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weal. "Discover what will destroy life, and you are a great man! what will prolong it, and you are an impostor! Discover some invention in machinery that will make the rich more rich, and the poor more poor, and they will build you a statue! Discover some mystery in art that would equalize physical disparities, and they will pull down their own houses to stone you."

The English aristocracy are, at this moment, greatly alarmed, as they have been for the last half century, in their conflict with republican France, and other abused neighbors. They profess to fight under the banner of Liberty; but the least informed can easily see that the only freedom they desire is to enjoy their own selfish privileges, which are endangered by every advance of liberal opinions and rational institutions. But liberty does not cease to be a great fact in the heart of humanity, and the most strengthening of its hopes, because the base, the cunning, and the tyrannical, are ready to offer mock incense on her altars, when about to murder Liberty's champions, and to transform into curses all which it is her prerogative to bestow. For instance, look at that beautiful and abused land, of which her noble son, Grattan, said long ago, "I found Ireland on her knees: I watched over her with an eternal solicitude: I have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from arms to liberty." No: not yet to liberty quite, but justice to all oppressed people will yet come.

It

The common sense of mankind has declared Brahminism hostile to civilization, because it produces stagnation in the moral life, and perpetually limits the exercise of intellect. The influence of all feudal institutions is exactly the same. is a system which has rendered but one good service to mankind the example of individual will, displaying itself with the utmost energy in revolt against insufferable wrongs. The lesson prospered in spite of the weakness of the serfs, and the prodigious inequality between them and the great proprietors, their lords, whole cities broke out in rebellion, and

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began the battle of freedom for the world. Says Guizot, “It is difficult to fix a precise date to this great event-this general insurrection of the cities. The commencement of their enfranchisement is usually placed at the beginning of the eleventh century. But in all great events, how many unknown and disastrous efforts must have been made, before the successful one! Providence, upon all occasions, in order to accomplish its designs, is prodigal of courage, virtues, sacrifices-finally, of man; and it is only after a vast number of unknown attempts, apparently lost,—after a host of noble hearts have fallen into despair; convinced that their cause was lost, -that it triumphs. Such, no doubt, was the case in the struggle of the free cities. Doubtless in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, there were many attempts at resistance, many efforts made for freedom;- many attempts to escape from bondage, which not only were unsuccessful, but the remembrance of which, from their ill success, has remained without glory. Still we may rest assured that these attempts had a vast influence upon succeeding events: they kept alive and maintained the spirit of liberty-they prepared the great insurrection of the eleventh century."

The battle of the popular heart and will, against feudality, has never ceased; it is mightier and more successful now than ever before. In the days of Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, sumptuary laws were passed which allowed traders and artisans the use of meat at one meal only; even the rich were allowed only two courses and two sorts of viands, with the exception of barons and prelates, who were at liberty to devour as many kinds and as much as they pleased. But people in our day seem disposed to take the law-making and foodproviding business into their own hands. In the grand final conflict, which every moment approaches a more deadly crisis, aristocrats in church and state will be the first to perish, according to the righteous ordinance of Heaven, that they who most outrageously invade the liberties of others shall first lose their own. The time has come when every man, deprived of

his lawful rights, will exclaim, as did Mirabeau, when expelled from the assembly of the nobles at Marseilles, "So perished the last of the Gracchi; but, before yielding up his life, he threw dust toward heaven, and from that dust Marius grew— Marius, less great as the exterminator of the Cimbri, than as the destroyer of patrician aristocracy at Rome." These words expressed the daring resolution of their author, which he lived to accomplish, and which enabled him to say on his death-bed, "I carry to my grave the shreds of the monarchy." So true is this that, although there have been a few royal puppets since, we hope Louis Philippe correctly said, in his recent flight, "I am the last king of France."

