bors, but its subjects did not abandon their iniquities.

The standard of piety is very low, throughout the island, and especially in the larger churches. So hastily gathered, from such materials, it can not be expected that the life of godliness should be manifested by them, nor is it. The enthusiasm of grateful feeling has subsided. The influence of the missionary, as the protector and friend of the oppressed, is gone. The people have acquired many artificial wants, and these have taught them the value and uses of money. The restraints of religion have become irksomegeneral worldliness and selfish gratification, that were held in abeyance by the first gushings of free feeling, have resumed their sway. The progressive intelligence of the people enables them to perceive that paying a monthly "duty," and tak ing a ticket; marriage, joining the church, baptism, and the Lord's Supper, are not the seals of grace, nor passports to heaven. These, with the depressed state of the island, rendering it difficult to obtain continuous employment for fair wages, and the increasing use of intoxicating liquors, have produced a reaction, which may yet scatter in fragments many of the large churches.

There are exceptions to these remarks. Among much of "wood, hay, stubble," there are many truly pious, devoted persons, who can give a reason for the faith that is in them. They will be found to be, both in number and intelligence, rather in the inverse ratio of the size of the churches to which they be long; for, where a charge of several thousand ignorant people is committed to a single missionary, it is impossible to give particular instruction to any of them.

We do not, in these statements, charge the missionaries with designed delinquency, or want of faithfulness. There was an earnest desire manifested by the English com

munity to witness immediate results from their labors and sacrifices; and the glad news of extensive revivals, and of pentecostal admissions, was hailed by the whole nation with unbounded joy. Peculiar sanctity was inferred in the case of those missionaries, who rapidly gathered large churches, and the reverse-a want of zeal and holiness, feared for, and, in some instances, attributed to others, who, by a more careful and judicious process-by restraining the fervor of feeling, and requiring some intelligent views of the gospel, and a holy life, as well as strong professions of love to "Massa Jesus” prior to admission, built up smaller, but purer churches. This, no doubt, acted as a stimulus to gather large bodies. Add to this, the sympathy of the missionaries for the newly emancipated people; the readiness with which they yielded themselves to all the external observances of religion; the impossibility of knowing any thing of the daily walk of indi viduals among thousands; with the servility and hypocrisy of the people; their unconquerable repug nance to disclosing each other's faults; their great earnestness to gain admission to church fellowship, and the facility with which it is gained in some of the large denomi nations; and the wonder will rather be, that the churches are not larger and more numerous. The most lax disciplinarians have rejected many applicants.

The question is often asked, "What will be the influence of the present embarrassments, upon the future history of Jamaica? Can the island recover from them?"

We may hazard an opinion, that its future history will be its most fruitful, most peaceful, and most happy. The estates must pass from the absentees, who now hold them for a mere moiety of their estimated value under the colonial system, when they enjoyed the monopoly of

the English market, and come into the possession of thrifty resident proprietors, who will manage them without the intervention of attorneys, and overseers. The enormous gov ernmental expenditure and weight of taxation will be greatly reduced by the action of the rising yeomanry, at the ballot-box or hustings. Competition will reduce the price of living, and the thrift and economy that have already been induced by the spirit of freedom, will rid the island of its greatest curse, the recklessness and extravagance of slavery.

These very desirable reforms are entirely feasible; and, once accomplished, Jamaica can not but be prosperous.

Within the past five years the temptations to intemperance have increased rapidly. Rum shops have multiplied in every direction; and, unless their influence can be destroyed, all the horrors of drunkenness lie directly in the pathway of the peasantry. Unhappily the missionaries, at the time of the eman cipation, generally used intoxicating liquors themselves, and thus lost the fairest opportunity of turning the people from this snare. Since that time, many dissenters have become total abstainers, and there are flour

ishing total abstinence societies at their several stations; but their influence is local, and the tremendous disturbing force of the established church, seems to blast every attempt to coalesce for any general reform. Efforts have been made, but they have failed; and they will continue to fail, till the missionaries shall abandon wine and malt, and fancied dignity, and heartily unite their influences against this vice. The suc cessful result of such a union is not doubtful.

There are other vices to which the peasantry are peculiarly exposed; but they sink into insignificance, when compared with intemperance, and some of them live only by the rum bottle. There are cheering indications of a revival of total abstinence principles and zeal, and there is ground of hope, that ere long the various bodies of dissenters, with their churches, will organize a general total abstinence movement, and earnestly labor to rid the island of this moral pestilence. Should they originate such a movement, and conduct it to a happy issue, the time is not distant when the arguments for freedom will find illustration in an intelligent, industrious, and happy community of emancipated slaves.

