gave each member of the family a tract, with a suitable admonition. "He sent for me in the evening," says Mr. B- "and in my presence requested his family with his dying words to turn from that refuge of lies (they were Arians), and come to the Lord Jesus Christ; and early in the morning he breathed his last. Such was the death of poor old Thomas!" "At evening time it shall be light." "Let me die the death of the righteousness, and let my last end be like his!" JERUSALEM DURING THE FEASTS. JERUSALEM, in ordinary circumstances, was comparatively tranquil: in the language of Isaiah it was "a quiet habitation." The laws of Moses, with all their particularity, gave no directions about internal commerce; and a foreign trade, bringing Jews and Gentiles into ensnaring communication, was wholly antagonist to the genius of that economy. Besides, Jerusalem was not a sea-port town, nor did any considerable river flow in its vicinity, to facilitate intercourse with distant localities. Indeed, the Holy City had ceased, in the days of our Lord, to be the capital of the country. Cæsarea, of Palestine, so called by Herod the Great, who enlarged and adorned it, in honour of his patron, Cæsar Augustus, had become the residence of the Roman governor, and was the principal seat of fashionable resort, and civil administration. It may be supposed, then, that on common occasions the old metropolis was sufficiently quiescent, and wore something of a sombre and deserted appearance. But if a traveller, taking up his abode there, had remained for some months, he would have seen a wonderful alteration in the aspect of affairs. There were three annual feasts, named respectively the Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles, which all the males of the Jews were imperatively required to celebrate "in the place which the Lord had chosen, to put his name there." Besides these, there were two other annual feasts-those of Trumpets and Expiation-which were celebrated in Jerusalem; and though attendance on these last was voluntary, they were numerously frequented. When any of these solemnities was at hand, it gave note of its approach. Houses of merchandise were taking in stores. The various sections of the priesthood were all activity about the temple. The streets resounded with the bleeting of sheep and the lowing of cattle that were to be offered in sacrifice. Not only were inns and similar establishments put into condition to receive visitants, but almost every family were providing for others besides themselves, and striving to make the most of their spare accommodation. A glance at rural districts was sufficient to show that the excitement and commotion were not con fined to the town. Every footpath had its passengers. They travelled in companies, and carried with them tents and kindred insignia of lengthened pilgrimage. In eyeing them more carefully and extensively, it might be seen that they were moving towards a common centre; and that, although coming from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, they had all their faces " as going to Jerusalem." They had many partial gatherings and comminglings, short of their final destination. As smaller rills of water lose themselves in the larger, and these again coalesce to form more considerable rivers, so the tributary by-ways furnished each its scores or hundreds of pilgrims to the principal roads; and near to Jerusalem the advancing population became as a Nile or a Ganges, rolling in all its accumulative might before emptying itself into the ocean. "They go from strength to strength," says the Psalmist; 66 every one of them in Zion appeareth before God." The marginal reading is, "They go from company to company;" and if this translation be correct, it conveys the sentiment I have expressed.' and represents one band as joining with another, till they presented in Zion one "general assembly." It appears that they relieved the tedium of travelling by devotional exercises, and more particularly by celebrating God's praises: to which allusion may be made in such sayings as these: "Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage" -"They shall sing in the ways of the Lord; for great is the glory of the Lord ""The ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads." When the fatigu ing marches were nearly concluded; when their hardships and perils were almost surmounted; and Jerusalem, the object of their longing, the completion of their hopes, burst on the view, we can readily imagine that the ardour of the worshippers would uplift the strains of rapturous salutation. The city of their God was before them! There stood its wails, its gates, its battlements, its palaces, and, most conspicuous of all, towered the temple, with its courts and pinnacles, and holy of holies, from the golden covering of which the sun reflected far and wide its beams, as if to conduct, by messengers of light, to the God of glory. Every Hebrew had his native town or country district; but here was Jerusalem, the mother of them all. Now every pilgrim was at home -and what a home! "Beautiful for situation, the joy of all the earth, was Mount Zion." On descrying it, well might their collecting hosts sing and shout "His foundation is in the holy mountains. The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God!" As the travellers came from all directions, these accents would break on the city from all sides, so that it would be literally" compassed about with songs of deliverance.”