lability of property, and other essential or conventional rights. They are of necessity limited and restricted, when men live in society; and pressing any of them to extremes would ruin any community in the world.

Setting aside, therefore, the obligation which Congress, as Christians, are themselves under to obey the precepts of Christianity, it is obvious that as long as they are the legislators of the Christian people, they have no right to pass a law which requires the violation of any of its commands. This, in the judgment of the petitioners, they have done; and of this they complain. Is it a crime, then, to represent to Congress, that by any law of theirs they encroach upon the rights of their constituents, that they require of them what their religion forbids? The reviewer, however, tells us that this is not the case; that every man is free to act as he pleases. "He is not called upon to do what he thinks wrong; nor is he prohibited from doing what he thinks right." "No one requires him to depart a jot from his principles, or to violate his sense of duty." The law does not force him to be a mail contractor, nor a postmaster; neither does it require him to get his letters or papers on Sunday. This is all true. Let us apply this principle to other cases. Suppose a law passed ordering both houses of Congress to sit on Sunday; the president, heads of departments, all clerks and minor officers, all judges from the highest to the lowest, to disregard the Sabbath; and then Congress to tell their Christian constituents that they need not act against their conscience; the law does not require any man to be either a senator or a representative; nor does it force him to accept of any office, from the president to a tide-waiter. If any of them have a cause pending in court, they need not prosecute it on Sunday; should it happen to be called up, they can easily submit to be non-suited. A lawyer need not take a case likely to come to trial on that day. All tha such persons have to do is to renounce all places of honour, power or profit submit to be defrauded at every turn, and allow those "less scrupulous" to govern them. Strange liberty and equality, this, in a Christian country! This course, which would disfranchise millions of the people; which would visit religious opinions with civil pains and penalties the most disgraceful; which would be a test-act of infidelity, according to the principles of the reviewer, is true liberty, good enough, at least, for petitioners. We rather suspect those same Calvinists whom the reviewer beards so unceremoniously, would find such a law as hard to bear as they did the stamp-act of old. That such enactments are in fact test-acts, needs no proof. Any law which prevents access to office to men of a certain creed, is a religious test. Our reviewer might have comforted the Irish Catholics, as he now consoles American Christians, by telling them they were "not required to do what they thought wrong, nor prohibited from doing what they thought right." What could they wish more? They need not take the offensive oath; all they had to do was to stay out of parliament, and let the less

scrupulous manage matters for them. Strange doctrine for freemen! Strange instructions for an American Congress! It is undeniable, that the post-office law, as far as it goes, is a law of proscription, a religious test administered to every servant of the department. So far, therefore, is the assertion, that the petitioners apply for a law to deprive any man of a right, from being correct, that their application is only for the repeal of an act which deprives a large body of our fellow-citizens of their rights. But the reviewer tells us he has, a right to have his letters on Sunday, and therefore a law forbidding him to get them is injurious and oppressive. If he has this right, it is more than any other man in the land has. Who gave him the right in a Christian country, to require the government, or any individual, to wait on him on Sunday? Must other people violate their sense of duty for his accommodation? Has he a right to have a cause tried on Sunday? Can he force Congress to receive a petition or perform any of its functions, on that day, in his behalf? If not, whence does he get the right to make government carry letters for him, or to employ persons to deliver them on Sunday? No such right exists.

The fact is, the reviewer knows, as well as we do, that all his arguments on this head are not worth a straw. He cannot help knowing it; because he himself has placed the whole subject on its proper basis. He tells us that Sunday, in this country, is to be respected by the people and government, as a day devoted to rest and worship, except when public or private necessity forbids. And, consequently, the whole question about the mail is, whether this necessity exists. If this be once made out, there is not a Christian in the land who would utter a syllable of objection. As this, according to his own showing, is the real point at issue, he must be able to see, that all arguments to prove that granting the prayer of the petitioners would be an interference with the rights of conscience, and requires an unconstitutional exercise of power, are in direct contradiction to his own doctrine, and bear with all their force on the practice of government in all the other departments. He must see, too, that if his principles were applied to the other branches of the State, the result would be a most odious proscription and tyranny, a test-act more offensive than has ever yet disgraced a Christian country.

We have dwelt on this subject much longer than we at first intended. It is, however, one of incalculable importance. Did the petitioners not believe that the Sabbath was divinely appointed, as the great means of preserving religion and good morals, that its influence was essential to the well-being of society, Congress would never have heard one word of remonstrance or complaint. No selfish motive can, with the least semblance of truth, be imputed to them. If stopping the mail on Sunday would occasion all the inconvenience which is predicted, they would bear their full share of the burden. Seeking such an object as the best interests of their country, by means obviously just and proper, is surely not

