Papacy and despotism ride in the same with merciless tyrants and spiritual despots death car, and spread fearful moral desolation can do, will not save them from the catasin their burning course; but they are hasten- trophe which awaits them! ing to a fearful and simultaneous overthrow! How could Archbishop Hughes, of New York City, unblushingly publish abroad that "Every body should know that we have for our mission to convert the world, including the inhabitants of the United States; nay, more to convert all pagan and Protestant countries: even England, and her proud Parliament and Imperial Sovereign!"

The religious state of the Christian world is becoming such, that systems of error involving salvation irrespective of character, which deny human depravity and accountability, the inspiration of the Scriptures and immortality of the soul, the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ, or the existence of a God, secure no permanent organized existence. Freemen demand a religion which breathes the free spirit of the Gospel. "If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed: and where the Spirit of God is, there is liberty.”

7. It is the age of the revival of the spirit of primitive Christianity.

What! Great Britain and America embrace all the dogmas of the Romish church? Never! What! the citizens of the United States, accustomed to independence of thought, to free speech, a free press, and freedom to worship God, ever prostrate themselves at the feet of the Pope? Never, In these latter days frequent pentecostal while the earth is green, the sky is blue, and seasons have been enjoyed. It is an age of justice is the habitation of God's throne! the glorious ministration of the Spirit. What Never, while we are endowed with common age of the world has enjoyed richer sanctusense and the Word of God. What if there ary privileges, a more evangelical ministry, have been some defections from the Estab-more quiet Sabbaths, and more extensive relished Church of England, almost exclusively vivals of religion, than the present? Revivals from the high church party? This arises from of religion are becoming much more frequent the fact that the church establishment of and prevalent than in former years. Churches England was never thoroughly Protestant. It become alarmed which do not enjoy frequent has always retained a tincture of the Papacy. revivals, and set themselves with fasting, huThe English Reformation was, in a measure, miliation and prayer, to seek the divine blessa contest between Henry VIII., King of ing. Our institutions of learning and misEngland, and Leo X., Pope of Rome. Henry sion churches enjoy frequent seasons of rewas at first a bigoted Papist, and, for his op-vival, which are the glory of Zion, the life position to Luther, was honored by the Pope with the title of "Defender of the Faith." Henry, subsequently falling out with the Pope for refusing to divorce him from his wife, assumed the government of ecclesiastical affairs, and entitled himself "Supreme

Head of the Church."

Modern Puseyism is a germ of a mongrel Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Some Puseyites have, some time since, arrived at Rome others are wheeling towards the Vatican and St. Peter's; while some have traveled "as far as the Appii Forum and the Three Taverns." But what has Protestantism to fear? Ecclesiastical History records the fact, that the number of Roman Catholics converted to Protestantism is as ten to one. Prophecy and Providence teach us that both the civil and ecclesiastical despotisms of this world are alike doomed institutions. The day of their final overthrow draweth nigh. All that cruel men and wily devils, together

buoy of the Church, and the hope of a perishing world. Revivals furnish one of the strongest grounds of hope for the permanency of our free institutions.

From about the commencement of the present century, when our age had its beginning, God has been granting the effusions of his Spirit in a measure unprecedented since the apostolical period. We cannot magnify the importance of revivals too much; and God deserves to be more praised and entreated for revivals, ten thousand times, than he Las been ; even by such as have the deepest sense of their importance.

Systems of politics may clash, demagogues may turn traitors, Popery may strive to gain the ascendancy. Ephemeral errors may gain a transient notoriety. Infidelity may rear her brazen front. Mobocrats may bid defiance to law. Licentiousness, intemperance and oppression may prevail for a time; but let revivals of pure religion be multiplied and

spread abroad, and a conservative influence philosophy at Athens, of arms at Rome, and will be exerted, which will save Christian has become the object of absorbing interest lands from the destiny of those countries to the known world!

which have not been blessed by the institutions of the Gospel.

The spirit of the age is the most signally displayed in the associations of Christians of the different denominations in the grand and sublime enterprise of evangelizing the world. Behold them uniting their prayers and their contributions in sustaining Bible, tract, and education societies; Foreign and Home Missionary and Seamen's Friend societies; Sunday-school, infant school, and temperance societies, besides free associations of Christians of every name and sect, for purely philanthropic, peaceful and benevolent purposes. What age, since that of the apostles, has displayed more of the spirit of primitive Christianity than the present?

In the preceding discussion we have dwelt upon the spirit of the age, as evinced in the practical results of science, of useful inventions, of increased international communications, in the growing spirit of freedom and of enlarged benevolence, in the ordeal by which systems of religion are tested, and more especially by the revival of the spirit of primitive Christianity.

