There was an apartment of the prison called the "sounding-room," which was round-a cavity dug from the solid rock. In this spherical cell the refractory convict was chained to the floor, and left to his solitary reflections. This treatment was always successful. The stoutest heart could not endure it long. "Give me something to do," he would say; " or, at least, something to look at; or, if that cannot be, give me a cell that is not round-one that has some inequality, or corner, or crevice-something on which I can fix my aching eyesomething to occupy my aching thought." Yet this was but a few days, and much of this time was spent in sleep. And if memory can do such a work for a guilty soul during a few short hours of reflection in an earthly prison, oh, what an array of bitter, appalling thoughts will it summon before the soul during its endless reflections in the prison of despair! There will be time enough there to spend an age upon each particular act of life. There will be no variety, no objects of curiosity or interest to divert the mind. There will be no respite, no sleep, no rest-nothing but incessant, intense, remembering.

But, it may be urged, the condition of the lost soul is not represented as a solitary one. Will not the society which the sinner will meet in the eternal abode shield him, in some measure, from the power of the remembered past? No! On the other hand, it will constantly remind him, with new distinctness, of the scenes of his probation. He will meet in the world of torment those whom he knew on earth, and whom he encouraged and helped on in the road to death.

When the exile, who has been driven into banishment for crimes committed in his native land, meets an old accomplice in crime whose ruin he has himself assisted to procure, how vividly does the meeting call to mind the scenes of their guilty career, mantling the cheek with a deeper hue of shame, and piercing the soul with sharper stings of remorse! Will it be otherwise, when the exile from God and heaven encounters the companions of his godless days-perhaps the victims of his own sinful conduct or example? Must not the meeting awaken a thousand bitter memories of this wasted probation, and open new vials of woe upon the consciencestricken soul! All the associations of the world of the lost will be the agents which conscience shall employ to carry the mind back to earth, and to echo the terrible words of Abraham to the rich man-Remember! remember!

The agency of the devil, by whom they were deceived and allured to ruin, will greatly quicken the memory of the lost, and supply abundant materials to exercise it. Now he would have men forget their sins; wipe out the faintest remembrance of them, lest they should be so distressed by them as to cry to God for mercy and for deliverance from them. But in the world to come we know not that he could do this if he would, and evidently he would not do it if he could. For he is supremely malignant, and is bent on making his victims

as utterly miserable as. he can. When once he has made sure of them beyond the possibility of escape, he will throw off the mask of innocence and kindness which he now wears, and make it his chief delight to torment them. To this dreadful end will he apply all the art and power of his infernal agency. He will see that they escape no bitter reflection or agonizing thought; no ingredient in their cup of woe will be wanting; and he will constrain them to drink that cup to its lowest dregs. With bitter taunts for their folly, and, fiendish delight in their woes, he will point them to the wasted and perverted past a Saviour refused-a probation lost-a heaven despised-repeating, though with a far different motive, the words of Abraham to the rich man-Remember! remember!

The process of judgment, moreover, will greatly quicken memory and furnish the mind with exhaustless topics of reflection. "God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil." By some means, we know not what, we shall be enabled to recall all the scenes and acts and even the thoughts of our whole lives; and the terrible array will be as distinct before our eyes as the sun in heaven. And as God himself summons them before us, as they are the basis of judgment, and the grounds of the final sentence, and as conscience will stand ready to burn them into the soul unless they are washed out by Jesus' blood, they will remain for ever in distinct remembrance. But it is proper to inquire,III. What subjects will probably be most prominent in the reflections of the lost soul?

"Remember," said Abraham to the rich man, "that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things." Here, then, is one thing which the lost will certainly remember. They will remember the gifts of Providence, for which they requited their Maker with ingratitude and rebellion.

My hearer, God has opened his hand, and strewed your path in life with blessings. The wholesome atmosphere that heaves your breast, the healthful pulsations of your heart, the supply of your unnumbered daily wants, the shield that protects your slumbers at midnight, the friends that share with you the trials and joys of life, the innumerable blessings with which your life is filled, are the free bounty of your forgotten Father in heaven; they are so many cords thrown around your soul to draw you to himself: and if you break away from them all, and press on in impenitence down to death and to hell, you will remember these ten thousand kindnesses of the Lord. The remembrance of the amazing ingratitude of your conduct in resisting all these mercies, and hardening your neck in rebellion against the generous Giver, will follow you to eternity, and harrow up your feelings to their intensest pitch. You will remember distinctly each of the countless blessings with which God crowned your lives, and gladdened your hearts in this world of grace, but which were forgotten in unthankfulness. You will remember

