The farmer does not labor more than eight hours a day, taking one day with another, throughout the year; the mechanic,-him, I mean, who is not a slave,-labors more, perhaps ten; the manufacturer, perhaps twelve. Now, none of these classes, and these are supposed to be longest confined by their respective occupations,-require more than ten hours for meals and sleep. What becomes of their leisure time, the farmer's six hours, the mechanic's four, the manufacturer's two? Can nothing be done in these? when I have two, four, six hours at my command?

No time!

No time! Has God, then, appointed me a habitation, and condemned me to total ignorance of its structure, laws, nature and destiny, by giving me no time to study them? Has he given me time to range the planetary world, and know something even of spots on the sun, meteoric stones, the milky-way, the great bear, the little bear, comets' tails, Saturn's ring, and Jupiter's moons;-to explore the atmosphere of our globe, as well as penetrate the depths of sea and land, and know the contents and elements of each; to dive into the still deeper arcana of nature, and ascertain the laws by which tides, tradewinds, lightning, earthquakes and volcanoes are produced, as well as those by virtue of which a stone falls down rather than up, and the magnetic needle points to or departs from the poles, has he given me time, I say, for all this, and have no years, nor months, nor even a solitary day been allotted me, to explore this master-piece of the Divine Architect, pronounced by its Author, to be wonderfully made and curiously wrought; -a temple fitted up and gloriously garnished for the residence of an immortal inhabitant, bearing God's own image?

No time! Am I then permitted to study the geography of every part of our globe, the history, laws, manners and customs of the countless tribes that animate it, even of the human race; to investigate the dwellings of every tribe of creatures which God hath created, from the more enlightened

biped, to the meanest quadruped, and even the smallest insect; and am to remain in utter darkness, like that of Egypt's fatal night, and in the most savage ignorance in regard to my own home?

No time! Have I, then, several hours of every day I live, to build up the political or civil fabric, and secure myself a comfortable apartment in it, with a snug salary, and have I not one solitary hour, to look to the internal economy of a dwelling which, if not regulated, would render me miserable, even in the chair of the chief magistrate?

I have no time, then! And yet I have time to spend in heaping up wealth, in preparing huge piles of wood, and brick, and stone in which to keep it, in employing men to handle it, to make massy locks to guard it, and prisons to confine intruders or conterfeiters. I have time enough for all this; but, alas! have I not a solitary moment to spend on a fabric, which may contain for a century or so, a treasure that neither moth nor rust can corrupt, and for which no thieves ever have known to break through and steal?

yet been

No time! And yet I have time for every thing else which can be named. I have time to destroy this temple, whose structure I ought daily and hourly,-for the sake of its immortal inhabitant,—to perfect. I have spoken, repeatedly, of the importance of selecting materials for building. Now, instead of selecting the best, it would seem as if my intention had been to select the worst, and lest I should fail of effecting my purpose, actually to procure help in the work of destruction. My house is committed,-till nearly its whole shape and character are in effect determined,-to the hands of one whom I have kept as long as possible in profound ignorance on this subject; * and to occasional assistants who are no less ignorant,

A gentleman, eighty-three years of age, in Dorchester, informed me but the other evening, that he went to a common or public school, in Dorchester, six years, into which no female was ever permitted to enter, except once a year to be publicly catechised.

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but far less interested than herself. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge," is as true now, as it was two thousand years ago, and in every step she takes, she verifies the truth of the statement. She employs inferior materials; and she renders these still worse by her modes of preparing them.

In short, it would frequently seem, as if her whole mission, -though her intentions be never so pure, consisted in destroying instead of up-building. During the last half century she has very much deformed the edifice which her hands have guided and fashioned; and what was before but barely sufficient for the convenience of its occupant, she has reduced to nearly half its ordinary original dimensions, and rendered it very uncomfortable. A most important chamber is narrowed away to the shape, and I had almost said the size,-of an inverted sugar loaf, with the prospect of narrowing it away still farther and farther during a century to come. And what is to be still more lamented, though her labors affect directly but half our race, they reach indirectly the whole, and deform the whole. In brief, then, instead of being a helper in the great work which is allotted her by her employer, her time, and strength, and talents, the world over, are devoted, to a considerable extent, to the work of a destroyer. Instead of performing the office of a ministering angel, she fulfils, unconsciously, no small part of the business of a demon, blighting, withering, cursing, where she goes, and whom, and what she loves and esteems.

In short, whole years of human life are spent, and with great cheerfulness, too, in grasping at things which are either useless or comparatively injurious, and not a few of them positively hurtful,—destructive of the body as well as of the soul. Yet when a claim is made,-yes, and the claim conceded, on a small share only, of any efforts to accomplish that for which I am best fitted by my Creator to do, I am apt to shrink back, and to complain of a want of time. Strange perversion of the faculties which He hath given! Strange

perversion of a law which common sense, one would think,

might long ere this have taught me !

Whether I am a father,

Let us change our whole course. a mother, a teacher, or any other builder, either of human character, or of the vehicle which is the outward sign or emblem of human character,-whether I am at home, at church, or at school,-let me rise from the state into which I have fallen, and build again the things which once, by my ignorance, I destroyed. Let it be my meat and drink to do the will of my Father who is in heaven, and in so doing, to employ a portion of every day which he shall henceforth give me, in endeavoring so to rear, and perfect, and adorn humanity, that it may be rendered a meet temple of Divinity. Let me do this as my most reasonable service, were this life all. But let me do it with still greater earnestness, from the conviction which I feel, and which Revelation itself countenances,-that somehow or other a relation subsists, and will for ever subsist, between the temple of the present, and the temple of the future; and that while I am laboring to improve my present habitation, every step I take has a bearing on my well-being, when I shall have attained to that house which is "not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."