to fill the world with plenty; institutions have been organized to build churches and maintain the services and ceremonies of religion. In all these works and movements there can be a display of learning and dignity, and an exertion of power; and so human nature gratifies itself. The conversion of individual men-of poor, wretched men, found in the highways and hedges-has not been talked of by these learned and great philanthropists. The great work of Christianity has been treated as a nullity-a fanaticism; and humble ministers and missionaries, and lowly souls in private life, have been left alone in the sublime but despised work. And even true-hearted and earnest philanthropists have been guilty of a shortsightedness in measuring one form of evil, and labouring at that exclusively, as if its extinction would be the regeneration of the world. The world is like a great field covered with thistles, brambles, and thorns. The labourers go into this field. Some do nothing but cut down the thistles, and they only make room for the brambles and thorns. Others cut down only the brambles, and they make room for the thorns and thistles. And so with the others. The thistles, brambles, and thorns continue to grow and overspread the field. Others, again, erect splendid palaces and temples in the midst of the desert, where they collect specimens of art, deliver discourses upon agriculture and all the forms of human industry, and offer thanksgivings to Heaven with eloquence and music for the rain and the sunshine. But all around the desert remains unchanged, and the thistles, brambles, and thorns crowd upon the thresholds, and thrust themselves into the doors and windows. Now, in different parts of the desert there are green and beautiful spots, where another class of labourers are at work. These have dug out the thistles, brambles, and thorns by the roots. Their work has been slow and toilsome, but it has been effectual. They have made these spots in the desert to bear all kinds of grains and fruits. They are gradually and surely pressing upon the desert, and widening their smiling and happy domains. Here are no palaces, no eloquent schemes, no one-sided labourers. Here is the simple but divine industry which takes out every evil thing by the roots, produces abundance, and makes happy homes. If all who are now in the palaces and temples, and all who are ineffectually cutting down what is above the ground, would only unite in the work of digging up the soil, then the whole scene would bud and blossom as the rose. The conversion of human souls from sin to holiness, is the digging up of the roots of all evil. The dissemination and preaching of the gospel is the efficient instrumentality. In no other way can we make a happy world. Come, then, let us go to work. CHRISTANITY AND SCIENCE BY JOHN ROBSON, D.D., GLASGOW. I PROCEED to remark, that Christianity, so far from being unfavourable to science, has conferred on it the most distinguished aid. This remark might be illustrated at great length. I must content myself, however, with a few general observations. It requires comparatively little acquaintance with the subject, to be convinced that in history, in chronology, in jurisprudence, and in the amelioration of morals, the assistance which science derives from Christianity is of the most valuable description. In freeing the mind from those superstitions in which it is prone to indulge, in preventing it from foolishly attributing events to mere imaginary causes, in stimulating to activity and inquiry, it does much to forward the interests of sound philosophical research, and to keep men from resting in vague and unsatisfactory conjecture. On the nature of the Divine Being-of the soul, and of all orders of intelligenceson the great plan of the Divine administration, in its causes and its results on the creation and destinies of the universe-it throws a flood of light. The simple fact, that those countries where the influence of Christianity is most powerfully felt, are the very countries where science has erected, and is erecting, her most splendid trophies, demonstrates that there exists no repellent principle between them-that, on the contrary, the cordial belief of the one is not adverse, but propitious to the prosecution of the other, and the fullest submission of the mind to both, a spectacle by no means rare. While revelation thus lavishes its favours on science, science in its turn illustrates and confirms revelation. Seeming facts have, indeed, at times been promulgated, which appeared to contradict and bring discredit on its statements; but further research on the part of scientific men exposed their fallacy, and confirmed the Scriptures. For example, the accuracy of the Mosaic chronology has more than once been impugned. Towards the close of the last century, the astronomical tables of the Indians formed the topic of protracted discussion. These tables professed to record observations conducted during millions of years. Attempts were made to verify this remote chronology, and to show that there was internal proof that the observations must have been actually made at the time specified. This theory was adopted by several philosophers in this country and on the continent; was