how he fed, and clothed, and protected you, though you were so unthankful and disobedient; how he held back the bolt of his anger from your head, and permitted you to prosper while you were "despising the riches of his goodness, and forbearance, and long-suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance." All this, and the ingratitude it involves, and which you would give worlds to forget, you will be compelled to remember, and remember for ever. 2. Again, you will doubtless remember the spiritual privileges which you failed to improve. Whatever may be your present estimate of these privileges, you will fully appreciate them when they are for ever gone. If you shall live and die as you are, impenitent, you will begin to consider then what you have lost. You will recount the days now passing over you, bright with the promises of mercy. A Saviour "wounded for your transgressions, bruised for your iniquities," will stand before you, and you will remember how you pierced him by your sins. You will remember all the means of grace which you resisted-the gracious Spirit who strove with you till you grieved him finally away-the ministry of the word, proclaiming the offers of life in your ear, which earnest entreaties to repent you disregarded. These Sabbaths will return to you-not as available realities to be again enjoyed, but the ghosts of their murdered hours will throng up the avenues of memory to lay their accusations at your feet. You will remember this house of prayer, where you so often turned your back upon your Maker, and the memorials of your Saviour's love. You will remember this blessed Bible, given to make men wise unto salvation, the dust of whose unopened lids will testify against you. You will remember its holy truths, once your rule of action and your guide, but now the matter of your accusation and the sentence of eternal condemnation. You will remember how those influences followed you up, step after step, from Sabbath to Sabbath, year after year-from the earliest dawn of reason to the close of life-and how you steadily, perseveringly, and stubbornly resisted them all-fighting your way through a thick array of warnings, entreaties, prayers, tears, nay, through the blood of atonement, and the strivings of the Spirit, down to eternal death.

3. There is another class of means by which God is striving to win sinners to his service and love: I mean bis Paternal chastisements. Many are subdued and saved by the hand of affliction upon whom all other means have been tried in vain.

My hearers, why is it that God has so often stepped between you and the object of your earthly desire ? Why has he so often disappointed your plans, and blasted your hopes, and stripped you of worldly good? Why has he constrained you so often to see and to feel the utter emptiness and vanity of all things earthly, and to sigh in your soul over the blight and misery of this sinful state of being? It is that he might withdraw your affections from earth and centre them on heaven

reclaim you from the ways of sin, and establish you in obedience. This is the design and the natural tendency of all God's chastisements; and this would be their invariable effect, through the blessing of his grace, if they were not resisted and perverted. You may not see this now; sin may shut this truth out of sight; but the day will come when the darkness will vanish, and you will remember all the scenes of your earthly suffering and disappointment with a perfect recollection. Memory, from the remotest future, will wander back to this probationary world, and recount not only every mercy of God, but every dealing of his paternal faithfuluess with his wayward child, and your insensibility and incorrigibleness under the discipline.

Call up to-day some of the reminiscences of the past. Let recollection bring back the time when, arrested by the hand of God, you found yourself prostrate and helpless on a bed of sickness. Then an opening grave, a proffered heaven, a threatened hell, a despised yet infinitely-needed Saviour, seized upon your thoughts and constrained reflection and prayer, and you resolved, under the pressure of these then felt truths, to devote your remaining days to the service of God, should he in mercy spare and raise you up. But you forgot it all— your sickness and your vows—as soon as you recovered; but those broken vows, made to God in that solemn hour, though hidden, are not effaced from the tablets of your soul. Like characters written with invisible ink, and which are brought out by exposure to heat, so will they be revealed by the fires of the final day; and they will be remembered while eternity endures.

Think again. God has taken from you cherished friends, from whose dying lips, from whose opening graves, you have heard the warning, "Prepare to meet thy God!" For a time the impression of that solemn death-scene lingered in your mind and restrained your conduct, but at length you effaced it all, and now think, perhaps, that the unpleasant reflections which it once suggested will never more revisit your heart. But be not deceived. That scene, with its attendant circumstances, is engraved on your spiritual being in characters of immortality; and memory will one day revive it, and confront you with the unwelcome record, and no hand will ever be able to efface it, no voice command it away. Transfixed in mute astonishment and despair, the soul will look upon, and read and ponder the pages of a past and almost forgotten experience, as memory reproduces them, one after another, and holds them up before the mind.

