ch a season she has no lukewarm
professors; no adherents concerning whom it is doubtful to what party
they belong. The Christian is then reminded at every turn, that his
Master's kingdom is not of this world. When all on earth wears a black
and threatening aspect, he looks up to heaven for consolation; he learns
practically to consider himself as a pilgrim and stranger. He then
cleaves to fundamentals, and examines well his foundation, as at the
hour of death. When Religion is in a state of external quiet and
prosperity, the contrary of all this naturally takes place. The soldiers
of the church militant then forget that they are in a state of warfare.
Their ardour slackens, their zeal languishes. Like a colony long settled
in a strange country[108], they are gradually assimilated in features,
and demeanour, and language, to the native inhabitants, till at length
almost every vestige of peculiarity dies away.

If, in general, persecution and prosperity be productive respectively of
these opposite effects; this circumstance alone might teach us what
expectations to form concerning the state of Christianity in this
country, where she has long been embodied in an establishment, which is
intimately blended, and is generally and justly believed to have a
common interest with our civil institutions; which is liberally, though
by no means too liberally, endowed, and, not more favoured in wealth
than dignity, has been allowed "to exalt her mitred front in courts and
parliaments:" an establishment--the offices in which are extremely
numerous, and these, not like the priesthood of the Jews, filled up from
a particular race, or, like that of the Hindoos, held by a separate cast
in entailed succession; but supplied from every class, and branching by
its widely extended ramifications into almost every individual family in
the community: an establishment--of which the ministers are not, like
the Roman Catholic clergy, debarred from forming matrimonial ties, but
are allowed to unite themselves, and multiply their holdings to the
general mass of the community by the close bonds of family connection;
not like some of the severer of the religious orders, immured in
colleges and monasteries, but, both by law and custom, permitted to mix
without restraint in all the intercourses of society.

Such being the circumstances of the pastors of the church, let the
community in general be supposed to have been for some time in a rapidly
improving