to many preachers, and a stone of stumbling to many hearers, and such a one as prevents many from hearing at all. Let it be a free, natural, manly address to the people on their most vital interests, and it would be a different thing-different to many hearers, and very different with many preachers.”— pages 231-233. In his lecture on the Blessing of Freedom, one of the very best in the book, Mr. Dewey dwells on the causes that for the present are in operation tending to lessen in our American brethren the due sense of the advantages of freedom: he states the just principle and working of democratic government, and that in proportion to the degree of popular ignorance on many important matters, will errors necessarily be committed by it. He, however, values the political constitution of his country, first, because it is the only system that accords with the truth of things, the only system that recognises the great claims and inalienable rights of humanity; secondly, because it fosters and developes all the intellectual and moral powers of the country; and in connexion with this topic, we cite an admirable passage. "Nay, I will go further, and confess the secret hope I have long entertained, that the liberty wherewith, as I believe, God has made us free, that the equal justice, the impartial rewards which encourage individual enterprise in this country, will produce yet more glorious and signal results; results that will proclaim to all the world, that political equity is the best pledge for national dignity, strength, and honour; results which will, effectually and for ever, break down the pernicious maxim, that a certain measure of political injustice and favouritism is necessary to the order and security of the social state. As I believe in a righteous Providence, I do not believe in this maxim; and I trust in God, that it will receive its final and annihilating blow in this very country. It is not that I challenge for our people any natural superiority to other people: it is not to the shrine of national pride that I bring the homage of this lofty hope, but to the footstool of divine goodness. It is to our signal advantages, and especially to the equal justice of our institutions, that I look for the accomplishment of this great hope. I believe that freedom-free action-free enterprise-free competition-will be found to be the best of auspices for every kind of human success. I believe that our citizens will be found to act more effectively, and more generously, and more nobly, for being free; that our citizen-soldiers will, if called upon, fight more valiantly for being free; that our labourers will toil more cheerfully for being free; that our merchants will trade more successfully; nay, and little as it may be expected, that our preachers and orators will discourse more eloquently, and that our authors will write more powerfully, for the spirit of freedom that is among us. The future, indeed, must tell us whether this is a dream of enthusiastic patriotism. But I would fain have the most generous of principles for once laid at the heart of a great people, and see what it will do. Alas! for humanity never yet has been treated with the confidence of simple justice. Never yet has any voice effectually said to man, 'God has made thee to be as happy and as glorious, if thou wilt, as thy most envied fellow.' When that voice does address the heart of the multitude, will it not arouse itself to loftier efforts, to nobler sacrifices, to higher aspirations, and more generous virtues, than were ever seen to be the offspring of any unequal and ungenerous system that ever man has devised. God grant that the hope may be realised, and the vision accomplished! It were enough to make one say 'Now let me depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation!"-pages 292-4. There is one great drawback to the unmixed gratification with which we should otherwise peruse these discourses; and that is, the reflection, that while the condition of slavery remains as it is in his country, some of the author's noblest passages lose their truth, and become to our minds mere declamation. There is certainly a "lamentable exception" to be taken in the averments of our last citation. Freedom, in the true sense of the word, cannot be justly predicated of any civil state, where a quarter of a million of human beings are held as property, and bought and sold like cattle, the vendors being in some cases the playmates in infancy, and even the brothers and fathers of the men, women, and children carried to the market! Against this and a few slighter detractions from our full pleasure in this volume, we have, however, to set off such a weight of opposite sensations, as will not allow us to conclude this part of our article, without repeating our persuasion that in Mr. Dewey, America may justly boast of one of the most honest, strenuous, able and eloquent of religious ministers. The spirit of religion in the Union is stirring up others to a reform in the administrations of the pulpit besides those that have already passed under our notice, in as far as the people are getting in advance of their present religious teachers. This spirit is bursting through sectarian restraints, and many powerful voices are raised within the churches as well as out of them, against the mechani on and practice of religion, and in favour of indivi d the consequent spontaneousness of s a defiance of public opinion exhibiting itself more and more in regard to some moral and religious questions about which heretofore there has been unconditional submission. There is a visible reaction in the best part of society in favour of any man who stands alone on any point of religious concern; and though such an one may have the more regularly ordered churches against him, he is usually cheered by the hearty countenance of some more congénial minds. That the people are taking a lively interest in these reforms is testified by the rapid sale of heretical books, and by the outbreak of heresy and schism in all directions. In this state of things we need not