prehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law." It is not, therefore, surprising that, after an enumeration in another place of various duties, the same dignified apostle says, "Above all these things, put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness." The inculcation of this benevolence is as frequent in the Christian Scriptures as its practical utility is great. He who will look through the volume will find that no topic is so frequently introduced, no obligation so emphatically enforced, no virtue to which the approbation of God is so specially promised. It is the theme of all the "apostolic exhortations, that with which their morality begins and ends, from which all their details and enumerations set out, and into which they return." "He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him." More emphatical language cannot be employed. It exalts to the utmost the character of the virtue, and, in effect, promises its possessor the utmost favor and felicity. If, then, of faith, hope, and love, love be the greatest-if it be by the test of love that our pretensions to Christianity are to be tried-if all the relative duties of morality are embraced in one word, and that word is love-it is obviously needful that, in a book like this, the requisitions of benevolence should be habitually regarded in the prosecution of its inquiries. And, accordingly, the reader will sometimes be invited to sacrifice inferior considerations to these requisitions, and to give to the law of love that paramount station in which it has been placed by the authority of God.

HUMAN, SUBORDINATE TO DIVINE LAW.

The authority of civil government is a subordinate authority. If from any cause the magistrate enjoins that which is prohibited by the moral law, the duty of obedience is withdrawn. "All human authority ceases at the point where obedience becomes criminal." The reason is simple: that when the magistrate enjoins what is criminal, he has exceeded his power; "the minister of God" has gone beyond his commission. There is, in our day, no such thing as moral plenipotentiary.

Upon these principles the first teachers of Christianity acted when the rulers "called them, and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus." "Whether," they replied, "it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye." They accordingly "entered into the temple early in the morning, and taught;" and when, subsequently, they were again brought before the council and interrogated, they replied, "We ought to obey God rather than men :" and notwithstanding the renewed command of the council, "daily in the temple and in

every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ." Nor let any one suppose that there is any thing religious in the motives of the apostles which involved a peculiar obligation upon them to refuse obedience; the obligation to conform to religious duty and to moral duty is one.

To disobey the civil magistrate is, however, not a light thing. When the Christian conceives that the requisitions of government and of a higher law are conflicting, it is needful that he exercise a strict scrutiny into the principles of his conduct. But if, upon such scrutiny, the contrariety of requisitions appear real, no room is left for doubt respecting his duty, or for hesitation in performing it. With the consideration of consequences he has then no concern : whatever they may be, his path is plain before him.

DUELLING.

If two boys who disagreed about a game of marbles or a penny tart should therefore walk out by the river side, quietly take off their clothes, and when they had got into the water, each try to keep the other's head down until one of them was drowned, we should doubtless think that these two boys were mad. If, when the survivor returned to his schoolfellows, they patted him on the shoulder, told him he was a spirited fellow, and that if he had not tried the feat in the water, they would never have played at marbles or any other game with him again, we should doubtless think that these boys were infected with a most revolting and disgusting depravity and ferociousness. We should instantly exert ourselves to correct their principles, and should feel assured that nothing could ever induce us to tolerate, much less to encourage, such abandoned depravity. And yet we do both tolerate and encourage such depravity every day. Change the penny tart for some other trifle; instead of boys put men, and instead of a river a pistol, and we encourage it all. We virtually pat the survivor's shoulder, tell him he is a man of honor, and that if he had not shot at his acquaintance, we would never have dined with him again. "Revolting and disgusting depravity" are at once excluded from our vocabulary. We substitute such phrases as "the course which a gentleman is obliged to pursue," "it was necessary to his honor," "one could not have associated with him if he had not fought." We are the schoolboys grown up; and by the absurdity, and more than absurdity, of our phrases and actions, shooting or drowning (it matters not which) becomes the practice of the national school.

It is not a trifling question that a man puts to himself when he asks, What is the amount of my contribution to this detestable practice? It is by individual contributions to the public notions respecting it that the practice is kept up. Men do not fire at one

another because they are fond of risking their own lives or other men's, but because public notions are such as they are. Nor do I think any deduction can be more manifestly just than that he who contributes to the misdirection of these notions is responsible for a share of the evil and the guilt.

THE POWER OF NON-RESISTANCE.

The Americans thought that it was best for the general welfare that they should be independent; but England persisted in imposing a tax. Imagine, then, America to have acted upon Christian principles, and to have refused to pay it, but without those acts of exasperation and violence which they committed. England might have sent a fleet and an army. To what purpose? Still no one paid the tax. The soldiery perhaps sometimes committed outrages, and they seized goods instead of the impost; still the tax could not be collected except by a system of universal distraint. Does any man, who employs his reason, believe that England would have overcome such a people? does he believe that any government or any army would have gone on destroying them? especially does he believe this, if the Americans continually reasoned coolly and honorably with the other party, and manifested, by the unequivocal language of conduct, that they were actuated by reason and by Christian rectitude? No nation exists which would go on slaughtering such a people. It is not in human nature to do such things; and I am persuaded not only that American independence would have been secured, but that very far fewer of the Americans would have been destroyed, that very much less of devastation and misery would have been occasioned, if they had acted upon these principles instead of upon the vulgar system of exasperation and violence. In a word, they would have attained the same advantage, with more virtue, and at less cost.

SLAVERY.

