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THE INQUIRER DIRECTED to an Experimental and Practical View of the Atonement. By the Rev. Octavius Winslow. Shaw.

THE view with which the author undertakes a work that he gives hope of carrying out to other most important branches of the Christian faith, is that of deepening the spirituality of the church which he rightly describes as rent by alarming divisions and wearied by controversy. The latter, indeed, we know to be unavoidable; because when the perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds are levelled at the foundations of our faith, those whose sworn duty it is to contend earnestly for that faith, must needs assume a controversial attitude. Mr. Winslow, however, aims at the root of all divisions and debates, by striving to fix the mind on those grand first principles which men are too ready to lose sight of: and delightfully has he executed the task. The volume is so small as to be soon perused: but it contains enough of the soundest doctrine couched in the most persuasive and impressive language, to engage the mind and conscience for many a long day. It is a heartsearching treatise; we pray the Great Searcher of all hearts to accompany with his divine influence the striking and solemn appeals with which it abounds.

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THE PROTESTANT.

THE past month will furnish matter for a memorable page in England's history, uncle.'

'Ay, if England be permitted to retain a place among the nations, so far as to have any history of her own.'

'You are too desponding, sir.'

'Perhaps so, my dear: I am reminded now of the sensations with which, when a delicate stripling just embarked for my first voyage, I looked over the ship's side after the weighing of the anchor. Wave after wave came heaving by; the vessel rolled upon their uneven surface, and I gazed until giddy, then sick, then terrified, I shrank away to hide my disordered head in the privacy of my own little berth. Even so the face of the political ocean now affects my mind ; and fain would I cease to look upon its troubled billows.'

'But, dear uncle, notwithstanding the commotion that affected you so much, your gallant ship outrode that and many a rougher, darker day. Come, you must not teach me to despond, while the Lord sitteth upon the water-floods, and remaineth King for ever and ever.'

'You are right, my dear child: these may be an old man's visions; but, alas! it is no dream that we are farther and farther receding from our Rock of safety, forsaking our own mercies, and daily provok

ing the Lord to jealousy. What say you to the outrage on public principle and public feeling unblushingly perpetrated by the minister who dared to present to England's monarch the active leader of an avowedly infidel sect, soliciting the royal patronage for their blasphemous tenets!'

In truth, uncle, I cannot comprehend the thing. That Robert Owen of Lanark, who glories in a long life of deliberate systematic denial of revelation, and hostility against the bible-who has laboured indefatigably, both in Europe and America, to establish a plan of education and an order of society in open opposition to the Christian religion, and with such a code of moral, or rather of immoral government, that no modest female can listen to its provisions-that this Robert Owen should have been formally introduced, in full court, among foreign ambassadors, and in the presence of dignitaries of our national Christian church, to the Queen of England, to lay at her feet the demand that her Majesty would be pleased to sanction and encourage their atheistical and licentious abominations-Uncle, it will not be believed in those parts of the empire whereto this moral putrefaction has not yet extended its destroying influence.'

' And the person who conducted Owen of Lanark, with his insulting address, to the foot of the British throne, and ensured him a gracious reception, is the individual who unites in his own person offices hitherto deemed utterly incompatible with the spirit of the constitution. Lord Melbourne, as prime minister of state, is the responsible adviser of the crown, in all matters of the gravest national interest: on him devolves the task of pointing out to the monarch

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what measures shall be most conducive to the glory of our God, the good of our church, and the safety, honour, and welfare of our sovereign and her dominions. So great is the power vested in him, as the head of the cabinet, that by an axiom of the constitution, The king can do no wrong: every public measure of the crown being supposed to emanate from the counsellors with whom such authority to check and to guide is lodged. Lord Melbourne, as court favourite, enjoys an overwhelming preponderance in influencing those who form the inner circle of the drawing-room, and the officials of the household, so as to ensure a subservience to whatever are known to be his wishes, on the part of those who are never altogether absent from the queen. Once more, Lord Melbourne, as a fascinating and experienced man of the world, and of what the world calls pleasure, has so engratiated himself, personally, with a very young and susceptible female, as to secure, in addition to the foregoing, the perilous advantage of an irresistible private influence, such as is usually enjoyed by a parent, or some equally authorized connection; and is thus exalted to the zenith of an absolutism which the law of England will not concede to any sovereign prince who wields her sceptre-an absolutism, the very attempt to grasp at which cost one royal Stuart his head, and another his kingdom; but which is now unhesitatingly granted by the English people to a fellow-subject!'

And if such a power was exercised for good, uncle'

'As far as the integrity of the constitution is coneerned, it would be doing evil that good might ensue: but the manner in which it actually is exercised

is appalling. Not to speak of comparatively private transactions emanating from this influence, Lord Melbourne has recently procured for Owen of Lanark a gracious reception from the Queen of England; and Lord Melbourne continues to hold the reins of government with a majority of two-thirds of the House of Peers opposed to him; a majority of two votes in the House of Commons to support him, nearly the whole bench of bishops, and as nearly the whole body of clergymen of the national church protesting and appealing against his ruinous measures for the subversion of our Protestantism, and with such a share of general unpopularity as to require galloping horses, and a protecting body of police, to convey him in safety from the royal presence back to the scene of his parliamentary duties and misdoings.'

'All these things, uncle, are tokens for good. The man who has the senate, the church, and the people arrayed against his unconstitutional abuse of the crown, cannot long withstand such an opposition. The House of Peers seems destined to save the country.'

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Ah, well do I remember the remark of our good old George the Third, when, on the prerogative of the crown being nobly vindicated by the peers, in a majority of 47, he said, "I trust the House of Lords will this day feel that the hour is come for which the wisdom of our ancestors established that respectable corps in the state, to prevent either the crown or the commons from encroaching on the rights of each other." God grant the issue now may be such as it

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'See Sidney's Life of Sir Richard Hill, p. 340.

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