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TRUE KNOWLEDGE.

The excellent John Newton, on being asked his opinion on some topic, replied, "When I was young I was sure of many things; there are only two things of which I am sure now : one is, that I am a miserable sinner, and the other that Jesus Christ is an all-sufficient Saviour." This is the sum of all saving knowledge, and he is well taught who gets these two lessons by heart.

THE MAN AND THE CHRISTIAN. Prayer is the vital breath of faith,

Which makes the soul to heaven arise; Neglecting this, the man may live,

But O, how soon the Christian dies.

THE CHRISTIAN AND HIS BIBLE. He knows, and knows no more, his Bible true, A truth the brilliant atheist never knew; And, in that volume, reads with sparkling eyes, His title clear to mansions in the skies.

MAKE YOUR WILL.

The Rev. Dr. Raffles, in preaching the funeral sermon of the late Rev. Dr. Hamilton, of Leeds, England, said, "In connection with the important subject of preparation for death-for we have all to die, and the sooner we distinctly understand what it requires to do so, honourably and safely, the better-allow me to mention, first, a wise and equitable arrangement of your temporal affairs. Have you made your will? There is an admirable tract with this title. I wish it were better known, and more generally read. He who has property that will survive him, and a family possessing indisputable claims on his remembrance, ought not to give sleep to his eyes nor slumber to his eyelids, till he has made such a testamentary disposition of his estate as shall be to the honour of his Christian character, and save his family from contention, litigation, and strife, in the event of his removal."

AN INDIAN'S THEOLOGY.

A white man and an Indian were both brought under conviction of sin about the same time. The Indian, whose conviction was pungent, soon found joy and peace in believing, while the white man continued in darkness and distress for a long time. Seeing the Indian one day enjoying the sweet consolations of religion, "Why," says the white man, "should there be such a difference ? Why has God forgiven your sins, while I go mourning? I have done all that I can do, but find no comfort." "Suppose," says the Indian, "that you come along to a great prince. He holds out to you a suit of clothes, and says, 'Here, take these, and welcome.' You look around, feel ashamed, and say, No, my clothes are pretty good yet, they will do a little longer, thank you, sir.' Then the prince, rather angry, says, 'Here, Sam, take the suit.' I look, my old blanket all rags, cold and dirty: 'Thank you, thank you, kind sir.' Poor Indian now be warm and happy."

A PERTINENT QUESTION.

A lady was engaged in domestic affairs, when some one rang the street-door bell, and the Catholic servant-girl was bidden to say her mistress was not at home. She answered, "Yes, ma'am; and when I confess to the priest, shall I confess it as your sin or mine?"

BE FIRM.

The wind and the waves may beat against a rock planted in a troubled sea, but it remains unmoved. Be you like that rock, young man. Vice may entice, and the song and the cup may invite. Beware, stand firmly at your post. Let your principles shine forth unobscured. There is glory in the thought that you have resisted temptation, and conquered. Your bright example will be to the world what the lighthouse is to the mariner upon a sea shore: it will guide others to the point of virtue and safety.

Biography.

In the absence, this month, of any particular Biography, we shall treat our friends to a few interesting extracts, concerning both the good and the evil, which will tend at once to illustrate the force of nature and the force of grace-the misery of infidels, and the felicity of those who walk with God.

HOWARD, THE PHILANTHROPIST. He was a singular being in many of the common habits of life: he bathed daily in cold water; and, both on rising and going to bed, swathed himself in coarse towels, wet with the coldest water: in that state he remained half an hour or more, and then threw them off, freshened and invigorated, as he said, beyond measure. He never put on a great-coat in the coldest countries; nor was ever a minute under or over the time of an appointment for twenty-six years. He never continued at a place, or with a

person, a single day beyond the period prefixed for going, in his life; and he had not, for the last ten years of his existence, ate any fish, flesh, or fowl, nor sat down to his simple fare of tea, milk, and rusks, all that time. His journeys were continued from prison to prison; from one group of wretched beings to another, night and day; and when he could not go in a carriage, he would walk. Such a thing as an obstruction was out of the question.