* MEMORIALS OF THE INQUISITION. NO. I. BY THE REV. W. K. TWEEDIE, EDINBURGH. POPERY has been called the masterpiece of Satan, and the Inquisition is the masterpiece of Popery. As the deceiver of mankind has lavished all his ingenuity on the system of which the Man of Sin is the head, he has concentrated all his malignity against the truth of God in that engine of Satanic cruelty, con- ! structed and employed by Dominic, who has long been worshipped as a saint by the Church of Rome on account of this invention. It was not enough to corrupt or caricature the revelation which Jehovah gave, and substitute the counterfeits of an alleged infallibility for the simple truth as it is in Jesus. To complete, if possible, the extirpation and overthrow of what God had planted-to rob man of his sole hope of escape from the wrath to come-to leave him as the victim of superstition, groping his own dark * From work on "The Lord's Supper," by Dr. King of Glasgow. MEMORIALS OF THE INQUISITION. ling way through this world to the second death, instead of allowing him to move onward to glory in the light which God in Christ shed down, the Gospel must be perverted in all its doctrines. And not only so. Some might still keep hold of the truth. The felt need of it on the one hand, or the felt blessedness of it on the other, might have rendered some victorious over all Satan's wiles. But to stratagem and cunning he added violence and bloodshed. | What could not be corrupted by the Papal heresy, or erased from the mind by a false creed, was crushed by the tortures of the body. Rome, in short, by her Inquisition, extirpated the truth from Christendom; and having all but succeeded in her diabolical crusade, she sat down like the fallen hero among the ruins, and rejoiced in spirit amid the devastation she had made. 319 at Castres de Termes they burned the wife, the sister, and the daughter of Raymond its lord, in the same fire, because they would not embrace the creed of Rome. Successes like these prepared the way for the thorough and secure establishment of the Inquisition as a system of murder. Toulouse, Narbonne, and some neighbouring places were among the first to be scourg ed with this terrible curse. In 1232 the Inquisition was established in Spain: in 1251 in Italy, under Innocent IV.; and the whole of Christendom was parcelled out by the spiritual despot among his ghostly executioners. In 1478 a new extension and greater consolidation was given to the horrid system, under Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. The Jews were remorselessly afflicted, and within a few years two thousand of both sexes were burnt. The bones of some were even taken from their graves and reduced to ashes; but their lot was a happy one compared with that which awaited the living sufferers. In 1494 the ferocious monarchs of Spain ordered all the children of Israel to quit their dominions in four years; and death was to be the award did any one dare to linger or return. One hundred and seventy thousand families-eight hundred thousand individuals-were thus driven into exile, to poverty, to death, and all the ills that persecution could inflict or humanity endure. The Moors of Granada shared a similar fate. The foundations of the Inquisition were laid in murder, and its walls cemented with blood. It may serve to manifest more clearly the spirit of false religion, and warn men against its subtle and insinuating wiles, if we lay before our readers some Memorials of the Inquisition. That institution has been subjected to various changes. It has at one time been established, at another abolished, at a third restored. Its spirit has on some occasions appeared even among Protestants. Let us try, then, to delineate its character, its principles, and doings; for what if the Inquisition were to be restored, even in the land in which we dwell, before a quarter of a century roll away? It was Dominic, the founder of the Popish sect of Dominicans, that was the author of this infernal machine. Born at Calaroga, in the diocese of Osma, in Spain, about the year 1170, he became in due time a fit apostle of Popery by the cruelty of his dispositions, and the ferocity with which he assailed and put to death all who dissented from the Church of Rome. The pope of the day saw that what he called heresy was spreading, in spite of all his efforts to repress it. The bishops in detail were not sufficiently exterminating. For that reason, the universal bishop took the matter into his own hands, and soon found a fitting ally, as the executioner of his remorseless will, in Dominic of Calaroga. He and some others were instructed to seek out all who were supposed to be infected. Their number, their rank and influence became objects of inquiry; and hence the name Inquisitors and Inquisition. The secular arm was called in to aid them in this work of inquest and extermination. It was the early announced resolution of Dominic to eradicate the very memory of heretics; and Toulouse and other districts in France soonings which were extended to both elements; for bled at every pore amid his murderous campaigns against the followers of Christ. Carcassone, La Vaur, Villeneuve, Castres de Termes, Avignon, and other places, were sacked, burned, or razed to the ground, because they were reputed the haunts of heretics. As a specimen of the method of procedure, we mention that At length, under the gradual development of truth, the Inquisition came to be regarded as the only safeguard of Popish kingdoms. Charles V., who had wielded its awful power with tremendous severity against heretics in some parts of his vast dominions, bequeathed it as a legacy by will to his son, the fierce and bigoted Philip II. During his bloody reign it was no longer solitary heretics that were consumed at separate places. All the condemned throughout the kingdom of Spain were collected like sheep droved for the slaughter, and kept till the king should return from the Netherlands