instrument appointed by God and Christ, to overcome all forms of wrong, intemperance among the rest; to neglect this instrument and devise another, a temperance society, to wit, is to abandon the institutions of God and Christ, and so it is unchristian and atheistical. In other words, here is intemperance, a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, in our way; there is an old wooden beetle, which has done great service of old time, and is said to have been made by God's own hand; men smite therewith the stone or smite it not; still it lies there a stone of stumbling and a stone of shame; other men approach, and with a sledge-hammer of well-tempered steel smite the rock, and break off piece after piece, smoothing the rough impracticable way; they call on men to come to their aid, with such weapons as they will. But our minister bids them beware; the beetle is "of the Lord," the iron which breaks the rock in pieces is an unchristian and atheistical instrument. Yet was this minister an earnest, a pious, and a self-denying man, who sincerely sought the good of men. He had been taught to know no piety but in the church's form. I would not do dishonor to the churches; they have done great service, they still do much; I would only ask them to be worthy of their Christian name. They educate men a little, and allow them to approach emancipation, but never to be free and go alone.

I see much to complain of in the condition of piety; yet nothing to be alarmed at. When I look back, it seems worse still, far worse. There has not been "A decline of piety" in Boston of late years. Religion is not sick. Last Sunday, I spoke of the great progress made in morality within fifty years; I said it was an immense progress within two hundred years. Now, there cannot be such a progress in the outward manifestation without a corresponding and previous development of the inward principle. Morality cannot grow without piety more than an oak without water, earth, sun, and air. Let me go back one hundred years; see what a difference between the religious aspect of things then and now! certainly there has been a great growth in spirituality since that day. I am not to judge men's hearts; I may take their outward lives as the test and measure of their inward piety. Will you say the outward life never completely comes up to that? It does so as completely now as then. Compare the toleration of these times with those; compare the intelligence of the community; the temperance, sobriety, chastity, virtue in general. Look at what is now done in a municipal way by towns and States for mankind; see the better provision made for the poor, for the deaf, the dumb, the blind, for the insane, even for the idiot; see what is done for the education of the people—in schools, academies, colleges, and by public lectures; what is done for the criminal to prevent the growth of crime. See what an amelioration of the penal laws; how men are saved and restored to society, who had once been wholly lost. See what is done by philanthropy still more eminent, which the town and State have not yet overtaken and enacted into law; by the various societies for reform—those for temperance, for peace, for the discipline of prisons, for the discharged convicts, for freeing the slave. See this Anti-slavery party, which, in twenty years, has become so powerful throughout all the Northern States, so strong that it cannot be howled down, and men begin to find it hardly safe to howl over it; a party which only waits the time to lift up its million arms, and hurl the hateful institution of slavery out of the land! All these humane movements come from a divine piety in the soul of man. A tree which bears such fruits is not a dead tree; is not wholly to be despaired of; is not yet in a "decline," and past all hope of recovery. Is the age wanting in piety, which makes such efforts as these? Yes, you will say, because it does no more. I agree to this, but it is rich in piety compared to other times. Ours is an age of faith; not of mere belief in the commandments of men, but of faith in the nature of man and the commandments of God.

This prevailing and contagious complaint about the decline of religion is not one of the new things of our time. In the beginning of the last century, Dr. Colman, first minister of the church in Brattle street, lamented in small capitals over the general decline of piety:—"The venerable name of religion and of the church is made a sham pretence for the worst of villanies, for uncharitableness and unnatural oppression of the pious and the peaceable;" "the perilous times are come, wherein men are lovers only of their own selves." "Ah, calamitous day," says he, "into which we are fallen, and into which the sins of our infatuated age have brought us!" He looks back to the founders of New England; they "were rich in faith, and heirs of a better world," "men of whom the world was not worthy;" "they laid in a stock of prayers for us which have brought down many blessings on us already." Samuel Willard bewailed "the checkered state of the gospel church;" it was "in every respect a gloomy day, and covered with thick clouds."

We retire yet further back, to the end of the seventeenth century; a hundred and sixty or seventy years ago, Dr. Increase Mather, not only in his own pulpit, but also at "the great and Thursday lecture," lamented over "the degeneracy and departing glory of New England." He complained that there was a neglect of the Sabbath, of the ordinances, and of family worship; he groaned at the lax discipline of the churches, and looked, says another, "as fearfully on the growing charity as on the growing vices of the age." He called the existing generation "an unconverted generation." "Atheism and profaneness," says he, "have come to a prodigious height;" "God will visit" for these things; "God is about to open the windows of heaven, and pour down the cataracts of His wrath ere this generation ... is passed away." If a comet appeared in the sky, it was to admonish men of the visitation, and make "the haughty daughters of Zion reform their pride of apparel." "The world is full of unbelief" (that is, in the malignant aspect and disastrous influence of comets), "but there is an awful Scripture for them that do profanely condemn such signal works!"

One of the present and well-known indications of the decline of piety, that is often thought a modern luxury, and ridiculously denounced in the pulpit, which has done its part in fostering the enjoyment, was practised to an extent that alarmed the prim shepherds of the New England flock in earlier days. The same Dr. Mather preached a series of sermons "tending to promote the power of godliness," and concludes the whole with a discourse "Of sleeping at sermons," and says: "To sleep in the public worship of God is a thing too frequently and easily practised; it is a great and a dangerous evil." "Sleeping at a sermon is a greater sin than speaking an idle word. Therefore, if men must be called to account for idle words, much more for this!" "Gospel sermons are among the most precious talents which any in this world have conferred upon them. But what a sad account will be given concerning those sermons which have been slept away! As light as thou makest of it now, it may be conscience will roar for it upon a death-bed!" "Verily, there is many a soul that will find this to be a dismal thought at the day of judgment, when he shall remember so many sermons I might have heard for my everlasting benefit, but I slighted and slept them all away. Therefore consider, if men allow themselves in this evil their souls are in danger to perish." "It is true that a godly man may be subject unto this as well as unto other infirmities; but he doth not allow himself therein." "The name of the glorious God is