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gone before it at a vast distance. We tion paid to the instruction of the rising need not inform those who are much generation. Since the increase of Sunconversant with this species of publica- day Schools we have had a multiplication, that many of the modern collec- tion of publications, suitable for imtions of Hymns are woefully circum- pressing important knowledge on the scribed in point of doctrinal sentiment. minds of the young. For their benefit Not a few are avowedly constructed upon chiefly, though not exclusively, the little the principle, that nothing should be volume before us appears to have been sung in the worship of God but what is designed. It is divided into four parts of the nature of praise. This, however, or numbers-No. I. is entitled, Piety in appears to us to be a very mistaken sen- the House of a Drunkard; or, an Actiment; for if we take the book of count of Mary Jones.-No. II. The Psalms for our model, and it was com- Unhappy Marriage; or, the History of posed by inspired prophets for the use Susan Lewis.-No. III. The Sunday of the ancient church of God, we find an School at B- --No. IV. The Conendless variety of subjects there intro- trast; or, the Rich miserable, and the duced; and on this model Mr. Wilcocks Poor happy. Each of these brief narrahas evidently constructed his volume. tives is interesting, but we have been The reader who carefully examines the particularly plessed with that of Susan "Index of Subjects," which occupies Lewis, (No. 2,) and the Account of the twenty-three pages in double columns, Misers, (No. 4.) In the latter, there is I will have the best view of its fulness in an intimation (page 80) that the chathis respect, and be best able to appre-racters are "copied from nature." We ciate its merit. Yet we would not be understood as holding it up in the light of a perfect work of the kind. We miss a few Hymns which are favourites with us-a few others have been curtailed of some of the stanzas which we cannot afford to part with; and both these deficiencies we must entreat him to supply, whenever a second edition is called for. We should have also been glad of a few pages of Preface to the work; but he has sent his bantling into the world without a rag to cover its nakedness, leaving the helpless creature to shift for There are a few things of minor imitself, or suffer the rage of its enemies. portance in this interesting volume, We have repeatedly tried to find an ex- which we should, ourselves, be disposed cuse for his very singular conduct in this to alter, either in a second or future instance; and after indulging in various edition. We don't think that the exconjectures, the most probable that we pression "a glorified joy," (page 49) is have been able to raise is, that he deter-either so expressive or so correct as our mined, in this respect, to exhibit as perfect a contrast as possible to the vanity and egotism of his brother Rippon! We take our leave of the Author and his work, by cordially thanking him for the service he has rendered to the church of God, and recommending his publication as the best adapted we have yet seen to supersede the necessity of having recourse to more Hymn books than one.

Pastoral Narratives: illustrative of the importance of Evangelical Religion, and its tendency to promote the happiness of its Subjects. London, Nisbet, Berners' Street, Oxford-street, pp. 97, pr. 1s. 6d. ONE of the pleasing characteristics of the age in which we live, is the atten

are not without an opinion, (though it is not stated in the work,) that the incidents throughout may have been either furnished or suggested by occurrences from real life. The narratives are simple and natural, and therefore the more interesting. The Novel style is very wisely guarded against by our Author, who, we dare say, thinks with Mr. James of Birmingham on that subject: See the admirable remarks of that Author contained in his recent work, which we reviewed in our last number.

common reading-" joy unspeakable and full of glory." At page 63 the expression occurs, "praise God to eternity." Though this should have the authority of good old Matthew Henry, it is manifestly ungrammatical, and should be altered. The proper expression is either through eternity, or eternally. At page 68, books of a class similar to Janeway's Token for Children, but perhaps a little smaller, are oddly denominated, "a host of junior brethren of the same family." The word condition instead of wealth, or temporal outward circumstances, is not very intelligible in the following sentence, at page 88, "It is character, and not condition that will fix our eternal destiny beyond the grave." We are not

PASTORAL NARRATIVES.

We have intimated an opinion, that these stories may have some foundation in real life. We sincerely hope, however, that this may not be the case with respect to the brutal husband in the narrative of Susan Lewis. It is but seldom, we hope, that such hardness of heart is of actual developement in our land.

