be true to Christ in the highest sense unless it represents him as the great Head of an earthly church and kingdom, and unless it makes its proclamation in some way tributary to the ultimate establishment of that kingdom and church in all the earth. All wise proclamation of the gospel, whether by minister or layman, tends in this direction. While it aims primarily at the conversion of souls, it can not forget that conversion is but the first stage in a grand spiritual process, and that the converted soul needs to confess Christ and walk in him to be nourished by his sacraments, and edified and sanctified through his appointed ordinances. It can not forget that the young disciple, born as a lamb, needs the shelter of the Christian fold, and can come to healthful maturity only as he is brought under the nurture and cherished by the love of the organized church. Such effort can not indulge in the shallow fancy that churches and sacraments and ordinances are nothing, and that the simple telling and commendation of the old, old story, is all that mankind need in order to bring them into the full experience of redemption. It may, indeed, count all denominational questions as extrinsic and unimportant; may be unwilling to inquire in what way the sacraments are administered, or by what order particular churches are governed, or what peculiarities of doctrine characterize and separate them. These are questions with which an earnest layman, intent on saving souls, and anxious as one crying in the wilderness to make his message of mercy heard by those who never approach the sanctuary, will not regard himself as called upon to discuss or settle. He may be willing to leave his hearers wholly unbiased in their choice of denominational associations. But such a layman can not fail to desire that every soul whom he leads to Christ should find a home in some church, formally confessing the Saviour and faithfully serving him in some one among the visible households of faith. He will regard no such soul as safe until he sees it folded and sheltered in some such household; until it thus becomes visibly a subject in the gracious kingdom of our Immanuel.

Wise lay effort will thus be found ever paying willing tribute to the church, and expending itself in the last resort

for the establishment and extension of the church. Christian Associations, and all other kindred organizations, will cheerfully sustain this tributary relationship, and count themselves but adjuncts of the church, existing rather for her advancement than for their own. And as this great work of witnessing for Christ is carried on, and the masses of our population are silently penetrated and suffused with the saving grace of a pure Christianity, it will be found that churches will every where follow; households of faith will be established and multiplied even in the most forbidding fields; and Christ and his Kingdom will every where be honored together. The establishment of that benign Kingdom is as much the work of Christian laymen, as of those who stand in more official relations to it. The rearing of the Church of Christ on earth is the joint work of all his disciples; this is the end for which all alike are commissioned to be his witnesses.*

* It is a cheering sign of progress in the development of this lay agency, that those engaged in such work are beginning to feel their need of some special training for it. Our Christian Associations are, in many places, becoming schools of instruction and discipline, where laborers of this class, by comparison of experience and of methods, are helping one another in the direction of higher efficiency in such witnessing for Christ. Sabbathschool conventions, devoted to similar investigation and consultation, are proving valuable aids in the same direction. Other methods are being introduced. by which the lessons which some have learned in the severe, but profitable school of practice, are made available to others of smaller experience, and through which the aggregate efficiency of those interested in such work is greatly increased. And of late, the proposition to establish occasional institutes, for the instruction of laymen, in the various departments of Christian effort, has been considerably discussed, and in some quarters is meeting with great favor. The general character and aim of such an institute might be sufficiently illustrated by the country, or district conventions of teachers, held in various States, eastern and western. for a period of a week or fortnight, once in the year, to consult respecting the best modes of teaching, to receive instruction and help from persons of experience, to stimulate and encourage the membership to higher efficiency in their chosen vocation.

The proposition is certainly feasible, and is worthy of careful trial. Let those laymen, in any city or district, who are already actively engaged in some section of this vast field of effort, come together for a few days, or even for a single day, once or twice in the year, or for an afternoon and evening in each month, for mutual conference and assistance. Let them take up some department of their work, or some practical question of method, or some important principle involved in their labor, and devote

ART IV.

THE PAPACY AND THE LAW OF NATIONS. By E. H. GILLETT, D. D., Prof. in University of the City of New York. POSSIBLY it never entered the minds of the ecclesiastical dignitaries who composed the Vatican Council, that their decree in favor of the dogma of Papal Infallibility had any thing to do with questions of international law. And yet, scarcely had the decree been issued, before the champions of the temporal power of the Pope were heard invoking, in his behalf, the sanctions of the Law of Nations, and asking that Christendom should interpose to restore him to the position from which he had been deposed by the plebiscite of his own subjects. In such circumstances it is proper to inquire what is the attitude which the Dogma of Infallibility requires him to assume toward the Law of Nations, and whether a consistent interpretation of the dogma will allow him to invoke, in his behalf, the authority of the law.

