is in jeopardy. Then, in God's name, throw by your doleful pipes, upon which you are playing such discouraging notes, and sound a charge to fill us with a good hope, and come over and help us! It is for men like you to labor when good things are in danger, not to fill other men's hearts with distrust!

But we fear not the result. The world has come out from every great trial purified and exalted. Well said that glorious apostle of freedom, John Milton, 'Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple. Who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?' 'For who knows not that Truth is strong next to the Almighty?' His voice is now speaking to us; a voice uttered amid the din of contending sects and the crash of falling governments. Out from that fearful period came England at last, with a garland upon her brow; and so will now the God of freedom and truth lead us through our day of trial. How much have we already gained! A portion of the race is free: the artificial and oppressive in religion is separating from the true and eternal; religious teaching is fast becoming earnest, practical, and independent. Our age is

certainly one of powerful reaction in favor of truth. Witness the struggles of modern philosophy to place religious belief upon foundations as immutable as eternity! Look upon France, leaping like a youthful giant from the withered arms of skepticism! When were men every where so earnestly enquiring for religious truth as now? The harvest is ripe: God grant that many of his chosen ones, men fully qualified to understand the wants of the age, and to minister thereto, men of fearless hearts, upon whom the spirit of love has descended, may enter and labor in this great field!

But, again, we are told 'the Present is an age of imposture and unbounded credulity. Deception is the order of the day. All steadiness in public sentiment is gone.'

That the present generation is free from its peculiar delusions we are not disposed to assert. No period has been exempt from them, and they will exist as long as man is an imperfect being. The power is not given us to separate the true from the false by one unerring glance. It is only by comparison and patient examination, not unfrequently delusion, that we arrive at correct results. The most valuable truth comes to us mingled with the grossest error, as the diamonds of the Andes are washed from beds of sand; and the most gifted are often baffled in their search for

it by the dissembling appearance of its companion. When man possesses the unerring gaze of Omniscience, will he be free from imposture, and not till then.

We, however, apprehend little injury to the cause of truth from the transient delusions of the day. They are mushroom existences, springing up in a night, and withering beneath the beams of the morrow's sun. The youngest of us can recall the rise, existence, and disappearance of a thousand, apparently as dangerous as the most alarming of those now existing. Truth soon discovers them, pursues them from the circles of the refined to the lurking places of ignorance, and leaves them to perish with a brand upon the forehead. Communities, like individuals, are often guilty of indiscretions and periods of unusual excitement, and the adoption of foolish theories; but these pass away, leaving them wiser from the humiliating experience. The manner in which these delusions are successively discovered and condemned, is an indication of a healthy state of the public mind; for, certainly that community is not far gone in credulity, which is ever upon the alert to discover and exterminate error.

There is one feature in the controversies and delusions of the day, full of encouragement. They are all bloodless. If we have strife, it is a war of

words, and an appeal to reason ultimately decides the controversy. If we have imposture, its history is written in the jest book, and a peal of laughter follows it to its grave. The delusions and disputes of past ages have been of a different character. Men once decided knotty points in theology by an appeal to

'The Holy text of pike and gun;

And proved their doctrines orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks.'

Creeds were founded upon the corses of their opponents. A continent pouring forth its strength to wrest the holy sepulchre from the hands of infidels; Christians hunted to the dens of the mountains; Europe desolated again and again by civil war; the inquisition; the rack; the blazing pile; these record the history of the religious disputes and delusions of the past. Thank God, these days are gone. We are willing that men should contend for the truth, provided they use only 'the sword of the spirit.' Excommunication and calling hard names is a great advance from hanging and butchering. It is a sad thing that men should be under the influence of delusion; but it is infinitely better that they should make 'resurrection pills' and counterfeit dollars, than burn witches and torture heretics. When a

community appeals to reason and argument in its contentions, and its delusions are the cause of mirth, rather than blood and tears, we cannot fail to be encouraged.

'But the morals of the community are daily becoming more corrupt,' cries our objector, driven to this, as a last resort. 'Men are no longer governed by Christian principle. Witness the political corruption, the love of gain, the fearful increase of crime, the bad faith so common in all business transactions. Does this appear like the dawn of an age of righteousness?'

We believe such opinions are the result of a limited view of society. We compare the morality of our nation, at the present time, with the stern rectitude of the Puritans, and are shocked by the apparent degeneracy. But this is an unfair test. That band of Puritans were the flower of their age, the pioneers of liberty and goodness. We are now a great nation of seventeen millions, a mixture of all civilized and uncivilized men. Compare the mass of the people in the world in the nineteenth, with any former century, and we have no fear of the result.

There are many sins, to which Americans are exposed from peculiar circumstances. Such is our national love for gain; the natural result of an enterprising people, placed in the midst of