return to France in 1853, when he was astonished to find so invaluable an article still uncultivated, and not in all the markets of France. A friend of mine, M. Palliet, being acquainted with M. Mauteprey, and hearing him describe its great merit, set to work in good earnest, and propagated between fifty thousand and sixty thousand the first year, and is now preparing to cultivate it in all the departments of France. Some of the roots were sent last June to the great Horticultural Exhibition in Paris, and gained for the M. Palliet the award for the introduction of the most useful plant, besides which, the Ministre Agriculture presented him (M. Palliet) with three thousand francs. Some of the roots, weighing two pounds and a half a-piece, were presented to the Emperor and Court, and pronounced excellent. M. Palliet afterwards received an order for forty thousand to be distributed through France. The cultivation of the Dioscoria is simple -not requiring so much labour as the potato. It will do well in any soil, but light or sandy is preferred, as they will be more mealy than when raised in heavy-bottomed lands. The roots are cut two inches long, and planted ten or twelve inches apart, in rows, and kept clean of weeds until ready to be dug, which will be in October and November. If left in the ground two years, it will go on increasing, and improving in quality. If kept dry, they will keep eight or ten months out of the ground; which will be a great advantage, especially for shipping purposes.-N. Y. Ev. Post. forter had been sent to impart. Sometimes, they exhort them to imitate the example of their crucified Saviour, and to take up their cross and follow Him. Sometimes, they represent suffering to be only a return of love on their part to the good and gracious Being, who had so lately commended His love towards them in sending His Son to die for their sins. Sometimes, they inform them of their being pre-ordained to suffer by a decree of the Supreme Ruler, who had important ends to serve by their suffering. Sometimes, they describe to them the graces which suffering, when improved, has a direct tendency to produce. short, they endeavour to bring forward every argument and every motive, which it was possible for them to draw, either from natural or revealed religion, in order to reconcile the minds of the new.converts to the pain and shame of persecution, which was too certain to prove the lot of all who dared, in those unhappy times, to confess publicly that 'Jesus was the Christ.' In The severe sufferings so heroically endured by the primitive believers, are often and justly adduced as a part of the general evidence in support of the Christian revelation; and indeed it is impossible for any person, who dispassionately examines it, to doubt for a moment of its weight aud importance. When any number of men believe so firmly in the truth of any doctrine, or system of doctrines, as to allow themselves to be deprived of every worldly advantage, and even of life itself, rather than renounce this belief, it is probable to a certain degree, from this single considera THE SUFFERINGS OF THE FIRST tion alone, that their faith is built on a CHRISTIANS, solid foundation. They may, indeed, have failed in appreciating the evidence that An Argument for the Truth of their Religion. | first induced them to believe; and if such PART I. THE apostles and first founders of the Christian Church, in publishing the new faith which they had ventured to embrace, were exposed to a great variety of severe and painful sufferings. The authority that empowered them to work miracles was not exerted to prevent, or even, in most cases, to alleviate them. In this respect, they were placed on precisely the same footing with their divine Master, who was 'made perfect through suffering,' and who seldom or never employed His omnipotent power in removing it from Himself. The apostles and evangelists, in all their writings, speak of suffering as a necessary part of their Christian warfare, and prepare their fellow-disciples for enduring it, by pressing upon their attention many interesting topics of powerful consolation. Sometimes, they discourse to them on the abundant supplies of grace, which the Blessed Com a charge can be fairly substantiated against them, their sufferings, however numerous or painful they may be, and with whatever firmness or perseverance they may be borne, cannot be received as satisfactory proof, that this previous and necessary work has been properly performed. But, at the same time, they do afford very unexceptionable evidence, that their faith is sincere, and that they have not embraced or professed opinions without being impressed with a deep sense of their truth and beneficial tendency. The higher, too, we suppose the degree of suffering to which they submit, and the greater the fortitude they display in enduring it, so much the stronger do we make the presumption in favour of their system of faith. If we study with any attention the lives of the early converts to Christianity, we cannot fail to be convinced, that there never was so numerous and so respectable a body of men, who were so long, so con laborious and dangerous a work for the sake of deceiving mankind, is to suppose them to have suffered without that consciousness of personal sincerity, without that trust in the Divine favour, and without that dependence on the Divine grace, which were alone able to support, and which, they solemnly declared, did alone support them during the whole course of their missionary journeyings and exertions. Besides, it is to suppose them guilty of such deep cunning and such base hypocrisy, as are wholly inconsistent with the manly sim affected benevolence, and the enlightened piety, that, even in the judgment of their adversaries, uniformly distinguished them both in public and in private life. Or, if we are inclined rather to maintain, that they were actuated by a desire of future fame in being the first founders of a new religion, when they were all the while aware of its falsehood, we must remember it will be necessary for us to maintain, at the same time, that they were capable of foreseeing the future success of the