sentiment of religion, our ideas thereof, if true, shall bless them in their deepest, dearest life. They will rejoice if we shall break the yokes from off their necks, and rend asunder the old traditionveil which hides from them their Father's face. All of your piety, partial or total, shall go down to gladden the faces of your children, and to bless their souls for ever and for ever.

ary

VI.

OF THE CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.

LET US GO ON UNTO PERFECTION. - Heb. vi. 1.

THE highest product of a nation is its men; of you and me is our character, the life which we make out of our time. Our reputation is what we come to be thought of, our character what we come to be. In this character the most important element is the religious, for it is to be the guide and director of all the rest, the foundation-element of human excellence.

In general our character is the result of three factors, namely, of our Nature, both that which is human, and which we have as men in common with all mankind, and that which is individual, and which we have as Sarah or George, in distinction from all men; next, of the Educational Forces about us; and, finally, of our own Will, which we exercise, and so determine the use we make of the

two other factors; for it is for us to determine whether we will lie flat before natural instincts and educational forces, or modify their action upon us.

What is true in general of all culture is true in special of religious education. Religious character is the result of these three factors.

I suppose every earnest man, who knows what religion is, desires to become a religious man, to do the most of religious duty, have the most of religious rights, and enjoy the most of religious welfare; to give the most for God, and receive the most from Him. It does not always appear so, yet really is. At the bottom of our hearts we all wish for that. We have been misled by blind guides, who did not always mean to deceive us; we have often gone astray, led off by our instinctive passion in youth, our voluntary calculation in manhood, yet never meaning to deceive ourselves. But there is none of us who does not desire to be a religious man, at least, I never met a man who confessed it, or of whom I thought it true. But, of course, they desire it with various degrees of will.

Writers often divide men into two classes, saints and sinners. I like not the division. The best men are bad enough in their own eyes. I hope God is better pleased with men than we are with

ourselves, there are so many things in us all which are there against our consent, — evil tenants which we cannot get rid of as yet. That smoky chimney of an ill-temper is a torment to poor Mr. Fiery, which he has not had courage or strength to remove in fifty winters. To "see ourselves as others see us," would often minister to pride and conceit; how many naughty things, actions and emotions too, I know of myself, which no calumniator ever casts in my teeth. Yet take the worst men that you can find,

men that rob on the highway with open violence, pirates on the sea, the more dangerous thieves who devour widows' houses and plunder the unprotected in a manner thoroughly legal, respectable, and "Christian," men that steal from the poor; take the tormentors of the Spanish Inquisition, assassins and murderers from New York and Naples, nay, the men who in Boston are willing to kidnap their fellow-citizens for ten dollars a head, and send them and their posterity into the perennial torture of American slavery; even these men would curl and shudder at the thought of being without consciousness of God in the world; of living without any religion, and dying without any religion. I know some think religion is rather uncomfortable to live by, but the worst of men, as the best, thinks it is a good thing to die with. Men repent of many things on a death-bed;

when the storm blows, all the dead bodies are stirred in the bosom of the sea, but no one is then sorry for his efforts to become a religious man. Many a man, who lives in the violation of his personal, domestic, social, national, and general human duties, doubtless contrives to think he is a religious man, and if in the name of Mammon he robs the widow of a pound, he gives a penny to the orphan in the name of God, and thinks he serves each without much offending the other. Thus, kidnappers in these times are "exemplary members" of "Christian churches" where philanthropy gets roundly rated by the minister from week to week, and call themselves "miserable offenders" with the devoutest air. This is not all sham. The men want to keep on good terms with God, and take this as the cheapest, as well as the most respectable way. Louis the Fifteenth had a private chapel dedicated to the "Blessed Virgin" in the midst of his house of debauchery, where he and his poor victims were said to be " very devout after the Church fashion." Slave-traders and kidnappers take pains to repel all calumny from their "religious" reputation, and do not practise their craft till "divines" assure them it is patriarchal and even "Christian." I mention these things to show that men who are commonly thought eminently atrocious in their conduct and character,