talent in every art and profession is fostered, and exerts peculiar
influence. There wealth concentrates its millions upon millions, to
exert extensively a blasting or brightening influence on society. There
the press daily sends out its thousands and its tens of thousands of
winged messengers, to excite the passions, to influence the opinions, to
control the energies of a nation. Powerful as is this engine, for
corrupting or sanctifying the people, who does not know that its
munitions and magazines of strength are placed principally in cities;
and that the character which the press there sustains is diffused
throughout the land? In cities, commerce is concentrated. The products
of the soil flow from every county, town, and village, to the cities;
and thence they are distributed to the world. The riches, the luxuries,
the products of other climes and nations are brought to cities, and
thence distributed through the land. How manifest then, that cities must
exert a mighty influence on the country and on the world. Who, that
reflects on their extended intercourse, does not know, that they
regulate the prices of commodities; that their fashions are imitated;
that their maxims of trade are common law; and that their moral habits
and opinions, good or bad, have an influence on the whole community?
Their influence is great, whether we consider them in a moral or
political point of view. The capture of a city has decided the destiny
of nation. When Babylon was taken, a mighty empire was given to the
invader. When Jerusalem was vanquished, all Judea was subdued. When
ill-fated France was tossed with revolutions and counter-revolutions,
the possession of her metropolis gave to either party the supreme
command.

Now suppose that all this influence of cities is of a worldly, immoral,
irreligious character; what must be its blasting power on the general
interests of religion! It was when the pretended successor of Peter