Now, how cogent and persuasive is this! One so high, come down so low; one dwelling in inaccessible glory, manifested in the flesh-in the infirmity and weakness of it; to this very purpose, to repair the creation, to make up its breaches, to destroy sin, and save the sinner. What force is in this to persuade a soul that truly believes it, not to sin! For, may he think within himself, Shall I save that which Christ came to destroy? Shall I entertain and maintain that which he came to take away, and do what in me lies to frustrate the great end of his glorious and wonderful descent from heaven? Shall I join hands and associate with my lusts, and war for them which war against my soul, and against him that would save my soul?-Binning.

FAITH.

In the experience of Christians, we find they too often show more regard to the actings of faith, than to the object of faith. This is an error in experience. The Scriptures principally direct our attention to the testimony of God-the report of God by his messengers-the record which he hath given of his Son. They testify of him, in his wonderful person, his perfect character, his mediatorial offices, his saving power, his great salvation, his faithful promises, his inconceivable love, his allsufficient grace. They invite, exhort, intreat, and urge sinners to believe in him; and promise pardon, justification, holiness, peace, and eternal life to all that believe. They dwell rather on what we believe, than how we believe; the truth believed, rather than the manner of believing it. They make no promise to a 'feigned faith,' a dead faith that is, to a heart destitute of real faith; but to a believing unfeignedly, with the heart, in the Son of God. There are differences of this faith, both in degree and in effects, but the quality of the principle is the same. It is a like precious faith' in all believers-in its object, war

rant, kind, and effects. Instead, therefore, of making distinctions on the nature of faith, as to its actings, we shall be more profitably employed in considering the truth, the gospel, the glad tidings of God; and, on the evidence of Revelation, endeavour, in dependence on the holy spirit, to believe the faithful saying.' The truth, really believed, will produce its effects, corresponding to its own nature.-Rev. John Cooke.

INFLUENCE OF FAITH.

THE unspeakable influence of faith in Christ, under the duties and trials of life, appears from his counsel or command, just before he left the world. Whatever his disciples felt or feared, here is the antidote His wisdom prescribes, 'Believe also in me.' We may be sure that this is the best advice, and adapted to his design. He would not afford them comfort by prolonging his stay on earth, but directs them to the exercise of a principle that would draw off their hearts from this world, and teach them, in desire, expectation, and affection, to follow him.-Rev. John Cooke.

CHRIST'S PRESENCE WITH HIS PEOPLE.
THINK not the Lord, though gone on high,
And seated on His throne,
Bestows His blissful company
On heavenly guests alone.

Think not that ere we meet with Him
And hold communion sweet,
We must traverse Death's passage dim,
And reach Heaven's golden street.
No; but where'er His people come
In two or three for prayer,
There Jesus too shall find a home,

His word is,' I am there.'

O blessed presence! which doth bring
To earth Heaven's choicest bliss,
And opens a celestial spring

In such a world as this!

S.

CAUTION IS NECESSARY. WHEN I see the fisher bait his hook, I think on Satan's subtile malice, who sugars over his poisoned hooks with seeming pleasures. Thus Eve's apple was candied with Divine knowledge, Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.' When I see the fish fast hanged I think upon the covetous worldling, who leaps at the profit without considering the danger. Thus Achan takes the gold and the garment, and ne'er considers that his life must answer it. If Satan be such a fisher of men, it is good to look before we leap. Honey may be eaten, so that we may take heed of the sting: I will honestly enjoy my delights, but not buy them with danger.- Warwick.

GOD IS TO BE LOVED SUPREMELY.

IF God is for ever, how ill do we calculate in preferring to his love and protection, the span of happiness which his visible creation can offer; the fashion of this world, which is so soon to pass away into silence! Yea, rather, forasmuch as the things around us, which are all one day to be dissolved, are so goodly and glorious during their stage of momentary existence; 'if God so clothe the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven;' if this earth, which, ere long, must melt with fervent heat, is now so richly adorned with fruits and flowers by the lavish munificence of its Creator; if this firmament, which is one day to wither like a parched scroll, is now set thick with suns, and all nature, even in this its ruined state, is teeming with whatever can supply the wants, whatever can delight the senses of us poor exiles from paradise, what may we not anticipate from the power and mercy of the Most High, in that new heaven and new earth, whose foundations shall be laid from everlasting, and where they whom he loves, and who have lovingly served him, shall be gathered as wheat into his garner. -Bishop Heber.

