of numerous other publications, stamps him as a man of a large and comprehensive soul. Still, all have not the physical stamina our benevolent friend has and from long experience we have proved that this concentration to one point has been attended with most deplorable results upon the principles we have before propounded. May we askWhy are men so slack in their belief of great truths? The faith and will of most of us are impotent and powerless, because there is some one or more predominant passion that has strengthened with our years, overpowering all the others, rendering us non-recipients: the flower must open by an act of its own, before the sunbeams can enter into it; and though it opens under the warmth of those very rays which before gave an entrance fosteringly around it, still, until there is a living principle in the plant, the warmth of the sun could no more unfold the blossoms, than it can open an artificial bud, or a painted enamelled one. The effort to believe any truth, is more or less difficult as the directing or moving power of the brain is in a good or bad state; and this, we affirm, is under the full control of the individual. Whilst the living principle is paralysed by some besetting passion, so long are we sowing the seeds of our own dissolution: in other words, digging the grave of our freedom, rendering ourselves impervious to the Sun of Righteousness and Peace. You might as well talk to a leaden statue, as to a man whose instrument of thought is opaque by some excess. So far we contend: so long as men make sensuous and shadowy things the basis of their hopes and fears, so long they will be insensible to the highest Godlike interests.

GOD is willing in the day of His power; but procrastinating frail man virtually says-Call again at some more convenient season; that is, when my grovelling propensities have been satiated to repletion; when I am more sick of sin and suffering; when my bodily organs are in better tune;—then I will listen to the syren voice. Monitors and people are in a fair way of verifying the truth of the maxim of the sagacious De Retz, viz., that "before the masses can see, they must be made to feel."

"Truth will fail thee never-never!
Though thy bark be tempest driven,
Though each plank be rent and riven,
Truth will bear thee on for ever!"

There is not an instance (says Cicero) of a man's exerting himself ever with praise and virtue in the dangers of his country, who was not drawn to it by the hopes of glory, and a regard to posterity. Give me a boy (says Quintillian) whom praise excites-whom glory warms: for such a scholar was sure to answer all his hopes, and do credit to his discipline. Lord Palmerston, in a homily to some labourers who received prizes for good conduct at Romsey, a short time ago, gave utterance to the following sentiments:-"All the good qualities of human nature, the qualities of mind and of heart, everything that tends to dignify our species, and to enable men to distinguish themselves in the condition in which they have been placed, these qualities have been sown broadcast over the human race, and are as abundantly dispersed among the humblest classes, as they are amongst the highest classes of the land. You will find that all children are

born good; it is bad education, and bad associations in early life, that corrupt the minds of men. It is true, there are now and then exceptions to general principles: as there are men who are born with club-feet, born blind, or with other personal defects; so also it will happen, that children will be born with defective dispositions: but these are rare exceptions. Be persuaded, that the mind and heart of man are naturally good, and it depends upon training and education, whether that goodness implanted at birth shall continue to display itself, or whether by bad associations it shall be corrupted or destroyed."

On this point, as well as many others, where we partly agree with everybody, and entirely with nobody, we will venture to differ from his lordship; inasmuch, if the sacred mine of jewels be correct, that we are not only "born in sin," but "conceived in sin, and shapen in iniquity;" we respond-How can these things be? We deny the fact upon which the reasoning is founded; and if the facts were true, the logic would be false. We are born-we die, and our end depends upon our origin. In our present dislocated social condition, when all sin and go out of the way, it is no marvel to us (who, we hope, have got the trick of making wonders plain, and not plain things wonders) that the masses bear the mark of Cain on their foreheads; being of the earthy, most earthy;—without believing in the entire perfectability of human nature, unless based on our previous principles. Upon this delicate and tender point, a remark suggests itself: it is a verity, we presume, that a clean thing cannot come out of an unclean; but if the fountain can be made pure, the streams issuing there

Make the tree good and the

from cannot be very impure. fruit will be good. No farmer, however stolid, sows bad seed upon any kind of soil; the parity of reasoning, good or bad, we dare trust our readers to form their own conceptions.

If it be granted that it is the abuse of free agency which occasions every evil under heaven,-all the ills that "flesh is heir to" at present, by eating forbidden fruit,-is it not possible that in a few generations, by a rigid adherence to the physical laws, the evils might be much mitigated? as, children being born under more favourable auspices, is it not quite rational to predicate they would be more plastic, when head, heart, and muscles, ab initio, are better developed? Would not mothers and schoolmasters find them more tractable—the clay more mouldable— by such previous pioneering? for then the sins of the fathers would not be visited upon the children, &c.

Sure enough, Emerson is right, "Man is good, but men are wicked;" that beyond a certain point, even virtue re-acts unfavourably on society. The very good, so designated, are the cause why there are others very bad; it is because your pseudo very-good people, necessarily abhor vice and error of all kinds, throw it from them, fly from it, leave its victims hopelessly condemned, and therefore likely to become worse and worse. Why, exclaims the super-sensitive gossamer-nerved lady or gentleman, would you have us domicile ourselves with those with whom our pastors and great teachers would not pollute the soles of their feet, by even walking over the threshold of the doors of these victims of circumstances? to admonish,

warn, and direct from the wrath to come, our females of easy virtue, and victims of other nameless dens of iniquity? The echo and re-echo would be-What would the world say? Our answer is-Our kingdom is not of this world, if we are bona fide regenerated and emancipated, nonconformists, "a peculiar people, zealous of good works." And if so, why do we not, in the depths of their humiliation, visit not only the widow and orphan, but those dregs of humanity-the lowest of the low; who many of them, perhaps, once were in better circumstances than ourselves, whom no section will or dare visit; quite oblivious to the big fact that virtue is safe in a den of lions; that God is omnipresent; and that the King of kings came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Who cares for Madame Grundy now?

Indubitably each section are as busy as bees, in calling upon those of their own peculiar platform most religiously; but are not the ragged sheep and lambs, who are more deeply immersed in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity, forsaken by pastors and teachers of all denominations? Surely these outcasts have a priority of claim upon our attentions! It is not a valid apology to say, in extenuation of this huge sin of omission, that hordes of these lost sheep of Israel have in their migrations so far wandered from the sheep fold, or the land of promise; it would be Quixotic, say the orthodox, fanatically Utopian, to make use of any leverage power to bring them to themselves. Alas! poor prodigal sons and daughters! LORD, lift up the light of Thy countenance upon all these ignorant and benighted samples of prostrate hu