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A LOOKING-GLASS FOR CHRISTIANS.

ure of those who had backed the other if the fair large sum is a little reduced, he
half, (whose luck was about to fail them), still conceives that he is not risking much.
would be comparatively unnoticed. Un-Yet (to take an example), if the true odds
questionably the like holds in the case of are nine to one against a horse, and the
public gambling-tables. If any doubt this, amateur sportsman consents to take eight
let them inquire what has been heard of to one in hundreds, then though he risks
those who continued to back Garcia and but a single hundred against the chance of
We know that winning eight, he has been as truly swin-
This is
other "bank-breakers."
Garcia and the rest of these lucky gam- dled out of ten pounds as though his pocket
blers have been ruined; they had risen too had been picked of that sum.
high and were followed too constantly for easily shown. The total sum staked is nine
their fall to remain unnoticed. But what hundred pounds, and at the odds of nine to
has been heard of those unfortunates who one, the stakes should have been respect-
backed Garcia after his last successful ven-ively ninety pounds and eight hundred and
ture, and before the change in his luck had
been made manifest? We hear nothing of
them, though a thousand stories are told
of those who made money while Garcia
and the rest were "in luck."

In passing, we may add to these considerations the circumstance that it is the interest of gaming-bankers to conceal the misfortunes of the unlucky, and to announce and exaggerate the success of the fortunate.

We by no means question, be it understood, the possibility that money may be gained quite safely by gambling. Granting, first, odds such as the "banks" have in their favour; secondly, a sufficient capital to prevent premature collapse; and thirdly, a sufficient number of customers, success is absolutely certain in the long run. The capital of the gambling public, doubtless exceeds collectively the capital of the gambling-banks; but it is not used collectively; the fortunes of the gambling public are devoured successively, the sticks which would be irresistible as a fagot, are We leave our readers broken one by one. to judge whether this circumstance should encourage gambling or the reverse.

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ten pounds. Our amateur should, there-
fore, only have risked ninety pounds for
his fair chance of the total sum stated.
dred pounds for that chance. He has
But he has been persuaded to risk one hun-
therefore been swindled out of ten pounds.
And in the long run, if he laid several hun-
dreds of wagers of the same amount, and
on the same plan, he would inevitably lose
on the average about ten pounds per ven-

ture.

In conclusion we may thus present the position of the gambler who is not ready to secure fortune as his ally by trickery. If he meets gamblers who are not equally honest, he is not trying his luck against theirs, but, at the best (as De Morgan puts it) only a part of his against more than the whole of theirs. If he meets players as - en verité le honest as himself he must, nevertheless, as Lord Holland said to Selwyn, "be-in earnest and without irony serviteux très humble des événements, in truth the very humble servant of events."

From The Dublin University Magazine.

A LOOKING-GLASS FOR CHRISTIANS. It is also easy to understand why in the It is not often that we have the advantbetting on horse-racing in this country and How Christianothers, success ordinarily attends the professional bettor, rather than the amateur, age of learning the views of outsiders upon or, in the slang of the subject, why the our morals and manners. ring" gets the advantage of "the gentle-ity strikes the mind of a heathen we can men?" Apart from his access to secret seldom learn. Occasionally, the publicasources of information, the professional bettor nearly always "lays the odds," that is, bets against individual horses; while the amateur "takes the odds," or backs Now if the odds the horse he fancies. represented the strict value of the horse's chance, it would be as safe in the long run to "take as to "lay" the odds. But no professional bettor lays fair odds, save by mistake. Nor is it difficult to get the amateur to take unfair odds. For "backing" The "backer" is seemingly a safe course. risks a small sum to gain a large one, and

tion of some work like the " Modern Bud-
dhist," enables us to see in what aspect
the creed of Christianity strikes a philo-
sophic and inquiring mind brought up
under very different influences. We send
out costly missions to all parts of the
globe; we translate the Bible into every
variety of gibberish; we write books upon
the manners, history, and religion of the
reserves his
speakers of the said gibberishes; but we
rarely get to know what they think of us.
The heathen is reticent, or
criticisms for his own countrymen; and so

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kneel, never bending a knee even before their king. They take hold of and kiss his hand, or pluck out hair from the forehead and throw it on the ground; this being the highest degree of honour shown either to a king or a father."

