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with a freedom from those disorders to which people, who are in other respects healthy, are sometimes subject, is a blessing we do not always value, as we ought, and for which we are not thankful; as, alas! we are not, for one of our innumerable mercies in the degree we should, and hereby we are prevented from that enjoyment of them we might have, as gratitude heightens the felicity of the soul. It is most certain nothing does, or can give that just view of the world, which a living faith does; as this discovers nobler, and more real and lasting pleasures, riches and honours, than it can promise. And yet, alas! how are even they who have obtained this like precious faith, for want of every moment living by it, allured by the shortlived uncertainty and unsatisfying vanitics of it; and so losing their victory over it, become captives to it, and thereby deprive themselves of that fellowship with God, which only can make any of the things of it real good! May this never be the case with my dear friends. But living a life of faith on the Son of God, who so freely loved them, may they enjoy an uninterrupted communion with God, and the same victory over the world; so shall they reap every advantage God designs them, by the station in which he has graciously placed them. While all is used in subordination to his will, and with an eye to the account to be given by all their Lord's stewards, the creatures all shall lead to him; as all will be discerned as flowing from his immensity, and so will be returned to the same ocean in streams of unceasing praise and love? Amen. We are greatly obliged to you for the kindness you show to ours. They informed us of having dined with you since you wrote, and of receiving the balance in your hand, for which they had not had need before. Their being together makes it the more expensive, and yet their separation for so long a time was not only painful but unnatural. I hope they will be preserved in the fear, and waiting for the love of God, and the rather as they are together. I doubt not but what you will be so kind as to help them herein, when you see them. Be so kind as to remember me in much love to every branch of the family, whom may the Lord abundantly bless and prosper; enduing them with his fear and love here, that they may be prepared to reign with him for ever. I wrote to Mrs. Marriott some time since, which I supposed she received. Our love to her. I hear Mr. Fletcher is to be at Conference. I saw Mr. Wesley well this day week at York. Wishing you and yours every blessing, we remain yours in Jesus to command. A. MATHER.

REV. J. WESLEY TO REV. JAMES MACDONALD.

London, October 23, 1790.

MY DEAR BROTHER,-You have great reason to praise God for the late glorious work at and near Newry; and I make no doubt but it will continue and increase if the subjects of it continue to walk humbly and closely with God. Exhort all our brethren steadily to wait upon God, in the appointed means of prayer and fasting, the latter of which has been almost universally neglected by the Methodists both in England and Ireland. But it is a true remark of Kempis: "The more thou deniest thyself, the more thou wilt grow in grace."I am, your affectionate friend and brother. J. WESLEY.

WESLEYANS TO DR. ADAM CLARKE. Penzance Circuit, August, 1819.

VERY DEAR SIR,-We have noticed with many painful emotions, in a periodical work we once highly esteemed, the manner in which your name has been brought before the public, which we cannot but think must have severely wounded your feelings. Under this impression we request that you will accept, in this address, our united testimony of the high esteem in which we hold your character, and the unfeigned respect we bear you. In doing this we are perfectly satisfied that we convey the general sentiment of the large body of Methodists in the county of Cornwall. By what motives the writers and publisher of the articles to which we allude were actuated, we presume not to determine; charity would induce us to hope that they were guided by better principles than to design to injure your deservedly established reputation. On the result of your laborious researches and patient investigation of abstract truth, we will not at present give our opinion; but we feel fully assured that the methods which have been taken to represent some of your conclusions as dangerous, have produced an effect quite opposite to that which your opponents intended, and have led to inquiries which, in many instances, have terminated in favour of what you advanced. Those among us who are capable of thinking will know how to distinguish questions in philology, from the doctrines of the Gospel; and it is only of late that we have perceived an inclination to connect a charge of heresy with an attempt to elicit truth.

Your letter to the Missionary Committee, which occasioned those feeble and illiberal remarks, published in the magazine for

June, we conceive to be the best that has ever appeared among us since the Methodist Missionaries have visited India, and it is certain it has rendered the cause, which we mutually endeavour to support, most essential service. And we presume to hope, dear sir, that nothing will be permitted either to dissolve your connection with Methodism, or to diminish your attachment to it. Permit us to assure you, that there never was a period in which you stood higher in the affection of the Cornish Methodists than you do at present; and from our knowledge of the sentiments which prevail in the other parts of the kingdom, with which we have any communication, we rejoice to say that we only echo an expression of the common feeling. That God may increase your usefulness in the church militant, until he remove you to the Church triumphant, is the sincere and earnest prayer of,

John Boase,

Very dear Sir,

Your affectionate Friends,

Robert M. Branwell,

Nicholas Pascoe,
John James,
Nicholas Berryman,
Richard Oates,
John Croker,

Richard James,

John Curmack,
David Richards,

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Representatives of the Societies in the Penzance Circuit.

