SUCCESSIVE BEREAVEMENTS-CHRISTIAN SUBMISSION. "IT IS THE LORD."—1 SAM. iii. 18. We know not all why little ones are lent, Not more we know why they are caught away; We darkly guess why stroke on stroke is sentBut know, for sure, it is our Father's way. "Tis thus He maketh oft his children weep, And wonder much; yet is He holy still; Up then, my soul, tho' now his ways are deep, And say, "Amen! Thou Great Unsearchable !” The first was ta'en, nor had we time to think; The second fell, as yet we held our breath; The third awhile seem'd balanced on the brink,We saw the trembling scales of life and death. And much did love imagine o'er the boy, And pray and wish the blow might not descend; Deceit, alas! The foe had but retired, And much too well to need his coming back. Love doubtless still had dreams, for love will dream, But fears she also had, and they were true: And now the stroke is past No tame career! A mystery, yet so clear, that faith can say A dear one hath escaped to bless our eyes: And unappall'd commit to Him our lot. Yea, let me say, while every pore doth bleed Within my heart, and anguish blinds my eye, Do on thy will, my Father, and if need, Strike yet again; I'll trust thee, God most high! December 8, 1847. G. C. H. A WORD TO THE WEARY. FORWARD go, thou pilgrim weary: Till opes the dawn of cloudless day. Forward go, thou child of sorrow, Softer skies may smile to-morrow, Though thus dark the present seems; 'Tis when thickest glooms are low'ring, 'Tis when fiercest storms are pouring, That we look for milder beams. Forward go, bereaved one lonely, Forward go, believer dying, Though hell's shafts be round thee flying, Yet on, still on, a few steps more, J. B. The Gleaner. PRESENT POSITION OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH. In the present equipoise of spiritual forces, the position of the Protestant Episcopal Church of England is, we must not say neutral, but ambiguous. It is not as if the church, strong in a calm unanimity of feeling, had taken up a position between the two parties, prepared to mediate and to rescue truth from the expected collision of the two. This is not the fact; for the church, intensely sundered in opinion, reels to and fro between the two, apparently inclining toward the side of anti-biblical despotism; and yet, on the feeling which pervades very many of its individual and private members, connected by vital sympathies with the church, truly Catholic and Protestant. At such a moment, when human sagacity must quite fail in the attempt to forecast the issue even of a year's events, no circumstances, no alliances, no symbols are unimportant, which, in fact, stand forth as badges of filiation and paternity, and which may be appealed to as such in some moment of ecclesiastical conflict. A day may come-and such a day seems to be at hand-wherein the Church of England will be dealt with, not according to its intrinsic and its ancient merits, but according to its badges; according to the colours it wears; according to its ostensible armorial distinctions. And it may thus be dealt with-first, by its declared opponents, who will snatch an incalculable advantage in thus denouncing the Episcopal Church as a body, degraded with the scarlet fringes and the meretricious ribbons of polytheism; secondly, it may thus be dealt with by the mass of the people, whose rude impressions would be confirmed while they listen at once to the denunciations of its adversaries, and to the plausible pretexts of Romish seducers. And next, it may thus be dealt with by statesmen who, finding the church resolved not to relinquish its symbols and bearings, will promptly act on the assumption, that this pertinacity is not without an inward motive and a reason, and that therefore the Church of England ought, in a legal sense, to be regarded as mainly one with the Eastern and the Romish churches.-Ancient Christianity -Supplement. INFIDELITY OF SCIENTIFIC MEN. If any man shall think, by view and inquiry, into these sensible and material things, to attain to that light whereby he may reveal unto himself the nature and will of God, then, indeed, is he spoiled by vain philosophy: for the contemplation of God's creatures and work produceth (having regard to the work and creatures themselves) knowledge. And therefore it was most aptly said by one of Plato's school, that the sense of man carrieth a resemblance with the sun, which, as we see, openeth and revealeth all the terrestrial globe; but then, again, it concealeth and obscureth the stars and celestial globe: so doth the sense discover natural things; but it darkeneth and shutteth up divine. And hence it is true, that it hath proceeded that divers learned men have been heretical, while they have sought to fly up to the secrets of the Deity by the waxen wings of the senses.-Bacon's Adv. of Learning. THE WONDERS OF PRAYER. ABRAHAM's servant prays-Rebekah appears. Jacob wrestles and prays-the angel is conquered, and Esau's mind is wonderfully turned from the revengeful purpose he had harboured for twenty years. Moses prays - Amalek is discomfited. Joshua prays-Achan is discovered. Hannah prays -Samuel is born. David prays-Ahithophel hangs himself. Asa prays a victory is gained. Jehoshaphat prays-God delivers him from his enemies. Isaiah and Hezekiah pray-one hundred and eightyfive thousand Assyrians are dead in twelve hours. Daniel prays the dream is revealed. He prays again, and the lions are muzzled. Mordecai and Esther fast Haman is hanged on his own gallows in three days. Ezra prays at Ahava-God answers. Nehemiah ejaculates a prayerthe King's heart is softened in a minute. Elijah prays-a drought of three years succeeds. He prays again-a plenteous rain descends. Elisha prays-Jordan is divided. Again he prays-a child's soul comes back. The Church prays--Peter is delivered by an angel. Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises-the doors of the prison were opened, and every man's bands were loosed. Prayer has divided seas, rolled up flowing rivers, made flinty rocks gush into fountains, quenched flames of fire, muzzled lions, disarmed vipers and poisons, marshalled the stars against the wicked, stopped the course of the moon, arrested the rapid sun in his great race, burst open iron gates, recalled souls from eternity, conquered the strongest devils, commanded legions of angels down from heaven, and overcome Christ himself -the mighty God. Prayer has bridled and chained the raging passions of men, and rooted and destroyed vast armies of proud, daring, blustering atheists. Prayer has fetched one man from the bottom of the sea, and carried another in a chariot of fire to heaven. What has not prayer done? -Ryland. DANGER OF A GOOD REPUTATION. I KNEW a venerable man who had attained to the age of seventy in blameless conduct. He was esteemed for his suavity by all who knew him, and then fell into odious immorality. On being asked if he could trace his fall to any ascertainable cause, he replied"I was proud of my reputation, and Satan, taking advantage of this state of mind, tempted me, and I was taken in the snare of my own pride." In how many ways does self steal away the heart from God! How subtile are its workings; how concealed its movements; yet how extensive its influence! How it perverts our motives, lowers our aims, corrupts our affections, and taints our best actions! How much incense is burned, and how many sacrifices are offered, on the altar of this idol.-James' Addresses. Notices of New Publications. GERMANY, ENGLAND, AND SCOTLAND; or, London: Simpkin & Marshall. Edinburgh: Oliver Ir was a bright and balmy day in Spring, 1845. The train from London to Newcastle passed along with fearful rapidity on its iron pathway. In one of its carriages might have been seen a passenger, somewhat tall in stature, and greatly interested in the appearance of the country through which he was whirled. His accent marked him as a foreigner. He could not contain his emotion as he flew through the "picturesque landscapes of Derbyshire," and he "waved his hand in passing, to the majestic towers of the ancient Minster of York.” The following day beheld him in the stage, galloping as fast as four steeds could carry him, to Edinburgh. He sighed over the ruined Abbey of Jedburgh as he glanced at its desolation, and fell into a musing attitude as Abbotsford faded from his view. On the evening of the same day, and as the coach drew near the city, some commotion was plainly observable at the east end of Princes Street. The horses dashed up to the office, the door of the coach was opened, and the traveller stepped out with conscious dignity on the pavement. Scarcely had he done so, when he was saluted by a man, stamped in his appearance as one of nature's noblemen. His aspect was venerable, his manner courteous and affable. There was a massiveness in his brow, Lines of thought farrowed his beaming features. This son of sanctified genius bade the stranger welcome to Scotland. That welcome was given in the gleeful tones, and with the cordial embrace of Dr Chalmers, and that stranger was none other than the historian of the Reformation, Dr Merle, who, with a spice of characteristic vanity, keeps added to his own name the illustrious cognomen of D'Aubigné. So might we write were we to imitate the spirit and mannerism of the work before us. It is all composed in what painters have named "the grand style"-in which there is ever apparent a painful and spasmodic yearning for effect, in which too we look in vain for natural grouping or truthful delineation. Dr D'Aubigné's mode of composition is sometimes powerful and striking, but, in his uniform desire to be picturesque, he often sacrifices the dignity of history, and his narrative lowers itself to the tricks and starts, the sudden attitudes and eccentric gesticulations of a modern melo-drama. Nay, more, he forgets to describe things as they are. Sometimes he commits curious slips in matters of fact, in his constant attempt to say something out of the way, something to surprise by its boldness, or fascinate by the richness of its colouring. We have many painful examples of all these fatal tendencies in this recent work. The mode in which he depicts Scottish scenery is quite symbolic of the method in which he has written Scottish Church History. The former is often ludicrous, and the latter frequently romance. Let our readers listen to the following clauses. "But what," says he, speaking of Edinburgh, "even to a Swiss is more striking, and especially when walking in the cool groves of the valley which separates the old town from the new, is that mountain, which, in the very midst of the city, shoots up its immense and abrupt walls of rocks, which an Irishman described as being more than perpendicular. You wander here amidst Scotch firs-you contemplate the base of the mountain, you climb from rock to rock-you hide yourself under their shadow, dive into their recessesyou fancy yourself in one of the most picturesque and most distant solitude of our Alps, in some secluded glen of the Valais, of the Oberland, or of Glaris, beside the Glaciers; you look up and palaces surround you. But what are those ancient walls which I see perched upon the summits of these bold rocks? What is that fierce blast of the trumpet which re-echoes from the heights? What mean the bands of armed Highlanders, who, clothed in their picturesque costume, ascend and descend the mountain?" Will, any