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with religious awe, the silent aisles of Westminster Abbey, the sentiment which is breathed from every object around him is, the utter emptiness of sublunary glory. The fine arts, obedient to private affection or public gratitude, have here embodied, in every form, the finest conceptions of which their age was capable. Each one of these monuments has been watered by the tears of the widow, the orphan, or the patriot. But generations have passed away, and mourners and mourned have sunk together into forgetfulness.

It is by what we ourselves have done, and not by what others have done for us, that we shall be remembered by after ages. It is by thought that has aroused my intellect from its slumbers, which has "given lustre to virtue, and dignity to truth," or by those examples which have inflamed my soul with the love of goodness, and not by means of sculptured marble, that I hold communion with Shakspeare and Milton, with Johnson and Burke, with Howard and Wilberforce.

DR. F. WAYLAND,

160. THE MISSION OF THE SAXON RACE.

THE power given to the two nations of the Saxon race is a remarkable fact of this age. The keys of the earth have been committed to their charge. The printing-press, the steamengine, the telegraph, the coal beds, and even the mines of the earth, have been thrown into their hands. To a great extent, their interest and work on the earth are common. Both of them combined may regenerate the globe. Their united mission is to elevate its whole population to Gospel light and truth; to rational liberty and to prosperous trade. And all this, we may reasonably hope, will soon, to a great degree, be realized, The pressing advances in the course of invention, discovery, and settlement, for the last twenty-five years, allow almost any extent of expectation, and make no calculations for the future appear extravagant. The new republics forming on our western coast are in this accumulation of wonders-the most important and remarkable, as connected with these anticipated results. How happy was the name given to that ocean, on which, probably, the great and final achievements of this moral victory are to be seen! Oh, that the omen may be permitted to abide! Let no warfare disturb its pacific waters! Let no streams of human blood mingle with its translucent depths! Carrying still west

ward our acquired sympathy for suffering man, let us press forward, everywhere, to elevate and save-nowhere to destroy. Let the attainments of the generations past be honored and fulfilled, by the generous and faithful discharge of the responsibilities accruing upon us for generations to come. Thus, in maintaining and spreading the glorious Gospel of Christ, in connection with every instrument of national extension and power, shall we be serving our generation according to the will of God, and preparing a highway for the Saviour's passage in triumph through a redeemed and rejoicing world. Thus may we justly come and offer our annual thanksgiving to the God of our fathers. Thus may we be ourselves laid unto our fathers at the last, in joyful hope for the welfare of our land when our own work of life is finished. Thus may earth have reason to rejoice over the discovery and history of a continent and a nation, whose influence has been an unspeakable blessing to mankind.

DR. S. H. TYNG.

161. POLITICAL DEMAGOGUES.

THERE never was a country in the world, from the days of Pericles to the present time, which furnished such unbounded scope for the demagogue as ours; and never was a country so cursed with demagogues. The demagogue and the courtier are but opposite poles of the same character. The demagogue perpetually tells the people that they are sovereign-that there is no higher law than their will. Like the courtier, he flatters and cajoles the sovereign, in order to mislead and rule him. What chance for a fair hearing has the honest friend of the people? It certainly cannot be said to be unnatural for men to confide in and yield themselves to the guidance of those who bow to their will, flatter their vanity, or minister to their passions. In point of fact, what public man dares resist the current of party opinion, and the demands of party discipline? What truths unpalatable to the popular taste, however vitally important to the public welfare, do the politicians of either party dare to tell the people? What popular errors, however dangerous, do they dare expose and denounce? From the political and party presses, controlled by demagogues, the people almost never hear the truth. Morning, noon, and night, they are fed on falsehoods, and nursed in prejudices, hatreds, and animosities. All considerations of truth, decency, and rever

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ence, give way before the violence of party spirit; and the blind and bitter spirit of party is continually stimulated by provocatives addressed to the ignorance, the prejudices, and violent passions of the people; and in the midst of all their professed homage, love, and respect for the people, the demagogues show clearly enough to the discerning eye in what real contempt they hold the knowledge, the wisdom, and the virtue of the people, by the boundless impudence of the lies, flatteries, and quackeries with which they seek to cajole and lead them.

And which way tends the political destiny of the nation under these influences of the party presses and of political demagogues? It tends to throw the absolute power of the nation into whatever party of demagogues, calling themselves friends of the people, can most successfully cajole and corrupt the people. It tends, in short, to a democratic absolutism—the worst of all forms of absolutism, the most pervading and the least conscientious. Any party, supported by a popular majority, can at any time overbear the constitution, and absorb into itself all the powers of the state. DR. C. S. HENRY.

