NATIONAL MORALITY. 87 For instance, the majority, they say, has now come down to agree to secret voting. It is a| coming down. It may be necessary, b melan- | choly necessity, just as crutches may bé needful, though it is sad to see the number of the lame increase. It is sad, though it be an admission of a truth, to hear numbers proclaim themselves unable to discharge their duties without the protection of secrecy. Again, as an example of what I mean, we annually hear of some legislative attempt to pro- mote a better observance of the Lord’s Day, and we are told that large numbers of shopkeepers are anxious to have some legal help in securing rest on Sundays. ‘This means that they are anxious to have human laws called in to prop up those which they profess to respect as divine. Of course they are at liberty to put up their shutters on Sunday, but they don’t like, can’t bear, to do it, unless their neighbours shut up too. They want to have the privileges of the day of rest secured to them. Natural enough, perhaps, but an indication of what sort of nature? Here is another sign of that feebleness of national morality which is inextricably mixed up with the tolerance of wholesale deceit, the effect of which is to weaken the power of conscience, a deceit which, under one form or another, has become customary in that which we are proud of, our character as a great commercial nation; a system of deceit which presses itself upon us even from every hoarding, where every thing claims to be the best or cheapest or largest or most wonderful in the world. The notoriety of all this does not really lessen its mischievous effects, since, as Christians, it is our business to compare ourselves, not with others, but with the divine rule of right and wrong. If a nation were all leprous, lepers might be com- paratively contented, but they would be none the less diseased. It is national acquiescence in wide- spread duplicity which should distress us. To hear, “Oh! that is nothing, every body does it,” is one of the saddest hearings, for it indicates a morality that accommodates itself to the disease of a people, and has small promise of amendment. | When all have settled down a little lower, this | standard will be equally good, equally bad. To} fight against it—and there are some who do—re- quires a courage that dares the charge of being singular, officions, meddlesome, or eccentric ; about the most galling charges that can be made against a man who, though he protests against the present majority, is conscious of being—so far from eccen- tric—in vital communion with God’s great laws of | truth, order, and righteousness. Still, herein is a chief exercise or use of the Spirit of Christ, who was content to be alone so that the Father was social, commercial, and, if you will, religious deceit —for the religious world has not escaped it—that the Christian must expect to find the severest trials of his life, and the shrewdest test of his disciple- ship. The pressure for him to give in, to connive, to hold his peace, is not only importunate, but presents itself even in the minutest concerns and circumstances of his daily life. It is to the spirit and help of Christ that he must look, if he is thus, in the truest sense, to fight the good fight of faith and lay hold of eternal life. There is one other national fault which I must notice before I conclude this paper. Lhardly know how to define it, as it appears in many forms of sensationalism and coarseness of taste. Perhaps I may come nearer to the evil principle of what I mean when I call it irreverence. I do not refer to carelessness of demeanour in church, or in con- nexion with what are called sacred matters alone ; but rather to the want of perception of what is sacred. There is indeed I believe a general, perhaps growing conventional respect for the professional externals of religion. For instance, a Clergyman or Priest, or Scripture reader, or Bible missionary, will generally meet with civility in the discharge of his ministrations, even from those who decline or dislike them. But when we see the grin of enjoyment in the faces of a crowd at, say one of the saddest of all spectacles, a drunken woman in the street, or when we know that gratification is afforded by the public gymnastic performances, the deliberately shameless antics, to multitudes of people of one who is perhaps, as has been the case, a mother, we have a revelation of irrever- ence, a blindness to that which is sacred in human life, deplorable beyond words. There are features of so-called enjoyment—I don’t mean the down- right shameless prosecution of debauchery by those in the full flush of idle passions, but semi-sensual or sensational indulgence, by people who pass cur- rent as commonplace, respectable citizens—which betray an appetite for that which is essentially pro- fane, which have all the cowardice and meanness of vulgar popularity about it, and which is one of the most damning defects in national reverence, and thus in national Christianity. There is one aspect of faith judged by the words, “ To the unbelieving nothing is pure,” and there is a greediness to seek questionable sensationalism which detracts heavily from our religious character. The protest against, if not the abstinence from, this sensuousness is the other danger and difficulty of our days. Extreme professions of religion and interest in religious matters do not protect us from it. It is not without some form in which it invades even the sanctuary. It can be indulged under a variety of guises. It sorely presses the inclina- with Him. It is in the protest against the taint of tion of thousands who, in the main, are not insin-