body recognise in this vapid exaggeration that mass of basaltic clinkstone, which the citizens of Edinburgh name-their Castle? This magnified vision of "Scotch firs, and recesses," and other non-existent features, so like the Swiss Alps, is indeed quite harmless in itself, but, alas! it may be almost taken as an index to the spirit and character of the book. The book is a formal glorification of the Free Church, That community, who indeed deserve no little commendation in many things, are all in all to Dr D'Aubigné. Scotland is the Free Church, and the Free Church is Scotland. In our author's imagination the two are identified. No other sect in the land is noticed, save as a mere matter of course. He sings the beauty of the veto and the blessings of church extension. He is profoundly ignorant of the H avowed spirit and purpose of the latter movement to crush dissent. He glories in the declaration, "that for a hundred years before the veto, only sixty-three churches were erected in Scotland by voluntary contribution, whereas two hundred were erected in nine years after it." We had thought that in Scotland, and in the hundred years before the veto, the Secession and Relief had built more than four hundred churches" by voluntary contribution." But the eye that saw the Scotch firs in Princes Street gardens, could not see even one of these four hundred dissenting edifices -and yet it is stated somewhere in the book (but, on searching again, the clause is so brief and insignificant, we could not find it), that the United Presbyterian Church has at least six hundred congregations. In the course of the work we have a cento of Scottish Church History, in some sections pretty well told, but all constructed so as to bear on the vindication of the Free Church, in its struggle, not for its present liberty, but for independence of the state which had created and endowed it. In the fact that the body now forming the Free Church dissented so strenuously from all half measures, as at length openly to secede from the National Church, we do greatly rejoice, and we wonder not that they have gained the hearty applause of good men in every land. But we distinctly avow our conviction, that what they aimed at, ere they seceded, was a supremacy incompatible with state connexion. We have no hesitation, too, in affirming that their legislation was ultra vires, was the assumption of a power that belonged only to the civil government. But Dr Merle approves of all their conduct-and has learned to talk of the "illegal act of Queen Anne." We demur to his identification of Scotland with the measures of the new sect, great as are its numbers, mighty as is its power, large as is the good which it has achieved, and will yet perform. Thus, however, writes Merle D'Aubigné. Speaking of one meeting of Assembly, he says, "Scotland, beheld the fulfilment of the promise." Again, describing a meeting of Commission, he writes, "Nothing like it had been seen since the memorable day when the Covenant was signed in Greyfriars' Churchyard." Then he affirms that the third "reformation in Scotland" commenced with the Assembly of 1842. He calls the agitation a "national movement"-and characterises the decision of the House of Lords, which led to the disruption, as an event "responding mournfully to such a movement." The disruption is described as "the coming of the Lord in his mighty power." "His angel was to visit EVERY MANSE, AND EVERY HOUSE IN -an error SCOTLAND, so that there should be a great cry throughout the land-SCOTLAND was to prepare to meet her God." On another page we read, "SCOTLAND, in 1833 and 1843, did not combat like the Scotland of 1663 and 1688." All this magniloquence is tasteless, and quite unworthy of a man of candour and impartiality. But it sounds well to speak of Scotland in that easy way-it adorns a historic paragraph. Dr Merle is, in other things as well as this, very guilty of mistaking some for all, even when his own senses might have prevented the blunder. "One Sunday," says he, "while I was in Edinburgh, there was a service in Gaelic, under a tent. These Highlanders, with their short kilts, bare legs, plaids thrown over their shoulders, and raised heads, covered with their characteristic bonnet, presented a most picturesque spectacle." Now, the likelihood is, that there were among that audience a few soldiers from some Highland regiment; but our vivacious annalist describes the whole audience as arrayed in the garb of old Gaul. And just as he amplifies the philabegs of a few recruits, and clothes with them an entire assemblage, so he ascribes the feelings and operations of the non-intrusion party to the whole population of Scotland,-which, in ordinary circumstances, we should attribute to unscrupulous partisanship, unpardonable carelessness, or superficial and inaccurate information. Perhaps he threw himself into a circle of society, in which Free Churchism was the prevalent ideathe one emotion--and he confounded the class whom he met with the world beyond him. That he was sometimes misled by others, not wilfully on their part, or on his, is very evident. His eyes practised strange hallucinations upon him, and his ears seem to have formed a similar conspiracy. Do we not find him recording the following statement in speaking of Sabbath travelling on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway? He says, that the railway was open on Sabbath, but "the Christians did not abandon their cause, and at last they gained the victory. When I was in Scotland it had not yet been won; and, in the mean time, christians abstained from travelling on that line." Some few did so for a brief period, and preferred a stage; but our author, as is wont, makes a