priests of all religions. Hence religions naturally tend to increase in complication, in gloom, and in misery, as the history of them all proves. From this cause, steadily acting, arose the multitude of the Heathen Gods, the horrid rites of Moloch, of Tyre, and of the Druids-the thousand Gods of the Hindoos, and the thousand Saints of the Romish Church. The same cause is never dormant. It may be traced in the acts of the Missionaries in France at the present moment, and in Britain in the conversion of our Sundays, our fifty-two festivals, from days of joy to days of sadness and humiliation. After a time it generally becomes so bad that it is no longer endurable. A new fanaticism arises. A war ensues, and fanaticism the second beats fanaticism the first. Thus it was with our Reformation. The fanatics of the Long Parliament beat the fanatics of the Pope, and if a concurrence of very extraordinary circumstances had not come together, fanaticism the second would have been worse than fanaticism the first. By a piece of unexpected good fortune, it became the interest of the priests to take a middle course betwixt the two follies, and a system arose which, in practical utility, was the best that ever existed. But it is daily giving way to the universal law of change. It is the first law of nature, that nothing should stand still-should be permanent. That which was good two hundred years ago, does not suit the present improved state of the human mind.

At the time of our Reformation the concurrence of extraordinary circumstances to which I have just alluded, produced an extraordinary event-one solitary event, unexampled in the history of the world-an order of priesthood friendly to liberty, and therefore not the curse of its country. Nothing of this kind ever happened before. I except not even the priesthood of the Jews. According to their histories, all the miseries of their state arose from the corruption of their religion by the priests, who seduced the people into idolatry. It began in the manufacture of a golden calf by Aaron, and ended in the performance of that act, by the PRIEST Caiaphas, of which the more virtuous HEATHEN, Pilate, washed his hands.*

* Americans, fellow-countrymen, look to the last speech of your great JEFFERSON when he resigned his presidential chair. Take out of it the sentence respecting the priests, and let it be emblazoned in letters of gold upon the walls of your Senate House.

Of all the evils which escaped from Pandora's box, the institution of priesthoods was the worst. Priests have been the curse of the world. And if we admit the merits of many of those of our own time to be as pre-eminent above those of all others, as the esprit du corps of the most selfcontented individual of the order may incite him to consider them, great as I am willing to allow the merits of many individuals to be, I will not allow that they form exceptions strong enough to destroy the general nature of the rule.. Look at China, the festival of Juggernaut, the Crusades, the massacres of St. Bartholomew, of the Mexicans, and of the Peruvians, the fires of the Inquisition, of Mary, Cranmer, Calvin, and of the Druids; look at Ireland, look at Spain; in short, look every where, and you will see the priests reeking with gore. They have converted, and are converting, populous and happy nations into deserts, and have made our beautiful world into a slaughter-house drenched with blood and tears!

THE SEVENTH PLAGUE OF EGYPT. THE TEMPEST.

Exodus ix. 22, &c.

[From Mr. Ackermann's "Forget Me Not, for 1828."]

'Twas morn-the rising splendour roll'd
On marble towers and roofs of gold;

Hall, court, and gallery below,

Were crowded with a living flow;
Egyptian, Arab, Nubian there,
The bearers of the bow and spear;
The hoary priest, the Chaldee sage,
The slave, the gemm'd and glittering page-
Helm, turban, and tiara, shone

A dazzling ring round Pharaoh's throne.

There came a man-the human tide
Shrank backward from his stately stride:
His cheek with storm and time was tann'd;
A shepherd's staff was in his hand;

A shudder of instinctive fear

Told the dark king what step was near.
On through the host the stranger came,
It parted round his form like flame.

He stoop'd not at the footstool stone,
He clasp'd not sandal, kiss'd not throne;
Erect he stood amid the ring,

His only words-"Be just, O king!"
On Pharaoh's cheek the blood flush'd high,
A fire was in his sullen eye;

Yet on the Chief of Israel

No arrow of his thousands fell:
All mute and moveless as the grave,

Stood chill'd the satrap and the slave.

"Thou'rt come," at length the monarch spoke;
Haughty and high the words outbroke:
"Is Israel weary of its lair,

The forehead peel'd, the shoulder bare ?
Take back the answer to your band:
Go, reap the wind; go, plough the sand;
Go, vilest of the living vile,
To build the never-ending pile,
Till, darkest of the nameless dead,
The vulture on their flesh is fed.
What better asks the howling slave
Than the base life our bounty gave?"
Shouted in pride the turban'd peers,
Upclash'd to heaven the golden spears.
King! thou and thine are doom'd!-Behold,"
The prophet spoke.-The thunder roll'd;
Along the pathway of the sun

Sail'd vapoury mountains, wild and dun.
"Yet there is time," the prophet said-
He rais'd his staff-the storm was stay'd.

