they are disregarded as quite insignificant and common-place. This is a vulgar error. Ben Jonson judiciously says: "It is only the disease of the unskilful, to think rude things greater than polished, or scattered more numerous than composed." The admiration paid to eccentric genius, and the disregard of well-regulated talent, are equal proofs of a weak judgment.

Things being as they are, however, it is evident, that talent perverted will attract more admiration in this world, than would the same amount of talent regularly and usefully employed. Let there be two men equal in mental gifts, gains, and activity. And let one of them be under no restraint from conscience as to the use of his powers, while the other is anxious to exercise his influence only aright; and the first man shall be stared at as a prodigy, while the other will be respected as a very worthy and decent character. The man whose talents are unrestricted by the fear of God, will make them formidable by their strange and exciting freaks. The astonishment which he witnesses as the effect of his fantastic performances, stimulates him to yet more capricious antics. And as the wonder of the gaping crowd still rises, his exertions become more spasmodic and convulsive, till he has convinced himself, and half the world beside, that he is the greatest man alive! He grows frantic and delirious, boldly capers on the outmost edge of impiety, wildly dances on the very brink of blasphemy,

"And plays such tricks before high heaven,
As make the angels weep."

On the other hand, the man who is fully his equal as to abilities, but who is guided in their application by a conscientious regard to the rules of reason and piety, is respected and commended by all, as a very excellent and valuable, but not specially gifted, person.

These erroneous estimates are to be lamented, both because they tempt the few to make a reckless and corrupting use of their powers, and because they allure the many to follow them in their wild and wilful wanderings. The pernicious influence of an Emerson or a Parker is wrongly ascribed to any wonderful measure of talents that either is supposed to possess. After a very careful reading of most that they have written, we are satisfied that their strength lies not in the power of thinking, but in

the inferior faculty of speaking. They have a great gift in language, and no hesitation or scruple as to its exercise. If Emerson had spent all his days in trying to talk sound sense, he would not have been known to ten men in England. Had Parker never attempted any utterances but those of humble piety, he might never have been heard of beyond the bounds of the neighboring parishes. But let these men, or any other such, blow a blast against the Lord and his Anointed, and it at once arrests attention. A single discordant sound will strike the ear more than a thousand harmonious tones which keep time and tune. If they can but sufficiently shock the feelings of the community, if they can but throw the excitable public into a handsome panic, their reputation is made, they are great men! They shall have their followers. They shall be deified with all the rites of man-worship. And some timid souls will burn incense to them, as the poor negroes sacrifice to the devil to keep him from hurting them.

The admiration of perverted talent, over-estimated because of its perversion, is one of the greatest moral evils of the day. Multitudes go "wondering after the beast," by reason of his deformities and excesses, who would never look at the creature if he were only to be seen in reasonable shape and useful occupation. Their littleness aspires to attain to the same exaltation in the same cheap way, by casting off the restraints of conscience, and dashing out into all the extravagances of radicalism. In this way they will all feel as if they had become great men together; and mutual admiration will throw the vanity of all into a common stock for universal self-inflation. Every drop of real ability will be swelled into a bubble, to float, to glisten, and to burst. triumphing of the wicked is short." Such characters fade so rapidly, that usually they are gone ere we are aware. As it is in the Psalm: "I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay-tree: yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not; yea, I sought him, but he could not be found." The more furiously these artificial meteors blaze athwart the night, the more darkling is the obscurity to which they are doomed. According to the modern proverb, "they go up like the rocket, and come down like the stick."

"The

To these reckless geniuses all settled principles and established usages are offensive. Constitutions and creeds, whatever is con

