Book of God now newly unfolded from the flinty keeping of a pebble on a subterranean beach, myriads of years older than Moses-confutes Moses and turns the popular Theology upside down. Philanthropy hates it; hates its jealous God, its narrow love, its pitiless torment, and its bottomless and hopeless hell. Let it pass. It can do little for us now; little for the mind and the conscience of the world; nothing for the affections, nothing for the soul. It can only drive men by fear, not charm by love. Let it pass; and its ministers tremble before the bank, the shop, and the tavern. Let the churchling crouch down before the worldling if he will.

But will Atheism aid us any more? It will do nothing, cheer nothing. It has only this to perform,-to rid men of fear and bondage to ancient creed. It never was a spring of action, and never can be. No! We must root into the soil of God, else we perish for lack of earth. An earth without a Heaven, a here with no Hereafter, a body without a Soul, and a world without a God-will that content the science and satisfy the philosophy of these times? Fill your mouth with the east wind! Atheism can never teach man that solemn, beautiful word,—I ought; only I must, which is Fatalism; or I will, which is Libertinism; never I ought, which is the mark of perfect obedience, and perfect freedom too. Atheism knows not the word Duty which marries Might with Right.

Well, shall we be without religion,-this Caucasian race, which has outgrown the worship of Nature, Polytheism, the Hebrew form of faith, classic Deism, and is fast outgrowing this popular Theology? I smile at the dreadful thought. Shall the great forces of modern civilization be wielded only for material ends? Here is America, a young nation, yet giant strong, with twenty million souls all cradled in her lap; and three million souls spurned as dust beneath her cruel feet. She has set her heart on this continent, "I will have all this goodly land," quoth she. She has set her affections on money, vulgar fame, and power. Every mountain gives us coal, iron, lead, water for our mill; California delights to tempt us with her gold. And America, speaking with the new and brazen trumpet of the State, says, "There is no Higher Law forbidding me to plunder Spain and Mexico, or crush the

Black as I slew the Red." Says America, through the other trumpet, the old and brazen trumpet of the Church, "There is no Higher Law! Plunder and crush !”

Is that to be so? Is modern civilization, with science that formulates the heavens and reads the hieroglyphics of the sky, with mechanical skill which surpasses all the dreams of faery,-modern civilization, with such riches, such material power, such science, such physic, ethics, metaphysics, with Beriins of scientific lore, with London, Paris, and New York, affluent with energy-is this to be an irreligious civilization; genius without justice, riches without love, organization for the strong, the rich, and the noble-born, an organization to oppress, a civilization without God? No! You say no, and I say no; human history says no; human nature says no!

What shall hinder? The popular Theology? The usurer, the politician, the kidnapper, in their selfishness, laugh at your Old and New Testament, and spurn at your hell. The Christian churches are on the side of sin; oppression is favoured by them the old world through, and oppression is favoured by them the new world through. Renounce the world!" says the priest, and means "Renounce the Higher Law of God." Soon as sin is popular the church christens it, and re-annexes the sin to itself. Did the American Church do aught against the Mexican war? Will it do'aught against the Cuban war? It will put Cuban gold into its treasury to evangelize the heathen. What does it do against the awful sin of America at this day? It has strengthened the arm of the oppressor; it has riveted chains on the bondman's neck. But just now-thanks to the Almighty God!—the churches of New-England and the West, met in solemn convocation at Albany, have protested against this mighty sin; and have charged their clergymen who went to those corners of the land where the sin is practised, to bear their testi mony against it; and if men would not hear them, then to depart out of their city. This is the first time; and it marks the turning of the tide which ere long will leave this old theology all high and dry upon the sand, a Tadmor in the desert.

The religion which we want must be of another stamp. It must recognize the Infinite God, who is not to be

feared, but loved; not God who thunders out of Sinai in miraculous wrath, but who shines out of the sun on evil and on good, in never-ending love. It must respect the universe, matter, and man; and worship God by natural Piety and serve Him with the Morality of

nature.

Then what a force Religion will be! There will be a religion for the body, to serve God with every limb. thereof; a religion for the intellect, and we shall hear no more of "atheistic science," but Lalande shall find God all the world through, in every scintillation of the farthest star he looks at, and Ehrenberg confront the Infinite in each animated dot or cell of life his glass brings out to light; yea, the chemist will meet the Omnipresent every atom of every gas. Then there shall be a religion for Conscience, the great Justice; a religion for the Affections, the great Love; a religion for the Soul, perfect Absolute Trust in God, Joy in God, Delight in this Father and Mother too.

