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to procure admission into a public library, where the richest treasures of literature will be available. In such a case as thisand there are thousands of such cases-periodical literature so far from having a dissipating effect, tends to build up, to strengthen, to dignify the intellectual character.

Admitting that in some cases the serial publications of the day exert an unhappy influence upon the intellect, would you be prepared to have a veto put upon the periodical press altogether? It is unreasonable to expect an unmixed good in this world. You must be willing to rest satisfied with what is substantially good, although imperfect, and it would be the perfection of fatuity to deny that the intellectual influence of our periodicals is on the whole of a salutary nature. That they have diffused a large amount of information among the working classes of society, that they have aroused a vast number of minds from the slumbers of mental torpidity, cannot be disputed by any observing mind; but, indeed, it is impossible to estimate the good they have done in these respects. They have opened a channel for the streams of knowledge into many a desert spot; they have scattered the seeds of truth over large tracts of uncultured mind; they have breathed a magic influence over millions of torpid spirits, awakening them to new life; in a word they have acted as a most efficient auxiliary to accelerate the onward march of humanity.

Periodical literature has also exerted a potent influence upon the political condition of society. Nor can it be well doubted that its influence in this respect has been beneficial on the whole. This may be easily demonstrated by an appeal to facts. There are countries even in Europe where the press is not allowed to develope its capabilities freely, but is kept under the strict surveillance and restraining power of the reigning dynasties. Indeed, this is the case in nearly the whole of the nations on the continent. No book is permitted to be published for the instruction of the people until it has been examined by a staff of literary police, who must give it the sanction of their authority ere it be free to accomplish its mission. If it can be found that a literary performance advocate principles which are supposed to be inimical to existing political institutions, those principles must be ignored, the passages containing them expunged, otherwise the book is condemned and strangled. It matters not that the performance be the highest creation of genius, enriched with the profoundest treasures of thought, or adorned with the splendour of a sublime eloquence, its supposed political delinquencies are too flagrant to be pardoned, and it must therefore submit to pass through the fires of a literary purgatory, or be cast into perdition. Periodical literature is placed in the same state of tutelage and kept under the same restrictions. No sooner does a newspaper or magazine manifest liberal tendencies

than the iron paw of civil authority seizes it, and it is compelled either to change its tendencies or forfeit its existence. The spirit of free enquiry is suppressed; the unfettered action of human thought is prevented, the medium through which mind might communicate with mind-interchanging the deep anxious longings of the spirit after a higher condition of social existence-is choked up, and there is a constant revulsion and stagnation. In every country where periodical publications are thus restrained and crippled, the corresponding effect may be easily traced in the political condition of the people. In other respects there may be much to admire in the character and condition of society, but there are all the evidences of political degradation. The people are in reality a body of serfs; they are of no account in the state but as the servants of those who wield supreme power. They do not carry with them the dignified port of free-born men, but have the crouching attitude and downcast look of slaves. But permit the press in those countries to be unshackled, to pour forth its influences upon the public mind without let or hindrance, and an amazing change will soon be produced in the political condition of society. The great body of the people who now contentedly submit to the proud domination of an autocrat, would at the bidding of a free press, start into new life, and feel their coward hearts throbbing with the ardent pulsations of patriotism. They would soon discover their importance in the body politic, the dependence of the higher classes upon their industry, the utter nothingness of all the pageantry and mummery of mere statecraft. They would judge themselves to be men as well as the proudest grandees, made of as good material in body and soul, and equally entitled to a name and place in the political constitution of their respective countries. The free diffusion of periodical literature would necessarily produce this change of public sentiment, and ere long effect an entire political and social revolution.

It is clear as the light of noonday that England is vastly indebted for the political freedom she enjoys to the influence of periodical literature. Not, however, that this ought to be regarded as the primary cause; for to our view nothing can be more obvious than that our world-famed institutions are the offspring of those religious principles which have from an early period, found a genial soil in this island, and taken deep hold of the national mind. But while thus doing homage to the supremacy of religion, we also claim for periodical literature a high and honourable place among the causal forces which have produced and fostered the liberties which it is our happiness to enjoy. The first developments of this kind of literature were clearly intended, as far as they could go, to ameliorate the political condition of the English people. As previously remarked, its first germinations appeared in the reign of

Elizabeth, shaping themselves into the form of political intelligencers, conveying information respecting the Queen and the Court, detailing our diplomatic transactions with foreign nations, and dealing forth a measure of miscellaneous reading. The haughty Elizabeth, jealous of the absolute prerogatives always claimed by the Tudor dynasty, could not look with indifference upon such a movement, for her clear sagacity perceived that its tendency was to augment the power of the people. So long as the periodical press gratified her exorbitant vanity, by pouring out fulsome adulation upon her person and administration, she gave it her patronage, but to secure its allegiance it was placed under the strict surveillance of her own minions. The freedom of the periodical press was equally abhorrent to the Stuart dynasty, the most blindly infatuated race of monarchs that ever reigned. It is not so generally known as it ought to be that in the times of Charles II., the law inflicted death upon those who published opinions opposed to the arbitrary claims of that licentious prince. Nothing is so terrible in the eyes of despotism as those periodical sheets which unveil to the public eye the mal-administration, the corruption, the usurpations of the powers that be, and discuss with a fearless pen every question affecting the welfare of the body politic. The English spirit, always characterised by its aspirations after liberty, felt restive under the restraints imposed on its literary energies, struggled against them, and eventually succeeded in working out a complete emancipation.