KNOW THE PLAGUE OF THY HEART.

WHEN a man is once sincerely humbled under God's mighty hand with sight of sin, and sense of divine wrath, so that all his sins be as an heavy burden upon his heart, whereupon he thirsts for Christ's blood far more eagerly than the tired hart for the rivers of water, prizing it before the pleasures, wealth and glory of the whole world, and is as well willing to take upon him his sweet and easy yoke, for to please him in new obedience, as to partake of the merit of his passion for the pardon of his sin; or in a word, and shortlier thus Though thou comest freshly out of an hell of heinous sins, and hitherto hast neither thought or spoke, or done any thing but abominably; yet, if now with true remorse thou groanest under them all, as an heavy burden, and longest sincerely for the Lord Jesus, and newness of life, thou art bound, ipso facto, as they say, immediately after that act, and unfeigned resolution of thy soul to take Christ himself, and all the promises of life as thine own for ever. All delays, demurs, exceptions, pretexts, standing out, scruples to the contrary, are dishonourable to God's mercies, disparagement to the promises, and derogatory to the truth and tender-heartedness of Jesus Christ, I take the ground for what I say, from that sweet invitation, Matt. ii. 28. As soon as we are poor in spirit, we are presently blessed. Matt. v. 3.-Bolton.

THIS is not a transient supply. The stream from Horeb ran in the wilderness constantly. Neither a burning sun nor a thirsty soil could dry it up, nor distance nor time lessen it. During eight and thirty years, it followed Israel in all their wanderings. At Kadesh, indeed, it failed,— why, we know not, but the miracle was again renewed, and the people still 'drank of the rock that followed them,' till they entered Canaan. Thus constant in its communication is the grace of Christ. It is lasting, as it is abundant. It took its rise in the eternal ages that are gone; it entered the world as soon as sin had made a way for it; it has ever since been flowing on like a mighty river, widening and deepening as it goes, and it will flow on as long as there is a mourner to be comforted, or a sinner to be cleansed. No draught can exhaust, nor cold arrest it. And in eternity the stream of grace shall not be lost; it will be seen in heaven a pure river of life, 'making glad the city of our God,' a sea of salvation, an ocean of blessedness. Rev. C. Bradley.

THE LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST.

:

HEREIN is love, here is the highest expression of God's love to the creature, not only that ever was, but that ever can be made: for, in love only God acteth to the uttermost;-whatever his power hath done, it can do no more: but for his love, it can go no higher he hath no greater thing to give than his Christ. It is true, in giving us a being, and that in the noblest rank and order of creatures on earth,-herein was love; in feeding us all our life long, by his assiduous tender providence,-herein is love; in protecting us under his wings from innumerable dangers and mischiefs

-herein is love, much love; and yet set all this by his redeeming love in Christ, and it seems nothing. When we have said all, herein is the love of God, that he sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. This was free love to undeserving, to ill-deserving sinners. Preventing love; not that we loved him, but that he loved us. Just as an image in the glass that is imprinted there by the face looking into it, the image does not look back upon the face, except the face look forward upon the image, and in that, the image does seem to see the face, it is nothing else but that the face does see the image. O! the inexpressible glory of the love of God in Christ. Rev. J. Flavel.

DEATH IS GREAT GAIN.

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'To die is gain ;' but it is gain to them only to whom it has been Christ to live; and by how much the greater salvation has been tendered, and by how much the easier the terms have been on which it was tendered, so much the blacker confusion must our face one day gather; if our obstinacy in sin has abused the long suffering of the Lord, and we have presumed on the merits of his blood to disgrace the name of his religion! Those are ill taught in the language of Scripture who suppose that salvation is not offered to us, but forced on us: who forget that they are the children of God, who only are heirs with Christ of a happy immortality; and that the promise

is not that we shall be made the sons of God, but that power shall be given us' to become so.-Heber.

DEATH A SLEEP.

