He hied him to the sacred spot

Where lay his Helen dear;

And long bedewed the green grass turf

With many a briny tear.

"I come, dear sainted shade !" he cried,
"I come to meet with thee;

With joy I yield my parting breath

For her who died for me.

"Soon shall we meet, no more to part,
In climes of bliss !" he cried,

Then on his much loved Helen's tomb
He laid him down and died.

G. S. FABER ON OUR NATIONAL APOSTACY.

ELEVEN [thirty one] years have now elapsed since, in the pride of our high political speculations, regardless of the merciful admonitions of Holy Writ, "Come out of her my people," we formed an immediate union with popery, and affectionately engrafted it upon the stock of our protestant constitution.

At that fatal era [1829] I published a series of letters, which were practically ineffectual.

In honest conviction of the soundness of my own views on the subject, I, then and there, expressed my deep apprehension, that if, after all God's mercies to us, and all our longfamiliar knowledge of Scriptural Christianity, we should recklessly amalgamate ourselves with an apostacy abhorred of heaven and doomed to swift and utter destruction, we must expect that henceforth the hand of the Lord would be upon our country for evil.

But now, distinctly from this broad view of the question, there would, in our particular case, be a special and terrific aggravation of the national sin; for what greater and more daring insult could be offered to Almighty God . .

than

that a body of legislators should first solemnly declare, upon oath, their full and conscientious belief that popery is idolatry, and should then deliberately proceed to form a most intimate union with this identical sworn idolatry, in order that henceforth it might sit in the high places of the realm, and concurrently make laws for a pure church, and receive all patronage, countenance, and encouragement.

*

How now shines the once glorious sun of Britain ?

Under the insulting hoof of the very superstition which we have delighted to exalt and to cherish, we are trodden down as the mire of the earth; so that, in the strict way of cause and effect, our national sin is made our national punishment and degradation. Like apostate Israel of old, the Lord is beginning to cut us short in our extremities. In our foreign relations we experience the truth of God's declaration : "Them that honour me I will honour; and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed.' At home, what is the prospect that is opening upon us? [in 1840: and what now, in 1860?] Infidelity in its worst form of conjoined Atheism and sensuality; lust, hard by hate, stalks openly through the land, and is unblusingly presented to youthful and female royalty itself. Anarchy rears its front in bold defiance of law, and professes a full purpose of universal conflagration and pillage and confiscation. Popery, warmed into renovated life, and blythely triumphant in its persecuting progress through the western portion of our empire, loftily demands and invariably obtains whatever its hierarchy deem most serviceable to its no longer concealed ultimate purposes; and its very resuscitation has been urged, in an imposing strain of pulpit eloquence, as an argument for its divinity.

An ingenious modern writer (Dr. Croly) has curiously shown, from the naked facts of history, that since the time of the Reformation, whenever England faithfully espoused and fostered the protestant cause, the manifest blessing of God was upon her, and she was always prosperous and triumphant; but that, whenever she drew back from her appointed duty, and acted for the advancement of the popish cause, the anger of God seemed evidently to be kindled against her, and she was invariably sunk and debased and degraded. From this remarkable providential arrangement, he argues, that, in these

latter days, England is intentionally made to hold much the same office and position as Israel did of old; and, consequently, that the history of the one may thus be viewed as a sort of key to the history of the other.

Whatever justice there may be in this conclusion, the mere facts, on which his opinion is built, are indisputable. Let the design of Providence be what it may, this extraordinary series of alternations which mark the course of faithful or unfaithful Israel, stands, past all contradiction, recorded in history. ... Speaking of the year 1829-" The bill of that calamitous year," says Dr. Croly, "replaced the Roman Catholic in the parliament, from which he had been expelled a century before by the united necessities of religion, freedom, and public safety. The whole experience of our protestant history had pronounced that EVIL MUST FOLLOW. AND IT HAS FOLLOWED. From that hour all has been change. British legislation has lost its stability. England has lost alike her preeminence abroad and her confidence at home. Every great institution of the state has tottered. The church in Ireland, bound hand and foot, has been flung into the furnace, and is disappearing from the eye. The Church of England is haughtily threatened with her share of the fiery trial. Every remonstrance of the nation is insolently answered, by pointing to rebellion ready to seize its arms in Ireland. The separation of the empire is held forth as an habitual menace. Democracy is openly proclaimed as a principle of the state. Popery is triumphantly predicted as the universal religion. To guide and embody all, a new shape of power has started up in the legislature; a new element at once of control and confusion; a central faction, which has both sides at its mercy; holding the country in contempt, whilst it fixes its heel on a Cabinet trembling for existence; possessing all the influence of office without its responsibility, and engrossing unlimited patronage for the purpose of unlimited domination. YET THESE MAY BE BUT