advocated by some of the leading journals; and infidelity seemed to have gained a victory. Its triumph, however, was short. By Bentley, Delambre, La Place, and others, these tables, to which the Brahmans had assigned so high an antiquity, were subjected to a more rigid and scientific scrutiny. The result was an unanswerable proof that they had been fabricated only a few centuries before. Again, when the celebrated zodiac of Dendara was brought from Egypt to Paris, Dupuis and his disciples expected to derive from it an argument in support of their sceptical reveries on the "origin of religions," and of a pretended civilisation, which they maintained had existed in Egypt long before the times of either Moses or the deluge. The calculations by which they attempted to prop their fallacious theories were investigated by men distinguished in the scientific world, and proved to be erroneous. Still the adversaries of revelation were unwilling to acknowledge defeat, and persisted in ascribing to this zodiac an antiquity of more than six thousand years. Quite recently, however, Champollion, in his researches among the mysterious paintings and hieroglyphics of the Egyptians, found, on the very temple from which it was taken, two inscriptions, one of them in Greek, containing the names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra and the Roman emperors, by whom it had been built about the commencement of the Christian era. Thus the truth of the Mosaic narrative, instead of being subverted, was confirmed, and its opponents covered with confusion. The inquiries of the learned into Egyptian documents and monumental inscriptions have thrown light on sacred history, and furnished independent evidence of its accuracy. The sojourn of the Israelites, their state of slavery, the occupations at which they were compelled to labour, as well as the period of their abode, are all recorded in the documents to which I have referred. Had Voltaire been now alive, he would not have ventured to put the sneering question how, and on what materials, the Hebrew THE SUPPLIANT. lawgiver would write the Pentateuch; for it is proved that papyrus was in common use for writing in his time. Nor would he have tauntingly asked how, after an interval of a thousand years, Hilkiah could find in the temple of Jerusalem the autograph of the law; for writings and contracts on papyrus, as old as the times of the Pharaohs, still exist, and are still legible. Nor would he have incredulously inquired, how so many objects of art for the tabernacle, and the sacred vestments and vessels, could be wrought in the desert; for the arts then flourished in Egypt, and there Moses had acquired a knowledge of them. Nor would he have insinuated against Ezra the charge of having forged the sacred books which he collected; for the written and monumental history of Egypt so coincides with these books, in dates and facts, as to demonstrate that they could not be the work of imposture. The remark respecting this celebrated infidel, made by Benjamin Constant, an eminent French philosopher, who had abandoned infidel opinions in consequence of the numberless difficulties which the facts of science oppose to scepticism, is very pungent: " He who would be gay with Voltaire, at the expense of Ezekiel and Genesis, must unite two things which will make his gaiety sufficiently melancholy-ignorance the most profound, and frivolity the most deplorable."-Lectures to Young Men. MEMORIES OF HOME. NOTHING can humanity worse spare than pleasing and gracious memories of home. So fervently does humanity cling to what nature owes it, that those who have no home will make one for themselves in vision. Those who have an evil one will soften down its many vices, and out of the scantiest affections bring forth rays of the heart to brighten their retrospect. It is the miracle of the five loaves performed spiritually for the soul, lest the instincts of our humanity should faint and perish by the way. The visitings of early home thoughts are the last to quit us. Feeble age has them, when it has nothing else in memory; and when all the furniture which imagination has put together has gone to pieces and to dust, these, not constructed, but planted-planted down in the living soil of primal consciousness-flourish to the last; when the treasures which experience has been many years collecting a few months may seem to take away, some diamonds are left behind, which even the thief, Time, has spared-reminiscences that glimmer through bare and blank obscurity from the crevices of youth. As every thing human has an element of good in it, that which is good in a vicious home is what the past gives back to feeling; it is also that which is good in an evil man that the remembrance of a virtuous home acts on. There is no mist of guilt so thick that it can always exclude the light of such remembrance-no tempest of passion so furious as always to silence its voices. During a lull in the hurricane of revelry, the peal of the Sabbath-bell may come along the track of wasted years, and, though loaded heavily, will be not unkindly in its tones. Through the reekings of luxury, faces that beamed on the prodigal in youth may seem to start in trouble from the