It is matter for devout acknowledgment that the Church of Christ, like every thing else really good, is progressive, and is destined to sweep away every obstacle, become as universal as the wants of our race, free as the dew and effulgence of heaven. She marches nearer and ever nearer to the infinite grandeur of the universe, and the perfect unity of its God. We are to look perpetually forward, and press toward the mark of our high calling, cultivating the conservatism, not of bigoted feudality, but of generous fraternity, holiness, and joy. Yesterday we cannot bring back; it is antiquated: our duty is to perform the duties of a better to-day, and anticipate a still more glorious to-morrow. Christianity must not be allowed to lag behind the other elements of civilization which it so much excels. Every new power that Science discovers, Religion hallows and consecrates to the widest advantage of all ranks, or they inevi tably suffer together the greatest harm. True development is a constant growth from the past into the future, at every advance imbibing the mystic and mighty agencies by which the heart is purified, intellect enlarged, and the whole person fitted to serve God and man. As it is with individuals, so is it with the church as a whole. ment, incompetent to satisfy the religious wants, or grapple with the religious perils, of an era characterized by great social and political revolutions, then must it perish, or receive from

If it remains stationary a mo

some new source immediate accessions of intelligence and force. Hence do we see modern Christianity, true to her mission of progress, gaining new vigor every day from innovators within her fold, who float more freely between habits of ancient submission, associations of bigoted attachment, and allegiance to revolutionary ideas.

All auspices indicate the dawn of a new era. Storms gather with irresistible might to sweep down thrones, disperse mitres, chastise aristocratic and priestly arrogance, awaken the masses to a sense of their capacities as well as their wrongs, and give stability to free institutions every where, by giving elevation of sentiment to all classes of mankind. Then rulers will understand that one of the best means of improving men is seasonably and generously to employ them; that the good of the laborer is to be regarded, as well as the profit to be derived from his toil. Then, too, it will be known that the vitality of Christianity is in itself, or rather in the will, precepts, and example of its divine Founder; not in arid creeds, sacerdotal despotisms, and hollow forms. True devotees, then, will be genteel and highly accomplished, not by an imprudent or effeminate unison with the tastes and customs of feudalism, ancient or modern, but by a profound and yet independent reverence for virtue, rather than rank; for worth, more than wealth. Should we live to enjoy the full splendors of that day, we shall have learned, beyond all present experience, that to be the servant of all is to command all; to give is to receive; to love is to be loved; to die is to live; that true happiness consists in the flowing out of our affections upon others, rather than the flowing in of their treasures or affections upon ourselves; — that dispersion, not accumulation; self-spending, not self-seeking; is the grand design of our earthly existence and its highest reward.

We have already seen that the first home of true religious freedom was in a few hearts among the first colonists of this western world. The Roman Catholics of Maryland, dreading the aggression of English bigotry, and profiting by Roger

Williams's wise liberality, on April 21, 1649, placed upon their statute-book the following noble act: "Whereas the enforcing of the conscience in matters of religion hath frequently fallen out to be of dangerous consequence in those commonwealths where it has been practised, and for the more quiet and peaceable government of this province, and the better to preserve mutual love and amity among the inhabitants, no person within this province, professing to believe in Jesus Christ, shall be any ways troubled, molested, or discountenanced, for his or her religion, or in the free exercise thereof." But notwithstanding these generous and Christian movements on the part of religionists who differed most widely in their tenets, their mutual foes in Massachusetts soon employed

"The skeptic's might, the crosier's pride,

The shackle and the stake,"

if not to mangle their flesh with the enginery of the most fiendish bigotry, to attempt what is worse, and "lock its hard fetters on the mind." Too soon for the peace and honor of that age, but not too speedily and outrageously for a warning to all time, and the ultimate disinthralment of all men from priestly and aristocratic domination, came the actors and their acts, celebrated by Whittier :

"O, glorious days, when church and state
Were wedded by your spiritual fathers!
And on submissive shoulders sat

Your Wilsons and your Cotton Mathers.

"Then wholesome laws relieved the church
Of heretic and mischief-maker;
And priest and bailiff joined in search,

By turns, of Papist, Witch, and Quaker!

"The stocks were at each church's door;

The gallows stood on Boston Common;
A Papist's ears the pillory bore

The gallows-rope, a Quaker woman.”

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