perfect man, and behold the upright; for the end of that man is PEACE." Thus did the presence of a covenant God administer strong consolation, and enable this expiring saint to stretch the wing of faith beyond the narrow boundaries of time, where mortality shall be swallowed up of life, and our now "vile body fashioned like unto the glorious body of Jesus." tempers of our friends, feeling assured that their liberated spirits, which were once incarcerated in clay, can never again taste the bitter cup of affliction, and are now, doubtless, uniting with an innumerable company in "ascribing glory and honour to Him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb for ever." Cowper has properly remarked, "We are forbidden to murmur, but we are not forbidden to regret; and those we loved tenderly while living, we may still pursue with an affectionate remembrance, without having any occasion to charge ourselves with rebellion against the sovereignty that appointed a separation. We would always withhold from the skies those who alone can reach them—at least, till we are ready to bear them company." give it to him." The man kept the 66 0," If this be Memory derives a melancholy pleasure when reflecting on the holy and devoted lives-the pious and chastened | said the dying nobleman, "I am never "Never to return!" exto return!" claimed the man; "never to return!" "No," said the nobleman, “I am going to eternity, and am never to return." "Has your lordship made any prepara"No," said tion for that long home ?” "Then," replied the he, "I have not." man, "your lordship will please to take the walking-cane! You are certainly a greater fool than I am-please to take the walking-cane." deemed a quaint illustration, it is yet forcible, and much to the point. Only think! the sinner is going to an eternal world! In that eternal world there is a heaven of unspeakable and everlasting happiness for those who have made preparation for it; and for those who have made no preparation, there is a world of woe, an awful hell, which must be their dwelling-place to all eternity. And yet the sinner makes no preparation! Regardless of his eternal interests, he is trifling with his undying soul. Is this acting the part of a wise man? Is it not rather acting the part O ye who, of a madman and a fool? carried away by the things of this world, forget that you have undying souls-that you must soon be in eternity-and must soon be in heaven or in hell! Oh, think about your need of R. S. THE FOOL AND HIS MASTER. A CERTAIN nobleman had a half wit in his employ, who, in the style of those days, was called a fool. Amused with a remark of his one day, the nobleman gave him his walking-cane, with this injunction: "Take this walking-cane, and keep it until you meet with a greater fool than yourself, and then preparation before the season for it be tyranny. It implies that you, an over and gone for ever. THE FIRST VICTIM. BUNYAN was the first person in the reign of Charles II. punished for the crime of nonconformity. This, in part, is Southey's own language-punished is the phrase he uses; it should have been persecuted for the virtue; for such it was in Bunyan; and any palliation which could be resorted to for the purpose of justifying the English hierarchy for shutting up John Bunyan in prison would also justify a Romish hierarchy for burning Latimer and Ridley at the stake. Strange that the lesson of religious toleration should be one of the last and hardest, even for liberal minds, to learn. It cost long time, instruction, and discipline, even for the disciples of Christ to learn it; and they never would have learned it had not the infant church been cut loose from the state, and deprived of all possibility of girding the secular arm with thunder in its behalf. John had not learned it when he would have called down fire from heaven to destroy the Samaritans; nor John nor his fellows when they forbade a faithful saint (some John Bunyan of those days, belike,) from casting out devils, because he followed not them. And they never would have learned it had the union of church and state been sanctioned by the Saviour. Wherever one sect in particular is united to the state, the lesson of religious toleration will not be perfectly learned: nay, who does not see that toleration itself, applied to religion, implies the assumption of a power that ought not to exist, that in itself is earthly authority, an earthly power, say to me, so condescendingly, I permit you the free exercise of your religion. You permit me! And what authority have you to permit me, any more than I to permit you? God permits me, God commands me; and do you dare to say that you tolerate me? Who is he that shall dare come in between me and God, either to say yea or nay? Your toleration itself is tyranny, for you have no right to meddle with the matter. But wherever church and state are united, then there will be meddling with the matter; and even in this country, if one particular sect were to get the patronage of the state, there would be an end to our perfect religious freedom. In the reign of queen Elizabeth, the poet Southwell, who wrote one of the most exquisitely beautiful death-hymns in our language, and who seems to have been truly a devout man, was put to