situation in other respects, but are not allowed to attend church regularly at least once on the Sabbathday, make a respectful request to your mistress, that she would grant you such permission; tell your mistress that you are grieved by this neglect of God's holy worship in time past, that you now see your sin, that your only reason for this request is, that you may go to hear of the Lord Jesus, "who came to seek and to save that which was lost." Only take care that your request be made with great respect in your manner; let it be quite plain to your mistress's mind, that you are sincere and earnest in your desire to worship and

which have not one religious observance that distinguishes the Sabbath from the six days of the week: there may not be the same hurry of business as on other days, but there is the company to be entertained, the spirit of worldly pleasure to be kept up, the same, if not greater, pressure of work for the servants to bear on Sunday as on the week-day. None of the family are seen devoutly repairing to the house of God, no Bible read to the children and servants; but worldly acquaintance and visitors keeping up a train of unprofitable conversation about news, and business, and pleasure; the master, a stranger to God; the mistress, with no fear of God before her eyes; the children copying, as of course they will, their parents' ungodly example; there is no time or arrangement for the servants' attendance at church; but, perhaps, you hear in the parlour religion cried down as hypocrisy, or something worse; profane language may wound your ears: indeed, the whole management of the house proclaims, as plainly as if it were written on the door, "God is not feared nor worshipped here." With such a family, such want of even the form of religion, how is it possible for a servant to live to God? If you are now seeking situations, as you value your welfare in life, your soul's everlasting destiny in the world to come, flee from such a household as this. If any of you are now in families where the public duties of religion are despised, God's name and word blasphemed, and his day profaned, the Gospel of Christ ridiculed, and what you hear at church is scorned at home, it is your bounden duty not to continue in such a place. The soul is too precious to be placed in such fearful danger, through an ungodly family. I trust that ministers will ever be kept from intruding into things which are beyond their proper office; but if the souls of servants are committed to our care, we do but trifle with our solemn responsibilities, unless we press upon you the great duty of avoiding irreligious families. If you can possibly find a situation where the family is daily assembled for reading the Bible and for prayer, the name and day of the Lord Jesus are revered, and where a Christian example will be placed before your eyes, this supreme advantage ought to weigh greatly in your choice of a situation. But this you cannot always find; yet to have a fixed opportunity of attending the house of God, once at least on every Sabbath, must in every place be agreed upon and granted to you. Many servants, I find, leave this matter about attending church quite unsettled. They fix the wages they are to receive; they ascertain the duties they have to perform; indeed, every thing but one is distinctly agreed upon, but that one which is omitted is important beyond all calculation. "Shall I have time on the Sabbath which I may call my own, for caring for my soul, carrying my thoughts to my God, hearing of my Saviour, death, judgment, and eternity?" If you are at present in a comfortable

From "A Pastoral Address to Female Servants." By the Rev. W. B. Mackenzie, M.A., Minister of St. James's, Holloway. 24mo. pp. 36. London, Forbes and Jackson.-A valuable little work. The temptations to which female servants, espe cially in the metropolis, are exposed, are incalculable. Mr. Mackenzie's Address cannot be too widely circulated.

form of a servant, and became obedient unto death for our redemption" (Phil. ii. 1-11).

There is not a lady in the kingdom, who regards the character and welfare of her servants, who would refuse this request, if you will take heed how you make it. Mistresses know that it is not religion which makes bad and disagreeable servants, but the want of it. Many worthless servants deceive their mistresses by pretending to go to church; but that would be a very poor reason why a sincere and upright young woman should be forbidden altogether to go to church and worship God there. Mistresses require their servants to be upright, faithful, conscientious,-persons of character and principle; but they must know that in no other way can they safely place confidence in man's fallen heart, than by having it changed and made new by the Spirit of God.

If you are already in a family where you are allowed to attend your church, and to enjoy the great blessing of family prayer, I must request you to esteem such advantages very highly; they are among the most valuable gifts which God bestows upon man; "the means of grace" are specially mentioned in the general thanksgiving, as demanding the peculiar gratitude of every person who enjoys them. Religious advantages are a talent which will immensely increase your solemn responsibility on the day of judgment. I implore you to think what account can you then give to the great God for the use which you are now making of this gift.

The Cabinet.

