sion of the coming Saviour. The promises and prophecies of the Old Testament have all a direct reference to Him. -The dignity of his person, the sufficiency of his atonement, the number of his subjects, and the glory of his reign, are the chief matters which they contain. And when in the fulness of time, Messiah appeared in our nature, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, His advent was announced by the angelic hosts as the GOSPEL, or GLAD TIDINGS of great joy unto all people. Hitherto, the intimations of a Saviour had been principally confined to the Jews, the peculiar people of God, and the personal ministrations of Christ were addressed chiefly to the lost sheep of the house of Israel; but since his resurrection, and ascension to glory, his salvation has been, by "the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith." Wherever the light of revelation shines, all are freely invited to partake of its blessings; none are excluded but those who wilfully and obstinately exclude themselves; the guiltiest of the guilty are declared welcome to come to the Saviour, yea, those who had imbrued their hands in his blood had a special commission addressed to them, for Christ came "not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." Let all, then, who read this tract, seriously consider whether they have obeyed the gospel call-whether they have given themselves up to Christ, and are depending on him wholly and alone for salvation; and should they still be in doubts respecting their state for eternity, let them flee without delay to Him who is still inviting them to come and receive the water of life freely. Aggravated is the guilt of the gospel despiser, and dreadful shall be his doom if he continue in his sin-for if he that despised Moses' law died without mercy, of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace !" THE ENGLISH MONTHLY TRACT SOCIETY, 27, RED LION SQUARE, LONDON; AND J. F. SHAW, BOOKSELLER, SOUTHAMPTON ROW, LONDON. J. & W. Rider, Printers, Bartholomew Close, London. THE LOSS OF THE PEGASUS. Few public events have occurred of late years, more painful in themselves, and more strikingly illustrative of the vanity of human life, and the utter uncertainty of all human expectation, than the loss of the steam-ship Pegasus, on the night of the 19th of July, 1843. The number of lives lost on that melancholy occasion-the peculiar interest attaching to more than one of the sufferers-and, above all, the circumstances of unexampled security and unpreparedness under which the accident occurred, conspired to produce throughout the country a deep excitement, and to connect the remembrance of it with feelings of unusual solemnity. The Pegasus, which for several years had plied between Leith and Hull, sailed from the former place at five o'clock in the afternoon of the 19th. It was calm, and, with the exception of a light and favourable breeze toward night, so it continued. On passing inside the Ferne Islands, near what is called the Golden or Goldstone Rock, while the captain from the bridge was taking a last look-out before retiring for the night, she struck on a sunken rock. She was backed off, and her head turned toward the shore; but ere she had proceeded many hundred yards, the water rushing in, extinguished the fires, by which means her course was inevitably stopped; so that she rapidly filled, and went down. If ever there was a body of persons who, on the bosom of the great deep, were justified in retiring to repose without contemplating danger, it was the company on board of that ill-fated vessel. With the sea calm and unruffled, and the weather in every respect propitious, within sight of a shore, where the verdant turf descends almost to the water's edge-on board a vessel, which was announced to have been newly repaired, and which seemed in all respects worthy of being fully trusted, under the conduct of a captain and crew familiar, from repeated and long experience, with every feature and every possible peril of the voyage-there was nothing to As excite in the most timid bosom any emotion of alarm. No such feeling seems, accordingly, to have visited the passengers. the shades of night gathered round them, they appear, with few exceptions, to have retired to rest, anticipating no other summons than that which should call them to witness, amid the splendours of the morning, how far they had sped on their course. Alas! how far different a summons awaited them in that fearful shock, which, ere their slumbers had well nigh commenced, was, to all but a slender remnant of them, the knell of death; for before many minutes had elapsed, of all that mass of living beings which this sudden catastrophe had crowded together upon the deck, only a scanty few were left to tell the melancholy tale. To such a tale it were impossible to listen, without emotions of the most intense interest. As the mind pictures to itself each part of the thrilling scene, succeeding each other with fearful rapidity-the amazement-the inquiry-the terrorthe instinctive rush to the deck-to the boats-the fruitless effort to make for the shore-the gush of the water through the crashed and opening timbers-the quenching of the furnace fires the sudden righting of the vessel-and then the going down at once into the deep-the heart becomes oppressed in its musings, and is tempted to seek relief in turning away to other and more inviting objects. Yet it might be beneficial to detain some of the varied emotions which have been excited in the bosoms of thousands who have read the affecting narrative. Many, doubtless, have been the stirrings of deep regret, over the awfully sudden summons out of this world, of so many who had no expectations but those of a longer continuance amid its duties and engagements. The thoughts of not a few have darted in a moment to the wives who would become widows, and the children fatherless-to the hearts that would be riven with sorrow, when the tidings of that catastrophe should reach them. And mingled with such feelings have been the hearty expressions of self-gratulation, on the part of some, and of sincere gratitude to the Disposer of all events, on the part of others, that themselves were not among the passengers of that vessel, and sharers in the alarm and the fatal issues of that night. But it may be it must be, that there have been readers, who, while they have been affected by all these, and many more considerations of a similar character, have been led to place themselves -as far as a fixed and serious effort of the imagination would allow them-in the very position of the sufferers whose untimely end has awakened their sympathies. They have attempted to conceive of all the melancholy circumstances as actually occurring to themselves-themselves as having paced that deck-gazing on the sea-all calm-all serene-all cheerful, until nature asked repose; themselves as being roused from their slumbers-themselves as hearing, with a shudder of horror, that danger was instant and imminent--themselves as realizing, for a few seconds, their inevitable nearness to another world-themselves, when the vessel, as if with a sudden spring, shot to the bottom, and when, a moment of heart-rending screams and struggles being over, the silence of death prevailed over the face of the deep. And then the personal question has proposed itself—it has come unsought, but with an appropriateness, which, however unwelcome, could not but be acknowledged -Had I been of the number of those who were on the wreck, with death and eternity just before me, what would have been the state of my mind? Serious as such an inquiry is in its very nature, it may have been allowed to pass away, without receiving any distinct and definite reply. And yet the production of such an act of self-inquiry, is so evidently a part of God's intention in these otherwise inscrutable providential dispensations, that to recall the question, and to plead with those to whom it was suggested, as well as to propose it to those whose reflections stopped short of it, is but the dictate of Christian regard for, and interest in, the welfare of immortal souls. Had you been, then, reader, one of those who were startled from your slumber, to discover, that in a few moments the ocean would be your grave, what would have been your state of mind? In this form of the question, possibly, you may be at a loss to answer it. Even a becoming self-diffidence may prevent you. The suddenness and fearfulness of the circumstances, you may reasonably allege, might have shocked and shaken many a mind, and thrown it for a time off its balance, especially if associated with keenly-felt peculiarities of relative connexion, and therefore it would be very harsh and unjust to conclude, on that account, that you were destitute of faith and piety, and in a state of unpreparedness for eternity. It is not every mind-it is not even every pious mind-that could manifest firmness and self-possession at such a moment. Nay, the very fact, that these astonish and delight so much when they are apparent, is a proof of their rarity. We admit the force of the plea. We put the question, therefore, in another form. What is now the ground of your hope? What is now the state of your preparation for eternity? You have not now the plea of sudden and distracting agitation. What, then, we repeat, is your hope, and what your preparedness now? Whatever they are now, they would have been then; whatever |