death violently and publicly, no other crime being proved against him but what he honestly and proudly avowed, that he had come over into England simply and solely to preach the Roman Catholic religion. And he ought to have been left at liberty to preach it; for, if the Protestant religion cannot stand against Roman Catholic preaching, it ought to go down : no religion is worth having, or worth supporting, that needs racks, or inquisitions, or fires and fagots to sustain it--that dare not or cannot meet its adversaries on the open battle-field of truth; no religion is worth supporting that needs anything but the truth and Spirit of God to support it; and no establishment ought to be permitted to stand that stands by persecuting others; nor any church to exist that exists serve him otherwise, will serve Satan simply by unchurching others. in the same way. So, if the English church establishment dared not consider herself safe without shutting up John Bunyan and sixty other Dissenters with him in prison,-some of them ministers and some laymen, some for preaching the gospel and some for hearing it,-the English church establishment was not worthy to be safe; the English church establishment was a disgrace and an injury to the gospel, and a disgrace and an injury to a free people. No church is worth saving from destruction if it has to be saved by the destruction of other men's religious liberties; nay, if that be the case with it, it ought to go down, and the sooner the better. No church is worthy to stand that makes nonconformity to its rites and usages a penal crime; it becomes a persecuting church the moment it does this; for supposing that every man, woman, and child in the kingdom is kept from nonconformity simply by that threat, and that through the power of such terror there comes to be never the need to put such penal laws in execution, and so never a single subject really molested or punished; still that church is a persecuting church, and that people a persecuted people, a terrified people, a people cowed down, a people in whose souls the sacred fire of liberty is fast extinguishing, a people bound to God's service by the fear of men's racks. Such a people can never be free; their cowardice will forge their fetters. A people who will sell themselves to a church through fear of punishment, will sell themselves to any tyrant through the same fear; nay, a people who will serve God through the fear of punishment, when they would not If you make nonconformity a crime, you are, therefore, a persecuting church, whether your name be Rome, England, or America, even though there be not a single nonconformist found for you to exercise your wrath upon, not one against whom you may draw the sword of your penalty. But it is drawn, and drawn against the liberty of conscience, and every man whom in this way you keep from nonconformity, you make him a deceiver to his God; you make him barter his conscience for exemption from an earthly penalty; you make him put his conscience not into God's keeping, but into the keeping of your sword; you dry up the life-blood of liberty in his soul; you make him in his inmost conscience an imprisoned slave, a venal victim of your bribery and terror; and though he may still walk God's earth as others, it is with the iron in his soul, it is with your chain about his neck, it is as the shuffling fugitive from your penalties, and not as a man of noble soul, who, fearing God religiously, fears nothing else. There may, indeed, be no chain visible, but you have wound its invisible links around the man's spirit; you have bound the man with the man; you have fettered him, and laid him down in a cold, dark dungeon; and until those fetters are taken off, and he stands erect and looks out from his prison to God, it is no man, but a slave, that you have in your service; it is no disciple, but a Simon Magus, that you have in your church. If a man, obeys God through the fear of man, when he would not do it otherwise, he obeys not God but man; and in that very obedience he becomes a dissembler 1 and a coward. If he says, I do this which I should not do otherwise, for fear of such or such a penalty; or I partake of this sacrament, which I should not otherwise touch, because the continuance of my office depends upon it, what is he but an acknowledged sacrilegious hypocrite? And thus it is that your system of penalties for an established church inevitably makes hypocrites.-Cheever's Lectures. THE BRITISH REFORMATION. BY REV. THOMAS TIMPSON. No one can intelligently enjoy the civil and religious privileges of Britain without some knowledge of its darkness and bondage under Popery, and of the price and the means by which those privileges have been procured. This requires a review of the case in relation to the blessings of the Protestant Reformation. It is, therefore, of the greatest importance that young persons, especially Sunday-school teachers, should be instructed in the history of that memorable event, so auspicious to our country, and to the great nations of Europe, as that important move ment gave birth to the vast empire of the United States of America. of ignorance and superstition. To exhibit the exact state of things in this country is difficult, though a tolerable idea