safely refuse to recognize religious influences. A physician might as well shut his eyes to the influence upon his patient of the social affections as of the religious nature. The teacher must take the child as he finds him, with intellect and affections and conscience, and the best education is that which meets the wants of the whole nature. Each part affects the rest. You cannot cultivate the heart without quickening the intellect, and the moral nature adds new motives to the love for knowledge. How, then, is it possible to exclude religious influences from the best systems of education? "I would not take the Bible from the schools," said Mr. Choate more than a quarter of a century ago, "so long as one particle of Plymouth rock remained large enough to make a gun flint of, or so long as its dust floats in the air. I would have it read, not only for its authoritative revelations, and its commands and exactions, obligatory yesterday, to-day, and forever; but for its English, for its literature, its pathos; for its dim imagery, its sayings of consolation, of wisdom, of universal truth.” 1

But we need to go further than the systems of education. Moral and religious ideas are very closely connected with the state. There is a mischievous ambiguity in the assertion so often repeated about the separation of church and state. If the meaning be, that the state does not impose a state church upon the people, and that it does not levy a tax for its support, then it is true that there is no connection between the church and the state in this country. But if the meaning be that the state is not to recognize the Christian religion as the religion of the people, then the assertion is not true. If the meaning be that the state is not to recognize moral and religious ends, and those institutions which grow out of the religious wants of men, then such a separation is clearly impossible. President Marsh stated the true position when he said: "The politicians of Europe consider it an essential part of government to support religion, but we

1 Life and Speeches of Rufus Choate (Prof. Brown), Vol. i. p. 406. VOL. XXVIII. No. 111.

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have reversed the order, and look to our religion as the only reliable support of our government." 1

Every thoughtful man knows that it would be absurd to attempt to maintain a government without any connection with ideas which are strictly religious. For where would government find the sanctions on which it rests? What can take the place of those oaths by which every officer and every citizen binds himself to fulfil his duties to the state? How can government shake off the obligation to protect the religious institutions of the people? If other interests and institutions have a right to protection, why should not the Sabbath be protected by the authority of law from desecra tion? There is scarcely a village in all the land so small as not to have a Christian church. The settler on the frontier makes it one of his first cares to erect a house of worship. These thousands of churches are connected with the strongest sympathies and most sacred associations of the people, and and can the state refuse to recognize them, and to protect the religious observances of the millions who throng them. And still further, are there not occasions when the state needs to call directly for religious services? If the government provides for the other wants of its soldiers and its sailors, shall it refuse to provide for their religious wants? Are not chaplains called for as legitimately as surgeons? And in great public exigencies, when the pillars of the state are trembling, what shall prevent the government from calling upon the people to supplicate the favor of the Ruler of nations, and the God of battles? The strongest impulses of men have always led them to do this. And after all this has been done, how absurd it is to claim that the state has no connection with the Christian faith.

Society needs moral and religious influences for its protection. It is an admitted principle that public policy requires some system of popular education; for an ignorant population is an element of weakness. But the need of

1 Memoir and Remains of James Marsh, pp. 568-569.

virtuous citizens is quite as plain. Vice will impoverish the people, and eat away the strength of the state.

We have elements in our population which may well awaken solicitude. If Europe sends us her surplus millions, they will not be the most intelligent or the most virtuous classes. We have learned how universal suffrage works in a great city like New York. And what we find in New York, we may expect to find in other great cities when they gain an equal number of inhabitants. And yet the tendency is to mass men in cities. The census has been showing for two decades that the cities are growing at the expense of the rural districts. Good authorities have stated that the urban population gains twice as rapidly as the population of the whole country, and three times as rapidly as that of the rural sections. This is one of the marked tendencies of our times. It grows out of improved means of communication, and the consequent increase of trade; and it is likely to continue and perhaps to strengthen. What then will be the state of things when other great cities become as populous as New York, and New York as populous as London? And when the cities shall control the political power of this country (as they may by and by) who can answer for the safety of free institutions?

In view of these facts and tendencies, who will say that government has no interest in the moral and religious influences which prevail? Who can deny the right of the government to regulate the traffic in those articles which are the direct causes of vice and crime? Is it safe to fill the land with godless schools and impart to the youth a godless education? Shall we write over every schoolhouse in the land: No Bible read here, no religious teachings permitted here.

The course of events is bringing these moral and religious. questions into the foreground. The powerful and concerted movements against the Sabbath and the Bible in schools, and against the indirect recognition which the government gives to Christianity, these will in due time awaken the people to counter movements which are essential to the preser

vation of the institutions of our fathers. The recent national convention at Pittsburgh has called attention to the fact that the Federal Constitution does not in direct terms recognize the Christian religion. This is a fact of greater practical' importance than has been admitted by many who have discussed it. The legal questions which have recently come before some of the higher courts in New York and Ohio, and which are sure, sooner or later, to make their appearance before the Supreme Court at Washington will show us how important it is. The question is already raised, whether this is a Christian nation, and some are taking one side, and some the other, So that it is no longer an open question, whether moral issues shall enter into political discussions; but the question is whether they shall be settled right or settled wrong.

The state has no eyes, save the eyes of its leading men. The men of thought shape its policy. The scholar who knows how controlling a part religious motives and principles have, must shed light on the great moral problems which connect themselves so closely with public policy. There is no real danger of any check of material prosperity. This nation will go on extending its settlements, and increasing its wealth. But it is not so sure that the heart of the nation will be kept sound. Still less certain is it that literature and learning and art will flourish. Yet history shows that the real greatness of nations depends not so much upon material prosperity as upon the intellectual and moral influences which control them. Great poets and philosophers and divines do more to exalt a nation than those who double its trade and its wealth. The work grows larger and more hopeful as the years go by, and it was written long ago, that" in the theatre of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on."

ARTICLE III.

THE DATE OF THE PASSION OF OUR LORD.1

.....

In

§ I. THE right understanding of the history of the passion, even in a chronological respect, depends greatly on a proper view being taken of the order of the Jewish Passover. Ex. xii. 1-18 we read: "Let the month Abib (Nisan) be for you the first month. On the tenth of this month let every one take a lamb for a house, . . . . . without blemish, a male of the first year. On the fourteenth of this month shall they slaughter it, the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel, between the two evenings (1), and ye shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and ye shall eat mazzoth (unleavened bread) in [something] bitter...... Seven days shall ye cat mazzoth; even the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses. ..... On the first day and on the seventh day there shall be holy convocation; no work shall be done, save the preparation of what is to be eaten. In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even (), ye shall eat mazzoth, until the one and twentieth day of the month at even." With slight variations, this order is repeated in Lev. xxiii. 5-14; Num. xxviii. 16–25; Deut. xvi. 1-8. Taken as a whole, it is clear; and as our design is simply to see how it was understood and observed by the Jews at the time of Christ, we may here pass over the exegetical and harmonistic difficulties presented by the various accounts just alluded to.

The current designation of the fourteenth of Nisan in the 1 The following Article is a translation (by Rev. Dr. D. W. Simon of Spring Hill College, England), from an able treatise by Chas. Ed. Caspari, entitled Chronologisch-geographische Einleitung in das Leben Jesu Christi," published in Hamburg in 1869. Permission to translate this portion for the pages of the Bibliotheca Sacra was expressly given by the publishers in the name of the author. We can commend the whole work as a very valuable contribution to the literature of Apologetics.