of the whole race of man, received command to offer sacrifices. It is true, that (like the law concerning capital punishment) the sacrificial command was afterwards embodied in the Jewish dispensation, which is past; but then the Adamic like the Noahical command had an authority quite distinct from that.

But to be serious, for this is a serious question, it appears to my own mind, that any appeal to the Noahical command, in order to justify the lex talionis which is condemned by the spirit of our common Christianity, is manifestly an outrage upon the fundamental principles of biblical criticism.

The few passages in the New Testament that the reviewer of Walter Scott quotes on behalf of his cause need no refutation: their own apparent weakness, when brought to the support of the gallows, is a sufficient refutation. Much might be said concerning the inconclusiveness of certain parts of the Review, which have no relation to the biblical question; but my purpose in writing is, merely to invalidate the correctness of the arguments built on the Jewish and Noahical economy. No advocate of capital punishment, however brave he may be, will have the courage to maintain that Genesis and Leviticus being removed, Paul and John will suffice to rescue the gallows-tree from the spoiler.

R. W. D.

WEEPING MINISTERS.

"Tis not a cause of small import, The pastor's care demands; 'Tis what might fill an angel's heart, It fill'd a Saviour's hands."

Sound Let the

"Blow ye the trumpet in Zion! an alarm in my holy mountain! priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep!" This was the language of the prophet Joel to the ministers in his day, and it is quite applicable to us. Joel classified the people, and no doubt it is right to classify. We feel lost in the crowd; but make your selection, and then apply-the sword to wound, or the balm to heal. First take the elders, then the congregation,-next the children, and then the infants at the breast but the ministers are the only persons commanded to weep-why was this? Was it that by their sins of omission and commission they had been the chief contributors to the nation's misery, or that by their example and influence they should be the chief instruments in promoting a nation's blessedness? Perhaps both. But look at the spiritual aspect of our country and see if there are not five reasons why ministers should weep.

I. Because our time and our talents have

not been more unreservedly consecrated to the service of Christ.

Few pious young men enter on the sacred ministry without having grand and absorbing views of the work: "Who is sufficient for these things?" O how we promised ourselves, and how we promised others, what great things we would attempt for the glory of our Master ! We remember our ordination vows, and weep. One young man said, "If I should live to the age of Methuselah, every day shall be devoted to the saving of souls; and if I had the wealth of both the Indies, every farthing of it shall be devoted to the cause of Jesus ;" but alas ! how far short of this has been the reality. Perhaps this young man is only a picture of half the young men who have entered on the solemn work for the last thirty years. One hard student, when taking a review of his life, exclaimed, "I have spent all my days in laboriously doing nothing." Others are luxuriating over some beautifully written book, while almost all the people outside the study door are going to the devil! O how much more might every minister have done for the real welfare of souls, if his heart had been more entirely consecrated to God!

II. Let the ministers of the Lord weep -because in our ministry we have not suffciently depended on the Spirit of God.

We have had solemn lessons on this subject, from the Bible, and from our own happy and painful experience, yet we have not profited as we ought. Our creed is good-but our practice! We say that we believe the prophet,-" Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord." We say that we believe the Saviour, "Without me ye can do nothing." We say that we believe the apostle, "The Spirit quickeneth," and we have reason to believe it; for when he breathed on the dry bones, they lived,-and when he knocked at the heart, the rock brake in pieces,—and when he touched the iceberg, it became a flame of fire. Oh, yes, we have seen it. Think of that hardened and profane young man, who became a penitent, and then became a preacher! Think of that sea-captain, whose ship deck almost shook with his oaths, calling his wife and children around him to pray! and, lastly, think of that self-righteous merchant, who sat under the word unmoved for twenty years, pricked to the heart, and his tears became his meat for three days and three nights. Oh, yes, we ought to look more to the Spirit. Experience proves that the men who honour the Spirit most are most honoured in their ministry. A warm-hearted and devoted preacher, who works hard for God, and depends greatly on the Spirit, is generally successful in the conversion of sinners; and, after all, that is the chief thing. Mr. Cecil once said,

There is a manifest want of the Spirit on the ministry of the present day; I feel it myself, and I see it in others;"-and who that sees and feels aright will not adopt the same language! O, let the ministers of the Lord weep What is the cause of our having so small a portion of the Spirit? God could convert a whole congregation in one day. What hindereth? He could come down on our Sunday-schools as showers that water the earth,-and what hindereth? Is it because the Spirit's aid has been so feebly' sought, so little depended upon? O, could we live more in the Spirit, and walk in the Spirit, and bring forth the fruits of the Spirit, we should see more of his mighty working in the midst of us. Multitudes would be added to the Lord, both men and

women.

