insignificance when we contemplate the bonanza of bankers' syndicates, of railroad monopolies, steamship subsidies, and the great future oceanic canal.

It is believed that the popular vote would not be adhered to with much tenacity if the fact were known that, in our most important elections, the President has not been the choice of the people of the United States, or of a majority of the States, and that this is the almost inevitable result of the provisions of the Constitution with regard to the constitution of the electoral colleges.

In 1860, the united vote of the Democratic candidates, Douglas, Breckinridge, and Bell, was 2,787,780, while that of Mr. Lincoln was only 1,857,660. Mr. Lincoln had, however, 180 electoral votes ; while Mr. Douglas, who stood next to him in the electoral vote, had only 12. Of the rest, Breckinridge had 72 and Bell 39.

There are objections to an executive consisting of a single person in confederate or composite states, that do not apply to an homogeneous country.

Take, for example, the United States, whose interests, North and South, were avowedly, during the whole period of slavery, antagonistical. It can not be doubted that a single executive possessing the immense prerogative enjoyed by the President of the United States might influence legislation, as well as the administration of the Government, in favor of his section to the prejudice of the others. Some attempts were made, during the disputes with regard to the tariff and slavery, as to a plan by which the rights of each section might be protected. Mr. Calhoun proposed a dual executive, having a legislative and executive action, as one of the means of preserving the balance of power between the two sections.

The discordant interests of Austria and Hungary induced the establishment of two general governments in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. It ordinarily happens that when, in a confederacy, there is one head, the office is attached not to the individual but to the prominent state. For instance, in the present empire of Germany, it is the King of Prussia, not as an individual, but King of Prussia, who is Emperor of Germany. And the subordination of the other states of Germany to Prussia is always recognized.

But I know of nothing more suitable to our condition than the present Constitution of Switzerland. The Swiss Constitution provides for the exercise of the supreme executive authority by a Federal Council, composed of seven members, only one of whom can be chosen from the same canton. They are named for three

years by the two Houses of the Legislature (Federal Assembly), denominated the National Council and Council of States, the former corresponding to the House of Representatives, the latter to the Senate, of the United States. From this Federal Council the President and Vice-President of the Confederation are annually appointed by a vote, also of the two Houses; but their functions are not materially different from those of the other members, and four members are required to sanction every deliberation. The duties of the Federal Council consist especially in superintending the national relations of the confederation.

In conclusion, I would remark that the views here stated, however illustrated by recent events, have exclusively in view matters of permanent interest. So far, indeed, as regards the contest now pending, the verdict of the people will be rendered before this article comes regularly into the hands of the subscribers.

W. B. LAWRENCE.

THE ADVANTAGES OF FREE RELIGIOUS DISCUSSION.

THE physical question which comes the nearest to this, in the minds of persons with strong religious emotions and convictions, is vivisection. I state it strongly, at the start. It was the Master himself who said, "I am the truth." It is the difference between Christianity and philosophy: that one is the formation of a school, and the other the following of a person. And the discussion of religion is really, shall we say it, the dissection of the Christ. And He "liveth for evermore." Now, we remember three distinctions and three instances. There were Roman slaves and soldiers, who tore and broke the body of the God-Man with the nails and the spear. This is the manner of the religious discussion of the scoffer. There is a very different spirit, in the case of St. Thomas, which approaches this same Body in somewhat the same way: "Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into his side, I will not believe." And this was permitted. And because of the permission, probably not acted upon, "Reach hither thy finger, reach hither thy hand," "Thomas answered and said, My Lord and my God." I think this picture stands as the perpetual evidence of God's tenderness with anxious, honest doubt; and of the way out of it, by searching examination. One more instance there is, which simply tells the story of the perfect knowledge, unattainable here, offered hereafter; when the Magdalen, needing not confirmation of faith, but satisfaction of love (which is not to be here), reached out to touch the risen Lord, and was forbidden. The brutal boy tormenting the living animal; the calm and anxious student seeking, in brute creation, the secrets of life to be applied for the relief of men; the demonstrator, eager to prove the truth of his own strong convictions of anatomy-these are the types of the scornful infidel, the anxious doubter, the posi

tive believer, discussing religion. And, of the three, two only are noble.