tomb, and though marred with grief, though pallid with affliction, turn mildly towards him, not in anger, but in sorrow. Amidst the chorus of bacchanals and the refrains of lewdness, the 197 satiated libertine may fancy, at moments, that he hears the calls of loved ones gone to heaven, startling him from the trance of death. Under the loud carousals that rage above the brain, deep down and lonely in his heart, there may come to him, too, the whisper of parental exhortation, the murmur of household prayer, and the music of domestic hymns. The very criminal in his cell will often have these visitations-ministers to exhort, not enemies to accuse-angels to beseech, not demons to scoff. The sentenced culprit, during even his last night on earth, must sleep, and perchance may dream, and seldom will that dream be all in the present and in prison; not all of it, if any, will be of chains and blood, of shapeless terrors and palefaced avengers, of the scaffold and the shroud. Far other things will often be in the dream. He once was honest, and spent his childhood, it may be, in a rustic home, and grew to youth amidst laborious men and with simple nature. Out of imagery thus derived will his dream be formed. In such dreams will be the green field and wooded lane; the boat sleeping on the stream; the rock mirrored in the lake; the shadow, watched expectingly from the school-room window, as it shortens to the noontide hour. Then there will be parents, blessed in their unbroken circle: there will be young companions laughing in their play; there will be bright harvest evenings after days of healthful toil; there will be family greetings, thanksgiving feasts; there will be the grasp of friendship, there will be the kiss of love. The dream will not be entirely, if at all, a dream of crime, disgrace, and death; it will be one that reproduces, on the brink of eternity, the freshness of emotion, hope, and desire with which existence on earth began. Parents-since the memories of home are so lasting and powerful, see that ye baptize them in the name of the Saviour.-Giles. THE SUPPLIANT. "O Lord, hear our prayers, and let our cry come unto Thee." ALL night the lonely suppliant pray'd, "I am cast out,-I find no place, "O dull of heart! inclosed doth lie, Strong bands are round them in their woe; He freely gives, nor grudging knows; -Trench. INFLUENCE OF MISSIONS UPON THE LITE the Press. What barriers to intellectual improvement it has broken down! When we can say of any pagan land, "The Press is at work there," what an agency of mental improvement we are permitted to announce ! What a lever is here to overturn those colossal superstitions which have crushed for thousands of generations the human intellect; and what a kind hand is here to lead the down-trodden captive forth into glorious freedom! It may be added, that several pagan nations are now indebted for every thing they have in the shape of literature to those who have carried them the gospel. All the works of education, and science, and history, &c., have been put in their possession by this agency. The school-books and various scientific treatises, which are promoting the cultivation of the intellect in our own land, have been translated into those languages, which the missionaries themselves have reduced to the written state, and are now aiding mental improvement among the millions of benighted nations. If missions had done nothing more than to cast off the burdens which have crushed the human intellect in pagan lands, and raise it to high and noble aspirations, they would have done a work of incalulable value to those countries. OLD SABBATH SCHOLARS. BY REV. DR. MORISON, LONDON.* OUR Sabbath school system will never be perfected in its economical arrangements, until there shall be lanthropic persons, whose distinct duty it shall be to found, in every congregation, a select circle of phitrace the steps of the interesting young people constantly issuing from our Sabbath schools, many of whom, it is to be feared, become the prey of temptation the moment they pass from under the eye of their devoted teachers. RATURE OF HEATHEN COUNTRIES. 1. MISSIONS have furnished benighted nations with a written language. It is needless to state how fettered and cramped must be the mind; how feeble its own progress; how faint its influence over other minds; and how little can be done in any way toward intellectual elevation without a written language. Its communication to a benighted people is the night Very painful facts have convinced me of the imand morning star of hope concerning their advance-perative necessity of some such method as the one ment. What was not the value to the philosophy, suggested, to provide, in some measure, against those eloquence, and every form of intellectual improve- fearful depravations of character which it has fallen ment of Greece, of the visit of that Phoenician to my lot to witness among young men and women, traveller who gave her an alphabet. Was it not the who once sat as children upon the forms of our Sabstarting-point of all her intellectual greatness? And bath schools. what have not modern missionaries done for modern uncivilized nations, by giving them a written language? No words can tell the value of the gift. The givers have set in motion the waters that shall pour floods of inestimably precious blessings upon such nations. "When letters were invented," says a Chinese writer, "the heavens, the earth, and the gods were agitated. The inhabitants of Hades wept at night, and the skies, as an expression of joy, rained down ripe grain." 