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very little, but it seemed much relieved before he died. And when his speech and sight were almost gone, he said as distinctly as he was able, "Happy!" This was almost his last word on earth, and he shortly after sweetly fell asleep in Jesus, on Sunday afternoon, September 15th, 1867, deeply regretted by his loving family, and a large circle of friends, by whom he was sincerely and deservedly beloved. And that fear of death to which he was naturally subjected seemed entirely taken away, and dying strength was indeed given at the dying day. A sermon was preached in reference to his death, at Providence Chapel, Chichester, on Monday evening, September 23rd, by the Rev. E. Vinall, from 2 Chron. xxxiv. 28: "Behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace." And, most singular to say, that, although quite unknown to the preacher, it was the very same text that Mr. Vinall's father preached from in the same chapel on the occasion of the death of the grandfather of the subject of this short account. And may that faithful sermon prove a blessing to many who heard it!

"GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS."

LAM. iii. 23.

College, Ely, Cambs.

THE blessed Lord has been with me and my dear wife for good in a preeminent manner during the past seven years, while striving to make known His good will and way to poor lost sinners on the plains of British India.

We have been greatly comforted and sustained by the faithfulness of our covenant Three-in-One Jehovah to His own pure word of truth; and so far from there being danger in declaring the whole counsel of God in Christ to His elect people, I have never found any other testimony so owned of the Lord the Spirit in turning poor wandering sheep to their great and good Shepherd; wherever a free-grace Gospel is faithfully and fully preached, good fruit is the blessed result as far as we can see, amongst all sorts and conditions of men in India as well as at home.

Failing health has compelled an unexpected return to England for a time, but on the passage by sea God strengthened us to preach Christ Jesus the Lord, and several souls were born again from above, and some young believers edified, fulfilling that sure word of promise, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me."

After enjoying the happy privilege of blowing the silver trumpet of God's Gospel for ten years, it is one's sore trial (from relaxed sore throat) to sit in silence "under the shadow." Questionless the discipline is good and absolutely needful, but still one cannot help groaning in this body; the old Adam ceases not to vex and annoy, but, blessed consolation to Christ's disciples, "Sin shall not have dominion over you."

Oh, that the Lord would in sovereign mercy raise up more truehearted labourers for His harvest! It is a lamentably evident truth in these days "the labourers are few." Surely, if ever there was need for the Lord's people to be much in united fervent prayer for Zion IT IS NOW. 66 Brethren, pray for us." J. G. S. [Deeply, most deeply, do we sympathize with this dear but personally unknown brother in the Lord. May he be divinely sustained, and (if the

Lord's blessed will) speedily restored to his loved labour. Who but those who have been for a season deprived of the sacred privilege can tell how great the privation, and how intense the regret when laid aside, after being permitted to stand forth and minister in the name of the Lord? Without question, to be privileged to proclaim the everlasting Gospel is the highest favour (next to personal salvation) God can confer upon man. To be prime minister or rule a kingdom is not to be compared to the high, the holy, the distinguishing honour of speaking to one's fellow-sinner of the goodness and the love and the tenderness of Jesus. Hence the being debarred from so vast a privilege, after the enjoyment of it, is the more soul-distressing. The Lord, therefore, cheer and comfort His dear servant, and pour upon His people a spirit of prayer for his speedy restoration.ED.]

The Protestant Beacon.

CRUELTY IN BELGIUM.

THE Times correspondent tells the following story: "An extraordinary trial of seven colliers for causing the death of two fellow-workmen by illtreatment has just been held at Antwerp. A band of those men, headed by one Nessels, appears for a long time to have exercised a most atrocious tyranny over some of their companions. The motives for their cruelty were chiefly religious, the victims being Protestants and their torturers Catholics. The punishment inflicted was a sort of crucifixion; that is to say, a cross was made by nailing two planks together in the form of an X, to which the sufferers were suspended, bound with cords at their hands and feet until they should do homage to the Virgin. One of the men who had died, named Steenbergen, had also been burnt with hot iron and then plunged in water; this treatment brought on a violent fever, which terminated in death. The ringleader, Nessels, inspired such terror among the other workmen that, when in court before his gaze, the witnesses trembled and hesitated to speak, and the judge at length ordered him to be placed in a position where he could not see them. The whole of the evidence was given with great reluctance, and several of the witnesses had to be menaced with imprisonment for their wilful reticence. Even a collier, named Coulemans, the father of the second man who had died from the injuries received, only disclosed the names of the men who had exercised the cruelty on his son on the Court promising him protection if he were menaced. The accused were now condemned to different terms of imprisonment-Nessels to six years, one to four years, one to eighteen months, two to one year, and two to nine months, with fines in addition varying from 50 fr. to 200 fr."

