Year: 1874

| While we were musing on the subject
and looking at some Of the encourage
ments, and difficulties. attending the Ia
bors of those whose aim it is to uproot
| vice; and rear the tender plants of temp
emncc and virtue, the thoughts of what
Mr. Baxter, author of the temperance law,
said in his lecture, in the Nj. f. Church.
came tc my mind. But as the few remarks
we purpose making will not be a repeti
ton of what he said, we shall proceed to
pen few reflections on this subject.
We often hear the "golden days and
the staid habits of our ancestors referred
to, and placed in contrast with the head
long zeal and wild recklessness of the
present age; and the conclusion drawn is
Frequently unlavorablc to the moral as
| Hrct OF the latter. Again, We arc told,
that notwithstanding the increase of light
and knowledge, crime presents fearful
odds against the cause of truth.


The present age has its evil tendencies,
and alarming indeed they Me-fearful are
the strides that vice and error make. So
PERCEPTIONS is the march of villainy, that
we stand agast at its onward rush, and
the devastation spread around us, we
tremble for the free institutions of our
| md, and would quake for the church oi
the lividg God, had not her great head
promised to be a wall cf fire around about
her, and were not her dwelling place
munition of rocks.


But it seems to me, that with the agen
cies at work at the present day, we might
naturally expect, with the rapid increase
of our population, a great augmentation
of crime.


Were the flood of immigration rolling
i'm upon us from the old world, of an in
telligent and virtuous character; were
that mighty engine, the press, restricted
in its operations TO the promotion of re-
| ligious, temperate and all moral works !;
were the astonishing Improvements in
the arts and sciences capable of subserv-
ing only the best interests of the human
family; the aspect society would present
would be vastly different from what it is
now.


But the reverse of all this is the case.
While the philanthropic and christian
portion of community have at their COM
mand resources for multiplying light ana
truth, of which generations past had not
dreamed, they have to cope with an ene-
my comma uding-so far as outward
means are concerned-equal advantages {;
and who are employing them with sur
prising ingenuity and untiring zeal.


If the present is an age of unexampled
improvement, it is also an age of immi-
nent peril.


Our choicest blessings may become
blasting curses; civil and religious free
dom may be made the stepping stones to
linsubordination and anarchy; the free
dom of the press may be converted into
an engine of moral death; and cultiyat-
ed intellect may but prepare an indlvidu-
al to be the greater adept in crime. The
intelligence, the natural resources OF a
people, or their civil and religious free
dom, Go not alone insure them against
those undermining and demoralizing in
fuences that will prove the sure destruc-
ton of a nation under any form of gov
eminent


1t is therefore Of the greatest moment,
that the moral training of a people keep
pace with the. intellectual-and, if we
mistake not, our country is in imminent
peril on this very ground, both as regards
its civil and religious interests.


IT there ever was time when the
watcbman could with impunity relax his
vigilance and repose upon his tower. it is
not It present.


Never was there time when more