condemnation inevitable, he is regarded with unspeakable tenderness by the Almighty, watched over with a solicitude, and provided for at a cost, which could not be exceeded if he were the noblest and purest of the beings that throng the intelligent universe? Teach me this, and you teach me everything. And this I learn from Christ crucified. I learn it indeed in a measure from the sun as he walks the firmament, and warms the earth into fertility. I learn it from the moon, as she gathers the stars into her train, and throws over creation her robe of soft light. I gather it from the various operations and provisions of nature, from the faculties of the mind, from the capacities of the soul. But if I am taught by these, the teaching after all is but imperfect and partial: they do indeed give testimony that man is not forgotten of God; but the testimony would be equally given, were there the power of receiving it, to the brute creation, to the innumerable animated tribes which are to perish at death. It is not a testimony, at least not a direct testimony, that we are cared for as immortal beings, and can be pardoned as sinful. It is not a testimony that He who is of purer eyes than to look upon iniquity, can receive into favor even the vilest of those who have thrown off allegiance, and manifest such an exuberance of lovingkindness towards the guilty, as will not leave the worst case without hope and without succor. Show us what will give such testimony as this, and sun, and moon, and the granaries of nature, and the workings of intellect, will drop, in comparison, their office of instructor.

From "Sermons.”

CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA.

R. J. BRECKENRIDGE.

ALL the immense problems on whose solution the destiny of man depends-and chief among these, the nature, the position, and the efficacy of all religious institutions-are presented among us in a light altogether singular. Here, for the first time, religion is absolutely free; and having been corrupted everywhere else by its union with the civil power, or pressed everywhere else under the iron hand of persecution, its sublime mission among us is to make manifest its capacity to be at once free and efficacious in the bosom of a people at once great and free. Moreover, the people among whom this vast experiment is to have free scope, differ most remarkably from all others precisely in those respects in which religion might be supposed most capable of being affected for good or ill, by other absorbing interests of man. Here there is cast loose upon society-wholly disconnected with religion, and, therefore, available against it as well as for it-a larger proportion of educated intellect has never before existed in any com

munity; a greater mass which must needs be influenced, and, when influenced either way, correspondingly powerful; a mass stimulated throughout every portion of it to a degree never witnessed before in any age of the world. Can the religion of Christ establish its dominion, by its own power, over such hearts? Can it maintain supreme sway over such minds by its own simple and divine force? It is a singular proof of its wonderful hold upon the human soul, that, so far from being shaken loose, it has constantly augmented its influence throughout the terrific agitations of the human race during the whole career of our country. It has survived the midnight of the world; and its last office is to preside over the noon of human grandeur. Let us do our part toward the accomplishment of this sublime destiny.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION.

M. HOPKINS.

THAT onward movement in the march of creation, how grand it is! how mysterious in its origin! How inscrutable, how utterly beyond the scope of science are its issues! Only after the dethronement of chaos, and during the first epoch in which there were orderly arrangements and recurrent movements, was science possible. Then she might have pitched her tent, and polished her glasses, and built her laboratory, and have begun her observations and her records. She might have counted every scale on the placoids, and every spot on the lichens, and every ring on the graptolites, and have analyzed the fog from every standing pool; and so have gone on thousands of years, feeling all the time that her tent was a house with stable foundations, and her recurring movements an inheritance for ever. 'Do you suppose,” she might have said, "that this fixed order will be broken up?" "Do you not see that since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were?" But that epoch came to its close. The placoids, and lichens, and graptolites, and all the science connected with them, were whelmed beneath the surface, to be known no more except as they might leave their record there. Then again, in the second period, science might have gone the same round, and fallen into the same infidelity. And, indeed, from her own stand-point alone, how could she do otherwise? The circular movement cannot speak of that which is to end it. And so it has been through the epochs.

According to its own records, the coming up of the creation out of the past eternity has been as the march of an army that should move on by separate stages with recruits of new races and orders at the opening of each encampment. During those long days of God there was scope for science, and for a new one in each. In each, science

could pitch the tent, and forage, and perfect the arrangement for the encampment; but she could not tell when the tents were to be struck, or where the army would march next. And so the movement has been onward till our epoch has come, and we have been called in as recruits. And now again science is busy with her fixed arrangements and recurring movements; but knows just as little as before of the rectilinear movement of the direction and termination of this mighty march. It is within this movement, and not in the sphere of science that our great interest lies. Belonging to arrangements and movements in this world, science can do much for us in this world, but she cannot regenerate the world, she cannot secure the interests which lie only in the rectilinear line of movement, and which are "the one thing needful." Of that movement we can know nothing except through faith. Through that we may know. We believe there is one who has marshalled the hosts of this moving army, and who has the ordering of them, and that he has told us so much of this onward movement as we need to know; and here it is that we find that sphere of faith which we say is distinct from science, but not opposed to it.

MAN'S LOVE TO GOD.

