Apostle to preach salvation to others, present no unapt emblem of the opposite genius of Paganism and Christianity?

284

CHAP. XVI.

SAINT PAUL'S RESPECT FOR CONSTITUTED
AUTHORITIES.

THE Gospel was never intended to dissolve the ancient ties between sovereign and subject, master and servant, parent and child, but rather to draw them closer, to strengthen a natural by a lawful and moral obligation. As the charge of disaffection was from the first most injurious to the religion of Jesus, it is obvious why the Apostle was so frequent, and so earnest, in vindicating it from this calumny.

It is apparent from every part of the New Testament, that our Lord never intended to introduce any change into the civil government of Judea, where he preached, nor into any part of the world to which his religion might extend. As his object was of a nature specifically different, his discourses were always directed to that other object. His politics were uniformly conversant about his own kingdom, which was not of this world. If he spake of human governments at all, it was only incidentally, as circumstances led to it, and as it gave occasion to display or enforce some act of obedience. He discreetly entangled the Pharisees in the insi

dious net which they had spread for him, by directing, in answer to their ensnaring question, that the things which belonged even to the sovereign whom they detested, should be "rendered" to him.

Saint Paul exhibited at once a striking proof of the soundness of his own principles, and of the peaceable character of Christianity, in his full and explicit exposition of the allegiance due to the ruling powers. His thorough conviction that human nature was, and would be, the same in all ages, led him to anticipate the necessity of impressing on his converts the duty of rescuing the new religion, not only from present reproach, but from that obloquy to which he foresaw that it would always be exposed.

He knew that a seditious spirit had been alleged against his Lord. He knew, that as it was with the Master, so it must be with the servant. One was called a "pestilent fellow;" another"a stirrer-up of the people;" others were charged with "turning the world upside down." These charges, invented and propagated by the Jews, were greedily adopted by the persecuting Roman emperors, and their venal instruments; and have always been seized on and brought forward as specious pretences for exile, proscription, massacre.

Many of the Protestant Reformers have since been accused, or suspected, of the same factious disposition; and if a similar accusation