heavens, and this desolate period became the epoch of nearly all the modern enterprises of Protestantism. Methodism, Calvinistic and Arminian, had their birth in it. The Bible Society sprung up from it. Tract Societies, with their continually multiplying machinery; Sunday schools, the most capable auxiliary of modern Christianity; missions even, for they had hardly become a distinct feature of the Protestant Church before; and, chief perhaps among them all, a lay ministry that great experiment which we have recently discussed-date from these despondent times.

Let us not fear, then. These contrasts of opinion seem to be oscillations of the moral world, which, overruled by the divine hand, have their law of reaction; the hands of the clock of destiny move on, the hour of sun-rise comes inevitably, though it may be "darkest just before the dawn."

Christianity is a necessity of man's nature. His moral instincts, amid whatever perversion, recognize it, and, sooner or later, silence his fallacious reasonings. There is none of the dictates of natural conscience which does not coincide with it; there is none of the natural affections or charities of human life that is not kindred to it; no national virtue or honor that does not borrow dignity from it; no interest of the public welfare that does not find support in it. These are its grand argumentation. These guarantee its safety. The changing winds may ruffle the surface of the waters; but they cannot reverse the tides, for these come of universal and inviolable laws. casional outbreaks of erroneous opinions, under the agency of anomalous minds, cannot disturb permanently the aggregate mind of a people; the excitement of novelty, however violent at first, sooner or later exhausts itself, and the common mind, regulated by its old common sense, subsides into its old channels, and moves on steadily as aforetime. And here is the inevitable safety of the truth; the inevitable despair of error.

The oc

is to shoot him without mercy. The enormous infidelity of the latter part of the last century could be denounced without courtesy. It could not comprehend the courtesies which pertain to all other intellectual combats. Its very dialect was made up of ribaldry and blasphemy. It reveled in immorality; but it is otherwise with the skepticism of our day, as we have said. The latter, among its representatives at least, is comparatively pure; it attempts to retain the morals, and not only the morals but something of the ideal, the spirit of Christianity, while it casts away its doctrines and authority. We go further, and venture even the remark (not acceptable, we know, to many) that this is done with sincerity-that it is not an artifice. We doubt not even that in some ingenuous minds the infidelity of the times is adopted with a sense of self-denial— with even an anguish of regret that the vision of Christianity, with its blessed hopes, fades away before the gaze of the disturbed, and, in many cases, as we think, the morbid mind. Such certainly was the case of Sterling and Marguerite Fuller. This opinion does not vindicate them from personal responsibility; it leaves open the question how far such minds may have occasioned their inability to believe-but it vindicates the treatment we ask for them. Denunciation, crimination is not the speech of religion for such cases, if indeed it is for any. We must not only meet them with the language of courtesy, but even with tenderness and sympathy. That state of doubt, which at some time or other almost every earnest mind encounters-through which, indeed, almost every Christian mind struggled at first into the light—has, in fact, received in our present infidelity an open expression, a definite form. This is its characteristic peculiarity, and it calls for a peculiar treatment—a treatment not unlike that which we would extend to a mind which, awakened with religious concern, is nevertheless beclouded with religious doubts. We trust we shall not be misunderstood here. We speak of infidelity as now represented in our literature, in the persons of its leading characters above named, and in the intelligent circles of social life, where all of us so ordinarily meet it. Its tendency must inevitably be downward; it cannot but become, sooner or

later, virulent and blasphemous; it has already such examples, and its popular effect, especially among our foreign population, is already openly demoralizing; but this is not yet its general character.

Again, the most important means of defeating the infidelity of the day is, we think, to meet fairly its challenge of competition in the practical reforms of the age. It has taken a route in this respect which is quite in contrast if not with the theory, at least with the practical endeavors of the infidelity of any other age. It would not only imitate the spirit of Christianity, but it would imitate and even transcend its practical philanthropy. Its most formidable reproach against the Church is, that the latter is behind the reforms of the age. The charge is fallacious, as we believe, and yet there is truth enough in it to give it plausibility and effect. It could be easily shown that nearly every important reformatory movement of the day has originated, directly or indirectly, in the influence of the Christian Church; but it can, at the same time, be too easily shown that not a tithe of her energy is yet put forth in these reforms-that most flagitious wrongs, public and social, prevail within the shadow of her temples, wrongs which ought to be annihilated by her very glance; -that especially in the higher places of her power, her verdict on public questions, involving moral wrong, is not as unambiguous and emphatic as it ought to be. Let her reform in these respects. She will incur new hostilities by so doing; but she will also redouble her energies she will concentrate all generous sympathies and heroic souls around her, and confound and silence her gainsayers. We have discussed this subject quite in detail in one of our former articles, and need not here enlarge upon it; but we would emphasize it as the great condition of the safety of the Church, especially in a country like this, where the voluntary patronage of the people must sustain it. We believe the Christianity of the times is shorn of its rightful power-of the very locks of its strength-by its lack of courage to take its rightful position on public questions, especially in this country. It is competent, as we once before said, to give a verdict, which shall be decisive to the popular opinion, on nearly every question involving moral relations that comes up in the public mind. It ought