THE hardest problem man has to deal with, is out of many to make one. But it is a problem nature is ever gloriously resolving; for organization, which separates by an intelligible boundary the worlds of life and death, is her great mystery and work. The formation of a mass by the aggregation of particles, (as many rocks have been composed, each of which is a confused, cemented heap,) is quite a different thing from the production of a plant. In the one case, there is mere acciVOL. VI.

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dental juxta-position, an accumulation of chance-gathered materials, without any principle of arrangement; in the other, growth from a seed, which has life within itself, involving potentially all that is afterwards unfolded. When this seed is quickened, and germination takes place, there is a process of assimilation begun, in which the plant gathers its nourishment from the earth, and air, and light, and incorporates the foreign substance with itself as a living, homogeneous part

of its own system. With the progress of growth, many organs with distinct functions appear, each admirably adapted to its specific purpose, and all co-working harmoniously towards the accomplishment of the end for which all exist. The root that abstracts nutriment from the earth by its delicate fibres, the sap vessels of the stem that convey this to every part, and the leaves, with their broad surfaces, for carry. ing on respiration, different as they are in structure, are all necessary to the final result, the ripening of the seed.

We may see a beautiful illustration of this law of organization, as well as of the lower principle of outward and mechanical arrange. ment, (of which crystallization is an example,) in the divine record of the creation. The elements of all bodies were first brought forth, as naked elements, "without form and void,"

“Outrageous as a sen, dark, wasteful, wild." But, step by step, laws were impressed on the chaotic mass, and this goodly universe rose out of the watery abyss, with its blue o'erarching firmament, its seas, its solid land, and their unsummed wealth of vegetable and animal life. This world of ours is just an organized chaos. And that which we see in the lower spheres of creation, is typical of the higher; for all nature prophesies of Him who is its lord, and sets forth the more glorious mystery of His being in its manifold symbols. Physiologists tell us that the human body is the epitome of all organized bodies, while it far surpasses them all in the number of its parts, their close relation to a common center, and the powers of its various organs. A handful of shapeless dust, as worthless as that we tread on, became, through the organizing power of the principle of life inbreathed by the Creator, the solid, bony frame, the network of nerves, the circula

ting blood, the beating heart, the thinking brain, and all else that be longs to this temple of an immortal spirit, within which a thousand processes are continually going on, which is formed for dominion over the world without, and bears stamped upon its countenance the intellec tual image of its Maker.

It is thus that nature is ever solv ing the problem of national unity. But we see, also, amongst the infe rior animals, a law of fellowship, by which they are grouped together in tribes, organized into commonwealths, made obedient to leadersin other words, a social unity-and we look to find something analogous to this in the structure of humanity. We can imagine men in a state of isolation, each the sole occupant of a planet; but this would not be the highest form of human life. Man, existing in separateness and soli tude, could not attain that position of dignity and blessedness, which he holds when he is associated with others under laws that bring him into new relations. The planets, which make up our solar system, might have been created entirely in dependent of each other, each with its own motion upon its axis; but they subserve nobler uses, now that they revolve in harmony around a common center. Their arrangement under a new law gives them new forces, and takes nothing away. The sun, encircled by tributaries, to which he imparts light, and warmth, and motion, holds a higher place than if banished to a point from which no ray, or influence of at traction, could ever reach any part of the creation. So, to be a father, a giver of life, a defender and guide to other beings, is a higher and more blessed thing, than to be an isolated creature, sustaining no relations to others. Nor need union with others under a law, destroy individuality by absorbing the personal element into a mass. The stones which are set in the arch lose nothing of their

distinctive qualities, but acquire powers by the combination which they had not before. They remain the same in size, and shape, and properties; but when so placed as to realize the idea in the mind of the architect, they become a new creation. They were a heap of stones lying confusedly together; they are now a majestic, self-sustaining arch, throwing its span across some mighty river, and strong to sustain the pressure of thronging multitudes, while tall ships sail securely beneath.

This may illustrate the possibility of uniting mankind under laws, which, without destroying the personality of the individual, shall elevate him into a higher region of existence. Man is not like a chemical element, which, in combination, may disappear altogether; nor like an irresponsible animal, which is subjected to laws wholly from without, and for the sole benefit of another; but he is a person, made in the image of God, a partaker of reason, possessed of a responsible will, and thus exists, in some sort, from himself, and for himself. The problem is how to organize these personal elements, while we recognize and secure their distinctness; or how to place men under a common system, without crushing man, and making him the particle of a mass.

