sion, as he has been taught to look forward to a nobler destiny. He goes forth as the enlightened apostle of Him who brought life and immortality to light, with the book of God in his hand, and zeal and love glowing in his heart.

GENERAL

THIRTEENTH WEEK-SATURDAY.

BE

SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT.-CONTRAST TWEEN SAVAGE AND CIVILIZED LIFE IN MORAL CULTIVATION.

THERE is a vast difference between intellectual and moral cultivation; and what promotes the one does not always promote the other. In the 'Summer' volume I showed, that, during the advancement of society, there is a point, in which, where Revelation does not come in for our guidance, support, and enlargement, man's progress in morals seems to retrograde, as his intellectual faculties expand; and, in proportion as he becomes more acute and ingenious, he becomes more regardless, depraved, and impious, his love of evil increasing with his power of perpetrating it. This subject will now require a somewhat more particular examination.

Scarcely any thing can be imagined more degraded and abject than society in its lowest state. The aboriginal inhabitants of New Holland and New Zealand, for example, seem to be almost utterly depraved, with scarcely one redeeming quality, and exemplify, more, perhaps, than any other portion of the human race, the horrors of the savage state. In advancing to a higher grade, we find the intelligence and the moral faculties of the community almost equally improved. The Africans, the

Hindoos, the inhabitants of China, and of Central Asia, seem each to have their moral and social qualities expanded in proportion to their intellectual powers. In both they are distressingly deficient, but in both they have made a considerable advance beyond the shocking degra

dation of the first-mentioned tribes. In the degree in which they have submitted to the restraints of regular government,-in nearly the same degree have they been found to have advanced at once in intellectual power, and in some of the social virtues.

In speaking of this subject, I purposely avoid taking any examples from Christian society, and must therefore recur to the classical ages of Greece and Rome. These ancient republics were, in their earlier days, remarkable for some heroic and patriotic virtues, which insured their progress. They became great, and powerful, and rich, by the exercise of these virtues. Ás they advanced in prosperity, new demands were made on their powers of understanding, of invention, and of mental energy, which resulted in undertakings of vast extent, and in imperishable labors of art. But their moral qualities were not equally cultivated. On the contrary, the very exuberance of their mental powers, being exerted on objects which fostered their pride, inflated their vanity, and gave additional intenseness to their selfishness, and while they inflamed their luxurious and dissolute passions, and broke loose from the restraints of moderation and of social duty, gave rise to a character in which the most fearful prostration of morality was accompanied by, and rendered compatible with, high mental attainments. A Cataline and a Nero are specimens of the profligacy of an age, in which the arts and sciences had arrived at a high pitch of improvement.

Another element required to be introduced into the human mind, to enable its moral powers to keep pace with its intellectual attainments,—and this was the element of a pure religion. With regard to this principle, the human mind is naturally in a very peculiar state. There are

qualities in our nature which dispose us to entertain sentiments of religion; but these sentiments are feeble and distorted. The lowest barbarian has some faint sense of a superior power which rules his destinies, and which he must propitiate. The Australian turns his face to the rising and setting sun, and recognises a presiding Deity in the wild howl by which he acknowledges the approach

and departure of that material emblem of the Creator's glory. The American Indian worships the Great Spirit, while

-"his untutored mind

Sees God in clouds, and hears Him in the wind."

The imaginative inhabitant of the East, as well as the ignorant and abused native of the African continent, has his idol or his fetish, to which he pays a superstitious homage. The follower of Mohammed is the devoted slave of a system of worship, in which the Divine dictates of revealed truth are artfully blended with the grossness of a polluted earthly imagination. All these demonstrate the existence of a deep-rooted sentiment, a peculiar faculty in our nature, which, though perverted by ignorance, and degraded by vice, may yet be made the foundation of the most exalted and ennobling feelings that can expand the human heart.

