passages before quoted, and also in 'my view accords much better with the passage, D. K. has expounded than does his interpretation. I have not access to Storr, nor do I remember in what part of his works it is found, but if one of your correspondents would give us a translation of Storr's

exposition of this passage, I imagine, we should not so often hear from the pulpit, and elsewhere, "When the mediatorial kingdom shall end." Perhaps some able biblical critic will favor us with his views on the class of texts cited above, as well as on the particular passage in question.

To the Trustees and Directors of those Institutions which hold grants or charters for Lotteries.

GENTLEMEN,-An individual, who professes himself friendly to every institution which is calculated to promote the religion, improve the morals, warm the patriotism, relieve the distress, or advance the happiness, of his fellow men, solicits your candid attention to a few thoughts. It is well known that the mode of raising money for public objects by lottery has been sanctioned by all goverments, and countenanced by many wise and good men. It is also known to you that the adventurers in lotteries are actuated by no public spirit of liberal regard to the objects proposed, but solely by a greedy desire for gain, a desire which they seek to gratify by other means than industry and economy. You also know that the spirit of lottery adventure, like other selfish passions grows rapidly by indulgence, and that vast multitudes become so absorbed in it as to lose sight of every other consideration, either of morality or of natural affection. You also know that in a vast majority of cases, from the very nature of the lottery system, the adventurers must be losers. You also know, that in almost every instance the succssful purchaser of tickets is ruined by his success. You also know that the present mode of conducting lotteries greatly facilitates fraud on the

part of the managers, and that there must be some way of realizing enormous profits to induce such increasing numbers to become lottery dealers. You also know that the evils of the lottery system have recently attracted universal attention, that they have been so far developed as to lead the legislatures of several states to refuse granting any more lotteries, and to prohibit the sale of foreign tickets. They have thus significantly though gently, expressed their deliberate opinion on the pernicious influence of the lottery system, and left it to be plainly understood, that if their hands were not tied by previous grants, they would totally banish lotteries from their limits.

The case of lotteries therefore stands thus, that the legislatures of several states have done all they can to remove the evils of the lottery system. And the question is, whether you ought not in such circumstances, to give up the grants which you respectively hold. It is true, that the objects to be obtained by these grants, are some of them very important. And if you ask how they are to be attained without the lottery, I answer by the favor of God upon your own efforts. Do not so far reproach your fellow citizens as to allege, that they cannot be made to see the importance of the object, or seeing it, cannot be induced to furnish the necessary means to secure it

By purposing to raise the needful funds in a way so monstrously ex

pensive as that by a lottery, you assume that the commuity is able to pay for this object, for you impose a burden at least ten times greater than the sum that is needed. And believe me, if the appeal is made to them plainly they will do it. There is no good and worthy object but what can be accomplished, by legislative donations or individual subscriptions, in a community so prosperous and so public spirited as ours. Throw yourself into our arms therefore and if you deserve it we will stand by and support you. Even if you have become involved in a contract with your managers, which will prevent you from actually cancelling the grant, you may at least surrender it to the State, and thus leave it to the wisdom of the Legislature to guard against the evils and get out of the difficulty, as well as they can, while you wash your hands from all further participation in the avails of lotteries. Now, gentlemen, allow me respectfully to request your serious attention to this subject. I fully appreciate the motives which may have led you to request the grant of a lottery, when the pernicious influence of lotteries was less generally realized. I know your anxious desire to cherish and improve the interests committed to your trust. I am not going to charge you with any wrong, excepting a wrong judgment, in which you had the general suffrage of the community. Where is the man who shall cast the first stone at those who have asked and received grants for lotteries? But now that the community, by their representatives, have cast out the beam from their own eye, they can see clearly the mote in their brother's eye. When they see the evils which now prevail, and trace so many of them as they now do to lotteries, and find yet the evil continued and fastened upon us, they will inquire why it is. They will know who holds this load upon society in spite of all our efforts to shake it off. If therefore the light in

which your favorite institution should be regarded by a virtuous people is of any consequence in your eyes, it becomes you to consider well before you resolve to receive any further support from lotteries. The avails of a lottery are the price of all the fraud, theft, and knavery, which it is the proper tendency of lotteries to produce, of all the improvidence and idleness and false hopes, of all the distress and misery to families, of all the characters ruined, of the intemperate habits formed, the crimes committed, the suicides and deaths, now rapidly increasing, the effect of lotteries. Public opinion is rapidly becoming enlightened, purified, and concentrated. Nothing on earth can stand before it. One general voice of indignation will soon burst out against those who having the power, will not relieve us from this calamity. And now that the subject is understood, I believe that whatsoever institution shall seek to promote its prosperity or secure its permanence, by means drawn from a lottery, God Almighty will blow upon that institution.

