AN article from Blackwood, giving some statistics with regard to the increase of crime in different parts of the world, was lately republished in many of our papers. According to the views of the writer, there is much more crime in England than in France; there is more crime in Prussia, where there is education,' than in France; that in Hindostan, where there is a permanent armed force, there is a great diminution of crime; and the propositions laid down seem to be, that the want of proper police force is the leading cause of crime in England and America.

It is not the absence of force of any kind that causes crime. There is undoubtedly more crime in England than there is in France; and yet there is more police force to suppress what is termed crime in England than there is in France. There is in France great military power, under the immediate control of the government, which is used chiefly to awe those who are disposed to commit political offences; but what is termed the police system is more rigid in England than in France; and the punishments attendant upon conviction are much more severe in England than in France. In the former place it is a well-ascertained fact that there has been a great diminution of crime since the severity of the criminal code has been reduced, and capital punishments for lighter offences abolished.

With regard to Prussia it is no doubt true, that notwithstanding the extent to which education has been vouchsafed to the masses, there is more crime than there is in France. But why? Not because there is no force to prevent or to punish crime; for there is great military power at the command of the government, forming part of the police force, so called.

With regard to Hindostan, we do not know what is intended when it is said that there has been a great diminution of crime in consequence of the establishment of a permanent and armed force. What do you mean by crime? The people of Hindostan, in the proper acceptation

of the word, are all criminals, or nearly so. Under this armed force they are wretchedly degraded, without moral sense or uprightness of motive. A late writer speaks of an entire want of truth as the characteristic, and avers that perjury in Hindostan is scarcely considered a crime: the people are demoralized by force.

Then why is it that there is less crime in France, as is shown by accurate calculation, than in the other countries named? It is simply because the public mind and the public heart are properly cultivated; it is because those pharisaical influences, so deadly in their effect upon the tone of the people, are discarded: it is because public and innocent amusements are provided by the government, and sympathies are awakened which run through all classes of society, making France in all its component parts one body. Provide sound moral activity, and there is no need for trouble as to the extent of police force: begin by removing the causes for crime, and it will no longer be demanded that we should secure means for the punishment of offenders. Hold it to be true, for it is so, that where there is much crime, the nation, as a nation, must be particeps criminis; for crime is the consequence of an absence of adequate moral provision for the masses.

We would deprecate altogether the idea of force when any reformation is proposed; whether it is force of government, of law, of the bayonet, or of diseased public opinion. In this community, we suffer under the disastrous influences of diseased public opinion, and what may be properly called Phariseeism; counteract those influences, and there will be no more necessity for apprehension as to police organization. We pride ourselves upon our 'religion,' as they did of old whom our SAVIOUR came to rebuke; and at this moment there is more crime, public and private, and less true religion among us, than there is in Paris. We have certainly more of the forms of religion, as the Pharisees had, but less of the honest sentiment; we are especially distinguished for our Sunday manifestations, and for our long prayers in public places. Our religion is all term, form, definition. We have yet to learn that there is religion in joy and laughter; in the honest expression of a thousand sympathies and affections, vouchsafed to us by GoD, to make glad the heart of man. Our attention is not directed to the cultivation of a healthy public temperament; we are guided by dictionaries; this and that are defined as crimes; particular sects are the doors to salvation, others to damnation. A native American is shot, a Roman Catholic church is destroyed, and these are hailed as religious' triumphs by their respective partizans; and they are the inevitable consequences of the sad spirit of Phariseeism which pervades the community. Strangers have observed a peculiar tightness of expression and countenance in our community; and such is the case: there is a want of frankness and sincerity of manner an appearance of constraint; all growing out of the causes before adverted to. We are a tight-laced people, with a great deal more arrogance and spiritual pride than religion; we have little or none of the beauty and loveliness of religion; in our observances there is an air of gloom and deformity.

It is a singular fact that our congregations when leaving their churches on Sunday, immediately after having been, in doctrine at least, in the

presence of God and in His house, wear the ugliest conceivable aspects; the countenances of the men, and especially perhaps those of the women, are wofully extended; indicating that something awful has been perpetrated. The sun, and every manifestation of GOD in His glorious works every where around them, may be laughing with joy, while those creatures who were made with souls to thrill harmoniously with heavenly inspirations, lock themselves up in a cold and gloomy Sunday encasement; much resembling, if such could be, tomb-stones walking out of grave-yards. The idea seems to be, that to twist the features into some sinfully ugly exhibition is to become solemn; and that to be religious or to appear religious, the image of GOD in man must be defaced, and something of the ape or asinine order must be substituted. We must look as if we thought: 'How wrong every thing is! What an ugly and wicked world! Hence Sunday wears a sad and sombre aspect; a funereal pall hangs over every thing; and even the laughter of childhood is checked; My child, 't is Sunday!' The tradesman, the mechanic, the laboring man, all who have to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow during six days of the week, must not have on the seventh that rest of mind and heart which can only appertain to the indulgence of cheerful and social sympathies.

