charge of a comparatively new interest, he was also the resident tutor of a theological institution, the editor of a periodical, the secretary of a religious society expending thousands upon the evangelization of Ireland, the superintendent of the Scripture agency of the Countess of Huntingdon, and his pen and his preaching at the same time ready in various ways for various works. We cannot wonder if such heavy labours upon his early manhood brought premature decay. Alas! little did we then think that these cares were gradually opening his grave. Thus usefully he lived. Thank God for it! It is a noble, if a brief history! Let us not refuse the consolation it imparts." 4 "IT IS FINISHED." "IT is finished !" said the spotless Lamb of God, as he poured out his life-blood for sinners. "It is finished!" the atonement is made, which nothing else could or can make, from the beginning to the end of time. The supper of the Passover did faintly shadow this in anticipation. The supper of the cross, by reason of greater light, casts a deeper shade to commemorate the same. In neither case was there, or can there be, a real atonement, but by involving the blasphemous doctrine of transubstantiation and the abominable idolatries of the mass. old, for this sin? The Jews for this sin were rejected of God, and ever since have become outcasts from the Divine favour. They leaned on that false principle, that broken reed, that dangerous superstition, in believing that their sacrifices and ritual solemnities atoned for sin; and in consequence of this they rejected their true Messiah, and were and are still rejected of him. In this condition of excitement they will remain until they repent and believe the Gospel, which unto Abraham was "preached before," and for this reason was called the " everlasting Gospel;" viz., that by the blood of the "Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world, and once for all poured out upon the cross, is the atonement made and sinful man justified." Till they believe in this true foundation of all true religion, they remain in their sins. The same may be said of those who believe in the false atonement set forth by the Romish mass in the decrees of the Council of Trent. By these decrees that whole communion was thrown into a condition similar to that of the Jews; both the one and the other held and still hold that the sacrifice itself and the ritual solemnity do atone for sin. THE POWER OF HOLINESS. THIS absence of earnest and devoted consecration, on the part of believers, is a most fatal hinderance to the success of the Gospel. It chills and frustrates prayer, palsies the arm of exertion, dries up the stream of benevolence, "It is finished," said our dying Saviour when he gave up the ghost." How many errors of the most deadly nature have crept into the church, by perverting this fundamental truth seal-shields the impenitent, as with triple ed by the blood of Christ! The Jews, steel, against conviction, and closing by reason of their carnal hearts, de- the ear of God, arrests the descent of parted from the faith of Abraham, and his all-conquering Spirit. depended for salvation on the outward ceremonies of the law, believing that their sacrifices of themselves atoned for sin. How widely spread among the Romanists is a similar opinion, that the sacrifices of the Christian altar atone for sin! Yes, not only in the Roman church, but in some who pretend to have rejected her errors, the same dreadful perversion of the truth seems to prevail. And will not God visit his Gentile church, as he did Jerusalem of There is a moral omnipotence in holiness. Argument may be resisted. Persuasion and entreaty may be scorned. The appeals of the pulpit, set forth with all the vigour of logic, and in all the glow of eloquence, may be evaded, or disregarded. But the exhibition of exalted piety has a might which nothing can withstand. It is truth embodied. It is the Gospel, burning in the hearts, beaming from the eyes, breathing from the lips, and preaching from the lives of its votaries. No sophistry can elude it. No conscience can ward it off. No bosom wears a mail that can brave the energy of its attack. It speaks in all languages, in all climes, and to all phases of our na- | ture. It is universal-invincible; and, clad in immortal panoply, goes on from victory to victory. Let Zion, through all her departments, but reach this elevated point, and how rapid and triumphant would be her progress! With what overpowering demonstration would her tidings be attended! What numerous and overflowing channels would pour into her treasury the requisite means; and what hosts of her consecrated sons would stand forth, to publish on every shore the mandates of her King! And how richly would the showers of Divine influence be shed down, quickening into life the seed which she scatters, filling the desolate wastes with verdure and joy, and changing this blighted earth into the garden of the Lord! RELIGION IN ENGLAND IN 1678. THE lamentation of John