regarding religion as an isolated peculiarity for a corner of the closet and a fraction of the week, and leaving all the rest of time and space an unconsecrated waste, where lawless passions travel, and selfishness pitches its tents. O! if religion _were_ thus a diffusive, practical, every-day reality, there would be a marvellous change in the aspects of life and the conditions of humanity around us. The great city, now so gross and profane, would become as a vast cathedral, through whose stony aisles would flow perpetual service; where labor would discharge its daily offices, and faith and patience keep their heavenward look, and love present its offerings. Yea, the very roll of wheels through its busy streets would be as a litany, and the sound of homeward feet the chant of its evening psalm. But religion is not only a help in and for ourselves; it has a ministration for others--for this great mass of destitution and suffering that broods in the midst of the city. Christianity is not merely a theory of existence--it is a _working-power_. Its precepts are practical, and enjoin not merely states of mind and heart, but conditions of activity. There is an entire magazine of working-forces in that one great law--"Love thy neighbor as thyself." Hear the words of an apostolical commentator upon it. "If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food," says he, "and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone." And wherever Christianity has existed and been apprehended, it has produced beneficent results for humanity. It has gone over the earth like its Divine Author, with healing and with help for the woes of the race. Anybody who takes his stand at the head-waters of modern history, will see that a mighty energy was then poured into the world, whose influence is evident in the truest civilization, in the best results, of ages. In estimating the practical power of Christianity, we must look at the _positive_ phase of things--we must consider what has actually been done; not merely what remains to be done. We must adopt proportionate standards, not the little measures of to-day and yesterday, in which the tides of human melioration may oscillate, and even seem to flow backward and at the best to make slight headway. But take up the cycle of history that preceded the advent of Christianity, and compare it with the present period; and is there not an entirely different expression on the face of things, so far as conceptions of humanity and influences of philanthropy are concerned? Contrast "a Roman holiday," its butchery and its blood, with a modern anniversary that clasps the round world in its jubilee, and see if humanity has not been helped by religion. Or look back upon Grecian art and refinement, and tell me what oration or poem,