gospel, when from their secret knowledge of the imposture, they must have had every reason to expect its speedy decline and final extinction. Indeed, the project in question is, in all its views, a scheme of worldly aggrandizement so daring in its conception, so difficult in its management, and so hazardous in its execution, that we may justly pronounce it impossible for so wild an idea ever to have entered the imagination of a few plain and unlettered men as the first preachers of the Gospel, with hardly any exceptions, most certainly were, before they were endowed with inspired knowledge and superhuman power. So that, in whatever light we choose to consider the severe and continued sufferings which the primitive converts were compelled to endure, we shall find that we invariably strengthen the moral proofs in favour of the sincerity of their faith, and indirectly through this medium, the presumptive evidence in support of the religion itself. stantly, and so cruelly persecuted for professing and propagating religious tenets, which they firmly believed to be true, and the knowledge of which they conceived to be essentially necessary to the best interests of mankind. Had these sufferings been confined to a few of the more active and zealous of their leading men, the circumstance of their being singled out from the great body of believers, might possibly have led them to glory in their singular fortune, and to consider its painful disadvantages amply compensated by the honours paid to their supereminent merit by their admiring|plicity, the honourable integrity, the uncontemporaries, and by the hope of posthumous fame from the applauses of a grateful posterity. But, the general and almost indiscriminate persecution that spared neither age, nor sex, nor rank, prevented the rise of this selfish sentiment, and purified the spirit of martyrdom from every low and unworthy motive. Even the more humble desire of supporting a character which they had once assumed, and might be unwilling or ashamed to lay aside, could not be gratified in numerous instances. For many of their distresses were private and unknown, or of such a nature as to elude observation, being produced by the labours and anxieties, the fastings and privations, the watching and weariness, the cold and nakedness, which they were obliged to undergo in maintaining the new faith, or in discharging its sacred functions. In these, often the heaviest and most harassing of their adversities, they were supported only by the testimony of an approving conscience, and by their confident trust in the ever-watchful guardianship of their Almighty Protector. It were almost impossible for any candid person to peruse the account of the dangers and hardships to which Paul was daily and hourly exposed, from the interesting moment of his call to the apostleship on the road to Damascus, till the solemn conclusion of his labours by his martyrdom at Rome, under the iron despotism of Nero, without being persuaded, that no other motive actuated his conduct, during the whole of that long and eventful period, but the Before leaving this part of the argument, single and sincere desire of preaching it may be proper to observe, that the 'Christ crucified,' arising from a deep- evidence for the truth of Christianity, rooted conviction of his being both the arising from the sufferings of its first prowisdom and the power of God,' and the fessors, is much strengthened by consider'only name given under heaven among ing the source from which they derived men,' by which he himself or any of our their knowledge of the new religion, and fallen race can be saved. Nor were it an also by the nature and character of some easy task to explain, even plausibly, how he of its doctrines. First, we may remark, was led to choose such a life of care and that these religious opinions were not misery, unless we admit him not only to received at second hand from the mere have believed in the divine origin of report of others, but were authenticated to Christianity, but also in his having himself them by the evidence of their own senses. received a divine commission to publish it The first publishers of the Gospel did not to the world. To suppose that either he believe in the doctrines which they pubor any other of the apostles engaged in solished, because they were taught by a Man of unblemished virtue and of profound wisdom, but because they were taught by a Man who, along with these moral and intellectual excellencies, could produce the surest credentials of a divine commission, and prove by works, which no human power could perform, that He was what He affirmed Himself to be, the Son of God, and the promised Messiah. These works were not of an uncertain or ambiguous character, but were clearly seen and strongly felt to be the effects of supernatural agency; and they were so openly and publicly performed as to be placed completely within the observation of the senses-of all the senses that were competent to examine and appreciate them. If the art of the juggler had been ever so ingeniously practised, it could not have escaped detection, for in most of the cases it could not assume or put on any of its usual disguises; and even had it attempted to do so, it would have reaped little advantage from the attempt. For not the gaze of the curious, not the look of the mere speculative inquirer, but the piercing eye of an enemy was fixed with the most searching scrutiny, and amid the light of day, on every turn of its winding, and on every step of its progress. And, secondly, many of the Christian doctrines, such as the incarnation, the passion, the resurrection, and the ascension of the Saviour, were facts, of which they were not only assured by the authority of Christ Himself, but of which they were themselves eye and ear witnesses. Christianity has justly been styled a 'religion of facts,' because some of its most essential doctrines are facts, and because the principal evidence on which we are required to believe it, is composed of miracles, or supernatural facts, exhibited before the senses, and exhibited for the express purpose of furnishing a train of reasonable and satisfactory evidence. So that it