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was the fullest and freest expression of opinion on principles and practices, on men and measures, on things done, doing, and to be done. The whole subject, therefore, in all its length and breadth, is now before our mind's eye. We have now an abundance of materials for criticism and discussion, for philosophical dissertation and practical deduction. We now perfectly understand the nature and character of the enterprise. We are now able to estimate the merits and claims of our companions in labour; and we are prepared, without fear, favour, or partiality, to state our conclusions. But for this we require the time and space of another month.

NEW ASYLUM FOR INFANT ORPHANS. THE Report for the present year has just been issued, and the result is highly creditable to the spirit of the age. This Institution, the offspring of compassion, in the garb of true liberality, is but of yesterday, and yet it has attained to no inconsiderable vigour. Already FIVE-AND-FORTY little orphans are admitted to its precious privileges. Let us understand this: here we are, surrounded by five-and-forty dead men-fathers, and four of the mothers laid along with them! Among the prostrate dead stand forty-one mothers, most of them utterly destitute, surrounded by a group of one hundred and ninetyseven orphans! What is to be done? Whither shall they go? To the wide world? To the parish workhouse? No! This Institution stands forth and receives to its tender bosom Five-andforty of the most helpless among them, thus at once freeing the hands of the poor mothers to struggle for the rest. Blessed deed! The infant orphan stands in the highest class of charity, and never in vain does that charity appeal to the generous hearts of Englishmen! In proof of this, we point with triumph to the noble list of subscribers in the Report before us, extending to no less than fifty-two pages! The expenditure for the year amounts to £2,327 15s. 10d, less a balance of £296 9s. 6d. But then the life subscriptions, which of course are not repeated -unhappily, in one sense-amount to no less than £1,022, and the annual subscriptions, the main-stay of the Institution, to only £733 18. 6d. To place the Asylum, then, even on its present scale, on a safe foundation, it will at once appear that the present annual subscriptions must be trebled-a point, however, which may soon be accomplished. Ladies of England, the true Protestant "Sisters of Mercy," this is emphatically your concern ! The Committee, with confidence, look to YOU! Up, then, and to work, without the delay of an hour!

CONGREGATIONAL SCHOOL,LEWISHAM. THE Report has just come to hand, and not a moment must be lost in calling attention to it. It is bad, very bad, bad throughout, dispiriting to the Committee, and disgraceful to the community This, which is one of our most important institutions, receives not one-fourth of the support to which it is entitled. Every church, every pastor, is deeply interested in its prosperity. It has been already an exceeding great blessing; but that blessing may be indefinitely diffused. To a limited extent the support is generous and hearty. The annual subscriptions for the year are £742; life subscribers, £126; donations, £21; collection, at Dr. Burder's, £14 58. But this is insufficient, even upon its present scale, to keep up the institution. Members of the Committee have actually advanced £175; £50 are owing to the Classical Master for salary due at Lady-day last! And, in conse quence of this state of things, the Committee were compelled to intimate that, "unless there be a considerable increase in the number of subscribers during the next six months, it will be indispensably necessary to omit the usual October Election." Can anything but the publication of these facts be necessary to bring a remedy for a state of things so deplorable, so discreditable, so impolitic? It is a fact that, while children from all parts of England and Wales are pressing for admission, several whole counties do not furnish a single subscriber, and several others, each, only four or five, and that during last year it obtained only a SINGLE COLLECTION.

These things ought not so to be, and we are confident they will be so no longer. Fifteen hundred circulars have, we see from the Report, been issued. We shall in due time proclaim the result.

OCTOBER COLLECTIONS. SPECIAL attention is requested to the Chronicle of British Missions, in our present Number. Will it be too much to hope that several hundred churches will this year be added to the roll of those which have heretofore concurred in the admirable arrangement?

AUTUMNAL MEETING OF THE UNION. OUR readers will perceive, that the Assembly is this year to be held in the West. There are both general and special grounds why this should be a very numerous and a very effective Assembly, some of which we shall specify in our next. All for whom it is practicable will, doubtless, make a journey to Plymouth a part of their autumnal arrangements.

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Review and Criticism.

The Memoirs and Select Works of the Rev. Joseph Fletcher, D.D. Edited by the Rev. JOSEPH FLETCHER, jun., of Hanley. In Three Volumes.