THE BEGINNING OF SORROWS.

[This was written in 1838.] The portentous events which have since occurred are fresh in all our memories.

The perplexity of our false position I perfectly feel; but its perplexity does not render it the more secure. In the unflattering language of Holy Writ, "We have been backsliders in heart; and though poor, we are filled with our own ways." Perplexing, however, as may be the position in which

we have gratuitously and thanklessly placed ourselves, on Scriptural grounds, I am painfully constrained to believe that nothing, save a retracing of our steps, can save us in that rapidly approaching day of God's judicial controversy, which the universal voice of prophecy harmoniously announces, and which (as it is strongly expressed in one of the sacred oracles) "shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time." We are now unhappily in such a situation that, whatever line of action be adopted, whether we persevere in our course, or whether we rescind our dangerous amalgamation with what our legislators swore to be idolatry, either ultimate misery and trouble, or immediate rebellion and blood-shed will be the punishment of our national apostacy in the fatal year 1829. If we rescind what we have done, the miseries of a civil war stare us in the face, associated with bitter reproaches of our folly for adventuring upon so rash a deed: if we retain it we link our national destiny with the Scripturally doomed city of destruction.

Under such circumstances, whither can the unpolitical Christian resort, but to the footstool of a still merciful and still gracious GOD, with whom vengeance is strange work? Prayer, unceasing prayer, must be the weapon of his warfare. We know that the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much; and we humbly trust that, in this our Zion, we have many righteous men, though the best of them be subject to like passions as ourselves. Never is the Christian soldier more powerful than when upon his knees. Let this attitude on this behalf be assumed morning and night by every devout Anglican Catholic, and the Lord peradventure may still be entreated. "He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth Him of the evil. Who knoweth if He will return, and leave a blessing behind him? Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar; and let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen (the false prophet, the man of sin, the lawless man) should rule over them; wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God? Then will the Lord be jealous for His land, and pity His people."Christs. Disc. at Capernaum, pp. 234, 243.

A MERCANTILE MARRIAGE.

A MERCHANT, who was originally from Liverpool, having acquired a great fortune in one of the West India Islands, after holding a bed of justice with himself, arrived at the conclusion, that he could not be happy in the enjoyment of his wealth, unless he could share it with a woman of merit; and being unacquainted with any one who came up to his ideas of worth, he resolved to write to his correspondent at Liverpool, in whose discretion he could trust. He was unacquainted with every other style of writing except that to which he was accustomed in his business: he treated this love affair as he did his other orders; so, after giving instructions respecting a cargo of goods, he finished his orders with the following:

"Item. Seeing that I have taken a resolution to marry, and that I do not find a suitable match for me here, do not fail to send by next ship bound hither, a young woman of the qualifications and form following:-As for a portion, I demand none. Let her be of an honest family, between twenty and twenty-five years of age; of a middle stature, and well proportioned; her face agreeable; her temper mild; her character blameless; her health good; and her constitution strong enough to bear the change of climate, that there may be no occasion to look out for a second through lack of the first, soon after she comes to hand, which must be provided against as much as possible, considering the great distance and the dangers of the seas. she arrives here, conditioned as aforesaid, with the present letter endorsed by you, or at least an attested copy thereof, that there may be no mistake or imposition, I hereby bind and oblige myself to satisfy the said letter by marrying the bearer at fifteen days' sight. In witness whereof I subscribe," &c.

If

The correspondent read over and over this odd article, which put the future spouse on the same footing with the bales of goods which he was to send to his friend. After admiring the prudent exactness of the West Indian, and his laconic style in enumerating the qualifications which he