J. MCCLINTOCK.

Ar every stage of life, man seeks for love. Yet he finds none that endures. What affections are not blasted by sin, by the world's sad changes, by the treachery of feeble natures, by the destroying forces of ambition or of avarice,—those, I say, that are proof against all these and O! how few these are, the bitter experience of life has convinced us all-what becomes of them? Buried, too often, in the graves of those that gave and received them. Who among us has not felt his own love-that went forth warm and gushing-falling back in an Alpine torrent upon his heart, as he has seen the dull earth close upon remains dearer to him than life!

But has God given us these affections, and are they never to be satisfied? Is there no object toward which they can be turned, that shall not change? Here, brethren, it is that Religion offers to fill this deepest craving of our nature. She offers to us an object worthy of our highest, purest love in the infinite and unchangeable God. She offers to us the "One altogether lovely," and tells us that he will accept our love, and treasure it up so that it shall never fail us. And she wooes us to bestow our affection thus, by showing us that God is not only so infinite in goodness as to be willing to receive our love, but that, in his unbounded condescension, he has sought us by pouring out the riches of his own infinite affection upon us! And she tells us, that this

supreme affection will not only have permanence in itself, but will also so sanctify and transfigure all our lower affections as to endow them with its own immortality, that our love for children, parents, husband, wife, or friend, need not perish with them, but may bloom for ever, in the paradise of God. In this sense, we may take as entirely true the beautiful language of Southey:

"They sin, who tell us love can die!

With life all other passions fly,

All others are but vanity.

Earthly, these passions of the earth,

They perish where they had their birth;
But love is indestructible,

Its holy flame for ever burneth

From heaven it came, to heaven returneth."

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RELIGIONISTS.

F. D. HUNTINGTON.

You have seen the religionist of mere passion. That impulsive temperament is doubtless capable of good services to the master. But, to that end, the master must have the reforming of it. That unsteady purpose must be made steadfast through a thoughtful imitation of the constancy, that said, Behold, I go up to Jerusalem to be crucified." That fluctuating wing of worship, must be poised by some influence from those hills, where whole nights were not too long for a Redeemer's prayers. That inexpert swimmer in the sea of life, now rising, now sinking, and now noisily splashing the waters, must be schooled by sober experience to glide onward with a firmer and stiller stroke. Ardor must be matched with consistency. You are not to be carried to heaven by a fitful religion, periodically raised from the dead at seasons of social exhilaration; not by a religion alive at church, but stagnant in the streets and in the market-places; not by a religion kindling at some favored hour of sentimental meditation, only to sink and flicker in the drudgery of common work. It is to little purpose that we read, and circulate, and preach the Bible, except all our reading and all our living gain thereby a more biblical tone. And it is quite futile that our breasts glow with some fugitive feeling in the house of God, unless that feeling dedicates our common dwellings to be all houses of God.

So have you seen the religious legalist. In business, in the street, in sanctuaries, at home, you have seen him. In business, measuring off his righteousness by some sealed measure of public usage, as mechanically as his merchandise, and making a label or a dye-stuff his cunning proxy to tell the lie that some judicial penalty had frightened from his tongue; disowning no patent obligation, but cheating the customer, or oppressing the weak, in secret. In the street, wearing an outside of

genial manners, with a frosty temper under it, or a cloak of propriety with a heart of sin; in the sanctuary, purchasing, with formal professions, one day, the privilege of an untroubled self-seeking the other six, or possibly opening the pew door and the prayer-book here to-day, with the same hand that will wrong a neighbor to-morrow; and at home, practising that reluctant virtue that would hardly give conjugal affection but for the marriage-bond, and that, by being exported to another continent, would find a Parisian atmosphere a solvent of all its scruples. Not descending, at present, to the depth of depravity, he certainly never rises to a pure piety. Whatever respectable or admirable traits you see in him, you miss that distinctive mark which every eye takes knowledge of as a spiritual consecration.

Engraft, now, on that "wild olive" stock, the sweet juices of Christian love, drawn from their original stock in Bethlehem, "of the seed of David and the root of Jesse;" soften that hard integrity by Christian charity; in place of duty done from sheer compulsion, put duty done from a willing, eager, and believing heart. Do this, and thou shalt live.

From "A Sermon."

DUELLING.

ELIPHALET NOTT.

ABSURD as duelling is, were it absurd only, though we might smile at the weakness and pity the folly of its abettors, there would be no occasion for seriously attacking them. But, to what has been said, I add, that duelling is RASH and PRESUMPTUOUS. Life is the gift of God, and it was never bestowed to be sported with. To each, the sovereign of the universe has marked out a sphere to move in, and assigned a part to act. This part respects ourselves not only, but others also. Each lives for the benefit of all. As in the system of nature the sun shines, not to display its own brightness, and answer its own convenience, but to warm, enlighten, and bless the world; so in the system of animated beings, there is a dependence, a correspondence and a relation through an infinitely extended, dying, and reviving universe, in which no man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. Friend is related to friend; the father to his family; the individual to community. To every member of which, having fixed his station and assigned his duty, the God of nature says, "Keep this trust-defend this post." For whom? For thy friends-thy family-thy country. And having received such a charge, and for such a purpose, to desert it is rashness and temerity.

Since the opinions of men are as they are, do you ask, how you shall avoid the imputation of cowardice, if you do not fight when you are injured? Ask your family how you will avoid the imputation of cruelty