DEATH-BED REPENTANCE. I shall end this first consideration with a plain exhortation,- that since repentance is a duty of so great and giant-like bulk, let no man crowd it up into so narrow room, as that it be strangled in its birth for want of time and air to breathe in; let it not be put off to that time when a man hath scarce time enough to reckon all those particular duties which make up the integrity of its constitution. Will any man hunt the wild boar in his garden, or bait a bull in his closet? Will a woman wrap her child in a handkerchief, or a father send his son to school when he is fifty years old? These are indecencies of providence, and the instrument contradicts the end; and this is our case. There is no room for the repentance, no time to act all its essential parts; and a child who hath a great way to go before he be wise, may defer his studies, and hope to become learned in his old age and on his deathbed, as well as a vicious person may think to recover from all his ignorances and prejudicate opinions, from all his false principles and evil customs, from his wicked inclinations and ungodly habits, from his fondness of vice and detestation of virtue, from his promptness to sin and unwillingness to grace, from his spiritual deadness and strong sensuality, on his death-bed (I say), when he hath no natural strength, and as little spiritual: when he is criminal and impotent, hardened in his vice and soft in his fears, full of passion and empty of wisdom; when he is sick, and amazed, and timorous, and confounded, and impatient, and extremely miserable.—Bishop Taylor.

THE NEW CREATURE IN CHRIST.-Now from this great doctrine, "therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature" (2 Cor. v. 17), among many other things which are very remarkable, we may observe, first, that no man can be a new creature, except he be in Christ; for the apostle here makes our being in Christ the foundation of the new creation. He doth not say, if a man be a Peripatetic, a Platonist, an Epicurean, a Pythagorean, or any other kind of philosopher, he is a new creature; neither doth he say, if a man be of the Church of Rome or of the Church of England, a Lutheran or a Calvinist, he is therefore a new creature. But "if a man be in Christ, he is a new creature;" therefore a new creature, as I have shewn, because he is in Christ; which is a thing much to be observed, for it quite overthrows that absurd opinion which some have entertained, that a man may be saved in any religion, if he doth but live up to the light of nature, and according to the rules of that religion which he professeth, be it what it will. For it is plain from what we have discoursed upon this subject, that no man can be saved, except he be within the pale of the Church, except he be of the Christian religion; nor in that neither, except he be really in Christ, and so a true Christian. For otherwise he cannot be a new creature; and if he be not a new creature, if he be not regenerate and born again, and so made the son of God, be can never inherit eternal life he cannot receive inheritance among them who are sanctified by faith in Christ, unless he himself be so whereas men may cry up the light of nature, and the power of natural religion, as much as they please; they may as well undertake to create a new world, as to make a new creature by it. They may exclaim against vice, and extol virtue as much as it deserves, and perhaps make a shift to do something that looks well by the principle of moral philosophy; but they may as soon produce any thing out of nothing, as turn a man from "darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God" by it: yea, they may be admitted into the Christian religion itself, they may make a plausible profession of it, they may do many things in it,-but they can no more make themselves new creatures, than they could make themselves creatures. That can be done only by the almighty power of God; and he never exerts that power, but only in Him by whom he created all things. And therefore, unless a man be in him, even in Christ Jesus, he may be confident he is not a new creature. -Bishop Beveridge.

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SUBVERSION OF THE CHURCH.-As true religion has been in every age substantially the same, so have its adversaries in every age assailed it with similar weapons. We cannot therefore be surprised if two of the most subtle, penetrating, and insidious of those weapons-reproach and slander-which the prophet specifies as being prominently employed in his time, should be, in at least an equal degree, directed against the Gospel in our own. This day in which we live is, like his, "a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and of blasphemy;" wherever we turn, our eyes are shocked, our ears are insulted, and our hearts are grieved by the open taunts and scoffings of the ungodly and profane. Those who, like Sennacherib, defy the living God, no longer shelter themselves under secrecy and darkness, but pour forth their blasphemies in the broad light of day, and in the hearing of assembled multitudes: the walls of our Zion in particular are publicly menaced, and the dark designs of her assailants unblushingly and unreservedly proclaimed. The watchword and war-cry of the enemies of all religion is, the subversion of the Church of England.-Rev. T. Dale.