Sinners will remember in eternity the evil influence which they exerted while on earth, and all the fatal consequences of it. The wretched man alluded to in the text, when he found there was no relief to be had for himself, entreated that his "five brethren," whom he had left behind, might be warned, lest they also should come to the same place of torment. Was this request the dictate of benevolence towards his brethren ? Not at all; there is no benevolence in hell. There can

be no natural affection. Every being is perfectly selfish and perfectly hateful. There is no pity felt there for sinners on earth; no desires cherished in the bosom of the lost for their salvation and happiness. The devil would make every creature as wicked and as miserable as himself; and this doubtless is the spirit of that entire world of total and unrestrained depravity. But there is remorse in hell, and this will account for this seemingly strange request. This despairing and torThis despairing and tormented man remembered the influence he had exerted over those five brethren; his conscience already accused him in their name. He dreaded the thought of being confronted with them face to face in that world of torment. He knew well that their presence would torture him eternally with the reflection that he had been an accomplice in their guilt and ruin, perhaps their corrupter and destroyer; and, if possible, he would escape this additional pang; he could not endure their bitter reproaches. And no doubt the remembrance of the ruin which they have brought upon others, causes the keenest and most excruciating pang felt in the world of torment. Few go there alone. Few can look around them there and not see some doomed spirit reproaching them with its ruin.

My unconverted hearer, have not some of your companions gone before you into eternity, and gone unprepared? They doubtless remember their ungodly example in this life, and their evil influence over you, and, if they could, would prevent your following them to their dismal abode. Perhaps they are even now begging that some messenger may be sent to warn you of your approaching doom, and to entreat you not to come to that place of torment. But soon, if you repent not, you will be with them, and like them; and, like the rich man, you will remember what you have done for the ruin of others-that you lent your example and influence to the enemy of your souls.

Are you a parent? God has committed to your care the souls of those whom you love as your own life, and bidden you to train them to virtue, to piety, and heaven. But by your example, the most powerful of all influences apon their minds, you are training them up for sin, and impenitence, and perdition. And if they shall follow you in your footsteps down to death, as they are likely to do, you will remember your agency in their ruin. You will remember that, had you taught them and lived before them as you ought, they might have been with you, adoring spirits before the throne, instead of hopeless outcasts and exiles. Oh, what a fact for a parent to remember through eternity! What remorse and anguish will it for ever awaken!

But you sustain other relations in which you are exerting the same kind of influence over other minds. This influence, unseen, it may be, now, will be revealed in the light of eternity, and as its fruit, many of those whom you loved in life may be sharers of your eternal prison. A husband or wife, a brother or sister, a friend or associate, may there reproach you as the instrument

of their eternal undoing, pointing you to the very temptation by which you ensnared them, to the laugh or sneer by which you banished their 'serious thoughts, and led them to grieve the Spirit of God, to the whole life of sin and impenitence which you lived before them. Ah, you will remember it all; and bitter indeed will be the reflection-bitter enough, with no other agents of misery, to overwhelm the soul with remorse and anguish. What, then, with all its other bitter ingredients, must be the sinner's cup of final woe!

But we will pursue these thoughts no further. I have endeavoured, in what I have said, not to rely upon conjecture, but to keep within the range of Scripture teaching, and legitimate inference from it. These views, we know, are not pleasing and grateful to unrenewed hearts; but if they are in accordance with the facts of the case, they are of immense importance; and every unconverted soul should strive to realize now, what, unless he speedily repent, he must realize when it is too late to find relief.

Imagine, then, the change already past, which may pass upon you at any hour; imagine yourself engaged in the reflections I have been describing. The affairs of earth are all over, and you are reviewing them from your abode in eternity. A voice from the bright world above, which you can see, but cannot enter, says to you, "Son, remember;" and all the scenes of probation start up before you, as witnesses to the justice of your doom, and in the words of inspiration, thou mourn at last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, and say, "How have I hated instruction, and my heart. despised reproof!" There are the golden opportunities I wasted, and the countless gifts of my Father's goodness which I abused. There is the long, dark, terrible catalogue of my sins, which must witness against me for ever. There is the heaven I might have gained. There is the glorious Saviour, in whose presence might have spent my eternity. There is the vacant seat I might have occupied, the untuned harp I might have strung. But here I am in hell! the place of which I so often heard, but to which I never for a moment meant to come. Yet here I am at last, a hopeless, accursed, despairing exile from all good-the enemy of my God, the victim of my own impenitence, the mur derer of my own soul-lost! for ever lost! Oh, that the humblest saint in heaven might bring me but one drop of water, to cool my burning tongue.

