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dispute!-that we may furnish that best of arguments for the popular system, an illustration, in our own example, of its benefits!

That we may do so, I am willing to give a hearing to all reasonable admonitions from abroad. It is evident, indeed, that a new form of public opinion is rising in the world; nations are to stand at its bar. Hitherto, public opinion has acted chiefly within the boundaries of the countries and states where it has existed. It has been a most efficient and useful power, on the part of the people, to control the government, and to correct the errors of fashion or habit, that arise among themselves. But now, public opinion is travelling upon swift-winged packets, or steam vessels, and railroads, far beyond its former bounds. The facilities of communication between nations, are rapidly increasing. I believe the time is not far distant, when steam ships will pass from Halifax to Valencia in a week; and guests from New York may dine in London, and the contrary, on invitation of a fortnight's standing. Our railroads will soon stretch from New York to Boston-to Portland -to the Penobscot-and, ere long, to Halifax. With the facilities, the disposition to foreign travel will increase; and if the civilized world may be left at peace, its increasing prosperity and wealth will supply unexampled means. Nations will yet become acquainted with one another, and feel the force of each other's opinion; as districts of the same country have, in times past. It will be a mighty power, and it must be beneficial. It must act upon a broad scale, and will not be, like village opinion, a vexatious, and almost personal interference with private life. It must be mainly sound and wholesome; it cannot skulk into lanes and bypaths, like a penny newspaper; its rebuke will be flung abroad upon the winds of heaven; and no noble act of any government -none that can bear the light, need fear it. It must be powerful. Nothing stung Bonaparte to such vexation, as the London journals. So let it be. Let every unrighteous government fear something more immediate than the faint echoes of distant history. Let the outraged rights of humanity speak in thunders from every quarter of the heavens. Let a summoning voice come from the east and the west, from the north and the south, and call every ruthless despot and oppressor before THE BAR OF THE WORLD, to answer!

LIVERPOOL, April 18.-At the parting point, I cannot help saying that I feel ties to England, that I did not expect. It is curious, and could not have been anticipated, but I believe that one may, all in the natural course of things, make more friendships in one year abroad, than he would in ten years at home. It seems as if a thousand distrusts and difficulties were removed, as well with one's own countrymen abroad, as with strangers. From the little I have seen and from the much that I am able to infer, I feel that society in England is clothed with many, many charms. And I know individuals in this fair and blessed isle, to make whose acquaintance and friendship is well worth a voyage across the Atlantic. God bless them! Indeed, I have gone to the length of making poetry, in my enthusiasm about England. Blessings upon it!-devout and grateful, if not poetic. Britain is to me no more a notion, but a being. With farewell tears, I shall gaze upon her receding shores, and say, and for ever say, "Peace be within her gates, and prosperity in her palaces!"

April 24.-To-day I set sail for America.

April 25.-On, on, like a mighty bird, stretching her flight across the illimitable ocean, with night and tempest brooding around her dark way. Our ship is now-leaving the last point in Europe (Ireland) — striking out into the boundless deep. To-day, I laid myself down on the sunny deck, nestling myself, as it were, upon the back of this mighty bird-and as I lay, protected from the wind under the lee of the ship's side, the situation recalled those days when I had thus laid myself down on the sunny side of a hedge, over my father's fields, amidst all the strange and mysterious dreams of boyhood. But what different situations were thus connected by the chain of association! Then I reclined amidst the rustling of leaves, the fragrance of wild flowers, and the wood notes of a thousand merry songsters; and my dreams were dreams indeed-vague, fluctuating, and half unconscious -and passed over my mind like the shadows of clouds over the surrounding landscape. Those dreams passed too within a compass as limited, perhaps, and seldom, probably, stretched themselves to the Old World. Now I return a traveller from that Old World; I repose not on the solid and quiet earth, but on a frail bark that is tossed upon "the fathomless and fitful waters;" I meditate upon a wider experience; I dream upon deeper matters than before; I dream as one, many of whose dreams have turned to cold realities: and yet, so strangely, it may be, am I constituted, that the dreams of my childhood were not fresher, than my feelings and fancies, upon a thousand subjects, are now! "Oh night,

And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong!"

But ye are not stronger than the brooding meditations and wrestling thoughts, that darken and sweep, in might and mystery, through our souls!

May 1.-This morning, as my state-room chum and myself lay conversing in our berths, and the ship fetched one of those deep lurches into the trough of the sea, that makes one feel so sensibly the depths of his stomach," There," I said, "what sort of a curve do you think the ship described then? was it parabolic or hyperbolic?"-alluding, of course, to the mathematical circles. "It was diabolic, I think," said F. Pretty good, wasn't it? But how good it was no one can tell who has not been at sea. For, truly, this sympathy with the ship is a thing indescribable. It seems as if the very fibres of your heart (or stomach, at least) were knitted to its mighty ribs. Its motions become, as it were, the motions of your whole interior being-of the very nerves, fibres, and fluids, of your entire system. Its abominable smells are the very breath of your nostrils. You become a being of tides, waves, winds, and all restless elements.

May 22.-Land! land! Were there ever four letters that expressed so much as these four? Yes, there are four letters that express morethe four that spell-HOME.

MISCELLANEOUS

DISCOURSES AND ESSAYS.

TWO DISCOURSES

ON THE

ORIGINAL USE OF THE EPISTLES.

DISCOURSE I.

1 CORINTHIANS ix. 22: "To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak; I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some."

THAT is to say, Paul adapted his religious instructions to the men whom he addressed, to their particular character, circumstances, difficulties, trials, and speculations. "Unto the Jews, he says, I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; to them that are without law, as without law, that I might gain them that are without law." From this statement, we derive the following principle of interpretation, viz. that Paul, and it may be added, that all the sacred writers, did not deliver their instructions in an abstract and general form, adapted alike and equally to all times, but that they had a local and special reference to the times in which they wrote. It was in conformity with this principle, that the apostle said to the Athenians, "The times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent;" and to the Corinthians, he gave advice adapted to a particular occasion, saying, I suppose that this is good for the present distress-i. e. the instruction which I give you is suited to the present exigency.

Let us

As I propose to apply this principle of interpretation to some subjects in the Epistles of the New Testament, I wish to place it distinctly before you, and in the outset, to guard it from misapprehension. It may at once be asked, if the Scriptures were not written for all men. then explain, and it will be seen, I think, that the Bible could not, to any valuable purpose, have been written for all men, if it had not been written for some men in particular.

The Scriptures not only bear marks of belonging to the periods and persons that produced them, but they bear marks of perpetual adaptation to the state, the opinions, the prejudices, in one word, to the moral wants of the men to whom they were immediately addressed. When God commissioned prophets and apostles to be the instructors of the world, he did not bereave them at once of their reason, their common sense, their observation. He rather taught them more clearly to per

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