Then look around you, and see the exuberance of nature's gifts, the varied forms of beauty by which you are surrounded, and the countless sources from which you are constantly drawing happiness, and I know you will confess that God's appeal is always to the best powers of the soul. Instead of shutting us up in a dreary prison, where we can only be driven on in our wretched toil, by the worst and severest forms of terror, he has given us a bright and beautiful world, and rendered the way of duty secure and happy.

If we turn to society, and witness the effect of kindness upon the heart, and the feelings which it awakens even in the depraved and abandoned, we shall see that man has indeed the moral attributes by which Deity himself is distinguished. While those who are cruel and unkind, are looked upon with dislike, those who are affectionate in their disposition, cordial in their manners, and free in their good offices, will be greeted by the smile of friendship and the tears of joy, and their presence will light up the emotions of thankfulness, even in the bosoms of the uncultivated and degraded. Who that has gone out on an errand of mercy, has not seen the tear of gratitude steal down the rough cheek, and every exasperated feeling softened into kindness, by

the charities that have been granted, and the wishes of peace that have been expressed? Even the wretched prisoner, over whose dark heart the turbid waters of sin have long been running, and who has been for years the guilty companion of the vile and abandoned, has been elevated and reformed by the power of love. The agency of this divine principle has rendered the prison a house of reformation, and has aroused those noble powers that have turned the hearts of the worst criminals to God; so that, when they went out again to the world, instead of engaging in their accustomed transgressions, they became useful and virtuous members of society. And since men have copied after the example of God in their treatment of criminals, a new era has commenced in their history. The golden age of prophecy has begun to dawn, and the enrapturing visions of the ancient seers are beginning to be realized. The rod of love has brought water from the flinty heart, and so tamed the fierce and angry passions, as to cause the lamb and the lion to lie down together.

If, therefore, we would gain the soul, and call into action its noblest and loftiest powers, we must follow the example of Phidias, the first of Grecian sculptors, who, in his statue of Jupiter, portrayed the divine nature in the mildness of

clemency, as well as the majesty of power, justly thinking that this would be a new motive to excite the veneration of mortals. If careful to mark the character of sin, and God's eternal hostility to it, we need have no fear of urging in too earnest a manner the overflowings of infinite compassion, the height, depth, extent, and fulness of that love which has been proclaimed by angel voices to a guilty world, and to exhibit which Jesus died in agony upon the cross. I would that it were proclaimed, not only to the enlightened and virtuous of earth, but to all its rude and barbarous inhabitants; to the lowest and most grovelling; to every prisoner toiling in his prison-house. I would, too, that the heralds of salvation urged it with all the eloquence and faithfulness they can command; that they caused it to stand out in blazing letters of light in all their ministrations, and breathed it upon the people in the prayers which arise from the altars of their hearts. Then would they be greeted by the voice of welcome, and listened to as friends and brethren; and they would lead their people in the footsteps of the Lamb, just as a little child shall lead the lion and the leopard in that day when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord.

THE SACRAMENTS.

THOUGH We do not believe religious ordinances to be necessary to the spirit of Christianity, yet there is a beauty and a solemnity about them which will deeply impress, where, oftentimes, the impalpable soul of religion would be neither recognized nor felt. They are forms to embody the spirit; vases to preserve an essence of ethereal sweetness; shrines for a divinity which cannot be seen save by the eye of the human soul.

By "religious ordinances we would not be understood as meaning all the idle mummeries which have been borrowed from paganism, and enforced by the rack and the dungeon. We allude merely to those institutions which were approved and authorized by our Redeemer; to that sweet communion of love by which we commemorate the deeds he wrought for us; to the blessing of little children, the more ordinary services of prayer and praise, and to baptism, that beautiful type of the spiritual unction of our faith, and of the purification of our hearts through its hallowing influences.

We have no superstition concerning this rite. We do not esteem it in any degree essential to an elevated and redeeming faith, nor do we believe its vow to be heard farther up in heaven than the lowest murmur of the secret heart. We love it simply as we love any holy and earnest covenant of the spirit with the glorifying faith of our Redeemer. We love it for its deep sanctity, its tranquil beauty, its far-reaching influences. It was administered upon our Saviour, and by him, in turn, administered to others. Ought we not, as Christians, for his sake, to love and revere it as a beautiful and hallowed ordinance? As an ordinance, not as a spirit, a principle, an element of our religion; rather as a form, an outward sign, a seal upon an eternal and divine covenant.

It was a Sabbath morning; one of those hushed and balmy seasons when the functions of the soul cannot operate, save to adore and worship. Summer wore her richest garniture of leaves and flowers and the glorious sunshine was abroad with its softest and holiest influences. Whether, indeed, nature hushes herself to a deeper serenity on this hallowed day of the seven, or whether the hush of the human soul invests the material world with something of its own devotional repose, is a truth not distinctly recognized; but within us all there is a feeling