Speaking of the spirit of the age, merely as a philosopher, I should be constrained to say, Christianity must prevail! for she has secured the aid of the most powerful principles of human nature. All the purely moral and Christian feeling in the community is pledged to her support. She can summon to the encounter, as with the flourish of a trumpet, an array of intelligence, bidding defiance to opposition.

Speaking as a Christian, I am compelled to say, Christianity must triumph. The promise of God is her security - Omnipotence is her bulwark. A small room would once hold all the Christians in the wide world. The legions of hell and the combined power of the Romish, Greek and Jewish churches waged a war of extermination against that little band of disciples. The church has been preserved. Christianity has girded on her armor and challenged the conflict. The stupendous temples of paganism, with their lascivious deities and polluted altars, are crumbling to dust. Idolatry, all covered with blood, is staggering to the fall. Mohammedism is waning, and the Cross is Crescent. The warhoop of the Indian grows fainter and fainter. Zion's sentinels blow louder and yet louder the Gospel trumpet. With triumphant march over the fields which have been won, the Gospel heralds press on to new fields of conquest, shouting victory! victory!

History informs us of an iron age, a pacific age, the dark ages, the Augustan age, the martyr age; and still later of the age of inventions, the crisis age, an electricity age, the age of intensity and dispatch. The nineteenth century may be emphatically called the golden Christian age, the working period Do you ask-Watchman, what of the night? of the world, the practical age of Christianity. Traveler, the morning cometh: the night is The conversion of the entire world has been far spent, the day is at hand! What an inundertaken in right earnest, with a holy en-expressible privilege to live in such a day! thusiasm, which lifts the voice of entreaty to the Almighty saying, “I will not let thee go till thou establish, till thou make Jerusalem a praise in the earth." The clocks of prophecy and providence both set in harmony to the divine decree, are striking the eleventh hour. Under God, an evangelical ministry, a holy church and a sanctified press, will speed the flight of the angel of Christendom, "having the everlasting Gospel to preach to every nation and kindred and tongue and people." Christianity possesses the elements of a mightier influence over the popular mind than commerce, internal improvements, politics, literature, or the arts. It superseded the excitement of Judaism at Jerusalem, of

greater than that of seeing Christ and his Apostles. "For many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them." It is better to live in this age than even in the period of the millennium. God has put into our hands the golden skirts of the millennium, that we may labor to accelerate its joyful coming. We are approaching not only the Saturday evening of time, but the Sabbath, the great Sabbath of the world draweth nigh. The morning twilight of that blissful age streaks the eastern skies. The Jubilee of the church hastens. Her signals are hung out. The anthem of ten thou

sand voices is already thundering through the
earth Alleluia! "for the kingdoms of this
world are become the kingdoms of our Lord,
and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever
and ever. For the Lord God Omnipotent
reigneth."

"The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks
Shout to each other, and the mountain tops
From distant mountains catch the flying joy,
Till nation after nation taught the strain,
Earth rolls the rapturous hosanna round."

For The Casket.

LETTERS FROM A FATHER TO HIS
SON.

LETTER II. RELIGION.

stand by religion. It is simply to love God above everything else, and to serve him with the whole heart. And this is properly the prerogative of man. The brutes cannot do it, because they have not the faculties-they are not rational. But what would you say of the man who should refuse to do this, and not acknowledge that he is under any obligations to his Maker? Surely, you would say that he would not answer the end of his creation. He would degrade his nature. He would even sink himself below the brutes; for

"The brutes obey their God,

And bow their necks to man;

But we, more base, more brutish things,
Reject his easy reign."

Man, without religion, is an anomaly; and as far as we know, is the only being in the universe, with the exception of the fallen angels, that does not answer the end of his creation; and even he would blush at the idea of his delinquency in this respect, were it not that his nature is so deeply depraved.

And now, my dear son, I am encouraged

My Dear Son, I shall make religion the subject of this letter, which I consider the most important of all subjects. As far as we know, man is the only religious being in the world; and for this simple reason, that he alone is endowed with a rational and intelligent mind. All other animals seem to be deprived of the noble faculty of reason, conse-in recommending religion to you, from the quently they are incapable of knowing, loving or serving God. Religion, then, seems to be the glory of man, and that which most eminently distinguishes him from all other beings. It is said that "God created man in his own image." But in what does this image consist? It cannot be in the form or size of his body. It must consist in his soul, which, like its author, is rational, intelligent and immortal. We know that man is superior, infinitely superior to all other animals, and for the very reason that he is endowed with a rational and immortal soul a soul that is capable of contemplating and admiring the infinite perfections of Deity. Every creature was made to answer some noble and valuable purpose. And for what purpose, do you suppose, man was created? or, in other words, "What is the chief end of man?" The answer to this, you learned many years ago in your Catechism-"Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever." But how is man to glorify God? Why, he must do it by loving him, and obeying his will. This is all that God requires of his creature, man. And is it not a most reasonable thing that the creature should love and serve the Creator? I know that you will admit this to be the case. Well, this is all that we under

