people; that is, to our want of leisure and our unsettled migratory character. But it cannot be concealed, that our constant state of political warfare, our new coalitions, begetting a habit of universal distrust; and our mutual abuses of character, have all the same tendency, a tendency which every wise man and true lover of his country will deeply lament. And religion has a greater interest in the case than might be readily supposed. Forthere is a close and honorable dependence between habits of friendship and habits of piety. They both demand a warm and a large heart, and having this in the breast of a people, they are almost sure to dwell there together, sanctifying the pleasures and employments of life by a common influence. Never was a heartless people known to be a religious people. Let every christian give this fact due weight. Let every man, too, who is plunging into this sea of politics, inquire how far he will go? whether he is willing to give up all heart, and love, and social truth, to win success as a courtier of the people?

4. We are admonished that religious men may easily mistake the nature of their zeal in politics. The Scribes and Pharisees were men eminently religious, if we speak of their professions and their outward life. They made long prayers, they were exact in every form and ceremony of Moses. They held every tradition of the church as the apple of their eye. And yet, to our view, they acted more like devils in their zeal than like men. But not in their own view, for they did not know the spirit they were of. They were carried away by their political zeal to such a degree, that they even felt as if the most sacred interests of religion rested on their success. In fact they proceeded against the Saviour mainly on religious pretexts, though actuated, unwittingly, by no other object than to serve their party and their power. Christ, they said, had uttered profane threats against the holy temple, and the high priest actually rent his clothes, so horrified were his reverend ears by the Saviour's blasphemy. They spoke of law too. We have a law by which he ought to die. Fine pretexts these,-law and religion! Better, surely, could not be formed. Ah, and how many christians, so called, in these days, know as little the spirit they are of when kindled in our political strifes! The country, they will say, is in danger; the holy ark of religion is in danger. Perhaps it is so―and perhaps the danger we are in is as great as they suppose. But if so, they give us the best of all proofs that they have too often no intelligent perception of the fact, by their desertion of all the proper duties of their profession. When should a true christian pray, if not when the country is in danger? when will he gather himself to the church in her pious councils and convocations, if not when the ark of religion is in danger? But no, they are not here. And for this they have the best of all reasons, they fancy,

viz. that they have to fight for the very existence of religion in the great campaign of politics! How can they pray, how meet with the church, how instruct their families, when they have to attend so many caucuses for the faith, and cry their hosannas in so many long processions of the people? Understand me; I make no objection to the long processions, nor even to your being in them. I only say, that when christians are so hurried away in the rush of the multitude, as to desert their most sacred duties, they do not know the spirit they are of. They declare, by that fact, that they have lost the balance of their christian intelligence. They are not only actuated by the worldly spirit in one of its rankest forms, but they are addled by it. I have no longer any confidence, in such a case, that they are governed by sober perceptions of truth or duty. Or if they may have begun with some real principles worth contending for, I perceive, by their extravagance and the loss of their self-possession, that they are already whipped in and tamed to tread where the party lions lead them. While the christian holds to his true place and his duties, there is somewhat of independence in him; he at least acts from consideration. How great, then, is the dishonor and the loss when religious men lose this holy individuality and become mere parts or particles in a public whirlwind! When I see how many such fall into all the rabid measures and styles that belong to party discipline, their perfect incapacity to understand how any thing can be done by their opposers without some corrupt intention; their intolerant proscriptive spirit towards every man that will not be an unqualified partizan with them; their hatred of every press that prefers to abide by truth, and will only give them a partial sanction; I am filled with sadness that christian men should melt so passively into the moulds of worldly infatuation. Nay, I seem to see the old Scribes and Pharisees over again, and hear their frenzied cry. And it forms no unnatural background to the picture, that every Nicodemus among the people, who has a private scruple, or will minister to his persecuted Lord, is constrained to do it slily and with a timorous heart.

Again, we are led to inquire what part is proper to the women of our land in these political strifes. It is worth noticing, that of the two women most conspicuous in the history of our Lord's trialscene, Pilate's wife, who staid at home, gave him some good advice, which it had been well for him to follow; while the busy maid, who went, actually faced down an apostle, and made him lie and swear as vilely as the worst man could. Some, I know, are pleased to unite the ladies in their political demonstrations, because their presence greatly conduces to preserve order and decorum. And doubtless it does in its first effects. It is an honorable distinction of our country, that we pay so delicate a respect to the fe

male sex, and that our roughest men, our roughest assemblages, are seen to be softened and dignified by their presence. But I am greatly jealous still of the future effects that will follow, if the practice alluded to is continued. It will not take many years of rough publicity, in these ways, to make our ladies mere women to us, and abolish the delicate respect we yield them. They will no longer grace the fireside by their retiring softness, whispering in the ears of their husbands their pious cautions, or nice religious scruples, or, if you please, their ominous dreams, as the lady of the ill-starred Pilate did on the morning of his fall, but they will become our maids and runners, heard in the noise of our assemblies, handled, as chance may be or malice direct, in the public papers, mere female men, and one with us in all but the ability to be more than second or third-rate actors in our rough contests. I should be silent on this subject, were it not for the revolution which is beginning to appear in the manners of the female sex in a certain section of our country. I am anxious that such a revolution should have no general countenance any where. Perhaps I am unreasonably anxious, but if that revolution goes on as it has begun, it will certainly destroy some of the most precious and best influences we have left. Do save us one half of society free of the broils, and bruises, and arts of demagogy! Let us have a place of quiet, and some quiet minds which the din of our public war never embroils. Let a little of the sweetness, and purity, and, if we can have it, of the simple religion of life remain. God made the woman to be a help for man, not to be wrestler with him. This he declared in the grand sacrament of creation, and we have a greater interest in the arrangement, as religious beings, than many ever stay to consider. Here it is that feeling is kept alive in us, and our affections saved from utter extinction. United here by truth and love, the truth of heaven and the love of God find a place also to enter our hearts. Or if this be too much, our nature is at least prepared, in a degree, to understand and open itself to the blessed approaches of religion. But if to all our present powers of strife and faction we are to add a race of factious women, there will not be left enough of feeling and rest to make life tolerable or allow virtue to breathe.

