sin, and then come to Christ; we sorrow for culty, though he found it an imperative duty, sin in coming to Christ. A person does not first to punish a criminal who afforded unequivocal travel from the east, and then towards the west; evidence of true sorrow for his crime. Had in the act of doing one he is doing both; and Pilate passed by Calvary when the contrite maleso he that repents is coming to Christ, and he factor was vindicating his own terrible punishthat comes to Christ is repenting. If the changement, and heard him say, "We indeed suffer of mind as to evil and good should be distinguished at all, the changes are co-temporaneous and reciprocally affect each other. Just views of sin enhance our estimate of the Saviour, and just views of the Saviour cause sin to appear more exceeding sinful. An humbling sense of demerit quickens our application to the blood of sprinkling, and when we have washed there, we abhor the iniquities more than ever that could not be washed elsewhere; and the saying comes to be fulfilled: "Then shalt thou remember and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more for shame, when I am pacified towards thee for all that thou hast done." justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds," it is supposable that the Roman governor might have felt disposed to relieve the sufferer. But, at all events, a greater than Pilate was there, who heard the words, and was moved by them, and who, in evidence that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law, and that a broken and contrite spirit will not be despised by him, replied, “To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." Penitence, I have said, is amiable in whatever relation it may be exhibited. But while we should all confess our faults one to another, or, in other words, each his offences to the person offended against, still penitential confession to God is pre-eminently becoming, because pre-eminently binding. We have sinned against the Creator so much more than against our fellow-creatures as to warrant the comparative ejaculation-" Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and in thy sight done this ill." The majesty of God also demands a profound obeisance, to which fellow-men, from their meanness, can have no title. Generally speaking, it is a false consequence that indisposes to own faults, even to each other; and many a time when dignity is consulted, by concealing and equivocating, the end would be far better gained by following an opposite line of conduct, and unfeignedly admitting. The inge Having endeavoured to give the full view of scriptural repentance, it may be proper to add, that a change of mind as to evil, or, in other words, true sorrow for sin, seems to be the predominating idea which it expresses. For as to the other element--a change of mind in relation to good-that change partakes of the nature of faith, and is commonly enforced in an associated command to believe the Gospel. Accordingly, we have seen that repentance is more specially and emphatically identified with confession of sin, or that frame in which penitence has subdued pride, and which shuns not to avow its condemnation of itself. We need not wonder at this ascendant place being assigned in Scripture to the prin-nuousness of acknowledgment often obliterates ciple of contrition. It is an amiable property, even as exemplified in subordinate and social relations. A kind parent may exercise severity towards an obdurate child, but that parent has little of parental feeling who can see his child subdued into tearful acknowledgment of wrong, and inflict severities still. To take a homely but illustrative instance. "You shall stand there yet two hours," said a pious mother to an offending child, who had been stationed for his offence on the domestic pillory. "Oh, I have done wrong," said the child, "and if you will only forgive me, mother, and not be angry with me, I will stand here all day." Such a simple saying, from its touching expressiveness of a becoming grief, not only disarms rigour at the time, but ever after endears to the heart the amiable penitent from whose lips it has proceeded. Even a just judge would experience great diffi the impression of misdemeanor, and even elicits the admiration awarded to moral greatness. But while there may be a semblance of ignominy in one creature making confession to another, there can be no pretence of this relatively to the Creator. In this case, also, there is undoubted condescension, but it is not with us it is with God. He humbleth himself when he beholds the things that are in heaven, and how much more when he listens to the accents of a sinner that repenteth! In a word, there is none good as God, and the goodness of God leadeth us to repentance! His clemency is indicated by the very opportunity of repenting. Were he not gracious, there would be no place for it: it would be wholly and for ever hid from his eyes. They have sadly misapprehended repentance who have classed it with irksome service rendered to a hard task-master. It is not the homage which a serf pays to his despot, or the victim of war to an