restraint before noticed, but this is more evidently and directly from Him. A fundamental principle of that government is, that each one should do unto others as he himself would have others do to him. Our Lord and Saviour recognized the necessity and force of this class of restraints, when He said: "With what measure ye mete withal, it shall be measured to you again." We find, then, that there is no such thing, except in solitude, as absolute and unrestrained liberty; every man's freedom is checked and limited every day and at every turn, and must, of necessity, be so restrained. Secondly. And now we come to apply this idea of real liberty to the spiritual life and walk of the true Christian. The Christian is a free man. "I will walk at liberty," said the Psalmist. St. Paul speaks of the liberty with which Christ has made him free. Is this liberty of his, then, like that of which we have spoken; is it absolute, or restrained? We have seen that in ordinary life there is no such thing as unrestrained freedom, no such thing as unlimited right and power to do as we please; but only a rational freedom which recognizes the restraints laid upon it by the circumstances of human society, and the moral government of God; and we will now venture to affirm that Christian liberty is of the same kind. The genuine Christian is the first to recognize these ordinary restraints, because He sees in them the wise and kind intentions of His heavenly Father for the good of mankind; and at the same time recognizes a still higher and more effectual restraint than even these. He perceives and accepts the claim of God's holy will and law, not only upon his actions and behaviour, but upon his thoughts, wishes, and intentions. He rejoices in the liberty wherewith Christ has set him free, and yet he feels that he is "not his own, because bought with a price.' He knows, he feels, that God's law is a restraint; but he rejoices that it restrains him; for "He serves God with his spirit in the gospel of His Son," and loves his servitude as much as his liberty. In fact, he regards them as identical; much as our prayer-book has expressed it: "Whose service is perfect freedom." St. Paul also unites the two ideas: "He that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman; likewise he that is called, being free, is Christ's servant." But how, it may be asked, can the restraint of God's law be regarded as liberty? Is not this a contradiction in terms? We think not. Let us once more refer to what has been said of ordinary liberty. We saw that there can be no real liberty without the restraints of a wise law, which shall prevent the liberty of individuals from becoming a nuisance to others and an injury to themselves. It is, therefore, the law which secures and preserves to every man his rights and his liberty. The law is so constructed as to leave free scope for all intentions and actions that are good or harmless, and to forbid only that which is wrong in itself and injurious in its effects. To violate the law is to infringe upon the liberty of others; and the law so violated, in order to protect their liberty, must abridge yours. While therefore you respect and obey the law, you have liberty; you lose it when you disobey. It was therefore genuine philosophy as well as enlightened piety to say,-" I will walk at liberty, for I seek thy precepts.' And this is especially true of the Christian's walk with God. The law of God forbids only what is evil, and imposes nothing upon us but what is conducive, nay, necessary, to man's happiness, both here and hereafter. It leaves full scope for the desires and actions of the renewed heart; nay, its whole object and aim is to foster and direct them. Viewed as a restraint, it is a restraint only upon the unholy desires, the sinful propensities, or mistaken notions of the carnal heart; and it forbids and denies these, because they displease God, interfere with that happy communion which subsists between Him and the renewed soul, and injure, in various ways, both the church of God and the interests of mankind. When the Christian is enabled to delight in the law of the Lord, and to walk consistently in its ways, he is conscious of peace and satisfaction within; on the other hand, when he fails to do this, pain and distress are felt, and impediments arise in his path. Surely, then, the restraint of God's law may be regarded as the freedom of his soul. He walks at liberty when he seeks His precepts. Two practical suggestions may close these observations. 1. We should always remember that we are not at liberty to do evil. That we have all the power to do evil, none will dispute; and that the choice of good and evil is before us, will not be doubted. If a man will be a sensualist, a dishonest, an irreligious man, an infidel, it is too easy for him to succeed. And he is too much disposed to think that, because it is so easy to go wrong; and because he finds temptations drawing, and propensities moving him in such a direction, it is therefore not wrong, or at least allowable, and that he is at liberty to follow the impulses of his nature. But the restraints we have noticed, as well as the evil consequences which result, show that though a man may have the power, and even the opportunity, he has not the right to do evil. And if he will abuse his liberty in this respect, he will sooner or later lose it. God will not allow us to sin, but will place restraints upon us in some form. And if men will persist in casting off those merciful restraints which He lays upon them, they will either in this world be deprived of liberty and power till they submit, or become prisoners of despair in the world to come. It is our wisdom, then, to remember, that while we have the fullest liberty to do good, we are not at liberty, at any time or under any circumstances, to do evil. 2. Let us learn to love the restraints of God's law. We have seen that the law of God, even viewed as a restraint, is a merciful arrangement of infinite wisdom to withhold us from that which would injure the soul, impede its growth in grace, abridge its enjoyment, and, indeed, mislead and ruin it. When we understand and regard it in this light, we love it. "His commands are not grievous." "I delight in the law of the Lord," says the apostle Paul, "after the inner man." It is only the carnal heart that would cast off its pressure,—that heart which loves not true liberty, but the bondage of sin,and shall we take counsel of that? "The law of the Spirit of Life sets us free" from this bondage; free to love God and delight in His commandments. There is no hardship, no grief, in doing the thing we like to do. When the heart sympathizes with the law, and is brought into such a measure of conformity with God's will as to love only what He loves, and to choose that which He chooses for us, our choice of good will be every whit as free as his choice is who chooses evil. We should not err if we added, that it is freer. For the word of God represents the man who chooses evil, as a slave, a slave to evil passions or imperious influences, which domineer over his better judgment, or as led captive by Satan at his will; while the Christian's choice of good is formed intelligently, thoughtfully, and upon the soundest principles which can guide the actions of man. The Christian, then, walks at liberty, when he walks with God. G. P. OLMSTED'S JOURNEY IN THE SLAVE STATES. Olmsted's Journey in the Slave States. London: Sampson Russell's Letters in the " Times." 