This is the faculty on which the sublime doctrines of our Christian faith lay hold, to purify and exalt the human character. By the first revelation, to Abraham and to Moses, it was partially enlightened; but it was reserved for the Son of God, Himself, through the medium of this faculty, to bring the mind up to its proper dignity. He addresses every power of the understanding and the heart, our reason, our imagination, our affections; and, through every avenue, He finds access to our religious feelings. He incites us by hope, He alarms us with fear, He persuades us, He draws us by the cords of love; and, by a mysterious and Divine influence, He renews us in the spirit of our minds.

The individuals who are the objects of this discipline are enabled to resist the temptations with which they are surrounded, to rise above the grossness and pollution of the atmosphere in which they dwell, and to shine in the light of heaven. Those very temptations, when overcome, are rendered the means of improving their strength, and enabling them to advance more assiduously on the path of duty and honor; that very grossness and pollution, when they emerge from them, only cause them to rise nearer to the gate of paradise.

Meanwhile the human intellect, under the stimulus of the various causes we have described, rapidly advances; and, while Revelation, with all its motives and influences, is suited to all states of society, the savage and the civilized; to all talents, the simple, the acute, and the wise; to all acquirements, the ignorant and the learned, the rich and the poor, it shines the brightest, and its power extends the furthest, when genius and intelligence are combined with piety. If we look for a character among mere human beings, to concentrate all our admiration, and to engage all our affections, it is such a one as that of Newton, who, to the largest range of intellect, and the highest cultivation of his mental powers, added the humility, the purity, and the devotion of a Christian.

FOURTEENTH WEEK-SUNDAY.

THE HARVEST IS THE END OF THE WORLD.'

This

THE destruction of any thing that has been constructed at the expense of much pains and ingenuity, is very painful and disappointing to man. The more he has labored after its excellence, and the more it has been useful to him, the more must its termination afflict him. It is very natural, then, for those who admire this great frame of things, and adore creating power and wisdom, to shrink at the prospect of the end of the world. wonderful exhibition of grandeur and minuteness, of beauty and sublimity, of adaptation and counteraction, is it to come to an end? Are these heavens to be folded up as a scroll, and all these elements to melt with fervent heat? Yes, so it is decreed. So, in the unperturbed tranquillity of his own eternity, hath the Creator appointed. But God's harvest is yet to come. It will not be reaped till the end of the world. When the materials whose occupation, in all the seasons, we have been

studying, shall be changed, and, by the great Creator, adapted to other uses, or employed for the benefit, and under the control, of other beings, they for whom the sun arose and set, and the seasons bloomed and faded, shall be gathered as the final fruit of this earth, and garnered up in the great storehouse, fitted for an eternal and unchanging existence.

We have sown and reaped; we have been enriched with terrestrial abundance, our valleys have smiled in plenty, the little hills have rejoiced on every side; one generation after another has possessed the soil, and enjoyed in autumn the consummation for which they toiled in spring, little weening that these seeds are but the superficial portion, the fleeting produce, while they themselves are the real germs, which must in their turn be deposited in the earth, until the whole world be sown, and these germs be matured.

Then cometh God's harvest. His plan for our earthly sphere has reached its most important era. His purposes with regard to man in his state of trial are accomplished. His well-beloved Son, the Lord of the vineyard, returns in the clouds, with power and great glory, to gather in the fruits. His angels shall collect them from the four winds, from the uttermost part of earth to the uttermost part of heaven. Those whom we have deemed as dead, were but sown, to spring again and be reaped. “All that are in their graves, shall hear his voice." The land, the sea, the cavern, and the wilderness, shall alike spring up instinct with life. O solemn mother earth, on which we tread so carelessly! Is every atom of thy soil engaged in this great concern? Wilt thou, on that day, heave up a breathing mass of human beings? Will generations, divided by thousands of years, meet face to face on thee? Shall we, of these later days, at last look upon Abraham, and Job, and Daniel ? Shall we hear the voice of Paul, and Peter, and the beloved disciple? Shall we see come from under the altar, those precious ones, who were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held? shall we admire their spotless robes, and rejoice in their faith