it. of moral action is wholly his gift and inspiration, and without his perpetual aid this capacity would avail nothing. But his aid is not compulsion. He respects, he cannot violate that moral freedom, which is his richest gift. To the individual, the decision of his own character is left. He has more than kingly power in his own soul. Let him never resign Let none dare to interfere with it. Virtue is self-dominion, or what is the same thing, it is self-subjection to the principle of duty, that highest law in the soul. If these views of intellectual and moral excellence be just, then to invade men's freedom is to aim the deadliest blow at their honour and happiness, and their worst foe is he who fetters their reason, who makes his will their law, who makes them tools, echoes, copies of himself. "Perhaps it may be objected to the representation of virtue as consisting in self-dominion, that the Scriptures speak of it as consisting in obedience to God. But these are perfectly compatible and harmonious views; for genuine obedience to God is the free choice and adoption of a law, the great principles of which our own minds approve, and our own consciences bind on us; which is not an arbitrary injunction, but an emanation and expression of the Divine Mind; and which is intended throughout to give energy, dignity, and enlargement, to our best powers. He, and he only, obeys God virtuously and acceptably, who reverences right, not power; who has chosen rectitude as his supreme rule; who sees and reveres in God the fulness and brightness of moral excellence, and who sees in obedience the progress and perfection of his own nature. That subjection to the Deity, which, we fear, is too common, in which the mind surrenders itself to mere power and will, is any thing but virtue. We fear that it is disloyalty to that moral principle, which is ever to be reverenced as God's vicegerent in the rational soul. "We have aimed to show the guilt of the love of power and dominion, by showing the ruin which it brings on the mind, by enlarging on the preciousness of that inward free dom which it invades and destroys. S To us, this view is the most impressive; but the guilt of this passion may also be discerned, and by some more clearly, in its outward influences; in the desolation, bloodshed, and woe of which it is the perpetual cause. We owe to it almost all the miseries of war. To spread the sway of one or a few, thousands and millions have been turned into machines, under the name of soldiers, armed with instruments of destruction, and then sent to reduce others to their own lot by fear and pain, by fire and sword, by butchery and pillage. And is it light guilt to array man against his brother; to make murder the trade of thousands; to drench the earth with human blood; to turn it into a desert; to scatter families like chaff; to make mothers widows, and children orphans; and to do all this for the purpose of spreading a still gloomier desolation, for the purpose of subjugating men's souls, turning them into base parasities, extorting from them a degrading homage, humbling them in their own eyes, and breaking them to servility as the chief duty of life? When the pas sion for power succeeds, as it generally has done, in establishing despotisin, it seems to make even civilization a doubtful good. Whilst the monarch and his court are abandoned to a wasteful luxury, the peasantry, rooted to the soil and doomed to a perpetual round of labours, are raised but little above the brute. There are parts of Europe, Christian Europe, in which the peasant, through whose sweat kings and nobles riot in plenty, seems to enjoy less, on the whole, than the untamed Indian of our forests. Chained to one spot, living on the cheapest vegetables, sometimes unable to buy salt to season his coarse fare, seldom or never tasting animal food, having for his shelter a mud-walled hut, floored with earth or stone, and subjected, equally with the brute, to the rule of a superior, he seems to us to partake less of animal, intellectual, and moral pleasures, than the free wanderer of the woods, whose step no man fetters; whose wigwam no tyrant violates: whose chief toil is hunting, that noblest of sports; who feasts on the deer, that most luxurious of viands to whom streams as well as floods pay tribute; whose adventurous life gives sagacity; and in whom peril nourishes courage and self-command. We are no advocates for savage life. We know that its boasted freedom is a delusion. The single fact that human nature, in this wild state, makes no progress, is proof enough that it wants true liberty. We mean only to say, that man, in the hands of despotism, is sometimes degraded below the savage; that it were better for him to be lawless, than to live under lawless sway. "It is the part of Christians to look on the passion for power and dominion with strong abhorrence; for it is singularly hostile to the genius of their religion. Jesus Christ always condemned it. One of the most striking marks of his moral greatness, and of the originality of his character, was, that he held no fellowship, and made no compromise with this universal spirit of his age, but withstood