ciples, is solemn in itself, and peculiarly so as indicative of the prevalence of irreligion and Infidelity. Where now were all his clerical friends? The whole is well calculated to show the connection between Irreligion in the Church and Infidelity in society; and, therefore, the responsibility of the Church for the Infidelity of the land. We do not say that there may not, or that there has not been, decided Infidelity in the midst of the purest Christianity; the very success of the work of the Spirit of God may call up the zeal of the spirit of darkness, but certainly the tendency of Irreligion is towards Infidelity, and the colder and more corrupt the Church, the arguments in behalf of Infidelity are always the stronger and the more popular. It is well for the Church of Christ to feel that her labour ought not to be limited to the irreligious making a profession of the Christian name-that the avowed Infidel has strong claims upon her-that a serious part of the responsibility of his unbelief, it may be, belongs to her.

We have detained our Christian readers long with these successive papers on Infidelity illustrated by facts. We are afraid that we may have wearied some; but many important lessons are taught by the lives and the deaths of Infidels. Christians should not think that they are so far a-head of such scenes that they have nothing to learn from them. In one sense this is happily true, but much instruction may at the same time be gathered from contrasts. As the occasional study of Paganism, and Mohammedanism, and Judaism, and Popery is useful, these acting as a foil, the better to bring out the right spirit and character of Evangelical Truth; so is the occasional and serious contemplation of Infidelity fitted to read the Christian various and valuable lessons-lessons of boundless gratitude to God for divine revelation, with all its incomparable blessings, especially for Christ and his great salvation, with all the happiness, purity, and hope which these imply-lessons of humility, when Christians think that they can claim nothing of God, that it is he who makes them to differ from Infidels, and that their inconsistency and unfruitfulness may have had a hand in making or in hardening the sceptic, and also when they compare their own defects, in particular points, with the attainments of some unbelievers-lessons of deep sympathy for those involved in the temptations and snares of unbelief, whilst their Infidelity is condemned as criminallessons of duty-as carnest desires and efforts to deliver. In short, the survey of Infidelity, in contrast to Gospel Christianity, is well fitted to lead Christians to prize their distinguishing privileges more highly, to hold fast by them in the face of all hostility, and to use means to extend the experimental knowledge of them to others, even the most hardened and hopeless. We feel that, if possible, our own conviction of the truth and excellency of Evangelical Christianity has been strengthened by reading the biography of Hume, and drawing up these papers as the result of our meditations. We have seen how little Infidelity could do for its advocate, even at its best estate-how defective and miserable its attainments, even in the most unexceptionable cases-how

the powerful intellect of the greatest of Infidel philosophers, with all the lights and advantages of ancient and modern times, could not penetrate its way to the certain proof of immortality without revelation; or rather, arrived at the opposite conclusion of settled materialism. Instructed by the darknessthe moral and religious doubts-the misery of the Bible rejecter-we grasp the Scriptures of truth with a firmer hand, more satisfied than ever of the neces sity of divine revelation; and we pray more earnestly that neither the character, the life, nor the death of Hume, with all its worldly glory, may be ours, or that of our children.

THINGS SEEN, TEMPORAL; THINGS
UNSEEN, ETERNAL.

How insecure our state! anon
What we now enjoyed is gone!
Come, and I will tell to thee
What things likest to it be.

A noble bark afloat I saw;
She many wondering eyes did draw,
To admire her wondrous state,
Whereon tides and winds did wait.
Songs of gladness rose from her

As she gallantly did steer

Through the churmed deep. With a frown
The black whirlwind stoopeth down.

Its fierce wrath an hour did last;
But when it was gone and past,
On the waters I did note
Some few wretched wrecks afloat-
The fair ship no more was seen.
Such our mortal state, I ween;
A few days of brightest gladness,
A few dreams of highest hope;
Then, beneath the storm of sadness,
Into death's abyss we drop.

A fair forest I beheld,

1.

Some with their full foliage made
In the noon a twilight shade.
The living brooks that here and there
Strayed, like happy spirits, were
Singing in the land of bliss
Strains, all day, of happiness.
Glad was echo to prolong
In her rocky haunts that song.
In the bowers and branches high
There was endless minstrelsy
Of pairing birds, a thousand notes
Piping through music-lined throats.
The golden age! it has not gone,
We, my love, have lit upon

That joyful time; our life-tent here
Shall stand in peace for many a year!

1

Scarce had I spoken, when a blight
On the sylvan realm did light,
Sudden, noiseless, and unseen-
Came it from yon sky serene ?
For the sky was sapphire bright,
And genial with the warm sunlight.
Sickly grew the leaves, and pale,
Now fiercely bit a frozen gale.
All the forest's beauty fled-
All was rotten, withered, dead!