BERNARD BARTON TO MRS. A.

Seventh-day night, Sixth Month 6th, 1840. MY DEAR FRIEND,-See how dangerous it is to send a poet such dainties! I have just been getting my solitary supper off the Stilton, for which I am thy debtor; and thinking how long it had "stood us instead," and it is not done yet, the annexed doggrel rhymes came, almost of their own accord, to commemorate its enduring worth. But I am not sure I should have thought them worth writing down, far less worth sending, had I not called to mind how long it was since I had heard aught of Ivy House and its inmates, of whom I think there is one more than when we last exchanged any intercourse. I should like much to know how that one is going on; how its papa and mamma are; and how my old friends next door wear their grandpaternal honours;-have they made them look much older? When I remember that I may hear tidings of all these matters for the sum of one penny sterling, at the added

cost too, I hope, of no great trouble to thee or Mr. A., I thought it worth sending a sheet, half-rhyme half-prose, to have a chance of hearing from you. How did my dream ditty, and the dream itself, answer your expectations?

Lady, who, my taste to please,
Sendest me such splendid cheese,
As may serve to relish more
Barclay's or Guiness' store,
From the Muses' grateful son
Take the thanks thou well hast won.

When I thank'd thee long ago,
"T was from merely outward show;
Though from colour, scent, and rind,
Well I guess'd the worth enshrined;
Having proved it o'er and o'er,
Now I'm bound to thank thee more.

Many a dinner of our best
It has heighten'd by its zest;
Many a supper it has been
As a standard dish, I ween,
Far surpassing boil'd or roast--
In itself an ample host.

And though now in its decline,
Unimpair'd its merits shine;
Still it stands our table's pride,
Valued more the longer tried,-
Like some ruin, moss'd and grey,
Glorious even in decay.

Rounds of beef must brag in vain;
Theirs is, "Cut and come again;"
Ten such joints, however big,
Long ere this had "hopp'd the twig!"
Transient in their power to please,
When compared to such a cheese.

Pheasant, partridge, turkey, salmon,
All such viands are but gammon,—
"Like the Borealis race,

Gone ere you can point their place."
Even ven'son's savoury haunch
Is a friend less true and staunch!

Days, and weeks, and months have sped
O'er us; and our "daily bread,"
By it made a daintier dish,
Far than fowl, or flesh, or fish,
Still calls forth, in votive lays,
The eaters' thanks, the giver's praise.!

With best regards to you all, thy assured
Friend,
BERNARD BARTON.

The Vindicator.

DESPOTISM THE CAUSE OF SCHISM.

At a meeting of the Evangelical Alliance, held at Freemasons' Hall, the Rev. Dr. R. Buchanan, of Glasgow, who presided, made the following truthful and significant deliverance :-Of spiritual despotism there were two kinds the assumption of unlawful power, and the using power, whether lawful or unlawful, in an oppressive and tyrannical spirit. The rulers of the Church were justly chargeable with the former, when, not contented with simply administering the laws of Christ's house, laid down in His own great Statute-book, they usurped the power of making different or additional laws, and of binding them upon the consciences of men, by making them terms of Church communion. This species of spiritual despotism, the leaven of which was already working in the apostolic age, reached its acme in the Papacy, which had not only perverted from their proper use and meaning the two sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper, which alone were of Divine institution, but added to them five others, under no authority but its own; it had sealed up from the people those Scriptures which Christ commanded them to search, and in which we had eternal life; and to make the yoke of this spiritual despotism more galling and intolerable, it declared that out of the Papal church, there was no salvation; and pursued with the most formidable temporal penalties, and with the most appalling threats of eternal damnation, all who dared to disown either its teaching or its authority. Not satisfied with the first form of despotism-that of assuming unlawful power-it had in all ages, and often with fiend-like ferocity, exercised the second also- the form of practical tyranny and cruel oppression in the use which it made of its power. From such a system to separate, so far from being a sin, was a paramount duty, and for the Waldenses and the churches of the Reformation to have suffered themselves to be absorbed in the church of Rome, would have been to allow not merely the unity, but the very existence of the church of Christ to be destroyed. But the cause of division and separation now under consideration, had not been always and exclusively confined to the church of Rome; Protestant churches had been too often chargeable with a measure, though small in comparison, of the same intolerance, and with a similar usurpation of unlawful power. It was well known what lament

able and lasting divisions resulted, subsequently to the Reformation, from the authority put forth by the church to decree rites and ceremonies, and to bind them as obligatory upon its members. The grand instruction which the Lord Jesus gave to those who were to bear rule in His house was to teach men to observe all things whatsoever He had commanded. True, there were points of external arrangement, respecting which he had given no express command, and which, with a due regard to order, decency, and edification, it did lie fairly within the province of church rulers to regulate; but no pains or care could be too great to avoid transgressing, by a single hair's-breadth, the legitimate bounds of that very restricted field. To multiply rites, ceremonies, and offices, by mere church authority, was to provide either burdens or snares for the consciences of men.