PARDON.

S. F. D.

THE following is extracted from a report exhibited to the Legislature of Connecticuit by a committee appointed to consider the subject of Prision Discipline.

It is believed that whoever attentively considers the subject will perceive that all the common errors respecting the way and means of a sinner's obtaining pardon from God, are supported by erroneous views of the true principles of Moral Goverment. Most writers upon moral and political philisophy have considered pardoning power as an essential part of governmental prerogative. And the turing out of a villain or a gang of villains upon the community, has been called an act of mercy. But in fact pardon of acknowledged

criminals has arisen from the imperfection of the government. Criminals are pardoned because the legal punishment is felt to be unreasonably severe, or because the government wished to gain popularity with the thoughtless multitude by a reputation for tenderness of feeling. But in proportion as the science of government becomes better understood, and when rulers shall feel that as public persons they are to know no rule but duty, the views contained in the following extract will command the assent of the wise. And as human governments advance nearer to perfection, they will act more and more upon the principles which the gospel ascribes to the moral goverment of God.

It

stand the ill effects of the frequent We fear no system can long withexercise of the pardoning power. may be right for the Legislature to discharge, not on the ground that the prisioner needs a pardon for guilt but that he is an innocent and injured man. But when the guilt is ascertained, we would submit with great deference if any convict should be pardoned. If the law be too severe, let it be altered; but in our opinion, the sentence of the law, when once pronounced, should be considered the measure and duration of the punishment.

One pardon scatters the intelligence abroad throughout the whole community of felons, and excites the hope that pardon may be extended to them, and that justice may be sometimes cheated of her victims. This practice is at hostility with every just principle of the penitentiary system. Even if the reformation of the offender is supposed to be completed, of which there can rarely, if ever, be sufficient evidence, still the great object of puishment is to deter by example. If reformation and penitence are to be a ground of pardon, then it follows as a necessary consequence, that the Legislature,to act consistently, must pardon all if all reform. Such a proposition requires only to be stated to be dismissed. The ties by

which crime is bound to punishment ought to be indissoluble.

"The great object of punishment" is to deter from crime by giving weight to the authority of government. Punishment does this because it is an example of the actual, strict, and determined exercise of authority. The doctrine that gorernment "must pardon all if all reform," so evidently and palpably absurd in relation to human affairs, is asserted by many to be the fundamental principle of the divine government. But there too sinners will find "the ties which bind crime to punishment to be indissoluble" excepting by atonement. In human governments there cannot be a proper atonement. For no man can wise and good men maintain that give a ransom for his brother. It was a matter of surprise to hear the act of a prisoner in disclosing the plot of his fellow prisoners constituted a "merit" on the ground of which the government was bound in justice to pardon him. The only consideration to which his disclosure entitled him certainly was the portion of good will which his conduct might gain him in the prison. We shall soon hear of plots in abundance, got up for the purpose of being disclosed. A true penitent ought to show his regard for the laws he has broken by meekly receiving the penalty. The very fact, that he seeks an exemption on the ground of his repentance, casts a shade of doubt over his sincerity. Until a human goverment can find a part of itself to make an atonement, every pardon for an admitted crime must be considered a departure from just allows for a provision of mercy; principles. The government of God He that believeth on the Son of God

hath everlasting life. By his death we may obtain redemption, even the remission of sins.

ANNUAL NARRATIVES OF THE STATE

OF RELIGION.