a crime of sufficient magnitude to justify the amount of vulgar abuse which has been heaped upon them. So long as this was confined to papers confessedly hostile to all religion, and to many of the most sacred institutions of society, it was not a matter of suprise. Nor did we wonder that the chairman of the committee of Congress should allow himself to stray from the real point in hand, into a disquisition on the diversity of religious creeds, and the value of religious liberty. Such things are common in reports. But that a work, of the standing of the American Quarterly Review, should present its readers, not with a fair discussion of the question at issue, but with an article in which the religious principles of a large part of the community are ridiculed, their motives vilified, and their general character defamed, is a matter of unmingled regret. It would seem as though, by a strange mishap, some stray sheets from pens under the influence of a nameless female, had found their way into the mahogany escritoir of the unsuspecting editor. The tone of a book cannot be quoted. A specimen we are bound to give, to justify a charge so serious, and so derogatory to the respectability of the work. On page 186, the following passage occurs: "It is your man-gods, who make such laws, and impiously assume the power to condemn and inflict awful penalties upon those they shall adjudge to violate them; while with a most impudent self-complacency, they find an expiatory apology for their own deviations. The stern and cruel severity with which these self-righteous expounders of the law visit its utmost rigours upon all who dissent from their opinions, warrants us in probing their pretensions to the quick; and in searching their lives to see if the fruit shows the tree to be better than those they would cut down and cast into the fire. Admitting that there are pure and bright examples of a good life among the terrorists-not, however, more or better than are found among their opponents-if we look at them individually, we shall see them, GENERALLY, as devoted to worldly wealth and enjoyments; as solicitous for distinction and influence; as easily and happily puffed with pride and conceit; and as mere creatures of flesh, as those they pity or spurn, because, forsooth, their pretensions to sanctity are not so lofty-or their notions of Christianity so mysterious as their own; nor their observances and deportment squared by the rule they have adopted. They are as impatient of injuries; as vindictive in their passions; as unforgiving in their temper; as sordid and penurious; as keen, close and avaricious in their dealings; as hard creditors; as inflexible and unpitying in exacting their rights. But all this offends no law of the land, and is not forbidden by the Decalogue, as they interpret it; but to step into a steamboat on Sunday! that is the fatal sin, and must be expiated by eternal torments. The religion of such men is satisfied by a hard and austere observance of the Sabbath, which happens to fall in with their taste; by professing a belief in certain sectarian tenets, which they do not understand; with occasional ostentatious donations to institutions which flatter

their vanity by adulatory resolutions, and give them importance by a pompous publication of their piety and generosity."* Such language the petitioners may well pity, and will, doubtless, readily forgive; more readily, we trust, than the reviewer can forgive himself, or regain his self-respect. On page 190, he says, " Assuredly, a Calvinist would hold it to be a much more important service to religion, to prohibit all men from an attendance on an Unitarian or Catholic church, than to stop the mails and steamboats on Sunday; and, therefore, in his own principles of duty, he would not only be willing, but bound to prevent it, if he could. And he refrains from the attempt, only because there is a stronger power over him; but if he can hoodwink or break that power in the one case, there is no security in it for any other; and we shall hold all these rights, not on guarantee of the Constitution, but at the discretion of legislatures, to be acted upon by popular feeling and interests." This is a bold assertion, not with that boldness which is required to meet danger with unconcern, but that which enables a man calmly to contradict truth and history to the face. There are several millions of Calvinists in this country, and the assertion is not true of any one of them, we verily believe. Before the reviewer can prove that Calvinists are particularly inclined to tyranny, he must blot out all the record of the past. They have, notoriously, been the staunch advocates and champions of liberty. The Calvinist Hampden was pleading and dying for the liberty of the world, while the infidel Hobbes was writing and raving for passive obedience. The liberty secured by Calvinists has given birth to all the world now enjoys. Calvinists† gave the world the Reformation, and England her constitution. They have ever been in advance of the rest of the world in the principles of toleration. Do Unitarians suffer from Calvinists here, in the nineteenth century, what Calvinists are now suffering from Unitarians in Switzerland? Take them, age for age, with others, and for the solitary victim to their bigotry you will find hecatombs of martyrs. No man, with the light of history before his eyes, would hesitate to prefer leaving life, honour, or property, in the hands of the strictest Calvinists of the age, rather than in the power of those "less scrupulous" personages, whom the reviewer has taken under his especial favour.

The committee of the House of Representatives, speaking of these same persons, say," It is believed, that the history of legislation in this country affords no instance in which a stronger expression has been made, if regard be had to the numbers, wealth, or the intelligence of the petitioners."

In the sense of the reviewer.

ESSAY XX.

BODILY EFFECTS OF RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENT.

DURING the years 1800, 1801, 1802, and 1803, a revival of religion occurred in the southern and western sections of Kentucky, or what is generally known as the Green River country. The principal instruments were the Rev. Messrs. M'Gready, Hodge, Rankin, and M'Gee. The first named individual was in the van. He was a devout, evangelical, powerful preacher; a pupil of Dr. M Millan, lately deceased. These men, let it be recollected, were the original leaders and abettors of the subsequent irregularities and disorders of the Cumberland Presbytery, which will be noticed hereafter. Previous to this revival of religion, Kentucky, and all this western region, was in a state of great coldness and declension. The country was new, and a heterogeneous mass from all quarters had pressed into it. Presbyterians, both clergy and people, were very formal. Sacramental services were very long, and often irksome, and apparently unedifying, or rather uninteresting, to the large mass of attendants. Communicants were heads of families generally; rarely was there to be seen a young person at the Lord's table. The services were conducted on the plan suggested in our Directory for Worship, chap. viii., sec. 6. The Sabbath was occupied in preaching, fencing, and serving the tables, as it was called, from five to eight hours. The communion was held twice in the year in those churches which had stated pastors or supplies, and in many churches only once in the year. Such was the state of things when the revival commenced, which was some time in the year 1799, in the region before mentioned. The population there was sparse at that time, and widely scattered. The work, at first, was no doubt a glorious work of the Spirit of God. The calls for ministerial labour were so great and extensive, that it was impossible for the few clergymen, recently settled there, to supply the demand. This circumstance suggested the idea of protracted meetings; that the ministers might have the opportuni

*The article here reprinted was originally in the form of a letter, from one who was well acquainted with the facts detailed. These are highly instructive, and ought to be recorded and remembered for the benefit of the coming generation.