imperious conqueror, or the deluded idolater to imaginary gods, whom an accusing conscience has armed with fury. It is the homage paid to benevolence-paid by a heart which benevolence has melted—an acknowledgment of transgressions disclosed to the transgressor's own view by the light of divine love shed abroad upon his soul. Perhaps it may seek vent in tears, but they are such tears as purify vision, and even while filling the eye, sparkle with joybrightening the moral landscape like clear shining after rain. Let not sinners, then, be alarmed at the call to repent. Let them hail it as a joyful sound, a benignant proclamation from a dishonoured Lord, that he is slow to anger and willing to forgive. To repent, is a duty which we are bound to perform. It does not follow that the performance of this duty by us excludes the aid of divine influence. We are required to turn, which is another form of the command to repent; and lest we should decline compliance, as impracticable, we are told that God will pour out his Spirit upon us, and make known his words unto us. In promising to send the Comforter, our Lord also foretold that he would convince the world of sin, and we have seen that a conviction of sin belongs very essentially to the nature of repentance. The account which has been given of this grace harmonizes with the representations which the Scriptures furnish of the work of the Holy Spirit. We repent when we change our minds on subjects of eternal interest, so that the understanding is enlightened and the heart is renewed; we thus change our minds on these subjects when we apprehend the truth respecting them; and we apprehend the truth when the Spirit takes of the things of Christ and shows them unto us. We are sanctified by the Spirit, and a belief of the truth; by the Spirit as the agent, and a belief of the truth as the instrumentality by which he works; and a sinner, in repenting, exemplifies that moral transformation, which in sanctification is more and more advanced, till we all come in the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. Difficulties of a metaphysical character might be raised on this subject of divine influence, as on most other subjects, and not less on those of common life and every-day experience, than the leading articles of Christian doctrine. But whatever solution of these intricacies argumentation may afford, let us seek experimental evidence that God's requirements and promises happily coalesce. Let us engage the appointed means of spiritual renovation, and implore the aid of God's Spirit, to give the means effect. As we look on truth illumined by the Spirit of truth, we shall change our minds with regard to it, no longer spurning it as fabulous or offensive, but under its moulding influence, hating what it reproves, and loving what it commands; and this mental change will constitute a repentance not to be repented of—a change of mind never to be regretted. like We are informed that this habit was peculiar to himself, and was not common to other in his history, it is very affecting. Luther, writers of the period; and connected with facts all great Reformers, was a man of one idea; but that one idea was not what historians have generally supposed-it was not civil liberty, nor liberty of opinion, nor opposition to forms, nor any abstract love of truth; but the one idea was-JESUS-SAVIOUR. No human being ever felt with deeper anguish what it was to be lost. Language cannot have a more terrible earnestness than that wherein he has described the death-agony through which he passed when he felt his sins, and the majesty of God, and the desperate hopelessness of any effort to approach him, or bring his fallen nature up to that immeasurable height of purity. "It was all over with me," he says; "the sin of my nature tor mented me night and day-there was no good in life; sin had taken possession of me—my free will hated God's judgments--it was dead to good; anguish drove me to despair-nothing remained but to die and sink to hell." threaten me with banishment and death, with the torture and the stake," he says in a later letter, "what is all this to me? it all makes no impression on me, it is all the merest trifle to the agony I endured in my religious life before I found a Saviour." Now, to a soul in this state of religious anxiety, the whole Catholic system is one great and gloomy barrier standing be tween it and its Redeemer. Luther struggled like a giant; he fought as for life, and broke through the dark obstacle, and found a Saviour "Let them he found, he embraced, he believed, he felt, he knew that he was saved, and he felt it with LUTHER'S ONE IDEA. a joy as mighty and overwhelming as had been his anguish. Thenceforth there was to him but one mighty idea--SALVATION and a SAVIOUR. When, late in life, he was complimented on the wonderful courage and energy he had showed in conceiving and carrying on the great enterprise of civil and religious reform, he seemed lost in thought for a time, and then said: "Strange, I never thought of any of those things; all I wanted was salvation, salcation, if salvation were possible." And having found Jesus, he proclaimed him; and when he saw the Catholic Church putting anything in place of Jesus, he tore it down; and when he found, to his amazement, that the whole Catholic establishment was not accidentally but designedly standing between the simple, common people and their Saviour, and meaning still to stand there, then it was that he undertook to fight the whole Church. Historians have dilated on the incredible courage that Luther showed in thus relying on himself in the face of the world, but his courage is all accounted for in this one passage of Scripture: "I have set the Lord always before me; because he is on my right hand, I shall not be moved." 