I TOOK Occasion in the last volume of the Christian Spectator, (p. 417,) to offer some remarks on the annual "Narratives of the state of religion," by our ecclesiastical bodies; and referred particularly to those of the Presbyterian General Assembly. I observed that these articles-besides the uninteresting nature of the topics which are made most prominent in them-are little more than reprints of the same matter from year to year. I noticed the narratives of the General Assembly particularly, not because the barrenness complained of did not exist in the similar documents of other bodies, but because it was most apparent in those narratives, and because on account of the great respectability of the General Assembly, whatever it sends abroad under its imposing name, ought to be done in the weightiest

lect data on which to base their appeals to the public, and with which to square their operations. Now how many facts which are important to these institutions might a congress of divines collect and bring together from all extremes of the land; and how large a fund of minute and practical information would result, not only from the labors of one, but of all the similar bodies which are annually convened.

I know of a clergyman near me who ascertained the number of drunkards within the town where he lives, and the ratio they bore to the whole population, with the gallons of spirits consumed, &c. I know of another who employed a prudent member of his congregation to make a similar inquiry. The results have since been embodied with other appalling data in the published documents, of the American Temperance Society. Now what was practicable for these clergymen to do, it is practicable for others to do; and suppose that every clergyman in the nation should be at the pains to collect within the sphere of his personal knowledge all the facts, not only in respect to intemperance, but in respect to every evil which it is the duty of Christian faithfulness to remedy; and should transmit the results in brief and lucid statements to the particular ecclesiastical body with which he is connected. How many years would it be, before the American public would know fully and accurately the extent of its moral wants and obligations, and the nature of its moral prospects.

The facts which are wanted are such as these, and it is entirely practicable for ministers, with the help of pious laymen, to ascertain them within a given circumference:

how many people there are who are not provided with ministers-how many families who are destitute of the Bible-how many young men of promise who may be selected and brought forward to be educated,

how many distilleries and grog-shops, and bar-haunted taverns, and how many individuals abandoned to beastly intemperance-how many lotteries and theatres and gaming houses, and how many persons according to the best means of judging, beguiled and beggared and ruined?This is the kind of information which it is the object of the correspondence and travelling agencies of our public societies to collect. It may be collected with more facility, as well as much more extensively, in the manner here proposed; and perhaps it would be well for each of the principal societies to make out its schedule of interrogatories to be used for this purpose. I do not see how the moral statistics of our country can ever be fully known, but by some such

means.

If it be thought that the returns of so many individuals would be too numerous for any committee to manage, let them first be sent to the smaller bodies, there to be properly scrutinized, and digested into sub-reports; and then be forwarded for ultimate arrangement and publication.-And instead of the barren sheet we now have, let us have as thick a pamphlet as shall be necessary to contain the facts.

The value of a document thus prepared, instead of being only looked. at and forgotten, would be seen, I apprehend, in the frequent reference which would be made to it :-it would be seen in the reports of our great societies,―in the force it would give to appeals to public benevolence, in the facts and arguments it would furnish to our patriots and legisla

tors.

One of the good effects of the system proposed, would be the increased industry, and enterprise, and courage it would produce in ministers themselves, and in the remedies it would prompt them to apply to evils which hitherto had been passed by within the limits of their daily walks.

tions as to what the documents in question should be, I will finish with what they are. Take for example the last Narrative of the General Assembly. The first half is devoted to the annual lament over the standing vices and evils which "some of the Presbyteries cease not to complain of;"--namely, "gaming" "profaneness"-" intemperance" "the violation of the rest of the holy Sabbath"-"the theatre""formality, coldness, and irregularity, in professors of religion," &c.

"These things," says the Narrative, "the Assembly deeply deplore, and would gladly pass them by in silence." Would that the Assembly would yield to its inclination!-since the same things have been "deplored" in the same strain, for I know not how many successive years.

Then follows a very formal and commendatory notice of missionary and other societies, as if we were now for the first time apprised of their existence and operations. The remainder of the paper is occupied with some statistical matters concerning the Presbyterian church, (which are very well,) including a list of places which have been blessed with revivals-the number of subjects not reported, with a very brief notice of the several foreign bodies in connexion with the Assembly. The report of last year is the same thing as that of the present-embracing the same topics in the same style and order; those of 1826-5 and-4, which is as far back as I am in possession of the reports, are still substantially the same, with only now and then a transposition in the order of the topics, or a change in their relative proportions.

Now is it worth while to give us at all a report of the state of religion, if it must needs be so barren as these" Narratives,"-which scarcely contain a fact that can be turned to any account, which, as I said in my former paper, impart no information,