churches to spiritual censure, for being masons. Anti-masonic meetings and societies have had their orators; and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, no less a man, than Dr. Waterhouse has been selected for orator. In some instances, when the pursuit has been too hotly urged, there has been a revulsion, and a reaction, and we trust, that the excitement, having lost the original pungency and zest of its influence, will soon pall upon the public ear, and this much vexed and discussed institution return to its original standing in the public estimation.

We should not have trespassed so long upon the patience of our readers, in spinning the thread of this narrative to such a length, had we not deemed, that the history is fraught with instruction upon a point most vital to the stability of those institutions, which are the pride and glory of us all. We proudly talk of our illumination and march of mind. We speak of the disgraceful delusion, recorded in history, of which some account is given in the book before us, as things, which belonged to a former age, and could never be re-enacted in ours. Here is a proof, and a palpable one, that the public mind, when a fair pretence has first been offered, can be played upon as effectually, and that men are in fact as gullible now, as they were in the times of the meal-tub plot or witch time. This ought to inspire present vigilance and caution. Another inference, as ministers say in a sermon, is, that of all the arts of demagogues, the most disgusting, and that, which ought readiest to consign them to infamy, is this of playing upon the virtuous feelings and credulity of the people, in turning these popular delusions to the purposes of their own personal and political advancement. A candidate for any office of honor and emolument, depending on the popular suffrage, may, perhaps, be allowed to caress the children of their constituents, and pronounce them the most beautiful little creatures, that were ever seen. He may insinuate, that the mother is pretty, knowing and good. He may talk with the good man about crops, pigs, and the price of pork, and flour, with such knowledge of the subjects, as he may possess. He may hint, so that it is done dextrously, that his competitor is a noodle, a rogue and a defaulter. He may practise all the little arts of what, we here call feeding the subject of the gull-trap with soft corn. All these are fair and hackneyed arts consecrated from all guilt by use, time out of mind. Whiskey and loans are more questionable expedients. Ogling, and walking arm in arm, and taking the voter aside from the crowd for private confab approach the confines of intrigue; and the promise of an office, conditioned upon success, is clearly 'bargain and corruption.' The west country fashion of treating the voters from a wash-tub of whiskey toddy, in which the brown sugar is stirred in by the candidate, who takes off his stockings and shoes, and gets into the tub, and operates, as the feet of the vintagers do in France, when they mash the grapes, and who hands off the political beverage to the voters in his shoe, may be tolerated, from its show of originality and of the 'free and easy.' It is a usage, not wholly disallowed, for the candidate to ride a race on a Kentucky 'chunk' for the amusement of the spectators, or run a foot race with the best man, otherwise the best boxer in the company. A stump is the time honored pulpit of all political aspirants in the west. These, and riding the canvassing circuit, and changing opinions, moral, political, and religious, a hundred times in a day, to accommodate the

party to his company, and seven hundred other choice arts, known to the sport, afford a very pretty and copious choice, in the selection and the right application of which, the aspirant shows his tact and his skill, and his cleverness; and they are all white-washed by common tolerance into innocence. But there are others, that are clearly questionable; and we have seen them in some instances too gross to be swallowed even by voters of the most enlarged deglutition. For instance, we saw a candidate, known to be a derider of religion, sitting at a camp preaching among the ministers, and ever and anon uttering a dismal groan, as if seized with a colick pang, and a face of most elongated and rueful sanctity. Candidates, however ungodly at other times, are sure to have religious concern come over them about the time of a camp-meeting.

We feel reluctant to enlarge upon a theme so hateful, and the revolting details of which are so well known to us all. There is no point of information, that has made so little progress among the people at large, as information, what deportment in aspirants for their favor, is becoming and respectable. One would think, that the head must indeed be of wood, that could not instantly penetrate the palpable contempt for the people, that is thinly veiled in all these miserable and unworthy expedients. Never does a candidate so loudly manifest his conviction, that the people are asses, as when, though at other times an atheist, he groans at a camp-meeting; and at other times select and aristocratic in his habits, when he all at once becomes the man of the people at the eve of an election. To seize the popular delusion of a meal tub plot, witchcraft, or anti-masonry, to work into the designs of ambition, ought to be stigmatized in terms of the most pointed indignation.

