His rights are sacred. His interests are the high care of governments-his safety and prosperity worthy the legislation of God.

The tendency is to make humanity every thing, to deify man, and call philanthropy religion. For the first time since the creation of the world, has this been the prevailing tendency. It has taken eighteen hundred years for Christianity to effect this result. There will be but one grander this side the millennium, the perfect union of Piety and Philanthropy in religion and that Christianity is destined to accomplish. The present danger is that devotion to human interests will be made the sum of religion. Such is the imminent liability of passing from the gloomy extreme of soulless Piety. Shocked at the discovery that man has been discarded from the hitherto prevalent religion, and glowing with the enthusiasm of the neophyte in view of the illustrious origin and destiny of this Lord of creation, it would be very natural to become idolatrously devoted to him as an object whose worth on the one hand, and whose wants on the other present a double claim to our religious regards.

While we deprecate such a transition from one fatal extreme to another, we nevertheless do rejoice that the tendency of the present times is so strongly away from the religion of Piety. Unloosed from such a fierce extreme, the pendulum may swing furiously by the centre of gravity, and certainly no human arm can stop it, but a mightier power will at length regulate its oscillations within the terms God and Man -Piety and Philanthropy!

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We may expect a short reign of the religion of PhilanthroAt present the two forms co-exist. They incline not to coalesce, but to conflict; Each feeling strong, the one in the experience and authority of hoary age, the other in the vigor and heroism of early prime.

We will now consider the grounds of the mutual hostility displayed by these two religions.

The God-ward system we have seen is essentially a religion of fear. By being associated with the exercises of religion, fear, under any circumstances a potent passion, becomes omnipotent. It controls the soul, excluding what it cannot subjugate and subjugating what it cannot exclude. It is wholly incompatible with confidence and love toward any being. Whom it does not fear it hates. If those around the Fearer are also the victims of fear, he rejoices; if they are not, he abhors them, for, miserable himself, he cannot endure to see

others in a fair way to be happy. Hence the disciples of the other type of religion are the peculiar objects of hatred and envy, because they openly renounce all allegiance to fear. There is another ground of hostility to the philanthropic religion. Fear ever seeks to propagate itself. Its victim, cowering under the awful object, strives to drag others into the same baleful Presence, or failing in this, endeavors to make himself an object of fear. He strikes terror into those beneath him, just as the wretched slave finds a grim pleasure in playing the petty tyrant among scullions. It will hence be seen that the religion of fear must exclude man—save as it seizes upon him to fill all the chambers of his soul with its own hell-torments. This religion has but one passion-fear, but one sentiment-piety, but one act-worship, but one object— God, or rather the Devil.

The man-ward form is on the other hand a religion of sympathy. Of course God cannot be directly its object, since he is not subject to those infirmities which are the special care of sympathy. Indirectly however, he is the object, for, having made his creatures with their liabilities to want and suffering, attentions to human interests must be well pleasing to him, and the scriptures most explicitly teach us that it is so, particularly in those remarkable words of Christ, which conclude thus, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me." So far this religion is nominally not without a God; while at the same time Man is its immediate and primary object. Its heart, that is its sensibility, is exquisitely tender toward all who are in distress, and it finds occasion enough to exercise its tender feelings. There would certainly seem to be a demand in this world of sorrow and sighing, for such a religion. Accordingly, it feels that it has a mission, that it is called of God, and of humanity too. Here is its sphere—this is its meat and drink. "I mourn for millions" is the motto of this lachrymal religion. It wants no other employment. As for praying, psalm-singing, and such like they are idle ceremonies. It would enter the solemn assemblies, if it durst, and drive out with a scourge all the sanctimonious worshipers, and disperse them over the world on missions of benevolence. It would convert every sanctuary into a hospital, and make every alter smoke with a bubbling caldron of charitysoup.

It seems unnecessary to add that two religions of such widely opposite principles and measures must be inveterately

hostile. Their respective disciples must be more bitterly antagonistic than were the Jews and Samaritans. The adherent of the old form sees in the new, a religion without piety. With holy horror and words of exccration, he accosts the sacrilegious intruders upon the hallowed mysteries of religion, "Procul hinc! procul este profani!

Conclamat vates, totoque absistite luco."

The advocate of the new, secs in the old, a religion without Philanthropy, and straightway denounces it as a doctrine of Devils!