May the details of our lives be lovely as the followers of Christ, vessels of mercy.

Is your daily life governed by inclination or duty? Are you doing all you might for the cause of Christ, and praying for more labourers in the harvest?

Reviews and Notices of Books.

The Religious Tendencies of the Times; or, How to Deal with the Deadly Errors and Dangerous Delusions of the Day. By JAMES GRANT, Author of "God is Love," "Our Heavenly Home," &c., &c. William Macintosh.

Amid the multiplicity of Mr. Grant's works-embracing, as they do, almost every department of theology-there is, we understand, no one to which he attaches greater importance than to the volume before us. This, indeed, may be inferred from the preface. Conscious that time is fast passing away with us all, and especially impressed with the conviction that the laborious professional life which he has led is not favourable to any very prolonged period of fitness for active service in the cause of Christ and His truth, he plainly intimates that he never felt so deep an anxiety to be spared to see the completion of any work, now-including books of a more general kind-numbering upwards of fifty volumes. He believes that no work, or something of a similar kind, was ever more urgently needed. Mr. Grant draws a dark and dismal picture of the state of religion at this moment, even among those bodies which are called evangelical. The picture is, indeed, so sombre that, if he did not verify his statements by undoubted facts, the fidelity of his representations could hardly be credited. It is lamentably true that the religion of Christ is at present suffering more at the hands of those who profess to be believers in it than at those who openly avow their infidelity. There is, in this respect, a fearful appropriateness in the words of our Lord in relation to the present state of the Church--that "a man's foes shall be they of his own household." The visage of evangelical religion is at this moment being marred, and its body mangled, by persons calling themselves its friends. The individual revelations, all duly authenticated, which Mr. Grant makes on this point, will astound the readers of his work.

Mr. Grant has endeavoured, in a comprehensive preface, to present the readers of his volume with a synopsis of its leading contents; but the startling nature of the disclosures he has made can only be clearly understood, and their deadly "tendencies" fully perceived, by a perusal of the book itself. It is a work which is sure to be fiercely assailed by those socalled Evangelicals who crowd the pulpits of our land, because their Goddishonouring and soul-destroying errors are exposed and denounced.

Mr. Grant first devotes himself to a consideration of the doctrine of "Annihilation"-a deadly doctrine, which is making alarming progress amongst us at the present time. The doctrine comes before us in three forms. It is boldly asserted by many, that the wicked will all be annihilated at death, and that consequently there will be no intermediate sufferings between death and the general resurrection-that, in fact, there will be no general resurrection, no general judgment, no future state at all-that, in other words, death will be to the ungodly, what it was declared to be by the Atheists of the French Revolution of 1792 to all, namely, an eternal sleep. Another class of Annihilationists maintain that there will be a general resurrection and judgment of the wicked, but that the sentence of everlasting condemnation pronounced upon them by Christ their Judge will be, not to everlasting punishment, or to any punishment at all, but to instantaneous and ever

lasting annihilation or everlasting unconsciousness. The third annihilationist theory is, that the wicked will rise from their graves, appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, be condemned and sentenced to a long period of punishment in hell-it may be for millions of years-but be ultimately annihilated, or blotted out of being, both as regards their souls and bodies. This is the belief of the Rev. Samuel Minton, Incumbent of Eaton Chapel, London, who has recently published a book in its favour.

"The Universalist System of Faith" is the next subject to which Mr. Grant applies himself. The variety of opinions included in this phrase is wonderful. The only one feature of Universalism embraced by all who are the adherents of the system is, that all intelligent beings, the devil and his angels as well as all mankind, will eventually, by the corrective discipline of the place of punishment, be purified and made happy, and received into heaven, to remain for ever there.

But Mr. Grant has devoted much more of his space to a consideration of the question, whether or not "Future punishments" will be eternal, than to any of the other subjects embraced by his book. He has done this, because he possesses the most abundant and conclusive evidence to show that the doctrine of the eternity of punishments in the world to come, is now repudiated in the great majority of our pulpits,-even in the majority of those in which evangelical doctrines are professedly preached. Mr. Grant has elaborately endeavoured to prove, that the doctrine of the non-eternity of future punishments is not only at entire variance with the Word of God, but that the rejection of the doctrine of the endless duration of punishment in a future state, is one of the most deadly errors which Satan ever invented for the destruction of souls. It is almost invariably followed by the abandonment of most of the other great central truths of the Gospel. Those, indeed, who, having once held the doctrine of eternal punishment in a future state, and have abjured that doctrine, find themselves in the majority of cases, landed, before long, in the lowest depths of Socinianism. Even in very many cases, as Mr. Grant shows, such persons gradually descend in the downward path of error, until they find themselves lost in the bottomless abyss of downright infidelity.