it in every form. He found the Jews intoxicating themselves with the dreams of empire. Of the prophecies relating to the Messiah, the most familiar and dear to them were those which announced him as a conqueror, and which were construed by their worldliness into a promise of triumphs to the people from whom he was to spring. Even the chosen disciples of Jesus looked to him for this good. To sit on his right hand,' or in other words, to hold the most commanding stations in his kingdom, was not only their lurking wish, but their open and importunate request. But there was no passion on which Jesus frowned more severely than this. He taught, that to be great in his kingdom, men must serve, instead of ruling, their brethren. He placed among them a child as an emblem of the humility of his religion. His most terrible rebukes fell on the lordly, aspiring Pharisees. In his own person, he was mild and condescending, exacting no personal service, living with his disciples as a friend, sharing their wants, sleeping in their fishing boat, and even washing their feet; and in all this he expressly proposed himself to them as a pattern, knowing well that the last triumph of disinterestedness is to forget our own superiority, in our sympathy, solicitude, tenderness, respect, and self-denying zeal for those who are below us. We cannot, indeed, wonder that the lust of power should be encountered by the sternest rebukes and menace of Christianity, because it wages open war with the great end of this religion, which is the elevation of the human mind. No corruption of this religion is more palpable and more enormous, than that which turns it into an instrument of dominion, and which makes it teach that man's primary duty is to give himself, a passive material, into the hands of his minister, priest, or king." W. E. C. A HYMN OF PRAISE. O Lord my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever. GOD of my life, through all my days, And griefs would tear my throbbing And mean the thanks I cannot speak. Soon shall I learn the exalted strains VAIN CURIOSITY. "IT is good to leave off learning, where God hath left off teaching; for they which have an ear, where God hath no tongue, hearken not unto God, but to the tempter, as Eve did to the serpent." H. S. "To what a mournful extent is the history of human governments a record of wrongs! How much does the progress of civilisation consist in the substitution of just and humane, for barbarous and oppressive laws!" W. E. C. 66 TEMPERANCE AND LUXURY. ONE of the commonest arguments in favour of the use of luxuries is, that it encourages trade. "Consider the number of persons that get their bread by these things," say the advocates of luxury. "There are thousands and millions," say they, "that live by nothing else." They contend that the use of luxuries is a great benefit to society, that the abandonment of luxuries would prove a serious evil,-they would, in short, fain have us to believe that if luxuries were laid aside, a great part of the human family would have to die of want. This is the doctrine of such men as Gibbon, and Hume, and Adam Smith, and a num ber of other political economists of the infidel school. They know that indulgence in luxuries is forbidden by the Gospel, and they know that if they can make men believe luxury to be useful, and a homely, self-denying kind of life to be injurious, they will be able to lessen men's respect for the Gospel, and destroy their belief of its truth and divinity. But infidels are entirely wrong in this matter, as well as in most others. The use of luxuries is not friendly to trade; it is not friendly to the interests of the working classes: we do not keep men alive by using luxuries; nor would people, by acting on the principles of the Gospel on this subject, either injure trade, or take away from people the means of life. The use of luxuries is opposed to the interests of trade, and tends to injure the working classes. It is, in fact, one of the greatest evils by which society is afflicted; and if men generally would abandon all luxurious indulgences, and act on the principles which we advocate, the self-denying principles of the Gospel,--they would confer on society, both in this and in other countries, an inestimable blessing. That we may be the better able to judge how the use of luxuries operates, it may be well to examine a few instances of luxurious indulgence. The principal luxury in China, I understand, is opium. The people in China eat and smoke opium much in the same manner as people in this country chew and smoke tobacco. At least this was the practice in China some time ago; and I suppose it is the practice yet, so far as the people can do it without fear of punishment. By indulgence in this luxury, vast multitudes of the Chinese have ruined their constitutions, and brought themselves to a premature death. They have, nevertheless, their excuses for using opium, and one of these excuses will probably be, the benefit which is thus conferred on the multitudes who manufacture and sell the drug. At least it is certain, they might use this excuse, with as much reason as men use it in our own country. "Look," they