false and sweeping assertion, relying on mistaken authority, or dazzled by the glory of such an affirmation before a Genevan audience, that no christian among us used at any time a railway which violated the Lord's day. The voluntaryism of Dr Merle is a very convenient thing. It rises into prominence, or quietly slips into abeyance, at his plea sure. Occasionally, in his other writings, it takes upon it a promising boldness; but in this work it evaporates, and flies off in fumes of fallacious and meaningless verbiage. We are not at present speaking of the consistency of this procedure. We are merely stating the fact. The Anti-State Church Society of London, the head quarters of extreme voluntaryism, have circulated, as one of their tracts, a publication of Dr Merle D'Aubigné's, on the separation of the church from the state. Nay, our author has named this enterprise "the reformation of the nineteenth century." But, in this new publication, he speaks with peculiar dubiety, with bated breath, in timid and contradictory language. He tries to shape his voluntaryism into something not very unlike the convenient theory of the Free Church. He makes a continuous effort to pare it down, till at last it becomes an impalpable nondescript. Let any one read the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of these "Travelling Recollections," and he will at once perceive the truth of our strictures. The author brands voluntaryism under a form in which it was never held in this country, and concludes by doing homage to the Church of Scotland. "May the Free Church," writes he, “maintain that ancient and grand principle, by virtue of which the kindly influence of christianity is to penetrate, not only into individuals, but into families; and most especially into the great body of the nation." And what religious denomination does not hold the same principle? Does Voluntaryism not avow it? But Dr Merle ends by saying-" May the Church of Scotland never cease to repeat, before the whole world, that she will not have a state without God-let her glory in her perfect freedom." What does Dr Merle mean by "her perfect freedom?" If the Church of Scotland has perfect freedom, why did the Free Church secede?-or how can he justify them in their secession?-or how can he reconcile this statement with two-thirds of his work, in which he labours to show that the Church of Scotland was in such spiritual bondage as warranted the disruption? Dr Merle is at a loss what theory to advocate. His perplexity has brought him to his wit's end; and so he argues in contradictory parallelisms, such as the following, which are a fair sample:-There cannot be a union of church and state, yet there may be a union. Union is good-discord is evil. Disunion is often necessaryunion does injury sometimes. Shall such a junction be in theory, or shall it be reduced to a system? Shall there be a union merely of pious feelings and tendencies; or will it include temporal emoluments? Between all these points Dr Merle vibrates rapidly, and finds no rest. These amusing oscillations do appear like a compromise. We ask not its motive, we like not its spirit, and we leave it as a feeble and miserable failure. It may be mentioned in passing, that Dr Merle divides the honour of originating the Evangelical Alliance between himself and the Free Church. Let them settle the question between them. The Alliance does not say so itself. Nay, more--many ministers of the Free Church branded the call to union in memorials and overtures before their courts; so that not a few of the clerical friends of the Alliance among them hung back for a season, and gave it no help. Many such blunders are to be excused in a foreigner; but they are not so pardonable in a professed historian. And we cannot pass them so lightly as we may overlook other slips of Dr Merle, such as his calling the principal of Edinburgh College "the Hebraist Dr Lee"-confounding him with his illustrious namesake of Cambridge. Much more might we write on the sections of this book which refer to Scotland; but it is an ungrateful task. We are truly sorry to see a man like Dr Merle stooping to such practices-tarnishing his own fame, and doing injury to his other and better publications. Has the desire to make a book that might sell had too much influence over him? The wish to make hay when the sun shines," to trade upon his popularity, has been suspected of leading him into a fatal error. Still there are other points which we are compelled to notice. Dr Merle, still confounding Scotland with only one religious sect or party, tells us that, in our country, the Lord's Supper is only kept twice ayear." The great majority of Dissenters observe the sacred institution far oftener, and so deserve Dr Merle's unconscious eulogium of being "select and truly christian flocks." We do not know what Dr Merle's notions of church discipline are; but they certainly appear to be rather grotesque. He affirms that the Church of Scotland has discipline, and gives the following specimen: -"Often when a father comes to ask baptism for his child, he is answered, 'You are an unclean person, or a drunkard; what assurance have we that you will bring up your child in the fear of the Lord?"" This is the discipline of the Church of Scotland! Are those persons so rebuffed by the minister, members of the church? Then they should be dealt with before they apply for baptism, and quite apart from the dispensation of that ordinance altogether. And if these parents are not members, what claim have they for the administration of any church privilege to their offspring? What discipline can exist in a church which places itself in such a dilemma? If we are to judge from her practice, the |