every son who, in religion and moral rectitude, resembles his Puritan sire, is made the subject of patriotic suspicion that he is plotting against the liberties of his country. This state of things, we lament to say, is but the counterpart of that which is extensively prevalent in this the father-land. The thoughts of Dr. Beecher are so profound, so just, and, at this moment, so applicable to England, that we cannot withhold a portion of one of his admirable dissertations: Theologically and Politically, in a Series of Lectures."* Dr. Beecher sounds the trumpet with a dread blast, to awaken, if possible, the virtue of the land to the evils which are impending over it. The principle of organization, it seems, is being extensively employed for purposes of Atheistic education. He is emphatic on the fact of the existence of Atheism in Germany and other parts of Europe. A large body of the American citizens, chiefly European emigrants, is sympathising with the European movement; and the Rationalists have boldly avowed their purpose to abolish the Sabbath, and in proof of their sincerity, and in illustration of their doctrine, they have actually "commenced public banquets and theatrical exhibitions on that day"!tion, and lay its heavy hand upon the Means are being diligently and vigorously employed "to prepare society for dissolution"! If still the number of these Reformers be comparatively limited, yet their activity compensates for that defect. Dr. Beecher is most eloquent in his appeals to his countrymen to awake from their torpor, and prepare for the events which await them. Things are clearly in a very critical condition. Dr. Beecher bears the following mournful testimony to the descending spirit of the nation : The energetic virtue of our Puritan ancestry, while we refuse not the blessings it has sent down to us, and which, with a less elastic tone, had never reached us, we are beginning to make the subject of apology and the butt of ridicule. From generation to generation, the threadbare story is going down, that they were too strict; while * A very excellent and cheap edition of this work has been transmitted to us by Messrs. Clarke and Beeton, Foreign Booksellers, which has our most cordial recommendation. VIRTUE AND LIBERTY. The necessity of intelligence and virtue to the perpetuity of republican liberty, is as real as it is proverbial. Despotism may coerce the obedience of dark, ferocious mind against inclina boiling wrath within. But, in republics, public sentiment will rule: and what will that public sentiment be which emanates from the heart of man, unchastened by the hopes and fears of eternity, and undirected by coercive human laws, and not humanized by the kind affinities of the family, and unstimulated to industry by the charm of personal acquisition, possession, and enjoyment?-Naked, ferocious human nature, conglomerated and condensed, in respect to all its tendencies to evil. Rivers do not more copiously and irresistibly bear onward their burden to the ocean, nor does the rock, loosed from the cliff, with more certain desolation thunder down the precipice, than man, tempted and unrestrained, rushes on to dissipation and ruin. All governments originate in the necessities of self-defence against the violent evil propensities of man. Walled cities, armies, navies, and notes of hand and bonds, and prisons and death, are memorials indicative of the indomitable propensity of man to evil. It is but a little, too, which law can preserve and protect from ingenious fraud, or successful violence. It has no sleepless omniscient eye, no omnipresent, omnipotent arm. Such delinquents only can be punished as can be arrested and convicted by a regular process of evidence. A government is needed to corroborate the public laws of men,which can look in upon the heart, and intimidate and stifle the young desire of evil, which can rouse up fear about the path of guilt, and tranquillize the madness of the heart. There never has been but one government professedly atheistic. The National Assembly of France, in the commencement of the revolution, appointed a committee to inquire and report whether there were a God: and the committee reported that there could be no liberty on earth while there was believed to be a God in heaven; and that there is no God, and that death is an eternal sleep. The Assembly adopted the report, abolished the Sabbath, burnt the Bible, instituted the decade, and ordained the worship of the goddess of liberty, in the person of a vile woman. But the consequences were too terrible to be endured; it converted the most polished nation of Europe into a nation of fiends and furies, and the theatre of voluptuous refinement into a stall of blood. The mighty Mind who governs the universe-whose being they had denied, whose word they had burnt, whose worship they had abolished, whose protection they had rejected, and whose wrath they defied-withdrew his protection, and gave them up; and, with the ferocity of famished tigers, they fastened on each other's throats, and commenced the work of death, till, quickly, few were left alive to tell the tale of woe. And yet this dreadful experiment these men would repeat upon us. The entire corroborating action of the government of God, with all its satellite institutions, they would abolish, to let out upon society in wrath, without mixture and without measure, the impatient depravity of man. The family-the foundation of the political edifice, the methodiser of the world's business, and the mainspring of its industry-they would demolish. The family--the sanctuary of the pure and warm affections, where the helpless find protection, the wretched sympathy, and the wayward undying affection, while parental hearts live to love, and pray, and forgive-they would disband and desecrate. The familythat school of indelible early impression, and of unextinguished affectionthat verdant spot in life's dreary waste, about which memory lingers-that centre of attraction, which holds back the heady and highminded, and whose cords bring out of the vortex the shipwrecked mariner, after the last strand of every other cable is parted-these political Vandals would dismantle. The fire on its altars they would put out; the