As to their morals the less we say about them the better:-"When friends meet they inquire about each other's wives, but never about parents. They regard parents as belonging to a past period. Brothers and friends seldom see each other, but when they meet they give themselves up to li

we lose that pleasure coveted by Burns, "of seeing oursels as ithers see us.' It is, perhaps, as well; for our self-love would not be flattered could we see the caricatures which pass for images of our veritable form and body. Notwithstanding the long period which has elapsed since the first European was seen in China, the ideas of western manners and religion do not appear to be so minutely correct as could be wished. A work has been widely circulated in the Celestial Empire, filled with the most absurd and disgusting fables concerning the foreigners and native Chris-centious intercourse." tians, and probably had its share in rous- Mr. Cardwell will probably be surprised ing John Chinaman to that pitch of fero- to hear: "That in England they have city which led to the massacre at Tien- the art of cutting out paper men and Tsin. A copy of this work, notwithstand- horses, and by burning charms and reing the precautions employed to prevent peating incantations, transforming them it falling into Christian hands, came into into real men and horses. These they use the possession of the missionaries in Teng- to terrify their enemies." Chow, and was by them translated into English.

The work is chiefly a compilation, portions of it having been written against the Jesuits in the 17th century. In its present form it is an attack on Christianity and Christian nations at large. As such it is a literary curiosity, and we purpose giving an account of it, only premising that the work is in parts so inconceivably obscene as to defy quotation.

First, as to the manners and morals of Christendom generally, but especially England and France. Place aux Dames "Women are regarded as superior; men as inferior. From the king down to the people all are subject to the authority of their wives. It is a common thing for a wife to drive away her husband, and seek another. They say that men are born of women; therefore many of their kingdoms are governed by queens."

But although the western nations are gallant, their conjugal morality is not very severe "When a son dies, a father may marry his daughter-in-law. A man may also marry his own daughter. They marry the widows of deceased brothers, uncles, or nephews. They also marry their own sisters."

They are great polygamists:-"It is considered honourable to have many wives. The principal man is allowed three thousand; and every year they collect the women together and a selection is made." The western method of showing respect is somewhat peculiar:- They do not

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Necromancy, however, is rarely a blessing, and so these magic battalions can be dissolved by beating gongs, discharging large guns, and spouting water over them. So much for the Christians in their native lands. The chief or head of the religion prevailing in France is called Kwo-ni. The name of their god (Shen), is Parti-hing, from his apotheosis to the present time, is one thousand and forty years. He has hair and whiskers, and one image represents him standing up looking with clasped hands to heaven. Another represents him kneeling and looking with clasped hands to heaven. These are the images the people worship. When the priests worship him, they have also an image of Buddha which they call Parti-li. On the third of the ninth month they worship their ancestors but use no tablet.

In the kingdom of A-kwo-er they con stantly practise killing men to sacrifice to Jesus in praying for happiness. They also offer sacrifices at their graves. When a principal man dies they offer one thousand men as a sacrifice. To procure victims they catch foreigners and traders coming into their borders, and if these are not sufficient, they seize travellers, so that no one dares to go to market alone for fear of being carried off.

In the Celestial Empire "They depend on their skill in constructing curious and ingenious machinery, and on their knowledge of mathematics and astronomy, making use, also, of occult and devilish arts, and practising alchemy."

Amongst these occult arts is photography: — "There is, however, a method of taking likenesses by spreading some chemicals over the surface of the mirror. The

practice of this art is very lucrative, and | years, and redeem them." How can these

some native Christians have by great assiduity possessed themselves of it. They also by obtaining the hair and nail parings of women and placing them under the bedmat, acquire the power to compel their presence."

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things be? cries the celestial critic. How is it possible for the Son of God (Shangti) to take the form of a man and be born? Before Jesus was born, in whose hands was the government of the universe? When his body had ascended to heaven how could he have a grave for men to worship?" Further he finds that Christians

About opium we have a truthful testimony: Opium is produced in the west. Its smell is fragrant and its taste very de-are not agreed as to their own sacred hislicious, and when first taken it will cure disease. There are none of the foreigners who eat it themselves, but they beguile Chinese to pay enormous prices for it and eat it. After a time it emaciates the body and wastes the springs of life until the whole man becomes a wreck, so that many die from the effects."

The Christian statesmen who forced this vile drug into China have a heavy responsibility upon their souls.

tory, for some say that Jesus died without any descendants, others, that he had a son born after his death called Prince Jesus. Some say that Jesus was born in the first year of the Emperor Tuen Sze, of the Han dynasty; others say he was born in the second year of the Emperor Tuen Sheo, and still others say in the fourteenth year of the same Emperor. The accounts are of various kinds, and disagree among themselves. "In the first year of the Emperor Incantations are used to decoy people Kung Cheng, the Tien-Chu sect made into Christianity, and when a person great progress at the capital. There was enters this religion, the teacher gives him a literary graduate cailed Chang Keo-i four ounces of silver and a pill. After who was in straits for a livelihood. He thus taking the pill his whole mind is con- and his family joined the sect of T’ien-Chu, fused and darkened, so that "he destroys and making liberal gains were soon in his ancestral tablets, and only worships an comfortable circumstances. A beggar was image of a naked child, which points one in the habit of knocking at the door in his finger toward heaven and the other toward rags, begging something to eat. The man the earth. They say this is the Prince Chang, upon giving him some food, exJesus, They also sacrifice to a god (Shen) horted him to go and enter the Tien-Chu called Ka-ni, and to another called Parti-sect, and escape his poverty. The beggar hing. Instead of doing this, they some- replied, 'Though I should starve to death, times make use of red paper on which I would not throw away my humanity, they describe an elliptical figure, within which they represent a cross with swords, spears, and other instruments; this they call the holy cross,' and place it over their doors or in a shrine."

