that of Christians in far less favoured quarters of the globe. It is related in a work, published some years since by the Rev. William Ellis, formerly missionary to the islands in the Pacific, that the ship reaching Tahiti on the Sabbath, no canoe put off, no native was seen on the beach, no smoke in any part of the district, and they (on board) began to apprehend that the population had been swept off by some disease, or that they had all gone to battle; when their fears were removed by one of the party, who had been there before, observing that it was the Sabbath, and that on that day, the natives did not launch their canoes, or light their fires. A similar testimony is borne by another interesting writer, the Rev. Mr. Stewart, of America; who, on arriving at one of the Sandwich Islands on the Sabbath, found the whole population assembled in their place of worship.1 We insist not on the circumstance of their not lighting fires; for allowance must be made for difference of climate; but surely, when we observe the beautifully strict and proper manner in which the natives of those distant isles, visited so recently with the day-spring from on high, sanctified the Sabbath, we may well anticipate, that they will rise up in judgment against multitudes in these our privileged islands, and condemn them.

3. We may notice, as another glaring sin of the day, DRUNKENNESS. To a reflecting mind it is perfectly distressing to witness the numbers, who,

1 See Mr. Stewart's Journal.

in a nominally Christian land, are led unresistingly along, the shackled slaves of this degrading vice. Intemperance marches over the kingdom, like some infernal fiend, destroying all before him, and respecting neither sex nor age. Though the Temperance Society has materially maimed this monster, and rescued many a poor soul from his fearful grasp, yet his powers of destruction are still tremendous; insomuch that scarcely a day passes, in which one may not hear of some new victim becoming his prey. "O that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!"

Of the awful extent to which intemperance prevails, some idea may be formed from the following uncontradicted statement of a member of the House of Commons, the session before last. Summing up a most startling and important calculation, he observes- It may be, therefore, asserted, without fear of contradiction, that the aggregate expenses entailed, and losses sustained, by the pernicious habits of drinking, exceed one hundred millions annually; that in a mere pecuniary and economical sense, it is the greatest blight that ever cursed our country; and, like the canker-worm it is eating out its very vitals.'1

Oh, what guilt the kingdom has to answer for, in the encouragement afforded to the sale of ardent spirits! thus feeding the national exchequer at the

1 Note III.

tremendous cost of the national morality. Surely this is the Juggernaut of Britain.

How still more applicable to our times, than to his own, are those lines of the Christian poet :

Pass when we may, through city or through town,

Village or hamlet, of this merry land,

Though lean and beggar'd, every twentieth pace
Conducts the unguarded nose to such a whiff
Of stale debauch forth issuing from the styes
That law has licensed, as makes temperance reel.
There sit, involved and lost in curling clouds
Of Indian fume, and guzzling deep, the boor,
The lackey, and the groom; the craftsman there
Takes a Lethean leave of all his toil.-
Dire is the frequent curse, and its twin sound
The cheek-distending oath, not to be praised
As ornamental, musical, polite

Like those, which modern senators employ,
Whose oath is rhetoric, and who swear for fame!
Behold the schools, in which plebeian minds,
Once simple, are initiated in arts,

Which some may practice with politer grace,
But none with readier skill! 'tis here they learn
The road that leads from competence and peace
To indigence and rapine, till at last
Society, grown weary of the load,

Shakes her encumbered lap, and casts them out.
But censure profits little: vain the attempt

To advertise in verse a public pest

That like the filth, with which the peasant feeds

His hungry acres, stinks and is of use.
The excise is fattened with the rich result
Of all this riot, and ten thousand casks,
For ever dribbling out their base contents,
Touch'd by the Midas finger of the state,
Bleed gold for ministers to sport away.

Drink and be mad then; 'tis your country bids!
Gloriously drunk, obey the important call!

Her cause demands the assistance of your throats.
Ye all can swallow, and she asks no more.'l

1 The Task, Book IV.

4. Immediately in the train of inebriation may be mentioned its usual attendants,-SWEARING, LYING AND FORNICATION. In whatever direction we turn throughout the land, what profane, what blasphemous expressions astound the ear! This sin has of late, indeed, been almost wholly renounced by the higher classes, on the mere ground of its being indecorous and vulgar; but it still prevails to a shocking extent among the inferior orders of society.

Then as to lying, how deplorable is its prevalence. The unrenewed heart is a forge of falsehoods, and out of its abundance the mouth emits them on the slightest inducement. "The wicked are estranged from the womb they go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies." How heinous also is the perjury practised at elections, and in the courts of justice: not to speak of still higher assemblies! Fornication-This vice, which one is ashamed even to mention, is notoriously and unblushingly prevalent. Witness the prostitution that parades and pollutes the streets of our cities, towns, and villages. They declare their sin as Sodom. Nay, in some places, unchastity has even ceased to be considered a sin, at least, it is palliated by the lenient appellation of a misfortune!' Such is the deceitfulness and hardening tendency of sin, and so true is the statement of Scripture, that 'whoredom takes away the heart,'—that is, stupi

1

1 Hosea iv. 11.

fies the conscience.

But God is not mocked, who declares, that'no fornicator, nor unclean person, hath any inheritance in his kingdom.'

5. We may specify as the climax of this accumulation of sins, practised throughout the land, INFIDELITY. This is the dead sea into which all these rivers of impurity naturally tend. For, when a person has, by long habits of transgression, run a deep account in the book of doom, it then becomes his interest that the Bible should be untrue; and what he wishes were the case, he very easily is persuaded may be. Hence, he hunts. about for arguments to support him in his depraved inclination: consults diabolical books; strives to exclude from his mind every struggling ray of truth and then, of course, the deceiver is not slack in coming to his aid with plausible speculations, and perverse arguments, making the worse appear the better reason.' All this while, the foundations of principle are gradually undermined, and the good Spirit of the Lord is grieved; (for he will not always strive with man ;) and the heart is passing through an indurating process; and because the individual liked not to retain God in his knowledge, nor had pleasure in the truth, but in unrighteousness, therefore he is most justly sent a strong delusion, that he should believe a lie; delivered over to a reprobate mind; to judicial

1 'It is a dark and portentous spot in our sky that the progress of knowledge should be accompanied with so much infidelity and irreligion.'-Dr. M'Crie.