Imatges de pàgina
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especially, seem to be unmindful of Providential agency. They, as well as the politicians, speak and act as though the salvation of mankind depended upon the adoption of certain measures of theirs, and the cause of human liberty and progress rested mainly on the success of their schemes and efforts. Indeed, there is a too general, if not an almost universal, tendency to look to modifications of government, acts of legislation, and associated movements, as the sole means of promoting the welfare of communities. Men allow themselves to identify the cause of liberty and righteousness with their own favorite notions and projects; and, having come to the conclusion that they must have their way or all will be lost, pursue their purposes with a fanatical, overbearing and unscrupulous spirit.

The oppressions and persecutions with which mankind have been afflicted from the beginning have sprung not from malignity or cruelty, but from the fatal persuasion that the welfare and redemption of the race are inseparably connected with the prevalence of some particular service, or creed, or government. The same cause produces, as far as circumstances allow, the same effect now. The theologian, when he witnesses the decline of any of his own favorite dogmas, feels that the rock on which the Saviour planted his church is crumbling beneath it. The politician, when the elections have terminated in the overthrow of his party and the access to power of his opponents, sinks into despair of the republic. The philanthropist, when the particular plan he has long been urging upon the public, as the only adequate means of ameliorating the condition and removing the wrongs of his fellow-men, is discredited and discarded, is too apt to abandon his hopes of humanity, and lose his faith as well as his temper.

The element in which they are all deficient is an abiding, intelligent, steadfast assurance that God, as well as they, is at work reforming and blessing the world. Instead of assuming, as they attempt to do. the entire command of events, if they would but pause, from time to time, and trace the steps of the All-wise and Omnipotent Disposer, and await with serene and cheer

ful confidence the movements of the Divine Agency, a path of most efficient and benignant action would be opened to them, and their efforts be crowned with sure and permanent success.

EXERCISE XXX.

TEMPERANCE.

THE progress of temperance, during the last few years, has been brilliant and rapid beyond all former precedent. Hundreds of thousands of our countrymen, who never drank to excess, have bound themselves to perpetual abstinence, while multitudes of moderate drinkers and drunkards have subscribed with their hands that instrument, which, if faithfully kept, will secure them forever from the curse of intemperance. Thousands of families which were suffering all the accumulated woes of intemperance, are now blessed with the comforts and enjoyments of life.

Want, which stood, like an armed man, at the very threshold of their doors, has been driven away, and plenty crowns their board. Misery, which stalked among them like the spectre of despair, has left them. forever; while the Angel of Happiness spreads over them her wings all radiant with feathers of gold, and the star of hope throws its silver light around their path. Look over our land; enter the populous cities, strewn all along the Atlantic coast and far into the interior, mark the villages that every where meet the eye, and behold the wonderful change that has been effected in the customs and habits of their inhabitants, and if you do not exclaim, in the language of Holy Writ, "What hath God wrought!" you must be destitute of the high and ennobling attributes of humanity.

It transcends the power of the human mind to compute, in all their length and breadth, in all their glory and grandeur, the blessed fruits of the temperance reform. It has transformed brutes into men, men of refined sensibilities, of noble, god-like powers of intelligence. It has taken the beggar from the gutter, and placed him

among the prir.ces and potentates of the earth. It has lifted the crushed and bruised spirit of the wife, whose frame was too delicate for the winds of heaven to visit roughly, whose mental susceptibilities were too exquisite to endure the rude insults of the drunkard, and who was trampled under foot and made the veriest slave of her brutal lord; it has raised the spirit of this woman, thus abject and wo-begone, to the heights of hope and happiness, placed a new song in her mouth, and awakened in her breast immortal hopes and aspirations. It has taken the little child, whose only dream was of misery, into its arms, and blessed it. It has thrown over the face of society a light, like that of another sun risen upon midnoon; and you and I, and millions more, walk in its brightness, scarcely conscious of its surpassing glory.

EXERCISE XXXI.

POPULAR INSTITUTIONS.