to give it. It is afraid to do so, lest it should compromise itself with public prejudices. This would doubtless be the result, but it should struggle through that result, until it could reach its legitimate position, and compel the public mind fully to concede it. Nothing, we believe, would be more practicable to it, and nothing could secure it, at last, more public respect and moral power. We are making progress in this direction; let us hope for the future.

Meanwhile we have no hope for the reformatory efforts of infidelity. It may be sincere, but it is neither wise nor efficacious. It perverts and defeats whatever it attempts. We have recommended in this article a courteous treatment toward it, and feel that at this point we need to remind ourselves of the fact; for it is difficult to speak of what is farcical and contemptible without contemptuous language. What has been more preposterous, and, were it not for the serious consequences, more ridiculous, than the reformatory movements of the infidels of this country? The anti-Bible, the Women's Rights, the anti-Slavery, and antiGallows Conventions, which by their extravagant proceedings, their eccentric characters-bearded men and "Bloomer" women their exhibition of all anomalous minds and anomalous opinions, have kept the scoffers of the land in a roar for the last ten years. What have they done except to bring contempt upon great truths, and to retard the genuine men, who, under the formidable burden of this contempt, have been laboring for the needed reforms of the day? What has even the most serious experiment of these pseudo reformers accomplished-Socialism-what but a series of failures? And then look at the humiliating scientific pretensions which characterize most of them, the gospel of the "great Harmonia," Mesmerism, Phrenology, Communism, Spirit Rapping, &c.,-some of them germinal truths, it may be, but abused with fantastic applications, which fill our hospitals with the insane, fill the pockets of charlatans with ill-gotten gains, and, worse than all-worse than anything else that they could perpetrate-render ridiculous before the public mind great questions which relate to the most urgent wants, the deepest sufferings of humanity.

"Better such efforts, with even such

results, than indifference," is often replied; and this reply the Church is to meet-there is too much edge upon it to turn it aside by an evasion. We must take the standard of reform from the hands of those who abuse it, and bear it onward ourselves, so much in the van as to leave them out of sight. There is no great evil in Christendom for which the Church should not feel itself, in a sense, responsible-there is none that it should not attack bravely. Let it break the restrictions that a false public opinion, and a weak concession from itself, has imposed upon it; let it stand forth upon the sublime platform of its divine constitution and universal moral authority, and here let it open its batteries against all wrong, whether in high places or in low places. There only should it stand-there infallibly would it be invincible and sublime before all eyes.

Again, and in order to this, the spiritual life of the Church must be more fully restored. We have said, in another article, that the ideal-the moral code even of Christianity-would be impracticable without the special doctrines of grace which distinguish the system; that the morality of the Sermon on the Mount would be a mockery of human infirmity, were it not for the doctrine of Regeneration. The real power and safety of the Church must come from its inward life. Less of sectarian zeal, less even of dogmatic rigor, and more of personal religious life, is what we need. Personal piety-personal sanctity-fervent in the pew, the vestry meeting and the closet, yet not there alone-but going about, as in the person of Christ, "doing good;" bearing around its brow the halo of divine light, undimmed amid the moral miasma and mists of the world-into the workshop, the mart, the exchange, the social assembly-this is the most needed, and, alas! the most rare demonstration of Christianity.

One overwhelming and conclusive proof of our faith infidelity has to concede. No thoughtful unbeliever will hesitate to admit that if Christendom lived fully up to the morality of the Decalogue, the piety of the Sermon on the Mount, and the devotion of the Lord's Prayer, it would reach all practicable moral perfection—that (admitting the paradox, for illustration,) if the Christian Church had not the true

religion, and the true were now, for the first time, revealed, the latter could not possibly be better than the former, were the Church fully up to the conditions mentioned. What is this but a virtual concession, that Christianity is the true religion itself? The fact is hypothetically granted, then; what need we further but to give it practical reality in the actual life of the Church?