cold hand of death they would place on the warm beatings of its heart; to substitute the vagrancy of desire, the rage of lust, and the solitude, and disease, and desolation which follow the footsteps of unregulated nature, exhausted by excess. The possession of the soil in fee simple, which to industry is like the action of the sun to the movements of the heavenly bodies, they would exchange for the common field, where men perform their tasks, and receive their rations, and eat, and drink, and sleep, and die; while infancy is committed to the tender mercies of state nurseries, in which, during the experiment in France, about nine out of ten died,-a system which, by infanticide and disease, had, in half a century, reduced by one-half the population of the Sandwich Islands, and, were it to be universal and permanent, would, in a few centuries, nearly depopulate the earth. Thus would political atheism suspend the kind attractions of Heaven upon us, and let out the storm of guilty passion, and, by one disastrous wave, from stem to stern, make a clear breach over us, sweeping away what patriots, and Christians, and Heaven have done to render us happy. It would unspiritualize our souls, cut off eternity from our being, to hang its leaden weights upon the wheels of our machine, till it run down and stop for ever. It would teach us to regard accountability as a fiction, and right and wrong as obsolete terms, without use or meaning; while, with signal consistency, it anathematized the ministry of Christ, eulogized the most abominable crimes, and covered the most exalted virtues with contempt and obloquy. my purpose to give the subject a thorough discussion, as associated with the open, avowed purpose of a class of men to set aside utterly the government of God, the existence of marriage and of separate property, and the influence of all our political institutions. Let the means and their adaptation to the end be well considered: tracts, and lectures, and paragraphs, and treatises, addressed to those principles of human discontent and insubordination in the masses, which have rendered it difficult to protect life and property, and maintain the peace and order of society,-recognizing their misery, sympathizing with them in their wrongs, and inflaming by argument and by ridicule their envy, and pride, and rage, The entire system is constructed for the accommodation of the most disgusting licentiousness, and produces the most fearful paroxysms of infuriated depravity. It reduces man to be the insect of a day, and renders murder an event of no more magnitude than the killing of a fly. What is it to kill a man?" said one of these atheistic philosophers, while the work of death was going on, and the blood was flowing from the guillotine as from an inexhaustible fountain ; "Only just to change the direction of a few ounces of blood." And so, in the progress of the revolution which they contrived and let out upon the world, they changed, in about five millions of instances, the direction of a few ounces of blood. But more than sufficient has been-tracts filled with specious cavils, and said to establish the Vandal tendency of political atheism upon our republican institutions. If the iron governments of Europe, justified by age, custom, power, and the sanctions of eternity perverted to sustain them, could not stand, how shall we of yesterday escape, should the action of the same baleful cause be concentrated upon us? To us it would be like the falling of the dam, and the desolation of the unobstructed flood,-like the extinction of the orb of day,-like the suspension of gravity, and the reign of chaos. I am not an alarmist, to proclaim danger when there is none; nor a false prophet, to conceal it when it approaches. I trust that my country will live, and rise to a glorious immortality. But if she should fall on evil times, and be ruined, while the fires of her burning ascend, and the fragments of her wreck are passing by, and the chains of her sons going to captivity are riveting, I intend to be able to retain the consolation of Hector amid the ruins of burning Troy : "Si Pergama dextra Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuis sent. The relations of the Divine govern ment to republican institutions, the absolute necessity of an all-pervading moral influence, and the certain direful consequences of an exclusively prevalent leaven of Infidelity, are, I am persuaded, but imperfectly, and to a very limited extent, understood. It is popular sophistry, and undermining scepticism, eradicating conscience and principle, and inspiring ridicule and blasphemy, and the most unlimited licentiousness,-directed especially to the uninformed and unevangelized portion of our population in city and country, on the farm and in the workshop and manufactory,- swarming, like the frogs of Egypt, from the centre to the circumference of our land,designed and eminently calculated to divide society against itself, by fostering invidious distinctions between the labouring and intellectual classes, and the relatively poor and the rich,-exhibiting industry, and separate property, and virtue, as offences against | society, and poverty and vice as the result only of religion, and laws, and persecution,-till the physical power, misdirected and infuriated, shall turn that impatient energy against the institutions of liberty, which in Europe was turned against the feudal system, and thrones, and despotism. Let them that have ears to hear, hear what this good and great man has said to his countrymen ! His closing thoughts are not less remarkable: Consider, also, with how much greater ease society may be undermined and destroyed, than organized and built up. Slowly and reluctantly does human nature rise from ignorance, and sloth, and animalism; and many hands and constant effort are required to raise and hold up the sluggish mass, while a single hand may suffice to cut the cord, and let it thunder back upon destruction. A well-tuned orchestra and a harmonious choir demand science and skill, while a fool can put the instruments out of tune, and send out notes of discord. To raise a garden to its highest state of culture, taste, and beauty, requires the experience of generations; but