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vivifying effect of the Gospel. See John iii. 16, 36, and iv. 14, and v. 24. Dr. Clarke, (in his Com. on John v. 24,) says on the phrase, "But is passed from death unto life," "Death is the country where every Christless soul lives. The man who knows not God, lives a dying life, or a living death; but he who believes in the Son of God, passes over from the empire of death to the empire of life."

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Barnes on the same passage, remarks, "Religion and its blessings here and hereafter, are one and the same. The happiness of Heaven, is, living to God, - - being sensible of his presence, and glory, and power, and rejoicing in that..... This life, or this religion, whether on earth or in heaven, is the same; the same joys extended and expanded forever. Hence, when a man is converted, it is said that he has everlasting life; not merely shall have, but is already in possession of that life or happiness." See Rom. vi. 16, 23, and viii. 6. Thus the everlasting, the aiönian life of the Gospel, is the spiritual, the living enjoy ment of the Christian. It is not measured by the lapse of time, nor by endless duration, but by the possession of a divine, a spiritual life. It is the well-spring of happiness, flowing from a pure and perfect faith in the living God, and producing holiness of life, peace of soul, and a spirit of charity and disinterested benevolence. This life is brought to light in the Gospel, and is imparted to the human soul, through its life-inspiring precepts. And that the reader may enjoy this life, that it may impart a "peace that passeth understanding," and eventually fill the souls of all with a "joy unspeakable and full of glory," is the prayer of the writer.

D. M. K.

ART. IV.
Progression.

THAT mankind are not only liable to err, but that they have deeply erred, in all that concerns mind and morals, theory and practice, is so certain and palpable as to have. acquired the force and authority of a proverb. They have

turned aside from the light, and groped in darkness; they have neglected to employ the means of advancement; they have persisted in wrong, when the right was acceptable and more eligible; and they have refused to be instructed by their experience. Yet, with these scarcely mitigated truths before us, it is more than probable that their prejudices, and errors, and offences, are less the result of perverse intentions, than of conditions and influences. which they knew not how to control. For it should be remembered that error is propagated, established, and maintained by similar means, and with as certain success, as truth. And when once conceived, diffused, and sent down to other generations, like some hereditary disease, its contaminations spread more fully and fatally over the system of thought, and betray a more fearful and incurable malignity. That mankind have, in all ages, been tried by the besetments of error, that modes of thinking and acting have been forced upon them, by the voice of the many and the power of example, that sanguinary laws have added their terrible sanctions to all other measures and influences, - can neither be doubted nor denied. The free soul, that should have inspired the man, has struggled for a season with the restraints which were thrown around it; and then passively yielded to the dictates of an admitted and overwhelming authority. Thus it has been; thus, to a lamentable extent it still is, with the great majority of the human race.

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It may not, perhaps, be denied without qualification, that men in all ages have thought; but they have not thought independently and strictly for themselves, in the great affairs of morals and religion. They have, indeed, had great reason to think that there was much wrong, and violence, and spiritual oppression; and they have neither felt satisfied nor at ease. But they have felt compelled to think and believe as they were taught, to submit in humble patience to the endurance of evils, which, though obvious, they knew not how to avoid or mitigate, and to regard their mental struggles as trials of virtue as well as of temper. When a doubt has been awakened of the utility or truth, the consistency or scriptural authority of some unintelligible or unreasonable dogma, it has been put aside, lest an impure hand should be stretched out to

steady the ark of God, and violence done to the sacredness of divine institutions. And how resolutely has every such suggestion been repressed, as the malignant insinuation of the "Father of lies," and as having for its object the utter ruin of the soul.

But while the masses have silently endured and bowed submissively to what they deemed their fate, while they have secretly mourned over the present, and looked despairingly to the future, there have been minds which not only perceived the wrong, but fixed their hold upon some tangible and assailable point, and aspired to move heaven and earth for the attainment of the right. These have in all ages, been the martyrs to public sentiment. These are the men, whose opinions and efforts are ever, in one or more particulars, in conflict with those of their times; and whose history always comprehends that of the mental and moral condition of the country and the age. Their story may be told by their enemies; their opinions may be misconstrued by prejudice, and misrepresented by malice; their imperfections magnified into offences, and their very virtues tortured into crimes, still we shall learn the public sentiment, by learning what they opposed, and why they were despised, hated and persecuted.