OUR popular institutions are favorable to intellectual improvement, because their foundation is in dear nature. They do not consign the greater part of the social frame to torpidity and mortification. They send out a vital nerve to every member of the community, by which its talent and power, great or small, are brought into living conjunction and strong sympathy with the kindred intellect of the nation; and every impression on every part vibrates with electric rapidity through the whole. They encourage nature to perfect her work; they make education, the soul's nutriment, cheap; they bring up remote and shrinking talent into the cheerful field of competition; in a thousand ways they provide an audience for lips which nature has touched with persuasion; they put a lyre into the hands of genius; they bestow on all who deserve it, or seek it, the only patronage worth having, the only patronage that ever struck out a spark of "celestial fire," the patronage of fair opportunity.

This is a day of improved education; new systems of teaching are devised; modes of instruction, choice of studies, adaptation of text-books, the whole machinery

of means, have been brought, in our day, under severe revision. But were I to attempt to point out the most efficacious and comprehensive improvement in education, the engine by which the greatest portion of mind could be brought and kept under cultivation, the discipline which would reach furthest, sink deepest, and cause the word of instruction, not to spread over the surface like an artificial hue, carefully laid on, but to penetrate to the heart and soul of its objects, it would be popular institutions. Give the people an object in promoting education, and the best methods will infallibly be suggested by that instinctive ingenuity of our nature which provides means for great and precious ends. Give the people an object in promoting education, and the worn hand of labor will be opened to the last farthing, that its children may enjoy means denied to itself. This great contest about black-boards and sand-tables will then lose something of its importance, and even the exalted names of Bell and Lancaster may sink from that very lofty height where an over hasty-admiration has placed them.

EXERCISE XXXII.

REFLECTIONS AT MOUNT AUBURN.

ENTERING Mount Auburn, I ascended an eminence and with feelings attuned to pensiveness, I threw my. self upon the earth, at the foot of an ancient oak, anc pored upon the scene. In a reverie I gazed upon the green landscape beneath, sleeping in the calm sunshine at my feet, and fading away in the distance into the soft blue hills that skirted the horizon. I turned my eye to the east, where Boston, swelling up with her proud domes and glittering spires, marked her noble outline upon the clear sky; and a feeling of awe came over me as I contemplated that majestic form, lifting its mass of stately architecture into the air, with a commanding grandeur, as f demanding the gazer's homage to the Queen of the North.

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This," said I, "is the city of riches and splendor:

there lie her fleets; there throng her thousands of merchants and tradesmen; there stand her palaces and her temples; there shine her halls and saloons, the abodes of wealth and the home of gayety and fashion; there throng her countless swarms of busy citizens, those multitudes that roar and thunder like a mountain stream within her limits, but of whom scarce a faint murmur comes to my ear upon the passing breeze. Shall those lordly domes and ambitious roofs crumble to dust, and leave not a wreck behind? Is that gay and eager mass, now teeming with young life and enjoyment, and shining as if earth contained no tomb, nought but such stuff as dreams are made of? Are they no more than the poor tenants of a little life that is rounded with a sleep?

"Yes, those cloud-capped towers shall fall; those fair bosoms now burning with high hope, those bright eyes that beam with love, shall close in darkness. Man of wealth, thy princely mansion shall forget thy name! Maiden of the blooming cheek, to-morrow shall the ring sparkle and the hall resound, but none shall think of thee? The generation, too, that cometh shall stay but for a time. The Queen of the North shall bow her head and fall—and no city shall be eternal but the City of the Dead!"

EXERCISE XXXII.

MAN A SOCIAL BEING.

MAN has an individual and he has a social being. He has duties to himself and duties to his fellow-men. He has a selfish and he has a sympathizing nature. He s bound in duty to regard his interests as an individual, to labor for the comforts of life- to accumulate for the necessities of age. He is also bound to interest himself in the prosperity of those around him. If successful, to aid the unfortunate. If endowed with health and strength, to comfort the sick and distressed; to drop a tear of pity over the erring and misguided, to bind up the broken-hearted, and administer hope and consolation to those whom the rough surges of the world have crushed

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