learn. Not, indeed, their errors and follies, nor their virtues; but whenever they suggest great truths to our consideration we ought to consider them as readily as though they caine from our friends. The crisis then, it seems to me, calls for much more profound teaching in the congregations on some points, hitherto more matters of speculation than of practice. The brethren are not, I conceive, at all alive to the great interests they have at stake in the truth of the Christian hope; and are not exerting themselves in any reasonable proportion to their means of increasing the joys of heaven in their own hearts; of enlarging the Christian kingdom, by the introduction of even their own children and domestics; by contributions for the gospel, and for the advancement of the great cause of church education; of family improvement, and man's deliverance from adverse influences. Will you, my dear sir, lay these matters before the brethren ?

Our religious editors have too many little hobbies under them. The Christian Messenger is telling us of the mighty struggles he and others had some forty years ago against creeds, and for the divinely sacred and foreordained name Christian, as a sort of matronimic. The good old brother is like an old soldier telling of his youthful wars and hairbreadth leaps in the imminent deadly breach, and of his hard escapes from the jaws of Calvinism and old-fashioned Trinitarianism, and his rejoicing in the blood-bought liberties of promulging his own opinions, &c., free from church courts and synodical tribunals.

Our most amiable brother of the Evangelist has, indeed, said much of Christian excellence and the perfection of Christian character, and has much enlarged our views of the Christian hope, by pulling the whole millennium into it. But he, too, tells of thefts committed by the Mormons on his premises, and of auld lang syne, and has drunk too deeply into Millerism, and the fictions of an ærial millennium paradise.

The Israelite, in whom there is neither guile nor too much prudence, has recently sought a new alliance with new opinions, and after having worn out one whole suit of Boston Millerism is now repairing the elbows with a few speculations upon the way and manner of destroying the wicked, not out of the earth only, but also out of hell; and has got into new declarations of rights, for the sake of getting into

the church at Jeffersonville a preacher whose breath is as cold as death and whose tenets are considerably more Sadducean than Pharisaic, more animal than spiritual, and much more whimsical than philosophical.

I shall not further notice at present either editors or their peculiarities; they all mean well, and they all say many true and excellent things. But, ah me! How the dead flies vitiate their ointment; and their imprudencies waste, and sometimes almost annihilate, the good they have done. Could they but see, as many of us do, the loss we sustain by their well-meant indiscretions, and their love of paradox, and their curious disquisitions, some of them as unprofitable as a lecture upon the virtues of the marrow of a humming bird's spine, methinks they would renounce all these little puny hobbies, and engage most earnestly and indefatigably in the great work of holiness and happiness. If these hints and overtures are imprudent or injudicious forgive them; but really it seems as though the crisis calls for more manly, grave, and elevated efforts; and let us all see what is wanting to make us more pure, more benevolent, more useful, and more happy. SILAS.

REMARKS BY A. CAMPBELL.

To my mind no proposition is more evident than this:No man can truly sympathize with fallen humanity or take a cordial and effectual interest in saving any person, mother, wife, or daughter, from everlasting ruin, who is not himself truly converted to the Lord, a real, genuine, living disciple of the great Messiah. Patriots and philanthropists have been found amongst pagan Greeks and Romans, but their patriotism and philanthropy were, like themselves, essentially selfish, narrow, and exclusive. Their humanity wanted the heaven-born impulse and living warmth of a soul replete with the everlasting love of God to man; which, if a man once truly apprehends, melts, and softens, and subdues his heart to genuine, expansive benevolence, purified from the dross of selfishness, active as the pulse of life, and unwearied as the angels of mercy that minister to the saints.

A man must feel what it is to be a sinner before he can realize what it is to be a saint. He that has experimentally known the heart of a stranger, and felt the want of a friend and brother, can realize the delights of home, the

cordial greetings of father and mother, of brothers and sisters. He that has felt the bitterness of sin the weight of guilt, and the hidings of Jehovah's face, can best appreciate the calm sunshine and the heart-felt joy of a perfect reconciliation to our Father and our God. He that hath lost his sins and found himself can feel most sympathy for the prodigal sons around him, and will make the greatest exertions to bring them home to their Father's house.

