ledge. His silence on this point is most emphatic. His blessed light was given to mankind for nobler purposes than to ransack the dark bowels of the earth for fossil remains; it was bestowed for guiding the steps of immortal pilgrims through the waste wilderness of the present world, through the darkness of the Valley of Death into that peaceful region which shall bloom in "The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, I am, Sir, yours, ROBERT WILSON. Greenock, December, 1853. MOVEMENT FOR THE BETTER SUPPORT OF THE MINISTRY IN THE Ar the last meeting of the Synod of the I. "That, as a large majority of Presbyteries and sessions have again reported in favour of a minimum stipend of £150, exclusive of a manse, while a considerable number suggests that £120 should, in the mean time, be named as more easily attainable, the Synod take immediate steps to raise all stipends of the church to at least £120, but that £150 be kept in view as the minimum stipend ultimately to be realized; and that rule 6, section iv., chap. ix. of the forms of procedure be altered, by £120 being substituted for £100 in the three places where that sum occurs. II. "That as many congregations at present under £120 are quite able, without extraneous aid, to give that stipend; and as many above £120, but below £150, are equally able to realize the latter sum, the Synod instruct the committee that may be appointed to correspond with these congregations, with the view of bringing the matter under their serious consideration; and as operation through the medium of deputations has been recommended by some portions of the church, the committee be empowered to adopt that course where it is regarded as expedient. III. "That in order to carry out the first resolutions in the case of those congregations under £120 requiring assistance, it be recommended by the Synod, that in addition to the ordinary sources of revenue in support of the home fund, an annual collection should be made on its behalf. IV. "That the Synod appoint a committee to carry out the objects of the second and third resolutions as adopted, and instruct the home committee of the Board of Missions in carrying out the first resolution, to correspond and cooperate with said committee." The special committee, in following out the instructions of Synod as contained in the foregoing resolutions, has, we learn, entered into correspondence with the elders and managers of 240 of our congregations, and at a late meeting of committee replies were read and considered from 120 of these churches. The members of our various churches will be gratified to learn that, generally, the greatest cordiality pervades these communications, and that in thirty-six instances the congregations have already, in the kindest manner, acceded to the wish of the Synod, and have raised the amount of stipend to their respective ministers from £130 to £150. Some have raised them from £100 to £120, and a few have, in the mean time, added £10 to stipends below the minimum. In one or two instances it is quite clear that the movement is misunderstood, as the replies returned to the circular which the committee of Synod had issued, embodying the recommendation of the Synod, express a fear that it interferes with the voluntary principle!!! Seventy-two congregations are favourable to the movement, and would gladly set about the good work, but require either the advice or the assistance of the committee. It is most desirable that all the other congregations who have not yet sent replies should do so without delay, in order that the exact facts of the case should be fully known to the Committee. It also appears that during the course of last year an increased effort has been made by a considerable number of congregations to pay off all liabilities existing on their various places of worship, manses, &c. This is as it ought to be; and in consequence, we doubt not, a number more of our congregations will very soon gladly comply with the request of the church, and raise the allowance to the minister in terms of the resolutions quoted above, and which were adopted by the Synod with so much unanimity. From the foregoing statement, it will at once appear that this is a movement of vital importance to the welfare and prosperity of a large number of our churches. This scheme must commend itself to every lover of our church, and even to every one who feels desirous to promote more and more the important cause of missions; for how can it be expected that our church should take a larger share in the work of foreign missions until she has strengthened her position at home? With this view, we hope our larger congregations will bear in mind that a special appeal will be made to them in March next, on behalf of this most important scheme, for unless the committee is placed in a position to enable it to assist weak but willing congregations, the plan, in respect to all such cases, will, in a great measure, prove abortive in regard to churches so situated. In a great and important movement like this, it is of much moment that sessions and office-bearers, generally, should make a point to act with promptitude and despatch, and by keeping in view the synodical appointments for general and special collections, prevent, as much as possible, claims of an inferior character from coming in the way of our more important and legitimate simultaneous efforts. In this way can the action of the united church tell with effect not only on the more wealthy churches in our large cities and towns, but also on all our poorer churches throughout the country. Let us look hopefully forward to the future for more decided and united action, and thus obey the apostolic injunction, "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." M. IRISH CONGREGATIONAL HOME MISSION. AT a meeting of the Committee, held the 1st of December, 1853, a Report having been made by the Deputation lately visiting Scotland, and of the sums received by our Treasurer, as obtained by them. It was resolved unanimously 1st, That we record our gratitude to God, for his favour granted to our Deputation among friends of the gospel in Scotland, and are encouraged by the result of our appeals there, to prosecute the work we have undertaken, with cheerful confidence that means will be forthcoming for its support. 