rights and claims, wants and woes. Without overlooking or undervaluing individual and private duty, there is special need that public men draw visible lines, and set up strong barriers, between right and wrong, justice and fraud, malice and mercy; that in all the seats of power there should be nothing but illustrious examples of truth, rectitude and purity, nothing but encouragement of the strict principles of morals, and the strengthening of all possible restraints upon corruption.

There is among the Americans a spirit of innovation unusually daring and bold. This also makes necessary in the government a steadier and stronger moral power. A reckless passion for novelty and change has been waked to special intensity and power here, by the circumstances of our origin and growth. The first act of the fathers of this people was an effort to burst away from established forms, from antiquated phases of thought, venerated modes of worship, stereotyped articles of faith. The movement was spasmodic and violent, and most determined. It has produced a vibration to the opposite extreme of innovation. It has created a nervous fear of uniformity, disrespect of ancient faith, contempt generally for the settled, time-honoured and revered.

The Americans, satisfied with nothing but the new, the untried, the advanced, the anticipated, march over every thing to realize the dreams of the dreamers, the vision of the seers, the splendid calculations of the daring and impetuous. But it is no part of merit to advance, or of prosperity to acquire, when we have reached the limit of honesty and justice.

This headlong spirit of innovation is doubtless valuable when properly restrained and directed: but in this country it has become to a vast extent but a personification of radicalism, irreligion, infidelity; but the stalking disturber of all order, and the haughty despiser of all sacred customs.

How shall a government impotent, because rotten at heart, fickle because unprincipled, control and guide a people thus reeklessly and urgently impelled? Under the sway of corruption and inefficiency, into what lengths and excesses will a people rush, whose grand element is a defiance of all that

others obey, a mockery of all that others worship, an overleaping of all the barriers at which others stop. No where else in the world is needed, so much as here, a righteous and a stable government to overawe, to guide.

Our country needs strict political rectitude, more than any other, from the democratic character of its government. Despotisms govern by force. Republics by moral power. Our government, therefore, unlike a tyranny, is imbecile just in proportion as it is corrupt; and imbecility is the next stage to despotism. That father, who cannot rule by his dignity and his character, rules by the rod. A free government failing, through moral delinquency, to maintain a vigorous autho rity, resorts to iron-handed force. Thus at one short step a republic becomes a despotism. It is to us a matter of the deepest interest, therefore, that our government possess purity and truth enough to maintain order, to protect life and property, without a resort to arbitrary power. Our government has no cordon of nobility to fall back upon, when by the loss of integrity it has become weak and contemptible; it has no church establishment to inspire veneration, when its civil authority is sinking; it has nothing to fall back upon, when its moral power fails, but. artillery and bribery. Heaven so clothe our government with the majesty and the power righteousness, that it may never even seem to be necessary that we should be crushed under military and despotic rule, in order to our submission and peace.

of

The great mission and destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race in America present a special argument in favour of government being administered here on the high principles of rectitude and magnanimity.

This race is evidently to occupy the whole of North America, to spread over it civilization, arts, learning and moral order.

The Anglo-Saxons have never yet found a boundary or a barrier, where they paused and reflowed, except barren wastes incapable of supporting life. Oceans and mountain ranges and untrodden forests only act upon them as a lure and an

invitation. By nothing earthly can you stop an Anglo-Saxon population, save that which forbids the habitation and progress of man. This people stands in no need of national cupidity, of the artifices and overreachings of diplomacy, of armies and navies, to fulfil their magnificent destiny. They have hitherto done something by war, too much! Heaven forgive them! It is pleasant to believe they have done far more by intellect, by enterprise, by religion. There lie within ourselves elements of moral power sufficient to diffuse over the immense territory lying between the Atlantic and the Pacific, the Isthmus of Darien and the Arctic Sea, all the civilization, order, freedom, happiness, which Heaven would love to see established there.