Like goodly trees our hopes do grow,
And we live their shade below,

Longing for the fruit;

beneath

A worm doth gnaw-that worm is death.
On the river bank did dwell
A small happy family.

How often did I mark full well
That they lived right happily!
Working, toiling, making shift,
By godly ways and honest drift,
To live in peace; and in their cell
Peace, in sooth, did long time dwell.
It was a sweet and pleasant nook
That home of theirs beside the brook,
With its plot of garden ground,
And small, well-cultured croft around.
Many a time the passer by
Turned that way his curious eye,
To admire; and welcome cheer
Oft found the homeless stranger here.

One autumn night, in deluge vast,
The murky sky its showers down cast;
Swift the river rose and rose,
Higher, higher every hour-
All its banks are buried deep;
Like a sea without a shore
It rages. When the river fell
Within its banks you scarce could tell
Where the happy dwelling stood;
Sunk beneath the slime and mud,
To a heap of ruin gone!-
So Time's flood doth strike upon
Our well-founded hopes: they perish
Those we did most fondly cherish.
When we lean upon them, they
By the waves are swept away,
And with them we fall, and lie
Buried in calamity!

My journey led one summer day
Through a lovely region, gay
With a thousand fairest flowers,
Star-like, clustering in its bowers.
Of them all, the fairest, sweetest,
Iris from its hues might borrow.
A nosegay for my love the meetest
I will gather on the morrow
As I homeward pass, I said:
On the morrow it was dead.
So Time withers, like the frost,
What on earth we valued most.
When we come to gather, they,
Like the flower, have passed away!

Brother! cheer thee, there is hope,
Though all earthly pleasures drop;
Though all thou built and leant upon,
Like a morning dream has flown.
Hope there is that ne'er shall perish;
Hope, that thou may'st daily cherish;
Hope, that ever surer grows,
Ever stronger towards the close;
Brightest in the darkest hour,
In the saddest, steadiest

Change: nor death, nor aught has power
To displace it from the breast!

If thou wouldst have it, thou must look
Unto Him who for us took

The cup of woe, that He might bring
Us peace through His own suffering.
With the travail of His soul
Bought He it; and, brother, He
(For He has a loving heart)

Freely offers it to thee!

With it, no longer shall it grieve thee
Earthly joys so quickly leave thee;
Rather thou old Time wilt chide
That not swift and swifter glide

605

The years; for thou wouldst straightway where Thy unfading treasures are!

Can

ROMANISM AND HINDUISM COMPARED. A BRAHMAN, for the purpose of showing the folly of rejecting Hinduism and embracing the Roman Catholic religion, instituted the following comparison between the two systems:-" Has the Feringhi cheap pardons? So have we. Can the Romanist by the mass rescue his ancestors from purgatory? We, by ceremonies at Gaya, can do the same for ours. the priest change the bread and wine into flesh and blood? Our muntras can impart divine attributes to images. Who are the Romish monks, but the counterparts of our Sunyasees? Do the Catholics count their beads? So do we our malas. Do they pray to mother Mary? So do we to Ganga-mai. Do their priests eschew marriages ? So do our Gosalies. Have they nuns? So have we our nach-girls, dedicated to the service of the temple. Do they boast their antiquity? Compare eighteen hundred years, the period they claim as the age of their Church, with the four jugs of Hinduism.

RICHARD BAXTER TO ROMISH PRIESTS.

ONE of your dissimulations which increaseth my dissatisfaction is, your pretending to the ignorant people that you are all of a mind, and there are no divisions among you, and making our divisions the great argument to raise an odium against our doctrine, calling us schismatics, heretics, and the like. When, indeed, no one thing doth so much turn away my heart from you as your abominable schism. Do we not know of the multitudes of opinions among you, mentioned by Bellarmine and other of your writers? If you call me out to any more of this work, I mean the next time to present to the world a catalogue of your divisions among yourselves, that it may appear how notable your unity is! If the Jesuits are to be believed, what a silly sottish generation are your secular priests! If your priests are to be believed, what a seditious, hypocritical, cheating pack are the

Jesuits! I speak not the words of your Protestant adversaries, but of those of your own Church. Do I not know what Guliel. de Santo Amore and many others say of your own Church? Do you think I never read Watson's Quodlibets, and the many pretty stories of the Jesuit exploits there mentioned by him? I do not think that you suffer many of your own followers to read these books that are written against one another by yourselves. But the great division among you, that quite overthrows your cause in my esteem, is that between the French and Italian, in the very foundation which all your faith is resolved into. You have no belief of Scripture, nor in Christ, no hope of heaven; you differ not from Turks and Infidels, but only upon the credit and authority of your Church; and this Church must be infallible, or else your faith is fallible-at least it must be of sovereign authority. And when it comes to the upshot, you are not agreed what this Church is? One saith it is the pope with a general council; and another saith it is a general council, though the pope dissent. One saith the pope is fallible, and the other saith a council is fallible. One saith, a pope is above the council, and another saith the council is above the pope. And now, what is become of your religion? Nay, is it not undeniable that you are of two Churches specifically different? Certainly a body politic is specified from the summa potestas. And therefore, if the French make a council, the summa potestas, the sovereign power, and the Italians make the pope the sovereign, and a third party make the pope and council conjunct only, the sovereign, are not here undeniably several Churches specifically different?

