proper uses. With these facts recorded on the pages of history, citizens of this country are denounced. Often native citizens are denounced by foreigners and men of foreign education, for doing the very things which, more than charters and laws, have secured religious freedom!

This case is rendered more striking and extraordinary by the fact, that the very same efforts which have brought on evangelical men in this country such injurious accusations, have produced in England, at the same time too, denunciations of an exactly opposite character. Here the cry is, "Liberty is in danger!" There, "The Church is in danger!" Here the accusation is, "These men are plotting to effect a religious establishment." There, "They are the enemies of the establishment." The case was the same in Russia, as far as the experiment was made. The Bible Society was suppressed by the priests and nobles, lest the people should become discontented with their condition. We could easily adduce similar facts in the case of Switzerland and France; and we could easily ask, why do the laws in some States of the Union shut out the Bible, and the Sabbath school, and the Missionary from the labouring part of the population? But the absurdity of these charges is only equalled by the credulity of the men who believe them.

The Presbyterians and Congregationalists are now the prominent objects of dislike and attack. But it is not because they are Presbyterians or Congregationalists; but because they are thought to be particularly active in promoting evangelical principles; because they with some zeal propagate that religion which tells man he is a sinner, and he must repent or perish; he must be born again, or he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Orthodox Baptists, Evangelical Episcopalians, and all other evangelical Christians, are as really the objects of this dislike as the men who at present have, for some cause, to bear the brunt of the battle. None need suppose that the world loves them or is at peace with them.

Only let those who have been first selected as adversaries be put out of the way, and the turn of some others will come next. The opposition will go on, either until evangelical piety shall be exiled to some Patmos in the Southern Ocean, or, which we believe will be the case, until the "truth as it is in Jesus," shall so prevail as to make all opposition hopeless.

We can only offer one additional remark. The spirit which has manifested itself in the writings of Dr. Channing, as brought

under review by Professor Stuart, and which has shown itself in many other places and on many other occasions, is the very spirit of tyranny. It claims for itself the right of doing what it is greatly offended if others do. It arrogates to itself all taste, all wisdom, all liberality, all comprehension of views, and attributes to others vulgarity, folly, contractedness of feelings, and narrowness of mind. "Nihil non arrogat sibi.”

ART. VI.-THE AMERICAN QUARTERLY REVIEW ON SUNDAY MAILS.

We have frequently been struck, in reading the numbers of the National Gazette, with the justness and weight of its editorial remarks on the responsibility of the conductors of the periodical press. And we have often sympathized with its accomplished editor, on observing the severity with which he has been treated by party prints, for endeavouring to conduct a paper on national principles, abstaining equally from indiscriminate commendation and abuse. We readily yield the tribute which is due to him, for the elevated stand which he has proposed to himself, and think that, as far as politics are concerned, it has been successfully maintained. As it is universally understood that the editorial departments of the Gazette and of the American Quarterly Review are filled by the same individual, we had hoped that the moderation and fairness which mark the political character of the former, would also have been impressed on the pages of the latter. We entertained this hope with the greater confidence, from the conviction that the editor had too much discernment not to be aware, that a responsibility peculiarly serious rests upon the individual who undertakes to conduct an AMERICAN Review, which aspires, in its measure, at once to form and represent American sentiments and opinions. In despite of our sectional partialities, we are constrained to admit, that in respect to candour and fairness, whenever religion has been concerned, it has fallen far below its great eastern compeer. In the very first number of the work, there was an article, which, from the levity and injustice with which the character of several of the most distinguished of the American clergy was treated, we considered of unpropitious omen. This, however, it seems,

was but a premonition of the spirit afterwards to be exhibited. We question whether the pages of the respectable periodical literature of this country, can furnish an instance of a more uncandid assault on the character and opinions of a large part of the Christian community, than the recent article on Sunday Mails in the American Quarterly Review. We cannot but regard the publication of that piece as a high offence against the professed principles of the work, and a flagrant breach of the confidence reposed in its conductors. The public, unquestionably, have a right to expect that works of this character should not avail themselves of the power lent to them for other purposes, to disseminate principles which the mild and venerable Bishop White has pronounced anti-christian in their character, and licentious in their tendency. It is no justification of this course to state, there is a portion of professed Christians who agree with the leading doctrine of the article in question; for the Review professes not to be the virulent and party advocate of any set of opinions; much less does it claim the right of insulting, in behalf of an inconsiderable minority, the faith of nine-tenths of the Christian community of the country. The public, indeed, do not presume to pry into the private belief of its Editor, nor of any of its conductors; but in consenting to admit the work into their families, to operate on the opinions and character of their children, they surely have the right to expect that it should be kept free from decidedly anti-christian sentiments. It may well be that some of the contributors to that Review have no faith in Christianity at all, no regard for its institutions, nor respect enough for its worship to induce them to pass the threshold of a church once in twenty years. But would such persons be authorized to avail themselves of the access afforded them, under the name and sanction of American reviewers, into hundreds of Christian families, to attack the authority of our religion, or to asperse its doctrines and institutions? Assuredly not. And yet they might with too much truth affirm, that many of their readers coincide with their views. Or were they to appear as the open advocates of Unitarianism, the same justification might be offered. In either case, however, it is acknowledged that they would violate their contract with the public, by appearing in a different light from that in which their prospectus and general object present them. We are utterly at a loss to discern how they can justify themselves for having, in the article under review, assailed opinions which they know to be held