THE friends of the eminent man whose name adorns these goodly volumes will survey them with devout and unmingled satisfaction. Here there is no "bookmaking," no swelling of the publication by compositions of doubtful merit, by loose Notes of Sermons, and by fragments. There is not a page which men of judgment will wish to have been withheld, all is solid gold. While, together, the Volumes form a complete whole, they may also be had separately, with title pages to correspond. The first volume is devoted to the admirable Life, by his Son, which, in adaptation to instruct, interest, and edify, is inferior to nothing of the sort that has appeared in the course of the present century, with, perhaps, the single exception of the Great Episcopalian Commentator, of which Dr. Fletcher, writing to a relative in 1823, says, "I have recently read Scott's Life. It is a most useful and interesting Memoir, and deserves frequent reference as a means of grace to the mind in times of langour and depression. Next to the Bible, the lives of eminently good and great men are, in this respect, singularly profitable." Every reader will consider these words abundantly verified in the volume before us, which cannot fail to realize a very extensive circulation, and to become a permanent favourite with the church of Christ. The volume, throughout, is marked by superior ability, and by that rarer virtue in filial biography-remarkable discretion. It is distributed into four parts: Infancy and Boyhood,-College period; which will be read with great interest and advantage by all intelligent and aspiring young men, and more especially by students,Blackburn period; extending from 1807 to 1823, which opens his full career as a scholar, a writer, a pastor, and a tutor, and the Stepney period; which threw him into the vortex of the metropolis, where from 1823 till 1843, he shone as a star of the first magnitude. The third and fourth periods more particularly present a vast amount of first class correspondence, which, with great force and beauty, illustrates the writer's rich assem

blage of gifts and graces. The volume ends with a most masterly "Summary of Character," extending to upwards of sixty pages, which may be safely pronounced one of the completest delineations of character anywhere to be found; and which will, beyond doubt, be read with very general admiration. Of the closing part, from the pen of John Angell James, suffice it to say, that it is worthy both of the writer and the subject. It was among the crowning felicities of the honoured lives of such men as Thomas Scott, John Griffin, and George Burder, that the monuments, commemorative of their labours and virtues, were reared by filial hands,—a felicity of which a very ample share has fallen to the lot of the celebrated pastor of Stepney.

The second volume contains the Lectures on the Principles and Institutions of Popery, to which are appended Two Lectures on Puseyism, which it was our privilege to hear on their original delivery. This volume contributed not a little to the establishment of the Author's fame; but it is even more seasonable now than it was at the time of its first appearance. Strong Popery was then mainly confined to Lancashire; it is now extending itself from one side of England to the other. On this ground, a special importance attaches to the re-publication.

The third volume contains Posthumous Sermons, and a Valedictory Lecture delivered to the Students of Blackburn Academy on their leaving the Institution. This Lecture is one of extraordinary value, which may be frequently read with still increasing benefit not only by every student, but by every pastor, whether old or young. It well deserves a separate publication, that it may circulate throughout the Christian world in company with such pieces as Booth's Pastoral Cautions, Dr. A. Clarke's Let ter to a Methodist Preacher, and such like productions.

This notice may suffice to give the public some idea of the undertaking before us, which, while it does great credit to the family of the deceased, forasmuch as it involves no small pecuniary respon sibility, reflects lasting honour on that son who, while he bears the distinguished name, inherits no slender portion of the talents and virtues of his sainted parent.

Elements of Language, and General Grammar. By G. PAYNE, LL.D. Royal 18mo, pp. 236. Gladding. DR. PAYNE seems incapable of doing anything superficially; he will do it thoroughly, or not at all. This is the characteristic of all his writings, from the least to the greatest. The volume before us forms no exception to this statement. It is a solid, compact performance, which admirably supplies a serious blank in our academic literature. When it shall have obtained the circulation it merits, and to which, we believe, it is ultimately destined, thousands will be grateful for the boon thus conferred upon them. Our readers, however, are to remember that this is not a compendium of English Grammar. It assumes the mastery of some of the various excellent treatises now in use; and aims at carrying the student forward into regions of philosophical inquiry, into those great general principles on which all particular grammars are founded. It is a work specially adapted to the higher classes in our superior schools, to intelligent and inquiring young people in general,—and to the junior students of our various colleges in particular, of whatever sect or denomination. For these purposes we emphatically recommend it as a masterly digest of the whole of the interesting and important subject. For a mere trifle, and a small expenditure of time and labour, the reader may here acquaint himself with the views and sentiments of all the principal authors who have written on the Philosophy of Language. To convey our mind in a sentence, Dr. Payne has here achieved for language, what, in his ELEMENTS, he so successfully accomplished for Mental and Moral Philosophy. Can we bestow upon it higher praise?

