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and not leave it to a sick and dying bed.

For his children he frequently prayed. During his illness several Christian friends visited him. On one occasion, during the visit of Mr. Hilditch, an excellent Christian, he referred to his state as a sinner, when Mr. Hilditch replied, "If you find the sin, Christ will find the righteousness.' He then remarked to Mr. Hilditch, "I want to be able to say, with good John Newton, I am packed, and sealed, and waiting for the post."'" A kind medical relative came several times from a distance to see him, and conversed with him as to his future hopes. After one of these visits he remarked to the writer, "Mr. is very kind; he is a doctor both for body and soul; I wish there were more like him." One of his sons, in speaking of God's ability and willingness to save, said, "There was no sin, however great, but God was able to pardon it;" when he breathed forth a prayer that God would remember his sins no more.

On Sunday, the 29th June, he knew his end was near. He frequently prayed that God would be with him, and, in his own time, take him to himself. On the 30th his sufferings, which, at times, had been severe, seemed gone. An individual asked him what were his prospects for eternity, when he replied, “Ì have prayed

OUR

for forgiveness; God has said he will forgive; I hope he has pardoned me. I depend on Christ-none but Christ." He afterwards spake little, but his lips seemed to move as if he were frequently engaged in prayer. He sweetly fell asleep in Jesus, without a struggle or a groan, on the 1st July. He was buried at Moreton Corbet on Friday, the 4th July, the Rev. W. F. Wood officiating; and as he read most impressively those words, "We commit our dear brother to the grave in sure and certain hope,' we felt that he never read them more truthfully than at that time.

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Shall not we draw a lesson from the foregoing? Reader, whoever thou art, ponder well the character here so feebly delineated-stifling conviction in youth, enduring trials severe, yet still wavering, until brought on a bed of sickness, and then came the outburst of feeling, that so many years had been pent up. Oh! serve God in your health! If, reader, you are halting between two opinions, at once decide. If God be God, serve him; your life hangs upon a trifle; and if you do not repent and believe, you must be lost! May you, and those who are dear to you, be encouraged, by the foregoing facts, to serve God here on earth, and you will then be fitted to enter on that change of state to which we are all so rapidly hastening, who serve God in spirit and in truth. September 1, 1857. AMICUS.

Domestic Affairs.

DAUGHTERS

WHERE? At fashionable boardingschools. How? In manner and form, to wit: A young lady in good health was sent to a distant city to finish her education at a boarding-school of considerable note. In one month she returned, suffering from general debility, dizziness, neuralgic pains, and headache.

It must be a very telling process, which, in a single month, transforms a rollicking, romping, ruddy-faced girl of sixteen, to a pale, weakly, failing invalid. It is not often done so quickly ; but in the course of a boarding-school education, it is done thousands of times. Public thanks are due to a cor

RUINED.

respondent of a Medical Journal, for the pains he took to ferret out the facts of the daily routine of the establishment, the proprietors of which so richly merit the reprobation of the whole community, both for their recklessness of human health, and their ignorance of physiological law. Said an accomplished lady to us not long since, "My only daughter is made a wreck of she lost her mind at that wretched school!"

At this model establishment, where the daughters of the rich and of the aspiring are prepared for the grave every year, twelve hours are devoted to study out of the twenty-four, when

five should be the utmost limit. Two hours are allowed for exercise. Three hours for eating. Seven hours for sleep.

Plenty of time allowed to eat themselves to death, at the expense of stinting them to the smallest amount of time for renovating the brain, the very fountain of life, upon whose healthful and vigorous action depends the ability of advantageous mental culture and physical energy.

But what is the kind of exercise which prevails in city boardingschools? The girls are marched

through the streets in double file, dressed violently, of course, so as to promote the benefit of the proprietors, in the way of a walking advertisement, knowing well enough that such a file of young ladies, from families of note, would monopolize attention on any thoroughfare.

But what does an hour's prim walk effect, when, conscious of being the cynosure of every eye, they are put on their most unexceptional behaviour; when a good side-shaking, whole-souled laugh, would subject the offender to a purgatorial lecture, to be repeated daily, perhaps, for a month?

Verily, Moloch has his worshippers in this enlightened age, when parents are found to sacrifice the lives of their daughters for the reputation of having them at the fashionable boardingschool. Hall's Journal of Health.

RULES FOR HOME EDUCATION. THE following rules we commend to patrons and friends, for their excellence, brevity, and practical utility. They are worthy to be printed in letters of gold, and placed in a conspicuous position in every household. It is lamentable to contemplate the mischief, misery, and ruin, which are the legitimate fruit of those deficiencies which are pointed out in the rules to which we have referred. Let every parent and guardian read, ponder, and inwardly digest.

