A progressive movement has been going on towards the rule, that, self-love directed towards the material, the sensible, the showy, the distinguishing, is so the ruling motive of human conduct, as to constitute it the first requisite in adjusting the social relations, that private interests, and class interests may not flourish best, short of the best attainable flourish of the whole. When this point shall be so thoroughly understood, that it shall be taken for no reproach of any class of men to regard them practically as subject to the common influences which control human conduct; we may expect an effective move, for giving to the lawyer and to the physician a relation to society, analogous to that sustained by the pastor among Protestants; instead of leaving their professions to find their best flourish, at about the vigor of intellectual and moral life, which just now we live. But this idea loses its importance as another comes into appreciation, --namely, that the conflicts of self-love with self-love, suppose mistaken estimates of happiness to be uppermost; and, just in proportion as men rightly estimate life, and truly love themselves, they appreciate those strong, numberless, delicate, indissoluble ties, which bind the members of the social body to suffer, or to rejoice together. And this idea again lessens in importance, as yet a third gains the ascendancy--the living conviction, that time is but the portal to eternity; the soul meanwhile tasting "the powers of the world to come;" and knowing the persuasiveness of that strongest call to mutual endearment, "If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." And now the consideration of these three points is commended especially to the attention of those, who, in the execution of their office and ministry, have weekly access to the mind of the people. We mourn the waning influence of the American pulpit. Where the power thence emanating in the stirring days of trial to men's souls,--when its ministers stood on that commanding point, where they caught the first beams of rising day, and reflected the light in the face of the people? At our Revolutionary period, ministers, in their earnestness to preach to the times, might have come short in preaching eternity. So far there was a mistake to be rectified; but they did well to preach to the times. It is among the reasons, why religious so tempered political zeal; and, accordingly, why, as our Revolution _was_ without a model, so it _remains_ without a rival. It is well that the struggle came, before the toad-eaters to capital's feed agents in legislative halls occupied the high seats of moral influence. The true successors to the fathers are not the preachers of party politics, but they who aim to supply the lack of all parties, in that they fail to make liberty a means, valuable only as affording facilities to improvement.