Some days after his first return from an attempt to mitigate the plague at

Constantinople, he favoured me with a morning visit to London. The weather was so very terrific, that I had forgot his inveterate exactness, and had yielded up the hope of expecting him. Twelve at noon was the hour; and exactly as the clock struck he entered my room; the wet-for it rained in torrents-dripping from every part of his dress, like water from a sheep just landed from its washing. He would not have attended to his situation, having sat himself down with the utmost composure, and begun conversation, had I not made an offer of dry clothes. "Yes," said he, smiling, "I had my fears, as I knocked at your door, that we should go over the old business of apprehension about a little rain-water, which, though it does not run off my back as it does from that of a duck, does me as little injury, and after a long drought is scarcely less refreshing. The coat that I have on has been as often wetted through as any duck's in the world, and, indeed, gets no other cleanng. I assure you, a good soaking shower is the best brush for broad-cloth. You, like the rest of my friends, throw away your pity upon my supposed hardships with just as much reason as you commiserate the common beggars, who, being familiar with storms, necessity, and nakedness, are a thousand times (so forcible is habit) less to be compassioned than the sons and daughters of ease and luxury, who, accustomed to all the enfeebling refinements of feathers by night and fires by day, are taught to shiver at a breeze. All this is the work of art, my good friend: nature is intrepid, hardy, and adventurous; but it is a practice to spoil her with indulgences from the moment we come into the world. A soft dress and a soft cradle begin our education in luxury, and we do not grow more manly the more we are gratified; on the contrary, our feet must be wrapped in wool or silk we must tread upon carpets; breathe, as it were, in fire; and fear the least change in the weather. You smile," said Mr. Howard, after a pause, "but I am a living instance of the truths I insist on. A more puny young ster than myself was never seen. wet my feet I was sure to take cold. I could not put on my shirt without its being aired. To be serious, I am convinced, that what emasculates the body, debilitates the mind, and renders both unfit for those exertions which are of such use to us social beings. I therefore entered upon a reform of my consti

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tution, and have succeeded in such a degree that I have neither had a cough, cold, the vapours, nor any more alarming disorder, since I surmounted the seasoning. Formerly, mulled wines, and spirits, and great fires, were to comfort me, and to keep out the cold, as it is called; the perils of the day were to be baffled by something taken hot on going to bed; and before I pursued my journey the next morning, a dram was to be swallowed, to fortify the stomach! Believe me," said Mr. Howard, "we are too apt to invert the remedies which we ought to prescribe for ourselves. Thus we are for

ever giving hot things, when we should administer cold. We bathe in hot instead of cold water; we use a dry bandage when we should use a wet one; and we increase our food and clothing when we should, by degrees, diminish both. If we would trust more to nature, and suffer her to apply her own remedies to cure her own diseases, the formidable catalogue of maladies would be reduced to one-half, at least, of their present number."-Pratt's Gleanings.

CROMWELL'S PURITAN ARMY. "THE army which now (1647) became supreme in the state," says Thomas Babington Macaulay, in his eloquent "History of England,' 66 was an army very different from any that has since been seen among us. It was raised for home service. The ranks were composed of persons superior in station and education to the multitude. These persons, sober, moral, diligent, and accustomed to reflect, had been induced to take up arms, not by the pressure of want, not by the love of novelty and license, not by the arts of recruiting officers, but by religious and political zeal. The boast of the soldiers, as we find it recorded in their solemn resolutions, was, that they were freeborn Englishmen, who had, of their own accord, put their lives in jeopardy for the liberties and religion of England, and whose right and duty it was to watch over the welfare of the nation which they had saved.

