8

THE master-vice of this country in the present day is its cupidity. We have formed the most absurd, the most monstrously extravagant, estimate of the importance of wealth. Gain has fairly become our god. The temple of Moloch is, happily, almost closed. Many worships, once rife amongst us, have well nigh ceased. We are all now, not moving, but hurrying in one vast, motley, confused procession to the shrine of Mammon.

There, every knee bows, and every heart does homage. There is no reverence for man's spiritual nature -no sense of its value-no appreciation of its vast capacities and lofty powers. There is no respect for intellectual and moral worth; there is, in effect, a practical oblivion of the great truth, that we have souls, and that they are immortal. It is in vain that some few see the folly and deplore the wickedness of this-that they have learnt of him who said, "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth"

-it still continues the practical faith of the nation. The measure of a man's worth, almost everywhere, is his wealth. The acknowledged god of Britain is Mammon. How many are the evils which flow from this source! Once and again it has, even of late years, convulsed the whole frame of society, and threatened universal ruin; and it requires no prophet to announce, that the mad spirit of speculation which is now so common amongst us will bring on another season of embarrassment, and will involve thousands in the deepest distress.

But we must look more closely into the evils which cupidity inflicts upon the country. To this we owe it that society, as a whole,

can scarcely be said to have made any progress during the last half century. During that period, unparalleled advances have been made by England in all that is great and good; but the millions are as degraded and as wretched as they have ever been-perhaps, many of them more so. Neither in wealth nor any of the blessings of civilisation, in the convenience and comforts of life, in moral and mental culture, has the mass of society been advancing. There have been immense accumulations of wealth in the hands of the few, who are every year becoming comparatively fewer; the many are as destitute as ever. The rich may be growing richer; but the poor are at once increasing rapidly in number, and sinking deeper in poverty and destitution. Never was a more affecting spectacle presented to the eye of benevolence than may be witnessed every day in the metropolis, and other large towns of the empire. Their merchants are princes; their habitations are palaces; their wealth is untold; their parties and entertainments present perfectly fairy scenes, which bewilder the unpractised eye. Look at their

houses of business! What decorations!-what an air of magnificence !—what dazzling splendour! Napoleon sadly wounded our vanity when he called us a nation of shopkeepers. But then, what shopkeepers! and such shops!-scenes of enchantment! But step a few yards behind those streets of gorgeous palaces, and what see you there? Oh, such courts and alleys! such miserable habitations, scarcely fit for the eye of man to rest upon -how much less for human beings to dwell in! The blue sky is never seen from them; the sun and moon

never look upon them; the pure air of heaven cannot breathe, nor its clear light shine, into them; and yet how densely crowded! Thousands of human beings are there, dragging out a miserable existence.

of

What cold! what hunger! what nakedness! what filthiness! what profligacy! what profaneness! what passion! what intemperance! what crime! what misery are there! and yet few know aught of it, but those who live in it. In almost every large town in England, you see some splendid edifice devoted to the purposes science, of literature, of the arts; there you have all the requirements of the highest civilisation; but in its immediate neighbourhood there are hundreds to whom the alphabet is a mystery, and the best of books an oracle that never speaks. You see around you, on every side, magnificent temples devoted to the

worship of God and of his Christ, to which not a few well-dressed persons resort; but in the immediate vicinity there are thousands living and dying in completest ignorance of the first principles of religion, in entire alienation from all that is holy and good, and in habitual disregard of the plainest dictates of morality. Strange and melancholy spectacle! Excessive wealth, in the very bosom of haggard poverty! The splendour which dazzles, surrounded by the loathesomeness that disgusts! The refinements of the highest civilisation, in closest connexion with squalid wretchedness, such as the savage of the wilderness rarely knows! Piety, some of which is genuine elevated, and much of which is high-sounding, in the midst of extensive practical atheism !

heart finds the object of its first, its supreme love? Is Jesus precious to me? Is he all my salvation, all my desire? Do I love his appearing? Am I prayerfully watching, patiently waiting for my Lord from heaven? am I ready to go forth to meet him, come in what watch he may? Does my soul watch for him, as the hart for the water-brooks; is this the language of her eager expectation, When shall I come to appear before God?' Are the great, the gracious, the infallible, the amazing promises of justification, sanctification, and redemption through the blood of THE

SPOTLESS AND UNBLEMISHED-are

they my own;-has God by his Holy Spirit made them consciously my own? Can I say, Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness?"

These are vitally important inquiries. They cannot fail to be the subject of deep and enlarged contemplation to those who know that it shall profit a man nothing though he gain the whole world if he lose his own soul; that there is nothing a man should take in exchange for his soul. They are, it is true, unhappily true, uninviting and uninteresting inquiries to many. They will engage the attention, and employ the meditations of a few. And yet of what infinite moment is every one of them, and without exception to all!

We are the survivors of thousands who were strangers to us, who have passed away from this scene since the commencement of

the year now gone. We are the survivors perhaps of those who came closest to our hearts in the bonds of earthly affection; they have been taken, and we are left.

O that men would strive after that Holy Spirit, whose continual presence within us can alone exalt us above the perplexing cares and concerns of a perishing world like this, and enable us to fix our hearts where true joys are to be found, in the presence and at the right hand of God-that we who name the name of Christ might let no other aspiration take precedence of this

-to be with him where he is, and to behold his glory-that we might regard not things that are seen, but the things that are not seen― "for the things that are seen are temporal; but the things that are not seen are eternal."