Howe over the state of religion in his day, may meet the experience of our country now. He says: "It is too sadly plain that there is a great withdrawment of the Spirit of God from us. We know not how to speak living sense to souls, how to get within you. Our words die in our mouths, or drop and die between us and you. We even faint when we speak; long experienced unsuccessfulness makes us despond; we speak not as persons that hope to prevail, that expect to make you serious, heavenly, mindful of God, and to walk more like Christians. The methods of alluring and convincing souls, even which some of us have known, are lost amongst us in a great part." also, were the men to whom it was given not only to believe in Christ, but also to suffer for his sake. They were men who left honourable and comfortable situations in the Church of England, rather than conform to unscriptural ordinances of men. But yet they seemed to labour in vain. Was it, however, in vain? And when, since their day, preachers seem sometimes to accomplish nothing, may they not take encouragement from this case, that they are doing their proper work, and God will bring about the best results, though they see nothing encouraging. MORAL COURAGE. F. HAVE the courage to discharge a debt while you have got the money in your pocket. Have the courage to speak your mind when it is necessary you should do so, and to hold your tongue when it is better that you should be silent. Have the courage to set down every penny you spend, and add it up weekly. Have the courage to pass your host's lackey at the door without giving him a shilling, when you know that you cannot afford it; and, what is more, that the man has not earned it. Have the courage to adhere to a first resolution, when you cannot change it for a better; and to abandon it at the eleventh hour upon conviction. Have the courage to acknowledge your age to a day, and to compare it with the average life of man. Have the courage to make a will, and, what is more, a just one. Have the courage to place a poor man at your table, although a rich one be present, and to show equal courtesy to both; and to deny your house to those whose qualities you condemn, whatever be their character and station. Have the courage to dance with ugly people if you dance at all. Have the courage to avoid accommodation bills, however badly you want money; and to decline, pecuniary as And yet there were eminent preachers in that age. There were men who were not only men, and learned divines, but men of eloquence and zeal, Such were Flavel, and Bates, and Bax-sistance from your dearest friend, if ter. John Howe himself was one of the most learned, fluent, evangelical, and zealous preachers of his day. These, confident that his money will be lost. Have the courage to show your preference for honesty, in whatever guise it appears; and your contempt for vice tea, as he saw his mother looking anxsurrounded by attractions. iously and sadly towards him. The Have the courage to thrust your legs nature of his disease, the dreadful hydown beneath the sheets in cold wea-drophobia, was become too evident for ther; and to shave every day before concealment. John was put to bed, breakfast. Have the courage to pass the bottle without filling your own glass, and to laugh at those who urge you to the contrary. LITTLE JOHN. and his mother remained with him while I accompanied Mr. S―― to church. None there as yet knew of what had happened, and were astonished at seeing this excellent man's eyes filled with tears, when, in the course of his sermon, the subject turned on the dreadful sacrifice by which Abra THUS writes an author, in his Diary of ham, in the strength of Divine faith, a Tour through Southern India: "On arriving at my esteemed friend's, the chaplain's house, I found it likely to become, ere long, the house of sorrow and mourning from the following melancholy occurrence:-On the 10th of October last, his only son, John, was playing with a little dog belonging to his father's Indian coachman; when suddenly the dog, without being at all provoked, (for the child was too kindhearted to tease even a dog,) bit him twice in the arm. Poor John ran into his father's house, crying a little, as the bite was very sore, but not making much noise lest he should frighten his mother. Mr. S―, as soon as he saw his arm, sent for the surgeon; who, when he came, dressed the wound, but thought there was no other apprehension to be entertained than that of a trifling pain and inflammation. offered up, at the command of God, his son, his only son, whom he loved.' Our pastor's voice became at last almost inarticulate; but a strong sense of his sacred duty, and the never-failing support of Him in whom he trusted, enabled him to complete the Divine service of the day; and we returned from it together in melancholy foreboding of the dreadful spectacle that would present itself to us on our | arrival. Slight convulsions had seized John previous to our return; and we found with