and in all the rest of us, it is plain that we can only judge of the existence of piety in other men, and measure its quantity by an outward manifestation thereof, in some form which shall serve at once as a trial test and a standard measure.

Now, then, as I mentioned in that former sermon, it is on various sides alleged that there are two outward manifestations of piety, a good deal unlike: each is claimed by some men as the exclusive trial test and standard measure. Let me say a word of each.

I. Some contend for what I call the conventional standard; that is, the manifestation of piety by means of certain prescribed forms. Of these forms there are three modes or degrees: namely, first, the form of bodily attendance on public worship; second, the belief in certain doctrines, not barely because they are proven true, or known without proof, but because they are taught with authority; and third, a passive acquiescence in certain forms and ceremonies, or an active performance thereof.

II. The other I call the natural standard; that is, the manifestation of piety in the natural form of morality in its various degrees and modes of action.

It is plain, that the amount of piety in a man or a town, will appear very different when tested by one or the other of these standards. It may be that very little water runs through the wooden trough which feeds the saw-mill at Niagara, and yet a good deal, blue and bounding, may leap over the rock, adown its natural channel. In a matter of this importance, when taking account of a stock so precious as piety, it is but fair to try it by both standards.

Let us begin with the conventional standard, and examine piety by its manifestation in the ecclesiastical forms. Here is a difficulty at the outset, in determining upon the measure, for there is no one and general ecclesiastical standard, common to all parties of Christians, from the Catholic to the Quaker; each measures by its own standard, but denies the correctness of all the others. It is as if a foot were declared the unit of long measure, and then the actual foot of the chief justice of a State, were taken as the rule by which to correct all measurements; then the foot would vary as you went from North Carolina to South, and, in any one State, would vary with the health of the judge. However, to do what can be done with a measure thus uncertain, it is plain, that, estimated by any ecclesiastical standard, the amount of piety is small. There is, as men often say, "A general decline of piety;" that is a common complaint, recorded and registered. But what makes the matter worse to the ecclesiastical philosopher, and more appalling to the complainers, is this: it is a decline of long standing. The disease which is thus lamented is said to be acute, but is proved to be chronic also; only it would seem, from the lamentations of some modern Jeremiahs, that the decline went on with accelerated velocity, and, the more chronic the disease was, the acuter it also became.

Tried by this standard, things seem discouraging. To get a clearer view, let us look a little beyond our own borders, at first, and then come nearer home. The Catholic church complains of a general defection. The majority of the Christian church confesses that the Protestant Reformation was not a revival of religion, not a "Great awakening," but a great falling to sleep; the faith of Luther and Calvin was a great decline of religion—a decline of piety in the ecclesiastical form; that modern philosophy, the physics of Galileo and Newton, the metaphysics of Descartes and of Kant, mark another decline of religion—a decline of piety in the philosophical form; that all the modern democracy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, marks a yet further decline of religion—a decline of piety in the political form; that all the modern secular societies, for removing the evils of men and their sins, mark a yet fourth decline of religion—a decline of piety in the philanthropic form. Certainly, when measured by the mediæval standard of Catholicism, these mark four great declensions of piety, for, in all four, the old principle of subordination to an external and personal authority is set aside.

All over Europe this decline is still going on; ecclesiastical establishments are breaking down; other establishments are a-building up. Pius the Ninth seems likely to fulfil his own prophecy, and be the last of the Popes; I mean the last with temporal power. There is a great schism in the north of Europe; the Germans will be Catholics, but no longer Roman. The old forms of piety, such as service in Latin, the withholding of the Bible from the people, compulsory confession, the ungrateful celibacy of a reluctant priesthood—all these are protested against. It is of no avail that the holy coat of Jesus, at Treves, works greater miracles than the apostolical napkins and aprons; of no avail that the Virgin Mary appeared on the nineteenth of September, 1846, to two shepherd-children, at La Salette, in France. What are such things to Ronge and Wessenberg? Neither the miraculous coat, nor the miraculous mother, avails aught against this untoward generation, charm they never so wisely. The decline of piety goes on. By the new Constitution of France, all forms of religion are equal; the Catholic and the Protestant, the Mahometan and the Jew, are equally sheltered under the broad shield of the law. Even Spain, the fortress walled and moated about, whither the spirit of the middle ages retired and shut herself up long since, womanning her walls with unmanly priests and kings, with unfeminine queens and nuns—even Spain fails with the general failure. British capitalists buy up her convents and nunneries, to turn them into woollen mills. Monks and nuns forget their beads in some new handicraft; sister Mary, who sat still in the house, is now also busy with serving, careful, indeed, about more things than formerly, but not cumbered nor troubled as before. Meditative Rachels, and Hannahs, long unblest, who sat in solitude, have now become like practical Dorcas, making garments for the poor; the Bank is become more important than the Inquisition. The order of St. Francis d'Assisi, of St. Benedict, even of St. Dominic himself, is giving way before the new order of Arkwright, Watt, and Fulton,—the order of the spinning jenny and the power-loom. It is no longer books on the miraculous conception, or meditations on the five wounds of the Saviour, or commentaries on the song of songs which is Solomon's, that get printed there: but fiery novels of Eugene Sue, and George Sand; and so extremes meet.

Protestant establishments share the same peril. A new sect of Protestants rises up in Germany, who dissent as much from the letter and spirit of Protestantism, as the Protestants from Catholicism; men that will not believe the infallibility of the Bible, the doctrine of the Trinity, the depravity of man, the eternity of future punishment, nor justification by faith—a justification before God, for mere belief before men. The new spirit gets possession of new men, who cannot be written down, nor even howled down. Excommunication or abuse does no good on such men as Bauer, Strauss, and Schwegler; and it answers none of their questions. It seems pretty clear, that in all the north of Germany, within twenty years, there will be entire freedom of worship, for all sects, Protestant and Catholic.

In England, Protestantism has done its work less faithfully than in Germany. The Protestant spirit of England came here two hundred years ago, so that new and Protestant England is on the west of the ocean; in England, an established church lies there still, an iceberg in the national garden. But even