commerce with that world of invisible beings, whose influences we are illustrating, is so very imperfect, that they see them but as the half-opened eye saw "men like trees walking." Their records of events and ideas of truths are correspondingly out of due proportion;-in Hindostan all is shadowy, gigantic, multitudinous; in China all is puerile, little, and fantastical.

Nations a little higher in civilization are those, which have more authentic history, more elevated poetry, and more advanced science. Such were the Saracens, of the middle ages, and such (though miserably degraded) are some of their modern descendants. These having been emancipated from the mental thraldom of idolatry, and having received the first great truth of revelation, that there is but one God,-"no God but God," in their own phrase— though that glorious confession was impiously associated with the most flagrant lie of their false teacher-"and Mahomet is his prophet,"—these, we say, were exalted far above all the philosophers and devotees of the eastern world; a great portion of which they were enabled to subjugate, by the superiority in arts not less than in arms, which they derived from their ancestors, whose deeds were celebrated in genuine annals, and whose works in every department of literature, from the most abstruse to the most fanciful, are yet the glory of Arabia and Persia.

Once more. In Europe there are many kindred, and people and tongues, who border on barbarism, or excel in civilization, just in proportion as they have received and improved the lessons of wisdom, which their fathers bequeathed them,-and not their fathers only, but the illustrious of all nations, ancient and modern, whose virtues, whose actions, and whose talents, have left indestructible monuments in their own works, or in the works of others, for the benefit of all the human race who may ever have access to the knowledge of them. It would not be difficult

countries.

to arrange and class the states of Christendom according to the social character of their various populations, when those would invariably be found highest in intelligence, who have the largest and most familiar commerce with the world of the departed, but unforgotten, of all ages and Those, too, would be found to stand highest, not only in intelligence, but in comparative virtue, who are most under the influence of the best examples; and whose laws, institutions, and literature are most conformed to these. Thus Spain and Portugal are exceedingly low, because almost unacquainted with the glories of Greece. and Rome, while they are strangers to the light of life in the holy Scriptures. Hence (except poetry) they have hardly any literature beyond that of the tales of chivalry, and little religion but that of the legends of saints. In Germany, there is a resurrection of mind, by a revival of research among the treasures of neglected learning for nobler purposes than mere verbal criticism. The various tribes of that heterogeneous empire are rising, therefore, to moral and intellectual grandeur, by their renewed communion with the invisible world, and the conflict and collision of generous spirits awakened by that circumstance, and which, perhaps no other circumstance could have awakened. Italy, rich in history, poetry, romance, the fine arts, the liberal sciences,-rich in inherited, acquired and accumulated knowledge of every kind, except the true knowledge of divine truth,-Italy rivals, if not transcends, all contemporaries in productions of genius, appealing to the senses, the understanding, the imagination, or the affections; yet, morally, she is on a level with the most debased, by servility and superstition, because she substitutes for the oracles of God the traditions of men,—mercenary, profligate, atheistical men. Of France, with some modifications to her disparagement, and a few to her advantage, the same may be said as of Italy.

Our own country, formerly deemed as waste and excommunicate as we think the wilderness of Siberia,-now, neither so highly exalted by the examples of Greece and Rome, as Italy, nor so conceitedly enslaved by them as France, has nevertheless been sufficiently swayed, to have greatly profited in all that adorns and dignifies man in political and civil society; while she has enjoyed one blessing superior to both, and which has placed her above all competition in true glory and true happiness. Wickliffie, before the Reformation, loosed the Word of God, which had been bound almost a thousand years. The way was thus prepared in this island for the Reformation: and that Reformation, by the freedom which it brought with it,-freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of action; a threefold cord spontaneously twined and not soon broken; that Reformation, by the freedom which it brought with it, caused the gospel, its precepts and sanctions, in process of time, so to mould the laws, policy, manners, and benevolent institutions of our countrymen, as to make the latter nationally, if not individually, more upright, honorable and conscientious in principle, than can be said of any other people in existence. The history of the last half century is proof of this, during which, whatever have been the sins of government or subjects, in particular instances, our character has been refining, and, at the same time, rising in the estimation of foreigners, till our enemies themselves in extremities, had more confidence in us than in each other; so that, without boasting, it may be said, both in the literal and figurative sense of the terms, "Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is (Great Britain) on the sides of the north." Psalm xlviii, 2. What hath made her so? Her children have had free and happy communication, beyond all others, with the world of invisible beings among them, consisting not only of heroes, legislators,

princes, philosophers, poets, painters, sculptors, historians, orators, and pagan worthies, who have flourished in all lands since the flood,-but especially of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, and righteous men, who first declared the truths of Revelation to a world lying in wickedness, or have sealed with their blood, and exemplified by their lives, that the gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.

An imaginary, but, happily impossible case, may illustrate the value and extent of that influence for which we contend, over the well-being and well-doing of consecutive generations. Were all knowledge, remembrance, and record of past ages obliterated; all books of science, religion, eloquence, and poesy, destroyed; all relics of ancient sculpture and masonry crumbled to dust; and were nothing left to the living race of men but the actual information which they had individually acquired from these sources, with the power of communicating the same, in their own words only, to their offspring and contemporaries;-it cannot be questioned, that society would abruptly retrograde, and must continue to do so, till a sufficient stock of documentary literature had been accumulated by the slow labor of superior minds, through many a century, to enable posterity again to advance towards the point from which the fall-second only to the fall in Paradise-had commenced. It is manifest, that without the aid of those writings, in which our progenitors have perpetuated their intellectual existence among us, it would be impracticable to support the intellectual progress of mankind, as we now see it accelerated among all classes of people in this country. It is not the mere hoards committed to memory, in which the available wealth of a scholar consists;-it is the sum of all the facts, examples, and lessons, which have been put by the press beyond the power or the failure of

memory, to which he has access, at every moment, and on every emergency, by being master of the language in which any portion of these may be included, and knowing where to find what he wants, either for the enlargement of his own stores, or the communication of useful instruction to others. Between the means of diffusing knowledge, which are now possessed by joint inheritance, and those which would be limited to the imperfect recollections of comparatively a few persons, in the event which we have supposed the extinction of all written and monumental records-there would be precisely the relative difference that exists between the situation of a noble heir coming to the whole patrimony and honors of his ancient house, and that of a younger brother with a portion, payable indeed out of the estate, but not equal to one year's rental, and the rank of his lineage allowed to him only by courtesy.

To this world of invisible beings-in some respects the good and evil genii of the living, with whom these hold converse by what is known of them through books, though they themselves are unconscious of the dominion which they exercise-like the stars, in their guidance of the mariner on the deep, the moon in her government of the tide, and the sun in his reign over animal and vegetable existence; to this world of invisible beings, there are continual accessions of many temporary, and a few imperishable names, consisting of every one who leaves a memorial of himself, from which posterity receives either a transient or more enduring impression. The multitude of these pass away from ideal, as soon, or even sooner, than they did from real existence; but in every age, at this advanced period of civilization, there are some who, having once lived, never die, in the perpetuated consequences, whether good or evil, of their bodily appearance, and intercourse with their species. Now, these more effectually color and shape