authorities. Begging is regarded as a thing not to be tolerated amongst a Christian community, where all are bound to assist such as are disabled by age or sickness, and where none are excused from work who have the power. It has, therefore, no existence. The Church, we have already said, needed to be built almost before the dwelling-houses were erected; for the prison, on the contrary, there existed no such pressing necessity. Nineteen years passed before it seems to have occurred to the good people's minds that their village was incomplete in that which is generally regarded as a very necessary appendage. At length, rather by way of provision in case the necessity should arise than for any actual need, a small place of confinement was built, which has, we believe, been used in the case of one or two of the younger members, for whom the church discipline seemed to possess few terrors. There is a fund, managed by the superintendent, for the deposit of savings, for loans, and for the insurance of cattle and farming stock. Having no idleness, no crime, no police, or other similar expenses, and no luxuriant expenditure, it may well be conceived that the people have advanced rapidly in temporal prosperity. A large amount is expended in charity, and an immense outlay has been needed for their buildings and roads, but there has never been lack; and they have, in a physical as well as in a moral sense, literally converted a waste "wilderness into a fruitful field." The taxes are paid to the government, as in other places, but the whole amount is paid directly by the superintendent at the fixed periods, so that the government is spared the pains of collection. "Unto Cæsar," they say, "the things that are Cæsar's, as well as unto God the things that are God's."

The doctrines maintained by the community of Kornthal are, with one or two unimportant additions, precisely those of the Augsburg Confession, and the character of the teaching

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is that which is indicated by the names of Arndt, Spener, Bogatzky, Osiander, Bengel, Storr, Rieger, and others of that band of holy men whose names are associated with the purest period of their country's religious teaching. Besides the three Sabbath services, a service is conducted in the church, or "house of prayer," as it is termed, every evening of the week. Family worship is observed in each house, and classes for instruction exist by which to train up the younger members of the households. A spirit of brotherly love is a marked characteristic of these people, who with all their strictness refuse fellowship to none who love the Lord Jesus, be they of what sect or name they may; and a dweller amongst them has before him as complete a specimen of a living Bible Christianity as probably any place of like size can present. Kornthal has been blessed throughout its history with excellent men as pastors and superintendents. Hoffmann its founder,-who afterwards formed a second community on the same principles in the south of Würtemberg, called Wilhelmsdorf, which is a kind of colony from Kornthal and enjoys the same privileges,-was a noblehearted man, and perpetuates his name and his excellencies in a son, who is at the present time one of the brightest ornaments of Germany-Professor Hoffmann of Berlin. Kapff, the prelate at Stuttgart, was for long its much-loved pastor. Staut, who fills that office now, is one of the most esteemed of the Würtemberg clergy.

We had thought to give some incidents of our short stay in Kornthal, but must forego. We were received at the inn rather as a friend than in any other manner, and were much attracted by the appearance it presented. The room we occupied was furnished with the Scriptures and religious books; it contained a missionary cabinet of considerable size, consisting of curiosities received from mission-stations in foreign parts; and it was hung from floor to ceiling on

all the four sides, with small pictures or coloured engravings representing subjects in Bible history, altogether two hundred in number. The pastor being absent at the time, the hostess asked the superintendent to spend an hour or two with us, together with two or three of the villagers, who were esteemed judges of wine. A double object was designed in this. And, as we sat together, we had the pleasure of gaining from our evening's intercourse much insight into the Christian life and past history of Kornthal, as well as of assisting to determine the cider which should be supplied to the inhabitants of Kornthal for the next year's consumption. All such matters are under the strict surveillance of the superintendent; and, although we did not put the hostess to the test, we learned that had we asked for wine beyond a second glass within a certain limited period, the rules of the place would have forbidden its supply. This kind of Maine law is not peculiar to Kornthal. Throughout Würtemberg, according to a measure introduced in the Parliament in 1852 by the prelate Kapff, the liberty to enter a public-house is prohibited to all under the age of eighteen years, an act which, although frequently evaded, it is said has been productive of very beneficial results in restraining the formation of habits of drinking and idleness.

We would gladly have stayed longer at Kornthal and enjoyed more of its pleasing society. We were invited to call on the widow of the late missionary Weitbrecht, who, like others similarly circumstanced, has found in the retirement of Kornthal a congenial place in which to spend her widowhood. But time pressed; and the next evening after that on which we saw the moon rise so beautifully over Kornthal, we had passed the frontiers of Germany, and were finding out new objects of Christian interest and new sources of hallowed enjoyment in the half-French, halfGerman city of Strasburg.

T. H. G.

PROVERBS OF SOLOMON.

No. I.-A WOUNDED SPIRIT.

"The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity: but a wounded spirit who can bear?"-Chap. xviii. 14.

GOOD health is athletic. It rather courts than refuses toil; and whether it be in climbing the mountain, or in the long pedestrian journey,-whether it be in the chase or the battle, in rowing the skiff or waging war with the beasts of the forest, the labour is itself an excitement, and there is a positive pleasure in the exercise of skill and agility and physical power.

There is a similar energy in a healthy soul. Where the understanding is vigorous and the conscience serene, and where the devout and benevolent affections are rightly developed, it is a pleasure to the man to exert his mind or his moral powers. He bends over the deep problem, or bestirs him to master the new science, or charges his memory with this and the other foreign tongue. Or if called to pursuits still nobler, he rejoices to carry out some scheme of arduous philanthropy; and there seems no limit to his dispersive good offices, his friendly undertakings, his generous feats, his self-denying perseverance, and all his labours of love.

There is one athletic exhibition at which we have often wondered it is the load which a strong man is able to sustain. There he goes, carrying almost unconscious a burden which would crush to the earth the unpractised strength of other people; or here is a mighty load,- -a heavy beam or a bulky bale, which you would not touch with one of your fingers ;-but he wriggles under it and gets it on his shoulder and marches off with it, like Samson with

the gates of Gaza. Or look into this armoury: it is as much as you can do to move that coat of mail; and were you locked up inside of it, you would either stand as moveless as a statue, or would sink to the ground in irrecoverable prostration. But that panoply was the every-day wear of an ancient warrior. He got so used to it that he seldom felt the vizor on his brow, and, instead of standing stockstill in the encasing iron, he made the pavement quiver with his stalwart stride, and in case of need could snatch and carry to the rear a wounded comrade.

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Yet there is one feat more wonderful, and that is the load of care and responsibility which some strong spirits carry. Here is an influential citizen. It is not only his own business so widely ramified-with nerves and feelers that reticulate all round the world, and so sensitive that it trembles with each day's barometric pressure; but it is the care of a hundred other interests: the clients who have imperilled their earthly all on his individual skill or fidelity; the dependants who look up to him for protection, for subsistence, for promotion; the projects of which his judgment is the pivot; the structures of which his reputation or his resources are the pedestal. And here is a hard-working man. He loves his wife; he loves his children; and it is all that his brawny arm can do to hold at bay that strong man, Want, who wrestles daily at his cottage-door; and he knows that were he laid low for a few short weeks, the pride of his little parlour would soon vanish piecemeal,whilst an accident, or an early death, or a cureless malady, would reduce the whole to beggary: and amidst the gallant struggle markets glut, or provisions rise, or in the care of an orphan family or in the sickness of his own, some unlookedfor burden falls on shoulders already overladen: and as still he plies his daily task, it is not the tale of bricks with which he mounts the ladder, nor is it the sledge-hammer