may be very safely affirmed, that the two circumstances we have now adverted to, add a considerable force to our former reasoning, which was adduced to show, that the sufferings of the first Christians afford a strong proof, not only of the sincerity of their faith, but also, to a certain degree, of the truth of the religion to which their faith was directed, and in the propagation of which all these sufferings were so readily and even cheerfully undergone. But there is another view of the sufferings of the primitive Christians, which is still more important than the former, and will appear to many far more decisive in the presumptive evidence which it furnishes for the truth of the Gospel; though perhaps it has not been so frequently taken notice of, nor so fully illustrated, as its value and importance might seem to merit. We allude to the moral qualities that dis tinguished the passive fortitude of the first believers during the whole period of their persecution, from the time they began to experience the hatred of the ruling powers, till the hour in which they were honoured with the crown of martyrdom. These moral qualities will be found, on examination, to be essentially different from those that belong to the character of any other body of sufferers, who may deserve to be compared, in number and respectability, with the company of Christian believers. The most prominent of these qualities may easily be reduced to three, each of which we shall endeavour to describe in another Article. N. STRIVE, WAIT, PRAY. STRIVE: yet I do not promise The prize you dream of to-day, Will not fade when you think to grasp it, And melt in your hand away. But another and holier treasure, You would now perchance disdain, Will come when your toil is over, And pay you for all your pain. Wait: yet I do not tell you The hour you long for now, Will not come with its radiance vanish'd, And a shadow upon its brow. Yet far through the misty future, With a crown of starry light, An hour of joy you know not Is winging her silent flight. Pray: though the gift you ask for May never comfort your fears, May never repay your pleading, Yet pray; and with hopeful tears. An answer not that you long for, But diviner, will come one day; Your eyes are too dim to see it; Yet strive, and wait, and pray. Household Words. SELF-SACRIFICES. That Or the interesting little Work* whose title is given below, a brief notice was inserted in our last Number. We promised an Extract, as a specimen of the Author's happy treatment of his theme. promise we now fulfil. Speaking of the sense in which Jesus Christ appears to be dependent on the favour of men, after beautifully illustrating the Principles in His people to whith He appeals, and the Organization amongst them through which He works,-he thus discourses on the Sacrifices which He requires from them: "These sacrifices may all be included under two heads-first, their abandonment Altar-Gold: or, The Worthiness of the Lamb M'Farlane, LL.D. London: J. Snow. that was Slain to receive Riches. By the Rev. J. of the world; and secondly, the consecration of their all to Him. Now, with regard to the first of these-the abandonment of the world-it is evident that it tells powerfully in His favour: it weakens the world to the extent of their withdrawment from it. They had their all in that world, and from it their all is taken. The strength of the world is sin. When men become holy, the world becomes weaker as an oposition to the kingdom of Christ. Now, all His people are in a sense out of the world: they are no longer the friends of its spirit, its philosophy, its fashions, or its iniquities. To all these things, as antagonists to Christ, they are antagonists; and in this antagonism the foundation of the mediatorial reign on earth and over earth is laid. So far as His people are concerned, the world, the devil, and the flesh must be continually losing ground. We say must be, for it is not conjectural; we cannot conceive of it otherwise without admitting that the loss of numbers, of strength, and of position, is favourable to a bad cause. The cause, whatever be its pretensions, from which the virtuous and the brave retire, is doomed. We are in darkness when the sun goes down; we languish when there is dearth of the staff of life; our bodies moulder and decay when the soul has quitted them: and so must it be with the evil that is in the world. Abandoned by so many, that evil has no longer the advantage of their presence, of their riches, of their favour-and to all that extent it is impoverished and weakened. It must not be forgotten, then, that our Saviour has handed over His cause to a party who stands in this negative relationship to the kingdom of darkness. But this is not all: there is consecration as well as abandonment in the sacrifices He requires. Not only must they withdraw heart, and soul, and substance, from the world, but they must invest all these things in His cause. They must and they do give their own selves, in the first place; and then, all they have they hand over to Him. They are not only negative in their influence, but most positive. Their very life, indeed, is the most active and powerful of all His agencies: it is salt, and savours all around it; it is leaven, and leavens all around it; it is light, and illumes all around it. It is for this very end that they have been taken out of the world and put into the Church. To bless the world is their vocation-shall we say, it is their necessity? they cannot help themselves—they must do it. The sun can do nothing but shine; the mountain streams cannot but roll down towards ocean; the earth must yield its fruits in their season; and the laws of nature must control nature. Do we ever tremble lest the planets lose their way and dash off from their orbits? or that thorns and briers shall come up from the seeds of the corn and the olive? or that the greater orbs shall falsify their prestige and forget to illuminate the system? We never do. Neither should we ever doubt of the necessary efficacy of the Church. That Church has truth in the centre of her system, and truth is as certainly a lightdiffusing constellation as any firmamental cluster. Besides, His