2. Next look at the school system which missions always introduce into heathen lands. "We must begin with the young," has been the motto. There had been next to nothing known of care for the intellectual culture of the young. But the powerful agency of schools is one of the first things to be set in motion by the missionary. "He extends his influence through all the future relations of his pupils, and in this way affects the literary interests of the people as truly as their moral and social interests. There is an intimate connection between the literature of a nation and the early education of its youth." The schools, established at first by the missionaries, created after a while the necessity, and opened the way for higher seminaries of learning; so that now, connected with all the older missions, are institutions furnishing facilities for entering the higher walks of science, and occupying a position similar to the colleges of our own country. 3. With the written language has of course gone Some years since I was called, as a Christian minister, to visit a poor dying girl in the immediate vicinity of my own residence. As I entered the wretched apartment, in which she lay on a pallet of straw, she burst forth into an agony of tears, which completely choked utterance, and which issued in a deep faint, from which she did not recover for some minutes. As soon as consciousness was restored, I gently intimated to the dying creature that there well for her to disclose. Laying her hand upon a must be some cause of agitation which it would be little volume which lay on her pillow, and which proved to be Legh Richmond's tracts, "There, Sir," said she, "is a reward-book which I received from your hand, at the anniversary of your Sabbath school five years ago; but, O Sir! what would I give to recover the innocence and peace I then enjoyed?" The fact was, she had fallen a prey to the arts of the seducer, and had proceeded from bad to worse, till then prostrate in body and mind she was on the brink of an eternal world full of anguish and despair. "Oh !" said she "I left the school in a fit of pride, because my teacher very properly complained of my dress as unsuitable to my station. This, alas! Sir, was the commencement of my ruin. I fell out of acquaintance with the good, and became intimate with a wicked young man, above my rank in life, who *From an interesting little work by the respected author, entitled, "A voice to the Churches on the present condition of those who have been pupils in our Sunday Schools," &c. LOVE KEEPING WATCH. first flattered my vanity and then destroyed my peace; and here I am in this miserable abode, the victim of my own folly and crime, without one friend to care for me whether I live or die. O Sir! is there any hope for one so guilty as I am?" I did not fail, with due discrimination, to lay open to the view of this unhappy wanderer the fountain of Divine mercy, and to point her to the exhaustless compassion of Him who "is able to save them to the uttermost who come unto God by Him." After three days and nights of extreme bodily suffering, born with exemplary submission, she died, expressing a humble but earnest reliance on the merits of Him who alone is able to save. Never was confession of sin more unreserved, nor the sense of unworthiness more oppressive. She looked through her tears to the cross, and was doubtless received by Him who casts off none who come unto Him. But there was one request which she made to me which I can never forget. In describing and condemning the feelings of pride which led her to leave her Sabbath school, she said, with tears in her eyes, "O Sir! if you should ever hear of any other thoughtless creature like myself, in your Sunday school, tempted to leave it for some imagined offence, pray, do ask some kind lady to visit the unhappy offender, and persuade her to return to the forsaken path of duty. I do think, if this had been done in my case, before my virtuous principles were destroyed, I should have gone back to my school, and then, Sir, you would never, perhaps, have heard the sad details with which I have made you acquainted." A narrative such as this, illustrates, in very striking terms, the snares which are spread in the path of our Sabbath scholars on their quitting school. In too many instances they are conscious of few other restraints upon sinful habit except those of the Sabbath school; and, when they are removed, the current of temptation sets in upon them, and they are borne along with a resistless and destructive force. Now, to ward off such results, and to preserve and perpetuate the benefits accruing from institutions which are the glory of the age in which we live, it becoms an imperative duty, on the part of the Churches, to provide the best means they possibly can, to surround and protect those who have been in our schools at the moment when they are most