boasted gift? It is quite enough our boast; let it be more our blessing. If it is only a boast, it will cease in any valuable sense to exist. We are free from political oppression; and yet it may be that we are in bondage to the fear or hatred or envy of one another, in bondage to ambition, to revenge, or to avarice. We live in a land of freedom; but how many are slaves to sensuality, slaves to wicked companions, slaves to negligently accumulated debt. Here are no walls, indeed, raised by tyranny to hide its victims from the day, no prison vaults to be the graves of the living, no dungeons, from which the cry of suffering innocence can never be heard. But vice has its victims, who are shut out from the light of day, from the respect of society; vice has its lone dungeons, in which not the innocent are chained down, but in which innocence itself is lost; its grave, for the living, for whom it were better if they were dead.

And if these things go on, and proceed from one step to another, from bad maxims to worse indulgences, then will that liberty, which, to such, exist only in form and is no longer a blessing, then will it be to the country no longer a blessing, and ere long, it will cease to exist even in form. Let the tide of luxury and immorality rise higher and higher, let the barriers of public virtue be broken down, let the good old disinterestedness, and the generous patriotism of our fathers, give way to universal selfishness, political corruption, and base office-seeking; let mighty parties arise, which are grounded on no other principle than the love of office, or let parties arise and grow upon sectional disputes and jealousies, and this very generation may not pass away till all these things which we fear, are accomplished; yes, we who read these things with whatever indifference or incredulity, may find that the language of warning was the language of prophecy, that the language of warning has become the language of history.

We do not expect that the possibility of this catastrophe will now be regarded with any serious apprehension. And yet we do none the less fear because of this security, but the more. No people, in calm times and a settled order of things, ever looked for their downfall. Immorality gains slowly and imperceptibly upon a people. The signs of the coming tempest steal silently over the heavens. The change passes so gradually that men do not see it. So it has been with every people; and when the catastrophe has come, it has come in flood and storm and thunder.

We hear much of the spirit of this age; but it seems more an object to dwell with exultation on the tendencies of the public mind at this day, than to point out the duties of the age. We believe, indeed, that the present epoch promises more than any former period in the long continued experiment upon human nature, because christianity is in the field, more free and unfettered than it ever was before; because knowledge is in the field; because the schoolmaster,' as has been said with a pertinence and emphasis that have converted the saying into a proverb, because 'the schoolmaster is abroad,' upon the field of this great trial; and if men can become free, wise, and religious, it may be hoped that they will become so now.

And

But to conduct this experiment to a successful issue, will require exertions—yes, and qualities, on the part of its friends, which they can never too highly appreciate. we cannot leave the subject without offering two or three remarks, in a broad view, to all who have the real improvement of the world at heart, on what we think ought to be the spirit of these times.

A wakeful heed and foresight are first of all demanded of the age; a consciousness of the part which this generation has to act, a solemn impression of our duties to future times. This should be no theme merely for fancy to embellish, or for rhetoric to adorn. It should be a great and impressive conviction. The men who are to take part in the work of bringing this momentous trial to a happy result, and every man may do something, must feel that patriots, prophets, and confessors had never a greater. They must not sleep upon their post. They must be awake and on the alert, and watch the signs of the times. This is no affair of political management, of commercial monopoly, of relief to the manufacturing interests, of internal improvements, of national administration, save all these bear upon the great end. These are 'signs of the sky and the earth' in comparison. No; but the great question is, whether the people of this country, and of England and of France and Germany and Russia, shall be wiser, more virtuous, religious, and happy races of men, fifty years hence, than they now are. It is not whether general wealth and luxury shall advance; they will advance,-but whether governments shall become more just, mild, and paternal, whether schools and universities shall be more effective instruments for training the mind; whether cities shall be

purified from their iniquities and vices, and families shall be well ordered, virtuous, pious, and happy; whether churches shall become purer, and knowledge shall increase, and righteousness shall exalt the nations. And to this question, we repeat, all men and minds, and books written at this day, and journals and associations and communities, should be awake.

