ravings of a madman and the invented confessions of a prostitute must be paraded in their columns, that licentiousness might be painted more vividly-and the system of prevention be made more surely operative. Some moralists have condemned the novels of Scott because they familiarize the reader to the vulgarities of the vulgar, and the oaths of the profane; and can moral Reform Papers be justified in publishing police reports, where all that is low and filthy is minutely detailed; and in copying the dying curses of a maniac, whose oaths and ravings act only upon the imagination of the reader and excite it by fictitious horrours?

Our proof of the inutility and evil of this system does not, however, entirely rest upon such direct inferences from the acknowledged principles of human nature. We take the position, that these reformers are, in substance adopting the same means for checking vice, which the vicious employ to spread it. That they have different intentions we do not deny. Does it require any proof that the profligate endeavour in all ways, to familiarize their victims with vicethat they strive to make its enormity customary, and to deaden all sensibility to virtue, by constantly dwelling upon descriptions of depravity? All who wish to gain a livelihood by feeding the base cravings of the vile; all who wish to encourage profligacy, that their own dissoluteness may be unrebuked; or to feed the demand of the popular appetite for whatever is loathsome or horrible; engage most fully in the same work of exposure to which the columns of the Moral Reform Journals are devoted. No where is vice so freely exposed as in the journals of Paris, and the Penny Papers of London-and no where is the state of morals so abject. Do these papers exercise a preventive influence? Yet they abound in details of all the "lures and wiles of the seducer." They present vice in all its deformity, with all its horrible effects. They do not deck it in tempting array, nor gloss it over with insinuating art. They are the vehicles for all the details of licentiousness, crim. con., and seduction. They faithfully describe squalidness, wretchedness and untimely death, as the inevitable results of lives of profligacy;-they paint in its "unfigleafed nakedness," not only the vice itself, but also its warnings, its jeopardies, and its terrific fate. And who are the readers and supporters of these Journals? The high-minded, the virtuous, those VOL. III.

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who wish to prevent and eradicate vice? Or the low, the dissolute, the abject, who feast themselves on the narration of all that is loathsome and filthy? The very publication and circulation of these papers is cited as an abundant proof of a depraved state of morals. If they, then, are the certain token of a vicious state of the public heart in Paris and London,-if they are favourable to and favoured by the licentious there;-if the principle of exposure, (the source of their popularity) adopted by them, is identical with that proclaimed by the Moral Reform Journals, (the only difference being the difference of intention)-and if the condemnation of the former is decided among the good and virtuous, ought not the condemnation of the other to be equally decisive ?*

The system of exposure must be acknowledged to be ineffectual for curing those who are already deeply implicated in licentiousness, we believe it will be equally ineffectual in prevention. It is useless in a good cause-it is used

Is it said that the difference in principle is fundamental? We are prepared to deny the assertion, and at the same time conclusively to prove the pernicious results of a system of exposure. "The Sun," and "Transcript," and "Herald," of New York, are as much akin to the journals of Paris and London, as the state of American feeling will permit. They expose vice, not to prevent it, but to gratify the itching ears which love such exposure. The radiations of this "Sun" are often reflected from the pages of the Advocate, and from the "Transcript" frequent copies of police reports are made. The following is but one of the many sentences in which identity of principle between the Advocate and these presses is asserted. Vol. 1. No. II. "We have long felt that some of the penny papers are doing a good work in favour of Moral Reform, by their praiseworthy disclosures of vice." When the melancholy fate of Ellen Jewett was in full circulation, when the Advocate avidly seized upon this story, as a precious and opportune revelation, then was the time for the principle of exposure to be fully and fairly tested. Were the results of the wide exposure then made calculated to reform, to save, to deter? We find the following paragraph, extracted from the Transcript, in a subsequent number of the "Advocate." "It is a melancholy fact, that since the murder of Ellen Jewett, and the consequent publicity given to her gay style of living, a number of young females have come from the country, enticed by the artificial blandishments and pleasures of a prostitute's life-and thrown themselves upon the town, victims to vile profligates, mercenary brothel-keepers, and their own depraved and licentious passions. Among the number of these deluded unfortunates, we saw yesterday, at the police office, an interesting, pretty looking girl, not more than 15 years of age, named S. D., who, as she stated, ran away from her parents on Saturday last, and immediately on her arrival here, made application at a notorious house of ill-fame in Church street, to become one of the inmates-a willing sacrifice to the worst, most debased and ruinous of vices, &c. &c." If any exposure could have deterred from a life of prostitution, it must have been that connected with Ellen Jewett. If ever a narration carried the antidote with the bane, it was that of the terrific fate of this hapless and guilty girl.

to uphold a bad one by the pennies and depraved Journals of the day. The maxim of the New York Female Benevolent Society that, "what is done in the cause of Moral Reform should be done and not said," we would take as a pointed conclusion to our argument and the summary thereof.