And then you have another deceit for the salving of all this, that increaseth my disaffection. You glory in your present judge of controversies, and tell us it is no wonder if we be all in pieces that have no such judge. And what the better are you for your judge, when he cannot or dare not decide your controversies? No; he dare not determine this fundamental controversy, whether himself or a council be the sovereign power, for fear of losing the French and those that join with them. So that it must remain but dogma theologicum and no point de fide, what is the summa protestas; and yet all that is de fide; even our Christianity and salvation, must be resolved into it? And doth not this directly tend to Infidelity? Would you have serious Christians deliver up themselves to such a maze as this for the obtaining of unity? What the better are you for a judge of controversy, in all those hundreds of differences that are among yourselves, when your judge either cannot or will not determine them? Are not we as well without him as you are with him? Plain things that are past controversy have no need of your judge! It is no controversy with us whether Christ be the Messiah; whether he rose, ascended, and will judge the world; and if we go to darker points, your own judge will say nothing or worse. Why do you cry out so much against expounding the Scripture otherwise than according to the sense of the Church, when your Church will give you no interpretation of them? Do not your expositors differ about many hundred texts of Scripture, and neither pope nor council will decide the controversies? These are, therefore, mere delusions of the world, with the empty name of a judge of controversies. And, indeed, you sometimes show yourselves that you have no such high conceit of your pope (whatever you would make the world believe) as to trust his judgment.

But yet I have not come to that point of your schism which above all things in the world doth alienate my mind from your profession; and that is your separation from all other Christians in the

world! I find in myself so great an inclination to unity, and the title catholic is so honourable, in my esteem, to them that deserve it, that if I had found you to have the unity and catholic religion and Church which you boast of, it would have much inclined me to your Church and way. But when I find you, like the Donatists, confining the Church to your party, and making yourselves a sect and faction, and unchurching and damning the far greatest part of the Christians in the world, this left me assured that you are most notorious schismatics. When I saw so much knowledge and holiness comparatively among the Reformed Catholics, and so much ignorance and wickedness among the Papists (even here where are but a remnant that adhere to their religion against the course of the nation), and when I read so many plain promises in Scripture, "That whoever believeth in Christ shall not perish, and that if by the Spirit we mortify the deeds of the body we shall live, and that if we repent our sins shall be forgiven, yea that godliness hath the promise of this life and that to come;" and then when I find that the Papists, for all these certain promises, do unchurch and damn us all, because we believe not in the pope of Rome as well as in Christ, this satisfied me as fully that you are most audacious schismatics, as I am satisfied that you are Papists. What! must I be a Papist on such grounds as these? Must I believe because you tell me so, that all the most conscionable heavenly Christians that I am intimately acquainted with are unsanctified, ungodly, and in a state of damnation? When I am a witness of the earnest breathings of their souls after more communion with God-when they would not live in one of those sins that you call venial, for all the world; when they mortified the flesh, and live in the Spirit, and wait for Christ's appearance: and yet that such as the Papist shall be saved that are so far below them, because they believe in the pope of Rome? Why, you may almost as well persuade me to become a Papist, by telling me that you have eyes in your heads, and noses on your faces, and the rest of the world have none. Doth Christ say, "He that believeth and repenteth shall be saved;" and must I believe that all Protestants shall be damned, let them believe and repent never so much? This is to bid me cease to believe Christ that I may believe the pope -cease to be a Christian that I may become a Papist. I am confident that I shall never be Papist, if it may not be done but by believing that all the godly that I am acquainted with are ungodly, and in the way to

hell.