But we have many such brethren who reason themselves out of their philanthropy by comparing themselves with themselves, rather than with their Master and Redeemer. Here, says A to himself, is my brother B, rich and increased in goods, with a small family and a large estate; he, too, delights to talk of the love of God to man-poor, fallen, ruined man he speaks of the anguish of a weeping, bleeding, dying Saviour, in effecting our reconciliation to God, and in carrying our sins and sorrows upon his head, and in his heart, into the land of forgetfulness. He thanks God for "his unspeakable gift," for "the unsearchable riches of Christ," and rejoices in him, who, "though he was rich, yet for our sakes made himself poor, that we, through his poverty, might be made rich;" and after all his ecstatic admiration of such soul-subduing benevolence, annually devotes to the honour of God and to the rescue of humanity from the miseries of ignorance, sin, and death, out of his estate of ten, twenty, thirty, or one hundred thousand dollars, some one per cent, some ten, twenty, thirty, or one hundred dollars per annum for the redemption of his race, of his kindred according to the flesh, from sin and death to righteousness and life! With such an example before him in the church, A, whose soul would prompt him to deeds of liberal benevolence, is chilled into a frigid parsimoniousness, and begins to compare his family of seven or eight sons and daughters, and his estate of eight or ten thousand dollars with A's family of one son and one daughter, and his estate of fifty or seventy thousand dollars. The result of the comparison is, I am sorry to say, that his heart retreats from its first generous impulse, and his soul contracts from hundreds to tens, and from tens to units; whereas, but for this unfortunate comparison, and still more unfortunate example, it would have risen from units to tens, and from tens to hundreds.

I choose to commence a more practical mode of teaching, in harmony with the peculiar genius of the crisis, by calling the attention of our brethren, in its most concentrated efforts, to the subject of Christian liberality. I have, indeed, long been of opinion that, after all, there is no better outward exponent of the true attributes of the soul, or the state of the moral affections of our nature, than those actions usually denoted by the word LIBERALITY.

Indeed, I impeach the liberality of the age before the supreme Court of Conscience, the associate judges, JUSTICE, TRUTH, and PHILANTHROPY being on the bench. I say I impeach the Christian liberality of the age with the robbery of God, with the Paganism of half the world, with the reign and tyranny of the man of sin, and the existence of that infernal brood of sects and parties, the damning sin of the present age. I may not now attempt the opening out of the numerous specifications and proofs requisite, in form of law, to make out the case in all its proper parts, in its amplitude and details; assuming that the statement of the facts admitted by the parties will suffice, without any of an ambiguous or debatable character. We shall therefore state a few of the common admissions of the parties, not one of which being challenged, we will assume that the case itself will be admitted.

1. " The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof."

2. He has, by his providence and his laws, distributed the earth and its fulness amongst the sons of Adam, and has retained not one acre, or one cent of all its wealth in his own hands for his own immediate use or appropriation.

3. He has constituted men as stewards of the riches and bounties of nature and providence, and makes them the managers of his lands, goods, and chattels, holding them severally and collectively bound to manage, use, and appropriate the earth and all its fulness according to his laws and requirements.

4. The Master has, therefore, made himself so dependent upon man for the means of accomplishing his benign purposes that, on one visit to the earth, during a short lifetime, he had not a domicile, a place to sleep, nor an ass on which to ride, only as he borrowed or received them from man.

5. Man is to be fed, educated, converted, and relieved in every exigency by the instrumentality of man, out of the

funds and means deposited in his hands and committed to his stewardship by the great Father, almoner, and proprietor of all.

6. In distributing the earth and its treasures amongst the sons of men he has employed their faculties, natural talents, and education, as well as their parentage, and other surrounding circumstances, amongst which are pre-eminently important time and place; by means of which, in his providential dispensation, he divides the earth and its fulness in various proportions amongst its inhabitants. To some he gives ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times more than to others; thus making both rich and poor. In this way a theatre is erected on which all may act their parts, form their characters, and acquire the attributes which may fit them for another and a superior state of existence.

7. The Lord is not an agrarian, in any sense of the word; nor has he made the human family on democratic principles. Every man is not fitted to be a governor, a teacher, or a king. Hence the infinite varieties and degrees of similitude in men's persons, heads, faces, families, fortunes, estates, &c.

8. He has made property, sometimes denominated riches, and that which represents it, money, essential to the preservation, comfort, and improvement- -even to the life and happiness of man; so that man cannot live without it. Hence the love of it is founded upon the necessity of it; hence said Solomon the wise, " Money answereth all things.' Yet the improper attachment to it, or the lust and love of it, savs Paul," is the root of all evil."

9. Money, therefore, or property represented by it, is essential to the life and salvation of man. Hence every man who possesses much of it must have power; because God has put so much of the life and salvation of men in his power, as he has the means of promoting them.

10. A Bible cannot be made without money; nor can a man preach the gospel without it. He must have clothing, he must have food; and, therefore, before he speaks a word, money or property must be had.

11. Not a soul can be educated, converted, or saved, without money or property; and if those who have it will not themselves become teachers and preachers, or impart their substance to those who will, no one can be enlightened, sanctified, or saved, and the world must be lost.