servative in civil society and the church, they seek to overthrow, because order and quiet are not favorable to their ambitious struggles for distinction. In times when great abuses prevail, such men may do some good in removing them; but they will never bring in any thing better than what they have destroyed. They will only introduce a change of abuses. "Let all things be done decently and in order." John Norton, in a terse comment on this text, says: "The case may be so, that though a thing be done that is, for the matter of it, good, there may yet be more hurt in the disorder of it, than there is good in the doing of it." Compare the men we speak of with the Puritans. These, in their day, were wholesale innovators, both in church and commonwealth. They were root-and-branch reformers. Of long-existing institutions, they left scarce one stone upon another. And yet they were as far as possible from being mere destructives, radicals and anarchists; because they had a definite plan, to be substituted in place of what they sought to remove. Their plan was to reduce all things strictly to the rule of the Bible. Their impassioned zeal was for dashing into ruins all antiquated inno vations, which had encroached upon and usurped the kingly office of Christ; but it was with a view to restore in full the power of Christ in his earthly kingdom. Hence the angels in heaven are scarcely more conservative than were our godly ancestors, notwithstanding all the overturnings they effected. They were men of fixed principle, of which the Word of God is the sum. Their sentiments are well given in the language of Norton, the admired pastor of the First Church of Boston, in a Sermon printed in 1659: "The rule of doctrine, discipline, and order, is the centre of Christianity. Sincere and grave spirits are like grave bodies; they cannot rest out of their centre,- that is, the rule. Religion admits of no eccentric motions." He that really belongs to the true fold, will not willingly forsake "the footsteps of the flock," to stray off in some private path of his own. For a member of the Church, which is Christ's mystical body, to move contrary to the rest of that body, and in opposition to the volitions of the head, spiritually speaking, is a sort of St. Vitus's dance. As Lord Bacon says in his peculiar style: "Let a man look into the errors of Cato the Second, and he will never be one of the antipodes, to tread wholly opposite to the present world." And yet his lordship was no slave to antiquity, tradition, or custom;

but was himself the great reformer of science, because he reformed according to sound rules."

Then let the man of lawless genius do his best to dazzle and bewilder his generation. He shall in no wise lose his reward, so easy to win. Let him verify the remark of Aristotle, that "there never was a great mind, without some mixture of madness." His madness tends to destruction. With all his glare, he will prove but "a wandering star, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness." Far happier he whose light shines in the calm and even tract of true benevolence; where, like the heavenly bodies, always in motion, he is still careful to keep within his proper sphere. His path shall shine brighter and brighter to the perfect day. He may not be illustrious in our lower skies; but he will shine forth like the sun, in the kingdom of his Father.

POPERY IN MONTREAL.

IT was not an idle curiosity that induced the writer to visit Montreal. As the chief seat of Popery in North America, he was desirous to behold it in the place of its power. Owing to the soil on which it stood, taking matters in its own way, having no restriction laid upon it to hinder it from doing its own will, it was felt that here Popery would present its real ability for doing good or evil. And if, in any respect, it differed in the nineteenth century from what it was in the dark ages, such difference should be looked for in that quarter.

The island of Montreal is twenty-eight miles long, by ten miles broad. It is owned by the Jesuits. The Seminary of St.

Sulpice, composed of eighteen Jesuits, is the corporation which holds the property. The annual income of this corporation, from real estate alone, is more than one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. It holds the best part of Montreal. Its convents and monasteries are immense.

The traveller is astonished at their size and number. They are in the heart of Montreal, and the basements are used for stores. Nor would we detect in the long line of stone blocks, running from street to street, with low and heavy windows, the

existence of the most celebrated convents in North America. Yet when the stranger enters through the dark stone archway, and finds himself in the centre of a large square, with heavy and frowning dwellings facing each side, beyond which the gables of others, as dark and gloomy, appear, he catches some glimpse of the extent of these institutions. Around these houses the priests are seen, thick as the frogs of Egypt; and, if common fame does them no wrong, like the frogs, they "go up into the houses and bed-chambers."

Out of a population of fifty thousand, more than thirty thousand are Catholics. Of these about eleven thousand are among the most ignorant and stupid worshippers of the Beast that can be found in the world. They are some of the most degraded of men.

The wealth of the church is immense. Besides the income from real estate, her merchandize in souls appears in all her acts. A large and fertile island near Montreal, owned by the Nuns, is farmed under their direction, and is devoted mostly to the unwomanly business of raising horses. The priests are paid for every service; for confessions, baptisms, marriages, the burial of the dead, masses, and prayers for the repose of the soul, after burial. No papist can come into the world, live in it, go out of it, or stay out, without paying a heavy toll to the church.

Perhaps, in no part of the world does Popery wear so bold a front. In no place is it more distinguished for its "signs and lying wonders," its "mystery of iniquity," its "deceivableness of unrighteousness." It is nowhere more open and unblushing in its fraud, or more disgusting, than in Montreal.

It is idle to talk of a modified form of Popery. If infallible, it cannot be modified. It may hide its enormities for a season. It may assume a more liberal aspect for policy's sake. But at heart it must be the same. To-day, wherever it is in full power, it denies the right of private judgment. The Bible is still a prohibited book. When it dares, it burns the sacred volume in this land of freedom, as it burned the earlier English translations in the great square in London. When it can command the civil power, it is aggressive and persecuting as in days of old. And before the fall of the French monarchy, the friends of missions and civilization were alarmed to know that French ships of war were tracking our missionaries round the globe, landing French