not hereafter be infused. This struggle is not the commencement of a series of events corresponding to those which the last sixty years have witnessed. Men are starting anew from a more advanced state of intellectual and moral culture. Their physical condition has also been improved. The wants and sufferings of the less favored portion of our race have been gaining more and more attention from those to whom the power to alleviate them has been afforded by the providence of God manifested in the necessary order of things which he has established in this world and by which men are bound together. The ferocious passions of the many have not been maddened as they had been sixty years ago by direct and open oppression, habitual injury and contempt; nor has the intellect of the more enlightened been insulted and exasperated through the imposition of absurd creeds, and the maintenance of intolerable abuses, under the name of religion. We cannot doubt that the aged survivors of the next half-century will have witnessed changes as great and as startling as those which have stamped their character on the period through which we have just passed, but changes of another kind. Men will not again run the same cycle. There seems to be no ground

for fear or for hope, should any be disposed to entertain such hope, that a new reaction will take place strong enough to carry men back to the same causes of evil from which they are now struggling to free themselves.

But this anticipation of coming changes affords in itself alone no augury of good. The restlessness and the convulsions of nations are in themselves no more favorable indications of improvement than the tossings and spasmodic motions of a man in a fever are symptoms of returning health. It is with nations as with the individuals of whom they are composed. It is only through means which may raise the moral and intellectual character of men, that their permanent good may be effected. It can be effected only through the influence of those principles of action which control our selfishness, and call forth our social affections; — only through a better knowledge and a deeper feeling of the truths which concern our relations to our fellow-men as founded on our relations to God and to immortality, and which lead us by the highest motives to the performance of our duties.

When, accordingly, we reflect, I do not say on the passions, but on the motives to action, which

govern the majority of men; on the virtual irreligion which is prevalent even under the profession of religion; on the merely outward and ceremonious respect for some established form of national worship; on the wild speculations which appear in the writings of so many, who, from their political station or their great intellectual powers, control directly or indirectly the minds of their fellow-men; on the infidelity and atheism, made only the more offensive by pretending to use the language of religion, which have found favor in our age as the highest philosophy; on the general absence of a recognition of the influence of men's opinions and religious belief in determining their character and conduct, and, in consequence of this, the general insensibility to the value of truth and to the mischief of error on the most important topics of thought, or, in other words, the common indifference as to what is essentially true or essentially false concerning Christianity; — when we consider these things, we may perceive that other influences, very unlike those which are now agitating the surface of society, influences working far deeper in the nature of man, are required to produce any great and permanent good for our race. We may hope, we may believe, that the pres

ent state of things is preparing the way for the more unobstructed action of these influences at some distant period. Christianity, though misunderstood and misrepresented, neglected and calumniated, has been the great civilizer of the world; and it is to Christianity better understood than it has been, that we must continue to look for all essential improvement in the character and condition of individuals, and consequently of nations.

11*

ON WHAT ESSENTIALLY CONSTITUTES THE VALUE OF CHRISTIANITY AND OF THE GOSPELS.

I HAVE spoken in the last Chapter of some of the characteristics of the Gospels. One requisite necessary to complete our view of their character — one requisite the most important-remains to be mentioned. We must have a correct apprehension of what essentially constitutes their value; and to this end we must have a correct apprehension of what essentially constitutes the value of Christianity.

The Gospels are the history of a miraculous communication from God to men. If this history be true, it relates to an event of inconceivable interest and importance. The Infinite Being has suspended the ordinary operations of his power to manifest himself more immediately to the dwellers on earth. The essential value of Christianity consists in its being such a revelation of Him. When