46

itself. He left his parish and home, and sought, at Cheltenham, and, I believe, elsewhere, for restored strength. But human skill and healing waters were unavailing; the disease was too potent for all remedial measures, and after a protracted absence he returned home to die.

A few days after his return a messenger from the vicarage called at Miss W's house, with a note from the vicar, stating that he was too ill to call upon her, and asking if she would be so good as to call and see him. More than a little surprised at such a request, she promptly obeyed the summons.

On her arrival she was shown into the minister's room, where he lay emaciated and wan, and supported by the loving attentions of a gentle. sister. He held out his attenuated hand

to Miss W- saying, "This is very kind of you to come and see me, for you perceive I could not call on you, although I wanted much to see you. Do you remember our meeting at the house of poor Miss T-—, and the conversation we had there?" Miss W

replied that the recollection of that interview would never be erased from her memory. "Well," he said, "I wished to tell you, for I knew how you would be glad and thankful to hear it, that what I then believed to be a delusion in regard to Christian experience I have since found to be a blessed truth, and I am here a witness of the boundless love of God to me in Christ Jesus;" repeating more than once, "O! the boundless love of God to me. Í shall not be here long. I am getting near the grave, but I rejoice in the glorious hope of a resurrection unto eternal life."

His sister was overwhelmed with emotion, which partook more of thankfulness than sorrow, and said to Miss W on her leaving, "Is not my dear brother in a most delightful frame of mind? and we thank you much for this kind visit."

A few days after the young vicar passed away from earth and entered Paradise.

E. P.

O! IF there be cast o'er the joys of a parent One feeling that shades the bright hopes of her breast

As she looks on the brow, so serene and transparent,

Of the child of her heart gently sinking to rest

'Tis the fear that this brow may be clouded with

sorrow;

These weak, trembling hands be uplifted to sin; That the hopes of to-day may be quenched on the

morrow

By trials without, or by passions within.

In that hour, when her form is forgotten who bore him,

And the arm which first clasped him is cold in the grave,

Her spirit may hover in tenderness o'er him,
And see him, alas! but not warn him, nor save!

Is there none, then, to care for the desolate stranger, Who goes, all unheeding, unwarned, on his way? No Spirit of Might to walk near him in danger, And scatter the foes who would make him their prey?

O yes! there is One, and beside Him no other! Redeemer and Ruler, Whose throne is on high! From the glories of heaven He beholds thee, sad mother;

'Midst the songs of the angels, He catches thy sigh.

Go, take thy sweet babe, and to Jesus confide him : He has dwelt in our flesh, He can feel for our

BITS OF WISDOM.

Humility and knowledge in poor clothes excel pride and ignorance in costly attire. Avoid popularity: it has many snares, no real benefit to thyself, and uncertainty to others.

As our faith, so our devotion, should be lively. Cold meat will not serve at such repasts.

It is a sad thing for a man so often to miss his way to his best, as well as most lasting,

home.

I

WAS saying that Uncle Kit gave my ear another pinch. O! it was such a pinch! So sharp! I knew what it meant. I was sure that there was a nice little story coming.

"O uncle!" said I, "you need not pinch so hard; my ear is quite ready for anything you have to say."

"Well then," said he, "what is the last county in England that you would come to if you went from here to the west?"

"Why, Cornwall, to be sure, uncle.”

"You say, 'to be sure;' but you must know that everybody is not quite so sure about it. I have met with some people, very fine people, too, who talked of Cornwall as some strange place far away in the north. But though Cornwall is not in the north, it has a north corner to it; and just where that corner joins to Devon there is a little quiet village where I once had to stay over-night. My bedroom was not very large, but it was sweet and clean. The walls were as white as they could be, and the floor had been scrubbed till it was almost as white as the walls. It was so nice that it would have been a pity to cover it with a carpet. But what do you think was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes in the morning?"

"How can I tell, uncle? what was it?" "A spider, my dear, and such a fine one. He had been busy all night I should think, for I am sure I did not see him there when I went to bed."

"Where was he, uncle?"

"Where? why in the middle of the room, just over the foot of my bed. He had spun two ropes-for spiders, you know, are beautiful spinners, and every spider spins his own ropes; now these two ropes he had somehow carried across the room, and had fastened their ends to the wall on each side. I first caught sight of him as he was busy making his web, and I watched him until he finished it. It was a pretty one; a round piece of fine net-work; and he made it to hang between the two ropes, nearly over the foot of the bed, as I told you. When all was ready he sat down in the middle of it, and waited to catch a fly for breakfast. I looked

47

about, but there was no fly to be seen; and I said to myself, 'Poor thing, you will have to wait there a long time, I fear.' But just then there was a buzzing in the window, and on looking I saw that a large fly had fallen into the web of a little spider who had his nest in one of the corners. The fly was so large, and made such a noise, that the little spider, though he ran out once or twice, seemed afraid to touch him. Then, with my penknife, I lifted the large spider out of his seat and carried him dangling on a rope which he had quickly tied to the point of the penknife, and let him drop upon the fly. He laid hold of the buzzer at once, and would have dragged him away, but the little spider ran out and drove him off; and though he came back again once or twice, the little one still drove him, and at last chased him up all around the window, and then came back and tied some new ropes around the fly so as to keep him from breaking away."