We perceive then our national duty; we understand our grand mission; we are informed with what instruments it is to be fulfilled. One of the most important of these, as we allege, is the maintenance by our government of an independent integrity, an unsuspicious and unsuspected justice and honour. Then our enlargements on every side will be like the conquests of the king of peace, the proffer of rich blessings to those who are without them, the conducting of liberty and light and happiness into regions which had not known them before. The banian tree of the east, which sends out its long arms to plant and root themselves all around successively for fresh sources of nutrition, of extension, of shade, from a whole circumference, is a happy emblem of what should be our peaceful, protecting, perpetual enlargements.

This government is a trustee of vast human interests, and bears corresponding responsibilities. To no nation on the earth, is opened so grand a career, so brilliant a succession of peaceful victories, so splendid an accumulation of power and of usefulness. At the age of seventy years our government has the care of twenty millions, at the end of another seventy it will afford protection to two hundred millions, settled over three zones, and over more than one hundred degrees of longitude. While receiving these vast accessions of dominion.

and of power, our government will stand in need of propor tionate additions of purity and honour.

Institutions and influences which are to reproduce themselves over this immense domain, should have underneath them the broad foundation of righteousness.

A people which is to introduce its families, its forms of society, its habits and character, throughout eight and a half millions of square miles, should be constructed and ennobled under a sovereignty of exalted worth. A government, which is to extend its laws and influence over one-eighth part of the earth, most certainly should be one of incorruptible, unimpeachable magnanimity and justice.

The Anglo-Saxon race in America has a larger mission still. It is to give encouragement and power to that spirit of prudent, safe, intelligent liberty, which is to go out beyond this continent over all the civilized world, and moderate all its monarchies and tyrannies; it is to mould the coming age to unaccustomed physical and intellectual industry; it is to communicate to religion apostolic expansiveness and enterprise; it is to kindle up a light before the face of all mankind, which shall not be extinguished, but brighten on until it melt into the light of eternity; it is to concentrate in this country a moral power able to move the world, and then to use it and move the world, and carry the world forward in a steady grand progress toward safer freedom, larger intelligence, purer religion. Be it the ambition of Russia and England, that the sun shall never set on their territory. Be it the nobler ambition of the Americo-Saxon race, that the sun shall never set on their free institutions, on their arts, on their learning, on their enterprise, on their moral power!

When our rulers shall be turned into the way of uprightness, the Deity will be propitiated, and be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams. The Lord will be our Lawgiver, the Lord will be our King: He will save us.

When God shall be known in our palaces, our condition will be one of unparalleled prosperity, our pathway will be one

of uneclipsed splendour. Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, will be our heritage! The kings of the earth, as they assemble to contemplate us and pass by together, will marvel and be troubled and haste away. But all the intelligent, the high-minded, and the free, from every kingdom, shall come and walk about our nation, and go round about her, and tell the towers thereof, mark well her bulwarks, consider her palaces, that they may tell it to the generation following.

ARTICLE III.

DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT'S INFLUENCES.

By Rev. MILES P. SQUIER, Geneva, New-York.

THE doctrine of the Holy Spirit is fundamental in the system of Christian truth; it is the central pillar of the edifice of grace, and should be intelligently regarded by all who serve at the altar, or labour for the coming of the kingdom of God.

The subject has intrinsic value, and a reference to it is especially appropriate now, when, though living under the promised dispensation of the Spirit, and near, as marked in prophecy, to the expected glories of the latter day, we mourn, as with one consent, his absence, and the declensions of Zion. Want of discrimination in respect to the doctrine of the Spirit, may in part have contributed to the evil complained of, and be among the impediments to a brighter day.

The work of the Holy Ghost in redemption is usually summed up under the heads of inspiration, miraculous gifts, and the spiritual renovation of the hearts of men. Dismissing the first two, as aside from the object of this article, we confine ourselves to the last. The children of the kingdom. 'are born of water and of the Spirit' the love of God is shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost'-' we are saved by the washing of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost.'