'King! be the word of freedom given : What art thou, man, to war with Heaven?"

There came no word. The thunder broke!
Like a huge city's final smoke,

Thick, lurid, stifling, mix'd with flame,
Through court and hall the vapours came.
Loose as the stubble in the field,

Wide flew the men of spear and shield;
Scatter'd like foam along the wave,
Flew the proud pageant, prince and slave:
Or, in the chains of terror bound,

Lay, corpse-like, on the smouldering ground.
Speak, king!-the wrath is but begun.-
Still dumb?-then, Heaven, thy will be done."

Echoed from earth a hollow roar,
Like Ocean on the midnight shore';
A sheet of lightning o'er them wheel'd,
The solid ground beneath them reel'd;
In dust sank roof and battlement;
Like webs the giant walls were rent
Red, broad, before his startled gaze,
The monarch saw his Egypt blaze.

Still swell'd the plague the flame grew pale;
Burst from the clouds the charge of hail;
With arrowy keenness, iron weight,
Down pour'd the ministers of fate;
Till man and cattle, crush'd, congeal'd,
Cover'd with death the boundless field.
Still swell'd the plague-uprose the blast,
The avenger, fit to be the last;
On ocean, river, forest, vale,
Thunder'd at once the mighty gale.
Before the whirlwind flew the tree,
Beneath the whirlwind roar'd the sea;
A thousand ships were on the wave-
Where are they?-ask that foaming grave!
Down go the hope, the pride of years,
Down go the myriad mariners;
The riches of Earth's richest zone,
Gone! like a flash of lightning, gone!
And, lo! that first fierce triumph o'er,
Swells Ocean on the shrinking shore;
Still onward, onward, dark and wide,
Engulfs the land the furious tide,
Then bow'd thy spirit, stubborn king,
Thou serpent, reft of fang and sting;
Humbled, before the prophet's knee,
He groan'd, "Be injur'd Israel free."
To heaven the sage upraised the wand;
Back roll'd the deluge from the land;
Back to its caverns sank the gale;
Fled from the noon the vapours pale;
Broad burn'd again the joyous sun:
The hour of wrath and death was done.

THOUGHTS ON PASSAGES OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

January 2, 1828.

- if God condescends to speak to us mortals, it is our duty to attend to what he says; and if, in any writing, he has revealed his will to us, it is our duty carefully to read that writing, and do our ut most rightly to understand it. Principal Campbell.

Matt. iii. 15; ousness" i. e. to observe every positive institution, as well as to obey every moral precept." By this act, Jesus Christ distinctly acknowledged the divine commission, and ratified the characteristic ordinance, of his forerunner.

<? thus it becometh us to fulfil all righte

The claims of Baptism are those of a positive institution. Now a positive institution is a practice resting on the will and authority of Him who appoints it; a duty" of which the reason is not so plain as the command." * Nor is it derogatory from the honour of the Gospel, but the reverse, that its two positive institutions stand not forth quite so prominently and conspicuously as its rule of life, its promises of pardon and immortality, and the death, resurrection, and exaltation of its founder. Those institutions demand, nevertheless, our serious regard. "It is a part of the law of nature," says Mr. Locke,† "to obey every positive law of God, when he shall please to make any such addition to the law of nature," We are "to observe all things, whatsoever" our Great Master has enjoined.‡

1. Cor. i. 17: "Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel."

If we consult the Christian Scriptures, we shall find that notices and recognitions of baptism are far more numerous than many persons imagine. Even the passages, and they are not a few, where the terms baptism, baptize, baptized, occur in a figurative sense, attest the existence of the literal rite for who has ever found such allusive and metaphorical expressions become current, when they were not taken from acknowledged facts and practices? We must further admit that our Lord's assistants were in the habit of administering baptism to their successive converts. Jesus Christ, it is

:

* Paley, M. Phil., &c., II.99 (ed. 10).

+ Reasonableness of Christianity, (1810,) p. 16.

Matt. xxviii. 19, 20. Baptism would seem to be one of the "things" which the apostles were both to teach and practise.