ENTERED According to an Act of Congress, in the year 1838, by JOHN S. TAYLOR, In the Clerk's office of the District Court for the Southern District of NEW YORK. STEREOTYPED BY SMITH AND WRIGHT, NEW YORK. TO THE MEMOIR OF THE LIFE OF THE REV. ELIJAH P. LOVEJOY, MURDERED IN THE DEFENCE OF THE LIB ERTY OF THE PRESS AT ALTON, IN THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, ON THE 7TH NOVEMBER, 1837. In the biographical narratives of the Founder of the Christian religion, and of his primitive disciples, there is an internal evidence of truth, not less conclusive than that of the miracles which they performed. The miracles were the evidence necessary to prove the authenticity of his mission to his cotemporaries, to whom he was accredited, to whom he revealed the hidden mystery of their own immortality, and to whom he proclaimed the laws of their own nature, the obligations of mutual benevolence and charity :—love upon earth—and life hereafter, were the everlasting pillars of his system of religion and of morals. So congenial to the nature of man are this precept, and this promise, that on presenting them in their simplicity to the mind, it would seem as if they must meet the universal acquiescence and assent of every intelligent human being. But before the precept of brotherly love, as the universal law of human kind, carried out to its logical conclusions, empires and kingdoms, principalities and powers, War and Slavery, were destined to fall prostrate, to crumble into dust, and to be extinguished on the surface of the globe. The first extensive operation of the Christian system of religion and morals, was to demolish the religion of Rome, the mistress of the world, and at the same time, to abolish the ritual portion of the Jewish religion-systems of government as well as systems of religion, were to be overthrown, subdued, annihilated by this simple ray of supernatural light, and with those systems were to be overcome and vanquished all the selfish and sordid passions of man's nature, and all the aggregations of physical human power. In the progressive revolutions effected by the Christian system of religion and morals, it was in the order of Providence that its operations should be slow and gradual, embracing a period of many thousand years. Its first converts were among the humble and the lowly-the diseased who had no physician; and the vicious who had no friend. Its first apostles were fishermen, publicans, and tent-makers. The earthly condition of the Messiah was to be the son of a carpenter, and the first of his disciples above the rank of a centurion, is known only as having offered a sepulchre for his grave. For the propagation of his doctrines he disclaimed once and again, with undeviating perseverance all recourse to an arm of flesh. He declared that his kingdom was not of this world. He declared that he came not to destroy, but to fulfil. He commanded his disci |