duced among nearly all Pagan nations, must have sprung from another traditionary source, the knowledge that the great atoncment for sins would be accomplished by one in human form.

This seems confirmed by the practice of making the eldest son the most usual victim: as the prophet says, in a passage already quoted, "Shall I give my first-born for my transgression?" We read also of the king of Moab offering his eldest son as a burnt sacrifice on the wall of the city; (2 Kings iii. 27.) and perpetual mention is made throughout the Old Testament of burning sons and daughters in the fire to Moloch, &c. This looks very like a faint remembrance of an expiatory sacrifice, to be offered in the person of "the only Son."

Even Tillotson, as we have before seen, appears to think that sacrifice may have been of primitive origin; and he adds, elsewhere, that this opinion of sacrifice, 'because it was so universal, seems to have had its original from the first parents of mankind, either immediately after the creation, or after the flood; and from thence, I mean as to the substance of this notion, to have been derived and propagated to their posterity.'

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It seems, indeed, strange that after such an admission, the archbishop should imagine this early notion to be the cause of Christ's sacrifice for sin, instead of the effect of its promise. Spearman justly says, The stumbling-block to the archbishop was the supposition of a religion of nature, prior to, and independant of revelation; and his taking for granted, that the notion of expiation of sins by sacrifice (which he saw obtained very early in the world, and among all other ways of divine worship, found the most uniAUGUST, 1838.

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versal reception in all times and places,) was not owing to any express divine revelation concerning the Lamb of God, slain in decree and type from the foundation of the world; but to certain common apprehensions, as Plato calls them, picked up, he knew not when nor where.' He adds, Sacrifice was a divine institution, ordained by God himself, to shew forth Christ's death, until he should appear in the flesh, in the end of the world, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, and as a pledge to assure us thereof.'

I quote the more largely from this excellent author, because of his extreme scarcity in the biblical world; few of my readers being likely to possess his valuable and learned book.

We are, then, constrained to view the rite of expiatory sacrifice as a relic of the divine ordinances, delivered in Eden; continued through the patriarchal dispensation; re-ordained, with fresh vigour and circumstances, under the Mosaic economy; and only abrogated at the offering of the one great and real victim" for the sins of the whole world."

Excepting, indeed, where it is continued, in defiance of that one FINAL offering, as the bloodless sacrifice of the mass,' by the semi-pagan, and wholly idolatrous church of Rome.

X. Q.

LETTER FROM THE CONTINENT.

Vichy, July 3, 1838.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

SINCE my last communication to you from Lausanne, (a place among those I have visited in my wanderings upon the continent, which I must always think of with a peculiar interest,) I have, in my way homewards again passed through Geneva, where I stopped for about three weeks. And although this is a town so much visited by English people, and whose general state, as it regards the reformed religion, to which it owes all its past celebrity, is so well known in England, yet perhaps a brief detail of what he saw and heard there so lately, from your old correspondent, may not prove unacceptable to some of your readers. This "city of refuge," then, of the Reformation, within whose bastions (which are still preserved in their order, and furnish most delicious promenades to the inhabitants) the servants of Christ, flying from the persecution of the dragon and his vicar from all quarters of Christendom, once found shelter and protection, though fallen from the purity of faith and fervour of love, which so nobly distinguished her clergy, her magistracy, and godly portion of her population, in the days of Calvin and his worthy and venerable successor, Theodore Beza, still is not without a remnant of the excellent of the earth, who are not ashamed of Jesus. The standard of truth cour

ageously elevated there some years ago by a few who, for their reward in this world, were consequently expelled from the national church, and amerced in their pecuniary means, has not been displayed in vain : but conformably with the character of attractive power through the Spirit, which is ascribed to it in the word itself, and which essentially belongs to it, has drawn unto the feet of IMMANUEL not a few of those citizens, who feeling themselves thrust out in the persons of their ministers, have naturally rallied around them in places of worship "without the camp," where, although bearing the reproach of Methodists or Momiers, before the world, they are now not only tolerated, and permitted to hold their meetings in peace, but enjoy the same municipal protection with the others. The principal of these independent places of worship, which also has an evangelical seminary of education, and a Societé des Missions attached to it, is the Oratoire: the members of which (among whom are numbered the three ejected ministers, Mons. Gaspen, Bost, and Merle d'Aubigné) by no means have embraced any close dissenting or separatist principles; but only for freedom of worship and edification's sake, they have built for themselves this "house of prayer," at least until the national church and the venerable company of its pastors' shall be restored to a healthier spiritual condition than at present. This interesting and most useful establishment, so well deserving the sympathy and the prayer of all who wish for the extension of the Redeemer's kingdom, is the principal focus of that missionary zeal, which through the means of ministers, localized or otherwise, as circumstances may demand, and of colporteurs, is at present so effectively at work

in some parts of France. And as money was wanting for the carrying on of these operations, it has pleased Him whose is the silver and the gold, and in whose hands are the hearts of all men, to add to this church, as a fruit of revived evangelical preaching, some of the wealthiest as well as the most illustrious (by their descent from ancestors whose pictures are to be seen among the original ones of the Reformers in the public library) of the citizens of Geneva-to the no small mortification of the Socinian party.

This latter body, though still forming an oppressive majority, and generally possessing the pulpits in those churches where once the men of God of the sixteenth century lifted up their voice, saying, "Fear God, and give glory to him," are greatly fallen in public estimation since the time when, by legal persecution, they compelled their brethren who were more righteous than they, Mr. Bost and others, to turn round upon them in necessary self-defence-or rather in defence of their gospel, and prove them before the world to have trampled under their feet, at once, the word of God and the civil and ecclesiastical institutions of the Genevese republic. And they are now reduced to the necessity of preaching no doctrine at all in their ministrations; and of quietly suffering it, not only that the ejected ministers should preach freely elsewhere within their walls, no man preventing them; but also that young men in the ministry, of the national church, upon whom the spirit of Elijah has fallen in at least equal measure, should occasionally mount their own pulpits, and from thence (as I was privileged once to hear in the old cathedral of St. Peter's) astonish and delight those that love the Lord, by a declaration of the whole counsel of