fact that you are a rational and an intelligent creature. You are possessed of those faculties which, more than anything else, assimilate you to your Creator. You have, also, arrived at that period of life when the faculties of the mind have begun to develop themselves. You are capable of reasoning, and can appreciate an argument. Force is used to move inert matter; brutes act from instinct, but man is influenced by motive. God himself never forces his creatures to become religious. It must be a voluntary thing; otherwise there would be no virtue or morality attached to it, and man, after all, would lose his reward. Nothing would rejoice me more than to see you become religious, but I wish you to become religious from principle; I wish you to embrace religion, because you clearly see that it is right, and that it is both your duty and your interest to do so. I wish you to understand what you do, and to be able to give a reason for it; and not be like some who profess religion and join the church, merely because it is fashionable, or because some of their friends desire them to do so. I hope you will see that there is too much at stake to trifle with religion in this way.

I hope you will look upon religion as emphatically "the one thing needful,” and “the

good part that shall never be taken from is the preservation of life, the cure of disease, you." Yes, religion is more valuable than or the raising of a crop, he employs natural anything and everything beside. Riches will means, and man is the agent. Or if the work evade your grasp; honor is an airy phantom; is of a moral or spiritual nature, such as the the world will deceive you, and life itself regeneration of the soul, he employs moral or fail; but religion will last forever - it will spiritual means, but still man is the agent. We never be taken from you, according to the are as really dependent on God for a crop, as Saviour's own declaration. You have been we are for any spiritual blessing; for it is he taught to read the Bible, and to look upon it that giveth sunshine and rain, without which as a revelation from Heaven. Now, the Bible the earth would not yield her increase; and declares that "the soul that sinneth shall yet who would be so foolish as to sit still, die." Again it says "Without holiness, and neither plow nor sow, because he could no man shall see the Lord." And again - not make his corn grow? Just so in spiritual Nothing that is unholy or unclean, shall matters. We are dependent on God for a ever enter into the kingdom of heaven." new heart, just as we are for a crop ; but shall Then you see that every wicked unregenerated we, on that account, sit still, and use no soul is, by an irrevocable decree, excluded from the kingdom of heaven. Hence, then, appears the necessity of regeneration, or the new birth. "Ye must be born again," says the Saviour, “or ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven."

efforts to obtain a new heart? We certainly would act very foolishly and inconsistently, and very differently from what we would in temporal things; for we never hear a man make this objection, and act upon this principle with regard to his crop. Do you ask But perhaps you may ask, "How is this what are the means to be used in obtaining change to be effected? You cannot change the blessings of salvation? This you learned your own heart, or regenerate your own soul." in your Catechism --"The outward and orI know that this is a common difficulty with dinary means whereby Christ communicateth the young, and not unfrequently they make to us the benefits of redemption, are his orthis an excuse for not coming to Christ, ordinances, especially the Word, sacraments and embracing religion. But really, it is a very prayer, all of which are made effectual to the flimsy excuse, and one which a man of sense elect for salvation." You must read the should never make. However, persons are Word of God, and meditate upon it; and in often sincere in making this excuse, and it this way you will learn what the will of God requires some explanation. The difficulty is, and what he requires you to do; and then arises from a misapprehension of our duty, or you must pray that he would enable you to do from trying to reconcile man's free agency your duty, and that he would give you a new with God's sovereignty-a thing which no heart and an upright spirit. God has given man can do understandingly. But this we us every encouragement to go to him in have nothing to do with in coming to Christ. prayer, for he has said- "If ye ask, ye shall Each truth is most clearly taught in the Bible receive; if ye seek, ye shall find; if ye knock, --namely, that man is a free agent, and God a it shall be opened." He has also said, that Sovereign, and we must believe them sepa-"Whatsoever ye ask in Christ's name, believrately; but when we attempt to reconcile them, ing, ye shall receive." There is no blessing we become lost in the labyrinths of mystery. that God will withhold from us, if we ask It is true that you cannot change your own him. He is even more kind and tender heartheart, or regenerate your own soul. This is ed than any earthly father can be, and mole the prerogative of God alone. But we should ready to bestow blessings upon his children. remember that he works through means. He O, how kind is this! and how highly favored has decreed that means shall be used in the are we who have such a kind Father to go to regeneration of the soul, as well as in anything else; and man must use those means, or he cannot hope that the end shall be accomplished. The means which God has ordained, are always suited to the nature of the work to be accomplished, whether natural or moral. For instance, if the thing to be done

one who is ever waiting to be gracious, and encourages us to bring all our wants to him, with the assurance that he will supply them! Never has he sent any empty away, and he assures us that he never will; for "Him that cometh unto me," says the Saviour, "I will in nowise cast out." But re