So far we have only seen John Chinaman's view of the ceremonial parts of Christianity. Now we come to his conceptions of its doctrine: "Those who commit sin must go to hell and wail and repent in the presence of Jesus, and pray to the mother of Jesus that she may present their prayer to God (T'ien-Chu), who will thus forgive their sins and permit their souls to ascend to heaven. All Buddhas, however, are devils, to be confined in hell for ever, without release." If you ask who Jesus is, the reply is, "he is God." (T'ienChu). If you ask who God (T'ien-Chu) is, the reply is," he is the ruler of heaven and earth and all things." If you ask why he descended and was born a man, the reply is, that "God (T'ien-Chu) had compassion on Adam, and on his descendants, to whom the calamity of his sin was transmitted through all time, and so he engaged to come to the world within five thousand

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and become a mere beast.' Chang said to him 'Why do you use such violent language?' The beggar replied, 'I do not speak violently; if you will listen I will tell you.' Chang said to him, 'Say on." The beggar said The T'ien-Chu sect are the sect of Jesus. This Jesus broke the laws of his country, and was put to death on the cross; and thus they discard the relation of king and subject. The mother of Jesus, called Mary, had a husband called Joseph, yet it is reputed that Jesus was not the son of his father; and thus they discard the relation of husband and wife. Those who follow him are not allowed to worship their ancestors or their tablets, and so they discard the relation of father and son. When a man discards the relations of king and subject, husband and wife, and father and son, if he is not a beast what is he?' Chang was enraged, and drove him out, and the beggar carelessly went his way. In a few years Chang's money was squandered, and he died of a grievous disease."

Another anecdote refers to a popular belief seemingly deeply rooted in the Chi

nese mind that certain indignities are perpetrated upon their dead by the Christian priests: -" In the reign of the Emperor Wan-Lie, a foreigner named Parta-li came into Chekiang, and began to persuade men to join the T'ien-Chu sect; and great numbers were ensnared by him. There was a certain military undergraduate called Wang Wen-mu, an athlete, who hearing when any one who had joined this sect died, they secretly took out his eyes, had a desire to test the matter, and so by false pretences entered the sect. For some days he ate nothing, and word was sent to the priest, who came and sure enough he had a little knife in his hand, and coming forward, was about to cut out Wang's eyes, when he, springing up suddenly, beat him and drove him out of his house, and cut off his head and destroyed his image of Jesus. When this affair came to be known in the capital, the Emperor rewarded him liberally."

What earthly or heavenly use could a dead man's eyes be applied to? Why should the priests desire them?

The reason is this. From one hundred pounds of Chinese lead can be extracted eight pounds of silver, and the remaining ninety-two pounds of lead can be sold at the original cost. But the only way to obtain this silver is by compounding the lead with the eyes of Chinamen. The eyes of foreigners are of no use for this purpose."

The charges of licentiousness, which our author very freely urges against the Christians, are put forth in a style which forbids us to allude further to them. One would think that a work so full of falsehood and absurdity would be its own refutation. Yet there seems to be no reason to doubt that the work is readily received by the Chinese as a faithful portrait of Christianity and its professors. To attempt to criticize such a production would be a sheer waste of time, since in a literary country like China, national and religious prejudices (things not unknown amongst Western peoples) have succeeded in producing such a hideous caricature, we may well ask whether our own pictures of foreign lands and strange religions are to be relied upon. W. E. A. A.

From The St. James' Magazine.

A TRUE LOVER.

IN THREE CHAPTERS.

CHAPTER I.

"OFF WITH THE OLD LOVE."

NIGHT: hot, breathless, blue, pierced with fiery white stars without, dusky and stifling round a dull glimmering candle within, pulsing doomfully with the blank "tick-tack" of a watch, which some hand, forgetful of more needful tasks, has wound up and placed on a shelf. An Indian night, awfully beautiful outside; but here, in a sick room, heavily redolent of vinegar and ether, lying like a palpable horror on a hot forehead, wet with sickened dews, a labouring chest, and waxen, wasted hands, that toss moaningly to and fro, and seek in vain for an easy place on that furnace-bed of fever.