MODERN PAPISTS.

All charity, candour, and benevolence,— if you will believe them:. But I cannot believe them. How should I, while they at the same time avow and swear a firm fidelity to a church, which, by the unalterable laws of its institute, makes intolerance-the extirpation of heretics—a duty? When they come talking or canting in this strain, I would say to them, your church, your sovereign authority, to which on peril of your souls you must maintain an inviolable fidelity, has it ever revoked its sanguinary decrees and injunctions? But, indeed, the very idea is foolish, since an infallible and unalterable authority cannot revoke its decrees. I would say, Do you disown the grand and final standard of your church, the Council of Trent? Answer, like honest plain-spoken men, yes, or no; and do not be playing fast and loose with us. If you say, No, it is then in vain for you to pretend to charity, liberality, and all that; in vain that you charge us with bigotry and injustice in imputing to you the odious principles which are essentially inherent in your institution. If you say, Yes, and yet profess to adhere firmly to your church, what becomes of your fidelity, your consistency, your honesty? If you can thus, just as it serves your purpose, be off and on with your adored church -your very religion itself-how can we depend on your integrity in anything else? What, at this rate, really are your principles, and what is your unalterable, infal

GENERAL INTELLIGENCE.

lible church? Do not palter and mystify; but either explicitly declare that you abjure the intolerant and murderous maxims which that church binds you to maintain, and thus bravely incur its anathema, or distinctly avow that you maintain those maxims, and then we shall know on what ground to meet you, and on what terms to give you that toleration which you virtually tell us you could not in conscience grant to us, if, as in Italy or Spain, you were powerful enough to withhold it. Tell us you approve that exercise of the church authority under which in Italy, &c., a man, not having the rights and exemptions of a foreigner, could not publicly avow himself a Protestant, but at the cost of his property, liberty, and probably his life. This would be honestly telling us, that if only you had the power you would do the same here and everywhere. It is only on this sanguinary and exterminating, but essential, principle of the Romish church that I am commenting. As to the many fooleries and corruptions of what may be called simply, religious doctrine and institution, let them pass, as not directly interfering with the civil peace of society. Between these, however, and the bloody maxims of the Popish church, the O'Sullivans, Boytons, &c., are furnished with weapons which, vilely as they use them, there is no fairly getting out of their hands; and little less to be condemned than their fanaticism on the one hand, is, on the other, that sort of cant of liberalism, now in vogue in some of our journals, and

speech-makings, which deprecates all zeal
against Popery, assuming, by implication at
least, that one mode of religion is just as
good as another, that is, that none of them
has any real basis in truth and Divine
authority.
JOHN FOSTER.

DISCUSSION OF TRUTH.

The discussion of truth, and the agitation of doctrines, have always resulted in good to the church, and to the world. Even the waters of Bethesda, in the very house of mercy itself, needed to be agitated and disturbed to renew their healing power. It is, therefore, unseemly in theologians, that when some "Doctor Angelicus" descends among them, and agitates the settled waters of their dull and stagnant orthodoxy, then always, "a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, and withered," creep from the "five points" of their "five porches," to brandish their crutches against the intruder, or to mutter their anathemas against the innovation, instead of welcoming the benignant visitor, sharing in the healthiness of the agitation, and becoming healed of whatsoever disease they had. Such an angel was Baxter, and such was the treatment of his wholesome and healing agitation of the waters of orthodoxy; and such will always be the treatment of theological agitations, until intellectual liberty become an acknowledged law in the republic of literature.

General Intelligence.

POPERY IN ITALY.

NO SABBATH IN ROME.-The only apparent difference there between the Sabbath and other days of the week is, that the shops are more gaily dressed, the markets are more full, and more people are engaged in buying and selling. On my way to St. Peter's from the Hôtel d'Angleterre, I saw monks and priests in all the shops and markets, buying as on other days, and chattering like magpies.

IDOLATRY.-You meet there wherever you go, miraculous pictures, and wonder-working relics, and statues that came down from heaven, and places rendered sacred by prodigies; and before these pictures, relics, and images, you see poor people bowing down with as profound a homage as ever the Hindoos render to their idols.