125 may, perhaps, make me poorer by an hour or two of life. It is enough for me that I have my sweet Redeemer and Saviour, my Lord Jesus Christ, to whom I will sing as long as I have my being." It ought to be known that the great body of Luther's preaching was not controversial, but consisted of such plain, practical efforts to lead the weak and ignorant to a Saviour, as would befit a city missionary of our own times; for "when I preach," said he, "I preach not for learned men and magistrates, of whom there are but few; but for the poor, the women, and children, and servants, of whom there are some thousands." Might not some modern ministers derive a useful hint from this? It would seem to be a time now, when it is necessary for every minister and private Christian, like Luther, to inscribe the name of JESUS on every effort, and set him always before them. Preaching Christ, has in these days become a phrase for anything which a man chooses to say in the pulpit. A man preaches on the differences between Old School and New, and that is preaching Christ. If he preaches all sorts of philosophical speculations, that is preaching Christ. If he preaches on temperance, moral reform, anti-slavery, and all the various outworks, that is preaching Christ; in short, if he preaches at all, he is preaching Christ, of course. But preaching Christ, according to the apostolic sense, is preaching the person, the individual, CHRIST JESUS as he is in himself, as he is in his adaptation to the wants of every human creature. It is preaching so as to produce a vivid, constant impression of the present reality of Christ, and his present activity in the affairs of the world. One sermon a-year on the character of Christ, a philosophical exemplification of the rationale of the atonement, an occasional dash at some historical fact in the life of Jesus, will not do it. There is given in the Evange lists the most noble, the most inconceivably beautiful ideal, far beyond the poet's dream, far beyond anything the highest human ideality ever hoped; and this vision of beauty and glory it is the minister's duty to reproduce, and make When on his way to the Diet at Worms, he stopped at Erfurt, and crowds flocked to see the doomed man, alone and helpless, marching onward, to all human view, to certain and horrible death-the church was crowded to overflowing; and at this time, when, like Jesus, he was going up to Jerusalem, or, like Paul, was bound in the spirit, knowing nothing, except that in every city bonds and afflictions should abide him, of what did he speak? Of Luther, and Luther's trials, and Luther's dangers-of Charles, of the pope, and princes of the empire ? No, none of these; nor yet of civil liberty and rights of conscience. Hear his text: "Then the same day at evening, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came JESUS, and stood in the midst, and said unto them, Peace be unto you! and when he had so said, he showed them his hands and his side;" and the whole discourse was a simple and pathetic illus-real and vivid on every mind in his audience. tration of this truth, that the presence of Christ, and the remembrance of his sufferings, is the Christian's support in times of affliction and danger. When forsaken by all his friends, and threatened with instant destruction by his enemies, he writes: "But in regard to their threats, I have nothing to say to my friends, but that sentence of Reuchelin's: "He who has nothing fears nothing, for he can lose nothing;' property I have none, and desire none; fame and honour, if I have had them, the destroyer has now entirely destroyed; one thing only remains a feeble body, worn down by constant labour; and if by force or fraud they take this away, they He must measure his success by this question, "How much reality and personal power among my people do I give to Christ ?" And as no one can reproduce the enchantments of art, but one who has been himself enchanted, who has gazed whole days, who has lingered on every line and lineament, marked every tone of colour and tremulous vibration of shade; so no one can reproduce Christ who has not seen him, felt him, and been thrilled to the heart's depths by his loveliness, and with whom he is not, as with Luther, the one idea, so that over every effort, of whatever kind, it should be the strong impulse of his heart to inscribe the name JESUS.-New York Evangelist. PRAYER.