This, we repeat, is the needed demonstration of our faith. It would operate two ways: first, the increase of spiritual purity and energy in the Church would stimulate all its practical movements, and thus give it that predominance in the reforms of the day, which we have urged; secondly, it would demonstrate the divine virtue, that is, the truth of Christianity, by exemplifying it.

This, then, should be the great movement of modern Christianity-the resuscitation of its original, its spiritual life. Its pulpits and all its other organs should subordinate every other question to this. Questions of ecclesiastical economy, sectarian tenets, even the reformatory duties above discussed, all should be surmounted by the more momentous aim of the universal resuscitation of the Church. We are already tending to it, and have been, since the great reaction above described; but the idea needs to be brought out more definitely it should rise so ostensibly before the contemplation of Protestant Christendom, that-like the sun, when, after hours of but partial distinctness, it emerges from the mists-its light shall break upon and cover all surrounding sights.

:

A difficulty besets us just here, of which we are painfully conscious, a very simple and yet very formidable one, viz.: that the obvious truthfulness of these last views will impair if not destroy their importance. They are truisms, and therefore, alas, become powerless common-places! Were you to propose some elaborately contrived and expensive mode of counteracting the infidelity of the times, it would probably be studied and discussed, and if it were evident that it must be successful, it could hardly fail to be adopted. But here is an obvious, all-comprehensive remedy; yet how far is it heeded?

We are the more urgent with the above opinions, from the conviction that the usual defences of Christianity are some

what irrelevant because not needed in the

present controversy. We need not, in this age, "Apologies" for Christianity so much as exemplifications of it. Besides the fact that infidelity is now more a sentiment than an opinion-more in the heart than in the head-we believe that more erudite and powerful defences of revealed religion than those already extant cannot well be expected. Learning has something yet to do, doubtless, for religious truth; it will still afford new illustrations and analogies in Natural Theology, new developments of Biblical criticism, new reconcilements of revelation with science, as in Geology; but the great standards on the Christian Evidences, the works of Butler, Lardner, Faber, Leland, Warburton, Bishop Watson, Macknight, Paley, Chalmers, and others as great, can never be superseded, any more than they can be overthrown. The citadel of our faith stands within a Gibraltar of such learning and strength. Its defence, hereafter, must be moral, not so much as heretofore intellectual, and we believe that we have indicated above the career of its future triumphs.

ON THE CLIFF-TOP.

FACE upward to the sky,

Quiet I lie;

Quiet as if the finger of God's will

Had made this human mechanism still,
And the intangible essence, this strange "I,"
Went wondering forth to his eternity.
Below-the sea's sound, faint
As dying saint

Telling of long-spent sorrows, all at rest;
Above the unscared sea-gull's shimmering
breast,

Painted a moment on the dark-blue skies-
A hovering joy, that, while I watch it, flies.
Alike unheeded now,

Thou grief; and thou,

Quick-wing'd joy, that like wild bird at play
Pleasest thyself to flit round me to-day;
On the cliff-top-earth dim, and heaven clear
My soul rests calmly, above hope-or fear.
But not, (thou God, forbid !

By Him whose lid

[down

[For the National Magazine.] WORK.

BY ALICE CAREY.

NINCE Adam and Eve went from Para

a proper receiving of that doom it has been
most benevolently ordained that we shall
find our greatest good. Right through
the curse shines the blessing-the flower
that grows bright under our culture, gives
us more pleasure than the wide garden of
our neighbor. "I have done this thing
myself," is at the bottom of true dignity.
I have planted a vine where there were
dry stones, and the shadow and the fruit
that are mine are not more grateful than
the knowledge that I have beautified the
landscape, given food to the hungry, given
example to the unthrifty, done a good
thing. The reward that follows labor
could not have been but for labor-the
burden makes grateful the rest. It is in
vain we disdain the work after which, as
God has willed, rest cometh; it is in vain
we pray for blessings, neglecting the na-
tural means that bless us. If we put our
hand in the fire and call an angel to bring
us water, we shall call without answer;
and if we cry ever so earnestly for manna,
we shall be likely to call in vain, so long as
we refuse to sow and to plant. "We have
a brave world to sin and suffer in," says
some one, and it seems to me that we have
also a brave world to labor and to rest in.