CHRISTIAN MYSTERIES.-We are often told of the mysteries of Christianity: and the Unitarians would persuade us, that the pure and simple Gospel has been overlaid by a successive mass of unintelligible

corruptions. But let us contrast the belief of the Ebionites, to whom the Unitarians appeal, with our own. I speak not now of those Ebionites who held the miraculous conception; for they are supposed to be in error like ourselves: but the other Ebionites and Cerinthians believed that Jesus for thirty years of his life was the same as any ordinary mortal; and that then, when he was baptised, Christ descended upon him, and continued united to him till just before his crucifixion. The sole cause assigned for this unprecedented union, was to reveal to mankind the knowledge of God. The redemption of a lost and ruined world never formed a part of their visionary creed: and we may say with truth, that whatever is mysterious in the two natures of Christ, was retained by the Ebionites; but they rejected that which the mind is able and willing to comprehend-the mercy of God, and the salvation of our souls. . . . The fact, that there was not one heretic in the first century who did not maintain the divinity of Christ, has not been sufficiently attended to. The Ebionites, it is true, believed in the human nature of Jesus: but that Christ was born of human parents, or that in any sense of the term he was a mere man, would have been treated by the Ebionites as the most irrational and impious error. So long as we know from history that the first Gnostics believed Jesus to be a phantom; and that they, who acknowledged his human nature, yet held that Christ descended upon him from heaven,-so long we have a right to argue that the apostles could not have preached the simple humanity of Christ. So far from the Socinian or Unitarian doctrine being supported by that of the Cerinthians and Ebionites, I have no hesitation in saying, that not one single person is recorded in the whole of the first century, who ever imagined that Christ was a mere man. I have observed, that one branch of the Ebionites resembled the first Socinians, i. e. they believed in the miraculous conception of Jesus, though they denied his pre-existence: but this was because they held the common notion of the Gnostics, that Jesus and Christ were two separate persons; and they believed in the preexistence and divine nature of Christ, which Socinus and his followers uniformly denied.-Burton's Bampton Lectures.

NO REPENTANCE IN THE GRAVE. The state of all on their departure from the body, as to happiness or misery, is unalterably fixed. An impassable gulf separates between the blissful regions of the blessed and the dismal dungeon of the damned. Of the latter none can pass that gulf, so as to gain admittance into the realms of glory, nor can any of the former pass it for the purpose of alleviating the misery which fills the habitations of despair. How deeply affecting, how intensely appalling is the solemn thought! how calculated to overwhelm the reflecting mind with the most serious concern as to the issue of approaching death! O, may such concern be experienced by us all; and may it produce in us the most salutary effects! May we constantly bear it in mind, that to whatever state death shall introduce us, in that same state eternity will assuredly keep and retain us! May it then be the fervent prayer of our hearts, constantly presented at the throne of grace, that in the day of life we may be united to Christ as our Saviour;-then in the night of death he will still be with us, and through the endless ages of eternity we shall not be divided.-Rev. J. Knight on the Parables.

WEEP NOT FOR THE DEAD.-Need I say to those who are mourning for departed relations, weep not? Can you weep for those whom you know and are assured, by the undoubted testimony of their life and conversation in Christ, to have been translated into the presence of Jesus, to have been carried from the dying bed by the angels to rest in his bosom; who are entertained (the glass of the Gospel shews you) with

all the affection of that heavenly company, and are waiting for the resurrection, when they, with you, shall be made eternally perfect? Can you weep for any who have finished their season of training under the discipline of this present world, and are called into the inner mansions of their Father's house, to be entertained therein till the time of their entrance upon the final inheritance be arrived? Are not the spirits of the just made perfect better companions than any you can find for them in the world which they have left behind? Will not the innumerable company of angels entertain them with brighter prospects than any which you could offer to them from your understanding of the book of God? Do not Moses, Elias, Isaiah, and Paul speak more comfortable things, think you, than you could do of the decease of their mortal body, and of the glory that remaineth to be revealed in them? Can you weep for those who are out of the reach of a single sorrow, whose capacity is filled to its utmost with happiness, and who know how soon they will welcome you, if followers of the same Saviour, unto the same heavenly places?-Rev. T. R. Hutton, Sydenham,

Our red-cross flag!-on the broad blue sea
We mark it, the badge of the bold and free;
For a thousand years on the foaming tide,
Our country's symbol, our seamen's pride.
But while on the ocean-banner we gaze,

While our hearts are swelling with grateful praise,
Let us stand to our trust, and be true to our Lord,
And send to poor heathen the light of his word.

'Tis not till the warrior to earth is prest,
That he wraps his colours around his breast;
And God, who hath shewn himself strong to aid,
Hath given us "a banner to be displayed,"—

'Tis the word of his truth; and as wide as the world Be that glorious banner of love unfurl'd,

That where'er our flag waves, there a message of faith

May point sinners to Him who redeem'd them from death.

MOONLIGHT.

BY THE REV, G. BRYAN. (For the Church of England Magazine.) We love to see thy clouds of grey,

Thy moon and planets, Night!
But there are brighter worlds than they,
Beyond thy shadowy light:

Thy shadowy light proclaims how fair
And blest those heavenly mansions are.
Oft as we, through the Scripture-glass,
Survey our home on high,
Figures of light and glory pass

Before our wond'ring eye,

And palms and crowns and thrones, and things
Too rich for man's imaginings.

