mine-not painted like mine," when both "addressed for fight unspeakable," cutting the yielding air with their blazing arms, now parrying, now thrusting, and now interposing to each their ample shields. In an instant all their respective groups, a vast concourse! left their pursuit of the common enemy, gathering around each their man, and mingling in the general fight for which the signal had been given. At this, the celestial stranger exclaimed, “O, I see, they are fighting because their streamers are not painted alike. Miserable men, if they would expunge the darkness, so that they should be all red and luminous, this cause of war would cease.'

While this contest was going on, he looked again in the distance and saw that millions and millions of those who were uttering the cry for help were sliding on a vast avalanche into a gulf, the most deep, dismal and dark that imagination can conceive. "Oh, what madness," exclaimed the angel again, "has seized these servants of God, to waste themselves in contending about their streamers, when they are the only authorized agents to carry the victories of the cross into the dark parts of the earth, which are full of the habitations of cruelty !"

Now, the object we have in view is to pave the way, if possible, for an adjustment of those differences among christians, which are so revolting to heaven, so prolific in scandal to the worthy name by which they are called, so much a matter of triumph among the enemies of the cross, and so painful to every correct sensibility. The task we feel to be an arduous

one, but let every reader accompany us in this prayer:

Oh, thou Infinite Fountain of light, let one convincing ray fall upon these pages, and thus adapt means so humble, to accomplish the magnificent result at which they aspire, that the undivided glory may redound to thy name forever and ever. Amen.

SECTION II.

To whom the subject relates-New basis of Moral classification.

The clear and direct contact of the gospel with the human mind seldom fails, perhaps never, to leave an impression either favorable or unfavorable to its virtue and salvation. The facts which it reveals are so appropriate to the moral sentiment within us, are so grafted upon our consciousness of what is right and true, or we might better say, are so directly the organs of Divine power, that the very contemplation of them imparts new and permanent modifications to the elements of our character. Their introduction among a people is like the dawn of the morning upon mountain scenery, where every dark ravine, though excluded from a direct communication with the sun, is made by means of his reflected luster, as sensible of his presence as the rugged eminence which was first gilded with his beams; and where the entire tenantry of animal and vegetable life is affected in one way or another by the general illumination. The same light which gives to one animal species new life drives another to their lairs—the same heat from which one class of plants receives luxuriance withers anotherthe ray that extracts from one flower all the charms of color is absorbed by the dark petals of another-and thus, while the whole face of nature feels and acknowledges the presence of the king of day, the effects in particular cases are exceedingly opposite and various.

How exactly do these facts of nature answer to those which follow from throwing the light of the glorious gospel over a community! Every feeling of accountability from that moment takes a tinge that it had not before; new views of duty, new reasons for

performing it, new trains of moral association, new appeals to the conscience, new anticipations in regard to a coming life, and entirely new combinations in the elements of character at once start into being. When did our Saviour and his apostles visit a place in which such effects were not immediately visible? A shock of electric truth penetrated to every avenue of feeling, vibrated upon every nerve, gave a new impulse to conscience, and shook the moral fabric to its center. "Never man spake like this," was the extorted confession even of his enemies. Some were made better, some worse, and all different from what they were before. The ministers of the gospel were unto God a sweet savor of Christ in all within the reach of their ministry, whether it contributed to their salvation or destruction. To the one they were the savor of death unto death; and to the other of life unto life.* How fearful, therefore, was their work and their responsibility! How invariably did their touch leave upon the chords of moral sentiment vibrations which run on in the endless line of eternity! Who is sufficient for these things? So it continues to this day. The clear exhibition of revealed truth to the mind awaken strains of thought and feeling, which will obtrude upon it in the blissful mansions of paradise to heighten its joy and praise, or in the caverns of dark despair to excite unavailing regrets, and feed the fires of remorse. Eternity is but the counterpart—the carrying out of the moral tendencies of time.

In addition to the effects of contact with the gospel, is the no less interesting fact of the new and permanent basis for moral classification to which they give rise. All other classifications, such, for instance, as are founded in differences of political sentiment, of physical color and conformation, of earthly calling, of degrees in knowledge and wealth, of rank

2 Cor. 2. 15, 16.

and station, or circumstances of a local, conventional and temporary nature, will be lost when the present scene of things passes away; while those founded in the different effects produced by the gospel upon our characters, will survive every change and continue forever. Where are those arbitrary forms of distinction in the social state, for which, under the extinct monarchies or republics of the earth, battles were fought and oceans of ignoble blood were caused to flow-those giddy heights to which ambition aspired at every expense of personal or public peace ? Where are the grades of Roman classification, from Plebian to Patrician and even Imperial distinction? They have ceased to exist except on the page of distant history. They were the objects of contention among the children of a former day, just as the equally senseless distinctions to which ambition now oftenest aspires, are exasperating against each other the childish hordes of this generation. But, while distinctions of this kind soon die away, those which the gospel establishes in society will continue forever. That we were saints or sinners, believers or unbelievers, is a consideration that will affect our destiny when the memory of our poverty or riches, ignorance or knowledge, elevated or depressed rank and calling in life, will be lost amid the wreck of other things. That Paul embraced the gospel and Felix rejected it, is a truth of thrilling interest to each, now that the one was a prisoner, and the other a governor, have ceased to be of the least importance.

There are two extreme classes among those affected by the gospel, between whom every other class may be included-that of those, who, like the Jews on the one hand, among whom our Savior appeared, are exasperated through opposition to it, to a pitch of demoniacal phrenzy, preparing them for such forms

of wickedness as never could have been acted under a less potent influence-and that of those, who, like

the apostles on the other, are elevated under the same influence, to a height of moral worth, and a sublimity of virtue, of which our natures without the aid of the gospel would be utterly incapable.

The moral character or standing of the Jews who were cotemporary with the events recorded in the New Testament, was as deeply affected by those events as that of Peter or John. But alas, it was an effect blighting as heaven's beam upon Arabian sands. Every plant of virtue withered and died, while vice struck deep its poisonous roots and sent forth such fruits as seemed more befitting hell than earth. Listen to him who knew the facts of the case, "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin." * It was from his coming that they derived the ability to sin on a scale of such extreme malignity, and to perpetrate crimes, in comparison with which their former guilt seemed like innocence. Thence sprang the immediate cause of their ruina ruin that could be equalled only by the privileges which they had contemned in rejecting their Messiah. Who does not know that the circumvallation of their Holy City by the Roman armies, its final erasure from its rocky foundation, so that one stone was not left upon another, and the utter extermination of their national polity, were judgments for the crimes to which they were incensed by their hatred to the Son of God? Crimes are proportioned not only to the malice prepense from which they originate, but to the extent of good at the annihilation of which they aim. Of course, the more good a man bent upon being wicked has the means of knowing, the the greater his wickedness becomes. To be situated so as to vent our malignity in attempting the life of a virtuous ruler, on whom the happiness of millions depends, enables us to be more criminal than to

* John 15, 22.