"the inroads of infidelity," are making gigantic strides everywhere, especially on the Western continent. To attempt to answer the question, "whither ?" would be, to a great extent, but a flooding it with conjectures. Many hope, none know, what the church, the religion of the future, will be. Judging from the past, one would suppose that in a few years it would amount, from our present standing, to almost mad insanity: but with the rise of the religious sentiment to culture and liberality, reason, and science too, will rise, to stand pre eminent, and check the tendency to that wild extreme: the opposite of the past; - when will be established forever the temple of the science of religion. True, a sentiment now, but when the truth is known it can be nought but a science in the highest sense of the word; not fixed and unprogressive, but having as recognized and truthful a basis as the science of mathematics, and progressive ever. To say the least, and for the most immediate coming, a religion which is philosophical, and can stand all the tests which science may apply to her, is to be the religion of the future. GEORGE M. GOULD.

HILE the world pays undue honors to the men of war who confine their exertions to exploits in the field, it is inevitable that the men who labor for the public in what is called civil life, are inadequately remem. bered or rewarded. The two men who have carried off the great prizes which have been awarded by the people to the heroes who fought the rebels in our war for freedom, are persons who never performed the slightest service for the good of their country in their private lives, and were utterly without influence either in educating the popular mind to a resistance of the nation's foes, or in providing means for carrying on the war which ended in establishing the nation's life. Yet, for the one or two exploits of Admiral Farragut on the water, and for the three or four battles of Grant, in which they would have been entirely powerless but for the influence and genius of three or four quiet men in Washington, these military officers are rewarded for life with the highest honors and the largest pay that the nation bestows upon any of its servants. The great heroes of the war were the Garrisons, the Phillipses, the Stevenses, and the Stantons, the men who not only made victory possible to our soldiers and sailors, but have since prevented their victories from proving mere costly, but worthless, sacrifices of human life and human labor. The soldiers get the rewards, while the real heroes, the real saviors of the nation, get only the execrations of the disloyal part of the people.

Of all the men who have been conspicuous in public life during the past eight years there is none who is better entitled to the grateful homage of Americans than Thaddeus Stevens, whose death is a national calamity; for we are not so rich in great intellects that we can afford to lose from our

national legislature an influential voice like his, which was always instinctively on the right side, and which was always courageously outspoken when the occasion required it. Mr. Stevens was not a party man he allowed no convention to frame principles for his adoption; he followed no leader, but always led the way himself. He cared nothing for party discipline; and when his political associates acted contrary to his convictions of right he never varied an inch from what he believed to be the best course of action. It was quite natural, therefore, when he died, that the New York Tribune should refuse to utter a word of commendation in his favor, and that the La Crosse Democrat should heap vile phrases upon him. Mr. Greeley and Brick Pomeroy are incapable of properly understanding the character of such a man as Thaddeus Stevens, who was not a politician, in its narrow sense, but a statesman. Even the professed admirers and political friends of this good man, in their post-mortem praises of him, have thought it necessary to qualify their laudations by ambiguous intimations, that in his prvate or social relations he was to be excommunicated from respectable society. But the truth, in respect of Mr. Stevens' private life, we believe, will bear the strictest scrutiny without damage to his personal character. He was never married, and never gave any attention to the little conventionalities of society which men with families are compelled to cultivate, whether they wish to or not. He had been educated in a rough school, and was necessarily rough in his speech and manners, but never ruffianly, for he had the tenderest regard to the rights and feelings of others, and gave his whole life to the promotion of public order and private liberty and happiness. His birth was in a poor little vil lage in Vermont, and his poor, widowed mother sacrificed all her worldly store to give him the benefits of a college training. He suffered from a lameness, which prevented his engaging in robust out door employment, and he went out into the world to seek his fortune as a school teacher. Happily he lighted upon a spot in Pennsylvania where the services of just such an apostle were sadly needed, and he taught with such excellent effect, and to so good purpose, that he converted the most stolidly Democratic population in the whole Union into a community of intelligent Republicans. By his personal influence he compelled the Pennsylvanians to adopt a system of public education similar to the free school system of Massachusetts, and convinced the people of the State that it was more for their interest to develop their own great mineral resources, than to depend upon Europe for the supply of the iron which lay in the bosom of their own hills. Free trade was the main dogma of the Democratic party, but Mr. Stevens made even the Democrats of Pennsylvania protectionists. After he took up his residence in the town of Lancaster, where he had to contend with the great political influence of James Buchanan, he soon became the leader of public opinion, the counsellor of the distressed, and the favorite of all classes. A bad man, a man of uncertain habits, of doubtful morals, one who outraged the moral sense of religious people, never could have gained the affections of a people, or have so controlled and shaped their political ideas and have won their confidence, as he

did. He must have been a man of integrity, of great benevolence, of good practical common sense, as well as a man of great executive ability, to accomplish what he did.

