binds together the mighty masses of the material universe, acts silently. In the sublimest of natural transactions, the greatest result is ascribed to the simplest causes. "He spoke and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast."

In

Contemplate the benevolence of these means. practice, the precepts of the gospel may be summed up in the single command, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself." We expect to teach one man obedience to this command, and that he will feel obliged to teach his neighbour, who will feel obliged to teach others, who are again to become teachers, until the whole world shall be peopled with one family of brethren. Animosity is to be done away, by inculcating universally the obligation of love. In this man

ner, we expect to teach rulers justice, and subjects sub-
mission; to open the heart of the miser, and unloose
the grasp of the oppressor. It is thus we expect the
time to be hastened onward, when men shall "beat
their swords into plough-shares, and their spears in-
to pruning hooks; when nation shall no more lift up
sword against nation, neither learn war any more."
With this process, compare the means by which men
on the principles of this world, effect a meliora-
tion in the condition of their species. Their almost
universal agent is threatened or inflicted misery.
And, from the nature of the case, it cannot be other-
wise. Without altering the disposition of the heart,
they only attempt to control its exercise. And they
must control it by showing their power to make the
indulgence of that disposition the source of more
misery than happiness. Hence, when men confer a
benefit upon a portion of their brethren, it is gene-
rally preceded by a protracted struggle to decide
which can inflict most, or which can suffer longest.
Hence, the arm of the patriot is generally, and of
necessity, bathed in blood. Hence, with the shouts
of victory from the nation he has delivered, there
arises also the sigh of the widow, and the weeping of
the orphan. Man produces good by the apprehen

sion or the infliction of evil. The gospel produces good by the universal diffusion of the principles of benevolence. In the former case, one party must generally suffer; in the latter, all parties are certainly more happy. The one, like the mountain torrent, may fertilize now and then a valley beneath, but not until it has widely swept away the forest above, and disfigured the lovely landscape with many an unseemly scar. Not so the other.

Wayland.

On the Death of the Princess Charlotte.

OH! how it tends to quiet the agitations of every earthly interest and earthly passion, when death steps forward and demonstrates the littleness of them allwhen he stamps a character of such affecting insignificance on all that we are contending for-when, as if to make known the greatness of his power in the sight of a whole country, he stalks in ghastly triumph over the might and the grandeur of its most august family, and singling out that member of it in whom the dearest hopes and the gayest visions of the people were suspended, he, by one fatal and resistless blow, sends abroad the fame of his victory and his strength, throughout the wide extent of an afflicted nation! He has indeed put a cruel and impressive mockery on all the glories of mortality. A few days ago, all looked so full of life, and promise, and securitywhen we read of the bustle of the great preparation -and were told of the skill and the talent that were pressed into the service—and heard of the goodly attendance of the most eminent of the nation-and how officers of state, and the titled dignitaries of the land, were charioted in splendour to the scene of expectation, as to the joys of an approaching holiday-yes, and were told too, that the bells of the surrounding villages were all in readiness for the merry peal of gratulation, and that the expectant metropolis of our

empire, on tiptoe for the announcement of her future monarch, had her winged couriers of despatch to speed the welcome message to the ears of her citizens, and that from her an embassy of gladness was to travel over all the provinces of the land; and the country, forgetful of all that she had suffered, was at length to offer the spectacle of one wide and rejoicing jubilee. O death! thou hast indeed chosen the time and the victim, for demonstrating the grim ascendency of thy power over all the hopes and fortunes of our species-Our blooming Princess, whom fancy had decked with the coronet of these realms, and under whose sway all bade so fair for the good and the peace of the nation, has he placed upon her bier! And, as if to fill up the measure of his triumph, has he laid by her side, that babe, who, but for him, might have been the monarch of a future generation; and he has done that which by no single achievement he could otherwise have accomplished-he has sent forth over the whole of our land, the gloom of such a bereavement as cannot be replaced by any living descendant of royalty-he has broken the direct succession of the monarchy of England-by one and the same disaster, has he awakened up the public anxieties of the country, and sent a pang as acute as that of the most woeful visitation into the heart of each of its families.