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very well satisfied with the title of No., the workhouse. No; she had been taught, 4. The Contrast; or the Rich misera- that all our affairs are governed and ble, and the Poor happy, because youth directed by infinite wisdom and she might be apt to infer from it, that misery rejoiced, that she even now possessed an belongs as a matter of course to the one assurance that the good promise of God, state, and happiness to the other. In that her bread should be given her, and the story of the miser, Mr. Bartle, the be fulfilled. She lamented, that it was her water should be sure,' was likely to reader is told at page 84, "He had de- her lot to be cast among so many who parted from God, and had loved this hated God, and she wept much when she present world." This glances at a pas- entered the house, and found a sage, 2 Tim. iv. 10. "Demas hath for- siderable number of poor old persons, saken me, having loved this present hardly any of whom knew any thing of world." Now Mr. Bartle's departure that Saviour whom she had long loved from God, does not appear to have been and adored; but she rejoiced that she either backsliding or apostacy; for should yet be allowed the privilege of though he is described as having de- hearing the Gospel. She has often said, scended from a race of pious men (page that the throne of God might be adthat it was to her a delightful thought, 81), we find no hint given of his having dressed even from a workhouse; and that himself made any profession of Chris- her heavenly Father would not reject her tianity. has she dwelt with pleasure on that prayer, because she was poor. Often delightful passage in the hundred and second Psalm, he will regard the prayer of the destitute, and will not despise their prayer.' Even in this unpromising spot, she found ways and means usefulness; as the whole of her time was unemployed, she had frequent opportunities of talking to the inmates of the the things of eternity; and there is some house on the importance of attending to reason to hope, that her labours of love' will not be found to be entirely ❝ in vain.' Her life was a luminous comment on the truths of which she delighted to speak: and had St. Paul been now living, he would not have scrupled to have ranked her among those whom he addressed, when he said, Ye are our epistles known and read of all men.' Whenever she was visited by any of her Christian friends, they did not find her murmuring at the to her, in sending her to the workhouse; but on the other hand, rejoicing in the goodness of God, and calling upon all around to join her in praising the Lord for his mercy, in making so comfortable a provision for her in her old age. She had used to say there was but one thing that gave her any concern, which was, that she was so seldom visited by those who loved the Saviour. But she would add, this complaint will soon be over; for I hope before long to enter that blessed world where I shall see all who love the blessed Saviour; and talk with them on the wonders of his love.' She was accustomed, very properly, to look on the trials of the present state, as a part of the discipline we must undergo to prepare us for the heavenly world; and reckoned with St. Paul, that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be

The third number contains a pleasing testimony to the advantages of Sunday Schools, in impressing the hearts of the young. Their vast importance is not to be fully estimated in the present state. To borrow the impressive phraseology of one of the Reports, "we may, indeed, see something of the rising crop, we may gaze upon it with wonder and delight as did the ancient Jews, when, looking on the grapes of Eshcol, they anticipated the felicities of the promised land; but they shall only be fully traced out with strong immortal eyes in the light of heaven."

The following extract from the concluding pages of the work, we give as a fair specimen of our Author's manner of writing in this little volume.

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Margaret Thompson was a woman whom poverty and the infirmities of old age had placed in our parish workhouse. She had long been a partaker of the grace of God in truth;' and when her eyes failed her, that she could no longer obtain her living by spinning, and she was forced in her old age to fly to the asylum which the wise and humane laws of our country have made for the aged and infirm, she did not murmur and think it hard, that after a life of industry and hard labour, she was obliged to come to

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hard lot which Providence had dealt out

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"The plants of grace shall ever live;

"Nature decays, but grace must thrive; "Time, that doth all things else impair, "Still makes them flourish strong and fair. "Laden with fruits of age they show "The Lord is holy, just, and true; None that attend his gates shall find "A God unfaithful or unkind.

“Her death was somewhat sudden, but to her it was happy, and to her friends it was satisfactory. She was enabled, in the language of triumph, to say, O Death where is thy sting? O Grave where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who giveth me the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ.' How great to her must be the change to rise from a bed of suffering, in a workhouse, to the possession of a throne of immortal glory! Her mortal remains were interred in the parish church-yard. It is true, no stone marks the spot where her body was laid; but Jesus shall watch over her precious dust, for he has said, and the declaration is full of delight, This is the will of him that sent me, that every one that seeth the Son, and believeth in him, shall have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.'

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We should have noticed this little work at an earlier period had we met with it. It well merits the attention of the conductors of Sunday Schools, and to have a place in all juvenile libraries. The Author, who has thought proper to publish anonymously, is a Minister of respectable talents in the Baptist denomination, but just now without any pastoral charge.

has

Lord Byron's Works viewed in Connexion with Christianity, and the Obligations of Social Life. A Sermon delivered at Holland Chapel, Kennington, July 4th, 1824. By the Rev. JOHN STYLES, D.D. London, Knight & Lacey, pr. 1s. 6d. The death of Lord Byron has produced among us feelings of the strongest kind. The man of taste mourned the extinction of his genius, the patriot has lamented the departure of one so devoted to the cause of liberty, the infidel regrets the decease of the great champion of his cause, and the christian weeps when he remembers the mighty talents that he prostituted, the religion he profaned, the blasphemies he spread, and the consequent moral mischief he diffused around him.