The Life of Joseph, and the last Years of Jacob. A Book for Youth and for Age. By RALPH WARDLAW, D.D. Post 8vo, pp. 413. M'Lehose.

THIS Volume comprises thirteen lectures. The author tells us it has been his practice for many years "to deliver courses of lectures, expository, controversial, and miscellaneous, according to circumstances, on the evening of the first Lord's days of each successive month;" and that the lectures in the present volume form one of those monthly courses. To our English readers, this point requires

a word of explanation. In Dr. Wardlaw's chapel, as in all denominations. throughout Scotland, the principal sercommencing at two o'clock. All denovice is that of the afternoon, generally minations have, at least, forenoon and afternoon service; and in numerous instances there is also evening worship, every sabbath; in many cases, as in that of Dr. Wardlaw, there is only a monthly lecture, and that, generally, on

some

special subject. The volume before us hardly admits of analysis. The mere title indicates a theme as full of instruction as of tenderness, and which only a man of true and profound wisdom, of wide and prolonged observation, and wellmatured experience, was competent to discuss. We need hardly say that such a man pre-eminently is Dr. Wardlaw. the many services he has rendered to the public there are few entitled to greater praise than the present. Every page of it bespeaks the father, the sage, and the saint. It is, moreover, a most masterly specimen of expository preaching.

China and her Spiritual Claims.

Of

By

EVAN DAVIES, late Missionary to the Chinese. Royal 18mo, pp. 134. Snow. MR. DAVIES has wisely determined to act upon the great principle laid down by the Master in the precious words, "She hath done what she could." In the morning of life he presented himself on the Lord's altar for missionary service, and when driven from the field of labour, and thrown into the home vineyard, he resolves still to do what in him lies for the heathen; and hence the appearance of the work before us, which gives a fine, clear, concise, correct, and popular view of this following division of the subject:-China, great theme. The volume presents the a land "wholly given to idolatry," surveyed by Christian philanthropy-China, as a field for missionary operations, estimated-China, with all its difficulties, evangelized-Sketch of Confucius's life -Infanticide. We heartily commend the work to the general reader, and particularly as an excellent present to senior Sunday-scholars and young persons generally.

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excellent men who conducted the enterprise, and most worthily is it occupied by its first minister, Mr. Martin. Already we are gratified in being able to state that, while the congregation is crowded, the church under his care is in a highly prosperous condition, and, at an early day, bids fair to stand prominently forth among the churches of the Metropolis in works of home and foreign benevolence. At the outset they have done wisely in collecting their strength and concentrating their efforts to fortify their own citadel, in annihilating their debt, in collecting a congregation, and in rearing scholastic institutions. Mr. Martin has also, personally, acted very much on the same principle; he has wisely resisted the manifold temptations with which every new comer is beset in the Metropolis, to be everywhere but at home, and to attend to everybody's business but his own, till the novelty wears off, and then he is neglected abroad, and by that neglect driven to his home, -a home dreary and desolate, because unwisely sacrificed to a thankless public. Eschewing this rock, on which not a few excellent men have split, Mr. Martin determined that his first duty was to become rooted and grounded in Westminster. He succeeded. Among the most hopeful methods of gaining his object he considered an intense devotion to the young-not to mere children, but to young people generally so called. As one method of reaching them, in September, 1844, he began to deliver monthly a discourse to youth till August, 1845, publishing each immediately after its delivery. These now collected form the present volume, which is prefaced by an earnest, solemn, and pungent introduction from the pen of J. A. James.

Christian Charity Explained; or, The Influence of Religion upon Temper, stated in an Exposition of 1 Cor. xiii. By JOHN ANGELL JAMES. Fifth Edition, post 8vo, pp. 320. Hamilton. We read this work on its appearance, in 1828, with an interest which has never been wholly obliterated, and now, at this advanced period, our conviction of its meritsis rather increased than diminished. The portion of Scripture selected as the basis of the volume is one of the most beautiful within the whole compass of inspiration; and it is but simple justice to say that the expositor has come to his work richly imbued with the spirit of the apostolic writer. It is full of heavenly

wisdom, and manifests no ordinary acquaintance with the workings of grace in the human heart, the nature of Christian fellowship, and the condition of the world at large. The sale has already been extensive, but it is much to be desired that it had been ten-fold; and we trust the next eighteen years will witness a vast increase of the aggregate circulation.