1. From your children's earliest infancy inculcate the necessity of instant obedience.

2. Unite firmness with gentleness. Let your children always understand that what you say you mean.

3. Never promise them anything un

less you are quite sure you can give them what you promise.

4. If you tell a little child to do something, show him how to do it, and see that it is done.

5. Always punish your children for wilfully disobeying you, but never punish them in anger.

6. Never let them perceive that they can vex you or make you lose your self-command.

7. If they give way to petulance and temper, wait till they are calm, and then gently reason with them on the impropriety of their conduct.

8. Remember that a little present punishment, when the occasion arises, is much more effectual than the threatening of a greater punishment should the fault be renewed.

9. Never give your children anything because they cry for it.

10. On no account allow them to do at one time what you have forbidden under like circumstances, at another.

11. Teach them that the only sure and easy way to appear good is to be good.

12. Accustom them to make their little recitals with perfect truth.

13. Never allow of tale-bearing. 14. Teach them that self-denial, not self-indulgence of an angry and resentful spirit, will make them happy.

If these rules were reduced to practice-daily practice-by parents and guardians, how much misery would be prevented-how many in danger of ruin would be saved-and how largely would the happiness of a thousand domestic circles be augmented. It is lamentable to see how extensive is parental neglect, and to witness the bad and dreadful consequences in the ruin of thousands.

WEAR A SMILE.

WHICH Will you do smile, and make others happy; or be crabbed, and make every one around you miserable? The amount of happiness you can produce is incalculable, if you show a smiling face, a kind heart, and speak pleasant words. Wear a smiling countenance, let joy beam in your eyes, and love grow in your forehead. There is no joy like that which springs from a kind act or a pleasant deed; and you may feel it at night when you rest, and at morning when you rise, and through all the day when about your business.

HUGH MILLER ON POPERY.

Popery.

THE late Hugh Miller has left upon record his settled views upon this great subject, as follows:

We are to have a Popish chaplain attached to every jail where a Romanist criminal may be found, and, thanks to the demoralizing influences of Popery, there are few of our prisons in which such do not occur; a Popish chaplain attached to our poor-houses, where the same description of paupers are found; and, lastly, Popish chaplains attached to every regiment in which the Romish soldiers rise to a certain number. The consent of the Government has been announced to this new mode of endowing the Romish priesthood, and returns have been laid before Parliament, as respects both the prisons and the army, showing the number of Romish criminals in the former, and the number of Romish soldiers in the latter, in order to regulate the number and distribution of these Popish officials.

Let our readers be assured of this, that the plan has already been partially carried out, both in the jails and the army, and will very soon be consummated if the country keep silence on the point. And they may be further assured that, the priests having found out this short-hand way of having their church endowed, Popish endowments will soon be as plentiful as blackberries.

Popery has uncommon facilities for the manufacture of both criminals and soldiers; and if she is to be paid so much a-head for them, we may rest satisfied that there will be no want of either. As she increases them so does she increase her emoluments. What course does she take to augment the number of Romanists in the army? She sends recruiting-serjeants to Ireland. And what is the proportion of Popish soldiers in the army? It is one-third of the whole. Onethird of the British army, then, is at the service of Rome, whenever she shall chance to need its service. This statement must not be pooh-poohed; it is the sober view of the case, as those who now may be most forward to deride it will find to their cost when the time comes. To each regiment in which there is a small body of Romanist soldiers a chaplain is attached, to inoculate the men with seditious doctrines.

The same spirit which at festive meetings gives the Pope's health precedence of the Queen's, in the army places the clerical above the military authority. Every bishop is sworn to the Pope, every priest is sworn to the bishop, and every member is sworn at confession to the priest, not formally, it may be, but still with awful and binding sanctions is he taken bound to obey the priest before all living authority. Where, then, would we be in the event of a foreign invasion?-no unlikely event, when Father Ignatius is going round Europe exhorting its kings to combine for the conversion of England.

PROTESTANTISM PROSCRIBED IN PORTUGAL.

A CLERGYMAN named Gomez, who is a Protestant, has for some time past endeavoured to instruct the miserable inhabitants of Lisbon in the truths of the Gospel. His proceedings at length attracted the attention of the House of Peers, and the Marquis of Valleda, selected for the purpose, called the attention of government to the advertisement of Gomez, who proposed to preach in his own house.

"It appears to me," said the Marquis, "that the name of the advertiser is Portuguese, although they tell me that the individual is a foreigner; but whether he be or not, that is nothing to the point; the fact is, that an individual here presents himself, publicly offending against the laws of the country, by announcing that he will give lectures in his house on Protestantism; and not in his house with closed doors and very privately, but in public, and his door open, inviting all to go and hear him, in order to convince them of the advantage of abandoning our religion and embracing Protestantism."

