66

prostrate and helpless on the weeping earth-but he is even on the point of defying heaven with his life, as in truth he has disowned its rights in his heart, and if he makes a last effort to raise his woe-oppressed head from the ground, it is only to curse God and die." Dreadful consummation of bodily disaster! A sickly frame is death begun, it may be in the soul as well as in the body. In all instances depression of spirits waits on bodily disorders. What in your own cases prevents dejection from passing into despair? What relieves the heart of its load at the moment that it cools the fevered frame? The soft, light hand of love; the kind and gentle attentions of wife, mother, or child. But alas! when sickness often comes, and means are scanty, and every hour is spent in toil, and a general unsoundness pervades the family, these pious cares can seldom be paid, if ever they can be afforded, according to the need. Then what cordial is there for the sufferer? Alas! that resource to which most actively fly, intoxicating liquors, does but aggravate the disorder, deepen the calamity, accelerate the ruin.

There is much infidelity in these our large townslow and degrading infidelity-that which in truth deserves so harsh a name, a disbelief in almost every thing above the senses; a disbelief in all the higher influences of civilization; a disbelief in human worth and in God's goodness; a practical actuating spirit or speculative disbelief in these great realities. Hence there must be a low moral tone; herein may vice flow in a plenteous stream. Nor in so cold and poor a soil can any of these virtues take root, patriotism, disinterested love, pure religion, domestic worth, individual elevavation, which bless, dignify, and adorn humanity. This infidelity has many causes, but the chief cause lies in the physical discomfort and unsound health of the people. They who live like brutes cannot feel like Domestic discomfort and bodily disorders beat down the character, drain the sources of self-respect, set men in hostility with society, and so prepare the way for irreligion. The vapours of the earth may be so foul and thick as to obscure the face of heaven,

men.

and conceal God from man. If discipline sometimes converts the heart, deep distress and hopeless disaster are sure to make it forget if not deny God. O if you

would have a religious, seek to have a healthy people. And if you would have a people sound in health, spare no pains to abridge and lighten labour, to secure leisure, and to furnish means for innocent invigorating recreation.

Did I want other authority for my pleadings than what reason and experience supply, I would appeal to the highest, for He who came to save the soul was eminently diligent in healing the body. Yes, he well knew that as a fountain cannot send forth sweet waters and bitter, so a diseased and enfeebled body cannot be a minister to soundness of mind, or to purity and elevation of feeling. The spirit of his religion, the spirit of all he did as well as all he taught, bids us care for man's bodies, if we would effectually serve their souls. And I rejoice to believe that his benign spirit is in the present day receiving unwonted honour. It is sinking deeply into human hearts; it is largely actuating human conduct; it is preparing to remodel human institutions. Wise and good persons have a fuller understanding of its nature, feel its power, acknowledge its worth, assert its claims; and in consequence there is a wider and deeper, a more tender and a more practical concern felt for the welfare of the people; a warmer and more enlightened interest in man as man-in man as a denizen of earth, as well as a moral being, a child of God and an heir of eternity. May He who is God over all, blessed for ever more, look with favour on this the spirit of his Son, cause it to have free course on the earth, and especially may he enrich therewith the hearts of all now present.

Martyria;

OR

EARLY UNITARIAN TIMES.

BY

REV. WILLIAM MOUNTFORD, M. A.

CHAPTER VIII.

"Lord of all that's fair to see!
Come, reveal thyself to me;
Let me, mid thy radiant light,
View thine unveiled glories bright.

Let thy Deity profound

Me in heart and soul surround;

From my mind its idols chase,

Weaned from joys of time and place."

JOHANN SCHEFFLER.

