slave is flogged; the drunken slave is poisoned. The negro is sore outside; the drunkard is racked inside. The negro is abused by the driver; the drunkard is tormented by himself. The negro is a sufferer only, not the criminal, and he suffers without an evil conscience; the drunkard is both sufferer and criminal, and all his pains are doubled by the consciousness that he is his own tormentor. The negro is pitied; the drunkard is pitied by some, but he is blamed by all. The negro may look forward to futurity with hope; the drunkard knows that all of his order are shut out of heaven. If the drunkard wished any chains breaking, they would surely be his own; for there are no chains so heavy, there are no chains so galling. If he wished any form of slavery destroying, it would be drunken slavery; for it is the most hateful and murderous in existence. If a man should complain of a fly, and yet tolerate a tiger, he would be set down for mad. But there is more difference between a drunkard's slavery and any other sort of slavery, than between the most harmless fly that ever flew, and the fiercest tiger that ever drank blood.

The drunkard is not friendly to the spread of knowledge. If he was, he would do more for the education of his own children. He is a first rate supporter of the old system of darkness. He must send his children where they can get him something to drink, instead of sending them to school. Sunday school learning is all they must have; and some of them are so ill clothed, that they cannot obtain even that. As for books, he never thinks of buying any such things. His books are the signposts; and the money that should purchase a family library, is spent in getting drunk on the premises. He may talk about the school master being abroad; but of all the creatures in the world the drunkard is the greatest hindrance in the school master's way; he is enough to frighten him out of the world.

There are many sorts of reformers in the country, but the drunkard has no claim to belong to any class. He is not a conservative reformer; there is not a good institution either in church or state which he is not doing his

worst to throw down. He is no whig reformer; for he has neither caution nor decency about him. He is not a radical; unless he is to be known by the green eye of envy; for there is not one abuse which he is sincerely desirous to tear up by the roots. He is not a leveller; or he would be trying to level upwards, that the high and the low might meet on the happy half-way plain. He is a destructive, heart and head, body and soul; a headlong, blindfold, miserable destructive. He is a foe both to God and man; an enemy to church and state; a plague both to his family and his neighbourhood; and the guilty and ruthless destroyer of his own body and soul. Let us hear no more of drunken reformers, until they have reformed themselves. Let them hide themselves in secret, and confess their sins before God. Let them abandon the accursed cup, and show their philanthropy by comforting their families; and we shall then know that they are sincere in their pretensions of goodwill to others.

CHRIST AND THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE GENTILES.

THE defect in Seneca's writings which we have pointed out in No. 22, is to be found in the writings of all the ancient philosophers. I do not recollect one of them that inculcates the exercise of universal charity. I do not recollect one of them that writes as if he pitied the human family. I do not recollect meeting in any of their works, with one single sentence that expressed a wish in the author to see all men intelligent and happy. They never seem to have thought that such a thing was possible; they never seem to have thought or felt upon the matter at all. Their works go on quite different principles from the Bible, and they breathe quite another spirit.

If you read the famous classics of Greece and Rome, you forget your brethren of mankind, and all your thoughts are pointed to yourself. The spirit of benevolence is chilled and frozen, and all your thoughts of blessing a world die away. Instead of the flame of cha

rity which had been kindled in your hearts by the book of God, the fire of selfish ambition is kindled, and instead of sighing for the improvement and salvation of a world, you pant only for distinction, and fame, and power.

