But, there is one most interesting subject, upon which these premises will enable us to enter with promise and hope. Labor, misunderstood and misapplied labor, with which the great multitude is so intimately and constantly connected, merits that attention which so many of the most vigorous intellects are bestowing upon it. Crowned heads, the votaries of science and philosophy, are condescending to enter this vast, dreary, noisy, and little known department, and rays of sympathy blend with the sweat drops that roll down the dusty face of the toil-worn operative. It is, as yet difficult to believe, and almost impossible to hope, that the robes of royalty are to displace the grime and sweat, that foul that rude looking toiler. How can such garments of purple and gold, be fitting to such tawny shoulders? What would such rough and brawny hands do with a regal sceptre? We shall see.

Labor is a decree of Sovereign Goodness, Wisdom, and Power; the great law of the great God; the requisition that all men endeavor to elude. Its theory and facts cannot be well understood; for as we find it, it is not that which it is reasonable to expect from our God; nor such as becomes our condition and our destiny. To him who looks into it reasonably, labor must appear to be in a state very inconsist ent with a system of grace and redemption. If we regard the estimate in which the laborer is held, the price he receives for his toil, and the duty he owes to God and humanity, it must be obvious that there is much to be learned yet, upon this important subject, and that there is almost measureless room for improvement.

No theory of labor can be correct, which esteems the laborer as degraded. How can it be, when it is flatly and eternally contradicted by the very example and word of Infinite Wisdom? We assume, that there is every conceivable propriety, in believing that when God advanced from the inscrutable depths of his being, to exhibit himself to his creature man whom he had created with a capability to know, admire and love him, as Infinite Excellence must be supposed to desire, it is beyond credence, that he would choose to so exhibit himself, as that man's first glimpse of him would degrade the Deity in man's estimation. It is by far more reasonable to suppose, that the displays of Deity, in revelation, would be worthy of himself; becoming his excellence and glory. Surely so good and pure a being

would neither degrade himself, nor deceive his intelligent

creature.

But, what is the first vision of God, vouchsafed to man? DEITY LABORING; "In principio creavit Deus cœlum et terram." Gen, i. 1. The Bible may be regarded as an awful theatre, upon which the drama of Deity is to be presented to human eyes. How will the act begin? In what splendors will God appear, in an exhibition of himself to our wondrous eyes? In vain we anticipate. We accomplish but wild, unreasonable conjecture. The curtain is rolled up, and behold the Deity at work! God is a laborer! Upon the schedule of his attributes, handed to us by himself, that we may see his glory, the very first item is, A Laborer! A Worker! And in what? Why in every thing, with which men's hands can be occupied for he wrought in metals, minerals, mud, wood, every thing that exists! "Tui sunt cœli," exclaims the Psalmist, "Tui sunt coli, et tua est terra, orbem terræ et plenitudinem ejus tu fundasti!" Psal. lxxxviii, 12: and well might he add, "Quam magnificata sunt opera tua Domine! omnia in sapientia fecisti," Psal. ciii. 24.

With what propriety, then, shall men constitute systems, in which to labor is to be degraded? Is not any such system a direct and inexcusable insult to God? Is man degraded by handling and working at that which God has handled and worked at? What material is found in the hand of the despised artizan, that has not already been in the hand of God? There must be some fundamental error in our theory and practice of labor. Our views and emotions. cannot be correct. Where and what that error is, it may take us sometime yet to discover and it is likely, that we are not wrong when we assert, that the discovery will never be made, until it be searched for by the light of the gospel. For what we conceive to be entirely sufficient reasons, we have not the least confidence in the various theories of Socialism; and as little in the delirious dreams of a Fanaticism, that would cure all human ills with the panacea of some soulless form, or unimportant opinion: with the latter we have no further patience than ordinary charity demands; and with the former, we have no patience to all.

What is to be hoped from a Fanaticism that confounds all proper distinctions, charges the results of local influences and national peculiarities and habits upon the systems it

opposes, and overlooks the great, eternal, obvious fact of a common humanity: a common participation in that humanity's frailty and imperfections? Fanaticism is the blazing, glaring, precipitate, exploding meteor; Christianity the fixed, lustrous, eternal star. And what are we to expect from a Socialism, that proposes organization as the catholicon for human woes? Has Prometheus returned to earth, and mindful of the gnawings of the cruel vulture, contented himself with framing the form of clay, without using the fire of heaven; and yet imagines that the organization will be animated? What is body without life? When Socialism has brought dead carcases together, the result will not be life it will be the triumph of putrefaction, the increase of the stench, and the wide revelry of the destroying worm. Can constituents impart what themselves do not possess? This overlooking individual responsibility, duty, and condition, is like planting a grove of dead trees, and looking in vain for them to flourish and supply an umbrageous retreat. Socialism will bring no blessing to mankind; unless it be some sorrowful lesson upon the folly of forsaking the living fountain, for broken cisterns, which cannot supply water to the thirsty lip.