"Why, what a coward the great spider was, uncle."

"Yes," said he, "but what was it that made him a coward? It seemed to me that he had something within like that which makes naughty people afraid when they are doing wrong; what is that?"

"Do you mean conscience, uncle? You don't think that the spider had a conscience, do you?"

'Well, my dear, I said that it looked as if he had something like what we call conscience. He was very much like those who are afraid because they know that they are where they have no business to be, and are doing what they know to be wrong. Now if you would never be a coward, mind that you are always where you ought to be; and be sure that what you are doing is always right. Nothing but sin can cause fear. If we feel that we please God, and are always good and doing good, we are safe and happy; nobody can do us any harm, and nothing need frighten us. Don't you know what a wise man said,—'The wicked flee when no man pursueth; but the righteous are bold as a lion.

-Pixie.

48

"I

WENT," says a friend, "to see the 'consecration,' as it is

called, of the new Greek church in Liverpool. It was the most complete show of symbolism that I ever saw. It gave me a vivid notion of something like an imitation of the old Jewish Temple service. The style of the Archbishop's gorgeous dress, the priestly attendance, the bodily action, the passage to the holiest amidst fumes of incense and waving lights, as well as the tones of prayer-all might well express the views and feelings of Judaizing professors of Christianity who, in the early centuries of our era, troubled the Church with their heterodox formalism. I stood, and looked, and listened, until I became mystified in an attempt to solve the question, by what means the Christian profession had passed from the pure simplicity of New-Testament worship to this' opera'-like imposition on the senses."

The question in which this friend's mind was all but lost is very like such as threatens to bewilder our common sense when we look at the religious and social condition in which the present Italian Government finds Rome andits immediate neighbourhood. A looker-on, whose word cannot be doubted, tells us that while Rome is full of convents, the Campagna is, for the most part, held as property, with little or no title, by religious orders; and that the whole district, in itself so fertile, has become, under their control, a scene of miserable desolation. Swarming thousands of monks and nuns have held the few people under ecclesiastical rule until they have shrunk into a condition scarcely above that of brutes. The question comes, how is it, that in the suburbs of Rome, where Christianity in its primitive form once reflected the free and sanctified spirit of the "Epistle to the Romans;" where, under Paul's ministry rather than Peter's, the pure, childlike example of Christian fellowship was first set before the Western world,-how is it that the New-Testament style of Christianity should change into the unnatural and corrupt thing which the Christian profession is now found to be by the Italian Government? An acute writer suggests something in reply when he says, "They who live under a tyranny, and have learnt to admire its power as sacred and Divine, are debauched as much in their religion as in their morals. If men have really no public parent, no magis

one

trate in common to cherish and protect them they will still imagine they have such a one, and, like new-born creatures who have never seen their dam, will fancy for themselves. In the room of a true foster-father and chief, they will take after a false one; and in the room of a legal government and just prince, obey even  tyrant, and endure a whole lineage and succession of such." This is shown to be true by the present social state of the Pope-ridden population in Italy, if not among ourselves. The claims of the Popedom have been so gradually put forth that its mischievous influence has quietly and all but imperceptibly crept over its victims from generation to generation; and so the demoralizing and enslaving power of that influence has slowly but certainly worked out its present painfully visible effects. These effects are akin in every case. We are now called to watch the Italian Government amidst the difficulties of their attempt to convert the convents and monasteries of Rome into public schools and hospitals, by the free action of which the people may be rescued from spiritual bondage, and the coming generation be educated for the duties of free citizens. Every true Protestant will watch the result in earnest prayer for Divine help on behalf of the "powers that be." Among ourselves there are those who, with all the warnings of history, experience, and passing events, seem to court the dark influences which other nations are trying to fling off. some appear ready to concede the claims of those who, under the guise of public educators, seek to confirm and widen the power of a system hostile to wholesome education as well as political and domestic freedom. Surely it is the duty of the English Protestant to resist the outrageous demands of the Roman Catholic priests of Ireland for a wider freedom to spread their destructive errors than is allowed to any Protestant Church in the United Kingdom for the dissemination of wholesome Scriptural doctrine. The Wesleyans are expressly committed, and surely all Protestant communities are solemnly bound, to resist these audacious claims to the utmost. We have need of the Holy Spirit's guidance to save us from the designs of Popery and Infidelity on either hand.