Dr. Styles, as many of our readers know, is a popular minister among the Independents, who has recently removed from the station he filled for some years at Brighton, to occupy the pulpit at Holland Chapel, Kennington, where it is said he has attracted a considerable congregation. Feeling a very laudable desire to guard his young hearers from the principles of Infidelity, which at once debase and ruin the soul, and scatter destruction among Society, he addressed to them the Sermon that now lies on our table, and which we have read with considerable pleasure.

Dr. Styles considers the works of Lord Byron as fraught with the most dangerous principles, and that therefore the ministers of religion ought to expose their true nature, and warn their bearers of the danger they incur in reading them. marks that-

He very properly re

"As that portion of the public press which is constantly employed in the desecration of all that is holy, will teem with monodies and panegyric, occasioned by the loss of so great and splendid a coadjutor; as he will be held up as the light and glory of his native land; as his transcendent genius will be lauded to the skies-and thus a new impetus be given, to induce the purchase, the perusal, and the re-perusal of his works, it ought not to be imputed to the official guardians of piety and virtue as a crime, that they lift up their solemn and dignified voice, in behalf of the traduced and suffering cause which these works assail; especially when that cause involves the temporal and immortal destinies of their fellow-creatures."

And again,

"When wonderful endowments, when

SERMON ON THE WRITINGS OF LORD BYRON.

intellectual capacity of the highest order are employed in throwing the elements of crime into the great mass of the community, identifying themselves with the principles of an infidel philosophy, and charming the imagination, that they may more surely corrupt the heart; when, like Lucifer, a son of light falls from his sphere, and carries moral ruin and devastation in his erratic and descending course, shining and destroying as he rolls along, equally an object of surprise and terror-what ought to be our emotions and sentiments when the career of such a minister of evil is arrested? Pity for the individual who is gone to his great account; regret for the debasement of the finest faculties whose original destination was for 'glory, honour, and immortality,' will not fail to be awakened in every Christian bosom. But

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which the worst men only conceive, and to which, wicked as they are, they dare not give utterance, except in the immediate circle of their initiated and depraved associates. Speculations! which dethrone the Almighty, confound all moral distinctions, annihilate immortal hope, and leave the heart of every one that entertains them desolate and miserable. These horrible delusions his lordship fearlessly, joyously, welcomed to his own bosom, and then bestowed, with an air of satisfied malevolence, as a precious boon upon the youth of his native land; throwing many thousand copies of the volume which contained them, like so many grenadoes into the heart of a city, while he stood at a secure distance to witness and to enjoy the terror and the ruin produced by their explosion."

think highly of this Sermon, we must While, however, on the whole, we express our grief on account of a very important omission in it. It has always appeared to us, that the Christian ministry is designed to explain to guilty sin

with these sensations will be excited others of a different kind;-such as usually succeed the removal of a scourge and a visitation of calamity; together with a virtuous determination to use all the means in our power to mitigate and circumscribe the misery it may have inflicted."ners the way of salvation through Jesus

quiring sinner may learn how he may be saved. Surely the Doctor might have found an opportunity to do this; it would have furnished a fine contrast to the gloomy system he has so ably exposed. We should have better liked the book had it appeared as an Essay, but it has this important defect considered as a Sermon.

Christ; and we cannot hold the man After this correct exhibition of very excusable who rises, professedly to proper sentiments, the Doctor goes on preach the Gospel, and sits down withto shew, that Lord Byron really was out a reference to the Saviour, or dropwhat he has been usually considered-ping a single hint from which the enan Infidel; and that of the most dangerous order. This he establishes from the total alienation from the spirit and influence of all religion, both natural and revealed, which pervade his various productions; from the identity of his philosophy with that of our modern Epicureans;-from his having employed his great powers in persevering efforts to remove from the minds of his countrymen all incentives to virtue, and all obstructions to vice; and, indeed, he exhibits him “as the direct assailant of virtue; the deliberate corrupter of morals;-the profligate and undisguised advocate of vice!"