might say, "what multitudes we keep in employment by the use of opium: there are millions of people in Hindostan, who get their bread by nothing else but by cultivating the poppy, and manufacturing opium, and if we were all to lay the use of opium aside, we should throw them all out of employment at once, and reduce them to absolute want and wretchedness." But what is the truth of the case? Is it true that millions of the Hindoos live by cultivating the poppy, and making opium, and that if the use of opium were given up, the poor Hindoos would be left utterly destitute? No such thing. The Hindoos do not live by growing and preparing opium; they suffer very grievously in consequence of the trade in opium. The Hindoos would not be left destitute if the demand for opium should cease; the probability is, that they would be greatly benefitted thereby. I will endeavour to explain how the use of opium by the Chinese operates on the Hindoos. In consequence of the great demand for opium, the poor Hindoos are required by their rulers, who get a great share of the profits resulting from the trade, to devote such a proportion of their land to the cultivation of the poppies, and to furnish, each one according to the quantity of ground in his possession, so much opium yearly. The consequence is, that nearly all their best land, which should be occupied in growing useful grain and fruits, is occupied with the growth of poppies, and the principal part of their time, which should be spent in caltivating and manufacturing things truly useful, is spent in attending to the poppies, and in preparing the opium. Hence it comes to pass, that they have generally not more than one-half or one-third the quantity of useful food to live upon, that they ought to have. Instead of having abundance of every thing needful, they have little else but a small quantity of rice, which grows in the marshy places. Even in their best years they are in great straits, and if at any time a year of scarcity or famine comes between, they perish by hundreds of thousands, and even by millions, of absolute starvation. As many as two or three millions of human beings, if I recollect right, have thus perished of want in one single year. The poor creatures were seen lying dead and dying along the wayside in great numbers: they had fallen down on their way from one town to another in search of a little food, and had breathed their last before they could find relief. Men, women, and children, in all the agonies of extreme hunger, were crawling out of their miserable dwellings, and lifting up their withering arms and mournful voices, imploring, with wild looks and howlings of despair, a little bread, or a few grains of rice, to save them from death; and there was no one to afford them relief. And there they were left, groaning and languishing, till hunger, by his slow, agonizing tortures, put a horrible end to their existence. And this is the way in which the Chinese support the Hindoos, by using the luxury of opium. They first cause the principal part of their best land to be occupied by the growth of poppies, and then they cause the principal part of their time and strength to be taken up with cultivating the poppy and preparing the opium, and so cause them to be left with but one-third or one-half of what is needful for them, even in their better years, and in years of scarcity and famine, with not sufficient to save the poor people from absolute starvation. Suppose the use of opium to be given up, and the whole trade in opium to cease, what would be the consequence? Would the poor Hindoos be injured thereby? How could they? They would have no less rice; and they would have no less fish. To say the least, they would have all the means of sustenance that they have at present. But this is not all: they would have much more. They would have all the ground, which is now occupied in growing poppies, for the growth of various kinds of useful grain and fruits; and they would have the time and strength which they spend, under the present system, in growing and preparing opium, for growing and preparing things useful for food and raiment, and for the improvement of their minds in knowledge and piety. They might not only have sufficient of every needful thing for themselves, but abundance with which to supply the lack of other lands. This is the way in which the disuse of luxury by the Chinese would be likely to affect the Hindoos. In And it is the same with respect to other luxuries. One of the commonest luxuries in our country, as well as in America, and in most of the countries of Europe, is tea. The use of tea, by so great a part of the human race, has a similar effect upon the Chinese, as the use of opium by the Chinese has upon the Hindoos. the first place the tea phat takes up a great part of the land of the Chinese, so that the people have not sufficient land to grow things necessary for food. Nay, so scarce is land in some places, that whole streets or towns are built upon the rivers, and people live in their floating houses all their life through. Then the gathering and preparing of the tea takes so much of their time, that they have not the opportunity