* THERE is what, rising from the earth, Can pierce beyond the sky; The lightning from the dark cloud cast, The whirlwind travels not so fast, As it ascends on high. How, in a twinkling, from the earth It to the heaven has gone! Not long a suppliant at heaven's gate Which opens wide, it passes straight Unto Jehovah's throne. Swiftly to that bright messenger Tell me, what messenger of grace It is that cleaves the air, To heaven, through heaven's gate, to the throne, With speed so swift and sure has gone? 'Tis prayer-believing prayer. And tell me from what heart it went? From yon poor troubled one, I saw the light fade from his eye- When Satan, striding 'thwart his path, CILIOGRADES AND SEA-WEED. BY THE REV. DAVID LANDSBOROUGH, STEVENSTON. UNDER the last part of this general title I might have a wide range, seeing that it might be understood to comprehend one of the most interesting departments of botany; but instead of availing myself of this privilege, I mean, on the present occasion, to keep within very narrow bounds, and to speak only of one rare alga. And before attempting to describe it, as our gleanings in Arran are very near a close, I shall take the liberty of mentioning another Ciliograde or Beroë which was discovered in Arran. In the month of July, when my daughter M- was on a visit to her friend Miss Ry, at that time residing in Arran, they fell in with a Beroë, some specimens of which were as large as a common-sized lemon. I was sorry that I was not of the party, but I had not long cause of regret, for the succeeding week, when my young people were bathing at Saltcoats, they fell in with a squadron of them, and having captured some, they brought them home for my inspection. "Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord. . . . . . Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them." It would be paying them a poor compliment, were I to rest their filial attentions on nothing better than their capturing of Beroës; and yet, as I have little time myself for strolling on the shore, I count it some advantage to have occasionally younger eyes and hands at work for me. When they were younger than they are now, a penny was promised for every new shell or sea-weed, &c., they found on the shore; and when new ones became rare, the premium rose to sixpence. This I thought one of the cases in which bribery was not corruption. For some weeks after this the Beroës in fine weather were found in considerable abundance. I brought some of them home, and putting them in sea-water, in a jar, I had the pleasure of observing their movements. The largest one we observed here was three inches in length, by about one inch and a-half in diameter. It was very beautiful-much more magnificent than the Beroë ovata. In shape, it resembled an antique pitcher contracted at the neck, with a graceful revolution, or turning back at the brim. It did not permanently retain this shape, however, for it could vary it at will. The shape which it more generally assumed was that of a clasp purse, rounded at the base, and somewhat truncated at the mouth. They were of various sizes, from the size of a lemon, a little truncated above, to the diminutive size of a lady's thimble. Being in general much larger and heavier than the Beroë ovata, they are more likely to attract attention; and yet I never heard of their being observed on our coast before. As I knew that some fine Beroës had been found on the Irish coast, I sent a figure of this one to Mr William Thompson, Belfast, who showed it to Mr Patterson, Belfast, who has written very scientifically on Beroës, and who kindly sent me his interesting publications; but as it was new to both these gentlemen, Mr Thompson forwarded the figure to Professor Edward Forbes, London, who informed us that it was Beroë cucumis; and that he had found numerous CILIOGRADES AND SEA-WEED. specimens of it that season in Lochfine, and had spent two whole days in the examination of them. As it is a rare animal, I may give a short description of it. It is gelatinous, like the sea-jellies, and hollow inside, like a pitcher. The whole body has a tinge of pink, and the eight ribs closely set with cilia, are beautifully adorned, having on each side an edging like fine crimson lace. In the larger specimens, this lace-work was studded with little orange ovalshaped bodies, like little grapes, attached by a capillary peduncle. When the Beroë was at rest, they rested; but when the cilia began rapidly to play, and the current of water, mixed at times with air bubbles, to rush through the tubes of the ribs, then all the little orange bodies were in quick motion, as if dancing to the music of the spheres; or, believing in fairies, as our forefathers did, one might have fancied that they were lace-bobbins, moved by nimble, invisible fairy hands, weaving the beautiful lace edging with which they were intermingled. Professor Forbes, however, says, as I had conjectured, that they are the eggs attached to the placentary membranes; and I doubt not that they are thus shaken by the motion of the cilia, that when fully ripe they may thereby be detached. But why should I attempt to describe this animal, when, having been found by Dr