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thought Nathaniel. No, he would not from him spiritual truth, and lifted go. The cattle were valuable, but his him into a new region where all family more so. He would stay, seemed to lie beneath the immediate and painful as the loss might be, smile and presence of God. leave the fire to take its course. felt he could live better, love more, And now the oxen were alarmed, and do more, when he trusted to and bellowed wildly, stamping and the simple Scripture thoughts this rattling their chains in a most book had opened, than when enterrible manner. Nathaniel hesi-veloped in the somnolent folds of a tated for a few minutes. But see, the fire is fast consuming the roof, and the flames leap up and round, and lie writhing and crawling amidst the smoke like fiery serpents. It was soon over. The roof fell, and the cattle one by one were silent, and the black ruin glared in frightful outline against the sky.

"Thank God we are all safe,' said Nathaniel, with great cheerfulness. This was the beginning of poor Newbury's troubles. Sheep, plantations, stacks, and outstanding crops, were variously plundered in their turn, and a state of genuine alarm was fostered by letters from London and tidings of neighbouring forays. So he furbished his arms, procured more gunpowder, and disposed matters within Carlton Grange for a siege if need be.

Nathaniel was not a man of war by nature. But there were three facts that went strongly to make him one under present conditions. He feared God, had a honest notion that there was something divine about a man's liberty and life, and had gradually come to dislike all Popish mummeries, priestly devices, and peremptory mandates from king and convocation, that began with blarney and ended with blasphemy. To be brief, he had recently become an'Anabaptist, or a Donatist dipper, and this almost without knowing it, or ever having had an opportunity to submit to the baptismal rite. He had been born a churchman because he could not help it, and he had attended church, with his family, pretty regularly, until he came across an old Dutch work, recently Englished by an anonymous hand. This book had cleared away the mist and dust that had hitherto hid

traditional faith, or groping in a blind murk that only excited aspiration to clip and hood it for ever. He got the neighbours together in his house on the Lord's-day, and expounded and preached, telling them whence he drew the impulses of his life and the germs of his primitive faith.

Here began fresh misfortunes. Persecuted for his new doctrines and contempt of the old, he struggled and strived, prayed, suffered, and believed. Light came in the darkness, and amidst that pure illumination, duty became beautiful, danger sublime, and death a transfiguration. But more than this, there had latterly been an evident absorption in some new and secretly cherished scheme. All the mean details of his daily life fell from him like leprous scales in this white-heat of a new and patriot enthusiasm. He was sad and solitary. Neighbours called him queer' and 'peculiar.' Old Midge, the armourer, knew more than most folks, and was most frequently visited, but he stood out against all talkers and news-mongers. conduct was made more inexplicable by the good news so joyfully received within the last few weeks. The neighbourhood was now clear of enemies, and Colonel Cromwell himself, more familiarly known as the Lord of the Fens,' was coming to clear the county of Camdeners and Papists.

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Such

The suspense at Carlton Grange at last grew fearful. Mother and children were caught up into the same fervent mood, without knowing how the impulse came, or whither it led. At length, in family worship one morning, the secret accidentally came out, and throughout the day Deborah was paler, though her eyes were wilder and brighter than usual.

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Night came. Old Midge brought, be. The country hereabouts was home a suit of armour, a sword, a now clear of all but honest men,' bolster pistol, and a stout pike for and there was little to fear. But as home use. They were hung in the for him, he must away; it was his warm oak-panelled parlour, and solemn duty, he said, to help good beneath them reposed the open Christian men elsewhere. His stout Bible. All was the hush of deep cob came round to the front, but it suppressed emotion-the silence of was sometime before he could tear the soul when it catches the far-off himself away. At length he was rhythm of celestial worlds, and is fairly mounted, and with a face of folded in the sweet embraces of flint he bade Deborah, and his divine tenderness and grace. The children, and domestics, farewell, soft lamplight danced on the bright and committed them to the care of arms, and touched up a word here the Most High. and there on the Holy page. Deborah was in tears, and her lips trembled in spite of the strong effort of her will. Keturah, a girl of fourteen, who sat next her, was demure and statuesque. Elijah, the eldest and only son, now Giles was away, was sedate, even sad, visibly nerving himself for what was coming. Serving men and domestics, in varying moods of curiosity and feeling, sat in the dim shadows of the distance, and made up a picture, such as Albert Dürer would have loved to paint, and one that would have done an honest soul more good than picture of saint, cherub, or Madonna. Nathaniel read a passage from the book of Samuel, beginning And David said to Saul, let no man's heart fail him because of him: thy servant will go and fight with this Philistine.' Every word sank deep in their hearts. Prayer followed, and when the father's voice faltered, there was weeping, wringing of hands, and loud gushes of feeling, that made the scene almost tragically impressive. Deborah and Nathaniel at last were left alone, and their speech shall be sacred as it was tender and holy. They spent the night in prayer.

