excellent and useful, that we may say of it, as David did of Goliah's sword, (1 Sam. xxi. 9.,) There is none like it."

Probably it is for this reason that we give the preference, among all those noted above, to the one published in Philadelphia, as the most purely a mere compilation from our Prayer Book.

THE FIVE POINTS HOUSE OF INDUSTRY.

[Continued from Page 304.]

To struggle with difficulty and opposition, often with enmity and violence, is the fate of nearly all enterprises, whether of policy or charity, which combine the virtues of energy and originality. Whatsoever, indeed, looks to improvement, either in the rational fabric of man or in his outward practice and conversation, is pretty sure, if it show any chance or likelihood of reaching its aim, to encounter certain fast-rooted prejudices: it has to wage a conflict, sometimes a fierce and protracted one, with antagonist interests and prepossessions: in its very promise of something higher and better, there is a note of threatening to divers old habits and notions,-the cherished treasure of men who do not like to be surpassed. You cannot make any discernible progress, without leaving many, perhaps all, of your neighbours behind, and thereby endangering their preeminence and respect; and, in nine cases out of ten, they will attribute your getting ahead of them either to some great vice of character or some fatal error of judgment on your part; they will even honestly and conscientiously believe, that you could not possibly outstrip them, but that your course were downwards; and so will make a merit of staying behind you, as proving their strength to be greater than yours. There seems indeed to be in the very nature of things some law or principle whereby Truth requires certain impediments, to give her sure foothold for working and pushing her way onwards; so that except she be hindered, she cannot advance; even as the steam-engine forces the ship along by means of that very element which obstructs her.

This law of movement by overcoming, of success through resistance, has been pointedly exemplified in the work which we are endeavouring to trace. And, in giving an account of the enterprise, it would not be doing right either to the man or to the cause, to pass over in silence the warfare which Mr. Pease had to sustain, and that, too, not only against the inhe rent hardness of his task, and the inertness or supineness of the public fastening upon the supposed impracticability of his scheme and the seeming desperateness of the subjects, but also against the assaults of personal enmity, the arts of misrepre sentation, and the persevering energy of concentrated rancour and spite. In truth, he had, for some years, to fight every inch of his course. And the fight was none the less trying, nor any the less wearing, that on his side it had to be, for the most part, a fight of silent endurance, and conducted on the principle of routing his foes by sticking to his work, and not allowing them to divert him from it. "Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you," is a sentence which he has been as far as possible from incurring. His actions were industriously vil ified, his motives maligned, his integrity impeached; slander's envenomed tooth gnawed at him; obloquy and detraction pursued and hunted him: some,-"you must think this, look you, that the worm will do his kind,"-some whom he had tried in vain to reclaim cooked their incorrigibleness into virulence against him, and pointed their malice at the breast whose experienced warmth had not been able to thaw it out of them.

This onset and tempest of calumny Mr. Pease stood through, not altogether unmoved indeed, but without "bating a jot of heart or hope;" till at length the voice of reproach was fairly shamed into silence, or was strangled beneath the accumulating proofs of its own impotence. As for the names of these illstarred assailants, who thus "with unbashful forehead wooed" contempt, it is not worth the while to recall them here. Nor would it pay, to enter with much fulness into the details of this miserable warfare: it is enough, to state the fact, and to indicate its general spirit and character. Nor would we do even so much as this for any other purpose than to show that such is but "the rough brake that virtue must go through;" that

others who, in like sort, have the heart to devise and the hand. to execute liberal things, may not be discouraged when their good is evil spoken of, nor lose hope when things are laid to their charge, which they knew not; but may rather follow the example of Mr. Pease, in turning the obstructions that hostility thrusts in their way into a means of getting up higher, and in growing the stronger to stand the more they have to withstand.

In its origin, however, and in the impulses that kept it up, this crusade offers certain points of so instructive a nature, that it would be scarce excusable to leave them wholly unnoticed. We have already seen that the original patrons of Mr. Pease at the Five Points were the "Ladies' Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church ;" and that he began to lose their confidence as soon as he presumed to know his business better than they did. Their plan was none other than to indoctrinate the Five-Pointers in the faith and morals of the Gospel: Mr. Pease, while nowise neglecting this part of the work, saw -and acted on what he saw-that it was further necessary to make the faith and morals of the Gospel possible in their case, by extricating them from the compulsory alternative of sinning or starving, and by providing for them the opportunities and the wages of honest and reputable labour. They thought only of a religious, not a charitable enterprise; he thought of an enterprise wherein religion should work by the laws and methods of charity; which is a very different thing!

