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times a shriek is heard from a sinking ship, and a poor starved sailor claims our aid. Sometimes the cottage of death is opened, and one who has herself suffered many sore afflictions, comforts another just stricken down by a single blow, by the words: "You have one empty little pair of shoes to look on-I have six." Anecdotes, allegories, parables, follow and even jostle each other in a hurried crowd, each itself dressed in its own embroidered robe of sub-metaphors and similes. It is in the fact that they do come in a crowd, and flit so hurriedly past us, that resides their saving force. Were they to come in one by one, and courtesy before us in a complaisant selfseclusion, as if saying, "Look and see how fine I am,” we soon would cease to look on them at all. But they sweep by us, bent on the errand with which piety as well as genius inspires them, with such phantom-like energy and haste, as to impress us with an almost awful sense of the importance of their mission. It is almost as if the spectres of all nature, animate and inanimate, as if all the illusions and phenomena. of the intellect itself, were thus in almost endless procession uniting in the great call to us to awake from bondage and join in the manifestation of the sons of God. It is not, therefore, in the effulgence, but in the thraldom of his imagery that the power of Dr. Guthrie consists. "True eloquence," says Pascal, is the contempt of eloquence." But it requires eloquence to show this contempt.

We must now close with giving one or two extracts from Dr. Guthrie's sermons on the "City: its Sins and Sorrows." Our only regret is that our limits require us to close our extracts at this point.

"Second, the highest piety is developed in cities. It is well known that the most active tradesmen, the most vigorous laborers, the most intelligent artisans, the most enterprising merchants, are to be found in cities. And if, just as in those countries where tropical suns and the same skies ripen the sweetest fruits and deadliest poisons, you find in the city the most daring and active wickedness, you find there also, boldly confronting it, the most active, diligent, zealous, warmhearted, self-denying, and devoted Christians. No blame to the country for that. Christians are like soldiers-it is easier fighting in the regiment, where the men stand shoulder to shoulder, than standing alone to maintain some solitary outpost. Christians, to use a familiar figure, are like coals or fire-brands. They burn bright

est when gathered into heaps; Christians are like trees, they grow the tallest where they stand together; running no small chance, like a solitary tree, of becoming dwarfed, stunted, gnarled, and bark-bound, if they grow alone. You never saw a tall and tapering mast which, catching the winds of heaven in its out-spread wings, impelled the gallant ship on through the sea, and over the rolling billows, but its home had been in the forest; there with its foot planted upo nthe Norwegian rock, it grew amid neighbors that drew up each other to the skies. So it is with piety. The Christian power that has moved a sluggish world on, the Christian benevolence and energy that have changed the face of society, the Christian zeal that has gone forth, burning to win nations and kingdoms for Jesus, have, in most instances, been born and nursed in cities. To the active life and constant intercourse which belong to them, religion has owed her highest polish, and that freedom from pecu liarities and corners, which the stones of the sea-beach acquire by being rolled against each other in the swell and surf of daily tides."

"Many years ago it was alleged that in our own city, containing a population of more than one hundred and fifty thousand souls, there were not fewer than forty thousand who had sunk into practical heathenism. They kept no Sabbath, they entered no house of God; bells might have been mute, pulpits silent, and churches shut for them. So far as they cared or were concerned, the cross, with its blessed burden, might never have stood on Calvary. Just think of us, sitting at ease in Zion, with forty thousand neighbors perishing at our door-but one here and another there, caring for their souls! Those who alleged this, those who had gone below to sound the well, and came up to report how the water was rising, were treated as alarmists. The sky was clear, the sea was calm, the ship was but slowly sinking, and so-all fears laughed away-the merry music struck up again, and the dance went on upon the deck. But since that period another party has stepped in-one not suspected of fanaticism or a sectarian spirit. The government instituted a census, and its results have established the ability, and vindicated the integrity of those who were the first to sound the alarm. It is now proved, that not only here, where between forty and fifty thousand go to no church—not in Glasgow only, where more than a hundred thousand go to no church-not in Lon don only, where more than ten hundred thousand go to no church; but that in all our large towns there are to be found immense, formidable, and growing masses over whom religion has no hold—who have parted from their anchors, and broken loose from all religious profession. Nor is that all. The plague has extended from the towns to the country. Many rural districts, which some years ago, were the homes of a devout and decent peasantry, are now filled with a mining or manufacturing population, who know no Sabbath, read no Bible, and care neither for God nor man."

MISCELLANEOUS

DEPARTMENT.

REV. EDWARD C. MCGUIRE, D. D.-SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND LABORS.