The time will come, and the time must come, or our institutions will not remotely descend to posterity, when enough of the controlling minds of the community shall possess just estimates of true dignity and worth and uprightness, and tact to discriminate, what is respectful deportment in candidates, to blast with the scorching lightning stroke of virtuous indignation, all these vile arts, similar to those, with which rakes woo prostitutes, all these arts which declare, that they, who use them, despise the people, and consider them of no other use than to be gulled to give their votes, and, like docile elephants, to be coaxed on to their knees, that these aspirants may erect their castles on their back, and ride them to their purposes. No man was ever worthy of the suffrages of the people, who would take these methods to gain them. No man, who had any right notions of dignity and self respect, would stoop to these measures for any boon which ambition could covet, or the people bestow. Nothing ought so directly to excite the suspicions of the people, as to discern these incipient efforts to fawn upon them.

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THE following paper is from a vigorous, bold and inventive mind. It will be obvious, that the author has a theory to sustain. We are generally averse to theorizing. Most of the sentiments meet our entire concurrence. The reader, who is acquainted with the general tone of this journal, will know, that we deem some of the sentiments, particularly those touching the comparative importance of natural and revealed religion, overstrained. That natural and revealed religion, being from the same author, must speak the same language, is certain. But to exalt the dim and uncertain light of nature over that lamp kindled by the Father of lights, for the express illumination of his benighted creature, man, is not our mode of viewing divine revelation. Nevertheless, in discussing views, which, in these respects, differ from ours, he elicits new and striking ideas. We give, as we have received, and leave the reader to judge for himself.-ED. An Essay on the Invalidity of Presbyterian Ordination, by JoHN ESTEN COOKE, M. D. Lexington: pp. 216, with an Appendix,

But few persons of intelligence venture to doubt, and fewer still are prepared to deny, that religion is the most momentous of human concerns. Whatever respectable production of the press is connected with it, although it be but slightly, is deemed worthy of the attention of the public in general, and seldom fails to receive it. But what pertains to it more nearly, or affects it vitally, awakens in no inconsiderable portion of the public, a sensation as deep, and often an interest as absorbing as human nature can well experience. There can be but little doubt, therefore, that the work which is announced for examination in this article, and which purports to possess the character last described, will make a forcible impression on those, whose nom de guerre, instead of their peace motto, is the 'religious community,' and who assume the exercise of privileges corresponding to the title.

Written expressly to prove the exclusive legitimacy of the episcopal form of church government, and the correctness of the public devotional discipline, and proceedings of that denomination of Christians alone; the work denies, of course, the legitimacy and authority of every other form, and the soundness of the worship of every other denomination. On the true answer to the question, then, has the author of the Essay' made good his position?' is suspended the validity of every religious rite and ceremony performed without the pale of episcopacy. By those Christians, and there are many such, who look so seldom and so slightly beyond exteriors and rituals, as scarcely to distinguish between matter and form, or even substance and shadow, and who attach but little value to aught but what is sanctioned by authenticated formularies, this representation may be received as a subject of serious import and deep solicitude.

By ourselves, however, it is otherwise received. We frankly avow that we do not, and cannot consider it a matter so momentous. Forms and rituals, and modes of government have doubtless their value. But it is not of the highest order. It is but the value of forms and modes, and has

no influence on the value of substance. The diamond is still a diamond, whatever may be its space. Exterior attributes are comparatively light, and usually unstable. It is the interior alone, the real matter and substance, that are at once ponderous, precious and unchanging.

There is, in true religion, that which neither rituals nor modes of administration can, in any way, effect; that which neither episcopacy nor presbyterianism can make either better or worse; that which instead of deriving from those forms of government and administration, any additional excellence, gives to them all the merit they possess. And if there were not in it such a quality, it would be unworthy of its name; because it would be itself nothing but a name.

Religion existed and was acceptably practised, before episcopacy and presbyterianism were established; and it would continue to exist, the hope, guide, and comfort of pious and adoring millions, were these establishments extinguished. The GREAT OBJECT of true worship is no more a respecter of forms than of persons. He is far above all such petty regards, and leaves them as toys to his petty creatures. Religion springs from the nature of man and his relation to God, and is as independent of ceremonials, and as far exalted over them, as the majesty of nature is independent of and elevated above the minutiae of art.