"A force thus composed might, without injury to its efficiency, be indulged in some liberties which, if allowed to any other troops, would have proved subversive of all discipline. In general, soldiers who should form themselves into political clubs, elect delegates, and pass resolutions on high questions of state, would soon break loose from all control, would cease

to form an army, and would become the worst and most dangerous of mobs. Nor would it be safe, in our time, to tolerate in any regiment religious meetings, at which a corporal versed in Scripture should lead the devotions of his lessgifted colonel, and admonish a backsliding major. But such was the intelligence, the gravity, and the self-command of the warriors whom Cromwell had trained, that in their camp a political organization and a religious organization could exist without destroying military organization. The same men who, off duty, were noted as demagogues and field preachers, were distinguished by steadiness, by the spirit of order, and by prompt obedience on watch, on drill, and on the field of battle.

"In war this strange force was irresistible. The stubborn courage characteristic of the English people was, by the system of Cromwell, at once regulated and stimulated. Other leaders have maintained order as strict; other leaders have inspired their followers with a zeal as ardent; but in his camp alone the most rigid discipline was found in company with the fiercest enthusiasm. From the time when the army was remodelled to the time when it was disbanded, it never found, either in the British Islands or on the Continent, an enemy who could stand its onset. In England, Scotland, Ireland, Flanders, the Puritan warriors, often surrounded by difficulties, sometimes contending against threefold odds, not only never failed to conquer, but never failed to destroy and break in pieces whatever force was opposed to them. They at length came to regard the day of battle as a day of certain triumph.

"But that which chiefly distinguished the army of Cromwell from other armies, was the austere morality and the fear of God which pervaded all ranks. It is acknowledged by the most zealous Royalists, that in that singular camp no oath was heard, no drunkenness or gambling was seen, and that during the long dominion of the soldiery, the property of the peaceable citizen and the honour of woman were held sacred. If outrages were committed, they were outrages of a very different kind from those of which a victorious army is generally guilty. No servant-girl complained of the rough gallantry of the red-coats; not an ounce of plate was taken from shops of the goldsmiths; but a Pelagian sermon, or a window on which the Virgin and child were

VOL. VIII.

painted, produced in the Puritan ranks an excitement which it required the utmost exertions of the officers to quell. One of Cromwell's chief difficulties was to restrain his pikemen and dragoons from invading by main force the pulpit of ministers whose discourses, to use the language of that time, were not savoury; and too many of our cathedrals still bear the marks of the hatred with which those stern spirits regarded every vestige of Popery."

PORTRAIT OF THOMAS PAINE, BY A MASTER.

THERE is a great deal of stern, manly truth told by the secular press. Whether it be through deference to a general public sentiment favourable to morality and religion, or from an increasing conviction of the vital importance of biblical principles, it is certain that the popular press is assuming a higher tone in the discussion of great moral questions, and is lending its influence to the diffusion of Christian knowledge, as never before. It thus contributes powerfully to the removal of danger from scepticism among the cultivated, reading classes. Infidelity is in a good degree made to slink into the narrow channels of its own creation, instead of flaunting its blasphemies in the face of the community, as in its palmy days. Even journals of loosest morality, and farthest from the support of evangelical views, deal with infidelity and its champions with just and unsparing severity.

The recent anniversary of the birthday of Paine having been seized upon as the occasion for rallying the discomfited adherents of the drunken blasphemer, one of the most widelycirculated of the secular journals thus draws the portrait of the "unhonoured and unwept" champion of unbelief:

"Paine sat down in the French prison to which his brother infidels had most causelessly consigned him, to overthrow the religion of the Bible, without a copy of that book at handwithout having ever carefully or dispassionately considered its claims to credence, or the evidences which sustain them-- assuming that such and such were the doctrines of Christ, because somebody said so; and that Christ was an impostor, because those doctrines did not square with his notions of reason and divinity. The tone of his work is presumptuous, scoffing, ribald, dogmatic, insolent. It is as much as to say, I, Tom Paine, know every thing, and whoever dissents from my doctrines must be a knave or fool-there is no third choice.' Such a work could have but these effects-to encourage lewd, reprobate boys in pursuing the course dictated to them by their fierce, unregulated passions, on which the religion of the Bible was the only practical check; and to impel devout, reverent, exemplary Christians to a deeper dislike of infidelity in all its forms, judging its intrinsic character by this God-defying manifestation."