In the next place, we would entreat all the advocates of this cause, to be sober; to think and speak and write and act with perfect sobriety. We want no Utopian schemes in aid of this cause. All visionary theories, fanciful speculations about perfectibility, extravagant measures, violent innovations, propositions without evidence, and proposals without reasonableness, and zeal without knowledge, and faith without works, must retire from this cause and let it alone. This, at least, must be the theory of the age; and we must come as near it as possible. In truth we want sober men. And we would that men would use all their trusts and privileges with more sobriety; that they would enter into school committees, political offices, and the learned professions, and into all the courses of trade and business, with a more thoughtful consideration of the part they are acting in relation to the moral welfare of mankind. We could easily show that the very transaction of business is a weighty trust in this respect; and that at this very moment, the eagerness for gain, hazardous speculation, pecuniary embarrassment-yes, that debt all over this country, threatens more moral evil to the next generation, than any other cause that can be named. The men of business as well as men of study, actors as well as authors, on this present stage, men with families, with children looking to them for education, with trusts of every nature, must be sober; must be sober, as feeling that the next age will depend upon what they think, and do, and are.

We do not know what is to be the state of things in this land and in Christendom fifty years hence; but we know that if men go on heedlessly, if all pursue their own immediate and selfish ends, without regard to the general good and the coming result, if none take thought for the signs of the times, that the experiment will be involved in infinite peril. We know that if political elections, and judicial proceedings, and the principles of trade, become thoroughly selfish and corrupt, if good institutions decline, if the sabbath is trodden under foot, and public worship is neglected, and

there is no concert or co-operation for good and holy endswe know that the hope, we had almost said, the last hope of the world, will be whelmed in 'the tide of human passions, competitions, and vices?

RECREATION.

BUSINESS and recreation are the two great departments of life to which the principles of morality apply. Between these two departments, however, the public conscience is apt to make discriminations which can hardly be defended. It is much more strict with regard to the sins of amusement, than with regard to the sins of business. And this strictness, we think, is much misplaced, for several reasons; first, because the heinousness of transgressions is not to be determined by the sphere in which they take place-the utility of business is not to screen, the frivolity of pleasure is not to enhance the appropriate faults of either; secondly, because the department of business is much larger than that of recreation, and is on that account more important in a moral view; thirdly, because the sins of business, among the body of the people, are far greater than those of amusement; and fourthly, because the national propensity here, is, with some justice, marked as leaning to avarice rather than to voluptuousness. This mistake of the public conscience is a most serious evil, because it amounts with many to an almost total suspension of that faculty with regard to the whole conduct of their lives. Many are committing perfect abominations in business, who, at the same time, take great credit to themselves for their opposition to amusements.

We think it is the duty of the Christian moralist to keep his eye upon both of these spheres of human pursuit. We are about to call the attention of our readers, in the present discussion, to the minor department. Let them remember, however, that it is a fair portion of life; of that life which God has given for serious purposes, and all of whose employments, whether grave or gay, are conspiring to the formation of a character which is the great and momentous result. Futurity is thus to answer for our pleasures as truly as for our labors or our devotions. In views of the subject, however, that come short of that solemn reference, it has strong claims to attention. We have long regarded recreations as

standing in a relation of great importance to social and national happiness and morality-far greater than is usually attached to it. We can by no means confound the importance of the subject, with the levity of its title; or the effects of recreation, with the trivial aspects, under which it presents itself to superficial observation.

Purification, as we judge, is the work at which good men should labor, with regard to things which are wrong only in the abuse. If they adopt any other principle, we know not where they are to stop, till they have swept away alike, all human recreations and employments. The work which the Christian moralist has to do with society, is not to send forth indiscriminate denunciations, but to point out evils and dangers-is not to destroy and overwhelm, but to correct and reform.

We wish our readers, and our youthful readers especially, to reflect on this subject, to consider the proper end of recreation, the just place it has in the order of life, the subservience which is required of it, to the great purpose of life, its strict connection with duty, and the close discriminations of conscience with which it is to be pursued. We wish them to consider recreation, not as something to be stolen, or partaken of as if it were a guilty pleasure, not as something to be connived at and kept out of the sight of consciencebut as something to be fairly, openly, and honorably enjoyed, so far as it is right, and no farther-something to be subjected, like every other part of life, to the test of sober reason and enlightened purity. We desire, that the strictest principles and maxims of religion may be applied by them to their amusements, as much as to any thing else they engage in; that their watchfulness, their Christian fidelity, their prayers, may extend as much to these, as to the graver cares of business and occupation.

There is a feeling, too commonly prevailing, we fear, even in well regulated minds, that recreation is a kind of neutral ground in life, that reflection and religion have nothing to do with it, that to include it in our prayers, to speak of entering into it with the fear of God, would be a kind of sacrilege. It is considered by some as an escape from reflection. It is sometimes called, in a questionable sense, we suspect, 'a relaxation from duty.' Some are attached to it under the very notion, perhaps, that there is no religion, no unwelcome seriousness in it. It is, moreover, apt to be valued for itself alone.