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'The illustration of these truths are abundant in every department of human history. The religious, the political, and even the scientific world, have respectively furnished their victims; and with them, the evidence to all future times, of the moral and intellectual condition of the million. It is well that we have even these means of information, since but for them, our knowledge of the real character of some ages would have been still more limited. The will and the policy of rulers, were the unresisted and unquestioned rule of opinion and practice among the masses. And it was not until within the last few centuries, that the people, as such, bore any part, other than that of the executioners of a master's will, in the affairs in which themselves were most deeply interested. It has been at the self-sacrifice and life-labor of a few uncompromising men, the wisest and best of men, too, that popular evils, whether political or religious, have usually been removed, and substantial human advancement effected. Why were the Saviour and his apostles despised, hated, 4

VOL. IV.

persecuted, sacrificed? Because, neither the people of the Jews, nor the masses of the Gentiles, were capable of judging and acting for themselves. They were debarred from the examination of the gospel; they were prevented, by all possible means, from attaining a knowledge of its principles, or appreciating the tendency of its truths; and the stern mandates of the priesthood, or the still more cruel rescripts of the civil governor, were enforced at the sacrifice of all legitimate right and all human sympathy. And this-not because the people, as such, were indisposed to listen to the message of peace; for they often gave unequivocal evidence of their deep and lively interest in those who aspired to teach them, and who in many ways evinced an inextinguishable sympathy for them. But they were overawed, and the policy and the will of the few gave impulse and character to the movements of the many. The same reasons apply to every instance of general persecution for opinion's sake, from the apostolic age to the present. This may be distinctly perceived and fully understood, by calling to mind that there is not now a single government among enlightened nations that could enforce so much as one of the sanguinary and persecuting measures of by-gone times. There is now a public mind, as well as character; and that mind has outlived this most important portion of its vassalage, and will no longer suffer the operation of a law which sets the first principles of toleration at defiance.

From these data we learn, that the distinguishing feature in the character of man- of the race, is PROGRESS; a constant tendency, with occasional and limited exceptions, to improvement, to elevation. Everything relating to him combines to sustain the belief, that his moral, social, and intellectual condition is higher and better in the present, than in any preceding age. He is improved in his whole condition and character. He is better fed, better clothed, better lodged, and better governed. He is more enlightened; he feels deeper and broader sympathies; he understands more clearly his affinities, and identifies his interests and his happiness more effectually with his race. He has learned that he is at least a unit in the sum of human existence; and, consequently, that he bears, and must bear his relative proportion of good or evil, happiness or misery.

He has outlived his isolation from his fellows; he is slowly but surely rising up from his debasement; his stinted and benumbed faculties are quickening under excitement; his vacant mind is filling with ideas, alike novel and crude, it may be, but ideas still; and he is no longer satisfied with the endurance of evils at the disposal of human wisdom and power, and which he once deemed inseparable from

existence.

The enviable distinctions of a class are passing away, and are becoming the inheritance of the million,-the unquestioned rights of man. And how came he by all these things? Came they from heaven in glorious vision? Did they in a moment break upon his passive soul, and overwhelm him with their number, variety, and fulness? Or did he leap at once, from the profound depths of his degradation, and seize the aggregate of all which he now enjoys? O, no, none of these things. They have been wrought out piecemeal through long ages, in the furnace of affliction. They are the incipient results of troubled thoughts, of untold sacrifices, of lives of weariness and unsubdued determination. They are the products of minds elevated above, and uninfluenced by, the considerations that sway the multitude; minds which defied the intervention of human authority between themselves and their God; minds which despised vulgar prejudices, which perils could not awe, and which gloried in the maintenance of the good and the true, even at the price of blood.

Looking back as we must, from the middle of the nineteenth century, we are struck with amazement at the tardy progress of mankind during many ages. Nor is our wonder abated, by the additional consideration, that so little was attempted or achieved, at any one time. Great and good men appear to have been incapable of perceiving or resisting more than a single error or wrong, of all the host by which they were surrounded; or of comprehending more than a single elevating truth or duty, to the promotion of which they consecrated their labors and their lives. The most prominent, but by no means the most formidable evils, were more frequently the subjects of complaint and resistance; and were it not for principles involved and too commonly unseen, the sacrifices made, seem too great for the motive, or the end attained.

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