And

50

had passed since Fox's quaint talk with the foiled authorities of Marazion; but the neighbourhood could still boast of successors to the Mayor and Aldermen of Market-Jew.

Dr. William Borlase, antiquary, parson, and justice of the peace, the genius whom Pope thanked for his contribution of Cornish diamonds to the Twickenham Grotto, was the rector of a parish within sight of the inn which had entertained Fox, and resided a few miles off in an old granite dwelling overlooking the Atlantic. Wesley, like Fox, had come on his western mission. Borlase, seemingly ashamed to face the man whom he would fain put to silence, ventured to issue a warrant against the wandering parson, and to entrust it to a friend and neighbour, a famous hunter resident at Botallack. Nothing can be more sprightly and amusing than the Methodist apostle's own account of the affair. It is curiously like the old Quaker's story. The humour in the one case is Quaker-like, and in the other it has the finely tempered character which befitted a polite Oxonian, But they bear the same family likeness. Wesley had been preaching at St. Just, not far from the Land's End; and "Mr. Eustick, a neighbouring gentleman," says he, "came just as I was concluding my sermon. The people opening to the right and left, he came up to me and said: 'Sir, I have a warrant from Dr. Borlase, and you must go with me.' Then turning round, he said," (to Mr. Wesley's companion,) "Sir, are you Mr. Shepherd? If so, you are mentioned in the warrant, too. Be pleased, Sir, to come with me.' We walked with him to a public-house near the end of the town, Here he asked me if I was willing to go with him to the Doctor. I told him, just then, if he pleased. 'Sir,' said he, 'I must wait upon you to your inn; and in the morning, if you will be so good as to go with me, I will show you the way.' So he handed me back to my inn, and retired." The Doctor's agent was not very prompt in the morning. His intended prisoners waited for some time. At length, with a sort of subdued waggery, it may be, in his eye, Mr. Wesley "desired Mr. Shepherd to go and inquire for him at the house wherein he had lodged; si fortè edormisset hoc villi, (if perchance, during sleep, the fumes of his wine had evaporated.") He met him coming, as he thought, to our inn. But after waiting some time, we inquired again, and learned he had turned aside to another house in the town. I went thither, and asked, 'Is Mr. Eustick here?' After some pause, one said, Yes;' and showed me into the parlour. When he came down, he said, 'O Sir, will

you be so good as to go with me to the Doctor's?' I answered, Sir, I came for that purpose.' 'Are you ready, Sir?' I answered, 'Yes.' 6 Sir, I am not quite ready. In a little time, Sir, in a quarter of an hour, I will wait upon you. I will come to William Chenhall's.' In about three-quarters of an hour he came, and finding there was no remedy, he called for his horse, and put forward towards Dr. Borlase's house. But he was in no haste; so that we were an hour and a quarter riding three or four measured miles. As soon as we came into the yard, he asked a servant, 'Is the Doctor at home?' Upon whose answering, No, Sir, he is gone to church,' he presently said, 'Well, Sir, I have executed my commission. I have done, Sir; I have no more to say.' And with this the squire bowed himself off, and left the good little man and Mr. Shepherd to stare at the old granite house on the cliff, and to wonder what had become of its runaway genius, or to smile at the mode of their own deliverance. Poor Doctor! He had committed himself by a foolish attempt at committing other people, and though he saved himself from being humiliated in the presence of Wesley, he secured immortality as a persecutor who ran into the church that he might not find himself at home as a "defender of the faith."

But pleasant as it is to look at some of the kindred features of these two remarkable journals, a deeper interest may be found in tracing the doctrinal parallel between them. If any men could ever consistently adopt an apostle's words, George Fox and John Wesley might have said, "We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake." The diction, style, and expression of the preachers differed; each speaking after the character of his times and his training, but in the allcommanding theme of their ministry,

"They lived, and spake, and thought the same. Their voices were attuned to the " one faith." The Quaker "preached and pressed repentance as a sight of sin; a sense and godly sorrow for it; an amendment for the time to come." He enforced this repentance in order to "Justification--that is, forgiveness of sins through Christ, the alone Propitiation;" and in order to "the sanctification of the soul from the defiling nature and habits of sin." "This regeneration, or new birth," he taught everywhere, declaring "that unless this work were known there was no inheriting of the kingdom of God. He was led to declare," also, Christian "perfection, as the mark of the prize of the high calling of