their taste, their fancy, become incapable of conversation, the fortunate parents may thank the school-house, the church, the library, the society of friends, or some other and less wretched part of their own defective system, for preventing the consummation of so frightful a result. Such are the morbid and sickly effects of play on the human intellect. But intelligence constitutes no inconsiderable part of the glory of man; a glory which, unless eclipsed by crime, increases, as intelligence increases. Knowledge is desirable with reference to this world, but principally so with reference to the next; not because philosophy, or language, or mathematics, will certainly be pursued in heaven, but because the pursuit of them on earth gradually communicates that quickness of perception, that acumen, which, as it increases, approximates towards the sublime and sudden intuition of celestial intelligences, and which cannot fail to render more splendid the commencement, as well as more splendid the progression, of man's interminable career. But, while gaming leaves the mind to languish, it produces its full effect on the passions and on the heart. Here, however, that effect is deleterious. None of the sweet and amiable sympathies are at the card-table called into action. No throb of ingenuous and philanthropic feeling is excited by this detestable expedient for killing time, as it is called; and it is rightly so called; for many a murdered hour will witness, at the day of judgment, against that fashionable idler, who divides her time between her toilet and the card-table, no less than against the profligate, hackneyed in the ways of sin, and steeped in all the filth and debauchery of gambling. But it is only amidst the filth and debauchery of gambling, that the full effects of card-playing on the passions and on the heart of man are seen. Here that mutual amity that elsewhere subsists, ceases; paternal affection ceases; even that community of feeling that piracy exeites, and that binds the very banditti together, has no room to operate; for, at this inhospitable board, every man's interest clashes with every man's interest, and every man's hand is literally against every man. The love of mastery and the love of money are the purest loves, of which the gamester is susceptible. And even the love of mastery loses all its nobleness, and degenerates into the love of lucre, which ultimately predominates, and becomes the ruling passion. Avarice is always base; but the gamester's avarice is doubly so. It is avarice unmixed with any ingredient of magnanimity or mercy; avarice, that wears not even the guise of public spirit; that claims not even the meager praise of hoarding up its own hard earnings. On the contrary, it is an avarice, that wholly feeds upon the losses, and only delights itself with the miseries, of others; avarice, that eyes, with covetous desire, whatever is not indi vidually its own; that crouches to throw its fangs over that booty, by which its comrades are enriched; avarice, that stoops to rob a traveller, that sponges a guest, and that would filch the very dust from the pocket of a friend. But though avarice predominates, other related passions are called into action. The bosom, that was once serene and tranquil, becomes habitually perturbed. Envy rankles; jealousy corrodes; anger rages; and hope and fear alternately convulse the system. The mildest disposition grows morose; the sweetest temper becomes fierce and fiery, and all the once amiable features of the heart assume a malignant aspect! Features of the heart, did I say? Pardon my mistake. The finished gambler has none. Though his intellect may not be, though his soul may not be, his heart is quite annihilated. Thus habitual gambling consummates what habitual play commences. Sometimes its deadening influence prevails, even over female virtue, eclipsing all the loveliness, and benumbing all the sensibility of woman. In every circle, where cards form the bond of union, frivolity and heartlessness become alike characteristic of the mother and the daughter; devotion ceases; domestic care is shaken off, and the dearest friends, even before their burial, are consigned to oblivion. This is not exaggeration. I appeal to fact. Madame du Deffand was certainly not among the least accomplished females, who received and imparted that exquisite tone of feeling, that pervaded the most fashionable society of modern Paris. And yet it is recorded of her, in the correspondence of the Baron De Grimm, whose veracity will not be questioned, that when her old and intimate friend and admirer, M. de Ponte de Vesle, died, this celebrated lady came rather late to a great supper in the neighbourhood; and as it was known that she made it a point of honour to attend him, the catastrophe was generally suspected. She mentioned it, however, herself, immediately on entering; adding, that it was lucky he had gone off so early in the evening, as she might otherwise have been prevented from appearing. She then sat down to table, and made a very hearty and merry meal of it. - Afterwards, when Madame de Chatelet died, Madame du Deffand testified her grief for the most intimate of all her female acquaintance, by circulating over Paris, the very next morning, the most libellous and venomous attack on her person, her understanding, and