In the evening we heard Dr. Bushnell preach, on behalf of the American Home-Missionary Society, at the "Church of the Pilgrims" in Brooklyn. This is a fine costly building, named in honour of the Pilgrim Fathers, and having a fragment of the Plymouth Rock imbedded in the wall. The sermon was a very ingenious one on Judges xvii. 13: "Then said Micah, Now know I that the Lord will do me good, seeing I have a Levite to my priest." The preacher observed that Micah lived in the time of the Judges--what might be called the "emigrant age" of Israel,--that he was introduced on the stage of history as a thief,--that he afterwards became in his own way a saint, and must have a priest. First, he consecrates his own son; but his son not being a Levite, it was difficult for so pious a man to be satisfied. Fortunately a young Levite--a strolling mendicant probably--comes that way; and he promptly engages the youth to remain and act the _padre_ for him, saying, "Dwell with me, and be a _father_ unto me." Having thus got up a religion, the thief is content, and his mental troubles are quieted. Becoming a Romanist before Rome is founded, he says, "Now know I that the Lord will do me good, seeing I have a Levite to my priest." Religion to him consisted in a fine silver apparatus of gods, and a priest in regular succession. In this story of Micah it was seen that _emigration, or a new settlement of the social state, involves a tendency to social decline_. "Our first danger," said the preacher, "is barbarism --Romanism next." The tendency to barbarism was illustrated by historic references. The emigration headed by Abraham soon developed a mass of barbarism,--Lot giving rise to the Moabites and the Ammonites; meanwhile, Abraham throwing off upon the world in his son Ishmael another stock of barbarians--the Arabs,--a name which according to some signifies _Westerners_. One generation later, and another ferocious race springs from the family of Isaac--the descendants of Esau, or the Edomites. Then coming down to the time of the Judges we find that violence prevailed, that the roads were destroyed, and that the arts had perished: there was not even a smith left in the land; and they were obliged to go down to the Philistines to get an axe or a mattock sharpened. Then the preacher came to the great American question itself. It was often supposed that in New England there had always been an upward tendency. It was not so. It had been downward until the "great revival" about the year 1740. The dangers to which society in the South and "Far West" is now exposed were powerfully described. The remedies were then pointed out.