2d, That our Christian acknowledgments be presented to the various ministers and members of the United Presbyterian, and other churches, in cluding our own, who so cordially welcomed our delegates to Scotland, and so liberally responded to their statements and appeals in behalf of our Home Mission. By order, Dublin. WILLIAM URWICK, Secretary. NOTICE.-The Committee will be happy to correspond with a Christian minister who is qualified and disposed to engage himself in Mission work in Ireland, and prepared to co-operate heartily with them in promoting the knowledge of the gospel. It is desired that he be competent to undertake the supervision of Scripture Readers. Letters to be addressed to the Secretary as above. THE OLD CHURCH-YARD OF KILBRIDE, ARRAN. THERE is something very suggestive about an old church-yard. Except, perhaps, the hackneyed grave-digger himself, every one who walks among its gray and crumbling monuments is quickened to serious reflections. The modern cemetery does not speak with so much emphasis about the swiftness and uncertainty of time, the reality of death, and the vastness of an eternity past and future; for, however affecting may be the sight of the newly-made graves and tombstones, however touching and true the inscriptions, and however beautiful and picturesque the arrangements of the plants and the tablets, there are entirely lacking the solemnity and grandeur that invest those cities of the dead whose foundations were laid in the centuries of the past, and whose inhabitants have long since been summoned to the "judgment-seat." In the old church-yard there may sleep some few whom we have known, but their graves are scarcely discernible amid the multitude of others whose openings and shuttings are not remembered even by the patriarchs of the place, and whose tenants are only known to Him who is the "resurrection and the life." If "Old Time" be ever realized, it is in such a spot. If we are ever able to send back our thoughts, and hold converse with the generations of other days, that we may be made to feel our vanity and appreciate our meted span, it is here-here, where our fore fathers have so long been sleeping, and from which they are to rise to shame or to glory. O how long is it since his soul reached As we recline upon some mouldering headstone, and try to decipher its almost faded story, how deeply are we impressed with the nothingness of a lifetime! Beneath may lie the remains of one who threw his soul into the love, and cares, and sins of the world, to whom the "threescore years and ten" once looked like an age that could never be exhausted, and upon whom the thought and weight of a coming eternity never rested till the last, when it was too late. What now to him is gold, or fame, or power, or anything that living men idolize? Or, to move once more among these lowly houses of the departed, let us select yon little grave, and meditate there. Here a child was interred. It was born, and it died! born long before the present rapid march of mind began, and died long before it knew even the simplest elements of truth. But what of that? Its own mind has long since joined the splendid processions of that science which is emphatically called "eternal life," and which have left behind them, at an infinite distance, the blundering and imperfect achievements of the master minds of this lower world. From an infant, it reached the "stature of a perfect man in Christ;" from a sin-stained creature, it became "holy as God is holy;" from a weeping, dwining, dying babe, it became a happy one among the immortals. What prodigious knowledge it now possesses! What magnificent conceptions of God it can now form! What sublime services to Emmanuel it can now accomplish in heaven or upon earth, or wherever he may choose to commission it! Its parents have long ago rejoined it. Its death almost overpowered them, and they felt as if they could never again smile or feel happy, so dark, so severe, did they esteem God's dispensation. How changed was their opinion when that child met them at the gates of glory, and conducted them to the King! Then all their tears were wiped away, and they justified their God in all his fatherly discipline when they were sojourners upon the earth. Such were some of my meditations this evening, as I studied among the tombs of the old church-yard of this part of Arran. There lie many generations of the islanders. In the midst of their mouldering dust, moulders also what was once the parish church; within its ruined walls the hawthorn-trees are growing, the only signs of life where once devout men worshipped, and the emblem, too, of the future resurrection which they now await. Many that went up to this court of the Lord, to hear and reject the gospel, now lie forgotten in the cemetery here; but many also, who heard and believed, are like these trees, still flourishing in the house of the Lord above. MARRIAGES WITHIN THE forbidden degrees. IN the approaching session of Parliament, a renewed movement is likely to be made to have the marriages, formerly condemned in point of law, but recently advocated by some parties, namely, those betwixt brothers and sisters-in-law of the one class, namely, a widower with his deceased wife's sister, legalized. The law of England regarding such marriages, is not in a satisfactory state, and some recent attempts to amend it have only rendered it more unsatisfactory. Such marriages, in consequence of the former anomalous state of the law, have been contracted by