phans to battle alone in a war of injustice. Think not, then, my friends, that the grandest triumphs of virtue can ever be made known. Some of its most dramatic and picturesque incidents may come to the ears of men ; but its most glorious manifestations have been where no mortal eye has gazed, and where the genius of poet or of historian could not enter. They have been not on the battle field, not on the crowded mart, not amid the business and the pomp of multitudinous assemblages, they have been in the dungeon, the hovel, the hospital; above all, they have been in the solitude of the human heart. But men are so constituted that it is only what strikes their senses that leaves a trace in their annals. Even Christianity itself, however spiritual, is not an exception to this remark. Those incidents in our Saviour's life, which he himself regarded as only the vehicles for the exhibition of great truths, have, for many centuries obscured those truths, and become the prominent points which men have regarded as the essence of religion. And with all other notable objects the result has been the same. We seize a few of their salient features, but we know not of the countless martyrdoms that have heralded their march. Should not this fact, my friends, throw a light on much that at first sight appears inexplicable in our destiny? If we have endeavoured with any attention to analyze our own career, we cannot but have remarked that the world never in one single instance does justice to our motives. It is sure to praise us when we are conscious that we do not merit its praise; it is sure to blame us when we are conscious that we do not merit its blame. And thus must it always be. The purer our virtue, the less likely is the world to understand it. Indeed, it would be a miracle if the world ever could understand what constitutes the value of an individual. When it decides from the spontaneous effusions of sympathy, its judgment is sure to be mistaken. When it decides from judgment, that judgment is only the echo of a conventional standard. The question, then, with the wise and the good, is not whether in charity or in any thing else their conduct can be so modified, as to suit some form of popular opinion; it never can.

The

question is, what mode of action is most agreeable to conscience, and to that Divine Being whose moral estimates cannot vary like human thought. The poor widow that cast two mites, which make a farthing, into the treasury, will not be judged by that simple fact, but by the motive that impelled it. And when God comes to weigh our life in the balance of his justice, he will look not at our deeds merely, but at the impulses stript of all artificial disguises that have peopled our breasts.

In the second place, the incident of the widow's mite teaches not merely, that the merit of an action consists not in its results, but in the spirit that inspired it it also teaches that the minutest effort communicated to any purpose of goodness has its value and its importance. How much are we all disposed to withhold our assistance to any object, not from indifference, but from distrust of our own ability to communicate any thing to its advancement. But there is one reflection that ought at once to vanquish this distrust. We may see at a very superficial glance, that the great agent for the world's amelioration has been not intellectual but moral power. The great reformers of the iniquities and the despotisms of earth have been not men of remarkable genius, but men whose integrity was unsullied, and whose courage was invincible. Genius may throw a grace round the progress of civilization, but it is not on genius that that progress depends. Not by the discoveries of the intellect, but by the assertions of truth, and by the embodiment of earnest convictions, are the power, and the happiness of humanity increased. Can any of us, then, deny that we can add to this influence of moral power? It is of far less importance that we should be right, than that we should be sincere and ardent in what we consider to be right. Zeal, when allied to error, always neutralizes the poison of the error. Let men but have faith;let them but act according to that faith; the faith may be wrong as a metaphysical truth, but mighty as a moral example. The humblest and obscurest mortal who boldly asserts and realizes his opinions, accomplishes a greater amount of benefit to mankind than the most fertile and original genius that showers forth in

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the ear of an eager and expectant nation its bright and burning thoughts. There is something in moral principle that appals the bad, and paralyses the tyrannical, which no other human agency can command or communicate. If, then, my friends, you cannot be great by the power of talent, be great with a nobler greatness, by the power of righteousness. Look to all the fields of