And (to speak of the quantity as well as the quality) I feel a kind of universal charity within me, extending to a Christian as a Christian, and, therefore, to all the Christians in the world, which will not give me leave to believe if a hundred popes should swear it, that the far greatest part of Christians shall be damned, because they are not subjects to the pope!: The Papists are but a handful of the Christians in the world, at least the smaller part by far! The most of them never acknowledged the sovereignty of your pope. And a few ages ago, before Mohammedanism and Heathenism diminished the number of Christians in Asia and Africa, the Papists were but a small proportion. There are but lately taken off from the Christian religion, it is probable, twice as many as all the Papists in the whole world: if it were but the kingdoms of Nubia and Tenduc, how far would they go on this account? A bishop of your own, and legate of the popes that dwelt in those countries, saith, that the Christians in the easterly part of Asia alone exceeded in multitude the Christians both of the Greek and Latin Churches. And which is more, the whole Church, for many hundred years after Christ, were far from being the subjects of the pope of

Rome! And, indeed, had Christ no Church till the Pope became universal monarch! Must Paul be damned because he was not one of Peter's subjects? Do not your consciences know that swearing obedience to the pope of Rome was a thing unknown for many hundred years, yea, that it is a novelty in the world? Must Christ lose for ever the most of his Church, even those that never heard of Rome, because they believe not in the pope? Never shall I be Papist while I breathe, if I must be engaged to send the most of the Christians on earth to the devil, and that upon such an account as this. These things are so uncatholic, so unchristian, so inhumane, that I wonder, and wonder a hundred times, how any learned, sober men among you are able to believe them. For my part I am a resolved Catholic, that own the universal Church of Christ, and cannot limit my charity to a corner or a faction, especially so gross a one as yours. I own not the errors or other sins of any of the Churches, so far as I can discover them; but if I must make them heretics, and unchurch them for these (yea, even those that go under the name of Nestorians and Eutichians), I must needs put you in among them, who I think do err more grossly then

they.

NO GOD.

BY MRS. L. II. SIGOURNEY,

"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."

"No God! No God!" the simplest flower
That on the wild is found,
Shrinks, as it drinks its cup of dew,

And trembles at the sound;
"No God!" astonished echo cries
From out her cavern hoar,
And every wandering bird that flies,
Reproves the Atheist lore.

The solemn forest lifts its head,
Th' Almighty to proclaim;
The brooklet, on its crystal urn,

Doth leap to praise his name;
High sweeps the deep and vengeful sea,
Along its billowy track;
And red Vesuvius opens its mouth,
To hurl the falsehood back.

The palm tree, with its princely crest-
The cocoa's leafy shade-
The bread-fruit, bending to its lord,
In yon far island glade-

The winged seeds, borne by the winds,
The roving sparrows feed-
The melon on the desert sands-
Confute the scorner's creed.

"No God!" with indignation high

The fervent sun is stirred,

And the pale moon turns paler still
At such an impious word!

And, from their burning thrones, the stars
Look down with angry eye,
That thus a worm of dust should mock
ETERNAL MAJESTY!

AN EXPERIENCE.

607

HAVING entered a cottage to visit an old woman, for many years suffering from an incurable disease, I found sitting by her a young female, whose appearance bespoke that she also had been long tried by bodily affliction. Her form was wasted to a shadow, and as she sat, seemed somewhat deformed. Her face bore the aspect of intense endurance, and there was coupled with it an expression of discontent, that gave to features naturally plain an almost repulsive appearance. I did not feel inclined to address her; but the thought that her bodily condition might be but a type of her diseased soul, and the hope that a word spoken in season might do good, overcame my reluctance, and I inquired kindly as to the state of her health. She replied with a cold, uncivil air, that had almost turned me aside from my purpose; but again the thought of how much she must need consolation impelled me, and I addressed to her some sentences regarding the compassionate tenderness of that God who afflicts not wil

lingly, nor grieves the children of men. All that was evil seemed now stirred within her; she looked indignant, and rudely replied, that she knew this as well as I did, but what was she the better for it? It seemed that God did not design by me to convey to her any lesson, and I ceased, lest I should provoke her further to sin against him. Her hostess, to whom I discovered she was distantly related, expressed much regret at her conduct, and she soon left the room. I talked and prayed, as I was wont, with the old woman, not forgetting before God her poor visitor. On rising to depart, she said, "Ye maun forgie poor Jean; she has a queer temper, but she has muckle need of your counsel, and perhaps you'll be back and speak to her again."

Strange as it may seem, she had deeply excited my interest. I had not met with an instance of enmity of heart against God so openly expressed. "Surely," I said, "Satan is striving hard for the mastery; shall no effort be made to rescue the prey from his grasp?"

Days passed on, and the unhappy expression of the poor creature still rose before me; and as soon as I could again spare time for so long a walk, I took my way to the widow's home. In the same seat, with the same look of discontent, sat her young friend. She moved not when I entered, and to my inquiry as to how she now was, she scarcely replied.

I determined not again to address her, but sought, in conversing with her hostess, to utter such things as she needed to hear; and in supplicating before God, I made mention of her as one for whom I desired the healing and cleansing influence of his Spirit. As I left the cottage, she followed me with an excited air, and asked who had told me anything about her. "No one has spoken to me of you," I said; "I do