THE subject of this sketch deserves a more particular and permanent notice than the usual obituary, if for no other consideration, because he was one of the small band honored by God, to begin and lead on the revival of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Virginia. Its sad prostration has been so often and graphically described, that it is not necessary to reproduce the gloomy picture. There was a period when he who has been most signally instrumental in its resuscitation, seems to have relinquished the hope. By the General Convention the Church in Virginia was considered as extinct, and so recorded their opinion in their journal. But "God's thoughts are not as our thoughts." The soil had been burnt over, and blackened, yet the process was not one of abandonment; it served to consume much that only cumbered the ground, and to prepare the way for breaking up the fallow, and scattering the good seed of the word, that the earth, receiving blessing of God, might drink in the rain oft coming upon it, and bring forth fruit for those by whom it was dressed. But, for this new and productive cultivation, other laborers were required, and of different spirit and action from those, through whose indolence and irregularities the field had become overgrown with "thorns and briers." And the merciful God did, in His gracious providence, raise up and send forth the men for the work. Among others who will be held in grateful remembrance, the Rev. Edward Charles McGuire, D.D., can not soon be forgotten. If this sketch serve to extend and perpetuate the knowledge of his worth, and the influence VOL. VI.-16

of his singularly excellent example, it will accomplish a good work.

Edward Charles McGuire was born in Winchester, Virginia, on the 26th of July, 1793. He was the eldest son of William and Mary McGuire. The father was an officer in the army of the Revolution. After the close of the war he engaged in the practice of the law. For some time he held the office of Chief Justice of the territory of Mississippi. He died at Harper's Ferry, the fourth of November, 1820. In the diary of the son, this dispensation is thus noticed: "This is a most afflictive event to my heart, and to all his large family, who are now deprived of their earthly support. I have a good hope that he rests in heaven. I have much reason to love him. He was to me a kind friend, an affectionate father."

Of his mother's death, which occurred in Winchester on the eighth of June, 1821, he makes the following affectionate record: "A day of sorrow and weeping. Received the sad and unexpected intelligence of the death of my dear mother, when I was hoping to hear that her health was in a fair way of being completely restored, and that an expected visit from her to me was to be realized. I have, however, a sweet consolation in the assurance of her complete happiness in the presence of God and the Lamb. She was a woman of rare excellence-the best woman in all the relations of life I ever knew. Her piety was genuine-her conduct as consistent and exemplary as that of any person in the world. Indeed, I do not know that she had a fault-that she was blamable in any thing, either towards God or man, that could be discerned by mortal eyes. She was to me (her firstborn) the most indulgent and affectionate mother. I shall remember her whilst I live with the warmest gratitude and sincerest affection, and cherish the hope of meeting her in my Saviour's kingdom as one of my dearest and most precious privileges." A touching tribute of filial love and reverence for a devoted Christian mother; creditable both to the affection of the son, and the mother's excellence.

It would not be easy to exaggerate the privilege of a truly pious parentage. The promise runs "to you and to your

seed," and its verification is palpable in every age of the Church's history. Of this "large family," every child became a hopeful subject of divine grace. Three of the sons, and two sons of the eldest brother, are ministers of the Gospel, and all, till the recent death of that oldest brother, laboring in the Master's cause in the Diocese of Virginia.

Dr. McGuire received his academic education in Winchester, giving special attention to the ancient languages and mathematics. Having finished his preparatory studies, he appears to have decided without hesitation in favor of the law as a profession, and in 1811 we find him entered as a student in the office of Robert Page, Esq., of Frederick. Those who became acquainted with Mr. McGuire, after he had attained maturity, and when his temperament had been sobered by various afflictions, and chastened by the influence of religion, would scarcely be prepared to learn that in early life his natural disposition was gay, with a large infusion of the humorous. For a good anecdote, well told, he never lost his relish, and on appropriate occasions would himself indulge in amusing narrative, which was rendered more attractive by his own peculiar manner of relation. This it would be impossible to describe, unless we could paint his eye, and imitate his utterance, with its occasional hesitances, which seemed to be produced by superabundant fullness with his subject, and with its occasional brief repetitions, which, like the retouchings of an artist, improved the effect of his picture. In his younger days, the gayety of his spirit led him to seek for pleasure in worldly amusement, which, at a more advanced period of life, no one disallowed with more decision as inconsistent with Christian sobriety, and detrimental to Christian. health. But though his unrenewed heart felt the attractiveness and yielded to the power of the world, he was not a stranger to strong religious impressions. This indeed is scarcely possible in one whose childhood had been blessed by the faithful instruction and example of a pious parent. The first "religious emotions" which he remembered, "were felt when he was about ten or twelve years of age." "They were," he writes, "when my beloved mother was showing me a

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