III. Let the ministers of the Lord weep, because we feel so little compassion for precious souls.

All the people around us will be saved or lost; if they are saved, it will be greatly through our prayerful, active labours; if they are lost, it will be chiefly through our neglect. Paul could not write about some of his old friends without weeping-and why? Because they were living an ungodly life. David could not look on one class of men without saying, "Rivers of water run down my eyes, because they keep not thy law." And Paul's Master and David's Lord was so touched with compassion for souls, that he laid down his life as a ransom for them. And are we bis servants, and shall we see the ways of Zion mourn, because her followers are few, and not come forth to the help of the Lord? How ought a minister to be humbled, and mortified, and ashamed to see an aged sinner sitting under his ministry for twenty years unconverted! Perhaps he is amiable, and benevolent, and upright; but the citadel of his heart is shut up against Christ. He will not surrender to the King of kings. How deplorable his state!-yet who weeps over him?

Then, think of a young man, - educated, accomplished, talented,- but he sits, like leviathan, covered with scales, and laughs at the shaking of a spear. Oh, shall not my soul weep in secret places over that precious soul? It ought,-but, alas! how few tears are shed over young sinners!

These are the people who attend our ministry; but think of the multitudes outside, who are perishing, and for whose conversion no adequate effort is made. If it were only one in a hundred who strayed, what should we do? Should we not leave the ninety and nine, and go after that which was lost, and search diligently until we found it? I suppose so. But it is not one in a hundred; oh, no! it is fifty at least.

See how they perish! "Broad is the road and wide is the gate that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat." And who goes out to put "the cross" before them, to keep them back? Who goes out into the highways and hedges to compel them to come in? If they come to us, well, we will preach to them; but who encloses "waste lands?" Who breaks up "fallow ground?" Who ventures on the regions of the shadow of death, and originates a new field of labour, capable of employing and sustaining a pastor? Who Let the perishing multitudes in our populous districts speak, and let the ministers of the Lord weep.

IV. Let the ministers of the Lord weep, because so much of their labour is lost.

No time is so valuable as a minister's time; no labours so important as a minister's labours. He works for eternity. Yet how few are converted under our sermons ! We plan, we study, we read, we write, we preach, and the people perish; and shall we not weep? O, bow the silver-tongued prophet complained, "Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" Again, hear the lamentation. "All day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people." This is the language of bitter disappointment; and yet, if twenty, or forty, or sixty, are converted by a year's labours, we seem quite satisfied. It is, indeed, enough to call forth our praises,— for one soul is worth a world; but we should never be satisfied while the larger half in our congregations are unconverted. sinners! dear, unconverted sinners! our neighbours and friends, you, you are the persons who trouble us. It is you who make us weep. Your case is very alarming, and we do not feel enough about you.

V. Let the ministers of the Lord weep, because they must appear as witnesses at last against some who were their constant hearers, and perhaps their kindest friends.

Brethren we must give up an account about ourselves, and we must give up our account about you. Perhaps there will be nothing so overwhelming at the judgmentseat of Christ as the meeting of a minister and his congregation. Some will be his glory and joy; others will be condemned, because they believed not the gospel. Our connexion is not one of small importance. It must not be treated lightly. Think of our meeting! See the Judge appear! Hear him ask the preacher, "Didst thou warn, and invite, and encourage that sinner to call on me, that he might be saved?" "Yea, Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I warned him from the pulpit, I visited him at his house, and intreated him to be reconciled to God. He heard me, and wept,

and promised; but he halted between two opinions, and at last preferred the world to Thee." The sinner is speechless; his conscience says, "It is all true." The command is given,-"Take him, ye angels, bind him hand and foot, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." And shall not ministers weep?

Application.

1. Behold the responsibility of the Lord's ministers: "If thou warn the sinner and he turn not, thou hast delivered thy soul; but if thou warn him not, he shall die in his iniquity, and his blood will I require at thy hands.' You ought to know this. It ought to be perfectly understood by every one in our congregations, that an unfaithful minister will be chargeable with the blood of souls; and you ought to wish and expect, to be lovingly and faithfully warned.

2. How much sympathy and prayer ought to be called forth in behalf of ministers! It is for your children they weep. It is for your partners they labour. It is for your parents they pray, and shall they not share largely in your sympathy and your prayers? Follow up our sermons with your counsels, and your prayers, and your tears. Let all in your house feel how tenderly you sympathize with the minister.

3. How churches and ministers ought to co operate in the great work of saving souls? Ministers ought to weep, and the tears of the saints ought to flow, at our mutual neglect. Brethren! our own hearts condemn us. We stand self-convicted. We have not united in this work as we ought. O, then, let us wake up now, and see what can be done.