To us it is alike humiliating and revolting, to listen to the loud and angry clamor, and witness the unholy and embittered strife of conflicting sects, about a set of opinions and a system of forms and ceremonies, each of little value or interest, but of which they make a compound by their mystic alchymy, and misname it religion. Genuine religion has nothing of this in it. Instead of being composed of opinions and rituals, it is a holy sentiment seated in the heart, and has no dependence on sectarian dogmas, or peculiar forms of ecclesiastical discipline. These are but the trappings and suits' of religion. Yet are they clung to with an adhesion, and contended for with a degree of zeal, mingled too often with an acrimony of spirit, which would seem to proclaim them the only things valuable.

Religion has sundry aspects which are all beautiful, and sundry bearings which are all important. By the community at large some of these have not, perhaps, been sufficiently contemplated. A brief notice of one or two of them may not be altogether without interest.

As an engine for the control and direction of individual man, as a mem ber of the community, and the regulation and maintenance of civil society alone, religion is essential. Without it all human government would degenerate into despotism, or be resolved into anarchy and misrule, and the earth become a theatre of unbridled crime. It gives to oaths their sanctity and effect, and, by its secret admonitions through the voice of conscience and cautiousness, stays the hand of rapine and murder, and prevents other meditated atrocities, which no human laws or public influences could reach. If it does not, by its direct agency, call down on nations and communities special blessings immediately from Heaven, it virtually confers those blessings, by so directing and ameliorating the minds and dispositions of men, as to induce and enable them to attain them by their own exertions. Of individual wellbeing, and national prosperity, therefore, it is a fertile source.

Of the truth of these allegations, proof, were it requisite, might be derived abundantly from the dismal chronicles of the French revolution. During the throes of that earthquake of the passions, which shook the moral world to its centre, the influences of religion were, for a time suspended. The issue was appalling even in the midst of that disastrous period. Vice and crime, whose magnitude before might have proclaimed their maturity, shot up with such an augmented rankness, and attained such a further growth, as were no less alarming than new to the nations. Mankind gazed at them, as at an approaching comet, whose sweep might threaten to desolate the earth. Nor did they diminish in size, until the frenzy of irreligion began to abate, and the people and the nation, returning to their senses, acknowledged their dependence on a God, and their accountability to him beyond the grave. So salutary and powerful is religion, as a mere social and state engine, so fatal the effects of subverting its obligations, and so deep the criminality of those who would conspire for a purpose so nefarious!

There is another aspect of the most attractive character, in which religion may be viewed. Connected with its oracles, the Old and New Testament, the Christian religion is not only an abundant source of moral beauty and sublimity, but an exquisite and imposing monument of polite literature. To say nothing of the solidity and grandeur of their matter, the style and manner of composition of the Scriptures are of the highest order. In narrative, history, poetry, allegory, didactic writing, those sacred records exhibit specimens of excellence which nothing can surpass. In the production of Moses alone, those several kinds of composition are presented in high perfection. When to these are added the sacred odes of David, so fervid in spirit and intense in diction, the songs of Solomon, rich in the tender beauties of the pastoral, the elegies of Jeremiah, the lofty and empassioned effusions of Isaiah, the grandeur and sublimity of the book of Job, the touching simplicity of the gospel of St. John, the vehement eloquence and irresistable dialectics of St. Paul, and the inimitable moral and didactic addresses of the Messiah; with these and other additions that might be specified, the Scriptures would form a text-book for the study of what is most choice and valuable in polite literature.

Compare, with those presented in the Old and New Testaments, the most forcible and magnificent delineations drawn by Homer, Virgil, and other profane writers, of Heaven and its inhabitants, their pursuits, characters, felicities, and joys, and mark the result. The contrast is striking, superiority in excellence being immeasurably on the side of the former. However brilliant in fiction, and rich and pertinent in many of its allegories, the mythology of the Greeks may be, it is tame and barren, compared to the scriptural representation of the God and celestial splendours of the Christian. What is Jupiter seated on Mount Olympus, brandishing his sceptre, swaggering and boasting amid the council of the gods, some of whom are scarcely his inferiors, and hurling his thunderbolts with a vigor not greatly surpassing that of Ajax or Hector, to HIM whose will called the universe into existence, by whose fat that universe might again be annihilated, who, to moderate the intolerable brightness of his glory, makes clouds and thick darkness his dwelling, and rides in tranquil majesty on the whirlwind, whose breath is the tempest, and his voice