Church has always possession of the influences of the Holy Spirit—which can no more be misdirected, resisted, or made eccentric, than the 'sweet influences of Pleiades or the bands of Orion. Under the bidding and help of that Spirit, His people throw their whole energies into the cause of Christ. They are so absorbed in it as to live and move and have their being in it. They are enthusiasts, enlightened enthusiasts, and are sure to accomplish their ends. They have accomplished all the Christianity that ever has blessed or that now blesses mankind, and they alone will finish what remains of the glorious work. How can we doubt it? Do we not at this moment feel the earth heaving under the influence of their faith and zeal? do we not know that the abodes of vice, idolatry and superstition, are every day and every where approached and blessed by their love? do we not see the cordon of their charity drawn around the globe? and do we not listen to their manifestoes, in every language, that 'Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners?' They are so devoted, indeed, that no power hitherto has repelled them. If it could have been done, it would have been done long ago, for Christ's adversaries seem to have come to the bottom of their genius for cruel inventions. They have done their worst—still the cause triumphs in the Church's hands. Our confidence then is, that the Most High, who is in the midst of Zion, will continue to anoint her people with the spirit of the Ancient of Days,' and that her treasury shall never cease to draw towards itself the riches of the world until a second Moses appears, to proclaim, 'It is enough.' But long before the dawn of this remarkable period, there must, be and there shall be, sacrifices of a peculiar kind, in behalf of the gospel of our Lord, by means of which that gospel shall be made greatly to triumph. We allude to the pecuniary gifts of Christians to this cause. It is astonishing how much depends upon and how much has been gained for Christ by such sacrifices. At first view, the arrangement seems to be mysterious. spiritual and heavenly cause of Christ dependent in any degree on gold and silver! How comes this? Is it not unworthy of Him to whom the earth belongs, The and the fulness thereof, that He should have risked the character and staked the destiny of His kingdom upon that lucre to which the human heart clings with such greed, and the incessant demand for which, in His name, so often perplexes the Church and offends at least her nominal friends? If a verdict were to be called for, even from many who have said 'Lord, Lord!' would it not be against the kindness, if not the propriety, of this financial law of His house? Now, we admit that there are many things in the conduct of Christians themselves that bring this law into reproach; for it is clear, that what may be called the Christianity of money, is a subject very far from being either understood or practised as it ought to be. Still it is not difficult to defend the statute in question, either as to its wisdom, justice, or kindness. One thing is certain, the Lamb stands in no absolute need of such pecuniary sacrifices: He could easily have devised methods by which, without a farthing of money, His gospel could have been carried in triumph everywhere; or, even admitting their usefulness, He could have had the command of thousands of gold and of silver by simply creating them for Himself, as He produced the silver coin in the mouth of the fish to pay a tax. He has preferred, however, to ask His own riches from His own friends. He gave them these, that they might have the honour and the happiness to restore them by consecrating them to Him. This is truly an admirable constitution of things. It acts and reacts in blessedness. It is the safety of His own people. Nothing so easily displaces Him from their affections as money. Besides, money is the world's idol. There is no carnal power which Satan uses with such deadly aim against the spiritual power of the cross. Is it not the bright day that brings forth the adder?' Has not increase in riches often occasioned decrease in godliness? and has not prosperity often the same effect on a Christian that a calm at sea has on the mariner, who ties up the rudder, gets intoxicated, and goes to sleep?' It is kind in Him, then, to take it out of the affections and out of the way of His disciples. The financial law of his Church does so. It commands the silver and the gold into His service. How profound, then, the administrative wisdom of Him who, by the more than magic touch of His wand of authority, makes the idol himself step down from his pedestal in the temple of Mammon, to become the willing servant of God in the temple of salvation! How exquisitely beautiful the plan that persuades men to break their gold and silver to pieces, wherewith to build, and bless, and beautify many such temples in this weary world! How affectingly tender the statute that causes blessings purely spiritual to flow through the channel of such liberality! And, oh how worthy of Him who cannot be inposed upon by mere profession, and who authenticates genuine discipleship by unmistakable credentials, to institute, as one of its tests, a system of self-denial which very powerfully discriminates Christian character! For all these reasons, then, we justify the plan which our Lord has adopted for the maintenance, extension, and final success of His gospel. He certainly has left it to His people's affections and management; but when we consider the principles in them to which He appeals, the organiza tion amongst them through which He works, and the sacrifices which He requires at their hands, we need be under no appre hension about its safety. It is all well ordered, and it shall all turn out to the world's advantage and to the Saviour's own satisfaction and glory." JESUS EVER NEAR. Near me in my hours of sadness, I would hear Thee whispering nigh, Thou did'st suffer, bleed, and die, That the afflicted still might find MOSES. NO. I.-HIS BIRTH. J. B. THE Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: He bringeth low, and lifteth up. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to |