In the afternoon, Master Brandon and Sir Francis Farel accompanied their hostess and her sister into the park, which afforded, among its trees, many pretty vistas, and several enchanting views into adjacent valleys; one of which was of marvellous beauty, the hillsides being covered with stately elms, while in the meadow-land, at the bottom, there ran a winding streamlet of clear water, whence the grass and the flowers derived such freshness, as prolonged their spring-time of bright tints through the dry summer months quite into the latter days of autumn. The merlin and mavis were wont to sing there longer than in most other spots; and, when startled, would scream with such a wild delight, while flying further off, as would, for an instant, surprise even an unthankful heart into gladness. It was a scene to wish to live in for a life; yet, doubtless, it would not universally be good, or human families could each one of them have been provided with like dwelling-spots, as easily as the elephant was with his deep, dark forests; or in the same manner as the antelope had allotted him his vast, luxuriant plains to bound over; or just as the eagles have each pair of them an eyrie, whence are visible plains, undulating hills, forests, lakes, the courses of rivers, and the sailing of light

and of dark clouds, over, it may be, a quarter of a kingdom.

The common Creator could have devised a natural home for man, as readily as for the most favoured beast of the field, and could have caused the earth to have produced his sustenance as spontaneously as that of the brutes; for a cave is not a harder creation than a fern, nor a rose than a thistle, nor a fruit-tree than a bramblebush, nor wheat than darnel.

Difficulty is God's ordinance : there is divine purpose in it,-visible enough here, but it will be indisputable hereafter. The beasts have not to labour as men have, because the greater end of labour is a moral end, and, therefore, does not exist for them. The harvest of human toil is twofold; one in autumn of corn and fruit, and in the end of the world another richer one, that of the moral results of labour-being the virtues fostered thereby, together with their accompanying rewards.

For man, effort is the appointed condition of almost all good, and labour the necessary means to all excellence; as though work were one way of man's manifesting the Creator's image,-culture being not unlike the creation of thought, and, in appearance, the rearing resembling much the creating of plants and herbs.

God's sentence on man was not the wantonness of tyranny, but an omniscient device for human help; "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thon return to the earth, eating of it in sorrow all the days of thy life." For the hardship of the sentence is transformed into mercy on knowing that " blessed are they that mourn." Labour and sorrow, the punishment of the fall, are co-operating aids in salvation now.

The necessity of toil is as peculiarly a human distinction as reason is. The greater man's intelligence, the more evident is his tendency to self-exertion; just as almightiness is the concomitant attribute of omniscience, on earth and in heaven, and in one and all of its infinite manifestations.

The noblest human work is a cathedral: the sight of it exciting emotions not unlike those of sublime scenery; for within the building the spirit of the architecture is the same with that of deep and silent forests:

it is irresistibly felt to be such in advancing from the western door of an edifice into an avenue of high and graceful pillars. And in like manner, externally, the pointed windows carry up the view to the pinnacles above, and the pinnacles send the spectator's attention up to the towers, awakening in the mind the sensation of alpine sublimity. It cannot be felt otherwise than that a minster is in beauty, an embodiment almost of like principles with those on which the world is constructed, is a microcosm of nature, a noble evidence of man's, in his purer state, still retaining God's image. Visibly, the inmost soul of art is religion-knowledge of, love for, and sympathy with divine principles; it will be known to be so with science sometime, and with labour also.

Agriculture was almost the only peaceful business which the Romans accounted consistent with their dignity; other pursuits they reckoned servile, but farming they jealously reserved for themselves. What idea they had in this arrangement, or could have, cannot now be well divined.

Tillage was a primeval occupation: it was Adam's in Eden; and, after his expulsion thence, it became his son Abel's,—and by many pious men, in many countries and in many ages, it has been accounted as being peculiarly conducive to righteousness. Certainly communion with God is more practicable in fields and meadows, and amid the creatures of His hands, than in towns and in shops, among objects of man's own making. Of the occupations in a city, many are on luxurious objects, and partake themselves of the questionable character of their ends, and many others tend to contract and debilitate the mind; but country labour is invigorating and pristine; it is congenial with thought, solemn thought; and it operates in concert with higher than human allies, working together with the elements, and, in their turn, with each of the four seasons; under whose mysterious agency, governable to some extent by man, though inscrutable by his eye, soil is transmuted into waving woods, and dust and dew-drops into pendulous fruit.

"Work and pray," is the legend of some religious,