of cultivating, as they ought, the portion of land that is left for the production of food. They have to pluck every leaf separately, and roll it up with their fingers, and they have to fan it all the time it is drying, that it may be nice and crisp. This loss of time and this waste of land, produce the same effects in China as in India. The people have not sufficient to support them even in the best years, and when a partial famine comes, they perish by multitudes. Malcolm, who visited China as a deputation from the American Baptist Missionary Society, represents the condition of the people there as being most deplorable. He says that he saw a number of men lying in the market-place dying and dead, from absolute want; and he also says, that what he saw was a common thing. The poor people, he says, go round begging for bread so long as they can get any, and when they can procure no more, they lie down in the market-place, or at the head of the streets, and die; and this is a daily occurrence. And W. Barrow says, that in one city alone, nine thousand little helpless children are cast out to perish every year by their own parents; and there is reason to believe that the great reason is, the parents have not the means of rearing and supporting them. And this is the effect which our use of tea has upon the poor Chinese. This is the way in which they live by our use of luxuries. This is the way in which our use of luxuries furnishes them with employment and the means of subsistence. The truth is, that instead of living by our use of their teas, they are dying thereby instead of furnishing them with the means of subsistence and comfort, we are plundering, and torturing, and destroying them. The opium which the Chinese consume, is the life and blood of the Hindoos: and the tea which Americans and Europeans consume, is the life and blood of the Chinese. Every man and woman that drinks tea as a luxury, is, whether he knows it or not, an accomplice in the robbery and destruction of thousands or millions of his fellow-creatures every year. And every man or woman that uses tea, may, by giving up the luxury, contribute something towards feeding, and clothing, and furnishing with every earthly and every spirit ual blessing, millions on millions. If tea were laid aside altogether, the Chinese would have land enough, both for purposes of building and for the growth of vegetables, grain, and fruits; and they would have time sufficient both for cultivating their fields, and for manufacturing and preparing the produce of their fields for every useful purpose. There would be nothing to prevent them, if they would pursue a proper course, from having every thing needful to their welfare and comfort in abundance. They might build comfortable houses; they might furnish them with every thing convenient and useful; they might sit daily at a plentiful table; they might rear their little ones, and furnish them with a good education, as well as with plenty of food; they might have time for the cultivation of their minds, and for every purpose of piety and benevolence; and they might have wherewith to relieve and help the needy among their fellow-men. The remarks which we have made respecting opium and tea, are applicable to all luxuries. They are applicable to coffee, to tobacco, to snuff, to intoxicating drinks, to ornaments, to all kinds of extravagance in eating and drinking, and to excesses of all kinds. Most of these luxuries take up a portion of ground for their production, and all of them take up a great deal of men's time, and care, and strength. The ground that is devoted to the growth of tobacco, might be producing wheat, or rice, or other useful things, to satisfy the wants of the perishing; and the time that is spent in cultivating it and preparing it for use, might be spent in useful labour for promoting the improvement and welfare of the human race at large. The ground that is occupied by the production of grain and fruit for intoxicating drinks alone, and the time and strength that are spent in making and selling them, are immense. I have seen it asserted in print, even by the enemies of Teetotalism themselves, that more grain went through the kiln, than through the mill; or, in other words, that more grain was used for intoxicating Whether drinks than for bread. this be correct or not, I cannot tell, but I see no great reason to disbelieve it. Forty millions of bushels of barley alone, I understand, are used for intoxicating drinks in this country alone every year. Besides the barley thus consumed, there is a vast quantity of oats, potatoes, apples, pears, and various other kinds of fruits converted into intoxicating drinks. Suppose it to be true, that the quantity of grain converted into intoxicating drink, is greater than the quantity made into bread, and bear in mind, in addition to this, the quantities of potatoes and fruits converted into intoxicating drink: think also of the strength and time that are spent in growing these vast quantities of grain and fruit, and in turning them into intoxicating drinks, and then say, whether the use of luxuries be a good thing for our country or not. Suppose all the |