their opening energies; guides their ardour without damping it; renders them docile and obedient without souring their temper or extinguishing their joy; and by teaching them to remember their Creator in the days of their youth, fits them for an honourable career in early life, and disciplines them for the duties and trials of more advanced years. It is a religion for parents; for it instructs them to rule well their own households; to have their children in subjection; to train them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; and to make their homes abodes of love, and peace, and prayer. It is a religion for children; for it requires them to honour their father and mother; to make their own will bend to theirs; to be happy to please them, and sorry to offend them; to be a stay and comfort to them in sorrow, a prop to them in the pinching hour of want, and a sweet solace amid the gathering infirmities of old age. It is a religion for masters; for it commands them to forbear threatening, and to give unto their servants what is just and equal, knowing that they also have a Master in heaven. It is a religion for servants; for it teaches them not to answer again; to obey, not with eyeservice as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart fearing God; whatsoever they do, doing it heartily as unto the Lord, and not unto men. It is a religion for husbands and for wives, for pastors and for people, for brothers and for sisters, for bond

and for free; prompting all classes to attend to the duties of their respective spheres in life; and to remember what they owe to God, and to each other. It is not nourishment to one and poison to others, but life, and health, and beauty to all.

V. Christianity tends to mitigate and remove all the social evils that afflict and depress mankind.

Not a few of those in political circles who, in our day, are trying to raise the degraded masses from the festering elements of debasement in which they are weltering, are actuated by fear. Long deaf to the appeals of Christian philanthropists, they have at last caught a glimpse of their danger, and tremble at the explosion of the mine under their feet, which may bury them and all they may most prize in its ruins. They are alarmed at the idea of the outburst of ferocious passions and gigantic muscular power, sharpened by envy, and whetted by revenge; trampling upon everything sacred, and noble, and dear; levelling our most valuable institutions; invading the sanctities of families; destroying property; drying up the springs of trade; shedding innocent blood; and putting all our social fabric out of joint. The giant is sleeping at their door, and they tremble lest he should awake, and seize them for his prey. Such persons would have been eaten up years ago, had not the Gospel been working in the heart of society, and imposed a restraint

upon the fierce elements of human nature.

But for the presence of this silent safeguard, our nation would have heaved with convulsion long ago. Criminal laws are a weak defence compared with Christianity. A Church, where the Gospel is preached, is much more potent than a jail, to keep men in order, and turn hatred into love. From such a vital centre emanates a power that tames the fiercest, whom no chains can bind; and induces them to sit down in meekness and gentleness at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in their right mind.

The disciples and advocates of the Gospel are constrained by love, to apply to the social evils of their day the only remedy which they know to be sovereign. They are not averse to the adoption of any measure or means calculated to relieve the virulence of the disease; but they know that all are mere palliatives and surface cures without the application of the remedy appointed by God. The Gospel is the enemy of all cruelty and oppression, of every disposition, and habit, and institution that poisons society. It takes the part of the weak against the strong, and of right against might. Its voice is lifted up against wrong of every kind. Its influence tends to sweeten the bitter cup of man all the world over, to "chain up the unruly legion of the breast, and lead captivity captive."

1. Slavery.

Slavery is one of the direful evils, which is a

fruitful source of suffering and crime wherever it rears its hydra-head. In every part of the globe where the spirit of the Gospel is cordially cherished, and faithfully carried out, slavery receives its death-blow. The first fruit of its dominion is to ameliorate the condition of the slave, and afterwards to effect his freedom. It introduces a style of thought and feeling hostile to human bondage. It proclaims all men equal in the sight of God. It recognises the relation of brothers in all who believe in the Lord Jesus, and produces a state of feeling between man and man that renders slavery impossible. The Christian philanthropy of this country led it to lay twenty millions sterling on the altar of liberty, that the down-trodden African might have equal rights with others, and feel that he was a man and a brother. Though men of little or no religion threw themselves into the movement, and helped forward the benevolent cause, the true heroes of the fight were Christians, whom the Lord had made free. Such men as Clarkson, and Wilberforce, and Buxton, led the forlorn hope, and toiled late and early, to strike the last link of the chain of bondage from the heel of the slave. They gave to the struggle a lofty tone; and transferred it from the region of the political to the spiritual.

Alas! the foul blot of slavery still stains the banner of a great people in the west, who boast on

paper that all men are equal, and trample the great truth under-foot in practice. The annual reading of the Declaration of Independence should crimson the cheek of America with a blush of shame. In asserting her rights she reads her own condemnation. She is condemned out of her own mouth. It is sad that a people in many respects so noble, and destined in the wise and good Providence of God to accomplish a great work in the history of the world, in diffusing Christian truth, and advancing the cause of civil and religious liberty and civilization, should tarnish their fair name, and stain their hands with the blood of the slave. What miserable shifts does it drive them to, in order to uphold a system so vile and so cruel, so inconsistent with the religion they profess, and their loud boasting about freedom! How eagerly they catch at any flimsy theory that promises to prove that all mankind are not sprung from the same pair; and to turn a favourable ear to reasoning, which, in an unbiassed and disinterested state of mind, they would denounce as hollow and unsound! What a snare does it lay for ministers of the Gospel to call evil good, put bitter for sweet, and darkness for light; and to call by smooth names, and dress up in a delusive garb, a system which degrades, and lacerates, and vilifies humanity! The guilt is all the greater, because of the progress of society, and the clear

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