O glorious place! where sun and moon,
And earth's fierce fires, would blaze
Faint as the candle-light at noon

On our bright summer-days;

And God's sweet smile darts gladness round,
And life, through all that holy ground.

And to that world yon stars shall be
Our stepping-stones and light,
When from these human dwellings we
Go forth in angels' might,

To join the song, the joys to share
Which love divine hath promis'd there.

HYMN.

"LET there be light!" th' Almighty said,
And swift the living beam obey'd,
Burst upon chaos dark and wild,
Till the glad earth and ocean smil'd.
Formless, and void, and black as night,
The heart remains, till heavenly light,
Obedient to the word divine,
On the dark surface deigns to shine.

Lo! Christ the light of life appears;
Thy form, eternal King, he wears;
And, full reflected from his face,
Beam forth thy glory and thy grace.
O Sun of Righteousness, impart
Thy light to each benighted heart;
Till the full soul with rapture glows
To reach the fountain whence it flows.

O Lord, thy life and light display,
Till sin and sorrow flee away;
Till, by thy Spirit chang'd, we prove
The image of the God we love.

REV. N. BULL.

THE LABOURER'S NOON-DAY HYMN.
Up to the throne of God is borne
The voice of praise at early morn,
And he accepts the punctual hymn
Sung as the light of day grows dim.

• Set to music, and published for the benefit of the fund for enlarging and repairing Godalming Church, Surrey.

Nor will he turn his ear aside
From holy offerings at noontide :
Then, here reposing, let us raise
A song of gratitude and praise.

What though our burden be not light,
We need not toil from morn till night;
The respite of the mid-day hour
Is in the thankful creature's power.

Blest are the moments, doubly blest,
That, drawn from this one hour of rest,
Are with a ready heart bestow'd
Upon the service of our God.

Why should we crave a hallow'd spot?
An altar is in each man's cot,

A church in every grove that spreads
Its living roof above our heads.

Look up to heaven!-the industrious sun
Already half his race hath run;
He cannot halt or go astray;
But our immortal spirits may.

Lord, since his rising in the east,
If we have falter'd or transgress'd,
Guide, from thy love's abundant source,
What yet remains of this day's course.

Help with thy grace, through life's short day,
Our upward and our downward way;
And glorify for us the west,
When we shall sink to final rest.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

Miscellaneous.

Lord

PURITANISM TRIUMPHANT.-Many of those venerable structures, which were the glory of the land, had been destroyed at the Reformation, by the sacrilegious rapacity of those statesmen and favourites to whom they had been iniquitously granted. The remainder were now threatened with the same fate by the coarse and brutal spirit of triumphant puritanism. Brooke said, he hoped to see the day when not one stone of St. Paul should be left upon another. A sentiment of vulgar malice towards Laud may have instigated the ruling faction, when they demolished with axes and hammers the carved work of that noble structure, and converted the body of the church into a stable for their troopers' horses. But in other places, where they had no such odious motive, they committed the like, and even worse indecencies and outrages, merely to shew their hatred of the Church. It was such acts of sacrilege which brought a scandal and an odium upon the reformed religion in France and the Low Countries, and stopped its progress there, which neither the Kings of France nor Spain could have done, if horror and indignation had not been excited against it by this brutal and villanous fanaticism. In some churches they baptised horses or swine, in profane mockery of baptism: in others, they broke open the tombs, and scattered about the bones of the dead; or, if the bodies were entire, they defaced and dismembered them. At Sudley they made a slaughterhouse of the chancel, cut up the carcasses upon the communion-table, and threw the garbage into the vault of the Chandoses-insulting thus the remains of some of the most heroic men, who in their day defended and did honour to their country. At Westminster, the soldiers sat smoking and drinking at the

altar, and lived in the abbey, committing every kind of indecency there, which the Parliament saw and permitted. No cathedral escaped without some injury: painted windows were broken; statues pulled down or mutilated; carvings demolished; the organs sold piecemeal for the value of the materials, or set up in taverns. At Lambeth, Parker's monument was thrown down, that Scott, to whom the palace had been allotted for his portion of the spoils, might convert the chapel into a hall; the archbishop's body was taken, not out of his grave alone, but out of his coffin; the lead in which it had been enclosed was sold, and the remains were buried in a dunghill.—Southey's Book of

the Church.

