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mired in its transforming, elevating, and ennobling influences. It softened as. perities; conciliated antagonism; elevated manhood; combined and united into one the families of man. Wondrous was the good it had done, and of which it was the representative and embodiment. What had it done for our own country? Our commerce had negotiated with every land; our literature was read in every land; our philosophy was kindly affectioned to every land; and our language would soon be spoken in every land. Mighty was the action from ourselves, and as mighty the reaction upon ourselves. There might be infidels present, who, thought they could tell the result of all this, that the religion of the Bible would wane before the march of civilization. But he contended, instead of civilization being the adversary of the Scriptures, it was their sympathizing, and thankful friend. Where would civilization have been, but for Christianity? The more perfectly civilization was brought out, the more perfectly was Christianity embodied. The more accurate philosophy became, the preeiser the utterances of Holy Writ. The wider our philanthropy, the more perfectly did it embody the love and pity written in every page, and involved in every sentence of the Scriptures. Civilization was the child and creation of Christianity. Religion had an upward, a homeward course; it came from God, and to God, by and by, it would go back; for the word of the Lord abode for

ever.

5. The Gospel was in no danger from the ulterior necessities of humanity.-There might be a species of human necessity which had never yet come to light in our acquaintance with men. and which, perhaps, would never come to light except in some further stage or care. The powers of the human soul were wonderful. Give it means, opportunity, and appliances, the mind would aspire to exercise deeper emotion, evince mightier" s of intellect, bestow intenser sympathy, and manifest more glowing apprehension of the immortal. What could man venture-what suffer-what devise-what accomplish! Who should say tet the means, appliances, and opportunities might not, some day, be supplied to man, and these aspirations be brought into intenser exercise? Well, was the Gospel in danger from this? No. We might have philosophy sublimated; but the Gospel would be transcendantly superior. Fo far from being inadequate to the requisitions of men, it would supply them all. It would not be effete, but accompanied with living power. So far from being an exploded and exhausted fountain, an infirm and invalid messenger, it would be proclaiming salvation through the blood of the Lamb, and declaring to man a higher salvation, adequate to all necessities and requirements. Be the position of humanity what it might, there would be the command, Take the heights of Christ's love, and scale them; its depths, and fathom them; its lengths, and reach them; its breadths, and grasp them; aud the place where the wise, the scribe, and disputer told us we should bury the Gospel, would be where it would reiterate its own interrogation, 'Where was the scribe, where the wise, where the disputer of this world?' He prayed, if any present had been disputers, they might be there to say,Here we are to testify to the Gospel of Christ;' that it had been the power of God, despite their infidelity, to their salvation.

In conclusion, what duty was to be founded on this permanency of the Word of God? It could not be trusted too implicitly, or recommended too heartily. Courage was the Christian's duty; not despondency and inaction. He would ask them to do that duty well. Let our neighbours know we hold the Gospel in admiration, that we venerate and glory in it, and see in ourselves living proofs of its truth. To those who have not yet believed the Gospel, he would affirm that they were all sinners, and was ready to make good his affirmatition by Scripture. Every sinner in the metropolis might be saved, by the blood of Christ. If the Word of God was slighted, they were the children of wrath; but if read practically, believingly, experimentally, they would become heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ.-The preacher then forcibly applied the ubject to the conscience, and concluded by commending all to the care of God.

ВЕТА.

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AN ADVOCATE OF A GIN-MAINE LAW IN 1756.

ABOUT a century ago, London was full of violence and crime, the result intemperance. In those days of dim street lamps, slow coaches, bad roads, and ineffective police arrangements, the most flagrant violations of the law were of almost nightly occurrence. The country people were afraid to appear within the precincts of the great metropolis, on account of 'the malefactors,' and a country gentleman, whom they had inspired with terror, naïvely suggested, in a number of the Gentleman's Magazine' for 1751, that the convicted should, for his consolation, be thrown into Eldon Hole, in the Peak! The most daring depredations were committed by bands of ruffians, who invested the streets. The vilest characters became the heroes of the day, from the morbid interest which was taken in their fate. There was no kind of villany which did not flourish in rank luxuriance. On the Sunday after the eondemnation to death of a notorious culprit, no fewer than three thousand persons visited him in his cell. Prints of them were taken, and memoirs of their lives and deaths were circulated every where. The greatest generals of the day had no chance with them.