some of the great and powerful. To decide these marriages illegal, would bring into dispute the succession to certain estates, and even in once instance, a dukedom. Among humbler ranks, such marriages have been contracted. An interest to have such marriages legalized is extending. Evangelical ministers along with others are in some cases giving opinion in their favour. A petition to Parliament for legalizing them, lately got up at Liverpool, numbers among the signatures attached to it, those of some of the evangelical ministers of our own and other denominations. Ministers especially ought to examine well the grounds on which they proceed in such a matter, considering how many, if they prove to be in error, will be carried away by their error; and the serious consequences of stamping with the sanction of human legislation, civil—and, what must also follow, ecclesiastical—a violation of the Divine law in so sacred a relation. The Divine laws, to which we especially refer on this subject, are those contained in Leviticus, chaps. xviii. xx. These laws form the application, in detail, of the prohibitory law. "None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness: I am the Lord." Whether such an approach as is referred to be under the name of the marriage union or not, it stands prohibited; and between parties, of certain nearness to each other, in point of kin, it is of a nature which all laws brand as incest. No form of marriage can legalise such a connection, as out of the marriage bond would be incestuous. For an answer to the question, Within what degrees of propinquity, in point of kin, are marriage unions permitted; and where is the line of prohibition as regards such unions drawn? we refer to the above, and parallel scriptures. As to the universal and perpetual binding obligation of these prohibitory laws, we can entertain no doubt, when we reflect that the connections they condemn are imputed to the Canaanites as abominations, provoking extirpating Divine judgments, and on account of which their land spued them out. Connections thus reprobated are thereby marked as violations of the law of nature, binding on mankind in all ages and in all conditions. The ancient Roman law, in pagan Rome, not only condemned the marriages under consideration, now sought to be legalized, as we shall yet show, but carried out the range of forbidden degrees, like the law of Moses, to uncles and nieces. The Mahometan law expressly carries out its prohibitions to the same extent; and, in particular, is explicit in forbidding the marriage of a man with the sister of his deceased wife. We hesitate not to maintain that such marriages are condemned by the Divine law, and shall proceed to adduce proof. The offence committed, in these prohibited approaches to near kin, condemned, Leviticus, chaps. xviii. xx., is described as an "uncovering of nakedness." To another offence, of an analogous kind, involving pollution and moral turpitude, the same phraseology is applied. In two or three instances the phraseology is applied by prophets rhetorically, in the way of denunciation against something vile and heinous; so that it always expresses the idea of moral turpitude. Cruden is correct in saying, that the phraseology referred to, "denotes a shameful and unlawful conjunction, or an incestuous marriage." This remark is not without application to the disputed passage, Leviticus xviii. 18, in which the phraseology occurs. That passage stands in the train of a series of prohibitory laws, in each of which this peculiar phraseology is employed to brand the offence prohibited. It is exclusively applied, either to what, in modern language, we call incest, or to another offence, also punishable by the Mosaic law with death. And if the polygamy, in which a man has a second sister as a wife in the lifetime of the first, be incestuous, a man's having two sisters as wives in succession, cannot be free of the same criminality. Apart from this particular law, whatever sense may be put upon it, a widower's marriage with the sister of his deceased wife, comes within the range over which the Divine prohibitions extend. This will appear from a cursory review of these laws. Concerning marriage connections betwixt blood-kin of the first degree in the ascending or descending scale of relationship, or the collateral, there is no dispute: these by consent of all stand forbidden. The next class of marriages within forbidden degrees is stated thus, In the first place, females with whom blood-kin has inhabited, are interdicted as wives, fathers's wife,father's brother's wife,-brother's wife, and son's wife. In the second place, males are interdicted as husbands to females, with whose blood kin, they have cohabited. The prohibitory law understood in this extent, will include mother's husband,-mother's sister's husband,— sister's husband, and daughter's husband. By parity of reason, the law stands the same, as regards kindred of both sexes, the male side as the female side: and the female side as the male side. An objection may be made to our drawing an argument by parity of reason from an express law, relating to cases specified to bear upon a case not formally expressed. It is sufficient to remark, that in the law, as given, every case is not formally expressed, but as to some, we are left to decide the law by the application of the principle it contains. For example, the uncovering of the nakedness of a granddaughter is expressly prohibited to a man as being an uncovering of his own nakedness. From this, the prohibition of the uncovering of a daughter's nakedness is left to be inferred as being implied. The criminality of a man's uncovering the nakedness of the grand-daughter of his wife is left also to be inferred, he and his wife being one flesh. Some other examples of implied prohibition might be quoted.* The prohibition by parity of Nearly a half of the cases ran king under |