On the morrow Nathaniel buckled on his armour, and girt on his sword, and thus equipped went through a short religious service. It was now time to part. The household of Carlton Grange clung about him like helpless, hopeless ones, but with radiant courage he blessed them, and gave each some special counsel. Elijah would be their stay. their defender, their captain, if need

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Here was a gospeller in armour. A strange sound the words have in these days.when men hesitate whether a soldier can be a Christian, and a Christian a soldier. Was it strange then, when honest, God-fearing men, went to danger and death, with prayer and psalm, and yielded their lives more joyfully than we pence that the kingdom of the Lord might come in the hearts of mankind, and the earth be free of the crimes that were done in His name? Say not it was all the effect of mere circumstance and a great national crisis. Beneath all that flitted on the surface, deep down in the hearts of men, was there not a grand gigantic Belief, centring in God, and sweeping round humanity to return unto Him again? Men were fanatical, raving, mad, if you please; but it was for truth, for liberty, for religion, for God: and the man who can ever remain in the frigid zone of an even balancing judgment when all that belongs to the glory of this life and the next are assailed by powers civil, military, and religious, has lost his sense of the worth and divinity of truth, and is a statue, a stone, and not a man. When men believe with a deeprooted, broad-set, bold-bossed, and self-annihilating faith, they tower into a moral atmosphere, whither others more logical cannot follow them, and where, as they are above our plane, they are beyond our criticism. I will not ask, where now we might have been, had such men never wrought their heroisms into the fabric of the world; but I will ask, where we might now be had we

Prayer for the New Year.

but their courage, their conscience, and their belief?

A gospeller in armour! Yes, Nathaniel Newbury was not going to leave off preaching and praying because he was going to fight. Some men wear their Christianity so loosely about them, that they can put it off in all great civil and political concerns; it is a robe embroidered with creeds and zodiacal signs, that can be slipped off the shoulders whenever it is convenient. All Noncomformists who vote for Puseyites, and all descendants of Anabaptists whose bones bleach in the mounds of Naseby who do dire despite to the liberty of their conscience for the sake of present comfort or paltry gain, are

men

of this latter type. Yea, even some men take this sleek calf-skin mas

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querade for the pure and virgin truth. Not so our forefathers, and not so our gospeller. If you uncoiled his religion from him there would not have been even so much left as a mummy-it was his soul, marrow, and framework, and if a spiritual analysis had been possible, you might have found it in the corpuscles of his blood. And it was not a little strange that as this new made soldier trotted off to the Cromwellian rendezvous, July 9th, 1643, one George Fox, of Drayton, in Leicestershire, broke away from his relatives at the command of God,' as he himself says, to lead a life of warfare, so opposite yet in some respects so similar, that the reader can make a parallel or a contrast of it as he may choose.

PRAYER FOR THE NEW YEAR.

STILL as death, and cold, and white,

All the land is lying;

Waiting 'neath the starry light

For the old year's dying.

Silence, where the forest hoar
Bound in winter sleepeth;
Silence, where the city's roar
Stills; and vigil keepeth.

Silence : as the old year dies,
The new year is dawning!
With a flash of glad surprise
Come the glad bells' warning.

Ah, we welcome thee, new year,
With such joyful pealing;
Yet to some sad eyes the tear
Even now is stealing.

Clasped within the dead year's hand

Lie our fairest flowers;

Blooming for the silent land,

Never more for ours.

Gather thou no more, new year;
Peacefully pass o'er us:

Bring some unseen joy more near,

Set some hope before us.

From the years, oh God, our cry

Up to Thee ascendeth;

Years are born, and pass, and die,

Thou the same remaineth.

Show us, through earth's darkened years,

Where life's dream, now dim with tears,

Light eternal breaking;

Shall have joyful waking.

MAUD.

Biblical Notes and Queries.

NOTES.

treasure.

Yet is not this selling of all to be considered merely in the light of an arbitrary condition, imposed from without, but rather in the light of a delightful constraint, acknowledged from within: even as a man would willingly fling down pebbles and mosses, which hitherto he had been gathering, and with which he had filled his hands, if pearls and precious stones were re-offered him instead; or, as the dead leaves easily, and as of themselves, fall off from the trees, when propelled by the new blossoms and buds which are forcing their way from behind.—Trench.