wonder if some of the most gifted minds, the authorized pioneers of religious improvement, should no longer seek to lose themselves in the crowd;-that the lawful leaders of the host should no longer cower behind the rear ranks. It would be difficult, perhaps, to ascertain the number and character of all these religious reformers, as well as to estimate correctly the nature and extent of the urgency in each demand; but as regards one in particular, we are not thus at a loss; we allude to Orestes A. Brownson of Boston. We are assured that he is a man of vigorous intellect, full of enlarged sympathies, who has not only discerned the wants of the time, but set himself to do what one man may to supply them. He invites to worship those who think and feel with him. A multitude flocks around him; the earnest spirits of the city and the day, whose full hearts and worn spirits can find little ease and refreshment amidst the abstract and inappropriate services of ministers who give them truth as they judge they can receive it. Nothing but the whole truth will satisfy those who are living and dying for it. In giving an extract or two from part of a discourse by Mr. Brownson on the "Wants of the Times," we trust the reader will perceive how much his sentiments accord with our own as stated in the commencement of this article, and will feel that his remarks do not apply to his own countrymen only. "The age, and especially the country, in which we live, are peculiar. They, therefore, require a peculiar kind of instruction, and, I may say, a peculiar mode of dispensing Christian truth. They are unlike any which have preceded us. They are new, and consequently demand what I have called a new Dispensation of Christianity, a dispensation in perfect harmony with the new order of things which has sprung into existence. Yet of this fact we seem not to have been generally aware. The character of our religious institutions, the style of our preaching, the means we rely upon for the production of the Christian virtues, are such as were adopted in a distant age, and fitted to wants which no longer exist, or which exist only in a greatly modified shape. * "Should it now be asked, as it has been, what I mean by the new dispensation of Christianity, the new form of religion, of which I have often spoken in this place and elsewhere, I answer, I mean religious institutions, and modes of dispensing religious truths and influences, which recognise the rights of the mind, and propose social progress as one of the great ends to be obtained. In that new church of which I have sometimes dreamed, and I hope more than dreamed, I would have the unlimited freedom of the mind unequivocally acknowledged. No interdict should be placed upon thought. To reason should be a Christian, not an infidel, act. Every man should be encouraged to inquire, and to inquire not a little merely, within certain prescribed limits; but freely, fearlessly, fully, to scan heaven, air, ocean, earth, and to master God, nature, and humanity, if he can. He who inquires for truth honestly, faithfully, perseveringly, to the utmost extent of his power, does all that can be asked of him; he does God's will, and should be allowed to abide by his own conclusions, without fear of reproach from God or man.” He next proceeds to state what are his views of the object, spirit and scope of the Christian religion. And what was this gospel which was preached to the poor? Was it a gospel suited to the views of the Autocrat of the Russias, such as despots ever love? Did it command the poor, in the name of God, to submit to an order of things of which they are the victims, to be contented to pine in neglect, and die of wretchedness? No, no: Jesus preached no such tyrant-pleasing and tyrant-sustaining gospel. The gospel which he preached was the gospel of human brotherhood. He preached the gospel, the holy evangile, good news to the poor, when he proclaimed them members of the common family of man, when he taught that we are all brethren, having one and the same Father in heaven; he preached the gospel to the poor, when he declared to the boastingly religious of his age, that even publicans and harlots would go into the kingdom of heaven sooner than they; and whoever preaches the universal fraternity of the human race, preaches the gospel to the poor, though he speak only of the rich. "There is power in this great doctrine of the universal brotherhood of mankind. It gives the reformer a mighty advantage. It enables him to speak words of an import, and in a tone which may almost wake the dead. 'Hold thy hand, oppressor,' it permits him to say, 'thou wrongest a brother! Withhold thy scorn thou bitter satirist of the human race, thou vilifiest thy brother! In passing by that child in the street yester 1 day, and leaving it to grow up in ignorants a God had given thee wealth to train it to knowinque neglect thy brother's child.' Oh: did we nur z all brothers and sisters, children of the same pate every wrong done to a human being, was wor "I say again that Jesus was emphaticalr ta prophet of the working men if you wi heavy laden.' Were I to repeat has worn 11. the intimation that I believed they meant, sweeti said, 'It is easier for a camel to go from to a rich man to enter into the kingdon, cʻ now that I believed he attached a mes call me a radical,' an agraria, a "I say still again, that Jesus masses, the prophet of the perpe one description of person, to the benefit one portion of the thing more than another dista the factitious distinctions of universal mind, and to the people because he recog suffered and died to estab cannot fail to bring up fea who, in all ages and is al come due rank and social importance fr have called the democrate of progress, in the intives s union with God. It start been at work in socer e before which slavery has destroyed the warn birth, which is now Singa promises, ere hung um stocracy of men." In conclusion. Ir. ticles of his creat strations: "My creed sa perfect liberty ty fect respect for the bea which he arrives. The a special object of the wor |