This fearful state of things drew the attention of some of the magistrates of the period to a cure. Among others, Justice Fielding, who had had extensive experience at Bow-street, and who was ably interested in the repression of such disorders, employed his pr in the composition of a treatise on the criminal disorders of his ach suggestions for their cure. was proband in January, 1751, and entitled, 'An Inquiry into Casts of the late Increase of Robbers, &c.; with some Proposals for Remedying the Growing Evil.' He gives the following startling account of the evils which threatened society: :

'What, indeed, may not the public apprehend, when they are informed as an unquestionable fact, that there is at this time a great gang of rogues, whose number falls little short of a hundred, who are incorporated in one body, have officers and a treasury, and have reduced theft and robbery into a regular system. There are of this society men who appear in all disguises, and some in most companies. Nor are they better versed in every act of cheating, thieving, and robbery, than they are armed with every method of evading the law, if they should even be discovered, and an attempt made to bring them to justice. Here, if they fail in rescuing the prisoner, or (which seldom happens) in bribing or deterring the prosecutor, they have for their last resource some rotten members of the law to forge a defence for them, and a great number of false witnesses ready to support it.'

The love of drink, of pleasure, and of extravagance are mentioned by Fielding as the most ordinary causes which drew men into the gulf of crime. He utters an emphatic and solemn denunciation against gin-drinking which he describes as a new kind of drunkenness, unknown to our ancestors,' and indicates that the revenue which the government derived from the sale of gin was one of the most cogent reasons why they did not speedily and effectually repress the fearful crimes that were prevailing on

all hands.

'The drunkenness I here intend is that acquired by the strongest intoxicating liquors, and particularly of that poison called gin, which, I have reason to think,

is the principal sustenance, (if it may be so called,) of more than one hundred thousand people in this metropolis. Many of these wretches there are who swallow pints of this poison within the twenty-four hours, the dreadful effects of which I have the misfortune every day to see, and to smell too. But I have no need to insist on my own credit, or that of my informants, the great revenue arising from the tax on this liquor (the consumption of which is almost wholly confined to the lower order of the people) will prove the quantity consumed better than any other evidence.'

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Nor did he stop here. With great sagacity and penetration, he indicated the appropriate remedy. He compares the first inventor of this diabolical liquor to the poisoner of a fountain whence a large city was to derive its waters.' It is no wonder that a magistrate who came so much in contact with the fearful fruits of intemperance, should prescribe a powerful and decided remedy. So far as spirits are concerned, Fielding proposed what is now designated a Maine Liquor Law, an expedient which would naturally suggest itself to one who felt anxious for the elevation of the people.

'Suppose all spirituous liquors were, together with other poison, to be locked up in the chemists' or apothecaries' shops, thence never to be drawn till some excellent physician calls them forth for the cure of nervous distempers; or suppose the price was to be raised so high, by a severe impost, that gin would be placed entirely beyond the reach of the vulgar. Some little care, on this head is surely necessary; for hough the increase of thieves and the destruction of morality; though the loss of a labourers, our sailors, and our soldiers, should not be sufficient reasons, there is one which seems to be unanswerable, and that is, the loss of gin-drinkers since, should the drinking of this portion be continued in its present height during the next twenty years, there will by that time, be very few of the common people left to drink it.'

J. H. R.

AN INFIDEL HOAX.

Ir infidelity is unfaithfulness to truth, the term 'infidel' was never more properly applied than to a hoax, as devoid of manly feeling as it is of truth. The morality that secularism teaches, we do not stop here to criticise; but the morality which some secularists practise is bad enough. They say they are the creatures of circumstances, and they seem to make themselves the creatures of the lowest and vilest circumstances possible. Judging from their conduct, they must be anxious for a place on the pillory of shame, and determined to outstrip all their past doings in heartless mischievousness. If they dare not tar and feather' a deserter from their ranks, they make him the victim of persecution more cruel and brutal, and give us a specimen of what they would do if they were a majority.

The communication which we addressed to the representatives of Mr. W. H. Johnson has been answered by that gentleman himself! To-day (the 18th) we have from his own pen the exposure of the disgraceful 'practical joke' of which he has been made the victim. The mourning card, with the deep-bordered envelope received on Monday morning have turned out a hoax and the number of enquiry letters which Mr. Johnson received along with ours, show to what an extent the trick has been perpetrated. Either from sheer love of mischief, or from malice, some of the Blackburn

THE BIBLE DEFENDER.

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secularists have discovered this cruel mode of annoyance to one who had earnestly laboured to give consistency and strength to the secular cause in Yorkshire. The height and front of his offending is that he has positively refused any longer to co-operate with them as a party. When asked for the meaning of their conduct, they answered that as he was 'dead' to the 'movement,' it was the same as turning Christian to them. This is the only 'logic' a deeply-injured man can get from the disciples of the 'philosophy of the people.' Mr. Johnson wishes us to take no notice of the matter, but we have felt bound to say this much, having referred to the subject in our last, never for a moment dreaming that there were any men so lost to all right feeling as to perpetrate such a 'joke.' We are sorry to think worse of the spirit of some of the secularists than we have hitherto done, and feel that some exposure of their conduct is due to our readers. Mr. Johnson may yet see it his duty to publish in our pages the entire facts of the case, or to give us some general history of the atheistic movement. If he does, we shall be thankful, as our pages are ever open to all honest inquirers.