The law of the nation can not be understood without reference to the structure of the household, which existed before it in the order of nature. In the union of the first pair by the act of God, the household was established; and every one that has since been born, has been born a member of it. Each one is brought into existence, not as an individual simply, a solitary, independent element, but as a child bound in the closest relationship to two parents, and placed under their rule. Their organization is begun, through a divine law, predetermining the place and the functions of each. In the

household there is no mere juxtaposition of equals, but a grouping of all around a central organ, from which they receive law and blessing. This was the beginning of the building up of society, and from this it is easy to trace the steps by which all politics have been formed. In the infancy of the world, when the law of primogeniture prevailed, the household naturally and speedily enlarged itself into the tribe, (the patriarch ruling over his remote descendants,) and its growth was like that of the banyan tree, whose branches root themselves in the earth, and become, in turn, the parents of encircling groups, till a huge forest springs up around, all intertwined, and bound together by the law of an ever-circulating life.

Hence we see the falsehood of that doctrine of the social compact, which teaches that men originally entered into society because of the inconveniences of living in solitude, and that it was a mere matter of voluntary agreement. Men never stood isolated and independent, as this theory represents them: they were born into the household, and the household grew into the nation. It was never left to their choice, whether to associate themselves or not; they were associated by a law coeval with their existence, and from which they could never be freed but by an act of rebellion.

But though the household is the germ of the nation, there is a generic difference between them. The state is something more than an enlarge. ment of the family. The one is for the training and government of children, the other for the government of men. The one is an ordinance for the defense and nurture of that period of man's life, in which his personal existence and self-sustaining energy is slowly evolving itself; but, while admirably adapted to this end, it can not furnish a sphere wide enough for the developed powers of manhood. It is the nursery of man ;

but men do not always need to remain in the nursery. The young seedlings require for a time the sheltered enclosure and the gardener's watchful care; but if you leave them in their crowded ranks too long, you have a stinted growth. Transplant them, and give them room enough, and each becomes a wide-shadowing tree, whose roots clasp the earth in a strong embrace, and whose branches wrestle victoriously with the storm. So the discipline appointed for infancy, and most needful for it, would dwarf manhood. In those eastern monarchies, (as China,) where the state is nothing more than the household expanded, and the paternal character overshadows the regal in the chief magistrate, the government is an intrusive despotism, and the people remain children, overshadowed by an all-monopolizing power, which leaves them no room for growth, and keeps them in perpetual infancy.

A nation may be defined with sufficient accuracy for our present purpose, a number of families, so great as to exceed the limits of a tribe, formed into a body politic, which has within itself the exclusive right of jurisdiction over the territory which it permanently occupies. The physical structure of the globe necessitates the existence of mankind in distinct and separate nations. Its seas, and gulfs, and lakes, its trackless deserts and lofty mountains, are natural barriers and boundaries, which may, indeed, be partially overcome by the stern ambition of dominion, as when Rome marched steadily on to the conquest of the world, or the Asiatic chieftains swept over numberless lands; but yet do hinder the formation of a universal inonarchy. And if we compare the tribes of Greece with the overgrown monarchies of Asia, we shall see that many centers of national life are most favorable to personal freedom and intellectual

development. Within a narrow circumference, the relation of each part to the center is most close and strong. That it was the divine purpose to separate mankind into distinct nations, was early shown by a direct and supernatural interposi tion. When "the whole earth was of one language and of one speech," and men began to build a city and a tower to be the capital of a universal empire, he confounded their language, and so compelled them to go forth in separate families and tribes in search of new habitations. We believe that in that preternatural breaking up of society, the law of the household was honored; and that the nations, which grew out of that convulsion, were not mixed multitudes, chance-gathered, like the motley wrecks which the tempest strews upon the shore, but races of a common origin, bound together by the ties of kindred. It would be impossible to trace their history from that time, for emigration, wars, and the results of commerce, have changed all national boundaries a thousand times, and broken up and mingled together the great nations of antiquity, till their identity is al most lost. Nor does it fall within our purpose to show the origin of the nations of Christendom out of the ruins of the Roman Empire, mingled with the rude institutions of its northern conquerors, and to point out how, through the power of Christian faith, the rich and various products of European life were evolved out of the darkness and chaos of those convulsive times. Our design is simply to speak of National Unity as involved in the idea of a nation, and to show by what means alone a vital and permanent union can be given to many parts, and a territory be transformed into a country.

There is a blind spirit of cosmopolitism, disguised under the fair name of universal philanthropy, which wars against national distinc