The Sabbath Day Book; or, Scriptural Meditations for every Lord's day in the Year. By JOHN LEIFCHILD, D.D. 12mo, pp. 360. Tract Society.

A VERY Valuable addition to the family library, and multitudes debarred from the courts of God's house will bless the author for its publication. This volume will take a foremost place in the class of works to which it belongs. It forms the marrow, the cream, the essence of a portion of the author's powerful ministrations. The essays are not fragments of sermons on the respective texts, but the sermons themselves, condensed and. recast in a form better adapted for self-reflection, or the meditation of a select class. The strain which pervades the volume is just what it ought to be-doctrinal, experi mental, devotional, and practical. To our own taste, individually, they are masterly specimens of the best class of sermons. As a man of business, the writer proceeds to his work at once, and when he has done he makes an end. Here there is no rambling, no wire-drawing, no small talk, no twaddle. We do not say we recommend the volume: this will be unnecessary. It will be enough thus simply to advertise it, to command for it a most extensive demand.

The Attractions of the Cross; designed to illustrate the leading truths, obligations, and hopes of Christianity. By GARDINER SPRING, D.D., New York. 12mo, pp. 334. Tract Society.

THE visit of Dr. Spring, his sermons and speeches, some dozen years ago, are remembered with pleasure by a numerous class of our readers. Few Americans ever made so deep an impression on an English audience. The fact of his visit has ever since prepared the way for the safe and successful re-publication of whatever has emanated from his pen; and we cannot doubt that this last, the largest and by far the most valuable of his productions, will meet with a hearty wel

come.

CHARACTERISTIC NOTICES.

The Apostolical Christians and Catholics of Germany: A Narrative of the present movement in the Roman Catholic Church. Second Edition. 12mo, pp. 209. Wertheim.

THIS is the completest view that has yet been given of the great German movement; it comprises all the principal documents that have appeared on all sides concerning it, and supplies an ample fund of materials for serious contemplation.

A System of English Grammar, founded on the Philosophy of Language and the Practice of the best Authors; with copious Exercises, for the use of Schools and Private Study. By C. W. CONNOR, M.A., English Master of the Western Academy, Glasgow. 12mo, pp. 168. Oliver and Boyd; Simpkin.

This is a very workman-like production, "sufficiently full, without being tediously minute." It is only a shilling more than Lennie's, while it is much more ample and satisfactory. Under the head of Syntax, in particular, its superiority to the smaller, and indeed many of the larger works, is strikingly apparent. It has our most cordial commendation to schools and to young men who are anxious by private study to improve themselves in the knowledge of their mother tongue.

Pilky Papers on Singular Subjects. By OLD HUMPHREY. Tract Society.

ADMIRABLE-wise-weighty-humorous-Old

Humphrey all over!

Passages from the Life of a Daughter at Home. Seeley.

A SOMEWHAT languid but well-meant dialogue.

Zaida: A Tale of Granada, and Minor Poems.
By LEWIS EVANS.
WELL&CONCEIVED, and written with power.

Seasons of Peace: Poems on Subjects Sacred and
Moral By MATILDA. Darton and Clark.
CORRECT sentiment-fluent and elegant versifi-
cation.

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British Missions.

CHRONICLE OF THE CONGREGATIONAL UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES: OF THE BOARD FOR GENERAL EDUCATION AND OF THE THREE SOCIETIES FOR BRITISH MISSIONS IN CONNECTION WITH THE UNION.

EIGHTH AUTUMNAL MEETING OF THE UNION. As announced in our last Number, the services connected with this important occasion are appointed to be held at Plymouth, Devonport, and Stonehouse, on Tuesday the 13th, Wednesday the 14th, and Thursday the 15th of October,

introduced by a public meeting for prayer on the evening of Monday, the 12th of October.

The three mornings of the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, will be devoted to the sessions of the delegates and members of the Union. The important subjects expected to engage the attention of the brethren assembled at these meetings have been already indicated: revision of the constitution of the Union, and of the methods of conducting the public business of its annual assemblies, and of their autumnal adjournments -plans for increased unity and efficiency in the management of the three British Mission So

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