usefulness which are so thickly scattered round you, to which your efforts may be given, and given with irresistible weight Many are perishing for lack of know.. ledge; many are perishing for lack of daily bread; can your hand, or your heart, or your mind, do nothing in the midst of such misery? Can you do nothing for the substitution of sympathy in the place of those fierce antipathies that separate and convulse the human brotherhood? Are you not willing to renounce some of your comforts, some of your conveniences, in order that others may be blest? I do not ask you to mingle incessantly in the noisy scenes of political strife. These must sometimes be visited. When, however, exclusively trodden, they nourish a feverish excitement, which is unsuited to the healthy action of your moral being. But I wish you to look beyond your families, beyond your occupations. I wish you to think, and to feel, that man was made for something else than a mere money-making machine. I wish you to help in removing that curse of mammon which has fallen on our country, that converts life into a savage scramble, and makes every man the enemy of his neighbour. I wish you to help in elevating public morality, which was never so weakened and so prostrated as at present. I wish you to gird on the armour of Christ, and to make your mission, as Christ made his, to the poor, the erring, and the bad. And while others that are rich cast much in to the treasury of human redemption, do you, in the true spirit of sacrifice, in the true spirit of goodness, cast in the widow's mite of your benevolence.

I have thus, my friends, endeavoured to draw two reflections from the incident of the widow's mite. I have shown, in the first place, that the merit of an action consists not in its result but in its motive. I have shown, in the second place, that the minutest effort

communicated to any purpose of goodness has its value and its importance. These two facts consistently realized in your life, will add, not simply to your social value, they will have an introspective agency of spiritual onwardness. It is not so much by making the improvement of our character a special object of our attention, as by the undeviating fulfilment of our duties, that that character can be improved. Our mind will grow more vigorously when surrounded with the glad and numerous results of our labours, than if we made it a subject of unceasing study. If we wish to become strongly individual, our end will be gained, less by the effort to be strongly individual, than by allowing that individuality to be the child of duty. Duty, conscience, sacrifice, let these three words for ever echo in your hearts, and pervade your doings, and you will find them far more potent for self-culture than all the theories of self-culture that have ever been proposed.

AN ADDITIONAL AGENCY SUGGESTED IN THE WORK OF CHRISTIAN REFORMATION.

SCOTLAND is undeniably the hot-bed of Calvinism. In Switzerland, the land which witnessed its birth, it is displaced by liberal views of Christianity. It exists as a feeble plant in France and Holland; while in Germany, we witness its almost total extermination. The strong weight of Channing's arguments, expressed with all the force and fervour of his splendid genius, and the high strain of benevolent and devotional feeling which runs throughout the whole, have so borne down the hosts of religious exclusives in America, that few have the courage there, to defend plain, undisguised Calvinism; so that the more abhorrent features of that system are now carefully kept from view. In England, the commanding and imposing front of the now pretty numerous and yearly increasing number of talented and accomplished defenders of our views, has kept the monopolists in check, so that the more prudent of them choose rather to stand aloof from, than to court, a controversial warfare. Our native country, then, being

the principal theatre of its devastating effects, we shall endeavour to point out, in a concise manner, the different parties marshalled against us, and suggest the employment of an additional weapon in our warfare, for the extirpation of those pernicious dogmas, which inculcate that partiality aud vindictiveness are the characteristics of God's administration; and for the vindication of the God-honouring and man-elevating doctrines of the Undivided Unity, and essential benevolence of the only true God, the Father.

The Established Church, although rent by its own internal feuds, devotes no small part of its time to denounce and war against what it is pleased to call "the damnable heresies of those who deny the Lord that bought them." Their brethren of the Secession and Relief Churches are not behind them in the art of slander; while a leader in a sect which wishes to be distinguished from its brother infallibles, by a greater stretch of liberality, has wilfully applied to us the vulgar nickname of Socinian, and in the same breath denounced as a " pestilent heresy" a religious faith which he fondly, though vainly, imagines "would speedily evince its earthliness, by dying a natural death," were the support and advocacy of Channing, and minds of like calibre, withdrawn from the conflict. This Pharisaical, anti-Protestant ebullition, evidences clearly the animus that pervades the Calvinistic masses. A recognised leader would not pen and give forth to the orthodox world such uncharitable sentiments as these, without a firm conviction that palates had been previously, and successfully trained to relish such unnatural food.

As the great body of the Scotch Episcopalians are evidently steering towards Puseyism, a peculiar line of tactics should be observed in the event of a collision with that body. Our special aim should be directed against the Calvinistic bodies. They are the body of the people. It is chiefly among the middle and lower classes that God is thought to favour the few, and reject the many, it being in those classes that the selfelation and spiritual pride of the elect, and the melancholy depression, oft issuing in madness, that desolates