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Then what Men shall we have! not dwarfed and crippled, but giant men, Christlike as Christ. What Families! woman emancipated and lifted up. What Communities! a society without a slave, without a pauper; society without ignorance, wealth without crime. What Churches! Think of the eight and twenty thousand Protestant churches of America, with their eight and twenty thousand Protestant ministers, with a free press, and a free pulpit, and think of their influence if every man of them believed in the Infinite God, and taught that the service of God was by natural Piety within and natural Morality without; that there was no such thing as imputed righteousness, or salvation by Christ; but that real righteousness was honoured before God, and salvation by character, by effort, by prayer, and by toil, was the work! Then what a nation should we have! ay, what a world!

We shall have it; it is in your heart and in my heart; for God, when he put this idea into human nature, meant that it should only go before the fact, the John the Baptist that heralds the coming of the great Messiah.

"Eternal Truth shines on o'er errors' cloud,

Which from our darkness hides the living light;

Wherefore, when the true Bard hath sung aloud
His soul-song to the unreceptive night,
His words, like fiery arrows, must alight,
Or soon, or late, and kindle through the earth,
Till Falsehood from his lair be frighted forth.

"Work on, O fainting Heart, speak out thy Truth;
Somewhere thy winged heart-seeds will be blown,
And be a grove of Pines; from mouth to mouth,
O'er oceans, into speech and lands unknown,
E'en till the long-foreseen result be grown
To ripeness, filled like fruit, with other seed,

Which Time shall plant anew, and gather when men need."

VII.

OF THE FUNCTION AND INFLUENCE OF THE IDEA OF IMMORTAL LIFE.

WE SHALL ALSO BEAR THE IMAGE OF THE HEAVENLY.

1 CORINTHIANS XV. 49.

I ASK your attention this morning to a sermon of the true Function and legitimate Influence of the Idea of Immortality. The subject is most intimately connected with the Theism lately spoken of..

The boy stolen from his mother by wolves in Hindostan, and brought up by them with their own young, becomes like a wolf. He seems to have no thought except for the day; his motives are gathered only from his present wants; no more. He satisfies his animal appetites, and then sleeps. Behold the sum of his consciousness! He knows no past, cares for no future, and has nothing within him which checks any instinctive desire. There is man reduced to his lowest terms, living from the lowest motives, animal selfishness; for the lowest ends, animal existence, brute enjoyment; by the lowest means, the instinct of brute desire. In that case human nature is as poor as it can live.

The cultivated citizen of Boston extends his thought in the present, to all the corners of the earth, takes in all

the countries of the globe; the doings in Europe and in Asia affect his daily consciousness. He embraces the stars of heaven; his telescopic thought sweeps the horizon of the universe. The discovery of a new planet is a joy to him, though his eye shall never taste its light. He connects himself with the past; he remembers his father and his mother, loving to trace his branch of the familytree far down,-now to a New-England sachem, now to a Norman king, or till it touches the ground in some Teutonic savage three thousand years ago. He loves to follow its roots under-ground to Noah, or Adam, or Deucalion, or Thoth, or some other imaginary character in the Heathen or Hebrew mythology. Thus he enlarges his present consciousness by recollecting or imagining the past, and is richer for every step he takes in history or fantasy. Not satisfied with this, he reaches forth to the future, with one hand building genealogies and tombs for his grandsires, and with the other houses for his grandchildren.

Thus our cultivated man enlarges his consciousness by the thought of men that are about him, behind him, and before him; all of these lay their hands, as it were, upon his shoulders, to magnetize him with their manhood, present, past, or to come; for as there is a long train of men, our brothers, reaching out from you and me to the furthest verge of the green earth, so there is another long train, six hundred or six thousand generations deep, standing behind us, each laying its hands on its forerunner's shoulders, and all communicating their blood and their civilization unto us who inherit the result of their bodily and spiritual toil.

It is a delight thus to extend our personality in Space, by knowledge of matter and man, and control over both; and in Time, by our connection with the family, reaching both ways, by our relation to the human race, in its indefinite extent backwards and around us on either hand. Human motives are gathered from the whole range of human consciousness and human knowledge, and our inward life is enlarged and enriched by the sweep of our intellect.

So the daily life of a civilized man in Boston comes to be consciously influenced by his wider knowledge of