till morning brings the hope of games and merry blood again;-and you have an idea of the imperial people, and their passionate living for the moment, which the gospel found in occupation of the world. And if you would fix in your thought an image of the popular mind of Christendom, I know not that you could do better than go at sunrise with the throng of toiling men to the hill-side where some Whitfield or Wesley is about to preach. Hear what a great heart of reality in that hymn that swells upon the morning air, a prophet's strain upon a people's lips! See the rugged hands of labor, clasped and trembling, wrestling with the Unseen in prayer! Observe the uplifted faces, deep-lined with hardship and with guilt, streaming now with honest tears, and flushed with earnest shame, as the man of God awakes the life within, and tells of him that bore for us the stripe and the cross, and offers the holiest spirit to the humblest lot, and tears away the veil of sense from the gates of the future state. Go to these people's homes, and observe the decent tastes, the sense of domestic obligations, the care for childhood, the desire of instruction, the neighborly kindness, the conscientious self-respect; and say, whether the sacred image of duty does not live within those minds; whether holiness has not taken the place of pleasure in their idea of life; whether for them, too, the toils of nature are not lightened by some eternal hope, and their burden carried by some angel of love, and the strife of necessity turned into the service of God. The present tyrannizes over their character no more, subdued by a future infinitely great; and hardly though they lie upon the rock of this world, they can live the life of faith; and while the hand plies the tools, earth keeps a spirit open to the skies. UPON THE EMPLOYMENT OF INDIANS IN THE W. PITT. MY LORDS,—who is the man that, in addition to the disgraces and mischiefs of the war, has dared to authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage?—to call into civilized alliance the wild and inhuman inhabitant of the woods?—to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of his barbarous war against our brethren? My lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment. But, my lords, this barbarous measure has been defended, not only on the principles of policy and necessity, but also on those of morality; "for it is perfectly allowable," says Lord Suffolk, "to use all the means which God and nature have put into our hands." I am astonished, I am shocked, to hear such principles confessed; to hear them avowed in this house, or in this country! My lords, I did not intend to encroach so much on your attention; but I cannot repress my indignation;-I feel myself impelled to speak. My lords, we are called upon as members of this house, as men, as Christians, to protest against such horrible barbarity!-That God and nature have put into our hands! What ideas of God and nature that noble lord may entertain, I know not; but I know that such detestable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. What! to attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature, to the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife! to the cannibal savage, torturing, murdering, devouring, drinking the blood, of his mangled victims! Such notions shock every precept of morality, every feeling of humanity, every sentiment of honor! These abominable principles, and this more abominable avowal of them, demand the most decisive indignation! I call upon that right reverend, and this most learned bench, to vindicate the religion of their God, to support the justice of their country. I call upon the bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn,-upon the judges, to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the honor of your lordships, to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country, to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the constitution. I solemnly call upon your lordships, and upon every order of men in the state, to stamp upon this infamous procedure the indelible stigma of the public abhorrence. More particularly, I call upon the holy prelates of our religion to do away this iniquity; let them perform a lustration, to purify the country from this deep and deadly sin! ON REFORM IN PARLIAMENT. H. BROUGHAM. MY LORDS, I have yet to learn that a measure recommended upon principle, consistent in its form, and certainly proceeding upon an anxious wish to restore, and not to de 80 PROSE DECLAMATIONS stroy-to improve, and not to impair is to be at once cried down and abandoned, because it happens to enjoy the additional quality—I will not call it a recommendation - that it is honestly and sincerely greeted with approbation by a large body of his majesty's subjects. But if it is said that I am talking of the people, and not of a few agitators, then I say I am also yet to learn that a measure recommended by its own merits, good in principle, and having the additional accident -I will not call it a recommendation, though I think it to be one-of being universally and in an unprecedented degree, the favorite of the people of England, is at once to be set aside, and at once to be condemned and rejected, because it possesses the aditional accident-again I will not call it a recommendation, but an accident-of pacifying even that portion of our fellow-subjects, which, as has been mentioned. in this house, no exertion of human power can satisfy. Still, my lords, I do not call upon you to adopt this measure because it happens to be consistent with popular feelings; I do not call upon you to adopt it upon that account; but I am persuaded, that if this measure be rejected, you will bring the security of the country, the peace of his majesty, the stability of our ancient constitution, and