THE EDINBURGH REVIEW

CROMWELL.

J. H. R.

THE EDINBURGH REVIEW Car tism, princip, and heroism, in opposition to great names and aut. tles, if not, indeed, to itself in ge days. In the number for this month, just published, we have a st and splendid tribute to the memory of Oliver Cromwell; and the Protector stands out in even a nobler and more homogeneal attitude, than he had done under the sympathizing chisel of Thomas Carlyle. Our readers will thank us for introducing to them so chaste and living a piece of literary sculpture. Referring to the three-fold view taken of Cromwell, viz., as false and corrupt in his own consciousness, as untrue to others while rectitude struggled for supremacy within, and as a real, noble hero: the latter, the only view harmonious with fact, is thus put:

The third stands apart from both of these, and may be taken as the expression of certain absolute results, to which a study of the entire of Cromwell's letters and speeches, brought into succinct arrangement and connexion, has been able to bring an earnest inquirer. We may thus describe them. That in the harsh untuneable voice which rose in protest against popery in the third parliament, was heard at once the complete type and the noblest development of what was meant by the Puritan rebellion. That there then broke forth the utterance of a true man, of a consistency of character perfect to a heroic degree, and whose figure has hitherto been completely distorted by the mists of time and prepossession, through which we have looked at it into the past. That THIS Cromwell was no hypocrite, or actor of plays, had no vanity or pride in the prodigious intellect he possessed, was no theorist in politics or government, was no victim of ambition, was no seeker of a sovereign or temporal power. That he was a man whose every thought was with the Eternal, -a man of a great, robust, massive mind, and of an honest, stout, English heart; subject to melancholy for the most part, because of the deep yearnings of his soul for a sense of divine forgiveness, but inflexible and resolute always, because in all things governed by the supreme law. That in him was seen a man whom no fear but of the divine anger could distract; whom no hononr

in man's bestowal could seduce or betray; who knew the duty of the hour to be ever imperative, and who sought only to do the work, whatever it might be, whereunto he believed God to have called him. That here was one of those rare souls which could lay upon itself the lowliest and the highest functions alike, and find itself, in them all, self-contained and sufficient, the dutiful, gentle son, the quiet country gentleman, the sportive tender husband, the fond father, the active soldier, the daring political leader, the powerful sovereign,-under each aspect still steady and unmoved to the transient outward appearances of this world, still wrestling and trampling forward to the sublime hopes of another, and passing through every instant of its term of life as through a Marston Moor, a Worcester, à Dunbar. That such a man could not have consented to take part in public affairs under any compulsion less strong than that of conscience. That his business in them was to serve the Lord, and to bring his country under subjection to God's laws. That if the statesmen of the republic who had laboured and fought with him could not also see their way to that prompt sanctification of their country, he did well to strike them from his path, and unrelentingly denounce or imprison them. That he felt, unless his purpose were so carried out unflinchingly, a curse would be upon him; that no act necessitated by it could be otherwise than just and noble; and that there could be no treason against royalty or liberty, unless it were also tun on against God. That, finally, as he had lived he died, in the conviction that human laws were nothing unless brought into agreement with divine laws, and that the temporal must also mean the spiritual government of man.

The admirable passage, in which an earnest and strong religious senti ment is shown to have interpenetrated his whole life, our space precludes us from quoting: the entire essay, for its justice, its candour, its power, and its spirit, deserves the study of all men, and especially of those who aspire at guiding the helm of state.

SOME LIGHT ON THE MYSTERY.

J. H. R.

I was already in the library, writing, when Harrington came in to breakfast. 'You seem busy early,' said he. I told him I was merely endeavouring to manifest my love for his future children.

'You know,' said I, 'what Isocrates says, that it is right that children, as they inherit the other possessions, should also inherit the friendships of their fathers.'

'My children!' said he, very gravely; 'I shall never have any,'

'Oh, yes, you will, and then these sullen vapours of doubt will roll off before the sunlight of domestic happiness. It will allure you to love Him who has given you so much to love. Yes,' said I, gaily, 'I shall visit you one day in happier moods; when you will wonder how you could have indulged all your present thoughts of God and the universe. As you gaze into the face of innocent childhood, which shows you what faith in God is by trust in you, you will say, 'Heaven shield the boy from being what his father has been!'-you will feel that such thoughts as yours will not do, as the world says; and we shall all go together, you with your wife on your arm, to church there in the valley, in the bright sun and deep quiet of a Sabbath morning, and amidst the music of the Sabbath bells and as the tranquil scene steals into your very soul, you will say, 'No; scepticism was not made for man.'

I shall

It is a pleasant romance,' he replied, gloomily,' and nothing more. never love, and shall therefore never wed; though, I suppose, that does not logically follow. However, it does with me: and, in consequence, I presume

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