162. THE PACIFIC AGE.

THE history of man's intellect down to the present hour is, with comparatively few exceptions, the history of deep darkness, of withering bondage, of noble aspirations stifled, of great and immortal faculties yielding nothing. I ask, wherefore has been this criminal perversion of God's noblest gifts? Wherefore has learning witnessed to so many ages of imprisonment, and, even in her best days, exercised so contracted a dominion? The an

swer is, she has had her lot in a world of enemies,-the chief of which is war. But we think we see signs of no equivocal import that war is soon to die; and we trust that her other foes will also be slain and buried in the same grave. The pacific age stretches into the far-distant future. I see it embosomed in millennial glory. I hear it celebrated in millennial anthems. I inquire for man's intellect, and behold it is quite another thing than what I have been accustomed to contemplate: he has become so great that, if he were to meet an angel, it would scarcely seem arrogant that he should call him brother. I see the means of knowledge multiplied a hundred-fold and extended everywhere: I see great and venerable institutions of learning

planted on the ruins of superstition and barbarism: I see the world peopled with cultivated minds: I see truth and virtue reigning over all. Hail, thou pacific age! Come and renovate man's intellect, as well as his heart! Be it so that it is our privilege to witness only thy auspicious dawn-yet we believe that our children and children's children shall rejoice in thy noonday splendors!

DR. W. B. SPRAGUE.

163. LANGUAGE.

WHAT is worthy to form a part of liberal study, if not language, and what is worthy of being studied more thoroughly? It puts us in intercourse with other men, and forms a society among the intelligences of the earth. The senses give us commerce with the physical world; but without language we should know little or nothing of other minds. So too in its written form, it gives us intercourse with the great men of all times and all ages, who have left their thoughts on record. We gather their works in our libraries, and when we please, we may enjoy their society, ourselves the host and master of ceremonies, and regulating our intercourse with them in our own way, Time and distance are no obstacles, for through language and the press they have gained ubiquity. Their books are better to us in their living intercourse, for these have patience with our dulness and our blunders; they bear with our doubts and our denials; they allow us our own time, and find no fault if we prefer the wisdom of others, or even our own, to theirs. When I look upon a library, I think I see the grandest achievement of the human mind. It is little to heap up the stones of a pyra mid, or to bind together the remotest ends of a wide territory, and to annihilate time and space by a railroad; here we have piled together the thoughts of men, the best labors of immortal intellects; we have, gathered into one mass, the wisdom of the wisest of all times and all countries; we multiply it, and place within the reach and hearing of all, ever living and ever speaking, those whom God has given, in the long course of time, to all nations, to be their teachers in knowledge and understanding.

DR. BENJAMIN HALE.

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164. THE BIBLE FRIENDLY TO LIBERTY.

THE language of the Bible is a hearty masculine English, as pure a standard of our mother tongue as we have. Its history is that by which all ancient history has been obliged to correct itself; and its poetry unsurpassed. It is full of the purest ethics and the noblest philosophy. It gives the truest view of human nature, and reveals the only method for its radical improvement.

Is it not the friend of civil liberty? Certainly, if beyond all other means it is powerful to make man a law to himself, it is beyond every thing else favorable to liberty. The Bible has never yet shown itself a foe to the liberties or the prosperity and happiness of states. It is true, the world has sometimes been agitated by the attempt of some of its friends to impose their views of its revelations upon others, but the evil is most surely corrected, by permitting it freely and at all times to speak for itself.

All the most valuable elements of modern civilization have developed themselves under the fostering influence of Christianity; and, if I may judge from my own consciousness, or from the records of history, nothing has contributed, and nothing can contribute so effectually to make men feel the true dignity of their nature, and raise them to a true independence of spirit, as to regard themselves in the light of that immortality which has been made known to us by the Gospel. Whose sufferings in the cause of human liberty have equalled those of the Christian martyrs of all times? And in Christian countries, who is most likely to set his opinion to sale, and truckle to the times, he who is daily conscious of the undying spirit within him, or he who has lost sight of himself as an immortal being?

DR. BENJAMIN HALE.

165. THE POLITICAL KNAVE.

THE lowest of politicians is that man who seeks to gratify an invariable selfishness by pretending to seek the public good. For a profitable popularity, he accommodates himself to all opinions, to all dispositions, to every side, and to each prejudice. He is a mirror, with no face of its own, but a smooth surface from which each man of ten thousand may see himself reflected.