The laws in force in Portugal are as follow:

Art. 130. He who fails in respect to the religion of the kingdom, the Roman Catholic Apostolic, shall be condemned to imprisonment from one to three years, and a fine proportioned to his income, in every one of the following cases:

1. Injuring (or insulting) the said religion publicly, in any dogma, act or object of its worship, by deeds, or words, or publications in any form.

2. Attempting by the same means to propagate doctrines contrary to the Catholic dogmas defined by the Church.

3. Attempting, by any means, to make proselytes or conversions to a different sect, condemned by the Church.

4. Celebrating public acts of worship, not that of the said Catholic religion.

Art. 135. Every Portuguese who, professing the religion of the kingdom, shall fail in respect to the same religion of the kingdom, by apostatizing, or renouncing it publicly, shall be condemned to the loss of his political rights.

If the guilty person, under Art. 130, be a foreigner, the punishment, instead of fine and imprisonment, shall be banishment from the kingdom.

It is affirmed that these articles were inserted in the penal code in pursuance of a concordat between the Pope and the late Queen of Portugal, in direct breach of a recent treaty between the Queens of England and Portugal, which guaranteed to British subjects the liberty of worship. Such is the morality of the Pope, encouraging a direct violation of treaty stipulations, and such the honesty of a Popish sovereign!

MOB APPRECIATION OF PRAYER TO THE VIRGIN.

THE Piemonti of Turin quotes a letter from Benevento (a small principality belonging to the Pope, but situated in the centre of the Neapolitan territory), giving an account of some disturbances which took place there a few days before. It says: The Papal Government having some time ago proclaimed the introduction of the tax on trades into the principality, as it has already been in every other part of the Papal territory, sent the tax-gatherers on the 6th to collect it; but all the tradespeople refused to pay; whereupon the authorities ordered the arrest of one of the chief citizens of the town, supposed to be the ringleader. This measure created great excitement; crowds assembled, and proceeded tumultuously to the bishop's residence, demanding the rescue of the pri

soner. The Bishop, Cardinal Carafa, wishing to avert the storm peaceably, recommended the crowd to pray to the Virgin Mary that she might inspire him and advise him how to act. The crowd obeyed, went to the cathedral, prayed an extempore prayer, and then, as tumultuously as before, went to ask the Cardinal whether he had received the expected inspiration. The Cardinal, more anxious than ever to get rid of the matter, then told them to consult the delegate, whose business it was to attend to their complaints. The delegate, not having sufficient military force at his disposal, consented to all their demands, on condition of writing to Rome about it. Since then, the Roman Government has applied to that of Naples for permission to send a few companies of soldiers to the principality, and it is expected there will be no difficulty in restoring order."

The Christian Ministry.

PUBLIC PRAYER.

SOME years ago, a minister, in examining an applicant for admission to the communion of the church, asked her, as is usual in such cases, the origin of her religious impressions. The lady answered that she owed them, under God, to his sermons and prayers, but especially the latter. The minister was amazed. His discourses he indeed expected the Master would own to the conversion of souls, for they contained his truth, and were written and uttered with simplicity and godly sincerity. But he had entertained no such hope respecting the public devotions he was called to offer. Nor indeed had he sought any such thing, having always cherished a strong dislike to what are called "preaching prayers," and sedulously avoided any appearance of exhorting men while professedly supplicating God. He was conscious, however, of having taking special pains to perform this part of public worship in an acceptable manner. He was in the habit of storing his mind with the good words of Scripture, and of seeking freshness and variety by adapting the tenor of his praises and petitions to the subject in hand for the desk, or to the special situation of the congregation in all its various parts. It was his endeavour also to finish the preparation of his discourse so thoroughly beforehand as to allow the hour or two preceding Sabbath worship to be devoted

entirely to the cultivation of a devotional spirit, so that he might pass undisturbed from private communion with God to the more formal service of the sanctuary.

Now the experience of this brother -analogous to that of the godly minister John Welsh, of whom it is said that when once engaged in secret prayer at midnight, at an obscure lodging-place in his travels, a Popish friar overheard him, and was converted by the prayer-suggests an important point in relation to this part of public worship, viz., that the true way to render pulpit prayers instructive and impressive, is not directly to seek this end at all. All that a minister should aim at is to pray, including of course adoration, thanksgiving, and intercession. He is to study the wants of his people and the properties of the time and place, and then open his heart to God, giving such specialty to his words as will fit the prayer to the case of those in whose name it is offered, yet never allowing it to become personal, or to degenerate into a thinly disguised exhortation. The ordinary difficulties in the discharge of this duty may be traced to two causes-one, the neglect of preparation for it, the other, the directing this preparation in the wrong way. It is bad to bestow no pains at all upon the service, but it is worse to bestow these pains unwisely.

