pecial reference to the second advent of our Lord; and to the prevalence of a class of doctrines which, under the notion of promoting the advancement of the Gospel, and the conscious happiness of the Christian, would banish the very idea of "duty" as a restriction upon the believer's "privileges," making faith its own evidence, and "assurance of salvation" the test of being saved. We will not add to what our correspondents have said upon these subjects, except briefly to remark, that, in reference to the first of them, we believe that no hypothesis which human ingenuity can frame has yet been able, in its applications of unfulfilled Prophecy, to go much beyond those simple outlines of faith and hope which are common to the wise and pious of all ages and nations, in regard to the glorious events of that day when "the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ;" and with respect to the second, that Christianity has made duty itself privilege, and obedience reward, so that the freest exhibition of mercy, the most clear exposition of the doctrine of justification by faith, and the most glowing statement of the blessings which result from the adoption of the believer into the family of God, are quite compatible with reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may grow by the spiritual nutriment of the sacred word, thoroughly furnished to every good work.
There is another subject which, from its momentous character and thevarious aspects under which it may be viewed-whether religiously, morally, politically, charitably, or economically-has found access into every department of our miscellany: need we say, that we mean the unchristian and inhuman institution of Slavery? To readers of a right heart and a sound mind, none of our pages, we feel assured, have been more welcome than those which have been designed to diffuse information and promote the public zeal on this most affecting subject. We trust that upon the whole the prospects of the unhappy slaves in our colonies are beginning, however slowly, to brighten: but much, we might say all, remains to be effectively carried into practice; and our readers may therefore expect that we shall still have occasion to devote many a page to the elucidation of this great moral and religious question.
The arena of Public Affairs, which, at the close of our last volume, was more than usually tranquil, has been since a scene of almost unprecedented violence and party warfare. We shall not here recapitulate the calamitous events which have given rise to this new aspect of our domestic and foreign politics; but we most deeply lament the effects. Oh that He who is the author of peace and the lover of concord, who alone maketh men to be "of one mind in a house," may allay the contentions which have broken out among us; and unite all ranks and degrees of our countrymen in one common desire to promote the welfare, temporal and spiritual, of all mankind.