Maccartney, on the shore of Kent, so good a description is given in my Vade-mecum-Professor Fleming's "British Animals ?" I shall subjoin part of it: "This most elegant creature is of a colour changing between purple, violet, and pale blue; the body is truncated before, and pointed behind; but the form is difficult to assign, as it is varied by partial contractions, at the animal's pleasure. I have represented the two extremes of form that I have seen this creature assume. The first is somewhat that of a cucumber, which, as being the one it takes when at rest, should perhaps be considered as its proper shape. The other resembles a pear, and is the figure it has in the most contracted state. The body is hollow, or forms internally an infundibular cavity, which has a wide opening before, and appears also to have a small aperture posteriorly. The posterior two-thirds of the body are ornamented with eight longitudinal ciliated ribs, the processes of which are kept in such a rapid rotatory motion, while the animal is swimming, that they appear like the continual passage of a fluid along the ribs," &c. As it is not likely that I shall return to the Beroës again, I have been tempted to subjoin some information respecting two of that tribe, so well described by Mr Patterson, in the papers he so kindly sent me. They are distinguished from the Beroës that have come under my observation, by having tentacula. The first bears a considerable resemblance to one described by Professor Fleming in his "British Animals," under the name of Pleurobrachia pileus. Mr Patterson points out in what respect his differs from Pleuro, pileus. His, to which he has given the name Cydippe pomiformis, was found by him in considerable abundance at various times, near Larne, in the county of Antrim. It had not before been recorded as British, From Mr Patterson's description, which is ably and tastefully written, it is evident 127 that it is a creature of great beauty and elegance. Its form, as its specific name implies (pomiformis, apple-shaped), is more globular than either (Beroë ovata or Beroë cucumis. Its consistence, and also its movements by cilia (hence ciliagrade), were pretty much the same; but what most obviously distinguished it from the genus Beroë, was that it had two tentacula-one from each side—which, when extended, were five or six times the length of its body. These tentacula were of great beauty, being beset with delicate hair-like cilia, diverging like branchlets from the main stem; at times, indeed, rolled up like beads, but at other times moving gracefully, like the tentacula from which they sprang. The tentacula themselves were not always visible, as on any alarm, they withdrew with a sudden jerk into their sheathlike tubes, in which they lay concealed till the alarm was over, when, as they wheeled onwards, rising and falling at pleasure, they exhibited in great perfection their locomotive powers, and displayed in the sunshine the splendid iridescence of their colouring. Another thing remarkable in them was their seeming insensibility of pain. An active little Medusa having laid hold on one of them, before they could be separated, it had cut out from the side of the Cydippe, a segment of a circle extending to more than a third of its breadth and fully two-thirds of its length. Did the Cydippe die, when three ribs with their gelatinous clothing, were thus like a crescent cut out of its body? No such thing. During four days that it was afterwards kept, it continued to career through the jar, and seemed as active and happy as before it met with the seemingly ruinous mutilation! When any of them happened to be shattered by the storm, the principle of vitality continued in the fragments. And when one of the fragments was clipped into small pieces, the cilia on the smallest bittock persisted in their rapid movements for a night and a day after an operation which might have seemed as deadly as if performed by the scissors of the Fates. Mr Patterson describes another Ciliograde which he had the pleasure of discovering, and to which he has given the name of Bolina Hibernica. It comes near the shape of Beroë ovata; but it had four tentacula, which were very beautiful-sometimes erect like the ears of a horse, and at other times hanging down like the ears of a lap-dog. The only thing I shall advert to respecting the Bolina is their phosphorescence. When about thirty were put into a glass jar, and the water agitated, the whole contents of the vessel became so completely lighted up as to render all the adjoining objects for a moment visible. On stirring them round, they were seen like lamps suspended in the water. "It was impossible to behold these bodies of innocuous flame floating amidst the brightness which they themselves diffused, without feeling that to convey an adequate idea of their beauty would be a task more fitted for the imagery of the poet than the language of the naturalist." The rare sea-weed to which I alluded at the commencement of this article, was Gloinsiphonia capillaris, which was on this occasion found by my son David, in a rock-pool not far from Corrie, being the |