The gold-headed wheat field aslanting,
The vine and the tree;

The sweet-smelling earth at the planting—
How pleasant they be!

And God has given us the great bountiful earth to cultivate and beautify, and are we not rich enough? What more could our good Father do for us than he has done? Any one of us by a little thrifty industry can make some small portion of the soil our own; and what a sense of satisfaction it imparts to us to feel that we are treading upon our own ground, or building our house upon a sure foundation! How luxuriantly the earth teems for our little pains-yellow wheat fields and red orchard boughs, and green meadows. Broad-bladed corn stalks, with their pale tassels and afterward golden ears; purple plums, pink peaches, and the various Vegetable store-the sweet-scented beanvines and hop-vines-more and better things than I can number, the brown soil

gives to the diligent. No costliest dyes can rival the coloring of the commonest flower, no king's canopy is half so glorious as the drooping boughs of my apple-tree, nor his wine better than the juice I squeeze from my own grapes; nor can his carpet of wool be so grateful as the cool soft moss to my feet. Why then do I envy him? Why do I sigh for his palace, when the little home I have shelters me as well.

If the king's gardener is a wiser and happier man than the king, it were better for us to be gardeners than kings. The moss bed is brighter than the sack of down, and what is it a king can have that I cannot have? Fictitiously much, absolutely nothing. He has cares that I have not, and do not desire; he has a crown, but I can make one of the flowers of the wood that will rival it in splendor; he has a gilded carriage, I have feet and can run past him; he has made the earth barren with useless masonry, I have made it fruitful with a garden; he has the adulation of a crowd, I the respect of myself, which is worth more than even the respect of another; for we must first feel worthy to obtain our own respect. I am a king's gardener, and in my labor I am blest. Singing every day as I keep and dress my vines

Hilda is a lofty lady,

Very proud is she

I am but a simple herdsman,
Dwelling by the sea.

Hilda hath a thousand forests,
Thousand meadow lands;

She hath maids and men for service,
I have but my hands.

Hilda hath a chain of diamonds,

Not a groat have I;

And her smile, my dun-brown oxen
Are too poor to buy.

She is clad in robes of splendor,
She is follow'd-fear'd;
Queens have paled to see her beauty-
I have but my beard.

Hilda from her palace window
Looketh down on me,
Keeping with my dun-brown oxen
By the sounding sea.

She may scorn me from her palace,
She may pass me by,

With my free heart and my manhood
Hilda's peer am I.

I am sorry the world has gone mad about things which, after all, are but the semblances of things. To look well in the

eyes of others and not to do well, to seem, and not to be, is what we are almost all of us striving for. And of all delusions that ever came into our deceitful hearts, that which says labor is an ignominy and a thing to be despised, is the falsest. All the great things that we so long to have about us, are reduced to this-the brickmakers and the carpenters go before the fine house, and the sheep-shearer and the loom before the brightly-dyed garment.

The author's book, if it is worth reading, was not made in a minute, it cost a good deal of plowing in the field of thoughtthose word-flowers did not grow without planting and tending-those smooth lines did not fall together without measurement.

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever," and by labor is the beautiful created: how then shall work be despised? Surely not by any but the despicable.

This false idea, that it is disreputable to work, is doing a vast deal of harm in the world. Moth will fret away the garment faster than useful wear; use keeps the iron polished that rusts when it is laid by; and if we seek only our own individual good, we cannot do so well as to work. Without labor, rest itself becomes the hardest of all labors; we cannot escape the laws of our being. Every moment of rest beyond a certain point is fatigue; every neglected labor is a neglected blessing; every opportunity of gaining knowledge, wasted, is a fountain sealed up; to be sure we can sit idle if we choose, but we do so at our peril. Yet the doom we bring on ourselves is full of mercy, for at any time we can cast it off.

Even those things which we call evil, and which are hardest to endure, are alleviated by labor, and by trust in Him who has made it our lot. The heart is lightened more by carrying green sods to the grave, than by the folding of the hands beside the bare, heaped earth; and the vacant chair is noticed less when we go out and bring some poor houseless wayfarer to fill it. But it is not ourself only that we harm by idleness or help by work-things are so interblent and interfused that one cannot cease to move, and the others go on as well. Moreover, cessation is stagnation-the tree that grows not, decays; the water that flows not, is dead: and the man who works not, is worse than dead: for out of death springs a new form of life; but out of idleness