I

My unconverted hearer, are these pictures real or not? They are as certainly real and true as that the Word of God is real and true; and being so, your soul is in jeopardy every hour. Nothing but the slender thread of life holds you one moment from the world of torment. Let that thread be cut, and all this will become a terrible reality to you in a single hour.

I forewarn you of it now, while you can escape; and I implore you to heed the warning, and take refuge in Christ. Go to him in penitence and contrition-go as a perishing sinner-go at once, and you are safe.

F, as we must believe, the Tractarian movement in the Church of England has exercised and is exercising a most deleterious influence upon that Church, it would be nothing less than a playing fast and loose with the truth to speak of the life of Dr. Pusey as an essentially beneficent one. There are few men who, with such good intentions, have in their day done so much real evil. At the same time, we do not think it possible for any one of ordinary candour to read his "Eirenicon" without feeling drawn to him personally as an honest, humble-minded, and devout man. How different, for example, is this language from that which too many others have allowed themselves to use when speaking of | the same class: "Ever since I knew them, I have loved those who are called 'Evangelicals.' I loved them because they loved our Lord. I loved them for their zeal for souls. I often thought them narrow, yet I was often drawn to individuals among them more than to others who held truths in common with myself." And although, as it appears to us, his views of the possibility of a corporate union with the Church of Rome are not only Utopian in themselves, but indicative also of a state of mind which is deeply to be lamented, there is in the very longing to which he gives expression for the healing of the breaches of God's house the unmistakable manifestation of the self-same spirit which seems now to be taking possession of earnest minds all over Christendom -the spirit of love and unity-the desire to see the Saviour's Prayer for his Church speedily answered. "Is there to be no issue to the present division of Christendom?" he asks. "Is disunion to be the normal state of the Church, for which we all pray that God would give her unity, peace, and concord? God forbid! I have never expected to see that external unity by intercommunion restored in my own day, but I have felt it to be an end to be wished for and prayed for.... And now God seems again to be awakening the yearning to be visibly one; and he, who alone-the Author of Peace and the Lover of Concord-must have put it into men's minds to pray for the unity of Christendom, will, in his time, we trust, fulfil the prayer which he himself has tanght."

The main object of Dr. Pusey's book, as is well known, is to show the possibility of those Churches which are under the government of a regular Episcopate coming to terms among themselves, and combining to form one great Catholic community. He quotes with high satisfaction the opinion of Count de Maistre, that the Church of England occupies a central position between the Latin Church on the one side, and the Greek Church on the other, and resembles one of those mediatory chemicals which are capable of uniting together elements which

are in their own nature "inassociable ;" and pursuing this idea, he, as a member of that Church, enters into an elaborate system of "explanations," by way of showing that the three Creeds are by no means irreconcilable. Much learning is expended in this endeavour, and much interesting information is incidentally furnished on a variety of matters; but in the course of his argument, the true character of the Church of Rome is exhibited in a way which not only makes the idea of reunion with it, on the part of any Protestant community, seem in the last degree preposterous, but renders this very volume the vehicle of the most damaging attack on modern Popery which has appeared in recent times. Dr. Pusey may think and call his work an "Eirenicon," but few Papists, we should imagine, will be forward to welcome it as such.

Most people are now familiar with the distinction which Romanists themselves are accustomed to draw, when it suits them, between the written Creed of Rome and its practical system-between what has been formally declared to be de fide, and what exists in a fluid state as a part only of the popular belief. This distinction has often been turned to excellent account by

controversialists. In point of fact, that which tells most powerfully upon the minds of the worshippers, and which is universally countenanced and used by the priests on that account, Is Popery, whether there is express written authority for it or no; but nothing is commoner than for the Papist, in defending his systemı, to shift his ground, and, abandoning what he calls popular abuses to their fate, to fall back upon those inner entrenchments which have been more carefully raised, and which are better fitted to bear the light, if not of Scripture, yet of reason and common sense. It is on this double aspect of Popery, that the argument of Dr. Pusey turns. He goes back to the decrees of the Council of Trent, and to the catechism of that council, and, shutting his eyes for the moment to all the more modern developments of the system, he endeavours to show that the differences existing between the articles of the Church of England, and the authoritative dogmas of the Church of Rome, are more verbal than vital. And it is wonderful how much of apparent accord his ingenuity succeeds in establishing. Thus, in reference to the Sacraments, he holds that although Baptism and the Eucharist have a special dignity, and are justly called "the Sacraments," yet the English Church has not excluded other appointments of God from being in some way sacraments or "visible signs of an invisible grace;" and hence he does not despair of the two Churches coming to some agreement in regard to the number of these sacred services. And as to their significance, he is satisfied that the opposition which now

exists is the result of a misapprehension. "My own conviction," says he, "is, that our articles deny Transubstantiation in one sense, and that the Roman Church, according to the explanation of the catechism of the Council of Trent, affirms it in another." Then, in regard to the Infallibility of the Church, he pleads that the sound men in his communion hold substantially the same opinions as the sound men under the Papacy. He does not believe in the infallibility of the Pope, nor does he hesitate to affirm that even general councils may err, but "the Church of England, equally with Bossuet, maintains that which has been received by the whole Church to be certainly true;" and meeting on this common ground, he believes it to be not impossible to arrange on this point also terms of agreement.