But he was something more. He had rare gifts as an orator; he was a great advocate; he had a keen and biting wit; he had strong powers of humor; his sarcasms were terrible to his opponents, but he was always generous to a vanquished foe, and was tolerant almost to a fault to the weaknesses of others. Next to Franklin, he was the most serviceable citizen that Pennsylvania has possessed.

During the whole of our rebel war he was the leading spirit of Congress, and by his eloquence, in recommending the measures which his fertile genius. originated, he did more towards bringing it to a victorious conclusion than any other man in the nation. And when the end came no man saw more clearly than he the dangers which still surrounded us, or more clearly indicated the only means of avoiding them. He has been fully justified in his extremest propositions by the occurrence of events, and we have yet to suffer the full penalty of not adopting his theory of territorial government for the rebel States. President Johnson seems to have been specially inspired to make good all of Mr. Stevens' predictions, and justify all the seemingly harsh measures he proposed for curbing the mischievous inclinations of our acci dental executive. He had the sagacity to discern that Mr. Johnson meant to betray the party that elected him into the hands of their enemies, and he took early and bold steps to prevent it. Timid and compromising Republicans were frightened at the boldness of Mr. Stevens in attacking "the man at the other end of the avenue," and thought it would be safer to adopt a policy of conciliation rather than one of defiance. But " old Thad" knew better, and no one will now accuse him of mistakes.

He lived nobly, and died grandly, in the very scene of his highest labors. His bed-side was strangely attended in his last moments by persons of such opposite characters, that they are typical of the comprehensiveness of his sympathies and the wide extent of his personal influences. Besides his im mediate friends and relatives who ministered to him, there were two of the sisters of a religious community in Washington who were assiduous in their attentions to him in his last illness, out of gratitude to him for the benefactions he had procured for their order. They sprinkled the dying patriot. with their holy water, not at his request, but by his consent. The same colored clergyman who had performed a similar office at the death-bed of the martyr Lincoln, prayed for the peace of his soul as he breathed his last breath. They could do him no harm. But if the long life of the dying legislator, who had devoted his more than three score years and ten to the service of his fellow man, who had always exerted his talents in behalf of the oppressed and suffering, had not secured rest for his soul in the possible hereafter, how fruitless and unavailing in the eyes of his Maker must have been the sprinkjing of holy water by those gentle sisters, or the sincere appeals in his behalf of that simple-hearted colored preacher.

LONG a dream haunts me oft

ONG since, a dream of heaven I had,

I see the saints in white robes clad,

The martyrs with their palms aloft,
But hearing still, in middle-song,

The ceaseless dissonance of wrong;
And shrinking, with hid faces, from the strain
Of sad, beseeching eyes, full of remorse and pain.

The glad song falters to a wail,

The harping sinks to low lament; Before the still unlifted veil,

I see the crowned foreheads bent, Making more sweet the heavenly air,,

With breathings of unselfish prayer ;

And a voice saith: "O, Pity which is pain,

O, Love that weeps, fill up my sufferings which remain !

"Shall souls, by me redeemed, refuse

To share my sorrow in their turn?

Or, sin-forgiven, my gift abuse

Of peace with selfish unconcern?

Has saintly ease no pitying care?

Has faith no work, and love no prayer,

While sin remains, and souls in darkness dwell?

Can heaven itself be heaven and look unmoved on hell?"

Then, through the Gates of Pain, I dream,

A wind of heaven blows coolly in ;

Fainter the awful discords seem,

The smoke of torment grows more thin, Tears quench the burning soil, and thence

Springs sweet, pale flowers of penitence;

And through the dreary realm of man's despair,

Star-crowned, an angel walks, and lo! God's hope is there!

Is it a dream? Is heaven so high

That pity cannot breathe its air ;

Its happy eyes forever dry,

Its holy lips without a prayer?

My God! my God! if thither led

By thy free grace, unmerited,

No crown nor palm be mine; but let me keep

A heart that still can feel, and eyes that still can weep!

JOHN G. WHIttier

MARRIE D.

VIII.