to Spain, when they were immolated at Seville and Valladolid, in an Auto-de-fe to grace and give pomp to the entry of the monarch. In the wholesale butchery on that occasion, men and women of all ranks were cast into the flames; and on another, in the presence of King Philip, twenty-eight of the chief nobility of Spain were tied to stakes and burnt. Such were the proceedings of one whom Pius I. called his "most dear son in Christ"--proceed in his ships on the ocean, as well as his cities by land, did Philip set up the Inquisition, and urge the Inquisitors to ply their horrid work. In Peru and Mexico (1571) the Spanish invasion brought with it the Spanish religion and its tortures. In the Marquesas, an Auto-de-fe the name impiously given to these murders on one occasion lasted from six in the morning till five in the evening; and from year to year these acts were repeated, under the prostituted | name of religion, with princes and princesses among the spectators, nay, stimulating the barbarity by their words and example. Portugal and Spain long vied with each other in perpetrating these enormities. mercy had on their san-benito the figure of flames ascending, with the images of devils fanning the fire. A cap of pasteboard covered the victim's head, marked with the same insignia of torture and disgrace, and thus arrayed, the unhapp men were, in horrid mockery, invited to partake of a sumptuous breakfast previous to their death! Thus marshalled and prepared, the mournful procession began. In some countries, the Dominican monks marched first, in honour of St. Dominic, the founder and inventer of th Inquisition. The banner of the Holy Office, a name for this diabolical invention, was carried before them, with the figure of St. Dominic In subsequent Numbers we hope to lay before our readers some accounts of the principles on which the Inquisitors acted, the regulations adopted for their guidance, the cruelties and tortures practised on their victims, the method in which the trials were conducted, and to submit some specimens of the murders which they committed. Meanwhile, we describe an Auto-de-wrought in needle-work, holding a sword in one fe, as practised by the myrmidons of Rome on thousands of those who dared to trust the God of truth, and follow the Lord fully, while rejecting the abominations and the bondage of Popery. A general Auto, then, was conducted with all the pomp and circumstance with which Popery knows so well to invest its ceremonies, whether to awe or to attract. hand, and an olive-branch in the other. O other occasions, other standards were employe The crucifix was borne before those who were appointed to die. Each one of them was ac companied by a Familiar, a servant of the Lquisition, and by two Jesuits, who constantly preached the duty of abjuring the heresies inputed to the victims; and if they offered to speak in their defence, they were immediately gagged "This I saw done," says Dr. Geddes," to a prisoner immediately after he came out of the gates of the Inquisition, upon his looking up to the sun, which he had not seen for years, and crying out, in rapture, "How is it possible for people who behold that glorious body, to wor A number of heretics were collected together, and the pomp of their execution was partly an imitation of a Roman triumph, and partly of the judgment-day. The Lord's-day, or some high festival, was selected by the Inquisitor, that the largest possible confluence of spectators might be present. The ceremony was pre-ship any being but its Author?" viously announced in the churches and made public by criers, and all was done that could give effect and grandeur to the coming scene. A public square or a spacious church was selected. The clergy, secular and regular, attended in crowds, and, in order to render the affair yet more impious and yet more Popish, an Indulgence of forty days was promised to all who took part in the act. At midnight, previous to the day of execution, a Confessor entered the cell of those who were doomed to die, and intimated for the first time, the lot that awaited them, urging them to recant and return to the faith of Rome. If they did so, they were strangled before they were committed to the flames; if they held fast their opinions, they were left to perish; and the most callous heart may easily credit what is written regarding the heart-rending scenes which then took place. On the morning of the Auto, all the bells of the churches were early tolled. The Inquisitors proceeded to the prison, and clothed the prisoners in the vestments to be worn at the spectacle. The less heretical were dressed in black garments. Those whose pravity was signal, wore the san-benito, a loose garb of yellow cloth; and in the case of those who were to be mercifully strangled before they were cast into the flames, the vestment was marked with the figures of fire burning downwards, to indicate that the wearer had escaped from the bitterest form of death; while those who were to perish without After the prisoners the Familiars rode or horseback; after them the Inquisitors and other! officers of the Court, and last of all, the Inquisitor-general, upon a white horse led by two men, and attended by all the nobles who were not employed as Familiars. When this impos- | ing cavalcade reached the place of execution, the Inquisitors took their place on a scaffold erected for them, and the prisoners were stationed opposite to their judges or persecutors, and all the spectators around them. A sermon was next preached by some distinguished prelate. The penitents were absolved, though that did not imply acquittal; they were punished by banishment, whipping, hard labour, or imprisonment, according to the sentence