That he should thus dare to be wise above his patrons, seems to have been resented by them as a sort of apostacy from the cause. His having a clearer insight and understanding of what ought to be done, and how, than they could have who had never stood face to face with the evil, nor set themselves hand to hand to outwrestle the practical difficulties of the work, this was more than they could digest; to their thoughts it wore a malign and sinister aspect; their spiritual sensibilities stood off from it as little better than a crime. Honourable exceptions there were indeed among them; but as a body they were unwilling, apparently, to shine on any but satellites. They were to be the head, he the hand; to do the thinking, was their part; to work out their thoughts, was enough for

him; they taking the credit, if he succeeded; he bearing the blame, if he failed. But it must be admitted in excuse of them all, that they but acted on what were then, as indeed is still too much the case, the general sentiments and convictions of the Christian public. So that the blame of their course, whatever it be, is to be shared by the religious community at large. And it was much more their misfortune than their fault, that they had been led to take religion in such a form and such a sense as made them inaccessible to reason; just as though Christianity did not presuppose in man a rational understanding, and offer itself as a supplement to his reason, and not as a substi tute for it. For the Gospel comes to us as a light, and not as an eye; to perfect our native faculties of knowledge, not to supersede them and it requires the best use of whatever good gifts we already have, as the condition of these better gifts which it has to bestow. So that he who slights the natural means of wisdom, and on the plea of grace makes himself expe rience-proof, will be none the wiser for his Christian faith: nay, more; as he abuses his reason by not using it, so he will be sure to abuse the Gospel by misusing it.

When it became manifest that Mr. Pease would think for himself, and would shape his way accordingly, the effect was to alienate his lady patrons. They drew off from him, and started, in the same neighbourhood, another missionary estab lishment, to be worked more in accordance with their ideas of the true Gospel method. Had his work died of their desertion, probably they would not have found it very hard both to forgive and forget his offence: but when they saw it living in spite of their desertion, and even thriving because of it, this took, to them, the aspect of a wrong such as they could neither forget nor forgive. The more he succeeded, the more they felt his course as a reproach; and they could not understand how, in their own case, such "reproofs of instruction" should be "the way of life."

In their opening another mission on the same ground, there was nothing to complain of; for there was room enough and work enough for several such enterprises; and if the two had cultivated a generous emulation in good works, it would have done no hurt. And one would think that, if they could not

run a course of mutual help, the least they could do was to let each other alone. But the older concern had the advantage in the public favour. And it appears that certain parties, before alluded to, they are nameless here,-of the right Five-Points stamp, and who were probably hostile to both establishments, but especially so to the stronger of them, shook hands with some friends of the younger, and succeeded in persuading them that Mr. Pease had done them wrong; that he had not been upright in his dealings and accounts with them; that he was deceiving the public, and defrauding the benevolent of their patronage. To these "lewd fellows of the baser sort" they gave willing heed; held up a greedy ear to their "calumnious strokes ;" and then, not content with repelling the supposed wrongs of Mr. Pease, proceeded to retaliate; therewithal, stoop ing to use his accusers as their agents or instruments in the work of traducing him. Of course, among the newspapers of the city, there were not wanting such as would readily prostitute their columns to this pruriency of mischief. But Mr. Pease had already made sure of too many friends to be crushed by such a proceeding: the Courier and Enquirer, the Times, the Tribune were prompt and decided in vindicating him moreover, Mr. John Stephenson, Mr. Thomas S. Eells, Mr. James Donaldson, Mr. Charles Ely, Mr. H. R. Remsen, and others, having full official knowledge of the facts, came out in their own names, and met the main charges, some with a point-blank denial, some with a decisive refutation. As for those who served as scavengers and utterers in this dirty work, they had no character to lose; those who patronized their talents were too prudent to make themselves responsible in the public eye; while those who stood forth on the other side were men of high character and approved worth, whose judgment was respected, whose testimony was conclusive.

Such, as briefly and as fairly as we can put it, was the course and upshot of this odious warfare, which grew to a head and crisis in the Winter of 1853-4. And the result was, a clear triumph on the side of Mr. Pease: it gave a public demonstration of that kind or degree of strength in him, which turns obstacles into stepping-stones. And the triumph was all the more memorable, forasmuch as it had come to be the general