which is established and well known as a source of no good, but as tending to produce beggary and wretchedness. A man is bound to pursue such a course of life as not neces sarily to increase the burdens and the taxes of the community. The pauperism and crimes of this land grow out of this vice, as an overflowing fountain. Three-fourths of the taxes for prisons, and houses of refuge, and almshouses, would be cut off but for this traffic and the attendant vices. Nine-tenths of the crimes of the country, and of the expenses of litigation for crime, would be prevented by arresting it. Now, we have only to ask our fellowcitizens, what right they have to pursue an employment tending thus to burden the community with taxes, and to endanger the dwellings of their fellow-men, and to send to my door, and to every other man's door, hordes of beggars loathsome to the sight; or to compel the virtuous to seek out their wives and children, amidst the squalidness of poverty, and the cold of winter, and the pinchings of hunger, to supply their wants? Could impartial justice be done in the world, an end would soon be put to the traffic in ardent spirits. Were every man bound to alleviate all the wretchedness which his business creates, to support all the poor which his traffic causes, an end would soon be made of this employment. THE BIBLE versus SLAVERY.-THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH. Of all the abuses ever applied to the Scriptures, the most intolerable and monstrous are those which pervert them to the support of American slavery. Sad is it that the mild and benignant enactments of the Hebrew legislator should ever be appealed to, to sanction the wrongs and outrages of the poor African in "this land of freedom;" sad, that the ministers of religion should ever prostitute their high office to give countenance to such a system, by maintaining, or even conceding for a moment, that the Mosaic laws sanction the oppressions and wrongs existing in the United States! *** The defence of slavery from the Bible is to be, and will soon be, abandoned, and men will wonder that any defence of such a system could have been attempted from the word of God. If the authors of these defences could live a little longer than the ordinary term of years allotted to man, they would themselves wonder that they could ever have set up such a defence. Future generations will look upon the defences of slavery drawn from the Bible, as among the most remarkable instances of mistaken interpretation and unfounded reasoning furnished by the perversities of the human mind. *** Let every religious denomination in the land detach itself from all connection with slavery, without saying a word against others; let the time come when, in all the mighty denominations of Christians, it can be announced that the evil has ceased with them FOREVER; and let the voice from each denomination be lifted up in kind, but firm and solemn testimony against the system; with no "mealy" words; with no attempt at apology; with no wish to blink it; with no effort to throw the sacred shield of religion over so great an evil; and the work is done. There is no public sentiment in this land, there could be none created, that would resist the power of such testimony. There is no power OUT of the church that could sustain slavery an hour if it were not sustained IN it. Not a blow need be struck. Not an unkind word need be uttered. No man's motive need be impugned, no man's proper rights invaded. All that is needful is, for each Christian man, and for every Christian church, to stand up in the sacred majesty of such a solemn testimony, to free themselves from all connection with the evil, and utter a calm and deliberate voice to the world,—AND THE WORK WILL BE done. WAR. Who has ever told the evils, and the curses, and the crimes of war? Who can describe the horrors of the carnage of battle? Who can portray the fiendish passions which reign there? Who can tell the amount of the treasures wasted, and of the blood that has flowed, and of the tears that have been shed over the slain? Who can register the crimes which war has originated and sustained? If there is any thing in which earth, more than in any other, resembles hell, it is in its wars. And who, with the heart of a man-of a lover of human happiness-of a hater of carnage and crime can look but with pity, who can repress his contempt in looking on all the trappings of war-the tinsel the nodding plumes-even the animating music-designed to cover over the reality of the contemplated murder of fathers, and husbands, and sons? THE GENTLE CHARITIES OF LIFE. A man's usefulness in the Christian life depends far more on the kindness of his daily temper, than on great and glorious deeds that shall attract the admiration of the world, and that shall send his name down to future times. It is the little rivulet that glides through the meadow, and that runs along day and night by the farm-house, that is useful, rather than the swollen flood, or the noisy cataract. Niagara excites our wonder, and fills the mind with amazement and awe. We feel that God is there; and it is well to go far to see once at least how solemn it is to realize that we are in the presence of the Great God, and to see what wonders his hand can do. But one Niagara is enough for a continent or a world; while that same world needs thousands and tens of thousands of silvery fountains, and gently flowing rivulets, that shall water every farm, and every meadow, and every garden, and that shall flow on every day and every night with their gentle and quiet beauty. So with life. We admire the great deeds of Howard's benevolence, and wish that all men were like him. We revere the names of the illustrious martyrs. We honor the man who will throw himself in the "imminent deadly breach" and save his country,-and such men and such deeds we must have when the occasion calls for them. But