So ample and sufficient are the preparatory measures which Chris. has taken for the final extinction of death, that he speaks of it in terms of comparative disparagement and indifference. So effectually is it disarmed and mutilated, and so completely at the disposal of Christ, that he speaks of it already as if it were notWhosoever believeth in me, shall never die. If a man keep my sayings, he shall never taste of death-he shall never see death.' In accordance with these representations, he has given to the state of death the soft and tranquillizing name of sleep. This use of the term, indeed, was not unknown to Jewish saints; but, as applied by them to death, it denoted chiefly the silence, darkness, and inactivity of the grave. The Greeks, too, had long been accustomed to speak of death in the softest terms: the dead they often spoke of as the departed-the worn out; and called their burial grounds dormitories,' or sleeping places. But this arose partly from the

dislike they felt to allude to a gloomy and unwelcome, subject, and partly from a wish to propitiate the deceased, of whom they stood in considerable dread. How superior the sense in which Jesus employed the term sleep! They used it as a figure, but he turned it into a reality; they uttered it from fear, but he made it the language of hope and of faith. He used it with the highest authority, for he was about to awaken one of the sleepers from his sleep; and however protracted the slumbers of his people may be, he knew that they are all finally to hear his voice, and to come forth.-Harris.

THE BLESSED IN HEAVEN.

TEMPTATION and sin have no place in those happy regions. These are the evils that belong to earth and hell; but within that tempteth, nothing that defileth. It is the gates of heaven nothing must enter the mixture of sinful thoughts and idle words, sinful actions and irregular affections, that makes our state of holiness so We groan within imperfect here below. ourselves, being burdened; we would be rid of these criminal weaknesses, these guilty attendants of our lives; but the spirits above are under a sweet necessity of being for ever holy; their natures have put on perfection; the image of God is so far completed in them, that nothing contrary to the divine nature remains in all fairest beauties of his holiness, and they their frame; for they see God in all the adore and love. They behold him without a veil, and are changed into the same image from glory to glory.—Rev. Dr. Watts.

WE have endeavoured, in a former paper, to show that science may be rendered subservient to the interests of religion. It may enlarge our conceptions of God; it may tend to deepen our devotion. We believe that God has given us a revelation of himself in his works; and that the study of these works, therefore, if rightly conducted, must be beneficial to his people. The writer of this Psalm seems to have found it an employment congenial to his taste, to survey the works of God, and to find in them matter of praise to their Almighty Maker. We too may profitably follow his example. Having first learned to say, 'Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits; who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction.' Having first learned to say this, we may not improperly follow it by this hymn-Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God thou art very great; thou art clothed with honour and majesty; who coverest thyself with light as with a garment; who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain.'

It is greatly to be regretted, however, that science and religion have been too often divorced. They have looked askance upon each other. Lovers of the Bible have sometimes regarded scientific men as almost necessarily irreligious or infidel-and the latter have in their turn regarded the former as ignorant and superstitious. And there has been but too much reason for this. Religious men, on the one hand, have frequently clung to mistaken interpretations of the Scriptures in spite of the clearest proof of their error; while scientific men have often virtually excluded God from the works of his hands. Many of our most popular books on science, have been written on the principle of excluding all expression of religious sentiment, and all statement of religious truth. How monstrous, that amid the most amazing evidences of the Divine power, wisdom, and goodness men should pass them by in silence, and scarcely deign to bestow upon the great Architect of the universe one passing thought. The human artist is not then forgotten, when we discourse of the productions of his genius, but man does not like to retain God in his knowledge.

It has often been thought that there is in scientific study a tendency towards infidelity; and the physical sciences have No. III.-NEW SERIES.

been looked upon as a field of inquiry, peculiarly dangerous. Experience has been appealed to, and it is affirmed that the vast majority of those who have ardently engaged in these studies have either become openly infidel, or have displayed a spirit directly the reverse of that humility of mind, and child-like confidence in God, which the Scripture would have us to cherish. We are afraid that the statement is but too true. There have indeed been bright and notable exceptions; but still there has been too much ground for the assertion. We apprehend that no little danger to the Christianity of the present day arises from this source; it becomes us therefore to be alive to the danger, and to be prepared to meet it.

Those who obtain their knowledge of science at second hand, and not from their own researches into the world around (and we suppose that the majority of our readers are of this class), are exposed to the danger of receiving their information through impure channels. Of these there are not a few in existence. Theories virtually, though perhaps not avowedly infidel, are broached as if they were scientific certainties these from their beauty, or from the eloquence with which they are set forth often gain an influence over the mind of the unwary reader, before he perceives their dangerous tendency. Among well informed minds and sincere inquirers after truth, these books will do comparatively little harm; those who are most exposed to injury are the half-intelligent, and those to whom an idea commends itself, not because of its truth, but because of its novelty, or of its beauty.

