y in degree."

With reference to religion, we readily acknowledge that dining _a la
Fijienne_ does not appear exactly to be a divine institution, as slavery
has recently been discovered to be. From olden times it used to be the
belief of superstitious man that there was a divine afflatus in liberty;
but our profound theological scholars and Biblical critics have found
out that the divinity is on the other side. Neither Tertullian nor
Austin, neither St. Bernard nor any Pope, good or bad, neither Luther,
Bossuet, Calvin, nor Baxter, no commentator, exegetist, or preacher,
ever found out, what these profoundest inquirers have at length
discovered, that slavery is divine, like matrimony. Had they discovered
this great truth before the Catholic Church settled the number of
sacraments, there must have been eight instead of seven. Why was their
advent so late?

Possibly these grave and candid, deep and fervent theologians, whose
opinions on theology are quoted everywhere, whose works are spread over
the globe, and whose lore is stupendous, may yet discover that there is
a divine flavor even in a soup _a la Mexicaine_. One thing, however,
is quite certain, namely,--that there is no prohibition of digestively
assimilating our neighbor with ourselves, from one end of the Bible to
the other. Was not Fielding's parson logical, who preferred punch to
wine, because it is nowhere spoken ill of in Scripture? When Baron
Viereck was rebuked by a friend for having given his daughter in
marriage to the King of Denmark, the Queen, undivorced, continuing to
occupy the throne, the shrewd father replied, that he had found no
passage in the Bible that prohibits a King of Denmark from having two
wives; and has not the democratic Fijian as good a right to that logic
as the noble Baron had?

To say the truth, all these objections are founded mainly upon
sentiment, and we trust that morbid sentimentality will have no weight
in an age which ridicules the horror of the British Commons at the
descriptions of the middle passage, and demands calm judgment when the
question arises, how to increase the number of representatives and the
profits on sugar and cotton,--in our poetic age, in which republican
senators have openly declared their chivalrous allegiance to the
sovereign substance of which night-caps are made, and petticoats,--to
His Majesty, King Cotton,--not a very merry king, it must be owned, as
young King Charles was, or old King Cole, but