and plainly shows that “ darkness covers the earth, and gross darkness the people” (Isaiah lx. 2). Even in the towns and villages of highlyfavoured Britain, how is the name of God blasphemed, his Gospel despised, his Sabbaths neglected, and his commands set at nought ? but blessed be his name, there are honorable exceptions in every land, and where the standard of the Cross is erected, it has its trophies : there are thousands and tens of thousands, who love the sound of the church-going bell, who are glad when it is said, “ let us go up to the house of the Lord ;" many who have made the noble confession of the apostle, and in the strength of God, are “determined not to know anything amongst men, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” (1 Cor. ii. 2.) Where the power of God has been displayed in turning man from darkness to light, we behold him again brought back to his favour and friendship, and will be eventually introduced to “joys which are unspeakable, and full of glory.” Notwithstanding the effects of the fall, man still bears the mark of his great original, and, in many instances, exhibits a loveliness of character, which calls forth our admiration and respect; but how much more lovely would their characters appear, if living under the influence of the pure and ennobling principles of Christianity. Our Saviour regarded the young man mentioned in the Gospels with affection. It is said, “ That beholding him he loved him." Yet he lacked the one thing needful, supreme love to Christ, which being shed abroad in the heart, must be the rule of our conduct, the standard of all our actions, while morality is not to be despised, but carefully cultivated. Faith in Christ is the grand medium of our acceptance with God, and that alone will secure to us a title to Heaven, a participation in the pleasures which are at God's right hand.

We proposed to consider man as he will be. The sacred volume in many instances assures us, that the world will again become a paradise, and all mankind will be brought back like wandering sheep to the fold of Christ. Through the combined efforts of his people, coupled with his blessing," the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea," when the Saviour shall reign from one end of the earth to the other, the cry of his people, “why are thy chariot-wheels so long in coming,” shall be silenced, and men and angels witnessing his supreme authority shall crown bim Lord of all. The prayer which he taught his disciples shall be fulfilled, “ Let thy kingdom come:" “ his enemies shall be subdued, and the wilderness shall again rejoice and blossom as the rose.” (Isaiah xiv. 17.) How encouraging these reflections to his people, in whatever way engaged to promote bis cause, and hasten the dawn of that glorious day. That they are not labouring in vain, nor spending their strength for nought, the most cheering and animating facts attest: the converts to Christianity have been as numerous as the drops of morning-dew, and angels have rejoiced over sinners repenting and turning to God. His servants have abundant reason to redouble their exertions to spend and be spent in the cause of the Redeemer, encouraged by the promise, “ He that turneth many to righteousness, shall shine as the stars for ever and ever." (Dan. xii. 3.) The cross of Christ is the centre of attraction, around which the world must come. It is the grand instrument which subdues the natural enmity of the carnal mind-it was the subject of the great A postle's preaching, and without it the efforts of man will remain unblest. But viewing man in the light of eternity, his condition appears in an affecting point of view ; Job tells us, • That man dieth and wasteth away, yea, he giveth up the ghost, but where is he?” Our Saviour answers the question, “ Whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.” The sacred volume points out to us but two places after death : our portion, therefore, must be either in endless happiness or eternal misery; although many persons would banish the subject from the mind as an idle tale. But the unbelief of man, does not affect its importance, for it is written on the page of eternal truth with the unerring finger of God, “ Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord” (Rev. xiv. 11); and “the wicked shall be driven into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” The promises to the true disciples of Christ at death, are calculated to stimulate him onward in the path to glory : his unfettered soul shall then rise above the perishing things of time, to behold the Saviour in unclouded brightness, without a veil between : but when the singer shall receive his commission to depart, conscious that he has not answered the great end of his existence, all the painful realities of the future will rise up before him, and when leaving the world, he can only anticipate the sentence, “ Depart ye cursed into everlasting tire." Knowing then that we are destined to live for ever, let us examine well the ground of our faith and hope, that we may be found with our lamps trimmed, and our lights burning, when the bridegroom cometh.

E. M.

ANNNNA

WHAT THE BIBLE HAS DONE FOR WOMAN.