To him who examines slavery by the standard to which all questions of human duty should be referred, the task of deciding, we say, is short. Whether it is consistent with the Christian law for one man to keep another in bondage without his consent, and to compel him to labor for that other's advantage, admits of no more doubt than whether two and two make four. It were humiliating, then, to set about the proof that the slave system is incompatible with Christianity; because no man questions its incompatibility who knows what Christianity is, and what it requires.

The distinctions which are made between the original robbery in Africa, and the purchase, the inheritance, or the "breeding" of slaves in the colonies, do not at all respect the kind of immorality

that attaches to the whole system. They respect nothing but the degree. The man who wounds and robs another on the highway is a more atrocious offender than he who plunders a hen-roost; but he is not more truly an offender, he is not more certainly a violator of the law. And so with the slave system. He who drags a wretched man from his family in Africa is a more flagitious transgressor than he who merely compels the African to labor for his own advantage; but the transgression, the immorality, is as real and certain in one case as in the other. He who had no right to steal the African can have none to sell him. From him who is known to have no right to sell, another can have no right to buy or to possess. Sale, or gift, or legacy imparts no right to me, because the seller, or giver, or bequeather had none himself. The sufferer has just as valid a claim to liberty at my hands, as at the hands of the ruffian who first dragged him from his home. Every hour of every day, the present possessor is guilty of injustice. Nor is the case altered with respect to those who are born on a man's estate. The parents were never the landholder's property, and therefore the child is not. Nay, if the parents had been rightfully slaves, it would not justify me in making slaves of their children. No man has a right to make a child a slave but himself. What are our sentiments upon kindred subjects? What do we think of the justice of the Persian system, by which, when a state offender is put to death, his brothers and his children are killed or mutilated too? Or, to come nearer to the point, as well as nearer home, what should we say of a law which enacted that of every criminal who was sentenced to labor for life, all the children should be sentenced so to labor also? And yet, if there is any comparison of reasonableness, it seems to be in one respect in favor of the culprit. He is condemned to slavery for his crimes; the African for another man's profit. *

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It is quite evident that our slave system will be abolished,1 and that its supporters will hereafter be regarded with the same public feelings as he who was an advocate of the slave-trade is now. How is it that legislators or that public men are so indifferent to their fame? Who would now be willing that biography should record of him-This man defended the slave-trade? The time will come when the record-This man opposed the abolition of slavery-will occasion a great deduction from the public estimate of worth of character. When both these atrocities are abolished, and, but for the page of history, forgotten, that page will make a wide difference between those who aided the abolition and those who obstructed it. The one will be ranked among the Howards that are departed, and the other among those who, in ignorance or in guilt, have employed their little day in inflicting misery upon mankind.

This was, of course, written before the glorious act of Great Britain-the emancipation of the slaves in all her colonies in 1834.

HUMPHRY DAVY, 1778-1829.

SIR HUMPHRY DAVY, who ranks as a man of science second to none in in the nineteenth century, was born at Penzance, in Cornwall, on the 17th of December, 1778. From his childhood he showed a remarkable quickness in acquiring knowledge, and a decided love of literature. He was early bound as an apprentice to a surgeon and apothecary of his native town, who had a great taste for chemical experiments. Here young Davy found what was entirely congenial to his tastes, and with such extraordinary enthusiasm did he devote himself to these pursuits, that he abandoned all the usual enjoyments and relaxations of youth, and showed an aversion to all festive society. He had to contend against many disadvantages, but what is impossible to an enthusiastic and determined mind? His success in scientific inquiries in a few years became known and appreciated, and he was engaged as an assistant to Dr. Beddoes in the Pneumatic Institution at Bristol.

In 1803, Davy was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, of which he subsequently became secretary, and finally president. During a period of twenty-five years he constantly supplied its "Transactions" with papers; and "it is not too much to say, that no individual philosopher, in any age or country, ever contributed so largely in extending truth, or ever achieved so much in eradicating error." Besides Six Discourses delivered before the Royal Society, at their Anniversary meetings, there are recorded fifty-one different Treatises and Lectures on various scientific subjects.

But that for which he is most widely known is the discovery of the "Safety Lamp." In the year 1816, after a long series of experiments, he discovered that if the flame of a lamp was protected by a wire gauze, the gases brought in contact with the lamp would not explode, while the light would still be preserved. This great discovery, which enabled miners to work in perfect safety, where before dreadful accidents were constantly occurring, was so appreciated by the coal owners of the north of England, that they invited him to a public dinner at Newcastle, and presented him with a service of plate valued at £2000. The Emperor of Russia sent him a splendid silver vase, as a testimony of regard, and he was created a baronet. But his best reward was the consciousness that the simple implement he had invented, annually saved hundreds of lives: indeed, it is said that an explosion has not been known where the "Safety Lamp" has been used. Sir Humphry's constant labours so impaired his health, that in 1828 he resigned the Presidency of the Royal Society, and went to Italy for the benefit of his health, where he amused himself in writing his "Consolations in Travel, or the Last Days of a Philosopher." These last days were fast approaching: he quitted Italy in a very weak state, but had only reached Geneva on his way home, when he died there on the morning of the 30th of May, 1829.

Sir Humphry Davy combined qualities we but rarely find united. Great quickness of perception, a peculiarly retentive memory, and a vivid imagination, together with habits of the most laborious investigation, enabled him to achieve discoveries which made his life equally honorable and useful. His disposition