No WORSHIPPING CONGREGATIONS.Crowds attend the high ceremonies of "Holy Week:" on great occasions, when there are gorgeous processions at which

the Pope and the military attend, multitudes are drawn together by curiosity; but, on ordinary occasions, there are no congregations to witness the ceremonies in the churches. In this I was greatly disappointed. The only exceptions I witnessed were at St. Carlo, in the Corso, and around the image of Mary, in St. Augustin. On Sabbath day, and every day in the week, I was at the great basilicas and churches, and very often myself and company were the whole congregation! I witnessed the mass in St. Peter's, St. John Lateran, and St. Mary Maggiore, performed by a bishop and many priests, when not a soul was present to form a congregation but my own little company. My last Sabbath morning there was spent between the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's; and, while mass was going on at several altars in the church, it would be a liberal calculation to say that there was an average of five persons at each altar.

VARIETIES.

BRITISH SILVER-At the Exhibition in 1851, the Duke of Buccleuch had a pyramid of pure silver, which weighed 120 lbs., and was worth 4807. Mr. Beaumont had a thick plate of silver, obtained from mines near Newcastle-on-Tyne, weighing 8,000 ounces according to one statement, and 12,000 by another, and worth 2,000l. or 3,000l., according to the weight.

THE COAL TRADE.-It amounts in Britain annually to thirty-five millions of tons; and, at an average of 10s. per ton, including the cost of carriage, and the profits of dealers, yields 17,500,000l.; the wages of more than 350,000 persons, at 17. weekly.

SHEEP. The number now in the United Kingdom is 50,000,000, which is nearly double the population. The number of this species of animals living on the earth during one generation of mankind, is probably 8,000,000,000. Each sheep in England gives 34 lbs. of wool annually.

COTTON YARNS.-Messrs. Houldsworth, of Manchester, have succeeded, in 1840, in drawing one pound of cotton into a double thread of 324 miles long, and another pound in a single thread to the length of 338 miles. In the Exhibition, 1851, they produced one pound of thread measuring rather more than 1,000 miles.

COCHINEAL INSECTS.-The quantity of cochineal in fine dyes, at 58. per lb., imported into Britain in 1845, was 1,095,800 lbs., but a larger quantity was imported during the first eight months of 1851. The number of insects in each lb. is, at the lowest, 50,000,000, which gives for the importation of eight months, a total of 58,637,600,000 individual insects.

LAC DYE.-This is the produce of insects. The British import of the present year may be reckoned at 2,000,000 lbs., averaging from 9d. to 2s. 6d. per lb. 50,000,000 insects are required to produce one lb.; and hence 100,000,000,000 insects to meet the import of the year.

SILKWORMS. The silk imported into England this year will reach 5,000,000 lbs., which is less than is used in France or in Italy, and that of all Europe is far less than is used in the home trade of China. The army of silkworms, therefore, probably equals that of the cochineal insects.

DIAMONDS.-The Koh-i-Noor, or mountain of light, exhibited in the Crystal Palace, has been valued at 1,500,0007. A Brazilian diamond, belonging to the Portu guese crown, at 5,644,8007., and the Russian Emperor has a great diamond valued at 5,000,000l., but it cost only 150,000l.

A PEARL.-The Spanish crown had one pearl valued at 30,000l. It weighs 250 carats, estimated at the rate of 120l. per carat.

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THE SWORD OR THE ARM.-One who heard of Scanderberg's victories was anxious to see the sword with which he had fought. On seeing it, he said, Oh, this is but an ordinary sword: what can this do?" Scanderberg hearing of this sent him word, "I have sent thee my sword, but I have the arm that did all by it."

PRAYER.-Luther used to say that he profited more by prayer in a short space, than by study in a longer. John by weeping got the sealed book opened.

HUMILITY.-The greatest buildings have the lowest foundations: the boughs of trees most laden with fruit bend most towards the ground: the men of most grace are most lowly.

MEEKNESS. Men may do much, hear much, pray much, fast much, give much, and yet be proud as Lucifer. Was it not so with the Scribes and Pharisees? best adorning is a meek and quiet spirit.

The

CREATURE GOOD.-Every creature is to us just that, and no more, than God makes it to be. While many, therefore, seek the ruler's favour, and so expect to make their fortunes, seeing every man's judgment proceedeth from the Lord, it is our wisdom to seek His favour, who is the Ruler of rulers-an effectual way to make sure our happiness.

IMITATION OF CHRIST.-" Learn of me"what to do! To make the world, to raise the dead, rebuke the winds and waves ? No-to be "meek and lowly;" to wash one another's feet: not to build churches, or erect hospitals; not to fast forty days, and forty nights, not to go barefoot on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, not to wallow naked in the snow as St. Francis: no, to be "meek and lowly."

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