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possibly arise among a people, universally trained in the fear of God. Had due pains been taken to establish that grand controling principle—the true basis of all moral obligation-in the hearts of the teeming multitudes who throng our great cities and manufacturing villages, no one would have needed to fear the torch of the incendiary nor the insurrectionary violence of an inflamed and misguided populace. voice which hushed the tempest on the sea of Galilee, when the labouring bark was ready to perish amid the angry waves, is that alone which is of power sufficient "to still the tumults of the people." voice heard in each home, as the family bible is reverently opened at the morning and evening services of domestic devotion; that voice mingling with the daily instructions of the school, giving line upon line, and precept upon precept, to the impressible mind of youth; that voice breathing in solemn accents from sabbath to sabbath, amid the assembled congregation in the sanctuary: speaking as it does with demonstration to the understanding, with authority to the conscience, and with persuasive power to the heart, will give a moral tone to society which no arts of mere secular legislation can ever impart. It is this blessed influence of religion, which, reconciling even the poorest to the hardships of their lot in time, by opening up to them the glorious prospects of a happy eternity, will alone suffice to chase away the sullen discontent with which the humbler are so generally found frowning on the higher orders of society; and to bind all classes together in mutual kindness and sympathy, as all equally in need of, and all equally depending on, the mercy of a common Redeemer. Let a branch

cut from this tree be cast into the bitterest waters, and straightway they will become sweet and salutary. It is therefore to a religious revival throughout the nation, we must look, as the only effectual means of securing us against the manifold dangers which menace the public weal; and of giving permanence and stability to all those time-honoured institutions, with whose preservation is identified the prosperity, perhaps the existence, of the greatest empire in the world. Then should "violence no more be heard in our land, wasting nor destruction within our borders;" but men should call our "walls salvation and our gates praise." Then should we be called Hephzibah, and our land Beulah, because the Lord delighted in it-because then it should be wedded to the Lord.

But once more, if from the country we rise to the survey of the world-if ascending the lofty eminence which is occupied by the genius of history, we review the annals of our race; or setting out with the traveller, we bring the eye of observation to bear on the existing condition of mankind-what a mournful picture is presented to the reflecting mind! Over by far the larger portion of that wide expanse, what does either the past or the present exhibit, but "darkness covering the earth and gross darkness the people"? Millions upon millions of our fellow-creatures, possessed of the same rational, moral, and immortal nature with ourselves, sunk to the level of the beasts that perish; ignorant alike of their origin and of their end-" changing the glory of the incorruptible Jehovah into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping

things." Humanity shudders even to think of the scenes that are daily witnessed in these dark places of the earth, which are full of the habitations of horrid cruelty. To see the wretched inhabitant of magnificent India standing for years with his shrivelled arm, outstretched and immovable, beneath the burning sun, or piercing with savage violence his own flesh as he dances with frantic vehemence before his frightful divinity, or lying down to be crushed like a worm beneath the wheels of the idol-car at Juggernaut; to see the poor degraded African, prostrate and trembling before the Fetish, the misshapen and senseless image which his own hands have made; to see the ferocious New Zealander feeding on human flesh, and that too with the conviction that there is something religious in this unnatural and monstrous feast, how does the very heart sicken at spectacles like these! The man of European refinement and intelligence, feels almost ashamed of his own nature when he sees it thus brutalized. And yet what is it that makes him to differ? Nothing but the religion of the Gospel-the religion of that blessed Jesus who is the light of the world, and whose word wherever it is known and embraced, has never failed to bring light to them that were in darkness and in the region and shadow of death. If we pass in review before us all the nations of the earth, and fix on that one of their number in which peace and order and civilization, comfort and freedom and knowledge most widely reign,—we shall find it to be the very nation in which true religion is most extensively diffused. Or if we fix, on the other hand, on the nation which of all others is sunk deepest in darkness,

degradation, and misery; where the rights of man are most habitually trampled under foot, where both his mental and bodily condition are most abject and debased, we shall find it to be just that nation which has stood farthest removed from all contact and communication with the religion of Christ ;-into which no ray, direct or traditionary, of its living and life-giving light has ever shone. Does not this one fact tell us, and that with the irresistible force of a demonstration, how and how alone the misery in which the earth "groaneth and travaileth" until now, is to be done away; that it is in the revival of religion we must seek for the means of regenerating the world? As we have worldly philanthropists full of schemes for the improvement of the community; and worldly politicians as full of schemes for the improvement of the country,-so have we worldly cosmopolites, citizens of the world as they delight to be called, whose zeal for humanity professes to have no limits narrower than the globe, and who are fondly dreaming of a millennium in which the Gospel is to have no share. It is to the diffusion of knowledge they look for the reformation of mankind. The infidel theory, contradicted alike by the explicit testimony of Scripture and the ascertained facts of history, on which they proceed, is this: that man started in the race of being at the lowest point of intelligence and virtue, and that by a series of progressive evolutions he has been continually advancing, under the operation of mere natural causes, towards the destined perfection of his nature. Scripture on the contrary declares of man, as of all the other works of God, that he came forth from the hands of his Maker

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very good"-enstamped with his Maker's image. And that from this high original elevation, there has been subsequently a constant tendency downwards to ignorance and depravity, wherever that tendency has not been arrested and borne back by the new influence of that economy of grace under which fallen. man was placed. In conformity with the view thus given on the immovable authority of revelation, history, so far as we can dimly trace its course up to the cloudy heights of remote antiquity, proclaims the same truth. Assyria, India, and Egypt, the most ancient kingdoms of which any authentic memorials have come down, were then evidently in possession of a learning and refinement, which in later ages were nearly altogether lost and forgotten. If there has been a progress going on, as in a certain sense and within certain limits undoubtedly is true, that progress has been identical with and uniformly dependent on the advancement of true religion. while the infidel theorist points to the arms, and the ships, and the commerce of this great kingdom, as spreading themselves abroad over the whole habitable earth, and carrying the arts and sciences of European civilization in their train, he wilfully or proudly overlooks the source of that moral and intellectual energy to which Britain owes the mighty influence it is thus exerting on the world. He forgets that Christianity, humanizing, refining, and elevating the heart and mind, is the well-spring at once of our national resources and of our national renown. And if forgetting this ourselves, we shall presume to say, 'by the strength of our own hand we have done it, and by our wisdom, for we are prudent,'--then shall

And