Mr. Grant devotes more than a hundred pages of his book to a variety of topics embraced under the general head of "The Existing Crisis in Religion Our Dangers and our Duties." It is demonstrated in this part of the volume, by proofs which cannot be controverted, that the pulpits of the land at this moment swarm with preachers, who preach God-dishonouring and soul-destroying errors to an extent and in a variety of form which are truly appalling. But we have not space to advert in detail to the soul-saddening aspect of religion at the present day. Neither have we room in our present number to give extracts from the body of Mr. Grant's book. We shall present our readers with a few in our next number. At present we simply content ourselves with the conclusion of Mr. Grant's Preface. "I will only add," he says, "that, in writing this volume, I have done so with a full knowledge of the unfavourable reception it is sure to meet with in many quarters. Its publication will be followed by the loss of personal friends, with whom I have been on terms of intimacy for many years. But I have felt that were I to be silent, or to shrink from the explicit and emphatic expression of my convictions in such a crisis as the present in the religion of Christ, I should justly be subject to the same condemnation for unfaithfulness to the cause of my Lord and Master, which the Bible pronounces upon all those who are chargeable with that great and grievous sin. I

have been constrained by the irresistible claims and imperative commands of conscience, to adopt the course I have done. Time with me is fast passing away, a fact which special circumstances have profoundly impressed on my mind, just as I was bringing my work to a close. I feel, therefore, that I should have lamentably failed in my duty to God and to my fellow-men, if I had longer delayed to raise my voice against the "DEADLY ERRORS AND DANGEROUS DELUSIONS OF THE DAY.' In doing that to the best of my ability, I have calmly and carefully counted the cost, and am fully prepared for the consequences, whatever they may be. My task is done. I leave the work in the hands of God, not for a moment doubting that, if it has been written in accordance with His word, it will be accompanied by manifest tokens of His approval and blessing." Some Remarks concerning the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The Thirteenth Article of the Creed of the Church of Rome. Christ our High Priest; or, The Doctrine of the Real Presence, a flagrant Denial of the Sufficiency of the Atonement. By F. G. H. London: R. Banks, 30, Ludgate Hill. -These three pamphlets, emanating from the same pen, are entitled to a careful reading at the present juncture. Their appearance is most opportune, and we trust they will have a wide circulation.

The Vicar of Charles. A Poem in commemoration of Plymouth's Great Preacher, in a preceding Age; who, "though dead, yet speaketh." Plymouth: W. Cann, 10, Duke Street.-Those in whose memory the late beloved Dr. HAWKER is enshrined, will be glad to possess themselves of this pamphlet, containing as it does, in some eight-and-thirty pages, a review of this great and good man in his person and work. The Scattered Nation. Edited by C. SCHWARTZ, D.D. London: Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row.-An article in this month's number on 'Agriculture in Palestine" contains most interesting facts on that once mighty-favoured but now desolate land, showing to what a state Palestine could be brought; but how the Jews are alone the people. that could restore it to its former glory if they should be permitted to re-occupy it.

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The Sunday Magazine. Edited by Dr. GUTHRIE. London: A. Strahan and Co., 56, Ludgate Hill.-The tale of "The Seaboard Parish," is still continued, and "The Occupation of a Retired Life." Dr. HANNA, the Rev. WILLIAM ARNOT, and the DEAN of CANTERBURY contribute other articles of interest.

The Churchman's Monthly Penny Magazine and Guide to Christian Truth. Edited by the Rev. EDWARD ELLIS, M.A.-This excellent publication is rendered additionally valuable by the series of articles on the Irish Church, which appears each month. The practical knowledge of the Editor-who for many years laboured in the Sister Isle-gives still greater weight to his argument.

The British Workwoman Out and at Home. The British Juvenile.-These publications are becoming very popular. They contain much wholesome advice, and may serve as an antidote to much of the ruinous trash in the form of periodical literature now teeming from the press. The Ragged School Union Magazine.-This contains an important article upon what is well termed "Literary Sewage," showing the contaminating influence of popular publications upon the youthful mind of the present day.

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