MADAM,

NUPTIAL FESTIVITIES.

HAVING long considered your Magazine a valuable medium for laying before the Christian community, points of interest and importance, both to themselves individually, and the Church at large; 1 feel induced with all deference to your better judgment and discretion, to trespass upon its pages a few remarks relative to a subject, which has, I confess, long been a matter of wonder and astonishment to my own mind, and concerning which I can scarcely touch a responsive chord in the bosom of others.

The point to which I allude, is the universally prevalent custom of squandering large sums of money upon the mere baubles (as I must call them) of cards, cake, sumptuous entertainments, &c. &c., so generally attendant upon the celebration of the nuptial tie. Now, that the world at large should adopt such a practice, need be no matter of surprise, but that professing believers in the Lord Jesus, desiring to frame their conduct by the rule, "whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God," and moreover confessing (as they do in words,) money, to be a talent; for the use of which, like every other, an account must be rendered to the great Proprietor of all-that these persons I say, should continue thus to conform to the world, appears to me a palpable and inexplicable inconsistency.

I am well aware that so singular a view of the question, will lay me open to some ridicule, and the circumstances attending the marriage in Cana, probably be urged against it. I must nevertheless believe the tenor of Scripture to be opposed to these worldly festivities, and would consider the abovementioned instance as sanctioning indeed festivity, at such joyousness, but let it be remembered Jesus himself was present there, and are such entertainments of the present day of that nature as reasonably to expect the spiritual presence of our blessed Lord to bless them? One word before concluding, in reference to an objection that may be started, viz. the puerile insignificant nature of the point under consideration, at a time when subjects of a much higher description are exciting the minds of people—but allow me to ask, can any thing be deemed unimportant, which affects the conduct of believers? and while confessedly "looking for and hasting unto" the second coming of our Lord, does it not behove us "in the power of his might," to be walking circumspectly, "abstaining" from all appearance of evil, "perfecting holiness in the fear of God," that with "our loins girded, and lamps burning," when he cometh and knocketh, we may open to him immediately.

Forgive the length to which I have carried these observations, but which indeed the subject appeared to demand, and believe me,

Madam,

With much respect and esteem for your Christian Protestant principles,

A LOVER Of Consistency.

P. S. I omitted to mention one suggestion, which I desire in all humility, to lay before your Christian readers, that on such joyous occasions as I have alluded to, surely a feast to the poor, or similar plans of benevolence, would afford more solid pleasure, be far more appropriate, and I will add, a thousand fold more consistent with our high profession as followers of the Lamb.

[THE foregoing paper was in type last month, but postponed from a surplus of other matter. We most heartily concur in the writer's remarks, and would earnestly press upon our Christian friends the view taken of a subject on which most of them are likely, directly or indirectly, to exert some influence. A marriage, if it be not what no marriage ought to be― a worldly, heartless, or profane contract—is a matter of present thankfulness and of prayerful hope for the future. Surely under such circumstances the Christian would desire, that whatever can be conscientiously spared should be offered to the Lord, not to Mammon. How many a poor, pious, industrious maiden might be portioned, and happily settled, for the money that is wantonly squandered on nuptial festivities and wedding-trips! We only suggest this, as one very suitable and appropriate way of enabling others to participate in the happiness which God vouchsafes to confer on his more affluent children in uniting those whose mutual affection he has graciously sanctioned.-ED.]

ON FAITH.

HENCE, we see how rightly, in ages before men were dazzled by the glare of their own ingenuity, it was deemed the fundamental principle of a wholesome education, to bring up children in full, strict, unquestioning obedience. For every act of obedience, if willing and ready, not the result of fear or of constraint, is an act of faith; and that too in one of its higher manifestations, as faith in a person; shewing its power of overcoming the world in that very point in which the struggle is the toughest-by overcoming the spirit of self-will born and bred in all such as are made in the image of him who first set up his own will against the commandment of God. Therefore is obedience rightly esteemed so precious an element of character, betokening, not, as presumptuous conceits, weakness, but strength, true, mature, self-subduing strength; not the want of a resolute will capable of determining for itself, but a will truly resolute, a will which has disentangled itself from the manyknotted snares of our carnal nature, even from those so subtile and unfelt, wherein we fancy ourselves to be most free, of our vanity and pride. Whereas, the practice, now far too prevalent, of refraining from requiring obedience of children, without at the same time explaining the reasons for requiring it, by depriving the obedience of its personal faith and confiding submission, deprives it in great measure of its

worth as an habitual element of character; while by appealing to the child's own understanding, as the supreme and qualified judge of what he ought to do, it fosters that spirit of self-reliance which springs up so readily in every heart, and which the world in these days so much loves to pamper. In fact, so far have we lost the true Christian knowledge of human nature, and relapsed into a heathenish anthropolatry, that the encouraging a spirit of self-dependence is become an avowed aim in the modern theories and practice of education: and it seems to be an anxiom assumed in these as well as in modern theories of government, that no man, woman, or child, ought to lower his dignity so far, as to believe and trust in any wisdom higher than his own. Yet while we thus exalt and worship the very dregs of human nature, we have by a judicial forfeiture lost the faith in its true dignity. Governments have cast away the faith in their own rightful authority; fathers and mothers have let slip the faith in their's; through a mock humility they have shrunk from asserting it: and so not having that faith in themselves, they have been unable to implant it in their subjects and children; whence those convulsions, by which all ancient faith, and every ancient institution have been shaken, have ensued by a natural consequence. For they who sow the wind are sure to reap the whirlwind.-From Archdeacon Hare's Victory of Faith.