him, besides his mother, three physicians, and a kind-hearted, indefatigable lady, the wife of one of them, who was a native of India. At about two o'clock in the afternoon the convulsions became stronger, and all power of swallowing medicine was lost; a cure was clearly hopeless: but with a "Nearly two months elapsed without view to diminish the violence of the John's feeling unwell, and the bites in paroxysms, the patient was blooded, the arm were apparently quite healed; and a warm bath prepared, into which when, on the 8th of December, he began he was plunged, though the instant he to seem shy and uneasy, never lifting saw the water he screamed most viohis eyes from off the ground, or ventur- lently, struggled, and shook with exing to look at any one in the face; as treme terror. After having been imyet, however, he complained of nothing.mersed for a short time, he was taken On the 9th he continued to appear uneasy, and loathed his food, showing an especial dislike to anything liquid. The doctor was again sent for, and administered some trifling medicines, but still thought it was only a slight bilious complaint. At breakfast the next morning, which happened to be the sabbath, I sat next him, and offered him a saucer full of tea, when a sudden convulsive shuddering seized him, and tears started into his eyes; but with a strong gulp he swallowed down the out, laid on his bed, and not again removed from it, as it was deemed useless to administer any further remedy. Nothing was done from this time, but the occasionally wiping from his mouth the foam which collected there during the violence of the paroxysms. To these were now added a sense of oppression on the chest, and a painful difficulty of breathing, which denoted the further progress of the disorder. All this time, during sufferings which I have rarely seen equalled in a man, and never before in a child, John only once permitted a word of complaint, and it was but a slight one, to escape his lips. He said, 'It is very sore to die.' In the moments of intermission from acute pain, he sometimes begged his mother to read to him out of a little book, containing stories from the Bible; at other times he wished her to sing some of his favourite hymns; his poor mother being, as may be supposed in such circumstances, quite incapable of singing, now and then repeated to him the words of a hymn, to which he listened with evident pleasure. "When sorrow overcame her, and tears flowed down her cheeks, he would say, 'Don't cry, dear mamma, I am quite happy;' but when the sacred spirit of a Christian silenced in her for a moment the anguish of a mother, and she once asked him, 'Whether he did not know that he had often been a great sinner in the pure eyes of Almighty God?' Oh, yes, mamma,' said the little sufferer; but Jesus Christ died on the cross for me.' 'But, Johnny,' she added, 'do you feel sure you shall go to heaven?' Yes, mamma; and when I am a little angel I will fly behind you, and take care of you.' · · "The mother could bear no more, and few who were present were able to restrain their tears. At the time when his paroxysms were most violent, he would never suffer his mother to come near him; lest, as in his momentary madness he snapped at everything within his reach, he might chance to bite even her. He never would confess to her that he was in pain, but always maintained he was quite willing to go to heaven.' By degrees nature, exhausted with suffering and agony, began to grow feebler and feebler, and the spasms were proportionably less violent; but his ideas wandered, and after two hours unquiet yet lethargic slumber, his sweet soul, with out any apparent pain or struggle, left its earthly prison, and flew to join the ransomed thousands of those innocents whom Jesus loved, and to chant with them the New Song' of the redeemed of the Lamb. "It was about ten o'clock at night that he ceased to breathe; and to my astonishment no mark of the agonies he had endured was visible on his lovely and placid countenance; it was beautiful even in death. The corpse having been washed, and dressed in a long white robe, was laid out on the bed in which he usually slept; and the attachment of the poor Hindoos covered it on the following morning with sweet flowers. Scarcely a word was spoken which had not some reference to the virtues of this pious and amiable child. His little sister told us a thing, of which his father even was as ignorant as we were, of no common nature. For a long time past, every Sunday, on returning from church, he was accustomed to seek out a retired corner of the house, where no eye could see him but that of his heavenly Father, and there pour out his little soul in earnest prayer. I learned from his father that whenever he had any pocket-money, he made two equal divisions of it; one part was in his father's hands for the support of the Bible and Church Missionary Societies, and with the other he used to visit the huts of the poorer natives, and relieve their wants as far as