DANGER TO MORALS. 24/ 



" avoid the practice of any thing which might impair the 

 vigor of rural virtues, simplicity and morality, and espe- 

 cially of the institution of the Sabbath." 



Coming down to the middle of our century, we find 

 the Rev. Mr. Beecher sounding a note of warning : " If 

 we neglect our duty and suffer our laws and institutions 

 to go down, we give them up forever. It is easy to 

 relax, easy to retreat, but impossible, when the abomina- 

 tion of desolation has passed over New England, to rear 

 again the thrown down altars, and gather again the frag- 

 ments, and build up the ruins of demolished institutions. 

 Another New England nor we, nor our children shall 

 ever see, if this be destroyed. All is lost irretrievably 

 when the landmarks are once removed and the bands 

 which now hold us are broken. Such institutions and 

 such a state of society can be established only by such 

 men as our fathers were, and in such circumstances as 

 thev were in. . . . The hand that overthrows our 

 laws and temples is the hand of death unbarring the 

 gate of Pandemonium, and letting loose upon our land 

 the crimes and miseries of Hell." 



Robbed of that link of hope and reverence which 

 ])rompts to aims and actions which are true and eter- 

 nal in their influence upon character, the people thus 

 divested must become as all nations that forget God. It 

 matters not what the method employed to break down our 

 best of institutions, — the direct or the indirect, — the result 

 must be the same in the end, and the responsibility upon 

 those instrumental in bringing it about, will be in propor- 

 tion to the knowledge they possess of the drift and pur- 

 pose of our social and national undertakings. The catas- 

 trophe in New England, should be an instruction and a 

 warning to the rest of America. 