a herd of swine may root it all up in a day. It must not be forgotten, moreover, in this comparison of forces, that, for the destruction of our institutions, the bad passions only of our nature are needed in a field where the seed is thick sown spontaneously, and the vegetation is rapid and rank, and the harvest abundant, without culture. No Bibles are needed, nor sanctuaries, nor laws, nor courts, nor Sabbaths, nor ministers of evil, to prevent the extinction and secure the continuance of selfishness, and pride, and envy, and covetousness, and ambition, and fraud, and sloth, and inebriation, and revenge; while all possible influences of revelation, and law, and schools, and families, and religious institutions, can scarcely keep down the intrusive weeds, and give space and nutrition to the plants of virtue. Che Fragment Basket. DISPERSION OF THE BIBLE. The wide dispersion of our English Bible may be freely conceded, at present, as being but little more than "seed corn," or as "the preparation of the ground for the sower;" but every intelligent Christian, knowing that the instrument of regeneration is the "word of truth," and that the volume cannot be sent where its sacred and only infallible interpreter is not present, to attend upon its devout perusal, will not fail to mark the wide and growing dispersion not only as the most important, but in the proper sense of the terms, infinitely the greatest movement of our day. He will never, indeed, confound the word which is to be read with that which is to be spoken, or even imagine that anything can relieve from the imperative obligations involved in the Redeemer's last commission to his servants; but still it is not in him with a vacant or indifferent eye to behold such a dispersion of the word of God. It is spoken of too generally only as a book, but to him it is the voice of the living God. He regards it as a rule, in the sense both of a law and a stand ard, perfectly sufficient for its purpose; touching every principle of human action, and admitting of no appeal "This dispersion, too," he says, "is altogether unprecedented, and therefore certainly never before, since their English Bible was in existence, were the Christian people of this language so loudly called upon, and individually, to mark the words of their common Mediator, and on behalf of their country and the world, to act accordingly." Luke xi. 13; Matt. vii. 7, 8, 12.Annals of the English Bible. WEBSTER'S ESTIMATE OF COLPORTAGE. A plain pious colporteur made arrangements to present the objects of his humble mission at Marshfield. When it was ascertained that Daniel Webster was to be at his home for the Sabbath, it was thought expedient to forego the full presentation of this object, that a more elaborate discourse might be preached. At the close of the sermon the colporteur was permitted to make a brief address, in which he unfolded, in great simplicity, the bearings of the system of colportage. When the congregation was dismissed, Mr. Webster took the colporteur by the hand, invited him to his house, expressed his regret that he had not occupied the entire service with his interesting narration and appeal, placed ten dollars in his hands as a donation, and said, "You have got hold of the right string, sir; if such books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country, and the people do not become religious, I do not know what is to be come of us as a nation." His comprehensive mind grasped at once the relations of a system combining simplicity, economy, efficiency, and benevolence. WORKING MEN. The expression, "Working class," or "Working men," must mean either those men who physically work without thinking; in which case it will not be very acceptable to those who arrogate it, and a wind or water-mill, working day and night, would be the beau ideal of a working man; or it must mean men who work and think. But if this is meant, who is not a working man, and who is? Is the physician who follows his vocation at any hour of the day, the lawyer who sits up late at night, the scholar who sacrifices his health to his science, a conscientious editor whose work never rests,-are all these, who rise much earlier and go to bed much later than those who call themselves working men par excellence, no working men? Is a Humboldt, who braves, in the pursuit of his noble and chivalrous career, fever, beasts of prey, and insupportable insects, under a thousand privations; is a Champollion, who exposes himself to the burning sun of Egypt, to learn the lesson of the past; is a Parry, who dares the ices of the pole; a Davy, a Herschel, who enjoy no rest so regular, no health so sound, as that of any farmer,-are not all these hard-working men? The division is entirely artificial and untenable; and, therefore, if acted upon, highly mischievous. It is to be regretted, then, that so fictitious a thing is made, not unfrequently, a ground of political division, as though the interests of those who apply their mind to the changing and moulding of materials were separated from those who consume their productions, or assist them essentially in discovering the best way of mastering the material.—Lieber. Poetry. THE MOTHER'S PRAYER. [The beautiful lines below were written in March, 1852, by one whose spirit has since taken its flight. She possessed a rare poetical talent, and gave promise of becoming an authoress of note; but hers was a frail spirit, and ere eighteen summers had passed over her head she was called to her reward.] THE mother lay on her dying bed, And beside her stood her son; With one hand placed on his youthful head, Her cheek was pale, and her eye grew dim, Oh! keep him safe, and when life is o'er, And a wail rose o'er the dead; And her name is scarcely known. Because she hath pass'd away? And well hath she won her rest; Were none by her efforts bless'd? Go mark that man who is bow'd with age, Whose brow bears the wreath of frost; Long hath he walk'd o'er the world's broad stage, Ask him if her life was lost. For he, though changed, is the selfsame child That stood by her dying bed, And sobb'd aloud in his sorrow wild, When he found his mother dead. Mark his reply: "I have wander'd far, I have swerved from duty's track; |