exposed. "CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME." THERE are many proverbs, sayings, and traditions in the world, some of which are very good, and some might be bettered, or might better not be used. The one above designated is of long standing. Whether it originated with Nabal, or is of still more remote antiquity, the writer, who is no very great antiquarian, cannot tell. At all events, it has become so venerable as to have secured a regular standing amongst the convenient sayings of men of a certain class, and seems to be of about as good authority, with them, as words of Holy Writ. Indeed, I am inclined to the opinion that some of them have quoted it so frequently, and with so much complacency and confidence, that they have come to believe that it is somewhere in the Bible, though exactly where they do not just now remember. When our Lord was on the earth, at a certain time there came to him certain Scribes and Pharisees, saying, "Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread." In reply to this, the Saviour said, "Why do ye also transgress the com 499 mandment of God by your tradition? For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother; and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; and honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition." Have some of the careful ones of the present day inverted the tradition, and, instead of saying, "It is a gift to the Lord," say, "It is a gift to my children?" If called on for a subscription to any work of religious benevolence, they have great fears of being worse than an infidel, and they must provide first for their own household. They are solicited to contribute liberally to send the gospel to the heathen. And they stare at you, to see whether you are in your right mind. "Send the gospel to the heathen! well, if that is not the poetry of philanthropy, sure enough! Haven't we heathen enough at home? I think we have no religion to send off. We need a great deal more than we have. Charity begins at home." Well, you say, Give me something for the cause of Home missions. "Home missions, home missions! nothing but beg, beg, beg. I have to give as much as I can afford to support our own minister, and my opinion is, that charity begins at home." Well, neighbour, I have come in good time. Our minister's stipend is behind, and though I do not think it quite scriptural, or becoming, to speak of the scanty support which we have promised to give him as a charity, we shall be very glad of your help in paying what has been due to him for several months, and what his family very much need. "Family! family! I wonder if I have not a family too. I have to work and save to support my own household. I am not required to take the bread out of my children's mouths to support other folk's families. I must take care of my own. Charity begins at home." This charity has been at home a long time. I wonder if she will ever get ready to go abroad, and look after the poor and perishing for whom the Lord of glory laid down his life. She cannot be very declared that she "seeketh not her own." I fear we nearly related to the charity of whom the apostle have not done with those who make the Word of God of none effect by their traditions. LOVE KEEPING THE WATCH. Pray, little one, that God may bless -Hinds. OBJECTIONS TO PRAYER. [In a recent Number we presented our readers with a noble passage on this subject, taken from Dr Chalmers' sermons. As the objections in question seem to be received with favour in some quarters from which better things might have been expected, we think it right to insert, as follows, an additional argument on the subject from the pen of an able and accomplished writer, Dr W. L. Alexander. contained in a sermon recently published by him, the whole of which will repay perusal.-Ed. C. T.] An objection has been urged against prayer, drawn from the immutability of God and the stability of the order of nature. This objection properly resolves itself into two distinct arguments, which it may be of advantage to consider separately. It is The former may be stated thus: God is immutable. Now, He either intends that what you ask in prayer shall happen, or He does not. If He does, then you will get it without asking for it; if he does not, your asking for it will never procure it, as no reasons you can assign, no entreaties you can urge, can ever effect any change on the absolutely Immutable. At first sight, there appears in this objection no small force. It seems to reduce the efficacy of prayer to metaphysical impossibility. But when objections of this kind are urged against practical conclusions, which we know by satisfactory evidence to be just, they afford only a sort of intellectual paradox; we feel at once that there must lurk a sophism in the reasoning somewhere; and, even when we cannot detect the sophistry, we allow the reasoning to have little or no influence on our conduct. So the clever sophist of old demonstrated that bodies cannot move, and that by a process which has never yet, I believe, been satisfactorily refuted; yet who ever believed him? who ever accepted his conclusion as actually true? Not even himself! It is much the same with such an objection as that