The ordinary action of society spontaneously exposes vice to a certain extent,-so far as is necessary to guide the policeman on his errand of justice and the philanthropist on his mission of love. But it is not required that the receptacles of impurity should be disembowelled or spread open, so that their noisome odors will be distributed, and mingled with the general breath. It is not necessary that any should enter them with the sole design of guaging the dimensions of foulness, or collecting the statistics of pollution. It is not necessary that any should hunt, in the fetid caverns of vice, for the amulets which are to preserve virtue. The peccant humours of the moral system after fermenting and swelling in secrecy, will of themselves burst forth in overt and flagrant disorders. To check these outbreaks, is the work of the police and the moralists. Like the ancient medical art, their office is to bind up the external wounds and bruises and putrefying sores, and to mollify them with ointment. It is the office of our holy religion, to rectify the internal cause of the malady. Its fitting symbol would be, a perfected therapeutic science, which should act from within upon the whole system, revivifying it by supernatural remedies, and cleansing the fountains of uncleanness. Thus will it act in the abodes of pollution and infamy, which but for it, must still be the abodes of hopeless ruin. It enters not to expose, but to save. The hearts which public opinion cannot reach, which the fear of disgrace cannot move, the religion of Jesus will melt. Had Moral Reform Societies confined their exertions to the employment of missionaries to visit such places in the name and with the gospel of Christ, they would have merited universal approbation. In the deep recesses of pollution, and the vile haunts of depravity, will the power of Christ be most strikingly manifested and his glories most conspicuously displayed. As the rays of the natural sun are reflected most gorgeously from the disturbed and clouded sky, so are the rays of the sun of Righteousness sometimes given back with intensest effulgence, from the vilest recep

tacles of pollution and crime. The preaching of this gospel then, and not the might of public opinion, of combined action, is the great means to be employed both for the reformation of the vile, and the preservation of the virtuous.

ART. VIII. THOUGHTS ON THE PRESENT ASPECT OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CONTROVERSY.

BY DAVID Meredith Reese, M. D. of New York.

No American, who is under the influence either of, patriotism, philanthropy, or Christianity, can be indifferent to the all-absorbing topic of ROMANISM, in its various bearings, and there are considerations which seem to indicate the present to be the set time for the free, full, and candid discussion of the whole subject. It is neither possible nor desirable that the controversy which has existed for so many ages between Protestants and Papists should cease, nor that there should be a truce to the war between truth and errour, in this aspect, which is now so vigourously waging in our own and other countries.

The name of PROTESTANT originated, and is still retained, for the purpose of designating the fact, that the doctrinal characteristics of Popery and Protestantism, are, and must be forever irreconcilable. From the days of Luther to the present, there has always been felt by every class of Protestants, an unalterable alienation from every distinctive peculiarity of Popery, and this "attraction of repulsion" is, and ever has been reciprocal. Hence have arisen the relentless controversies, which have been carried on at different periods and in various countries, between these belligerent sects, and the excesses into which both parties have been led, constitute a dark and melancholy chapter in the history of the past. And the deeds of cruelty, infamy, and blood, by which the name of God has been dishonoured, and Christianity disgraced, have been the fruits of the intolerance and persecution which this controversy has engendered, while candour constrains us to acknowledge that

neither Protestants nor Papists can ever obliterate the memory of the guilt in which they have mutually participated.

While then the propriety of persevering opposition to Popery is admitted, and even maintained; it becomes us to profit by the experience of other ages and countries, lest Protestantism be again dishonoured by partaking of the intolerant spirit, against which we are arrayed. So calamitous have been the results of this controversy as written in the history of the past, and so visibly are they discoverable in the decline of true religion, and the prevalence of infidelity, that their recollection should serve as a beacon of warning, to the present and all succeeding generations, against the revival of a spirit, so fruitful of mischief both to the church and to the state. For though the position of these two great armies of Christendom, absolutely forbids all amalgamation, or even compromise, neither of which is desirable, yet each have had sufficient experience in the use of "carnal weapons," to teach them the important lesson that the great Head of the Church will never approve or prosper such instrumentality. Indeed the fathers of the American nation, seem to have wisely appreciated the voice of historic truth, and hence while they established no religion, yet as a nation they have tolerated all religions. Liberty of conscience had then been too recently purchased, and at the expense of too much blood and treasure,-for them to overlook the importance of transmitting it to posterity. And it is the brightest star in the banner of American freedom, that beneath its ample folds, "every man is permitted to worship Go according to the dictates of his own conscience and under his own vine and fig-tree, none daring to molest or make him afraid."

This toleration, which extends to the Roman Catholic religion, because it is universal, was never designed to preclude arguments or facts, from being urged in opposition to any one form of Christianity, by those whose consciences might impel to the employment of such moral means in religious controversy; for liberty of conscience itself, is not more scrupulously guarded, and secured, than are the liberty of speech, and the freedom of the press, by the American constitution. It was however designed to prevent the employment of any form of religious persecution so that no citizen of our republic should be disfranchized of his civil