his means would extend. Such was John S-- at the age of six years and a half, for he was no more when he died. His remains were followed to the grave by a number of poor natives, which stamped upon the melancholy procession a more peculiar interest. They accompanied it in tears; and at the moment of committing the corpse to its last earthly home, they pressed forward to throw each his handful of earth upon the coffin which held all that now remained of him who once enjoyed among them the blessed title of The poor man's friend.' "A small monument has since been erected to his memory; on a tablet of white marble are simply recorded his name, age, and death; together with the words of Him, who, in the days of his sorrow, loved to take up little children in his arms and bless them, saying, Of such is the kingdom of heaven.'" ROMISH INTOLERANCE. MONSIEUR PACHE, of the village of Morges, in Switzerland, a minister of the Gospel, and a member of one of the most respectable families of the whole country, was sojourning during the summer, for his health, at the baths of Aix, in Savoy. He was so ill that he was often shut up in his chamber, and obliged to keep his bed. An old woman had the care of him as his nurse, a creature as cunning and malicious as she was bigoted She soon observed by his conversation and manner of life that M. Pache was a religious man; although, knowing the jealousy of the priest, he had prudently abstained from giving her either Bibles or tracts. This, however, did not prevent the old woman from going to her priest, and telling him, it is said, at the confessional, all she had seen or heard of her patient's heresy. The priest took the alarm; but M. Pache could not be arrested without some plausible pretext, and how should that be gained? Under guidance of her confessor the old woman pretended to her patient to be filled with a very sincere and earnest desire to be instructed as to the interests of her soul. She entered into conversation with M. Pache, and finished by begging him to give her one or two of the religious tracts which she had seen upon his table. The sick man yielded to her request; for who, not knowing her wicked league with the priest, could have refused it? Soon as the old woman had got possession of the tracts, she ran in triumph to carry them to the priest. M. Pache was at once arrested and conducted to prison. Some influential friends exerted themselves to obtain his liberation, but in vain; they were told that M. Pache must wait in prison the issuing of his judgment. The prisoner next addressed a petition to the king of Sardinia, with whom he had been personally acquainted, had lived with him at Geneva, had dwelt in the same house with him, and studied in the same school. He received for answer the assurance, that the king remembered him very well, but that he could not hinder the free course of justice. At length, after having waited a long time in vain for his sentence in prison all bail being refused to him—he was brought before the Senate of Chambers, and there condemned to a year's further imprisonment, a fine of a hundred pieces of gold, and besides to pay the expenses of the process. The infamous treatment would have been still worse had it not been for his personal relations with the king, and the interference of some persons of high rank. The treatment which this minister of the gospel received while he was in prison was severe and cruel. They only who may have visited the interior of a prison in a Romish country, and especially in Italy, can imagine what M. Pache must have suffered. During a considerable space of time he was shut up in the same cell with eight banditti!! A man of admirable education, of refined manners, a companion of the studies of the king, resorting to the baths of Aix for his health, is taken sick from his bed, and shut up in a foul, infected dungeon, with corrupt and disgusting villains, where he cannot enjoy one moment's repose, not even à corner to himself, but day and night is surrounded with filthy creatures covered with vermin! All this for giving away a religious tract, at the wily instigation of the priest himself! With all this, it will scarcely be believed, that out of this monstrous piece of persecution and deceit the Romish church arrogated to herself the praise of great tolerance. After M. Pache had suffered in prison nine or ten months, the bishop of Strasburg interfered in his favour by a pompous letter, which spoke of "the pity and compassion of the church," and pretended to implore mercy and deliverance for a heretic justly condemned! This was really adding mockery and insult to the punishment; but, at length, just as the period of imprisonment for their victim was expiring, M. Pache was set at liberty in consideration of the application of the bishop. Of course this was applauded as a proof of the compassion of the Romish church, which may well pretend to be merciful when its very acts of persecution can be turned, by the ingenuity of the priests, |