Again, the scene of Christ's trial and crucifixion shows us what to think of the sacredness of democracy. It has been given out, within the past year, with a profound philosophical bow to the people, and especially to christian people, that "democracy is holy." It is not enough that irreligion, or the hatred of religion, should be addressed and won by appeals to the vilest prejudices, but a sop also must be thrown to religion that she also may be gained. Now I have no objection to any such praises of democracy as our countrymen may choose, if they do not trespass on the sacred distinctions of truth and holiness. That the religion of Christ is a popular religion

I most certainly believe; neither is any one better suited with the popular character of our institutions. But when it is given out that democracy is holy, the insult offered to religion is too offensive to be suffered. What do we see? But yesterday the populace were all for Christ and followed him with their hosannas. To-day they are with the Scribes and Pharisees crying "Crucify him, crucify him." And the cries of them and of the chief priests prevailed. Yes, they prevailed; they were a high majority. Democracy holy! What was it when its multitudinous voice clamored for the blood of the Saviour of the world. Here was Pilate on one side, the organ of an imperial throne; here were the populace on the other, all staining their hands together in this blood, and declaring to the world by that sign, that man is fallen and unholy every where; that kings and thrones are unholy, that democracies are unholy, that all are cruel, and treacherous, and violent, and unfit to be trusted. And this is what we, as the ministers of religion, are obliged to declare. We are obliged to say that sin reigns in man universally, making him both a slave and a tyrant in his nature. That you can trust him with no interest, no form of government, and have it safe. No checks can tame him, no balances keep him in the sacred bounds of order. He will abuse power, pervert justice, betray trusts, and perpetrate all mischiefs, because he is a sinner. The many may be as bad as the few or the one, as bad a tyrant, as faithless a guardian of the public welfare. Under any and all forms of government you will have unholy work; for man is unholy, your king is unholy, your democracy is unholy, full of mischiefs, treacheries, cruelties, and lies. This is the doctrine of the Gospel, and, what is, if possible, less to be doubted, the doctrine of our eyes.

But it is only meant, you may suspect, that the doctrine of democracy as the true form of government is holy, i. e. sanctioned by Christ. But before we are deluded thus, we had better ask, where and when it was done by him? When did he condescend to tell us that ours is the true form of government? When lend himself to any such mischievous flattery as this? When did he undertake to be a lecturer for democracy? And when his apostle dared to say of all the forms of government, "the powers that be, are ordained of God," did he there controvert his Master's special predilection for democracy as the only holy form?

The sentiment of which I speak, on this head, is yet a strange sound, I rejoice to believe, to all but a few of our people. But being uttered under the imposing garb of philosophy, we can by no means judge, as yet, how far it will go. It may yet produce a new style of jacobinism in our country, viz. Gospel jacobinism; a fanatical storm in which all the elements of religion and politics shall be blended, and their distinction lost.

Again, we are admonished in our history, of the depravity of the doctrine which proposes to give the spoils of victory to the victors. Let me take you to the scene where your Lord is crucified, and, after the work is done, I will point you then to four men, not the most worthy, sitting down to parcel out the garments of the crucified Saviour, and casting their lots for the seamless robe he wore. These, too, were receivers of the spoils. Now this doctrine which proposes to give the spoils to the victors, has been imputed mostly to one of our political parties, and, as some suppose, has been avowed by that party. Of this I am willing to doubt. However this may be, I will on no account be deterred from speaking of it as it deserves. I do it not as a politician, but as a minister of God and virtue, and in this character I am bound to speak of any thing, any where, that is corrupt or demoralizing. We shall see, perhaps, how far the opposing party will abjure this doctrine of the spoils, and whether it is not yet to be the universal doctrine of politics in the land. If so, then shall we have a scene in this land never before exhibited on earth; one which would destroy the integrity and sink the morality of a nation of angels. It will be as if so many offices, worth so much, together with the seamless robe of our glorious constitution, were held up to be the price of victory, and as if it were said, "Look, ye people, here is a premium offered to every discontent you can raise, every combination or faction you can mention, every lie you can invent. Cupidity here is every man's right-try for what you can, and as much as you can get you shall have." Let no one say that I here enter the field of politics myself. I speak here as a defender of moral principle, which is my duty. If there be any party in the State, or is to be, that holds out or avows this rule, it is a party which pollutes the public morals. Our Saviour taught us to be more than just to the government, more than quiet citizens. He said, "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's." But this says, "throw down Cæsar if you can, and his place is yours!" Only conceive such a lure held out to this great people, and all the little offices of the government thus set up for the price of the victory, without regard to merit, or any thing but party services, and you have a spectacle of baseness and rapacity such as was never seen before. No preaching of the Gospel in our land, no parental discipline, no schools, not all the machinery of virtue together, can long be a match for the corrupting power of our political strifes actuated by such a law as this. It would make us a nation of apostates at the foot of Sinai.

Again, it will serve to impart seriousness and sobriety in these contests, if we notice in our history, that every man is individually responsible for what he does. Too many think that they escape all responsibility, because they act in such a great party