advantages with which an ecclesiastical usurpation would invest me; so I will not interfere with a blasphemous intrusion between any man and his Maker.

3. I hold it a criminal and accursed sacrilege, to rob even a beggar of a single motive for his devotion; and I hold it an equal insult to my own faith, to offer me any boon for its profession. This pretended emancipation bill passing into a law, would, in my mind, strike not a blow at this sect or that sect, but at the very vitality of christianity itself. I am thoroughly convinced that the antichristian connection between church and state, which it was suited to increase, has done more mischief to the gospel interest, than all the ravings of infidelity since the crucifixion.

4. The sublime Creator of our blessed creed never meant it to be the channel of a courtly influence, or the source of a corrupt ascendency. He sent it amongst us to heal, not to irritate; to associate, not to seclude; to collect together, like the baptismal dove, every creed and clime and color in the universe, beneath the spotless wing of its protection. The union of church and state only converts good christians into bad statesmen, and political knaves into pretended christians. It is at best but a foul and adulterous connection, polluting the purity of heaven with the abomination of earth, and hanging the tatters of a political piety upon the cross of an insulted Savior.

LESSON CXXXIV.

TEMPTATIONS OF LARGE CITIES.

DEWEY.

1. How many youth are there, alas! and must we say of both sexes? who came from their native

hills, pure as the streams that gush forth at their side, and have found in our

city, allurement, enticement, pollution, poverty, disease, and premature death. Look at that young man, if, indeed, vice and misery have left him yet young; look at him as he stands in the early morning, perhaps, at the entrance of some porterhouse or grog-shop, pale, irresolute, destitute, friendless, not knowing where to go or what to do; fix your eye, ay, and a compassionate eye, upon him for one moment, and I will tell you his history.

2. A few years only have passed over him, since he was the cherished member of a happy country home. It was at that period that his own inclination, or family straits, led him to seek his fortune abroad in the world. What a moment is that, when the first great tie of nature is broken-the tie of home. The long pent-up and quiet tenderness of family affection swells in the eye of the mother, and trembles at her heart, as she busies herself with the little preparations necessary for the departure of her son; her charge till now, from infancy.

3. At length the day comes for him to bid adieu to the scenes of his early life. Amidst the blessings and prayers of kindred, with many precious words spoken to him, he turns away, himself moved to tears, perhaps, as he catches the last glance of the holy roof of his childhood. He comes to the great city, and for a time, probably, all is well with him. Home is dear to his heart, and the words of parental caution and of sisterly love are still in his ears; and the new scenes seem strange and almost sad to him. But, left alone in the city throng, he must seek companions.

4. And here, alas! is his first great. peril. Could he have been acquainted with but two or three virtuous and agreeable families with whom to pass his leisure hours, all might still have been well. But left to chance for his associates, chance is but too likely to provide him with associates that will tempt him to go astray. Their apparently honest wonder at his country simplicity, their ridicule of his fears, their jeers at his

doubts and scruples, ere long wear off the first freshness of virtue.

5. He consents, for experiment's sake, it may be, to take one step with his evil advisers. That step sets the seal of doom upon his whole after career. Now, and from henceforth, every step is downward-downward-downward-till, on earth, there is no lower point to reach. And what though for a while he maintain some outward decency! What though he dress well and live luxuriously, and amass wealth to pamper his vices! It is but a cloth of gold spread over the fatal gangrene, that is eating into his vitals, and his very heart!

6. But, often, instead of that cloth of gold, are the rags of beggary, or the garb of the convict. Vice is expensive and wasteful. It wants means at the same time that it is losing credit. It must, without a rare fortune, descend to beggary or crime. How often does it find both mingled in its bitter cup! How many are there in this city who have descended from the high places of honor and hope, to a degradation of which once they never dreamed as possible!

7. Alas! how sad is the contrast between what that man is, and what he once was! But a little time ago, and he knew gentle nurture, and the music of kind words, and the holy serenity of nature, and quiet rural labor; the peace and plenty of a country home were around him; and a mother's gentle tone, and a sister's kind voice, were in his ears; and words of sweet and solemn prayer rose each morning and evening, perhaps, beneath the venerable roof where he dwelt; and now— in the prison or the poor-house, or in some dwelling more desolate, pent up with stifling filth and squalid wretchedness, amidst oaths, and blows, and blasphemies, he is pursuing his dark and desperate way to a grave, that already yawns to re ceive him!

8. And when he is buried—“ his pale form shall not be laid with many tears" beneath the green fresh sod of his native

fields; but he hurried and huddled into some charnel-house, unwept, unhonored, unblessed, even there, "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest."

LESSON CXXXV.

THE SWORD AND THE PRESS.

CARLYLE.

1. WHEN Tamerlane had finished building his pyramid of seventy thousand human skulls, and was seen standing at the gate of Damascus, glittering in his steel, with his battle-ax on his shoulder, till his fierce hosts filed out to new victories and carnage, the pale looker-on might have fancied that Nature was in her death-throes; for havoc and despair had taken possession of the earth, and the sun of manhood seemed setting in a sea of blood.

2. Yet it might be on that very gala-day of Tamerlane that a little boy was playing nine-pins in the streets of Mentz, whose history was more important than that of twenty Tamerlanes. The Khan, with his shaggy demons of the wilderness, "passed away like a whirlwind," to be forgotten forever; and that German artisan has wrought a benefit which is yet immeasurably expanding itself, and will continue to expand itself, through all countries and all times.

3. What are the conquests and the expeditions of the whole corporation of captains, from Walter the Penniless, to Napoleon Bonaparte, compared with those movable types of Faust? Truly it is a mortifying thing for your conqueror to reflect how perishable is the metal with which he hammers with such violence; how the kind earth will soon shroud up his bloody foot. prints; and all that he achieved and skillfully piled together, will be but like his own canvas city of a camp-this evening

loud with life, to-morrow all struck and vanished,—“ a few pits and heaps of straw."

4. For here, as always, it continues true, that the deepest force is the stillest; that, as in the fable, the mild shining of the sun shall silently accomplish what the fierce blustering of the tempest in vain essayed. Above all, it is ever to be kept in mind, that not by material but by moral power are men and their actions to be governed. How noiseless is thought! No rolling of drums, no tramp of squadrons, no tumult of innumerable baggage-wagons attend its movements.

5. In what obscure and sequestered places may the head be meditating which is one day to be crowned with more than imperial authority! for kings and emperors will be among its ministering servants; it will rule not over, but in, all heads; and with these solitary combinations of ideas, and with magic formulas, bend the world to its will. The time may come when Napoleon himself will be better known for his laws than his battles, and the victory of Waterloo prove less momentous than the opening of the first Mechanic's Institute.

LESSON CXXXVI.

WORTH MAKES THE MAN.

PENN.

1. THAT people are generally proud of their persons, is too visible and troublesome, especially if they have any pretense either to blood or beauty; the one has raised many quarrels among men, and the other among women, and men too often, for their sakes, and at their excitements. But to the first: what a pother has this noble blood made in the world, antiquity of name or family, whose father or mother, great-grandfather or great-grandmother, was best descended or allied?