Of a different sort, yet teaching the same lesson, is Simon Peter's zealous investigation, when he went into the sepulchre and learned there, by closer inquiry, the lesson, not only of the composure (which is the highest attribute of power) with which the Lord rose from the smoothed and separated grave-clothes, but the deeper lesson of the twofold nature, God-head and man-hood-" the napkin that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself."

And even more akin to our subject is the story of the two who went to Emmaus. They started in the twilight of the first EasterDay, whose sunlight only showed to them the stolen body and the rifled grave of their most dearly Beloved. And their anxiety took on no phase of stolid despair or stoic silence. They talked together, they communed together, they reasoned; and, while they discussed and doubted, reasoned and disputed, balanced their hopes. and disappointments, their "holden" eyes were opened. The dead Christ lived again. They knew him. And, when the witness of the Scriptures to Christ and Christ's witness in the Scriptures added their voices to the discussion, "their hearts burned within them."

No one, I think, can fail to see, from the manner of Christ's dealing with the case of St. Thomas, and from the result of St. Peter's examination of the empty grave, the warrant for close scrutiny into the difficulties of our Christian mysteries; nor, from the result of the reasoning and communing along the road to Emmaus, "the advantages of free religious discussion.”

So much for the starting-point. Let us be bold to say that even the blasphemy of irreligious discussion-that is, of the discussion of religion in irreligious ways-not of honest doubt seeking certainty, but of cruel hatred, seeking to scald other souls with its bitter gall-even this, save to the blasphemer, works the glory of God. Unconsciously, the cruel hands that nailed and pierced and lifted up the Christ were writing on the opposite side of the old prophetic scrolls, with pens of iron, the fulfillment of prophecy. And, any way, whether in pretense or in truth, of contention and envy or of good-will, Christ is preached; and, as the reaction of the centuries over and over again proves, the believer may therein rejoice.

And yet I do not think this sort of thing can be fairly called religious discussion. The literature of the apologists will be in our

day, as in the time of Celsus, the amber that preserves the stinging and persistent fly of the attackers upon the Christian faith, as earthworks, overgrown with grass and pastured by the peaceful kine, are historical landmarks of old contests, interesting but anachronistic. Continuously reproduced editions of the old apologists would answer all the purposes of defense, against the motley array that advances to the attack with the old war-cry, against supernaturalism; against the immoralities of the Bible; against the probability of any revelation; against the inequality of its making known. When men persist in using the arquebuse and crossbow of a disused and superseded warfare, they must be either treated as masqueraders or met with the revived defenses of old time. Butler's Analogy," to-day, is an arsenal of weapons against the thin and cracked battle-cry of the mere denier-cracked and thin, and with the strong French accent and idiom of Ferney.

The discussion, intelligent and valuable, of religion in our day, is either among believers, or with those men who in the ardent use of telescope and microscope, with the geologist's hammer and the naturalist's dissecting-knife and the chemist's solutions, are finding facts and fancying inferences, and drawing (often with a long bow) conclusions which relate to what is, or seems to be, revealed truth. Nature, we claim, is so religious (the heavens declaring the glory of God) that it must reveal God. And God is so consistent that, between the religion revealed in nature and in the Bible, there must be analogy and not antagonism. This paper does not propose to deal with the contest between believers and atheists; nor with the theological disputes among believers. The true religious discussion is between the seekers after and the holders of truth. And it needs two temperaments on the part of the holder of truth, a confident composure and a kindly sympathy with those who are still groping. And the seeker must be one "whose tone is that of sadness, not of scorn.'

To such discussion the "condition preliminary" is, it seems to me, what the story of that twilight walk to Emmaus contains. Walking in the groves of philosophy, or in the beaten tracks of historical investigation, or in the narrow paths of personal experience, or in the fields of natural study: and discussing, reasoning, talking, having communication with one another; not nursing difficulties, and brooding over them; not shutting up convictions behind the sealed stone of shamefaced silence, but walking, and reasoning, and talking; and being "sad"-not necessarily, although often,