you will be the sufferers; the pitiless pelting of the storm it will produce, will fall first upon your heads. MAN may and will be contaminated by its baneful and destructive influence; but WOMAN will not only be contaminated-she will be enslaved and degraded. She will fall from the dignified and exalted station, which she now enjoys, to the same ignominious level at which she rested, when the blessed Redeemer came to dissolve the chains which the mean and selfish tyranny of MAN had forged for her body; and to break also the chains of death and of hell, by which the soul of MAN, as well as that of WOMAN, was encompassed and enthralled. What I have here said, is not mere speculation: To illustrate this, I will barely exhibit two examples--one on each side-of the practical effects of Christianity and Infidelity and to bring home the illustration the more forcibly to yourselves, I will select, from many that present themselves, two female examples. Among the distinguished females of Great-Britain, whoever has indulged much in literary pursuits, must recollect the names and destinies of Lady RACHEL RUSSELL and MARY WOLSTONECRAFT. The former was a Christian, and the wife of Lord William Russell, who was beheaded in the reign of Charles the Second; the latter belonged to the Infidel School, and though of humble origin, distin guished herself in the literary world, and became the wife of the celebrated William Godwin, who is still living. Now let us briefly contrast the conduct of these two women, especially in the hour of adversity, and we shall see clearly the benign superiority of the influence of Christianity over that of Infidelity. Lady RUSSELL was destined to see her husband, whom she ardently loved, and who reciprocated her affections, die on the scaffold, the victim of a bloody and relentless tyranny; but under the pressure of this awful calamity she did not sink: On the contrary, in proportion to the keenness of her sufferings, did her moral courage display itself with increased energy and effect. All England beheld her, under circumstances calculated to appal the stoutest hearts, sustaining herself with unparalleled firmness and fortitude. She attended her husband on his trial, and "when," says Hume, "the Attorney General told him, he might employ the hand of one of his servants in waiting to take notes of the evidence for his use," Lord Russell answered, that "he asked none but that of the Lady who sat by him." The spectators, at these words, turned their eyes, and beheld the daughter of the virtuous SOUTHAMPTON rising up to assist her Lord in this his utmost distress a thrill of anguish ran through the assembly." From the day of her husband's conviction and sentence, to that of his ignominious death, she attended him constantly, and consoled him, with that unremitting tenderness, assiduity and heroic forti tude, which the gospel of Jesus Christ can alone inspire. Lord RUSSELL was so much encouraged by this heroic conduct of his wife, and so deeply sensible of her virtue and firmness in so trying a moment, that he exclaimed at their last parting, "the bitterness of death is now past!" Many are the evidences, which this truly pious and godly woman exhibited, of her Christian virtues, and unshaken faith in her Redeemer; but to these, our limits will admit only of a partial refer ence.. To Lady Essex she wrote as follows:-"I beseech God one day to bespeak peace to our afflicted minds, and not to suffer us to be disappointed of our great hope. But we must wait for our day of consolation till this world passes away. An unkind and trustless world has it been to us. Why it has been such, God knows best. All his dispensations serve the end of his Providences; and they are ever beautiful, and must be good, and good to every one of us : And even these dismal ones are so to us, if we can bear evidence to our own souls, that we are better for our afflictions, which is often the case with those who suffer wrongfully. We may reasonably believe our friends have found that rest we yet but hope for; and what better comfort can you or I desire, in this valley of the shadow of death we are walking through? The rougher our path is, the more delightful and ravishing will be the great change." This truly illustrious woman survived her hus band forty years, and honored his memory by con tinuing in a state of widowhood. She died in 1723, in the 87th year of her age. To the last she retained her faith "in HIM who had been the staff of her life, and her support in affliction;" and the fruits of this holy faith were exhibited in her last moments:-"God," said she, "has not denied me the support of His Holy Spirit in this my long day of calamity; but enabled me, in some measure, to rejoice in him as my portion for ever. He has provided a remedy for all our griefs, by his sure promises of another life, where there is no death, nor any pain nor trouble, but fulness of joy in the presence of HIM who made us, and who will love us for ever." Thus lived and died, Lady RUSSELL, the pride of her country, the ornament of her own sex, and the veneration as well as admiration of ours: And now let us turn to MARY WOLSTONECRAFT. That Miss Wolstonecraft, as a mere woman, was an interesting and lovely being, we shall not attempt to deny; for it is neither in the beauty of her person, nor the brilliancy of her intellect, that we have to compare her with Lady Russell. Her advantages, in these respects, were great. But with beauty and genius in her favor, she had the misfortune, not only to fall upon evil times; but, what was still more deplorable on her own account, to imbibe no small portion of the worst spirit of those times. She drank in, at an early period of her life, the poison of that seductive but ruinous creed, by which the principal Authors of the French Revolution were actuated-a creed fraught with eternal ruin to all who ever lived and died in it, or who shall hereafter live and die in it; for the eternal perdition of all, who have to encounter vincible ignorance only, and still die out of the pale of the Christian faith, is, we believe, placed beyond a doubt by the DIVINE ORACLES. It was a feature of this horrible and soul-destroying creed, to discard the ties of Matrimony, and adopt in their stead the vicious principle suggested by Pope :- "How oft when press'd to marriage have I said, And again "Should at my feet, the world's great master fall, It was this infamous principle of French Revolutionists, though originating, if no further back, in the licentious imagination of a British Poet-a Poet, too, who was capable of exclaiming― "Nor fame I slight, nor for her favors call, Then teach me Heaven! to scorn the guilty bays, O! grant an honest fame, or grant me none!" It was, we say, the infamous principle which Pope puts into the Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard—a principle so inconsistent with all virtue, and all |