Since the accession of the House of Brunswick to the British throne, periodical literature has had free scope for the development of its capabilities and the diffusion of its influences; promoting in its onward course the political improvement of the empire. To what else are we so much indebted for the timely reforms in our jurisprudence, the obtaining of which has protected the nation from those bloody convulsions which of late years have swept over continental Europe? The general amelioration of the laws, the extension of the franchise, the security of the person, and the thousand other advantages resulting from our political constitution are to be attributed, in a very high degree, to the services of periodical literature.

Passing over many points of secondary interest, I now invite serious attention to the influence of periodical literature upon religion.

Considerable discrimination is required to judge righteously of periodical literature in its relations to religion; and we would, therefore, proceed cautiously, not committing ourselves to illdigested or dogmatic assertions. It will be found, I opine, that there is much to applaud and much to condemn, while there is not a little respecting which it is difficult to say whether it deserves

praise or censure. That periodical literature has, in many respects, and to a high degree, done good service to the cause of religion, it would be foolish to deny. It has diffused a vast amount of theological, biblical, and missionary intelligence throughout the land, making tens of thousands of the population much better acquainted with the truths and triumphs of religion than it was possible for them to become by any other means. By the information it has circulated respecting different religious communities, it has in no small degree smelted down the bigotry and sectarian exclusiveness which formerly kept the tribes of Israel asunder, and, by affording channels of intercommunion, it has induced them to associate more closely with each other. It has proved itself effectual, by the blessing of God, in arousing many slumbering souls to a sense of their lost sinful condition; leading them also to that Great Redeemer who is mighty to save, and who will save to the uttermost all that come to God through him. It has proved itself a messenger of mercy to many a wounded disconsolate spirit, bringing a balm for every wound, a cordial for every grief. In many cases it has nobly championed the divine claims of the Holy Volume against the onslaughts of infidelity, building invulnerable ramparts around the city of God, and hurling death and destruction upon the impious assailants. In these and other ways too numerous to mention periodical literature has rendered important service to the cause of religion.

But let it be understood that the commendatory remarks now made apply almost exclusively to that class of periodical literature denominated religious. Nor must it be thought that because of the praise bestowed on religious periodicals, we think them free from fault and incapable of improvement. We could indeed mention certain quarterlies and monthlies which are all that our hearts could desire, fully up to the mark, arrayed in the complete panoply of literary and religious excellence. There are others blemished and emasculated with serious defects. Generally speaking, our religious periodicals are greatly wanting in first-rate literary talent. Now and then papers appear in them bearing the unmistakeable evidence of powerful intellect and cultivated taste, but along with these there are usually large accumulations of what we would not exactly call trash, but rather the secretions of feeble watery brains. That our religious periodical literature does not enlist in its service a greater amount of first-rate mind, is most unquestionably the sin of the church; for were Christian professors to feel that deep interest in it which is their duty, were they duly impressed with the vast importance of placing our religious periodicals in the first rank of literary progress, the proper class of talent would speedily multiply. Shame upon us that the men of the world, whose aims do not go beyond this mundane sphere, should in their merely literary and

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commercial and artistic periodicals evidence the possession of a much larger amount of first-rate talent than we do in those serials which are devoted to the sacred, the immortal cause of religion. If our hearts are loyal to Christ, we shall rise and wipe away this stain from our escutcheon. We do not so much want an addition to the number of religious periodicals, I fear there are too many already drawling out a feeble existence-the grand desideratum is to increase the efficiency and extend the circulation of those already existing. Now, especially, when infidelity is renewing her strength, and popery is unfurling her banners-when these two equally dangerous foes are putting forth all their powers for the subversion of the true religion-it is of unspeakable importance that the periodical exponents of our faith and the champions of our religious heritage should be perfectly equipped for the great struggle. Betrayed by their supposed friends, assailed at every point by their avowed enemies, never was it more necessary for the Nonconformists of this great country to secure the services of an efficient periodical press.

If we launch out upon the ocean of general periodical literature we shall discover much that is inimical to the interests of religion. I am told, and I fear there is too much truth in the report, that the greater number of those gentlemen who conduct the periodical press of this country are infidel at heart. The general tone of their writings gives too much countenance to this report. There may be few of our periodicals avowedly committed to the advocacy of infidel principles and the destruction of Christianity; but the same unholy designs may be quite as effectually accomplished under the plausible pretext of neutrality or even of friendship. It is no uncommon thing in these writings, to find the inseparable connection between virtue and religion denied; and Christianity, if spoken of at all, divorced from all the essential attributes belonging to it in the New Testament. There is no hesitation to give the lie to the positive averments of Holy Writ, and to affirm that to be right which God says is wrong. The Bible is of no more account, when it contravenes the judgment or wishes of the creature, than if it were an old wife's tale. Indeed, I have met with the rankest atheism in some of our popular periodicals, and yet in the same publications Christianity has been spoken of in the softest language of affection. A great number of our periodicals abound with principles utterly subversive of morality and religion. Now let it not be forgotten that millions of these sheets are scattered broadcast over the land every year, infecting the minds of the population. with a spiritual miasma, and tending to plunge our nation into all the horrors of infidelity.

A new class of periodical literature has, of late years, started into existence under the auspices of certain celebrated writers; it may be called the periodical literature of fiction. As an illustra

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