and the market-places of Cincinnati, by the boisterous cry, What is sin? There is no sin. It is all an old story. Let men who fear no God, but who have lives, and wives, and property to lose, look to it, and say if they act wisely in giving their influence to a system which lands in such consequences. Let them devise some religion for the people which will preserve the rights of man, while giving license to trample upon the rights of God; or, failing in the effort, let them acknowledge that the enemy of God is, and of necessity must be, the foe of all that constitutes the happiness of man. Impiety and immorality are wedded in heaven's decree, and man cannot sunder them.

IV.-PANTHEISM IS VIRTUALLY ATHEISM.

It may scarce seem needful to multiply proofs on this head. How can any one imagine a being composed of the sum of all the intelligences of the universe? Such a thing, or combination of things, never was distinctly conceived of by any intelligent being. Can intelligences be compounded, or, like bricks and mortar, piled upon each other? If they could, did these finite intelligences create themselves? If the soul of man is the highest intelligence in the universe, did the soul of man create, or does the soul of man govern it? Shall we adore his soul? Some Pantheists have got just to this length. M. Comte declares, that "at this present time, for minds properly familiarized with true astronomical philosophy, the heavens display no other glory than that of Hipparchus, or Kepler, or Newton, and of all who have helped to establish these laws." Establish these laws! Laws by which the heavenly bodies were guided thousands of years before Kepler or Newton were born. Shall we then adore the souls of Kepler and Newton? M. Comte has invented a religion, which he is much displeased that the admirers of his Positive Philosophy will not accept, in which the children are to be taught to worship idols, the youth to believe in one God, if they can, after such a training in infancy, and the full-grown men are to adore a Grand Etre, "the continuous resultant of all the forces capable of voluntarily concurring in the universal perfectioning of the world, not forgetting our worthy auxiliaries, the animals." Our Anglo-Saxon Pantheists, however, are not quite philosophical enough yet to adore the mules and oxen, and therefore refuse worship altogether. "Work is worship," constitutes their liturgy. "As soon as the man is as one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action." +

one hundred thousand intelligent beings in this Christian city worship no God.

The abstraction which the Pantheist calls God, is no object of worship. It is not to be loved. If it does good, it could not help it, and did not intend it. It is not to be thanked for benefits. It, the sum of all the intelligence of the universe, cannot be collected from the seven spheres to receive any such acknowledgment. It cannot deviate from its fated course of proceeding; therefore, says the Pantheist, why should I pray? It neither sees his conduct, nor cares for it; and he denies any right to call him to account. It did not create him, does not govern him, will not judge him, cannot punish him. It is no object of love, fear, worship, or obedience. It is no god. He is an Atheist. He believes not in any God.

HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD Our God is one Lord. He is distinct from, and supreme over all his works. He now rules, and will hereafter judge all intelligent creatures, and will render to every one according to his works.

1. Reason declares it.-The world did not make itself. The soul of man did not make itself. The body of man did not make itself. They must have had an intelligent Creator, who is God. God is known by his works to be distinct from them, and superior to them. The work is not the workman. The house is not the builder. The watch is not the watchmaker. The sum of all the works of any worker is not the agent who produced them. Let an architect spend his life in building a city, yet the city is not the builder. The maker is always distinct from and superior to the thing made. You and I, and the universe, are made. Our maker, then, is distinct from, and superior to us. One plan gives order to the universe; therefore, one mind originated it. The Creator is over all his creatures.

2. Our consciousness confirms it.—If a blind god could not make a seeing man, a god destitute of the principle of self-consciousness (if such an abuse of language may be tolerated for a moment) could not impart to man the conviction, I am,-the ineradicable belief that I am not the world, nor any other person; much less, everybody; but that I am a person, possessed of powers of knowing, thinking, liking and disliking, judg ing, approving of right, and disapproving of wrong, and choosing and willing my conduct. My Maker has at least as much common sense as he has given me. He that teacheth man knowledge, shall he not know?

3. Our ignorance and weakness demand a Governor of the world wiser than ourselves.—The soul of man is not the highest intelligence in the universe. It cannot know the mode of its own operation on the body it inhabits, much less the plan of the world's management. Man may know much about what does not concern him, and about things over which he has no control; but it is the will of God that his pride should feel the curb of ignorance and impotence where his dearest interests are concerned, that so he may be compelled

to acknowledge that God is greater than man. He may be able to tell the place of the distant planets a thousand years hence, but he cannot tell where himself shall be next year. He can calculate for years to come the motions of the tides, which he cannot control, but cannot tell how his own pulse shall beat, or whether it shall beat at all, to-morrow. Ever as his knowledge of the laws by which God governs the world increases, his conviction of his impotence grows; and he sees and feels that a wiser head and stronger hand than that of any creature, planned and administers them. Ever as he reaches some ultimate truth, such as the mystery of electricity, of light, of life, of gravitation, which he cannot explain, and beyond which he cannot penetrate, he hears the voice of God therein, demanding him to acknowledge his impotence.