of the Inquis tors. The next part of the ceremony consisted in an oath administered by the presiding Inquisitor to all assembled, binding them to live and die in the faith of Rome, and to uphold and defend it against all gainsayers. The sentences of those who were to die were next publicly read. Those who were in orders were publicly degraded, by being stripped of their vestments; and ignominy and execration, we are told, accompanied every step of that procedure. They were next delivered to the secular judge to be punished by the civil arm, and it was now that that hypocritical farce was acted which would. of itself, have been enough to brand the system with which it stands connected with indelible ignominy. In handing over the victim of WHISPERERS. superstition to the civil law, the Inquisitors besought the magistrate to treat the criminals with clemency and compassion, though he was sworn faithfully to execute the sentence against the heretics. In horrid mockery of righteousuess and mercy and truth, clemency was implored on behalf of those whom the Inquisitors had already racked, tortured, and lacerated, till their bodies were distorted, in the recesses of the office impiously called holy. After this solemn mockery, then, the prisoners condemned to die were led to execution. The civil magistrate made no inquiry regarding their crime. He could not imagine that men condemned by the Inquisition, could be aught but criminal-he pre-supposed them guilty. They were loaded with chains when that was necessary, then strangled if they were only erring Catholics; or burned alive if they were hopeless heretics, or Negatives-deniers of the charges brought against them. Amid this horrid exhibition scenes of atrocity occurred which it is appalling even to describe. Those about to be put to death were teased by Jesuits to recant. The executioners and these ghostly attendants united their endeavours to add to the misery of their victims; and when there was no hope of recantation, they were left in the haud of him who was supposed to be the fo" enter of their heresy-Satan. When the priests abandoned them, a shout was raised by the people. This was like the deathknell, and, amid coarse and ribald expressions, blazing furze was first thrust into the face of the sufferers. This inhumanity was commonly continued until the face was black as coal, and was accompanied with loud acclamations from the spectators. If the wind was moderate, the agony of the murdered men lasted perhaps for half an hour, but on other occasions an hour and a half or two hours were needed to terminate their sufferings. "But, though out of hell," says one who witnessed an Autode-fe," there cannot possibly be a more lamentable spectacle than this, added to the sufferers (as long as they can speak) crying out, Miserecordia, por amor di Dios!' yet it is beheld by people of both sexes, and all ages, with such transports of joy and satisfaction as are not, on any other occasion, to be met with." He adds, at another place; "That the reader may not think that this inhuman joy is the effect of a natural cruelty that is in these people's dispositions, and not of the spirit of their religion, he may rest assured that all public malefactors, except heretics, have their violent deaths nowhere more tenderly lamented than amongst the same people, even when there is nothing in the manner of their deaths that appears in human or cruel." Such is a brief account of an Auto-de-fe, as celebrated in Portugal and Spain-a systematic part of the religion of Rome in its palmy condition, when it was free to put forth its native 321 energies in a way congenial to its spirit. Protestants have startled the world by one or two such atrocities. Romanists have reduced them to system, and rendered them a part of their faith; nay, the fiendish barbarities we have described are, by excellence, termed An act of Faith, as if the creed of Rome were condensed into such a transaction. The Inquisition is now shorn of many of its terrors; but the spirit that fostered it into such fiery vigour is still unchanged. In the States of the Church it is still at work; and could Popery regain what many are willing to concede, we might, sooner than many will believe, find a renewal of what even Pegna, a Spanish Inquisitor, was forced honestly to describe as "horrendum ac tremendum spectaculum." The causes of this mischievous custom are as various as men's circumstances. Envy longs to blot the character of a rival, to obscure his talents, to diminish his influence, to obstruct his success in business, and to lessen the number of his friends. Resentment of some real or imaginary offence, which, if public, would expose itself, may be gratified by a secret insinuation. Coreteousness, wishing to monopolize trade, will often induce the selfish tradesman to slander his neighbour secretly. The influence of prejudice, or of a party spirit; a mean jealousy lest another should be as highly esteemed as yourself, will often whisper something unfavourable against the rival. Indeed, the bond of union between some families and friends, is to think evil and speak evil of all persons whom they wish to degrade; and to such little, narrow, selfish souls a secret slander is sweeter than honey. applause, will lead a person to backbite his own A disposition to please men, to obtain their brother, to procure the good opinion of the person with whom he is conversing. Such a person will join you in censuring or applauding any one; for he seeks the "praise of men," and the price of it, he thinks, is to say as they say. Hence a temptation to slander you to please See M⭑Crie, with his authorities; Dr. Geddes; Chandler's History of Persecution; Llorente, and others. The