S. T.

TIME is precious, but we are ignorant of its true value; nor will we learn it before it is too late to profit by it. Our friends demand it of us as a trifle, and we bestow it accordingly. It is often a burden to us, and costs us some pains to know how to dispose of it; yet a day will come, when we shall think a quarter of an hour more valuable than all the treasures of the earth. God, though most liberal and bounteous of all other things, yet teaches us, by the frugal dispensations of his providence, how careful we ought to be to make good use of time, because he never grants us two moments together, nor vouchsafes a second until he has withdrawn the first, still keep

ing the third in his own hand, so that we are entirely uncertain whether we shall have it or not. Time

is given us to prepare for eternity, and eternity will not be too long to lament our lost time, if we have Imade a bad use of it.

Our whole life, as well as our heart, belongs to God; they are neither of them too much for him; he gave them to us for no other end than to love and serve him. Let us, therefore, rob him of nothing. It is not in our power every moment to do great things for him; yet we may always do what is proper for our station. To be silent, to suffer, and to pray, when there is no room for outward action, is pleasing and acceptable to

God. A disappointment, a contradiction, an injustice, received and endured for the sake of God, are of as much value as a long prayer; and the time is not lost which is spent in the practice of meekness and patience. But for these we must be cautious that those interruptions are not occasioned by our own faults. Thus

we should regulate our life, and "redeem the time," as St. Paul

saith, "flying from the world," its vain amusements, idle pursuits, and useless conversations, which serve only to dissipate the mind, and indulge the heart in self-love. By these means we shall find time for the service of God. All that is employed otherwise is lost.

The moments fly-a minute's gone!
The minutes fly-an hour is run!
The day is fled-the night is here!
Thus flies a week, a month, a year!

I REGARD the year 1844 as having witnessed a crisis in the affairs of that portion of the great family of Christ, to which we are from principle and from choice strongly attached. During the first nine months of this period, the mind of our communion was agitated by the most intense anxiety as to the issue of a great controversy, which, having originated in the Church of England, had crossed the Atlantic, and shaken to its very foundations the principles of our Protestant faith. The exciting questions which were canvassed were not the ephemeral growth of modern times, but the legitimate consequences of principles which had been latent, yet living, and more or less opera▾ tive in the Church of England, ever since the era of the Reformation. Since that event, two streams of influence had been flowing-one openly, the other covertly for the most part, yet at times showing itself with a foaming crest on the surface of the ecclesiastical world. At the time of the separation of the Church of England from the usurped jurisdiction of Rome, a large number of clergy, known to be attached, from early education and long-continued usage, to the

principles of the Roman apostacy, remained in the Church of England and took the required oaths of allegiance, and made the signature to the Articles of the Protestant faith. They were only nominally Protestant, submitting, with certain reservations, to the new order of things, and probably cherishing the hope, that in the lapse of time, the Church would return to her recent subjection to the Italian pontiff. The Liturgy, the Articles, and the Homilies of the Church of England, looked one way, and reflected the light of the Word of God; but these men (conscientiously, no doubt,) looked another way, and, as far as they could, breathed the spirit and diffused the influence of the Romish faith and practice.

Through the mercy of God, notwithstanding the reverses of the days of persecution which ensued, the great leading doctrines of the Reformation were preserved; and although the same causes which early operated against them still retarded their progress, moved onwards, eradicating error, and being made, under God, the vitalizing energy of the English Church.

In the days of Archbishop Laud,

error revived; and, in a subtle and modified form, spread itself extensively through a great portion of the clergy and laity of the English Church. The attempt was then made, as is well known, by Pauzani, a chosen agent of the Pope, to ensnare the Church of England into an alliance with the Church of Rome. It was proposed that our Articles and standards of faith and practice should be razed and pared down, so as to show how the Church of England might cease to be Protestant without inconsistency, and the Church of Rome forego her anathemas of English Christians, without any reflections upon her infallibility. The project failed,

and its abettors were covered with confusion.

and

Still, however, the tendencies of theological opinions and ecclesiastical practices which had been favoured by Archbishop Laud and his colleagues, remained in certain quarters of England, were constantly in conflict with the decidedly Protestant principles of the martyrs of the Reformation. The two streams of principles and measures continued to flow-all that was vital and evangelical in the Church of England flourishing on the margin of the one, and much that was redolent with Italian error, on the other. Those doctrines which are now distinctly known by the name of the Protestant Episcopal, or Evangelical, being advocated with more or less clearness by the former, the friends of the distinctive principles of the Reformation; whilst those doctrines which held the seminal principles of modern Oxfordism, or of which the latter is only a refinement, were as strenuously advocated by the latter, the disciples of Archbishop Laud, and others of kindred views.

What were some of the conse

quences? 1st. Dissent was cherished from infancy to the vigour of manhood. Detachment after detachment marched away from the Church of England. Several of the most estimable of both her clergy and laity were literally forced reluctantly to leave her bosom. Men who wished to preach the truth as it is in Jesus, the identical doctrines contained in our Prayerbook, were branded with opprobrious names, and visited with such indignities, as showed the stern face of ecclesiastical intolerance covered with indignation.

After a season, however, dissent reacted favourably on the Church of England. Can any man doubt it. If so I leave him in his blindness. Both in England and our own country, we owe much to our dissenting brethren. The stream of evangelical truth widened in the Church of England, and its banks were more verdant than ever. A noble band of evangelical preachers were raised up, in the providence of God, and gathering the real truths of the Reformation, and freely unclasping the word of God, proclaimed "repentance and faithreal conversion and true justification by faith, and by faith only— and that there was a wide difference between true holiness and that which was only ceremonial or ecclesiastical. They declared that the Church was in Christ; not that Christ was in the Church-that baptism was the sign, not the thing signified, which was not always nor necessarily present when baptism was administered; and that in the Lord's Supper we have a commemorative covenant, and a representation of the one oblation of Christ, and as such, a rich and precious means of grace, but nothing even distantly approaching the Roman mass, either as a real