may be conveyed by the statement of a few facts in connection with some of the chief men of those periods; and these will be read with peculiar interest by every inquirer after the knowledge of the truth in genuine Christianity. Thomas à Becket, an ambitious priest, archdeacon of Canterbury, was made lord-chancellor by king Henry II.; but the haughtiness and pride of that lordly ecclesiastic were intolerable towards the nobility. The king appointed him archbishop of Canterbury in 1162; and in that office he seemed determined on degrading all the civil powers, while exalting the clergy, who were guilty of the greatest crimes. The laity were liable to the most grievous outrages, but dared not to complain; yet it was proved before the king, that in eight years, since his accession to the throne in 1155, above a hundred murders had been committed by the ecclesiastics in different parts of the country, of whom not one was punished. The prelates gloried in this independence of the clergy above the civil power, supposing they could give no surer evidence of their zeal for religion and the service of God. They were encouraged in this course by the pope; but the nobles united with the king in preparing rePopery had universally corrupted the gulations as necessary for the nation: religion of Christ in the middle ages: -"1. No person shall appeal to Rome its administration included, as its chief without the king's leave. 2. No archexercises, a variety of senseless cere- bishop or bishop shall go to Rome monies, that could be performed by upon the pope's summons without the ungodly men as priests, instead of the king's leave. 8. No tenant in chief, or faithful preaching of the gospel of any other of the king's officers, shall Christ. By this means its dreaded be excommunicated, or his lands put hierarchy had enslaved the nations, under interdict, without the king's which were held bound by the chains licence. 4. All clergymen charged ditions, appointing him also a grievous and humiliating penance, that he should go barefoot to Becket's tomb, and receive discipline from the hands of the monks of St. Austin ! with capital crimes shall be tried in the king's courts. 5. The laity, whether the king or others, shall hold pleas of churches and tithes and the like." These were refused by the bishops and abbots, unless rendered use- Dr. Southey gives the following acless by the clause, "Saving the rights count of King Henry's degradation in and privileges of the clergy and this affair:-"Landing at Southampchurch." The king threatened them, ton, he there left his court and the and they signed; but the pope rejected mercenaries whom he had brought over, them, and Becket recanted, taking part and set off on horseback, with a few with the pope; on which he was pro- attendants, for Canterbury. When he secuted as guilty of treason. But being came within sight of its towers he disencouraged by the king of France, the mounted, laid aside his garments, threw archbishop treated the king's courts a coarse cloth over his shoulders, and with contempt, and refused obedience proceeded to the city, which was three to his sovereign. To record his various miles distant, barefoot over the flinty acts of turbulence during the next six road, so that in many places his steps years would require a volume. His were traced in blood. He reached the opposition and violence towards the church trembling with emotion, and king led the sovereign one day to was led to the martyr's shrine; there utter an exclamation of regret that no in the crypt, he threw himself prostrate one of his dependents would revenge before it, with his arms extended, and the affronts that he was obliged to en- remained in that posture, as if in eardure from a wretched priest. Four of nest prayer, while the bishop of Lonthe king's knights, therefore, hearing don solemnly declared, in his name, the indiscreet words of their master, that he had neither commanded, nor set out for Canterbury, and, after re-advised, nor by any artifice contrived proaching the archbishop, murdered the death of Thomas à Becket; for the him by the altar in the cathedral. The assassins were shunned by all; and they, being terrified, hastened to Rome, confessed their crime to Pope Alexander III., and submitted to a severe penance through life. Henry despatched an embassy to Rome to clear himself from the guilt of this deed; but the pope charged the murder upon the king, and summoned him to Normandy to be tried for the crime. Though the legates of the pope had orders to grant absolution to the king, they took many depositions, endeavouring to prove him guilty; and they bound him down by degrading con truth of which he appealed to God: but because his words, too inconsiderately spoken, had given occasion for the commission of this crime, he now voluntarily submitted himself to the discipline of the church. The monks of the convent, eighty in number, and four bishops, abbots, and other clergy who were present, were provided each with a knotted cord; he bared his shoulders, and received five stripes from the prelates, three from every other hand. When this severe penance had been endured, he threw sackcloth over his bleeding shoulders and resumed his prayers, kneeling on the pavement, and |