There can scarcely be a more degrading view of woman than the condition which she now presents in Pagan lands. And wbat is that condition, now, in the nineteenth century of the Christian era ? Hated and despised from her birth, and her birth itself esteemed a calamity; in some countries not even allowed the rank of a moral and responsible agent; so tenderly alive to her own degradation that she acquiesces in the murder of her female offspring ; immured from infancy, without education, married without her consent; in a mul. titude of instances sold by her parents ; refused the confidence of her husband, and banished from his table ; on her husband's death doomed to the funeral pile, or to contempt, that renders life a burden ; such is her degraded and pitiable condition in almost all except Christian lands. The Bible has an appropriate place for woman, a place for which she is fitted, and in which she shines. It elevates her, but assigns to her a proper sphere. It does indeed exclude her from the corruption of the camp, and the debates of the forum. It does not invite her to the professor's chair, nor conduct her to the bar, nor make her welcome in the pulpit, nor admit her to the place of magis. tracy. It bids her beware how she overleaps the delicacy of her sex, and listens to the doctrines of effeminate debaters, or becomes the dupe of modern reformers and fashionable journalists. It asks not to hear her gentle voice in the popular assembly, and even “ suffers her not to speak in the church of God.” It claims not for her the right of suffrage, nor any immunity by which she may “ usurp authority over the man." And yet it gives to her a throne; for she is the queen of the domestic circle; it is the bosom of her family; it is the heart of her husband and children ; it is the supremacy in all that interesting domain, where love, and tenderness, and refinement of thought and feeling, preside. It is the privilege of making her husband happy and honoured, and her sons and her daughters the ornaments of human society. It is the sphere of piety, prudence, diligence in the domestic station, and a holy and devout life. It is the sphere that was occupied by Hannah, the mother of Samuel; by Elizabeth, the mother of John ; and by Mary, the mother of Jesus. It is “ the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which, in the sight of God, is of great price.” It is the respect and esteem of mankind. It is that silent, unobserved, unobtrusive influence, by which she accomplishes more for her race than many whose names occupy a broad space on the page of history. More than this too, does the Bible do for woman. It opens to her the stores of knowledge. It proscribes her no intellectual advancement. It commits to her intelligent culture the minds of the rising generation. It tells her that her peculiar province is to embellish and adorn. It opens before her the loveliest spheres of active benevolence. And while it tells her to be a “ keeper at home,” it, at the same time, points her to the poor, the afflicted, the widow, the orphan, the sick, and the dying, and says, “ Pure religion, and undefiled before God and the Father, is to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep herself unspotted from the world.” It does for her what it does for the stronger sex : it gives her the piety that it gives to pious men; ardency and devotion in her religious affections; numerous and illustrious examples of converting grace; a great reward, and a bright crown. Nor can she ever know what she owes to the Bible, until she is presented by her great Lord and Husband faultless before the throne.

DR. SPRING.

ANECDOTE OF ARCHBISHOP LAUD.

· The venerable Laud once enquired of a daughter of the Earl of Devonshire, who had turned Papist, the reason of the change. She replied, “It is chiefly because I hate travelling in a crowd. When pressed for further explanation, she said, “ [ perceive your Grace and many others are making baste to Rome, and therefore to prevent being crowded, I am gone before you.'

There is a class of modern Divines, who may take a hint from this A RIGHT ESTIMATE OF FOREIGN CHURCHES.

The following speech, delivered by the Rev. James Currie at the last annual meeting of the European Aid Society, is deserving of a separate notice, as it appears to us to settle the question, which has recently been unhappily raised by the Oxford Tractarians, respecting the manner in which foreign churches have been in past times, and, still are to be regarded, by the English Episcopal Church. For the argument and historical research which the speech contains, we recommend it to the careful attention of our readers.