her morals. This utter heartlessness, this entire extinction of native feeling, was not peculiar to Madame du Deffand; it pervaded that accomplished and fashionable circle, in which she moved. Hence she herself, in her turn, experienced the same kind of sympathy, and her remembrance was consigned to the same instantaneous oblivion. During her last illness, three of her dearest friends used to come and play cards, every night, by the side of her couch; and, as she chose to die in the middle of a very interesting game, they quietly played it out, and settled their accounts before leaving the apartment. I do not say that such are the uniform, but I do say, that such are the natural and legitimate, effects of gaming on the female character. The love of play is a demon, which only takes possession as it kills the heart. But if such is the effect of gaming, on the one sex, what must be its effect upon the other? Will nature long survive in bosoms invaded, not by gaming only, but also by debauchery and drunkenness, those sister furies, which hell has let loose, to cut off our young men from without, and our children from the streets? No, it will not. As we have said, the finished gambler has no heart. The club, with which he herds, would meet, though all its members were in mourning. They would meet, though it were in an apartment of the charnel-house. Not even the death of kindred can affect the gambler. He would play upon his brother's coffin; he would play upon his father's sepulchre. The Preservation of the Church.-MASON. THE long existence of the Christian Church would be pronounced, upon common principles of reasoning, impossible. She finds in every man a natural and inveterate enemy. To encounter and overcome the unanimous hostility of the world, she boasts no political stratagem, no disciplined legions, no outward coercion of any kind. Yet her expectation is that she will live forever. To mock this hope, and to blot out her memorial from under heaven, the most furious efforts of fanaticism, the most ingenious arts of statesmen, the concentrated strength of empires, have been frequently and perseveringly applied. The blood of her sons and her daughters has streamed like water; the smoke of the scaffold and the stake, where they wore the crown of martyrdom in the cause of Jesus, has ascended in thick volumes to the skies. The tribes of persecution have sported over her woes, and erected monuments, as they imagined, of her perpetual ruin. But where are her tyrants, and where their empires? The tyrants have long since gone to their own place; their names have descended upon the roll of infamy; their empires have passed, like shadows over the rock; they have successively disappeared, and left not a trace behind! But what became of the Church? She rose from her ashes fresh in beauty and might; celestial glory beamed around her; she dashed down the monumental marble of her foes, and they who hated her fled before her. She has celebrated the funeral of kings and kingdoms that plotted her destruction; and, with the inscriptions of their pride, has transmitted to posterity the records of their shame. How shall this phenomenon be explained? We are, at the present moment, witnesses of the fact; but who can unfold the mystery? The book of truth and life has made our wonder to cease. "THE LORD HER GOD IN THE 1 MIDST OF HER IS MIGHTY." His presence is a fountain of health, and his protection a "wall of fire." He has betrothed her, in eternal covenant, to himself. Her living Head, in whom she lives, is above, and his quickening spirit shall never depart from her. Armed with divine virtue, his Gospel, secret, silent, unobserved, enters the hearts of men, and sets up an everlasting kingdom. It eludes all the vigilance, and baffles all the power, of the adversary. Bars, and bolts, and dungeons are no obstacles to its approach bonds, and tortures, and death cannot extinguish its influence. Let no man's heart tremble, then, because of fear. Let no man despair (in these days of rebuke and blasphemy) of the Christian cause. The ark is launched, indeed, upon the floods; the tempest sweeps along the deep; the billows break over her on every side. But JehovahJesus has promised to conduct her in safety to the haven of peace. She cannot be lost unless the pilot perish. Modern Facilities for evangelizing the World.-- THE means of extending knowledge, and influencing the human mind by argument and moral power, are multiplied a thousand fold. The Lancasterian mode of instruction renders the instruction of the world cheap and easy. The improvements of the press have reduced immensely, and will reduce yet more, the price of books, bringing not only tracts and Bibles, but even libraries, within the reach of every man and every child. But in the primitive age, the light of science beamed only on a small portion of mankind. The mass of mankind were not, and could not be, instructed to read. Every thing was transient and fluctuating, because so little was made permanent in books and general knowledge, and so much depended on the character, the life, and energy, of the living teacher. The press, that lever of Archimedes, which now moves the world, was unknown. It was the extinction of science by the invasion of the northern barbarians, which threw back the world ten cen |