Again, the devotees of the God-ward form have established in their own minds, such an association of ideas in reference to the terms religion and humanity, as being terms of disagreement, that their devotion to the former produces and perpetuates an indifference to the latter. What their religion excludes, their piety must eschew. With them deadness to the world of wants and miseries passes for absorption in God, the more profound the one, the more perfect the other, and when the petrifying heart becomes hard as the nether millstone,' the unearthly being is proclaimed a saint, and canonization crowns the consummation! Now when that which is rejected from the idea of religion, as constituting no part of it, is taken up by another class and made the very essence of it, there must be an intense hostility. Our national history furnishes a forcible illustration of this principle. The idea of liberty, as originally held by our fathers, was exclusive of the slaves. In this view both slaveholders (among whom were some of the most ardent advocates of liberty,) and non-slaveholders were agreed. With them liberty and slavery-perfect opposites as they abstractly are-stood in no relation involving incompatibility, inasmuch as they applied to entirely different classes, whose respective conditions, as of right established, they truly denoted. The negroes were destined to be slaves, or at least must be so for the time being; and consequently the declaration that "all men are born free and equal" could not be construed as having any reference to them. Let now an association of men arise, and maintain, upon the principles of our constitution and declaration of Independence, the slaves right to liberty, and, by implication, call in question the consistency of the framers of those documents. There will be war at once. The very fathers of liberty are impeached. Shocking! With what abhorrence will they and their reverential descendants regard the upstart expounders of

human rights. They will be the first to reject the claims of the slaves. Their very attachment to freedom will be the soul of their opposition to the freedom of the negro! In perfect accordance with this representation have been the facts in the history of the anti-slavery movement. There have been no enemies more bitter or unsparing than some of the boldest champions of human liberty.

Such is the attitude of the friends of the two forms of religion at the present period. The Pietists behold the man-worshipers-prayerless busy-bodies-waking heaven and earth to liberate a few millions of slaves-denouncing curses upon the church, speaking evil of dignities,' and they regard it all as a most impious assault upon their 'holy religion.' They mourn that Zion has fallen upon evil times. In their deep, self-righteousness, they exclaim-"If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do!" They sigh for the former days when religion was suffered to maintain its holy elevation above human concernments, when it was left to its own loved employments, of swinging censers and saying masses. Or. the contrary the zealous disciples of the religion of humanity look upon all this as downright diabolism-and in some cases they almost forget their zeal for humanity in their war-, fare against so monstrous a perversion of religion.

We ask now, where is the hope that these variant religions will ever be united? Is it in their becoming better acquainted with each other? This will but aggravate the hostility. Should they meet to compare notes, it would be but to part with fierce words and fixed enmity. It would be as the meeting of the Prophets, Matthias and Joe Smith. They had heard of each others fame, as prophets of the Lord; they determined upon an interview, they met, they sounded each other's pretensions, they examined each other's commissions. It was a severe scrutiny-prophet proving prophet! At length the investigation closed. Matthias called for Joe's judgment.

"I pronounce you an Impostor" said Joe.

"And I pronounce you an Impostor and an arrant scoundrel," retorted Matthias. The interview ended. The Prophets never sought another.

We repeat the inquiry-where is the hope of an alliance between the belligerent systems? We answer-it is in Christianity. It proposes, yea it purposes, to effect a perfect union. The gospel is in theory a scheme of religion in which these polar extremes blend and fuse with equatorial intensity.

What the gospel is in theory, religion will be in fact; for the gospel is the wisdom of God and the power of God. What it devises, it can and will accomplish. The time will be when the Lion and the Lamb shall lie down together, when Piety and Philanthropy shall meet, when Sacrifice and Sympathy shall kiss each other. To effect this is pre-eminently the object of Christianity; and its achievement will be its crowning glory.

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The genius of the gospel is both God-ward and Man-ward. This is manifest in all its inculcations and announcements. How beautifully is it set forth in the angelic chorus which charmed the shepherds of Bethlehem the night the Savior was born; "Glory to God in the highest-and on earth peace, good will to men." Piety had gone over the earth, shouting Glory to God;" Philanthropy had faintly whispered, “good will to men;"-Christianity harmonized both in a sublime anthem, and sent "a multitude of the heavenly host" to teach men how to sing it. The genius of the gospel is seen too in the bi-une commandment, in which with the same positiveness of precept and the same severity of sanction, are enjoined love to God, und love to Man, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and thy neighbor as thyself." The genius of the gospel is displayed with an awful brightness in the Incarnation. Divinity conjoined with Humanity! The Son of God, and the Son of Man! How clearly does this indicate that the religion of which this God-man was the founder, was to embrace both God and man. Man alone could not originate it, God alone could not establish it. It was a religion for both— both therefore must participate in its establishment; and accordingly both were represented in the incarnate God. Who would have conjectured that such a religion could ever be perverted into an engine of the most cruel oppression of man under the sacred name of Picty!

The genius of the gospel appears in the double mission of the Saviour; namely, the vindication of God's law, and the salvation of the violators of that law. It is exhibited also in the Savior's actions. While upon him devolved the stupendous work of founding a kingdom, which should ultimately displace all other kingdoms, and spread its dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth; yet it is recorded of him that he went about doing good! It would almost seem to have required two separate beings to have accomplished such very different undertakings, to have carried on at the same time such distinct enterprises. The genius of