ceremony of an Auto-de-fe differs at different places. We have given the substance. me, or to slander me to please you, will equally prevail. Ambition, a thirst for power, will, by secret falsehood, degrade the man who stands in its way, by some sly opposition-some dark saying which may render his character or qualifications suspected. Who can calculate the evil consequences of malignant whispers? To the person into whose ear the whisper is conveyed, how seriously injurious may it prove! It leads him to suspect the most faithful friend -disturbs his peace-sows distrust and prejudice in his mind-influences his passions against the man worthy of his tenderest regard, and deprives him of all the advantages he might have derived from his friendship. And after receiving the tale-bearer into his bosom, and becoming the dupe of his artifice and secret lies, he commits a thousand sins in the evil surmises which he harbours, the severe censures he secretly passes, and the resolutions he forms against his old friend. "The words of a tale-bearer are as wounds, deep wounds," to him who receives the cruel tale, as well as to the person against whom the whisper is directed. Believing now his friend to be his enemy, his suspicions are awake-he is ready to put the worst meaning into all his looks, words, and actions. When he meets him, he dare not tell him what he has heard, for the whisperer has bound him to secrecy: but he betrays the coldness of his heart towards him, for "his countenance is not toward him as at other times." As he does not speak of his friend with his usual kindness, the distance is soon perceived by others. They wonder, and express their wonder to others. The connection in which this sin stands shows its malignant effects; as covetousness, which whispers slander to injure others in their property; malice and envy, which pine at the wellbeing of others, whisper detraction from their character; deceit, in misrepresenting the words, actions, and motives of others; "swellings" of pride and prejudice, which are relieved by secret whispers. Debate, tumult, and murder have been occasioned by the concealed insinuations of the whisperer. Whilst a whisperer blasts the character, and injures the interest of others, he disturbs the peace of society. What guilt is contracted by such slander! How difficult, how improbable is the repentance of the whisperer! for repentance implies restitution, as far as possible. In some cases, the injury done by a whisperer can never be repaired; in others, persons are unwilling to retract their falsehoods. Should the whisperer be detected, his character is ruined; and if his lies are not detected, he will probably add one slander to another, "till God, the God of recompenses, shall expose him, and fully requite him." THE MINISTER'S STIPEND. OUR story will carry the reader back a little more than fifty years, when all north of the Ohio River was an almost unbroken wilderness-the mysterious red man's home. On the other side a bold and hardy band from beyond the mountains had built their log cabins, and were trying to subdue the wilderness. would often cross the river, steal their children and To them every hour was full of peril. The Indians horses, and kill and scalp any victim who came in their way. They worked in the field with weapons at their side, and on the Sabbath met in the grove or the rude log church to hear the Word of God with their rifies in their hands. To preach to these settlers, Mr. Joseph Smith, a Presbyterian minister, had left his parental home east of the mountains. He, it was said, was the second minister who had crossed the Monongahela River. He settled in Washington County, Pennsyl vania, and became the pastor of the Cross Creek and Upper Buffalo congregations, dividing his time between them. He found them a willing and united people, but still unable to pay him a salary which would support his family. He, in common with all the early ministers, must cultivate a farm. He purchased one on credit, proposing to pay for it with the salary pledged to him by his people. Years passed away. The pastor was unpaid. Little or no money was in circulation. Wheat was abu dant, but there was no market. It could not be soli for more than twelve and a half cents in cash. Even their salt had to be brought across the mountains of pack-horses, and was worth eight dollars per bushel,, and twenty-one bushels of wheat were often giver. for one of salt. The time came when the last payment must be made, and Mr. Smith was told he must pay, or leave his farm. Three years' salary was now due from his people. For the want of this, his land, his improvements upon it, and his hopes of remaining among a beloved people, must be abandoned. The people were called together, and the case laid before them. They were greatly moved. Counsel from on high was sought Plan after plan was proposed and abandoned. The congregations were unable to pay the tithe of their debts, and no money could be borrowed. In despair they adjourned to meet again the following week. In the meantime it was ascertained that a Mr. Moore, who owned the only mill in the country, would grind for them wheat on moderate terms. At the next meeting it was resolved to carry their wheat, to Mr. Moore's mill. Some gave fifty bushels, some more. This was carried from fifteen to twenty-six miles on horses to the mill. In a month, word came that the flour was ready to go market. Again the people were called together. After an earnest prayer, the question was asked, Who will run the flour to New Orleans? This was a startling question. The work was perilous in the | extreme. Months must pass before the adventure could hope to return, even though his journey should |