4. Our consciences convince us that God is a Moral Governor.-The distinction between brutes and men is, that man has a sense of the distinction between right and wrong. If we find a tribe of savages, or individuals, who indulge their appetites without rule, and who do wrong without any apparent remorse or shame, we designate them brutes. Even those who in words deny any difference between right and wrong, do in fact admit its existence, by their attempts to justify that opinion. Though weaker, or less regarded in some than in others, every man is conscious of a faculty in himself which sits in judgment on his own conduct, and that of others, approving or condemning it as right or wrong. In all lands, and in all ages, the common sense of mankind has acknowledged the existence and moral authority of conscience, as distinct from and superior to mere intellect. No language of man is destitute of words conveying the ideas of virtue and vice, of goodness and wickedness. When one attempts to deceive you by a wilful lie, you are sensible not only of an intellectual process of reason detecting the error, but of a distinct judgment of disapprobation of the crime. When one, who has received kindness from a benefactor, neglects to make any acknowledgment of it, cherishes no feelings of gratitude, and insults and abuses the friend who succoured him, we are conscious, not merely of the facts, as phenomena to be observed, but of the ingratitude, as a crime to be detested. And we are irresistibly constrained to believe that he who taught us this knowledge of a difference between right and wrong, does himself know such a distinction;

and that he who implanted this feeling of approval of right and condemnation of wrong in us, does himself approve the right and condemn the wrong. And as we can form no notion of right or wrong unconnected with the idea that approbation of right conduct should be suitably expressed, and that disapprobation of wrong conduct ought also to be suitably expressed-in other words, that right ought to be rewarded, and wrong ought to be punished-so we are constrained to trace such a connection from our minds to the mind of Him who framed them. This conviction is God's law, written in our hearts. When we do wrong, we become

conscious of a feeling of remorse in our consciences, as truly as the eye becomes conscious of the darkness. We may blind the eye, we may sear the conscience—that the one shall not see, nor the other feel; but light and darkness, right and wrong, will exist. The awful fact which conscience reveals to us, that we sin against God, that we know the right and do the wrong, and are conscious of it, and of God's disapprobation of it, is conclusive proof that we are not only distinct from God, but separate from him-that we oppose our wills against his. And every pang of remorse is a premonition of God's judgment, and every sorrow and suffering which the Governor of the world has connected with sin-as the drunkard's loss of character and property, of peace and happiness, the frenzy of his soul, and the destruction of his body-is a type and teaching of the curse which he has denounced against sin.

5. The world's history is the record of man's crimes and God's punishments.-Once God swept the human race from earth with a flood of water, because the wickedness of man was great on the earth. Again, he testified his displeasure against the ungodly sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah, by consuming their cities with fire from heaven, and leaving the Dead Sea to roll its solemn waves of warning to all ungodly sinners, to the end of time.

By the ordinary course of his providence, he has ever secured the destruction of ungodly nations. No learning, commerce, arms, territories, or skill, has ever secured a rebellious nation against the sword of God's justice. Ask the black record of a rebel world's history for an instance. Egypt? Canaan? Nineveh? Babylon? Persia ? Greece ? Rome? Where are they now? Tyre had ships, colonies, and commerce; Rome an empire on which the sun never set; Greece had philosophy, arts, and liberty secured by a confederation of republics; Spain the treasures of earth's gold and silver, and the possession of half the globe. Did these secure them against the moral government of God?

No. God's law sways the universe-that law which, with the brazen fetters of eternal justice, binds together sin and misery, crime and punishment, and lays the burden on the backs of all ungodly nations, irresistibly forcing them down-down-down the road to ruin. The vain imagination that refuses to glorify God as God, leads to darkness of heart, thence to Atheism, thence to gross idolatry-onward to selfish gratification, violent rapacity, lust of conquest, and luxury, licentiousness, and effeminacy begotten of its spoils; then military tyranny, civil war, servile revolt, anarchy, famine and pestilence, and the sword of less debauched neighbours, Christ's iron sceptre, hurl them down from the pinnacle of greatness, to dash them in pieces against each other, in the valley of destruction; and there they lie, wrecks of nationsruins of empires-naught remaining, save some shivered potsherds of former greatness, to show that once they were, and were the enemies of God.

O America, take warning ere it be too late! God

But in the day of glory,

When God's gems shall be set,

A crown of starry brightness

Shall be the guerdon yet Of him who went forth nobly,

Like red-cross knight of old, Bearing the blood-stained banner Aloft with steadfast hold.

Yes; when Earth's hard-won chaplets,

Of laurel and of bay,

Are, like its tears and wailings,

For ever passed away;
When deeds of kings and heroes

Are all alike forgot,

The fruit of Faith's high daring
Shall bloom and perish not.