Hence, we sometimes are invited to unite in prayers which are not prayers. They are pathetic soliloquies, or doctrinal digests, or hortatory appeals, or sentimental outbursts, or other similar performances in rhetoric and logic. The speakers have forgotten the first and last point, the Alpha and Omega of their business, which is, to pray. However eloquent, learned, various, sparkling, thrilling they may be, they are not the one thing which would compensate for the lack of all the rest, that is, devotional. Their utterances, therefore, reach neither heaven nor earth. They enter neither the ear of God nor the heart of man.

A WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT TO VILLAGE PREACHERS. PREACH your own sermons. Do not read those of other men, however great or good. Take courage; labour on, pray without ceasing, and no fear! I have selected the following cases, which will interest you, and from which you may profit, and remain your true friend,

AN OLD PREACHER.

HOW THOMAS SCOTT LEARNED TO PREACH

EXTEMPORE.

Scott, the great commentator, was in the habit, after having written his sermons for the Sabbath, of reading them to his wife; and at her instance he altered many things, especially in exchanging words unintelligible to labourers and uneducated persons, for simple language.

His practice of preaching extempore commenced from these rehearsals of his sermons before they were preached. Something had occurred in his parish to which he thought it right to allude in the pulpit, but on reciting to his wife the discourse which he had prepared, she objected to it, and brought him over to her opinion. He, in consequence, committed his sermon to the flames, and was thus, on the Saturday evening, left without one for the next day. This induced him to address his congregation without written preparation, and succeeding in the attempt he repeated it, and by degrees discontinued the use of written sermons. This change, however, required severe effort. An old parishioner at Weston, lately deceased, mentioned his well remembering Mr. Scott's sitting down in a kind of despair, and exclaiming, "It does not signify; it is impossible that I should ever be able to preach extempore."

CHALMERS' EXTEMPORE PREACHING. "Under the very strong conviction that his use of the manuscript in the pulpit impaired the power of his Sabbath addresses," says his

biographer," Mr. Andrew Fuller strenuously urged upon his friend the practice of extempore preaching, or preaching from notes. If that man,' said he to his companion, Mr. Anderson, after they had taken leave of Kilmany manse, if that man would but throw away his papers in the pulpit, he might be king of Scotland.' Mr. Chalmers was perfectly willing to make the experiment, and he gave full time and all diligence to the attempt; but it failed. He read, reflected, jotted down the outlines of a discourse, and then went to the pulpit trusting to the suggestion of the moment for the phraseology he should employ; but he found that the ampler his materials were, the more difficult was the utterance. His experience in this respect he used to compare to the familiar phenomenon of a bottle with water in it suddenly turned upside down: the nearly empty bottle discharges itself fluently and at once; the nearly full one labours in the effort, and lets out its contents with jerks, and large explosions, and sudden stops, as if choked by its own fulness."

Nothing was wanted but the perseverance of Scott to have rendered Chalmers one of the best extempore speakers the world ever

saw.

EXTEMPORANEOUS PREACHING.

The Bishop of Montreal, in a late charge, offered the following remarks on the subject.

"For myself, it has been so ordered that I have been called upon, all my life, to address men of very different classes and in a great variety of situations. I have been called upon to preach to sailors upon the deep; to fishermen upon the sea-shore; to settlers in the backwoods; to bodies of emigrants upon their first landing as strangers in the country; to the poor of cities in places expressly allotted for their instruction; to convalescents assembled in hospitals; to Indians to whom I spoke sentence by sentence, through an interpreter; to prisoners in gaol and to prostitutes in the house of correction, and, in many of these instances, I can truly say that the formality of a written sermon, especially being prepared for a very different kind of occasion, would have been much out of place, and the want of allusion to circumstances offering themselves at the moment for remark, would have been signally unfortunate -in fact, in some examples, it would have produced no small embarrassment to know how to manage the leaves of the manuscript itself. To this I will add that, had I been obliged to write sermons for all the occasions upon which I have preached or publicly expounded the Word of God, I might calculate that it would have been impossible for me to have performed the duty more than one-third or perhaps one-fourth of the same number of times; and thus, if ever it has been at all granted to me to sow any good seed which has been blessed by the shower and the sunshine of heaven, that benefit may be said to have been trebled or quadrupled by my having early acquired the habit of speaking without book."

"This is a valuable testimony," says the Montreal Register; judiciously adding, "but we hope that no one will be encouraged by it

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