gratitude by her works. Let her manifest her regard for the Bible-for the gospel of blessings to her sex-by sending it to soothe and elevate her sisters throughout an ignorant and oppressive world.

The Bible-should it ever have free course and be glorified-will put an end to war, to ambition, to intemperance, to duelling, to murder, to robbery, to injustice, to all angry and malevolent passions, to prejudice and all uncharitableness, to gambling, and to every human folly, extravagance and vice. It will prove the cheapest possible remedy for all the ills which flesh is heir to.

Loud and angry have been the complaints against Bible and other benevolent associations, on the score of their expensiveness-uttered too by men who never contribute a dollar to one of them. Common decency ought to constrain such officious economists to hold their peace, or to substantiate their charges. But the modest gentlemen who murmur at this expense, without ever feeling it, seem never to advert to the profit side of the question—to the expenses which the Bible will prevent, and to the clear gains which it will insure. The single vice of intemperance costs this nation more, in five years, than would be required to send the Bible to every family in the world. It levies, directly or indirectly, an annual tax upon our people of $120,000,000. And pray, worthy gentlemen, what good does intemperance achieve? Would it not be better, on the whole, to purchase Bibles and give them away, than to buy whisky and get drunk? This is only one item. Tell us, if you can, the annual expense of gambling, of horse-racing, of the pauperism

and disease occasioned by vice-of fashionable and vulgar follies in a thousand forms-of the militia systemof jails and prisons and the whole array of criminal law and justice—and your arithmetic will be exhausted in the enumeration of the hundreds of millions now thrown away to encourage, to pamper, to restrain, and to punish the wicked propensities of our citizens:-all of which will disappear whenever, and wherever, the Bible shall reign in all its celestial energy and glory. How cheap a remedy then is within our reach.

Finally the Bible, when thoroughly studied and obeyed, will make honest men of priests, lawyers, editors and politicians: who have hitherto contrived to hold in bondage the great mass of the people; or it will enable the people to effectuate their own emancipation. It will put down the despotism of priestcraft, and the priestcraft of despotism; will subdue or exterminate that antichristian spirit of intolerant exclusiveness and persecuting bigotry which still lurks in the strongholds of every Christian church, and which sways the temper and conduct of a large majority of every Christian denomination. It will prevent, in our country, that unhallowed union of Church and State, which is so much dreaded just now, and which is undoubtedly aimed at, not by the genuine followers of Christ, but by crafty infidels, wily politicians and ambitious sectaries-by the very parties who have raised the fiercest clamour and preferred the heaviest charges against the friends and distributers of the Bible.

The Christian religion, as instituted by Christ and as exhibited in the New Testament, is the only religion

under heaven which never courted a State alliancewhich never sought countenance or support from the civil authorities, by any species of cringing, selfish, timeserving compromise. All other religions, Pagan, Jewish, Mohammedan, have been and are incorporated with the political institutions-interwoven, as it were, into the very texture of the government of the country. Christianity entered our world, and advanced without a smile from any earthly throne, and without the aid of any military arm. It stood upon its own intrinsic merits. It challenged and sustained the severest scrutiny. It prevailed because it was true, and because God prospered it. All human governments opposed and persecuted it from the beginning, and through every stage of its early progress.

It received no imperial countenance until the reign of Constantine; and it had become the religion of the people, before that politic prince ever thought of taking it under his special protection. Constantine, like all his predecessors, whether emperors, consuls, dictators or kings, had been accustomed to regard religion as an affair of State—as an essential part of the political fabric. When, therefore, he adopted Christianity as the religion of the court and the empire, he yielded none of his royal prerogatives: but merely viewed the Christian faith as a substitute for paganism, and continued to exercise over its forms and tenets the same species of arbitrary control. His example has been followed throughout the Christian world-and ever since this first bold act of imperial usurpation, Christianity has been compelled to

wear the livery and to speak the language of earthly courts and despots.

But the gospel is not responsible for this abuse of its plainest precepts- for this egregious perversion of its genuine spirit. Its divine author had, on all occasions, disclaimed any pretensions to worldly power, wealth or influence. He promptly checked every ambitious desire of his followers—and repeatedly told them that his kingdom was not of this world. He commanded them to obey the existing civil powers-to render unto Cæsar the things which were Cæsar's, (Matt. xxii. 21)—tribute to whom tribute, and honour to whom honour was due, (Rom. xiii. 7)—to keep themselves separate and unspotted from the world and to be clothed with humility. No candid reader of the New Testament could ever imagine that the disciples of the meek and lowly Jesus would become ambitious political demagogues, or aspiring courtly sycophants. It is impossible that they should. They virtually renounce their faith by the very act. They betray their insincerity, their unbelief, their hypocrisy, by every such attempt.

Christianity, no doubt, has been converted into an instrument or pretext for all manner of cruelty, fraud and oppression. But all these evils are ascribable, not to Christianity, but to the abuse of it—to infidelity in fact, wearing the Christian garb, and affecting Christian sanctity for the vilest and most iniquitous purposes. Satan himself, we are assured, often chooses to appear as an angel of light, the more effectually to deceive the unwary. Thus infidelity, in every age, has best suc

ceeded in the assumed character of heavenly wisdom. It has thus most completely blinded and imposed on the world by its specious zeal and sanctimonious observances. When, therefore, men declaim about the dangerous influonce of the Christian religion, let them substitute the term infidelity. The Christian religion never endangered any human right, privilege or immunity, any moral principle, or any ingredient of human happiness. False religion-infidel Christianity-has endangered all these; and often prevailed to the enslaving of the people. Infidel ecclesiastic politicians and infidel political ecclesiastics have, in all ages and in most countries, under some pretended or usurped Christian authority, succeeded in exalting themselves, and in humbling and degrading the multitude.

Popular ignorance may be assigned as the radical cause of all this enormity. An ignorant people will always be liable to imposition in some form; and that form, best adapted to the purpose aimed at, will always be assumed by the unprincipled and ambitious. Were it as fashionable and as effectual to court the populace by extraordinary demonstrations of sanctity, in our country, as it is by hollow professions of patriotism and devotion to their interests, every popular demagogue would presently be transformed into a popular saint-and every stump speech would be a puritanical sermon. The man would not be changed in the least. He would merely have changed his mode of cheating the people. He would be a praying, preaching, canting demagogue, instead of being a swearing, swaggering, bullying, duelling, whisky-treating.