Those books which either avowedly or tacitly exclude all reference to religion are in reality more dangerous than those which are directly irreligious. The danger arises from the fact that it is but partial truth which is presented to the mind. Insensibly the reader is led to regard it as the whole truth, while the more important truth for him is forgotten. Let a man with a taste for science give himself to a course of such reading, and, unless a vigorous effort of mind be made to the contrary, the result will be, that nature's laws will usurp in his mind, the place of nature's Lawgiver; the living God will be forgotten, and in his place will be substituted a mere principle of order, a simple prime mover of the universe. It is a dangerous thing for a man to be conversant with the works of God, and with those evidences of his wisdom and goodness VOL. I.

which he has so plentifully given, and yet to keep the remembrance of Him banished from the mind, and to cherish towards Him no emotions of love. There are some writers on science who apparently avoid the error of excluding God from their works, but very frequently they fall into a sickly sentimentalism which can be productive of no other result than that of deceiving both themselves and their readers. What we would have is science baptized with the spirit of the Bible-the universe must be surveyed from a Christian point of view. Above all, we must remember that the God of nature is the living God, the God with whom we have to do, and we must beware of every thing which may have a tendency to make us forget those peculiar relations in which we ourselves stand to him.

As it is possible for a man to read the Word of God, and to rise from its perusal with a blinded mind and a hardened heart, so also is it possible to study the works of God with a like result! If a man comes to nature merely for intellectual gratification, and when he finds God in it, glorifies Him not as God and is not thankful, what more probable than that he should become 'vain in his imaginations,' and that his 'foolish heart be darkened;' and because he does not like to retain God in his knowledge,' that therefore God should give him up to strong delusion to believe a lie.' But if a man come in the spirit of Christianity, that man shall be blessed in his study of God's works; the beasts of the earth shall teach him, the rocks beneath his tread shall enrich him with their treasures, and the stars of heaven shall light his pathway to the skies. A, H., C.

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ROME AND MAYNOOTH. BABYLON is foredoomed. Rome, like its prototype, must perish, utterly perish. Rome, the armed Pallas, as she delighted to represent herself, has passed away; but the Eternal City, as she was wont to style herself, remains; for out of her grave has issued a vampire apparition-the painted sorceress. The lance of war has fallen from her hands, and its place is supplied, as in the Papal device, by the cup of philters, with which she enchants and intoxicates the nations. But though altered in form and in resources, she still pursues the plan of universal dominion; in her youth subduing, and in her age deceiving the whole habitable world, with an army of priests as strictly disciplined, and still more numerous, than her ancient all-conquering legions. But with all her resources, all her deep designs, Rome is

foredoomed, and her doom is near at hand. The foreshadows of that doom are not wanting. Sin is, in part, its own executioner. Rome is sentenced to utter desolation, and that very desolation she is herself commencing in all the realms of her sway; but above all in the precincts of her chief seat, in the increasing solitude of the Campagna, and amid the wide-wasting pestilence of the Maremma.

Ty

It is true that Rome is apparently recovering her dominion; and that even the nations that seemed to hate her, and were ready to make her desolate, have returned, in some measure, to their spiritual allegiance, and are banded together to maintain the persecuting power. This was what might be expected, both according_to reason and according to Scripture. ranny has no such firm support as superstition, and a natural death was too mild a dissolution for her who has encrimsoned herself, in all ages, with the blood of the saints. The destruction of Rome was to be sudden, therefore Rome must be revived-the deceiver and the willingly deceived were to perish together, therefore the union between the great corruptress and her too willing vassals was for a time to be restored. Some secret attraction and sympathetic influence is drawing all who partake of Rome's corruptions to renew the alliance with the mother of corruptions, in order that they may partake with her in one common and inevitable doom.

There is one cheering distinction for Britain, she has no recognised ambassador at Rome. Many may be the underhand transactions, but they do not meet the light of day, nor are they brought under the notice of the nation. The inconveniences of having no ambassador are great; and there is meanness, as well as inconvenience, in having some secret Papist underling, with his understanding blinded to all the monstrosities of the Papacy, and his conscience corroded by all the corruptions of Romish_casuistry, to be the sole agent between the empire of Britain and the dark dominion of the false prophet of the Revelations. We have no ambassador in the Papal city-this marks the perpetual state of war, unbroken even by a hollow truce. Away, then, with all underhand transactions with a declared enemy; and let Britain stand forth, in all respects, as the opponent of tyranny and superstition and the head throughout the world of civil and religious liberty.

Thus nobly distinguished among the nations by having no representative at the Papal Court, we are yet bound, by one fatal link, to the city of destruction-the Grant to the College of Maynooth. The sums that are lavished in educating a