ADVANTAGES OF ENGLAND.-In conclusion, therefore, I will only add, that after traversing so many countries, observing so many different modes of civilised and semi-barbarous life, and becoming acquainted with such various political and religious institutions, it is with increased pleasure and admiration that I contemplate the state of society in our favoured land. Some nations, perhaps, may boast more taste and refinement; some, a more showy literature and more splendid public monuments; and others, more renowned achievements in arts and arms: but in the solid advantages and comforts of life, in profound learning and experimental philosophy, in private and public virtue, in all that secures domestic happiness and peace, or constitutes lasting excellence and real greatness; the administration of equal laws and impartial justice; the enjoyment of a liberty as yet restrained from licentiousness; and the free exercise of a religion equally removed from the extremes of fanaticism and indifference,-I know not the equal or the rival of Britain. Nor can I indulge for my country a higher hope than that she may long retain, under the Divine favour, the institutions which have for ages been her glory, enhanced in value by the gradual but judicious correction of their accidental defects, and consolidated in strength by the increased public estimate of their superior merits; that we her sons may be preserved from a bigoted prejudice in favour of what is old, and a feverish appetite for what is new; and above all, that we may never be deprived of that security for national soundness of doctrine, correctness of practice, civil liberty, and religious example, which is presented to us by an institution endeared by early associations, and consecrated as the well-tried bulwark against anarchy and infidelity, the establishment of the Church of England.-Elliot's Travels.

SOLITUDE.--An hour of solitude passed in sincere and earnest prayer, or the conflict with, and conquest over, a single passion or "subtle bosom-sin," will teach us more of thought, will more effectually awaken the faculty, and form the habit, of reflection, than a year's study in the schools without them. A reflecting mind is not a flower that grows wild, or comes up of its own accord. The difficulty is, indeed, greater than many, who mistake quick recollection for thought, are disposed to admit; but how much less than it would be, had we not been born and bred in a Christian and Protestant land, very few of us are sufficiently aware. Truly may we, and thankfully ought we to exclaim with the Psalmist, "The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding even to the simple."-Coleridge (Aids to Reflection).

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WORLDLY CAREFULNESS INCOMPATIBLE

WITH CHRISTIAN GODLINESS.

BY THE REV. WILLIAM BUSWELL, B.A.
Evening Lecturer of St. Peter's, St. Albans.
II.

THERE is not, perhaps, a sin which our Lord so repeatedly warned his disciples against, as that of anxious, distrustful care concerning their worldly interests; for such anxiety and carefulness not only argued a weakness of faith in Christ and his promises, but was also a proof that their treasure was still laid up upon earth; and we well know that where the treasure is, there will the heart be also. To this grievous sin we are all of us so prone, and into it the very best and the most faithful may be betrayed by some insidiously lurking feeling-either that of pride, or love of ostentation,-that our Lord censured, though mildly, even the kind offices of hospitality when they engrossed too much of the thoughts and affections, and interfered with that which must ever be the first and principal duty of the creature, namely, the worship of that adorable Being, "whose service is perfect freedom," and the welfare of the immortal soul. "Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: but one thing is needful." Well, then, might St. Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and deeply impressed with the vast importance of sanctity and holiness, urge on the Philippians, and on all who would be "followers of God, as dear children," the necessity of renouncing the world entirely and unreservedly, and of not being entangled with the affairs of this life: "Be careful for nothing."

VOL. VII.-NO. CLXXXVI.

PRICE 1d.

But if over-anxiety and carefulness in things that are lawful, that is to say, respecting food and raiment, be a sin, as it most undoubtedly is, how greatly must that sin be increased when we are anxious and over-careful concerning things that are unlawfulsuch as the pleasures and vanities of the world-and devote all our time and attention to what we have so solemnly pledged ourselves to renounce! O, how great must be our guilt, how enormous our wickedness, when, in defiance and in utter disregard of that righteous God, who " hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness," we are " careful" to make "provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof;" and when we trifle away in scenes of profligacy and vice, and in the pleasures of sin, which can but endure for a season, those few, and fleeting, and precious moments of our earthly existence, which ought to be devoted to holy and heavenly pursuits! "Dearly beloved, I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;" "cleanse yourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord;" and for his sake who died to redeem you. As far as regards. the things of this present life, "be careful for nothing" but nevertheless there is one thing needful; there is one thing concerning which it is both your interest and duty to be careful, namely, the welfare of your souls, and your fitness for eternity. Remember, "you are not your own, you are bought with a price," even with the precious blood of the immaculate Lamb. Prepare then, O sinner, to meet thy God. "Be careful" for thy soul's health; " be careful to

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