There was a time when I read the works of the ancients with rapture; but it was when my spirit was more earthly and selfish than at present. I am tired of them now. I cannot relish them. They do not accord with my feeling; they cross the whole grain of my soul. I can still admire the simplicity and beauty of their language, the sublimity and grandeur of their conceptions, and the quickness and vigour of their spirits. And I am pleased, too, while I look at them, to think how high they rose in the midst of their disadvantages, and what noble efforts they made to rise still higher. Though I have now ceased to relish their writings, I cannot speak lightly of the men. Considering the times when they lived, and the circumstances in which they were placed, many of them did nobly. They set an example of patient investigation, and eager search after truth, that would do honour to a disciple of Christ. They were wonders in their way; and they deserve the admiration of all ages. And there is no one perhaps esteems them more highly than myself, no one that judges more favourably of their character, or that thinks more honourably of their reception with God. But they must never be ranked with the Bible; their morals must never be compared with the moral teachings of Jesus. They are wholly different systems, they are as opposite as life and death. The Bible is a book of love from first to last. It never speaks of less than the happiness of the world. The first revelation that was given to Abraham, was the revelation of a purpose "to bless all the families of the earth." All succeeding intimations of God's designs are of the same kind; all bear the stamp of unbounded and impartial goodness. He never speaks as if he had no care of a part of mankind; he always stands forth as the Father of the whole race. The prophets are full of glorious disclosures, unfolding to the mind the most rapturous visions. All nature is to be regenerated. The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad, and

the desert shall blossom as the rose. The savage arts of war shall be forgotten; misrule and want shall disappear; all nations shall be blessed with peace and freedom,all shall be happy and united, and rejoice in expectation of blessings without end. There is nothing like this in the works of the ancient philosophers. If they speak of a God, it is not a God of love: if they speak of men, it is not to make them happy. They are works of selfishness. They never speak of the world's salvation. They breathe no spirit of tenderness. They say nothing of the principle of universal brotherhood. If I were to give myself up to them, they would completely change my nature. They would make me feel as if I were one by myself, and as if the rest of men were of another family. They would freeze my soul's best feelings; they would kill the spirit of kindness in me, and make me as hard and unfeeling as a rock. And this is what I could not endure; I would rather die than be robbed of affection. If I must live, I must love; and I had rather be driven from the earth than be deprived of sympathy with my fellow-men.

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And this is the reason why I cannot love the productions of the ancients. My heart will not mix with them. They talk of beings without charity. The heroes of the poet and the historian are all of the earth, and they. live only for themselves. And even the wise and the good man of the philosopher is a cold and frozen statue. has none of the fire and animation of the philanthropist. He cares not so much for fame, it is true; he seeks not so eagerly for wealth, and he is not so much agitated with calamities and injuries; but he has no feeling of affection. He cares not for me, and he cares not for my brethren. He stands erect, and moves with dignity, but he will not bend, he will not stoop to pity and bless his fellows. He walks with firmness and majesty, but he does not go about doing good. And his eyes are never dimmed with sorrow, and his cheeks are never wet with tears. He will not weep, he will not sigh, he will not look on sorrow. I cannot bear such a sight. I want men that can feel; I want to read of characters that can stoop

to the wretched, and sigh over them; and shed a tear of sympathy. I want such as can scheme, and plot, and toil to bless their brethren. But the philosophers of Greece and Rome had never seen such men, and they had no idea that there ever were such characters, or that there ever could be.

The great men of the historian and poet are still more unlovely. They clothe themselves in iron, they march like horrid demons, they speak of nothing but blood and death. The great man of the philosophers was too cold and stiff; these are active enough, but it is to do evil. "Their throat is an open sepulchre; and the poison of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace have they not known." They walk up and down like a wasting fire, and hurry to and fro like furies. These are the men that the poets and historians of the ancients place before us, and it is with the cruel and merciless deeds of such characters that they fill the pages of their works. How can I love them? I want to hear the voice of prayer, and the tones of mercy, but I hear nothing but the cries and shouts and frightful noises of war. I want to see men comforted, and I see them destroyed. I want to see the broken heart bound up, and I see it rent in pieces. I want to see the slave set free, and I see whole nations chained.

If the authors wrote as if they pitied the unhappy, I could bear them; but they speak of victories and conquests as glorious things. The ruin of a city, the depopulation of a nation, the slaughter of ten thousand men, and the capture of a hundred thousand more, are splendid achievements. I turn aside from such books with distress, and except when I wish to perceive more clearly the brightness of the Gospel, by contrasting it with ancient gloominess, I open them no more.

But I love the Bible; for whatever scenes it presents to my view, and whatever imperfect characters are set before me, the spirit of the Great Author which runs through the whole, is one of unchangeable and unbounded