And are these the teachings of religion? Of that SAVIOUR, who for these things more than for any thing else, rebuked the Pharisees again and again?—of that religion which, born of love, sought to awaken the heart of man into communion with the beautiful ministries every where in his paths, and to lead his soul through gratitude and prayer into ecstatic sympathies with angels and their thoughts?- to open a spiritual vision which could look through the material boundary-line of earth and behold with rapture the glory and splendor of Heaven? What then should be done? We should direct our attention to the cultivation of a state of the public mind in which the true glory of man and the world can be appreciated: preach the doctrine that every day must not be a hard-working day, nor every amusement a sin that there is gratitude to GOD in the gladsomeness of a heart inspired by rational amusement; and that church is there, and prayer. Let us try to bring ourselves into harmony with the cheerful and beautiful creations around us, and help to reflect that love of GoD which smiles through all nature.

Let us not deceive ourselves by supposing that adequate moral provision is made for the people in what we term our various religious institutions; for the principles upon which these are conducted and their mode of advocacy are such as to preclude the accomplishment proposed. We have penalties, pains and terrors; appeals to the meaner part of our nature, to the neglect of the higher and holier tendencies implanted by GoD in the heart of man. Let the press disentangle itself from sectarian cobwebs, and address itself in truth to men as men; let it speak in the tone of the Sermon upon the Mount, and discard the lithe pliancy of language which debases it into a servitude to religious and political demagogues. Let us see in high places, and especially in the pulpit, the naturalness of man restored; and when he who speaks by authority addresses us, let us be able to feel that it is but one part of our nature, or of creation, addressing another, and kindling the feelings

which hold us in union; another man uttering the sentiments as natural to our hearts as to his, however they may have been hitherto concealed by the overgrowth of the weeds of the world; let us be brought into that happy companionship with our religious, moral, and political teachers, which will develope our common nature; let us tear down the fences created between the teachers and the to-be-taught; orthodoxy and heterodoxy, this sect and that sect; let us see this glorious world by the light of Heaven, laugh and dance upon the green, each proclaiming his own joy as his own heart bids him. When we do so, the valleys and the hills and the stars will speak to us, and we shall answer them; we shall become again as little children, and know in what consists the kingdom of Heaven.

What do we want exactly? We want something which will break up our fixedness of mind, whether upon religion, business, or politics; something which will teach us that all the world is not in that one idea which each of us possesses; something which will teach us that there are fountains of happiness at which we may all drink together and be glad; be glad ourselves, be glad because our neighbors are glad; be glad altogether and always; something, which for the dark and contracted brow may substitute the bright and open expression through which the heart can see the heart: we need something to change our character; and as we have an almost superstitious reverence for those who proclaim themselves our religious teachers, we first need a change in them and in their character. It becomes especially necessary that they should divest themselves of this oneness of idea; that they should be compelled to feel that rational beings will require to be preached the rationality of being; the acknowledgment of existence as it is, and as a natural consequence from GOD: that they should no longer preach systems which propose that man shall separate himself from the general organization and become the mere professor of something instead of the man, with all the relations, physical, social and moral, of the man.

It is not to be doubted, that no matter how demure and solemn the acquiescence with which the masses of our church congregations appear to listen to the sermons of their pastors, their faith is unreal; the taking for granted that it is all right and true, without any distinct conception of what it is that is supposed to be right and true; and as long as this is the case, it cannot be expected that any sound and distinct tone of mind can be imparted. Some protestants complain that the service of the Roman Catholic church should be in Latin, while many of their own sermons verily are in Hebrew, or in something else even less understood; and for the proof of this, we would remind our readers of some of the able and interesting discourses they may have heard upon the subject of the wrath of GOD, as viewed through the telescope of Calvinism. Take this last expression, so common in the pulpit, the wrath of God! - add to it that other expression, just as common, the vengeance of God! -and see farther how these words are written upon the tone and tendencies of our institutions in characters legible at least to the mind's eye. We once heard a 'religious' person remark, in speaking of the conduct of a neighbor, Never mind; thank Heaven, he will catch it in the next world;' and this seems to be the very poetry of much of the