sacred by a large portion of the community. Let it be borne in mind, that we are not objecting to a consideration of the expediency or inexpediency of carrying the mail on Sunday; nor even to a discussion of the grounds on which the religious observance of that day is obligatory on Christians; but to the avowal and laboured support of the doctrine that the Sabbath was not originally a day devoted to the exercises of religion, and that it is now most appropriately kept by festivity and amusement. It is this doctrine which we affirm is abhorrent to the feelings of nine-tenths of the serious part of the public.

The reviewer asserts, "that the true construction of the Mosaic law is, that it (the Sabbath) should be kept as a day of festivity and gladness, and not by gloomy lectures and religious worship," p. 178. p. 178. In reference to the meaning of the phrase, "to keep it holy," he says: "It is asserted, on the other hand, that we are commanded to abstain, not only from labour, but from our usual amusements, from festivity, from social intercourse, such as is allowable on every other day, and that we should devote the Sunday to the solemn offices of religion, to the worship of God, public and private. We deny that such is the meaning of the commandment, but the reverse, p. 180. "In short," as he quotes from some learned author,' "the Sabbath was celebrated, at first, like other festivals, with feasting, dancing, and other holiday recreations, p. 182.

To our apprehension, these assertions carry the mark of absurdity on the very face of them. They represent the Sabbath as standing in a predicament occupied by no other religious institution in the world, ancient or modern. They exhibit it as being at utter variance with the whole system of which it is a part. The injunctions of every religion are certainly to be understood in a manner congruous to its own nature. The festivals of the heathen were thus in keeping with their religion. Those in honour of Ceres, Bacchus, or Venus, were attended by rites adapted to the character of the imaginary power to which they were consecrated. But the Re

viewer's position requires us either to suppose that the Sabbath had nothing in common with the system with which it was so intimately connected, or to renounce our whole belief as to the nature of that system. It is so evident that where a festival is enjoined, the manner of its observance must be adapted to the religion to which it belongs, that the very same formula of words must have very different meanings, under different circumstances. When we are told that a day was

kept among the heathen as a time of joy and gladness, in honour of their gods, we take it for granted that the nature of that joy, and the mode of its expression, was determined by the nature of their mythology. And when in the Bible, we are commanded to rejoice, to sing, to make the Sabbath a delight, we know just as surely that the joy, singing and delight are to be of a spiritual character, adapted to the religion of the Bible. If the Lord's day is to be observed, as we shall show is the faith of the whole Christian world, in commemoration of the resurrection of Christ, and of the pardon, purity and eternal life thereby secured, it is self-evident that its appropriate celebration is not by worldly singing, dancing and festivity; but by sincere thankfulness for these blessings, and joy adapted to their nature. Any man, therefore, who believes the Bible to contain a revelation of the true religion, and who entertains any correct idea of what religion is, must feel that the Reviewer's assertions are in themselves incredible.

If the object for which any festival was instituted, determines its nature, and the manner of its observance, then it scarcely needs an argument to prove that the Sabbath is to be religiously celebrated. It was instituted to keep in mind the creation of the world. The great source of idolatry was ignorance of the origin of things. To preserve, therefore, the knowledge of the fact that God called the universe into existence, and as the Creator was the only proper object of worship, was the most effectual means of preserving the true religion. That this was its object is expressly and repeatedly asserted. Thus in Ex. 20, v. ii. "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy; for in six days the Lord made the heaveans and the earth, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the seventh day and sanctified it." This assuredly means, that the end for which the day was to be observed was to commemorate this event. When the Hebrews were commanded on the first month on the fourteenth day of the month," to keep the Passover, "for in this self-same day have I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt: therefore shall ye observe this day in your generations by an ordinance forever," it is evident that the object of the feast was to keep in mind this merciful deliverance. And it is not less evident that when they were commanded to sanctify the seventh day, because God rested on that day, it was in commemoration of that event the day was to be celebrated. This is so often recognised as the end of the