Dennis Kilcourcy, who at present owns these inconvenient proofs of humanity, but who is not likely, if appearances are correct, to own them long, has been lying here for weeks, parched and frozen to the heart alternately, "fairly melting away," as his sweet Irish voice, half comic, half pathetic, expressed it, when he could still smile at his own sufferings; till all strength of mind and body seem drained out of him, or concentrated into those big black-blue eyes, ablaze with fever, glistening from their dark circles with a terribly intent look, such as men seldom wear till they lie face to face, shut up beyond chance of escape, with the last great problem.

He looks awfully white, as he lies on the white pillow-just a touch of scarlet on his sharpened cheekbone, and his lips that move drily with faint fluttering breaths; his voice, muttering plaints that in their agony are almost prayers, is nearly extinguished; and the boy comrade, Newsome, who shares his quarters, who left him, weary of the piteous spectacle, half afraid of one more piteous yet, two hours ago, has to-night all the sad importance of the first bearer of ill news.

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Kilcourcy's awfully bad," he has announced to one man after another, "I don't think he can live."

"Poor old Paddy! he used to be so jolly," says some one, regretfully; “always ready to help a man out of a scrape."

"Or into one," remarks an unpopular person, whom an angry repetition of Newsome's intelligence speedily checks.

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Somebody ought to go and see him," a now voice observes.

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"Why not?" "Well, he groans so, and . . I think he's off his head a little, and you know, quite. .. dying.'

He drops his voice nervously at the last words, and fidgets with a ring on his finger, while an oppressed silence falls on the

rest.

scene

your sins that matter; but your being sorry for them to God."

"She said so," answers the other eagerly, brushing the drops off his forehead. "But then I thought it might be because she cared for me a little, and so wanted to look at it that way. But you'd tell me the truth, wouldn't you?"

They are most of them young, and afraid, not exactly of death, but of a death-bed of any sort of gloom; embarrassed, too; wondering, perhaps, if that pleasant, hot-tempered, soft-hearted, reckless daredevil" Paddy," will be as daring to the last, or need prayer and comfort such as they never knew, or have forgotten how to give. So they look at each other soberly, till a man rises from the shadow, where he has been sitting, and goes with a gentle... and a locket..." heavy step towards the door.

"You know I would."

"And it isn't sure I'll die this time?" "No."

Kilcourcy heaves a long sigh of relief, and clinging fast to Shafto's hand, turns his head wearily to the pillow.

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Elphinstone," says some one, as if the name were in itself comforting and explanatory; and messages are shouted after him, to which he listens conscientiously, and with sadness on a usually cheerful face, and then goes on his mission.

"It's in his line," remark those he leaves; and they are so far right, that doing a kindness, under whatever circumstances, is always in Shafto Elphinstone's line.

He reaches the door of Kilcourcy's room in course of time, and after knocking twice or thrice in vain, enters. The candle has burned lower, and the sick man lies much quieter, with a look of awe and helpless terror in his bright eyes and on his wan face that goes to Shafto's kindly heart.

He turns his head sharply as the latter enters, having heard him outside speaking to the doctor, who has been here since Newsome left.

"He says, I'll die?" he asks piteously, "Oh! Elphinstone." And he shudders, and stares round wildly, and clutches the big hand that Shafto lays tenderly upon him, as if for very life.

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"I think I'll be able to rest now," he mutters, exhaustedly. "I was afraid before, if I didn't keep stirring, I'd die in my sleep. . . . And there was a message.

His words die into a tired murmur; he falls asleep with them on his lips, and Shafto, looking down with simple unenvying admiration at the delicate beauty of his features, the long black lashes that quiver on his waxen cheek, the wet glossy rings of hair tangling on his white forehead, wonders whether the "message and the locket" were for that same "she" who used to try and teach poor Dennis the good things he has such need of now; whether she loved him very much, and was really the secret of his fits of recklessness and sorrow, of his magnificent indifference to the belles of the station.

"Poor girl!" he thinks, "and poor Paddy, too! It's evident it can't have gone very smoothly." And as he makes this reflection, Dennis stirs, and strokes caressingly, with feeble feverish fingers, the strong hand he clasps, and mutters Darling," over and over, with a name Shafto does not catch.

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He listens tenderly, with a little curious awe for a feeling he has never known. His life has been a very calm and steady current, slow enough, with scarcely an event to break its course till that which is sending him back to England now, namely, his unexpected succession to estates and a fortune.

He rejoices over it in a quiet way, for he dislikes India, and thinks England the only country worth living in; but he is not unduly elated, and has mild schemes for the good of others his friends - his future tenants and neighbours as well as for his own pleasure. Elphinstone is quiet, indeed, in every thing. Out of those light blue eyes, which are not beautiful, or soft and passionate, like Kilcourcy's, looks a soul which will never find full utterance here - wistful, yearning, sad, with

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