the most corrupt nation which had ever been reared amidst the empires of paganism; it was at the height of its glory; it was in the zenith of its power-when its conquests overshadowed the earth-that CHRIST came to announce the second dispensation. The ERA OF CHRISTIANITY was begun. The world no longer dated time (urbe condita) from the building of the city, but (anno domini) from the year of our Lord. The calendar of time and the annals of history were both changed. Man commenced a new spiritual era. Figures and shadows were forever removed, and Christ revealed the second book of the divine law.

It is thus that the Bible, the HOLY BOOK, contains, in our enlightened day, both volumes of the divine law. It is thus that the figures, and shadows, and promises of the first dispensation have been opened up, interpreted, and made clear to our minds, by the full beams of the Sun of Righteousness.

This divine law is, to all who profess Christianity, the one fundamental law of life and action. Hence, there can be no Christian education without making its principles, its precepts, and its history a constant study.

THE BIBLE CONTAINS THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF

PROGRESS.

The evils of mankind are various in form, but one in kind. Departure from the divine law is the one

universal evil; but its visible effects in deranging society, in rendering individuals unhappy, in disturb ing the harmony of mind, and in creating moral insanity, among the most gifted and beautiful of the human race, manifested in thousands of forms, are the special evils against which philosophers and reformers have directed their attacks. In this they have endeavored to check the stream at its mouth, rather than its spring. But while the spring remains, the stream will flow. The ancient philosophers enumerated what they called the cardinal virtues. They were prudence, temperance, courage, and fortitude. Yet nothing is more certain than that a man might have all these, and be neither wise nor good. The savage has fortitude, the warrior has courage, the miser may have both prudence and temperance ; but if all that savage, warrior, or miser have, could be united in one person, he would be neither lovely nor admirable without graces and virtues which the sages of Greece did not enumerate.

There are others, in more modern times, who think that if government could everywhere be constituted on certain principles; society modified in certain forms; industry organized to produce the utmost possible results; temperance be universally adopted ; and all mankind instructed in the elements of intellectual education: that then the broken fragments of society would be moulded into a united whole; the disturbed spirits rest at peace; and all move harmoniously and beautifully in their respective orbits!

But this whole scheme fails exactly at that point where failure is fatal. All its arrangements are external or social. It would give a frame-work to society, an energy to industry, a system to effort, a prevention to drunkenness, and an instruction to intellect. All these are happy results; but do they, or can they, control the individual spirit? Will they arrest one passion? Can they call back one wandering soul from its dark imaginations? It is palpable -most palpable-that after all, it is the individual spirits, deranged and diseased, which cause all the mischief. The Bible states this fact, and then proposes a remedy, which, if adopted, will restore society to a beauty, harmony, and glory, beyond what the most vivid imagination has ever pictured to itself. Its doctrine, in regard to human evils and human reformations, is simple, direct, and positive. It states as a fact, that man has departed, and continues to depart, from the divine law: it states, that as a consequence of this, man has broken the relations which connected him with God on one hand, and with his fellow-man on the other. To reunite these broken relations, is in itself to restore harmony and peace to the human race. There are, then, given two general principles by which that restoration can be effected. The first is love to God; and the second, love to man. By the adoption of the first, the divine law will be perfectly obeyed with reverence and humility, because the subject perceives, admires, and loves the wisdom and goodness of the law. By the second

principle, it is rendered impossible that man should do evil to man; for how can murder, or theft, or oppression exist in a society where every one loves his neighbor as himself? All actual evil becomes then impossible. This is the simple, direct, and easily understood theory of human reformation proposed in the Bible. It was Christ who announced this doctrine. He was standing in the temple, at Jerusalem, where the Mosaic ritual and observances had for ages been the law, amidst Pharisees and Sadducees, the philosophers of Hebraism-in the presence of those Roman conquerors who had subdued the earth-surrounded by all the splendors of that Roman empire, whose civil laws were carried to the highest point of legal art, when learning was the ornament and glory of the greatest men, and the brilliancy of Greece yet illuminated the nations—when He announced this simple and sublime view of the principles by which human society is to be reformed and restored. Has experience shown any other method by which it can be restored?

In these simple principles are contained all the elements of the most rapid and most powerful progress of which society is capable. They are not opposed to any thing not inconsistent with themselves. They are, therefore, not opposed to any partial or minor plan of reformation which may promise good. On the contrary, these great principles will energize and make effectual any partial and particular plans of good which human ingenuity may

devise for human reform; but in those principles themselves lie all the elements of real progress.

THE BIBLE ANNOUNCES FUTURE GLORY.

Hope is the strongest excitant of the human mind. It is exhibited in various forms. We hope, not only for ourselves, but for others; for communities, for nations, for country, and for the world. Perhaps the brightest picture which ever floated before the human vision is that of a lost race restored a world in ruins rebuilt in all beautiful proportions; wandering orbs returning to their spheres; a discordant society made harmonious; a fractured harp made whole and the air made melodious with its sweetly swelling music!

Such is the picture set before us in the Bible of a future condition of society upon earth. To the eye of faith this future is clearly visible. However near, or however remote, there are no clouds or shadows which can obscure its glorious certainty. The Christian of this day sees it, if possible, with even more clearness than did the prophet of Judah, when announcing it from Judah's hills. He sees now the fulfilment of long trains of prophecy; he sees the Jerusalem of the first dispensation perished; he sees the Messiah ascended; he sees the leaven hid in the lump bursting out through the earth; he sees the dark power of paganism crumbling away; he sees the leaves for the healing of nations scattered through