seven days;" when "the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound."

"When the Christian's last pit is digged; when he is descended to his grave, and hath finished his state of sorrows and suffering; then God opens the river of abundance, the rivers of life and never-ceasing felicities. And this is that which God promised to his people:-'I hid my face from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy upon thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer.' So much as moments are exceeded by eternity, and the sighing of a man by the joys of an angel, and a salutary frown by the light of God's countenance, a few groans by the infinite and eternal hallelujahs; so much are the sorrows of the godly to be undervalued, in respect of that which is deposited for them in the treasures of eternity. Their sorrows can die, but so cannot their joys. And if the blessed martyrs and confessors were asked concerning their past sufferings, and their present rest, and the joys of their certain expectation, you should hear them glory in nothing but the mercies of God, and ‘in the cross of the Lord Jesus.' Every chain is a ray of light, and every prison is a palace, and every loss is the purchase of a kingdom, and every affront in the cause of God is an eternal honour, and every day of sorrow is a thousand years of comfort, multiplied with a never-ceasing numeration; days without night, joys without sorrow, sanctity without sin, charity without stain, possession without fear, society without envying, communication of joys without lessening: and they shall dwell in a blessed country, where an enemy never entered, and from whence a friend never went away."

(To be continued.)

PROVIDENCE AND PROPHECY; or, God's Hand Fulfilling his Word; more especially in the Revolutions of 1848, and Subsequent Events. By Rev. WILLIAM REES. Hughes, London.

THIS book is not to be classed with the miserable rubbish which is ever issuing from the press on "unfulfilled prophecy" and "apocalyptic visions"-subjects before which profound spirits stand off in awe, but which seem to have a mysterious" attraction for the rodomontadal, superficial, and popularityseeking minds. Regarding the Bible references to Popery as directed to the Popery of men rather than that of systems; the Popery of the depraved soul rather than that of any particular church; and loathing as we do the heterodoxy of the life more than the heterodoxy of the brain; we are not able to subscribe to all this book contains. In stating this we are not afraid of incurring the displeasure of the author, who, with the mingled modesty and daring of a truly great mind, says in his preface, "Let tender mercy be extended to the style, but stern justice to the sentiments." We appreciate this book, not merely because it abounds with important historic information, and teems with noble sentiments, but because it breathes the breath of life-free, unaffected, vigorous life, capable of far higher developments than appear on its pages. We shall be right glad to meet our author soon again in our literary walk, and earnestly trust that the man who has filled Wales with his name, and is enlightening and interesting her with his Welsh pen, will turn his attention a little more to his Saxon neighbours.

RELIGION AND BUSINESS; or, Spiritual Life in one of its Secular Departments. By A. J. MORRIS. Ward and Co.

THERE are two sore evils amongst us-the theoretical secularism of the sceptic, and the practical secularism of the

church. In lecture-rooms, on controversial platforms, and in books, these are widely dissimilar; but in the market, and the every-day duties of life, there is such a correspondence between many of the professed followers of Jesus and the disciples of Owen, as to baffle the discriminating faculty. One spirit animates them. Their commercial aims are one: to one goal, with equal eagerness, they direct their steps. When we think of the hypocrisy of acting contrary to our profession, the sin of misrepresenting Christianity to the world, we are disposed to regard the practical secularism of the church as the greater evil. It seems to us, therefore, far more beseeming for practical spiritualists to seek to preach out the Demases from the church than to preach in the Holyoakes from the world. Indeed, success in the latter is not to be expected until the accomplishment of the former. Mr. Morris's little book bears powerfully, so far as it goes, against the greater evil. "It is not," as the author says, "controversial nor doctrinal, but practical. It is addressed directly to the conscience and the life." It is free alike from theological commonplaces and philosophic disquisitions. It abounds with healthy counsels; it suggests more than it contains. It is small in compass, but big in meaning; rich in thought, and racy in style.

LAYS OF THE FUTURE. By W. LEASK. Partridge and Co.

WE judge of poetry as we judge of beauty-by the general impression it makes upon our emotional nature. We shrink at the idea of having the object that captivates us questioned and cross-questioned at the cold bar of intellect. When our heart swells and surges under the gales of true poetry, your metres, artistic canons, analogical proprieties, and all else pertaining to mere poetics, go for nothing. Determining, as we do, the quality and power of poetry by the kind and measure of sentiment it evolves, we prize the "Lays of the Future." Great truths, wrought oftentimes into forms of exquisite beauty, appear amidst the scintillations of every page.

A HOMILY

ON

The Sphere of the Pulpit; or, the Mission of Ministers.

"But by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God."-2 Cor. iv. 2.

Of all classes of the community, teachers sustain the most important and honourable position. The artizan, the merchant, the lawyer, the physician, the statesman, sustain offices which dwindle into insignificance when compared with that of a teacher. He has to do directly with mind, and generally with mind in its most impressible and mouldable condition. He acts on the mainspring of society, and may throw the whole machinery into confusion, or assist in giving harmony to its movements, and utility to its results. The outlines of a nation's history are drawn in schools: there the intellectual and model types of future men are formed. The habits and conduct of the men of this age are but the actualizations of the ideas and lessons they received at school. The teacher stands nearest the world's heart; he is up at the fountain of moral and social life, and may give to its streams what tinge and direction he please. It is a sad reflection on the intelligence and moral insight of the age that its most valuable functionary should be so little appreciated and so badly remunerated. It will not be always so: coming for the true instructor of his age. vances, and the paramount claims of mind society will award to him the highest honours it has to bestow.

brighter times are As intelligence adbecome recognised,

But of all the teachers, the religious teacher occupies the

R

highest position. Of all functionaries of society, we award to him the pre-eminence, for reasons that shall hereafter appear. I am aware that but few will agree with me in this judgment, and many, perhaps, will treat it as the vain dream of an individual who has an overweening conceit for the office he has assumed. The speculative world thinks of the religious teacher as one who has more of soft sentiment than vigorous sense; the dispenser of hackneyed dogmas, rather than the enunciator of broad, soul-quickening, and self-digested truths; one who is the member and advocate of a little sect, rather than the brother and friend of universal man. The pulpit it looks at as a thing effete-an old tree, that was prolific in other ages, under whose clustered branches the good of past times sat and fed, but is now worn out. It has scarcely any foliage, has seldom any blossom, and is little else than a cumberer of the ground. It can only be tolerated as a relic of antiquity amidst the abounding verdure and rich fruitage of this age of mental fertilities. How far these opinions apply to conventional pulpits, and existing forms of religious instruction, is a matter for deep and serious inquiry—an inquiry which, I fear, would lead to humiliating discoveries. But such an investigation comes not within the scope of our present purpose. We are far enough from setting up a defence for things as they are in this respect. We have to observe the merits of religious teaching not as it is, or has been, but as it ought to be; to exhibit the pulpit not as we see it in the hands of men, but as we find it portrayed in the system of Christ and we shall, I think, find that, whatever objections men may have to pulpits and preachers, the pulpit and the preaching prescribed by Christianity, and which we advocate, supply the deepest wants of humanity, and are, therefore, the world's greatest blessings. Let us proceed to some illustrations of the importance of the pulpit, as suggested by the passage before us :

I. THAT THE PULPIT HAS CHIEFLY TO DEAL WITH THE

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COMMON CONSCIENCE OF HUMANITY. Commending ourselves