above stated against prayer. It may afford a puzzle for metaphysical wits; but plain people, even though they cannot refute it, will go on without being in the least influenced by it. A metaphysical ingenuity is impotent when brought to bear against a practical conviction. But the sophism in this objection we may more than suspect; it may, I think, be very clearly pointed out. Observe, in the first place, that this objection proceeds on the assumption that immutability in God is the same thing as immutability in man; that is, that the Divine Being resolves beforehand on some course to be pursued, and will not allow himself to be moved from that by any thing that may subsequently occur. Now, a little reflection will suffice to show, that all such representations of Deity are purely tropical; they have no absolute reality. With God there is nothing before, nothing after. To Him, nothing occurs. He occupies an eternal present. It is plain, therefore, that to reason in regard to Him as if He were subjected to the law of events, must infallibly land us in error. It is plain also, that as we can never comprehend how God fills eternity, it is absurd in us to attempt to determine, by a logical process, the relation in which events, as they occur to us, stand to Him. The whole subject is wrapped in impenetrable night, and we only prove our own impotence when we attempt to meddle with it. Secondly. Even if we impute to God immutability in the human sense of that term, we must presume that in making up His mind (so to speak) to any given course, He has taken into view all the circumstances affecting that course. But if he has estimated all, contingent as well as necessary, then He has estimated the prayers we offer among the rest. It follows, that these prayers form as essential a condition of the Divine immutability as any other of the occurrences relating to the course in question. If God, having foreseen them, has taken them into account (I speak after the manner of men), then, supposing them not to be offered, it is manifest that part of the terms of the Divine calculation would fall to the ground, and that, consequently, He would have to change His plan; just as a general changes. his plan of battle when he finds that he has calcu lated on certain things taking place which do not take place. Even then, if we regard God's immutability as the same thing with human immutability, we must see that our prayers, instead of coming into collision with it, are essential to it. Thirdly. All that we really know about the immutability of God is, that what He promises to us He will assuredly do, saving the conditions under which He has promised it. Now, if God has specially promised a blessing on condition we pray for it, it is manifest that the direct effect of a belief in his immutability will be to lead us to offer prayer for that blessing if we desire it; as was strikingly exemplified in the case of Daniel, who, when he understood-by studying the Divine declarations by Jeremiah concerning the duration of the Babylonish captivitythat the deliverance of his people was certain, and that the time for it was drawing nigh, was, by this very assurance, moved to earnest prayer and supplication, that what was thus determined might take place." In this there is something quite natural. What the pious mind most desires is, that the will of God should be done; and what, therefore, such an one will be most emboldened to ask of God, is that what he knows God has purposed may come to pass. But if this hold true where God has specifically promised any thing in answer to prayer, there is no reason why it should not hold equally true where a promise of a general kind has been given to this effect. Now God has, in general, promised that true prayer offered to Him for the blessings of which we stand in need shall be effectual. It follows that, seeing He is immutable, we have in this the best security and the greatest encouragement to make our requests known unto Him. The doctrine of the Divine immutability, therefore, instead of presenting a difficulty in the way of the man who would call upon God in the day of trouble, is, when rightly considered, one of the greatest inducements he can have to betake himself to this re source. The other form in which this objection is put forth is of a more atheistical cast. It founds not on the immutability of God, but on the stability of nature. The order of nature, we are told, is fixed; all things obey certain laws, and happen in obedience to settled and unalterable arrangements; and consequently, to expect the Divine Being to interpose, so as to prevent the regular sequence of events, is unreasonable and absurd. When presented in this form, it will be seen that the objection is one not merely against prayer as a means of securing the aids of Omnipotence, but against many other things, which those adducing it are not in all cases prepared to renounce. It holds, for instance, as much against prayer as an instrument for the procuring of reflex results, as an instrument for the procuring of direct results. The established course of nature embraces all results not supernatural, and if its uniformity place a bar in the way of using prayer for the securing of one |