It is one of the assumptions-perhaps we should say axioms of International Law, that each nation, each member of the community of nations, is an equal, sovereign and independent. No matter how limited its territory; no matter under what form of government it exists, in its rights as a nationality it is the peer of the mightiest state or empire on the globe. It knows no superior. It acknowledges no dictator. If any other state assumes a superior or dictatorial authority, it disclaims the equality by which alone it takes its proper and conceded place in the community of nations.

the time to the earnest and studious investigation of it. Let them call to their aid those who have had the largest experience, and have proven most successful in the specific direction considered. Let them be assisted by any ministers, on whose wisdom and sympathy they may be inclined to rely, and of whose more theoretical studies they may take advantage. Let them maintain their organization as permanent, meeting as frequently as circumstances will permit, and from time to time prosecuting their investigations, until the whole field of lay agency has been thoroughly surveyed. Let them make their organization a school, in the best sense, and count themselves as pupils in it; making the whole tributary in whatever way tends better to the enlargement of knowledge, and to personal culture and discipline. Can there be any doubt as to the value of such a movement, or any hesitancy in making such an experiment?

It is thereby self-excluded from the protection afforded by the sanctions of International Law.

What, then, are the assumptions of the Papacy in its own behalf? But for the decree of Papal Infallibility, we might answer the question by a reference to the present attitude of the Papacy. Even in this case, however, the fatal Syllabus, with Encyclicals that have preceded and followed, would seem to preclude the claims put forth by the Pope as a temporal ruler, possessing rights which nations were bound to vindicate or respect, under the authority of International Law. He does not consent to be merely an equal, who insists that toleration shall not be extended, in any nation, to any other form of faith or worship than his own. He does not place himself on the same platform with other sovereignties, who demands that in every land the interests of education shall be surrendered by the State into the hands of men who have sworn allegiance to himself. In subordinating, or requiring the subordination of, the policy of foreign States to the policy of "the church," when that church-in the light of International Law-is simply an abnormal appendage to his political power, he violates the conditions upon which alone his existence as a unit in the community of nations can be recognized, or his rights as an equal member can be conceded.

But it is when we examine the character and assumptions. of the Papacy, as these are to be interpreted consistently with the dogma of Papal Infallibility, that we see how incongruous they are with the prevalence, or even existence of International Law, as through centuries past it has been shaped to its present form. The history of the Italian Inquisition of the Middle Ages, as its features are traced in the Ballarium Romanum, where persecution has been elaborately digested into extended codes, is full of those interferences with foreign nationalities which constitute one of the gravest offenses against the equality which International Law is intended to assert. But the assumption of authority to command Italian cities and states, to place Papal decrees on the same pages with municipal records, or to execute these decrees by the civil power, seems tame enough by the side of other

pontifical pretentions, frequently put forth. In practically asserting the right to depose monarchs, release their subjects from allegiance, dispose of their scepters and their lands, the Pope subverted the very foundations upon which International Law must rest. On this point, Ward, in his "History of the Law of Nations," remarks, speaking of Gregory VII : "An epistle of his is still extant, of the date of 1073, to the Nobles of Spain, in which he asserts his claim to the whole of that kingdom as the patrimony of Saint Peter; observing, that although the greater part of it was in possession of the Moors, yet it had formerly been under the dominion of the Christians, and therefore of the Apostle; 'that what once had belonged to him, must still belong to him; and he therefore grants to the Count de la Roche, all that he can conquer from the Saracens in that country.' He carried his pretensions so far, as to extend this claim to the States already possessed by Christian princes in the kingdom; all of whom he required to acknowledge themselves his feudatories, to quit the Gothic liturgy, and to receive that of the Romish church. They replied, however, with becoming spirit, that they were independent sovereigns, who owned no superior on earth; and for this time the designs of the See of Rome were defeated in Spain. In the year 1300 a similar claim is laid to the whole kingdom of Scotland, at that time lying open to various pretenders, a letter of Boniface to Edward I. of England, stating that Scotland had belonged to the Church, 'pleno jure, et ab antiquis temporibus."

The historian elsewhere makes his record of Papal usurpation in this sphere still more complete. But we may not linger over it. To disclaim the authority upon which is based its usurpations, would be to forego or destroy its own identity. In its presence an Emperor was no exception to the rule which subordinated all other nationalities to itself. At the Council of Constance, after the commencement of the fifteenth century, in a public and authoritative exposition of the mutual relations of popes, emperors, kings, and princes, the first were compared to the sun, the second to the moon, while the others were quite inferior, although, as stars, differing from one another in glory.

What place in the community of nations, where equal sovereignty is the necessary term of admission, is there for the Papacy, with its immemorial claims to a supremacy which it would be fatal to the law of nations to admit or recognize?

But it may seem invidious to cite on this question, writers who may be said to have drawn their materials from the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, from a period ante-dating the