The Rev. JAMES CURRIE (deputed from Geneva) in moving the adoption of the Report, addressed the Meeting to the following effect :- In the course of the last year, the Geneva brethren, on whose behalf I am privileged now to stand forward, made a written declaration of their faith. They gladly availed themselves of that opportunity to state their opinion of the Church of England, and the terms they apply to her are these :-- That Church,' they say, ' which confesses, with so much purity and perseverance, God manifest in the flesh, and his grace alone as the source of salvation ; that Church, which God has placed in bis heritage as one of the most powerful bulwarks against the invasions of the Papacy; a Church, which, whether by her immediate efforts, or by those of Christians who have gone forth from her bosom, has planted the standard of Jesus Christ in vast continents, and in the most distant islands; a Church, the purity of whose doctrine, its power, its constitution, and the important sphere which divine providence bas assigned to her, makes us justly regard as the eldest sister of the Churches of the Reformation.' Such is the light in which our Church is viewed by the Evangelical Society of Geneva. Thus high and thus honourable their eulogium upon us. But they have not stopped short at a mere profession of attachment, however glowing in its phraseology. In selecting-to represent their interests upon this important occasion—a clergyman of the English Church, most conscientiously attached to her, and known to them to be so, they have, I think, given a practical proof of good-will towards her, which this meeting will know how to appreciate. But though the conduct of our Swiss brethren in this matter cannot but be altogether satisfactory and grateful, that of the individual addressing you may not, at first sight at least, appear so. In thus identifying himself with those who differ from him on the subject of Church government, and on some other points, or I should rather say, whose actual position in these matters is somewhat different, he may be viewed as betraying a laxity of feeling on those topics, incompatible with his solemn engagements to the Anglican Churcb. Here, then I may perhaps be permitted to enter into some details, less for the purpose of vindicating my own consistency, that of clerical brethren around me, or indeed that of the present meeting, composed as it mainly is of members of the Church of England, than with the view of bringing into fuller light some important truths which can no longer be lost sight of with safety. In the unhappy times on which we are fallen, many are led to confound the ecclesiastical position of the Reformed Churches of the Continent with that of Dissenters from our national Establishment and there are those who dare to say of the Church of England that she denies the validity of the ministrations of our foreign brethren, though she acknowledges those of Rome. In the view of the English Church, it is said, and that not simply by the younger and less experienced members of our Universities, but by some who ought to know better, the foreign Churches of the Reformation, excepting perhaps that of Sweden, form no portion of the Church catholic and apostolic; and were this indeed the opinion of the Church of England, I might not now be addressing this assembly. But I deliberately affirm that never was there an assertion more unfounded. It can never indeed be made, but in the very teeth of facts, as decisive in a contrary sense as they are numerous. If the blessed work of the Reformation triumphed in our own favoured country, let us not forget that its success was in a measure due to the assistance it received from foreign Protestant Churches, assistance of a character clearly marking the unity of feeling with which they were regarded by our English Reformers. Not only was an intimate correspondence kept up with them by letter, their advice being thus sought on every case of emergency, but Bucer and Peter Martyr were named Divinity Professors at Cambridge and Oxford, whilst, but for the early translation to a heavenly crown of the Sixth Edward, Cambridge would have numbered Melancthon amongst her Professors of Theology. Bucer was especially consulted in the compilation of the Book of Common Prayer, and nearly all his suggestions with regard to it attended to. Now, I ask, would all this, - could it, indeed, have ever taken place, had our foreign brethren not been viewed as fellow-Churchmen as well as fellowChristians, to say nothing of the latter involving, as a logical consequence, the former term? Again, the foreign exiles, driven by persecution to seek a home in our dear and happy country in the first days of her reformation, were not simply received with hospitality : they were allowed to retain amongst us the ecclesiastical discipline and usages they had brought with them. The strangers from Germany were embodied into a Corporation by Royal patent, which grounds the sanction thus given them, not only on the duty of showing protection to those suffering for the Gospel, but ‘on the duty of a Prince to diffuse through the wbole body of the Commonwealth pure and undefiled religion, and to preserve the Church in truly Christian and apostolic opinions and rites.' I have here translated the very words of the patent itself. But the proof that their differences in some secondary points were not considered to separate these strangers from communion with us, becomes even more clear, from the further fact that these foreign congregations, when placed by Elizabeth and their own voluntary submission under the jurisdiction of the English bishops, in whose diocese they might be placed, were still allowed to retain their peculiarities, their selection and ordination of ministers after their own form, e.g. being subjected to the approval and confirmation of the Anglican diocesan. To this day, the Bishop of London is the superintendent, the 'ETÍOKOTOS, of the ancient foreign congregations which still subsist in this metropolis. He has lately exercised his official power with regard to one of them in a manner