the employments of the laboring classes will break them up more or less into distinct castes, at the sacrifice of intellectual expansion and capacity for moral improvement. With the growing luxury and vice of the country, our larger towns and villages will, it is to be feared, embody a still greater amount of corruption. Of these incalculable evils, manufacturing towns will come in for their full share. Nay, it is easy to see that, without special preventive influence, they, of all places, will be most sorely scathed by the lava tide of profligacy and crime.

These emergencies must be suitably met, or we are undone. In the responsibility of meeting them aright, the whole religious community partakes. A few suggestions to ministers and Christians will be here indulged.

There must be then, most obviously, a special adaptedness of ministerial and Christian effort to the wants and peculiarities of manufacturing towns. Not forgetting that the sovereign power of God is the only source of success in saving men, it is still a truth not to be overlooked, that God works ordinarily by instrumentalities adapted to their intended ends; and that, other things equal, those means will be most blessed, which are the most perfectly fitted to accomplish their object, and are most wisely, perseveringly, and prayerfully applied. It is on this ground that we speak of the wants of these places as demanding special adaptedness of religious exertions. No fixed

routine of effort, mechanically pursued; no following of a beaten track; no stereotyped plans of action, will answer the purpose. Among a population transient almost as the water-courses by which they dwell, a minister cannot live on the "capital" of reputation and public confidence which he may have acquired by past years of prudent, indefatigable, and successful toil. Nor will a few splendid efforts atone for long intervals of dullness. Pulpit preparation must not be neglected. Do whatever else a minister may, if he be habitually careless on this point, his moorings are unsound, and his sheet anchor drags. No audience hears preaching more attentively than one composed of mechanics. And with little aid, perhaps, from mere bookish lore, there is in such an audience no lack of quick perception, of sound common sense judgment, and a demand, approaching even to fastidiousness, for clear, matured and solid exhibitions of truth. But the pastor must not stop here. materials, of which his church and congregation are composed, are, to a great extent, individuals, as distinguished from families. These require, as the means of attraction and union, a large amount of individual attention. The pastor's work, therefore, consists much in details; and generally his success will depend less upon a few great or brilliant efforts, than upon a multitude of things, in themselves perhaps small, skilfully and seasonably performed. His

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skill in tactics will go nearly or quite as far towards determining his success as his pulpit power.

His toils, like the fabled labors of Sisyphus, must be unintermitted. But if he have the blessing of God, the results will be proportionably great. Beneath his ministry are passing in quick succession scores and hundreds of minds to be molded for eternity by his hands. If he emulate the satisfaction of instrumentally "building up" a church, he may enjoy it in such a place, not merely for a few years, but for his life. Those who a year or two since were gathering around him, with the ardent attachment of his spiritual children, to cheer him with their sympathy and to lend him their aid, are now very probably gone. New faces present themselves every Sabbath. And these new comers must be converted, new conscripts for Christ must be perpetually enrolled, or the church, now numerous, and strong in mutual confidence and attachment, will be found to have ebbed from him in the refluent tide of emigration, leaving only the fragments of what was so lately "the pillar and ground of the truth."

This representation applies, in its whole extent, only to those places where the body of the population is composed of manufacturers. But it is true proportionably of smaller establishments. And it is made, not to discourage ministers from entering these fields of labor, but to correct an impression under which, we have sometimes suspected, ministers of acknow

ledged power have declined invitations to the pastoral charge of such churches; viz: that they do not promise sufficient opportunities of usefulness. Let a minister throw himself upon such a community, regardless of emolument, honor, or ease, for the single purpose, in the strength of God, of winning men to Christ, and he shall have souls for his hire. True and warm hearts will rally for his countenance and support in every good enterprise. Aarons and Hurs will not be wanting. He shall not labor in vain, or spend his strength for naught.

In no communities so much as in these, does the prosperity of religion depend so much on the exertions of private members of the church in their individual and social capacities. They can perform services vital to the growth and prosperity of the church, which no pastor, without the gift of ubiquity, and scarcely even then, could render. The character and circumstances of the population, necessarily throw upon them much of the work of cementing and consolidating the church, and of securing the attendance of strangers upon the means of grace; introducing them, when suitable, to the pastor; and following up the favorable impressions which they may have received in the sanctuary. All the responsibility which rests upon Christians in other places, for the maintenance of a sound public sentiment, is incurred tenfold in a manufacturing village. No where are they called upon to take so high and decided a ground

on the subjects of Intemperance, Sabbath-breaking, and every other form of open vice. On all these subjects it emphatically concerns Christians thus circumstanced to avoid the appearance of evil; to abstain from what their circumstances and relations to others render inexpedient, as well as from what is morally and universally wrong. Let those habits of wasteful expenditure, of indulging in idle and fashionable amusements and follies, which have ensnared and ruined so many youths of both sexes, be met by professing Christians with the sternest and most decided reprobation. The peculiar susceptibility of all assemblages of youth, to the contagion of example, gives transcendent importance to the strictest consistency, in all these matters, on the part of professed followers of Christ. Let the youthful female friends of the Redeemer ponder well their peculiar responsibilities. Woman's energy and perseverance have here done wonders. It is ordinarily for the females of such a community to give tone to its public sentiment on morals and religion, and to decide how general shall be the attendance upon the sanctuary, the Sabbath school, and the meetings for prayer and for religious inquiry. It would be interesting, did space allow, to record some of the results of the divine blessing upon the exertions of females employed in manufactories. But their record is in heaven, and their memorial is on high. Let every female so situated, understand her obligations to Christ, and aspire to the enviable en