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CONVERSATION OF MR. NETTLETON.

THE late Mr. Nettleton, widely known as an instrument in many revivals of religion, owed part of his success to his private labours, and to the remarkable talent which he possessed of interesting people by his conversation. His remarks were generally founded on some passage of Scripture. I was once coming up the Delaware in a steam-boat with Mr. Nettleton ; he sat in the cabin, and talked about the pa. rable of the sower, having his New Testament in his hand, At first the remarks were addressed to a few of us, belonging to his particular company, and were uttered in a low voice. One after another was added to the group; even persons who had been pacing up and down the saloon listened, stopped, and finally remained. As the circle widened, his voice became louder, and his language assumed the character of a regular discourse. At length quite a little congregation surrounded him.

To this day, after fifteen years, I cannot explain the process by which these persons were gained and held, or what was the secret attraction which, in so many other instances, made him the centre of interested companies. It was often so where he was least known. His ap

pearance was nowise striking. It was not eloquence, in the common acceptation of the word; for his voice was unmusical, and his manner ungraceful; while he consulted no grace of language, and used a good deal of repetition. Yet such is the fact, and thousands probably are living who could give testimony of the same kind.

Frequently he would send for the family Bible, when he entered a house, and, after causing a number of the nearest neighbours to be called in, would discourse for half an hour on some striking passage. Many learned from his practice to set a higher value on the Word of God, and to employ it more in exhortations, pastoral visits, and conversations by the way. These lines may meet the eye of a clergyman in Virginia, in whose house I once heard Mr. Nettleton expound two entire chapters of Jeremiah. In all cases this was done without either affectation or formality; you only wondered that you had never done so yourself, and that you had never seen any one do so before. It has often occurred to me since, that we should avoid the sameness and the barrenness which often prevails in exhortations at prayer meetings, if we were to found them always on the Word of God.

Popery.

PRESENT STATE OF POPERY No. III. of the "Manchester Tracts for the Times" has just come to hand, having for a Thesis, "That without placing implicit confidence in the exaggerated statements of popish pretensions, there is too much reason to fear that Popery is, to say the least, not declining." Declining! who says it is? When the Papal scribes boast it, Protestants do not deny it. However, the publication is more advanced, and more ad rem, than might be supposed from the proposition to be discussed. The writer quotes a Protestant advocate in 1836, as saying in Exeter Hall, that when he (the speaker) was a boy, there were four Roman Catholic places of worship in this country, and twenty-four years ago they did not much exceed fifty; whereas at that time (1836) they amounted to 580. And again, he cites the Rev. Mr. Tweedie, of the Free Church, as saying, "No one can compare the present state of Popery in this kingdom with what it was a century ago, without alarm and dismay. Then there were only 30 popish chapels in Great Britain; now there are 600 public chapels, besides many private ones, 40 convents, 10 colleges, and nearly 800 priests." The Catholic Directory for 1848, gives 620 chapels, 22 stations, 11 colleges, 38 convents, 11 monasteries, and

THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.

Its

806 missionary priests. The writer afterwards extends his view, severely animadverting on the conduct of our Government in "petting it both at home and abroad." The writer considers that matters are becoming worse and worse in Ireland, from the fact that numbers of the very worst of the continental Catholics, whose intrigues and profligacy have rendered them intolerable at home, repair to Ireland as to a city of refuge. His view of the foreign operations of Popery is alike luminous and distressing. exertions are great in the East. In China alone they have no fewer than ten bishops, with four coadjutors, and 1,411 priests,an enumeration, however, which conveys but a faint idea of multitudes employed in the East, unless we collect the host of fathers, monks, nuns, and other accompaniments of missionary agency. next turns to the Western Hemisphere, which seems to present a still more appalling picture of the progress of Antichrist. The Church of Rome is making gigantic efforts to complete her ascendency in all parts of America. The continent of Mexico is hers without dispute, while the constant influx of German and Irish Catholics into the United States, most of whom swarm about the cities, and all of whom become

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votaries, is fast changing the constituency of those centres of influence; and the day is probably not very distant, when the elections in America will be decided, as the unseen influence of Rome shall direct.