These are heavy charges, but we are sorry to say they are too clearly proved. The whole sermon is a very able exposure of the awful nature, and the dreadful consequences of modern infidelity, and we hope it will be extensively read. Speaking of his lordship, and the tendency of his works, the Doctor says

"Wicked men and seducers grow worse and worse; and it was reserved for Lord Byron in the morning of his days, to reach the very acme of depravity. His is the ignominious distinction to be the first man of genius, who has given a popular form to atheistical and abominable speculations, VOL. X.

We hope the Doctor does not in his sermons generally use such words asexacerbations-denaturalized-libidinousprurient — emasculated-saturated, &c.; they are high sounding words, but they are not understood by the great mojority of persons in our congregations; and we therefore hope that he will, in future, be like the great Reformer, who aimed to be plain, because he had before him a number of slaves who could not understand hard words!

Harriett and her Scholars: a Sabbath School Story. London, Seeley, Hamilton & Co.; Whittemore; R. Baynes, &c. pp. 120, pr. 1s. 6d. bds. 1824.

This little volume is intended for the amusement and instruction of female Sunday scholars-a class of readers who will, no doubt, find much more interest

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in it than can reasonably be expected from us. The Author has taken pains to descend to the level of their capacity; and the frame work of his narrative is composed of such materials, as the young people, for whose use it is designed, may be supposed most readily to comprehend and relish. Harriet Thompson was the only daughter of a respectable tradesman at Abbotsley who, by losses in trade, became insolvent, and died of grief and depression of spirits, when his daughter was about the age of thirteen. Fond of learning herself, she became a teacher in a Sunday School at a very early period of life, by the permission of her father, and had a class at Abbotsley before his decease. Five months after this melancholy event she removed with her mother to a neat little cottage at Mill Lane, a distance of twenty miles from Abbotsley, and some affecting incidents are related, the result of the "leave-takings" of her pupils and friends in that quarter. In her new situation she enters upon a more extended sphere of usefulness; and besides establishing a Sunday School in the village, she obtains permission of her mother to have a few children to instruct in writing one evening in the week at her own house. In the eighth chapter of the volume, we have a truly pleasing exhibition of Harriett's talents in catechising her pupils; and sincerely do we wish that all Sunday School teachers would take her as a pattern for their imitation. In glancing an eye over the Author's pages, we observed a few texts of Scripture misapplied, which he will probably correct in a subsequent edition, for this little work is very likely to "make its way in the world!"

Songs of Zion: or the Wesleyan Harmonist; containing One Hundred entirely new and original Tunes, in Four Parts, adapted to the Hymns of the Rev. John Wesley, A. M. in all their various Metres; composed and arranged for the Piano Forte and Organ. By T. PURDAY, Author of the Harp of Jubal; Beauties of Sacred Harmony, &c. &c. London, Kershaw, 14, City Road, and James Peck, Paternoster Row. pp. 141, pr. 10s. 6d.

We are generally pleased at the appearance of publications similar to the one before us; for although it often

happens that we are disappointed in much of what they contain, yet as variety is a great desideratum in every species of music, something worth having is usually added to the previous stock. Mr. Purday's work contains, in our opinion, a greater number of Tunes substantially good, in proportion to its size, than we have usually met with in publications containing none but original Tunes.

The title page intimates, that especial reference has been had to the Hymns of Mr. Wesley. The reason of this is, that the Hymn Book used by that denomination of Christians, contains an extraor dinary proportion of the metres termed peculiar; and it was found desirable on that account to have a suitable variety of music adapted to them. As among these hymns there are many that are very excellent, and that have been incorporated into Collections in use by other sects than the Wesleyan Methodists, we have not a doubt that Mr. Purday's work will meet a much more general acceptance than its title page seems to invite. Amongst the peculiar metres we would point the attention of the lovers of sacred harmony to the following, viz. Beneficence, Victory, Invocation, Triumph, Condescension, Good Shepherd, and Sanctuary, which may be accounted models for peculiar measures; and there are many others of the same class in the work. The tune entitled "Sanctuary," is set to that beautiful hymn of Charles Wesley's, beginning, "Jesu, lover of my soul," to which it is finely adapted. Towards the end of the Book we see some good tunes for the long and common metres, that are of a superior order, and fit to rank with the best of Dr. Wainwright's; indeed, the Author of this work shews that he is no novice in the science of

musical composition, but thoroughly acquainted with its principles. We therefore need not add, that the different parts requisite to fill up the harmony, and we cordially recommend the work are arranged with the hand of a master; to general and extensive notice.

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