Such is a sample of his method, and since it is well known that ingenious Papists, in their conversations with silly Protestants, can always so explain their principles as to make them look innocent if not positively commendable, his proposal to negotiate with a view to union would not perhaps appear so very absurd if he and the controversialists were alone left to settle upon the conditions. In fact, he shows that at one time-in the beginning of last century-informal negotiations did proceed so far as to put the possibility of a friendly alliance beyond all reasonable doubt. A strong desire for union with the Church of England sprang up among several doctors of the Sorbonne, and this desire being communicated to Archbishop Wake, an interesting correspondence began, of which Dr. Pusey gives a full account. From the letters written at that time by Du Pin, who conducted the negotiations on the Popish side, we learn that the liberal members of the Gallican Church did not find any insurmountable obstacle to union even in the Thirty-Nine Articles. He (Du Pin) was convinced that the two Churches were not so far apart as to preclude re-union-that there were many articles upon which they were agreed-that others related to discipline only, and in regard to them there could be no dispute on either side-and that with respect to the other articles, few in number, "upon mutual explanation the two parties might agree." As to the explanations suggested, a specimen or two will sufficiently indicate their nature: "On the XIV. Article, Du Pin explained away the offensive sense of the term 'works of supererogation,' was willing to drop the term, and only wished the distinction to be maintained between works of strict precept' and those which were of 'counsel' only." "On the XXVIII. Article, Du Pin was willing to omit the word 'transubstantiation' and to substitute 'changed.'" "On Article XXXII., he himself advocated the Celibacy of the Clergy, but allowed of their marriage when not prohibited by the laws of the Church." "On XXXVI., since he allows that, in the case of an union, the English clergy might remain in their benefices either of right or of the indulgence of the Church,' he must have acknowledged the validity of our ordinations, since, of course, no indulgence of the

"Du Pin's decease," says Dr. Pusey, "the change of political relations, the ascendency of the Jesuits, quenched the hope of the restoration of union. But Du Pin's work of charity was like bread cast upon the waters, to be found after many days." And he is full of hope that now the happy consummation which was then vainly aimed at is rapidly approaching.

Now, if Dr. Pusey had confined himself to this line of argument, and if, in his anxiety to show what Popery might be, he had resolutely shut his eyes to all the evidence which presses itself on our attention, declaring what Popery is, he would probably have written a book that was fitted to exercise a most unwholesome influence on many of his own weaker-minded followers. But the work carries with it its own antidote. Nowhere else has the charge of idolatry, which has been so often brought against the Church of Rome, been so terribly and conclusively substantiated.

If the following had been written by some controversialist, whose information about Romish teaching had been gotten second-hand, and whose hatred to Popery was inspired in a great degree by political partizanship, we might have received it with some hesitation as probably exaggerated. But the writer is Dr. Pusey, whose life-long admiration of the Church of Rome has been notorious, and who would undoubtedly far rather cast a veil over her faults and failings than magnify or unduly expose them; and such being the character of the witness, we must accept the description as a strictly correct and faithful account of the state of things within that communion, on which the Tractarians are now casting wistful eyes. "It is taught in authorized books," says he, "that it is morally impossible for those to be saved who neglect the devotion to the Blessed Virgin;' that it is the will of God that all graces should pass through her hands;' that no creature obtained any grace from God save according to the dispensation of his Holy Mother;' that Jesus has, in fact, said, 'no one shall be partaker of my blood, unless through the intercession of my mother;' that we can only hope to obtain perseverance through her;' that God granted all the pardons in the Old Testament absolutely for the reverence and love of this Blessed Virgin;' that our salvation is in her hand;' that it is impossible for any to be saved who turns away from her, or is disregarded by her or to be lost, who turns to her, or is regarded by her;' that 'when the justice of God saves not, the infinite mercy of Mary saves by her intercession;' that God is 'subject to the command of Mary;'