fluencing the civilization of the world is an industrial people, so devoted to business as scarcely to be capable of enjoying leisure. It is a people remarkable for the general and equable diffusion of physical comfort, of intelligence and intellectual culture, for public spirit, for interest in all that promotes human welfare, for hopefulness and progressiveness, for manly self-reliance, for energy and enterprise. The enthusiastic joy of Americans at the supposed success of the Atlantic Telegraph, contrasted with the indifference of Europeans, exemplifies the contrast between them in their interest in human progress. We see also the tendency of aristocratic civilization to concentrate advantages, and the tendency of republican civilization to diffuse them. If the former can show statesmen more consummate, scholars more learned, gentlemen more polished, the latter can show more widely diffused political knowledge and general intelligence and culture. If the former can show larger estates, the latter opposes overgrown wealth and shows the general distribution of property. If we have no St. Peter's nor St. Paul's, nor any Bodleian library, we have churches and libraries in every hamlet, schools in every neighborhood, and books in every house. If we have not the elegant palaces of noblemen, we have millions of happy cottages and the general diffusion of comfort; so that an American laborer is astonished at the little with which an emigrant is contented; and the waste of an American camp, it has been said, would support a European army. If we have no private parks, we have no poachers. Such is the people that, educated under republican institutions, is realizing the Christian doctrine of labor in its own history and the civilization which it develops.

We can only glance at the present position of the opposing forces. The old slavery which Christianity first encountered, long ago, under the power of Christianity, ceased to exist. Serfdom, which succeeded it in the feudal system, has passed away. Monarchical and aristocratic institutions remain. Neither of these ever had any footing in this country. We had the immense advantage of beginning without the entail of these institutions and their everywhere penetrating influences.

The principal influence of aristocracy here is to dazzle weakminded men, who speak of it as a disparagement that American estates are so much less than the great estates of Europe, who affect in house and equipage, and attendance, the state of a European lord, and, sewing yellow plush upon the hat and clothes of a hired man, think they are like a European nobleman with servants in livery; and to blind other misguided men to get up strikes and Trades Unions, which may be excused where labor is degraded and kept down, but have no place in our civilization in which labor is free.

The great antagonist in this country to the Christian doctrine of labor is negro slavery, which has succeeded to feudal serfdom, and in some respects is worse than it and than the ancient slavery. We say of it only this; both it and the state of society arising from it rest on the heathen doctrine of the degradation of labor, and are in direct antagonism to the Christian doctrine. The present rebellion is an attempt to establish the old heathen civilization, with its castes, its aristocracies, its contempt of labor, its interest in military rather than in industrial pursuits. In reading quotations from Aristotle and other heathen writers of antiquity, the reader must have been struck with the fact that they propound the same theory of society which has been propounded of late at the South; the need of a class raised above the necessity of labor and having leisure to attend to the affairs of the State; the laboring class, the foundation by which the superstructure of society is supported; an inferior race, because weak, bound to serve the superior race because it is strong; and the like. The only difference is that the ancients write in language of classic dignity and elegance, while McDuffie, Hammond, and their coadjutors, in more vulgar style, talk of "mudsills" and "the greasy mechanics of the North." We charge on those politicians the folly and the crime of attempting to crush Christ's truth respecting labor, to arrest the benign progress of the civilization which it creates, and to destroy the great republic in whose institutions the doctrine found protection and support, and by whose growth and might it was pushing its peaceful conquests across the continent.

Those politicians are correct in affirming that the republics of Greece and Rome rested on slavery as their corner-stone. Every law, every usage, every institution of those republics degraded labor and barred it from the possibility of rising. But their folly and crime are that they insist that all republics must be like them, and attempt to destroy this republic because it is vitalized by the contrary and the Christian doctrine. Nay, their crime outreaches this. They would recognize heathen civilization and polity in the name of Christianity, and blaspheme Christ by affirming that he taught no other principles on this subject than Aristotle taught. They would incorporate a heathenish philosophy into a modern civilization and state, and when that abomination of desolation stands in the holy place, they baptize it in the name of Christ.

It appears, then, that this conflict does not result from local or temporary causes. It is but one campaign in the long conflict between the Christian and the heathenish doctrine of labor, and the two forms of civilization which these respectively create.

It appears, also, that so far as American civilization is vitalized by this doctrine it is vitalized by a truth of Christianity, possesses the vigor and immortality of Christianity and must go forward with it to triumph. The worship of Jupiter and Apollo cannot be restored. Equally abortive must be the effort to perpetuate in institutions the principles of that heathenism, when in the fulness of time Christ pushes into collision with it institutions which his truth vitalizes with the vigor of immortality. Slavery is an iceberg floated away from its Arctic home, heaving and melting in the waves of a sunnier climate.

It is of great practical importance to remember the Christian origin of the modern doctrine of labor. Doubtless, in the great industrial movement of these times, which has been gathering momentum from every discovery and invention for many centuries, we see the fulfillment of God's original promise to give to man dominion over the earth. Man lost the fulfillment of

this promise by his fall, but regains it through Christ, whose teaching set in motion that industrial energy which is subduing the earth. It is necessary to bear its Christian character in mind. So mighty and broad has this movement become, there is danger, if we forget Christ's claim on it, that we forget our spiritual interests and obligations, and become swallowed up and lost in material enterprise and gains. There is danger lest this overgrown child of Christianity turn Christianity itself out of doors. We must learn that man does not live by bread alone, but by the word of God. A civilization wholly occupied with material interests may be as deadly as heathenism itself.

ARTICLE IV.-THE FOUNDATION OF MORAL OBLIGATION.

FROM a very early period in his history, man experiences what is known as a sense of duty, of oughtness, of obligation. In certain contingencies there arises within his soul the authoritative command, Do thus; and he cannot help but acknowledge, I am bound, obligated to obey. This "sense of obligation" is found to be an intellectual perception; and to be universal, spontaneous, and organic. It is further found, that this is the highest possible requirement, which can lie upon any being; for the positive and unqualified affirmation of the intellect is, that when a being has obeyed this behest, he has performed the highest possible act.

Such a command, occupying such a position, having especial and sole regard to moral beings, must necessarily fasten the attention of the world's purest and profoundest thinkers; and the question would inevitably assert itself, and demand an answer: What is the ground of this command? Why is this obligation? Without attempting a historical review of the growth of human thought upon this subject, it will be the object of the following Article to present, by quotations, the views, respecting it, of three eminent writers now living in our country; to construct, partly at least therefrom, a clear, exact, and [final statement of the truth,-such as shall be self-evident; and, in doing this, to note and eliminate what is believed to be an error in the theory held by two of them. The extracts which, have been selected are given below in historical order:

"The ground of obligation, then, is that reason, or consideration, intrinsic in, or belonging to, the nature of an object which necessitates the rational affirmation that it ought to be chosen for its own sake."

"I say the intrinsic nature of the ultimate end, for the sake of which the executive acts are demanded, must be in the