-Let me further apply all this to the sons and the daughters of royalty. The truth is, that they appear to the public eye as stalking on a platform so highly elevated above the general level of society, that it removes them, as it were, from all the ordinary sympathies of our nature. And though we read at times of their galas, and their birth-days, and their drawingrooms, there is nothing in all this to attach us to their interests and their feelings, as the inhabitants of a familiar home—as the members of an affectionate family. Surrounded as they are with the glare of a splendid notoriety, we scarcely recognise them as men and as women, who can rejoice and weep, and pine with disease, and taste the sufferings of mortality, and be oppressed with anguish, and love with ten

derness, and experience in their bosoms the same movements of grief or of affection that we do ourselves. And thus it is, that they labour under a real and heavy disadvantage.

Now, if through an accidental opening, the public should be favoured with a domestic exhibition-if, by some overpowering visitation of Providence upon an illustrious family, the members of it should come to be recognised as the partakers of one common humanity with ourselves if, instead of beholding them in their gorgeousness as princes, we look to them in the natural evolution of their sensibilities as men-if the stately palace should be turned into a house of mourning-in one word, if death should do what he has already done, he has met the Princess of England in the prime and promise of her days, and as she was moving onward on her march to a hereditary throne, he has laid her at his feet.-Ah! my brethren, when the imagination dwells on that bed where the remains of departed youth and departed infancy are lying-when, instead of crowns and canopies of grandeur, it looks to the forlorn husband, and the weeping father, and the human feelings which agitate their bosoms, and the human tears which flow down their cheeks, and all such symptoms of deep affliction as bespeak the workings of suffering and dejected nature what ought to be, and what actually is, the feeling of the country at so sad an exhibition? It is just the feeling of the domestics and the labourers at Claremont. All is soft and tender as womanhood. Nor is there a peasant in our land who is not touched to the very heart, when he thinks of the unhappy stranger who is now spending his days in grief, and his nights in sleeplessness-as he mourns alone in his darkened chamber, and refuses to be comforted-as he turns in vain for rest to his troubled feelings, and cannot find it as he gazes on the memorials of an affection that blessed the brightest, happiest, shortest year of his existence-as he looks back on the endearments of the bygone months, and the thought that they have for ever fleeted away from him, turns all to agony-as he looks forward on the

blighted prospect of this world's pilgrimage, and feels that all which bound him to existence, is now torn irretrievably from him! There is not a British heart that does not feel to this interesting visitor, all the force and all the tenderness of a most affecting relationship and, go where he may, will he ever be recognised and cherished as a much-loved member of the British family.

Chalmers.

For ourselves we must say, that the admiration with which we at first read many of Dr. Chalmers' (sentences is strengthened rather than weakened by a repeated reading. Among these-Oh! how it tends to quiet the agitations of every earthly interest and earthly passion, when death steps forward and demonstrates- O death! thou hast indeed chosen the time and the victim for demonstrating the grim- There is also the time, and we might add, the manner of introducing this eloquence.

Such a sentence as surrounded as they are with the glare of a splendid notoriety, requires a termination to the rising inflection at notoriety. It is the part which gives notice of something to come. All similar sentences terminate the same inflection at the same point. We shall construct a sentence for another example. It is this-Seated on the throne of the universe, and wielding, with the breath of thy mouth, worlds and systems, thou canst easily weigh the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance. Systems ends the rising inflection.

The Injustice of the World, a source of Consolation to the Righteous Man.

THE injustice of the world, so humbling to those who love it, when they see themselves forgotten, neglected, and sacrificed to unworthy rivals, is also a fund of soothing reflections to a soul who despises it, and fears only the Lord. For, what resource is left to a sinner who, after having sacrificed his ease, his conscience, his wealth, his youth, and his health, to the world and to his masters; after having submitted in silence to every circumstance the most mortifying to the mind, sees at once, and without knowing why, the gates of favour and advancement for ever