all men are not to be useful in this way-any more than all waters are to rush by us in swelling and angry floods. We are to be useful in more limited spheres. We are to cultivate the gentle charities of life. We are by a consistent walk to benefit those around us-though we be in an humble vale, and though, like the gentle rivulet, we may attract little attention, and may soon cease to be remembered on earth. Kindness will always do good. It makes others happy-and that is doing good. It prompts us to seek to benefit others and that is doing good. It makes others gentle and benignant-and that is doing good. Practical Sermons. THE VALUE OF INDUSTRY. I have seen the value of industry; and as I owe to this, under God, whatever success I have obtained, it seems to me not improper to speak of it here, and to recommend the habit to those who are just entering on life. I had nothing else to depend on but this. I had no capital when I began life; I had no powerful patronage to help me; I had no natural endowments, as I believe that no man has, that could supply the place of industry; and it is not improper here to say that all that I have been able to do in this world has been the result of habits of industry which began early in life; which were commended to me by the example of a venerated father; and which have been, and are, an abiding source of enjoyment. Dr. Doddridge, in reference to his own work, the "Paraphrase on the New Testament," said, that its being written at all was owing to the difference between rising at five and at seven o'clock in the morning. A remark similar to this will explain all that I have done. Whatever I have accomplished in the way of commentary on the Scriptures is to be traced to the fact of rising at four in the morning, and to the time thus secured which thought might properly be employed in a work not immediately connected with my pastoral labors. In the recollection of the past portions of my life, I refer to these morning hours, to the stillness and quiet of my room in this house of God when I have been permitted to "prevent the dawning of the morning" in the study of the Bible, while the inhabitants of this great city were slumbering round about me, and before the cares of the day and its direct responsibilities came upon me,-I refer, I say, to these scenes as among the happiest portions of my life; and I could not do a better thing in reference to my younger brethren in the ministry, than to commend this habit to them as one closely connected with their own personal piety, and their usefulness in the world. Life at Three-Score. ROBERT C. SANDS, 1799-1832. ROBERT C. SANDS was born in the city of New York, May 11, 1799. He entered the Sophomore class in Columbia College in 1812, and was graduated, with a high reputation for scholarship, in 1815. He soon after began the study of law in the office of David B. Ogden, entering upon his new course of study with great ardor, and pursuing it with steady zeal. He had formed in college an intimate friendship with James Eastburn, afterwards a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church; and in 1817 he commenced, in conjunction with his clerical friend, a romantic poem, founded on the history of Philip, the celebrated Sachem of the Pequods. But Mr. Eastburn's health began to fail early in 1819, and be died in December of that year, before the work was completed. It was therefore revised, arranged, and completed, with many additions, by Sands, who introduced it with a touching proem, in which the surviving poet mourned, in elevated and feeling strains, the accomplished friend of his youth. The poem was published, under the title of Yamoyden, at New York, in 1820, was received with high commendation, and gave Mr. Sands great literary reputation throughout the United States. In 1820, Mr. Sands was admitted to the bar, and opened an office in the city of New York; but his ardent love of general literature gradually weaned him from his profession. In 1822 and 1823, he wrote many articles for the "Literary Review," a monthly periodical, and in 1824 the "Atlantic Magazine” was established and placed under his charge. He gave it up in six months; but when it became changed to the "New York Review," he was engaged as an editor, and assisted in conducting it till 1827. He had now become an author by profession, and looked to his pen for support, as he had before looked to it for fame or for amusement; and when an offer of a liberal salary was made him as an assistant editor of the "New York Commercial Advertiser," he accepted it, and continued his connection with that journal until his death, which took place on the 17th of December, 1832; in the mean time editing and writing & great number of miscellaneous works. A selection from his works was published in 1834, in two volumes, octavo, entitled Writings in Prose and Verse, with a Memoir.1 FROM THE PROEM TO YAMOYDEN. Go forth, sad fragments of a broken strain, Friend of my youth! with thee began the love Forever lit by memory's twilight beams; Where the proud dead, that live in storied page, There would we linger oft, entranced, to hear, Through Argive palaces shrill echoing stole; Friend of my youth! with thee began my song, But for thy sake such idlesse would deplore And swears to meditate the thankless muse no more. 1 "That American literature experienced a great loss in the early death of Sands, will be felt by the reader who makes acquaintance with his well-cultivated, prompt, exuberant genius, which promised, had life been spared, a distinguished carcer of genial mental activity and productiveness."-DUYCKINCK. A series of interesting papers on the early and unpublished writings of this "true son of genius" may be found in the twenty-first and twenty-second volumes of the "Knickerbocker Magazine." Mr. Eastburn died December, 1819, on a voyage to Santa Cruz, undertaken to regain his health. |