The laborer who does the most, and the hardest work, is least esteemed! God did all the work, used all the materials, and requires us justly to honor him supremely! Certainly here must be a serious error. Just in proportion as a man most resembles God, as it regards work, is he degraded and despised! God himself was the great artificer: and he created his works to do, to be active; for so we understand the wonderful account he has given us: "quia in ipso (die septimo) cessaverat ab omni opere suo,quod creavit Deus ut faceret." Gen. II. 3. Ut faceret; to do. God

had created his works to do; and surely he has been but a dim observer, who has not seen activity to be a prominent attribute of the creatures of God. His creatures are secondary agents. He is the great First Cause. They the secondary causes. So, that, although God worked, and ordained that his creatures should work, yet the worker is despised! If God had not worked, there would have been no creature existence: if creature existence be inoperative, the Creator's plan is defeated, and the creature undone. Yet the laborer is degraded!

Another error appears. He that labors the most, the

hardest, and at the most disagreeable work, gets the smallest wages! The more unpleasant the work; and the more desirable it is that we have some one to do it for us, the less we pay him for it! Not only is this indispensable worker treated with the utmost contempt, with which the mistaken but obliged employer regards the degraded operative; but, as if to depart from the Divine example as far as possible, we give him the minutest compensation for his so much needed toil! Is not this too bad? Is it not high time, that such a monstrous, glaring, insufferable injustice were looked into and adjudicated? How are we to be patient, when we learn from indisputable evidence, that within some of the most magnificent cities on the globe, the most useful laborers reside in crowded, decaying, unwholesome piles of brick and lumber; sad, within the sound of the royal revelries; famishing, where parasites, courtezans, and dogs are furnished with abundance; and the food and apparel of felons in the common prisons, offering a temptation for these laboring, honest, worthy, but destitute men to abandon the path of virtue! How is this to be tolerated? It cannot be. A just God requires so great an injustice to be attended to, and to be remedied. Men must look to it; and behold the gospel, to light them on in the investigation!

The gospel directs men to labor. Its great Author de clares, "Pater meus usque modo operatur, et ego operor." Joan. v. 17 and, so far from imagining that he had dishonored his father and rank by his industrial life, he says again, "Ego te clarificavi super terram: opus consummavi, quod dedisti mihi ut faciam." Joan xvii. 4. Paul, well instructed in the gospel system exhorts, "vestram salutem operamini." Philipp. ii. 12. But, neither Christ, nor the Apostle, hints, that labor is degrading, or to be almost unrewarded. What honor, what incomputable recompense do such words as these imply? "Tunc dicet rex his qui a dextris ejus erunt: venite, benedicti patris mei, possidete paratum vobis regnum a constitutione mundi!" Mat. xxv. 54. In this system, it is very evident, that the most laborious are the most honored, and the most abundantly rewarded and how can an opposite arrangement be upon Christian principles? It is impossible.

If, then, the principles of Christianity are precisely opposed to the principles of our industrial system, the triumph of those must be the conquest of these. What the manner VOL. XI.-NO. 21.

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and the consequence of such a revolution will be, it is impossible to foresee. Conjecture, at present, must be our utmost success, and few would venture even so far as that. Changes must occur, grander than those adorning our modern geological theories; in which, while mountains which seemed to be the pillars of heaven melt and disappear, making way for the restless billow of the ambitious, encroaching sea; from the abysses of the disporting, angry waters, huge continents arise, changing not only the loci of the dry laud and the sea, but also the climate, and the denizens of our planet's ever, though slowly changing surface. If at all, how imperceptibly do those variations occur! So it must be said of the moral mutations to which we are referring. When the geological revolutions have advanced to one and the other of the distant, and magnificent epochs, how prodigious the change! And it will be so, as future generations note the strides of the gospel, towards the sublime and inconceivably glorious consummation at which it will finally arrive.

Is it unreasonable to urge, that the time, body and mind exhausting, and slenderly remunerated labor of the present system, cannot consist with one's duty to God or man, as laid down in the gospel? Can God be most pleased, and man most profited, by the laborer's occupancy of such a social position, as effectually excludes from his mind, that wonderful gift of his Creator, that excellence of his being, the means of suitable improvement, the light of knowledge, the treasures of revelation, the discoveries of science, the perception and appreciation of the refinements and beautiful courtesies of polished, pure, and elegant society? To observe one of the weary ones, whose brow is foul with grime, whose well formed limbs are stripped, blackened and stiff from toil, tottering slowly homewards; to drop down upon the rude floor of his hovel, among his ragged, ignorant children; without a smile of love for his witch-looking wife, who has scarcely any thing for his irritated stomach, and but little upon the hard boards, as a bed for his aching and stiffened limbs: and, then, to be told, that that is one of the most honest and laborious operatives, with whose unpleasant and excessive toil, society cannot at all dispense: who but a fiend with his heart baked as a brick in the nethermost fire, would not say, the man is not treated well? He suffers as a criminal, when he should be rewarded as a