by which the satirical giggle of the "wise and prudent" who never go there is provoked. Now, I am not going to enter into any of the questions which such a vast enterprise may very fairly suggest. The ethnologist, the physiologist, the historian, and even the theologian, may have objections to the design, may doubt its feasibility, or may perceive wiser methods of pursuing it. And when such objections are temperately stated, such doubts respectfully expressed, and such suggestions sincerely made, it is the duty of missionary advocates and managers gravely and carefully to consider them. But rude laughter at the supposed blunders made by those who know nothing of these questions, or who have come to their own conclusions in respect to them, shows but a shallow conceit or a contracted soul. The perpetrators of the missionary follies have at least done this, they have carried religion to the extremities of the earth as a divine motive to human culture; and this is better than as though they had carried a mere human culture as the means to a true religion; but their defamers have not even done this. They have stayed at home and amused themselves at the expense of the generous and faithful, who have left houses and lands for His sake who did the same work on an infinite scale in his day.

The objections to evangelical enterprise are generally associated with a professed solicitude for the interests of civilization. It is argued that the great achievement of human redemption must begin with the understanding, and that, in time, the heart will right itself. If you would have men pure, teach them cleanliness; if you would see them devout in worship, give them half a dozen lessons in etiquette. When they ask, "What must I do to be saved?" hire them to work in a cotton factory. Are they dull? Let them have a game at cricket. Do they burn their wives, or throw their children in the sea? Read to them a page or two of Elliotson. Are their habits unhealthy, degrading, suicidal? Blessed are those who shall lay hold of a copy of Combe's "Constitution of Man!" In short, as a universal panacea for all their ills, there is no specific like Cocker's "Arithmetic!" The multiplication table is infinitely to be preferred to the table of ten commandments. Only make a man perceive how two and two make four,

and he will cast his idols to the moles and the bats forthwith. Tell him that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another, and his countenance will radiate with ecstasy: he will cast off all old prejudices, he will devote himself instanter to the problems of his origin and of his destiny, and his hopes will bloom with immortality and eternal life!

Now supposing, for the sake of a personal application of the argument, we grant all this, will the Rev. Mr. Punch, or the venerable chaplain of Printing House Square, or even the soberer and more consistent disciples of Harriet Martineau or of M. Comte, go to the South Sea Islands, to China, to Western and Eastern India-will they go even to Ireland, or to St. Giles's, to teach their glorious gospel? Will they form a society to give a copy of their vaunted “Constitution of Man," or their infallible “Euclid," to every denizen of this unhappy world? Have they their organizations of practical science, and of educational philanthropy? Can they find a single individual generous enough to carry out the theory they so perseveringly defend? It may be very atrocious to give a man a stone when he asks for an egg, and when he asks for a "copper to insult his poverty with a "tract;" but is it not worse, when they groan in bondage, to mock them with your ethnological hypotheses? and when they ask for salvation, to mystify them by your present of a phrenological bust? But you will not even do this. You tuck the figured crockery-ware under your arm and say to the poor suppliant, in whose civilization you have so supreme an interest, "No! if you want one of these saviors, go to my shop and buy one. Here is my card."

The fact is, nothing but a profound religious zeal will enable a man to seek out and to save his fellow-man. We hear how much commerce has done for religion; cannot somebody tell us how much religion has done for commerce? Until you feel that you are responsible to the great God for doing your duty to others, you have no adequate motive to restrain you from a supreme consultation of your own personal interest. Believe a book to be the veritable revelation of the divine will, able to make wise unto salvation, and you have then a strong inducement to give it to every man; yea, and to teach every

OUR PLANET.

Institutions, Female Protection Societies, Humane Associations, Temperance Leagues, and a thousand other domestic philanthropies, advocated at Exeter-hall? Is it not the resort of the friends of England, as well as the friends of India? Yea, and are not the embassadors of both classes of enterprise, almost without exception, the same men? Our sneering scribblers and caviling devotees of science are not there even when the poor "unfortunate" is being cared for. True, some improvement in the method and the enthusiasm of these departments is possible, and, in time, it will be made, but not by the worldly-wise men or the "Positive" philosophers of our day.

Of what, then, is Exeter-hall truly the type and the center? Of liberality without stint. Of enthusiasm in the service of God, and of untiring perseverance in the service of man. Whatever of official and organic disinterestedness our times have witnessed has been associated with this renowned and consecrated edifice. Mammon-worship is the crime of our age. Here, at any rate, an altar to the true God has been erected, and on it have been deposited the sacrifices of innumerable benevolent and consistent devotees.