4. If ministers ought to weep, and pious parents and friends ought to weep, what ought you to feel who are the chief objects of our solicitude? If the righteous scarcely be saved, where will you appear? O, what will become of you if you continue to neglect the great salvation! O, ye young men ! do not shut your ears to the voice of mercy. Hear the loving Saviour, "My son, give me thy heart! Obey the call; run to the Saviour; become his youthful followers; it will render you happy now, and happy for

ever.

O, ye young women! behold a bright, example in the youthful Mary, of whom the Saviour said, "She hath chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her."

Many have imitated her example. O, let us have joy in you all as followers of the Lamb, that if we weep about you, it may be tears of joy. Ye unconverted old people! O, let us have joy in you also, and let it be soon: To-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your heart." Some of your own age have sought and found mercy. Come, then, and trust the Saviour now, that

66

MISSIONARY COMMUNION.

To the Editor of the Evangelical Magazine. DEAR SIR,-We are now looking forward to the annual meetings of our various religious societies, among which none are more interesting to a large portion of your readers than those of the London Missionary Society. Will you allow your pages to be the medium for a suggestion in reference to an important part of them, the Missionary Communion?

It was a happy thought to close the series of our missionary services by the joint participation of the Lord's Supper. That solemn ordinance appears peculiarly adapted at such a season to enlarge our fellowship with the church of Christ, to deepen and sanctify our missionary zeal by bringing it into contact with our most precious personal hopes, and to lead us to renew in the presence of the cross our consecration to the cause of God and man. The addresses by various esteemed ministers on these occasions are well suited to produce these effects; and yet there is a circumstance which I have reason to believe has caused many to retire disappointed, after having heard, and seen, and tasted, and handled, so much that was calculated to be in the highest degree beneficial. It is, that little or no time is allowed to gather up in the minds of the hearers what has been said; and the sentiments of one address, however important and salutary, are absolutely driven out of the thoughts by another ministerial exhortation that immediately succeeds it. Both may be equally excellent, but by coming so closely together, each in some degree neutralises the other. The Missionary Communion is surely a more solemn occasion than our other public meetings; we there especially meet the Great Master as well as his servants: but perhaps when there are scarcely any of the intervals of silence, which are afforded in the ordinary celebration, of the Lord's Supper, we realize the presence of the ministers rather than that of the King in the midst of the assembly, whose footsteps are most often heard in the sacred stillness that is intermingled with pastoral admonition at the table. It is then that the scriptural instruction or precept just uttered can take permanent effect.

These few remarks have been penned, not in a spirit of criticism, but in a desire that the object contemplated in this interesting and hallowed service may be more fully accomplished. Other impediments may,

indeed, stand in the way, but this is one which probably, by a slight alteration in the arrangements for the evening, could be easily removed. There might be fewer addresses delivered, or those given might be more brief; and if we should thus have less of man and more of God in our convocations, it would be the very thing which our churches want.

Trusting that the opinions of a hearer thus uttered will not be considered an intrusion into matters which are in the disposal of our respected ministers.

I remain, dear Sir,

EVANGELICAL PRESS OF FRANCE. The New Voice.-La Voix Nouvelle. It has afforded us heartfelt pleasure to hear that Evangelical Protestantism is at last represented in the French daily press; -Evangelical Protestantism, we say, not Episcopalian, nor Presbyterianism, nor any exclusive denomination but Bible Christianity alone. Absorbed as our neighbours are in political discussions, engrossed by questions connected with the revenue, electoral reform, and international relations, we look upon the publication of La Voix Nourelle as a good omen,-as a token full of import for the future. It shows that the reading public on one hand are aware of the low state into which periodical literature is sunk, whilst on the other, Protestants feel the necessity of forgetting petty logomachies to unite their whole strength against the combined forces of Popery and infidelity. Among the most cheering signs of the times we live in, we would certainly rank our conviction, which is spreading far and wide, that there is one bond for Christians of every denomination-the gospel. Such a conviction had manifested itself in the organization of the Evangelical Alliance; we see it once more bringing forth its fruits by the appearance of La Voix Nouvelle.

The readers of our Magazine need not be reminded that Protestantism in France was, till the revolution of 1789, proscribed by law, persecuted; and that the pressure of iniquitous decrees, enforced by the joint machinations of secular and ecclesiastical authority, prevented the citizens from weighing with calmness and impartiality the different arguments brought forward on either side. By degrees, however, Jesuitism has been compelled to abdicate; the French Protestants are restored to their rights as a political as well as a religious body, and now, feeling that negative concession must be con

sidered merely as a step to something higher, they ask to be heard.