the whole frame of society, from Cornwall to Sutherland, Ireland as well as England, - into a state of jeopardy, which I earnestly pray to Heaven may never come to pass. My lords, I do not wish to use the language of threats; but I recollect, and history has recorded the fact, that when the great Earl of Chatham was addressing our most severe ancestors within these walls, when he was shaking them with his magnificent oratory, he suffered the lightning of his eloquence to smite the enemies of reform by menacing them with the dangers that must attend an attempt to withhold from the people their just rights; and I well remember that that was deemed no insult by those who heard him, but was considered honorable, highly honorable, to him who had the boldness to utter that denunciation. For my own part, all that I will venture to do, in this latter day of eloquence and of talent, standing in the honorable situation which I do in this house and in the country, is to call upon your lordships to reflect, and believe that the thunders of heaven are sometimes heard to roll in the voice of a united people! INFIDELITY TESTED. R. HALL. WE might ask the patrons of infidelity, what fury impels them to attempt the subversion of Christianity? Is it that they have discovered a better system? To what virtues are their principles favorable? Or is there one which Christians have not carried to a higher than any of which their party can boast? Have they discovered a more excellent rule of life, or a better hope in death, than that which the Scriptures suggest? Above all, what are the pretensions on which they rest their claims to be the guides of mankind, or which emboldened them to expect we should trample on the experience of ages, and abandon a religion which has been attested by a train of miracles and prophecies, in which millions of our forefathers have found a refuge in every trouble, and consolation in the hour of death; a religion which has been adorned with the highest sanctity of character and splendor of talents; which enrols amongst its disciples the names of Bacon, Newton and Locke, the glory of their species, and to which these illustrious men were proud to dedicate the last and best fruits of their immortal genius? If the question at issue is to be decided by argument, nothing can be added to the triumph of Christianity; if by an appeal to authority, what have our adversaries to oppose to these great names? Where are the infidels of such pure, uncontaminated morals, unshaken probity, and extended benevolence, that we should be in no danger of being seduced into impiety by their example? Into what obscure recesses of misery, into what dungeons, have their philanthropists penetrated, to lighten the fetters and relieve the sorrows of the helpless captive? What barbarous tribes have their apostles visited? What distant climes have they explored, encompassed with cold, nakedness, and want, to diffuse principles of virtue and the blessings of civilization? Or will they choose to waive their pretensions to this extraordinary, and in their eyes eccentric, species of benevolence, and rest their character on their political exploits; on their efforts to reani mate the virtues of a sinking state, to restrain licentiousness, to calm the tumult of popular fury; and, by inculcating the spirit of justice, moderation and pity for fallen greatness, to mitigate the inevitable horrors of revolution? Our adversaries will, at least, have the discretion, if not the modesty, to recede from this test. More than all, their infatuated eagerness, their parricidal 82 PROSE DECLAMATIONS zeal, to extinguish a sense of Deity, must excite astonishment and horror. Is the idea of an almighty and perfect. ruler unfriendly to any passion which is consistent with innocence, or an obstruction to any design which it is not shameful to avow? What Eternal God! on what are thine enemies intent? are those enterprises of guilt and horror, that, for the safety of their performers, require to be enveloped in a darkness which the eye of Heaven must not pierce? Miserable men! Proud of being the offspring of chance; in love with universal disorder; whose happiness is involved in the belief of there being no witness to their designs, and who are at ease only because they suppose themselves inhabitants of a forsaken and fatherless world! BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST. A. B. FULLER. BELSHAZZAR presides at the thronged banquet, and his proud heart is elevated by the brilliant spectacle. The noble is there, glittering with the wealth extorted from the oppressed and enslaved; while the flatterer, with smiling brow and wily heart, creeps with serpent noiselessness to whisper his welcome adulations in the sovereign's ear. The maddening wine produces in the assemblage the laughter of frenzied mirth; the pointless but royal jest elicits peal after peal of hollow forced applause; and the glare of myriad candles is reflected from all the barbaric splendor with dazzling radiance. The revel burns. But 't is not enough. "Drain the intoxicating bowl!" commands the monarch; "raise the triumphant shout! louder clash the cymbals, and softer rise the strains of delusive yet enchanting melody! Stay, we will show ourselves equal with, nay, greater than that Jehovah whose 'vengeance slumbers over the wrongs of oppressed Israel. Bring in the golden and silver vessels consecrated to his worship and honor. They shall be filled with joyous wine, and be drained by lips of those who never spoke his praise.” The royal mandate is obeyed. Those vessels, hallowed by many a prayer and dedicated to the service of the great I AM, glitter at a pagan festival. The vaulted roof echoes with drunken laughter; the sacred cup passes from one guilty hand to the grasp of another, and is drained by feverish, unnatural thirst; |