respective worldly concerns, and accustomed to see the routine of common events going on smoothly from age to age, we are little apt to reflect on natural events of a tremendous character, which modern science shows might possibly happen, and that on any day of any year. We think of the land as a firm and solid thing -as terra firma, in short-not recollecting that geology shows how it may rise or sink, so as to pass into new relations to the enveloping sea; how it may be raised, for instance, to such an extent as to throw every port inland, or so far lowered as to submerge the richest and most populous regions. No doubt, the relations of sea and land have been much as they are during historical time; but it is at the same time past all doubt, that the last great geological event, in respect of most countries known, was a submergence which produced the marine alluvial deposits; and when we find that Scandinavia is slowly but steadily rising in some parts at this moment, and that a thousand miles of the west coast of South America rose four feet in a single night only thirty years ago, we cannot feel quite assured, that the agencies which produced that submergence, and the subsequent re-emergence, are at an end. We likewise forget, in these cool districts of the earth, that we are not quite beyond the hazard of subterranean fire. There are numberless extinct volcanoes in both Britain and France; there are some on the banks of the Rhine; indeed, they are thick-sown everywhere. Now an extinct volcano is not quite so safe a neighbor as many may suppose. Vesuvius was an extinct volcano from time immemorial till the year 63, when it suddenly broke out again, and soon after destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum; since which time it has never again subsided into entire inactivity. Suppose Arthur's Seat, which is "within a mile of Edinburgh town" were to recommence business in like manner, we should like to know at how many years' purchase house property in that beautiful New Town would be selling next day. Yet what is there about an old volcano there more than an old volcano in Italy, to give assurance that its means of annoyance and destruction are extinguished?

There is, however, in the showings of science, a more serious danger than any of these. Comets were once regarded as most terrific objects, but only in a superstitious way, perplexing nations with fear of change, and shaking pestilence from their horrid hair. During an intermediate enlightened time, these notions passed away; and we have even come to think, that such a visitant of our skies may exercise a beneficial influence. We at least recollect when old gentlemen, after dinner, brightened up at the mention of "claret 1811," merrily attributing the extraordinary merits of the liquor to the comet of that year. But comets, in the cool eye of modern science, are not without their terrors. Crossing as they often do the paths of the planets in their progress to and from their perihelia, it cannot but be that they should now and then come in contact with one of these spheres. One, called Lexell's, did come athwart the satellites of Jupiter in 1769 and once again in 1779, so as to be deranged in its own course. It made, indeed, no observable change in the movements of the Jovian train, being of too light a consistence for that; but, can we doubt that it might nevertheless seriously affect the condition of their surfaces, and especially any animal life existing thereon? This very comet, on the 28th of June, 1770, passed the earth at a distance only six times that of the There is another called Biela's, which revisits the sun every six years, or a little more; and this busy traveler actually crossed our orbit in 1832, only a month before we passed through the same point in space! Another, which made a grand appearance in the western sky in March, 1843, would have involved us in its tail, if we had been only a fortnight earlier | at a particular place! Now, if we consider that as many as eight comets have been observed telescopically in a single year, (1846,) we must see that the chance of a collision of this kind is not quite so small as to be unworthy of regard. If it be true that there are thousands of comets, all of which make periodical visits to the near neighborhood of the sun, it must be evident that the earth, being itself not far, comparatively speaking, from that luminary, must be rather liable than otherwise to a brush from one of these wanderers; and, indeed, the wonder is, that several thousand years should have

moon.

passed without, so far as we know, any one such collision having taken place.

Seeing what a highly-organized system is formed by the physical and organic arrangements upon our planet, one is apt to think that the scheme of Providence must have been framed with a provision for the complete exclusion of such accidents. To allow of the sudden undoing of all this fair scene, which it has taken thousands of years to bring out in its full proportions, seems like a wanton destruction of valuable property, and we are not disposed to believe that such a thing could be permitted. But we must at the same time remember, that our sense of what is important and consequential has a regard to the earth alone, which is but a trifling atom in the universe. Who can tell what are the limits which the Master of worlds has set to mundane calamity? And assuredly, even though a whole solar system were here and there, now and then, to be remodeled in respect of all such arrangements as have been spoken of, it could not be supposed to be a very great event in the progress of the entire scheme, seeing that astronomy has taught us to regard such systems as no more than particles in the dust-cloud or grains of sand on the sea-shore. It must, then, in sober reasoning be admitted, that our mere abhorrence of so much destruction is no guidance to our judgment on this point; and that for anything we can see of the plans of Providence, an entanglement of our globe with a comet may take place any day, with consequences incalculably damaging for the meantime, though not conclusively destructive, and perhaps necessary as a step toward an improved system of things.

NOBODY WOULD KNOW IT!-How much insult, injury-how many hard words, fierce threats-nay, how many tweakings of the nose might be borne by some forgiving souls, if nobody would know it! What a balm, a salve, a plaster to the private hurt of a sort of hero may the hero find in the delicious truth that-nobody knows it! The nose does not burn, for nobody saw it pulled! It is the eye of the world looking on, that, like the concentrated rays of the sun, scorches itblisters it-lights up such a fire within it, that nothing poorer than human blood can quench it! And all because everybody knows it.-Jerrold.