"Three principles alone are at work in modern society," says La Voix Nouvelle, "the sovereignty of intellect, or philosophism; the sovereignty of the priest, or Roman Catholicism; the sovereignty of the Bible, or Protestantism. It is impossible to conceive a fourth element of civilization; such an element does not exist: then those above named constitute what we would call the social triangle.

"In our important periodical literature, the first angle is occupied by infidelity in its various shapes-indifference, materialism, scepticism; the second angle belongs to Roman Catholicism with its two chief shades, Gallicanism and Ultramontanism; the third, the Biblical angle, has remained empty, we must fill it up. Let us explain our views still more clearly. Every morning, when it awakes, reading France is appealed to by the defenders of interests, parties, ideas, systems of all descriptions, waging war against one another, for the conquest of the present, or the direction of the future. Religion, politics, philosophy, industry, arts, sciences, everything is represented, everything finds an utterance, everything stirs about, under the full blaze of daily publicity, everything-except Protestantism. For in this universal concert of human passions and convictions, the voice of the gospel alone is missing.

"In fact, scriptural Christianity, amongst our daily newspapers, has not one advocate; the periodicals are subdivided into two classes quite distinct, and corresponding pretty well to the phases of our history and the tendencies of our own times, the Catholic journals on the one hand, the infidel gazettes on the other. But we have not one important newspaper of a pure Christian character, appealing solely to the word of God.

"Whether sciences, arts, politics, or religion be the topic, Protestantism is continually attacked, calumniated, caricatured, scoffed at; a clever and perfidious hand is ever busy in pouring poison at the fountain heads of public thought, in order that prejudice and repulsion should stick to us, and that the name of Protestant may become nothing else but a disgraceful sign of opprobrium. Those men who are gifted with some degree of foresight, and whose thoughts are not wholly taken up with temporal interests, watch anxiously the direction of the national feeling, misled as far as we are concerned; they ask where that movement will carry us, if neglected in its growth; and their legitimate fears anticipate the day when Protestantism will awaken with fettered hands and feet, under the insolent whip of a mediæval Popery. All Protestants, truly

worthy of the name, are interested in the existence of a periodical belonging to their communion; those who do not wish to be sent to prison for a controversial pamphlet ; those who feel indignant at seeing their father's remains mingling with the dust of the vilest criminals; those who would prevent young children from being carried away with impunity by priests; those who would follow an honourable career, without being subject to the worry of stupid bigotry; those who would procure for our poor a morsel of bread and a bundle of fire-wood, though they may not be able to exhibit a certificate of confession; those who would shield a dying man against the conversions of a nun-whether white, black, or grey; those who would, along with their rights as Protestants and Christians, retain their rights as citizens and Frenchmen; those, in fine, who would be Protestant and free, Protestaut and honoured, Protestant and peaceful; all these have an interest in the establishment of our Journal, in the planting of that tree of religious freedom, whose roots are to strike down deep in biblical ground, whose foliage will invite to its shade the whole Protestant family.'

La Voix Nouvelle eschews all party-spirit in politics as well as in ecclesiastical questions:

Some people, many, perhaps, think it impossible for a periodical to steer a middle course between radicalism and conservatism, without touching upon one or other of the subordinate isms which compose the political Archipelago. Yet the Voix Nouvelle, as far as we have been able to judge of its tone, seems to have solved the problem, and it answers the question

"Which king, Bezonian? Speak, or die!"

in terms such as the following: "What party would be bold enough to maintain, that a conservative, a radical, is necessarily ipso facto animated by those generous intentions without which talent itself becomes a plague."

To say the truth, there are two enemies alone against whom a constant war is to be waged,-Popery and Infidelity. From this double evil springs the mischievous ideas so Let the world actively at work amongst us.

be once reformed by the gospel principles, as apostolical virtues spring forth from a society on the eve of moral dissolution, then it will be felt that politics ought not to be reduced to a question of proper names, "their probity shall no more be called a niaiserie, nor charity a rhetorical dictionary."

We regret that want of space prevents us from enlarging more on the merits which recommend La Voix Nouvelle to the attention

of all our countrymen. We shall just add, in conclusion, that the editors intend circulating it extensively among the Roman Catholic communities, for whom newspapers are becoming more and more the sources of every kind of information. But to do this, money is necessary; and the friends of Protestantism in England may efficiently assist the diffusion of gospel principles on the Continent, by forwarding donations, in favour of La Voix Nouvelle, to Messrs. Herries and Farquhar, bankers, St. James'sstreet, London. Subscriptions, (27. 6s. a year,) are received by M. M. Partridge and Oakey, 35, Paternoster-row.