The classes above-named are also, in many places, the only persons of the community regularly armed, and travel as a voluntary corps, officered, and abide only by themselves; so that Rome will soon not only have the civil magistrate, but the sword entirely at her disposal, in many of the most important parts of the United States. Lower Canada, long the stronghold of Popery in the North, is pouring her well-trained missionaries into the Hudson's Bay territories. She has revenues already secured to her greater than those of some sovereign states of Europe-revenues which have been bestowed and augmented by Protestant industry and enterprise. The valley of the Mississippi has become particularly the sphere of Jesuit operations. That terrible body of ecclesiastics have partially relaxed their efforts there, to fortify themselves in other places. A year ago it was calculated, that in states where forty years back Popery had scarcely an existence, the number of popish churches and preaching-stations, of bishops and priests, together with Jesuits, had increased at least to three times their number ten years back. There are no fewer than 24 theological seminaries for training young men for the priesthood, there are 12 Roman Catholic colleges, and from one to two thousand inmates of religious houses. There are now in Oregon about 30 missionaries, under the direction of 10 fathers of the Jesuits, and others are soon to join them; 1,500 Romanists have gone from Lower Canada to co-operate with them. Colleges, academies, literary institutions, and churches, are rising in rapid succession. Fourteen churches have already been furnished and dedicated according to the principles and forms of the popish ritual; 6,000 Indians have been baptized as members of the popish church, and have sworn allegiance to the Pope; 15,000 Indians have passed the proper course of training for the same rite. Immense sums of money have been sent from France during the past year, both to the archbishop of Oregon, and the Jesuits in the Rocky Mountains. diocese subject to the Pope of Rome has been created in Texas, and ten thousand dollars were sent there by the same French society.

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This mighty system of spiritual agency, while instinct with life, is thoroughly organized. At this moment, every prelate and priest in Europe takes an oath of direct allegiance to the Pope; no prelate can be consecrated, or be regarded as the lawful possessor of a mitre, without the authority of the Pope. Hence the formidable nature of its influence, since the popish bishops are spread through every country of the earth, and their number is upwards of 400, besides 112 archbishops, with vicars apostolic and bishops; the whole constituting an immense system, every part held in constant connection with Rome, the whole of the minor priesthood looking up for rank, reputation, and advancement to Rome; and this vast column of active force flanked by a multitude of fierce Jesuit missionaries, nuns, and nondescript allies, all operating against the progress of Protestantism, and sustained by the implicit obedience and inveterate ignorance of nearly 120 millions of mankind!

The pamphlet before us has rendered essential service, and well deserves circulation. One of the lessons which it reads to Protestants is, the necessity of union, and the extraordinary evils of disorganization among the friends of truth. The writer has endeavoured to convince his readers that Popery is essentially immutable, that though the external ornaments of the edifice might be ruined, and the whole service, cleansed, beautified, and adapted to the taste of the body, yet not a single pillar or stone can be taken out of it, without bringing down the whole structure. Between true Popery and true Protestantism the war is to the death; the one must fall before the other; reconciliation is impossible. He considers that the present ascendancy of Popery is but the beginning of the end. At present, Rome speaks with a friend's voice, and uses the gentle language of persuasion; but let the time come when she shall have the power to compel, and then shall men be driven by violence and torture towards that path which she proclaims to be the only way of salvation! The fires of Smithfield still but smoulder, and want only a breath to kindle them. The experience of the past, even without prophetic intimation, points to the result; and when the evil day shall come, as come it must, will it then be our duty to stand still to be stricken down like paled deer, without resistance? Will the enemy regard us as neutrals,

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