A. L

氏

JOURNEY over the Alleghanies in these days is very different from one half a century ago. Fatigue for any ordinary traveller there is none; and

on the Great Central Pennsylvania Railway danger has been reduced, even on mountain-sides, to a minimum. About eleven o'clock, on a starry night in May, I entered a Pullman sleeping-car, got stowed away in a comfortable berth, was fast asleep in a few minutes, and when morning dawned was sweeping along the magnificent Juniata valley. Soon afterwards we began to ascend the mountains; and as we ascended, the great state of Pennsylvania, with its noble rivers, and its rich uplands, still partially clothed with remains of primeval forests, opened out further and further away behind us. Here and there rose, from river-bank and wooded glen, dense clouds of smoke, indicating the spots where the coal and iron mines, probably the most extensive in the world, are now worked. The mountain glen, up whose side the railway is carried, is deep and wild; and the glances one gets into the abyss below, as the train winds round the point of a dizzy crag, or spans the head of a cascade, almost make one shudder. But it is exciting to gaze away down on the houses that look like so many toys in the bottom of the valley. The curves of the line are in places so sharp and abrupt, that one would imagine, looking forward, that the engine is about to run headlong over a cliff. The gradients, too, are very steep, so that the ascent is at times painfully slow, while the descent, on the other hand, is alarmingly rapid. Towards the summit of

the range the pine forests become more dense, the clearings are few and far between, and signs of human life disappear, save here and there a wooden shanty with a solitary watchman.

On passing through the long tunnel which pierces the summit, the descent of the western slope begins. The scenery is rich and grand; and signs of industry, enterprise, and inexhaustible mineral wealth soon appear in the valleys and on the mountain-sides. We pass Cresson Springs, a pleasant and fashionable summer resort, three thousand feet above the sea, and famed for the purity of its air; then we descend rapidly along the banks of a wild torrent, and twenty miles further we see the Cambria Iron Works, said to be among the largest in America. Eighty miles more through a splendid country, studded with coal-pits and smelting-furnaces, brings us to Pittsburg, the Birmingham of the United States, and situated in a region which may well be termed "the black country" of America.

PITTSBURG.

Naturally the position of Pittsburg is beauti

ful. The Alleghany and Monongahela rivers gradually converge, flowing between high and picturesque banks. At length they unite, and form the Ohio, which then runs some six hundred miles westward, and joins the "Father of Waters," the Mississippi. In the fork of the Alleghany and Monongahela is a low delta, and on it stands the city of Pittsburg; beyond the former river, along the lower base of a pleasant ridge, is Alleghany city; and or

the further side of the Monongahela lie the extensive suburbs of Birmingham and Lawrenceville. The commercial advantages of Pittsburg are not surpassed by any inland city in America. It is the centre of the iron and glass manufacture; and in its immediate neighbourhood there are said to be upwards of a hundred collieries in active operation. Railways radiate from it to every part of the country; and its rivers are crowded with steamers, whose enormous paddles, not at the sides, as elsewhere, but right across the stern, have an odd look. In no part of the States, indeed, in no part of the world, can one see more wonderful evidences of commercial activity and success. The smoke of some five hundred factories spreads a curtain over the beauties of nature; but it does not deaden the ceaseless roll of railways and din of steam-hammers. The streets are filled with huge vans, and a busy, bustling populace. Facilities for locomotion in all parts of the city, suburbs, and environs are even more numerous, as it appeared to me, than in other towns; and some of them display an amount of ingenuity and engineering skill that it would be difficult to exceed. On the south side of the Monongahela is a precipitous bank, probably two hundred feet high, on the summit of which a small suburb is built; and straight up that bank, at an angle of about forty-five degrees, a tramway is carried, wrought by a chain and steam-engine, thus bringing the highest houses within a minute or two of the bridge that leads to the city.

the first public school was opened; but State education was then so unpopular, that there were only five pupils. The people thought it an indignity to send their children to what they were pleased to designate a pauper school. They forgot, and many to this day in other places forget, that when education is supported by a general tax, all pay for it, and all may claim it as their due. Education, thus provided, free to all, and compulsory, is, in my judgment, the true system for an enlightened nation. No man should be allowed to go into the arena of life, until he has at least a decent English education. A class of uneducated labourers in a state is an ever-present element of danger and injury. The prejudices of the people of Pittsburg gradually wore away, and the five pupils of 1834 had increased in 1870 to twelve thousand, with a staff of two hundred and four teachers. The schools are now of four grades,-Primary, Medium, Grammar, and High. The High School has a course of four years' study; and, in addition, an advanced course, corresponding to a Normal School, specially intended for the training of teachers. All the schools are opened with reading of Scripture.

Alleghany city is the seat of no less than three theological colleges. The largest is the Western Theological Seminary, which belongs to the Presbyterian General Assembly; the other two are connected with the United Presbyterian and Reformed Presbyterian Churches. I regretted that the colleges were not in session during my visit, and those professors to whom I had letters of introduction were from home, so that I had not an opportunity of inspecting them.

CINCINNATI.

EDUCATION IN PITTSBURG.

The progress of education in the city and district has been wonderful. In the year 1834,

But such is very far from being the aspect of this great inland capital. Its streets are generally well paved,-far better than in New York; its houses are spacious and elegant; and its public buildings and monuments would do honour to any city in Europe. The roads, too, all through the surrounding country, are