1861. IN our last Number we had occasion to notice the present state of American affairs, and to express our doubts, which many at least of our English readers will share, and which have been already expressed in other organs of English opinion, whether the war, now raging between North and South, could be justified on constitutional principle, or could end in anything but disappointment. We wish our friends in the Northern states, who are naturally inclined to look at the question with the heat which such strife engenders, would so far bear with us as to accept and weigh an opinion which is general in England, unprejudiced, and, we truly believe, friendly; for our natural sympathies are all with the Northern states. With them we have the closest relations both of commercial interest, brotherly affection, and religious sympathy. We even go further. They think us indifferent and cold; they have blamed us for our neutrality in the war, and they think we cannot understand the real points at issue. We are about to show them that we have some knowledge of what is passing in the South, and we shall take that knowledge from one of their own citizens, a very keen observer, who looked upon the South with the prepossessions of a Northern man, and with a strong dislike of slavery, though without fanatical excitement. We can even enter into the feeling which has raised the North as one man in a transport of loyal resolution. An old nobleman among us, who has held our highest judicial offices, and who, surviving beyond the age of ninety, preserves his remarkable intellect unimpaired, formed in early life a connection with the United States, which has given him a brotherly interest in their welfare. He has been so mortified by seeing the great republic broken into two by this disastrous warfare, that he never alludes to it without tears. We can well understand, then, how the men of New England and of the North, who have been proud of that Union which has swelled, in less than a century, into a great state, whose flag of Stars and Stripes flies bravely, while the Fleur-de-lys of the Bourbon and the Bees of Napoleon have disappeared, should resist, with a passionate loyalty, this unhappy secession. But it is one thing to have strong feelingsit is another thing to deliberate as statesmen; and the reasons we have given from history and experience, from geographical extent, from distance, solitude, the necessity of large armies, the need of great supplies, the certain bloodshed and the uncertain issue, form reasons which weigh strongly with us, and incline us to the opinion that even the secession of the Southern states is better than a bloody, ruinous, and unprofitable war. One good, however, we derive from this event-we shall study the United States more, and we shall begin to understand the people and their various conditions better. The graphic pictures which Mr. Russell is now giving us in the "Times" will leave with us a vivid impression of the South, and of that part of the South which stretches to the far West; and these pictures, as far as they have gone, confirm the views which, in more detail and from a different point of view, Mr. Olmsted, himself a citizen of New York, gives us in this volume. Mr. Olmsted is a yeoman, and an employer of labour; he is able, therefore, to judge of the bearing of slavery on wages and the profits of farming. We detect in his work the prejudices of a northern American. He detests the law of entail and primogeniture, and prefers small properties and subdivision of land. He charges the Southern states at times with faults which, if we were reviewing the condition of the North, we think we should find reproduced there. The inconveniences which he suffered at inns, and of which he gives a laughable picture, arise sometimes from the independence and insolence of hotel-keepers, which are to be found in the North; at other times, from the extent of the country, sparsely peopled, with great blanks of marsh and forest intervening, and with bad roads. Old as Virginia is as a settled country, having been colonised for two centuries and a-half, she still is in her infancy in population and tillage. Our notions of the size of the states of the Union are very vague. We hear of the North invading Virginia, and of its intention to compel the Southern states to submit. If we were to hear that France had attacked and meant to annex Switzerland, that she were to try to conquer the Peninsula, to overrun Belgium and Holland, and push her frontier to the Rhine, we could understand the greatness of the enterprise and its risk. But we think of Virginia as we think of Yorkshire, or of the North of England beyond the Trent. The fact is, that Virginia is a great state, of 61,000 square miles, and of near 40,000,000 of acres. She has fine rivers, vast mineral treasures, and a soil of boundless fertility. Various causes -among them may be, as Mr. Olmsted thinks, a large landed proprietory, wealthy, improvident, and extravagant, not improving themselves, or the soil, or the people-have reduced Virginia to comparative poverty. These proprietors, like the Irish gentry, encumbered their estates, and only saved their country by becoming bankrupt; their estates then went to the hammer, and passed into the hands of a more enterprising and thrifty class. This process fell upon Virginia after the American revolution, and had reached such a point in 1790, that from that time there began an increase of produce and population. In the thirty years which ran from 1790 to 1810, the increase of the population of Virginia was from 10-68 to 13.92. This increase, however, is much less than in the Northern states. In the ten years which preceded 1852, the ratio of increase of population was in Virginia 11, while in New York it was 27; and in Massachusetts 34. The unimproved land in Virginia was in 1850 near 30,000,000, as compared with 10,000,000 improved; while in Pensylvania, the unimproved land was 6,000,000, as compared with 8,000,000 improved. The cash value of farms, which is twenty-five dollars per acre in Pensylvania, is only eight dollars an acre in Virginia. The impoverished state of the land, which in many places is wrought out and abandoned to the forest, estates heavily mortgaged, mansions and houses tumbling into ruins, are signs of its backward state. No better evidence of this can be given than the canvassing |