For joy thereof, goeth and selleth all that he hath and buyeth that field.' (Matt. xiii. 44.) Augustine excellently illustrates from his own experience this part of the parable. Describing the crisis of his own conversion, and how easy he found it, through this joy, to give up all those pleasures of sin that he had long dreaded to be obliged to nounce, which had long held him fast in the chains of evil custom; and which if he renounced, it had seemed to him as if life itself would not be worth the living, he exclaims: 'How sweet did it at once become to me to want the sweetness of those toys; and what I feared to be parted from, was now a joy to part with. For Thou didst cast them forth from me, Thou true and highest sweetness. Thou castedst them forth, and for them, enteredst in Thyself, sweeter than all pleasure.' The parting with those other delights, which had hitherto held him bound, was, in Augustine's case, the selling of all that he had, that he might buy the field. Paul also declares (Phil. iii. 4-11) how he too sold all that he had, renounced his trust in his own righteousness, in his spiritual and fleshly privileges, that he might 'win Christ and be found in Him.' In each of these illustrious instances the man parted with the dearest thing he had, so to make the treasure his own; though in each case, how different was the thing parted with! So, too, whenever any man renounces the thing that is closest to him, rather than that that should be a hindrance to his embracing and making his own all the blessings of the Gospel,-when the lover of money renounces his covetousness,-and the indolent man, his ease,-and the lover of pleasure, his pleasure, and the wise man, his confidence in the wisdom of this world, then each is selling what he has, that he may buy the field which contains the

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That if any did not work, neither should he eat.' (2 Thess. iii. 10.) This has very much the air of a proverb; and in fact there was such a proverb in very frequent use among the Jews. A similar adage is found among classical writers. From the earnestness with which the apostle dwells upon this matter, in both his epistles to the Thessalonians, it would appear that many of the converts were disposed to give over work, and looked for their maintenance to the wealthier or more industrious brethren, and that this was one of the evil results of their false notions about the immediate advent of Christ.

'Wherefore the law is as our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.' (Gal. iii. 24.) The translation of waidaywyos by schoolmaster' throws some shade over the idea this passage is intended to convey. The pædagogus was not a schoolmaster, in the modern sense of the word, but was generally a slave, or a domestic servant, who attended to his master's sons, to watch over their behaviour, and particularly to conduct them to and from school and the places of exercise. From this part of his office he derived his name. He had nothing to do with the education properly speaking; although_when he happened to be an educated man, which was sometimes the case, he

Notices of Books-The Strife of Sects.

appears to have assisted and directed his young masters in getting ready their lessons for school. In the Greek authors, the pædagogus is often introduced as a character, and as such is usually represented as of a severe and imperious description. In point of fact, then, the present text really represents Christ himself as the schoolmaster, to whose school the pupils are brought by the pædagogus,-the law.-Kitto."

Putting away lying.' (Eph. iv. 25.) This was by no means a superfluous injunction; for the heathen had no principle of truth among themselves, or anything on which a high standard of moral excellence might be erected. Whitby says on this injunction: The heathen philosophers thought lying lawful, when it was good or profitable; as owning that rule of Menander, а lie is better than a hurtful truth; and that of Proclus, "good (advantage) is better than truth;" and that of Darius in Herodotus, "when a lie will profit, let it be used;" and that of Plato, "he may lie who knows how to do it in a fit season," for, says Maximus Tyrus, "there is nothing decorous in truth, but when it is

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profitable; yea, sometimes a truth hurts, and a lie profits a man." And to countenance this practice both Plato and the Stoics framed a Jesuitical distinction between lying in words, and with an assent to an untruth, or "lying in the soul."

QUERIES.

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No. 1. What are we to understand Jesus is Lord, but by the Holy by 1 Cor. xii. 3, No man can say

Ghost ?'

M.

No. 2. Does Gal. vi. 2. 'Ye see

how large a letter I have written
refer to the length of the letter,
unto you with mine own hand,'
which is not so long as some others:
or to the size of the characters
of the apostle's handwriting? J.
No. 3. How are we to interpret
'If ye
this saying of Christ ?
had faith as
a grain of mustard
seed, ye might say unto this sycamine
tree, be thou plucked up by the
root, and be thou planted in the sea;
and it should obey you.' Luke

xvii. 6.

B.

[Short pithy answers to the above will oblige.-ED.]

Notices of Books.

THE STRIFE OF SECTS. Tracts for the Thoughtful on Matters Relating to the Religious Condition of the Age. No. 1. London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co.

ONE way of making out a good case for your client is to ignore every argument of opposing counsel. The author of the pamphlet before us has acted in some such way as this. He has a great deal to say about the ' evils of denominational schism,' and very little to say about the unquestionable 'good' which has resulted from denominationalism itself. He will allow that every sect now existing probably originated in an

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earnest conviction of mind, and a
solemn sense of duty in its founders.'
He will not allow that earnest con-
victions and a sense of duty influence
the modern sectary.' Very black
indeed is the picture he gives of
him: he is uncharitable, egotistical,
captious, fond of a little brief au-
thority, neglects the weightier mat-
ters of the law for some petty detail
or unimportant form, originates weak
'causes,' perpetuates the race of poor
ministers, poor in more senses than
one, builds mean-looking chapels,
supports inefficient Sunday schools,
and makes religion generally con-
temptible in the eyes of the thought-

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