is the religion of Englishmen that we want, and crown, the country, and the people, for it is then France would be free; whereas at present identified with the sober rational love of liberty, we have, to a great extent, an irreligious people, that on one hand will not trample upon others, and on the other cannot itself be trampled upon. and therefore France is doomed to suffer under a succession of despotisms, sometimes of the I believe also that the building of such sancmob and sometimes of one strong hand." In tuaries and providing religious worship is idenshort, no man can have been amongst the tified with all the best enjoyments of family life. French without seeing that they are not fit for If you examine the history of families that are liberty, because they have not the fear of God miserable, you will generally find that the Chrisstrong in their minds as a people. I was in tian religion does not exercise a due influence Paris on the memorable Lord's-day morning over their policy. I shall be told "there is Mr. when the present emperor was proclaimed and Mrs. So-and-so, they live like cat and dog." prince president. All Paris had been up the I should like to know their history, how and night before. Myriads had been up all night, why they were married: was theirs an union of some shooting off bad powder, and some drink- loving hearts or a money-bargain? Marriages ing bad brandy. Before dawn the volunteers for money are not according to the Christian of the national guard were assembled and religion-they are against the religion of our armed. But my impression is there was no holy faith, and do violence to the principles of sense in their conscience of the presence of the church of England. All such marriages are God, or of his providential and controlling in- contrary to the principles of the church of Engterference in human affairs. They were not land; and I protest solemnly, as a clergyman, ready to see, as the political wheel went round, against their being perpetrated in any parish that "the Lord was reigning." They cried, whatever. The dark records of the divorce"Long live fraternity, liberty, equality, repub- court prove it is high time to give this warning. licanism!" They inscribed those words on all To those that would sell a daughter I can only their public buildings. A few weeks after, the say that I hope God will bring them to repen. inscriptions were wiped off as with a sponge. tance. Depend upon it that, in proportion as A little time after that I was in the city of you seek to live in the principles of the church Bordeaux, and a gentleman said to me, "We of England, and regularly attend divine serdon't like revolutions coming down by post vice as the means of keeping them strong in from the centralizing capital." The great com- your mind, so will you find all your sanctities mercial city of Bordeaux seemed of so little ac- and your happiness increased. I was married count, that they were to obey Louis Napoleon before I went into orders, and I remember the as they had obeyed Louis Philippe when the time when I used to take my wife to church order came down. He said, thrusting his hand twice a-day regularly, and we came home through his hair with Gallician vehemence, strongly impressed with the thought that we "Ah! sir, how is it that in England you have ought to bear and forbear; and when we took so much freedom and no revolutions ?" I said, our nurslings to the font we could not have had wishing to startle him into reflection, "The the thought impressed on us in a more solemn answer is very simple: we go to church on manner that we were to bring them up in the Sundays, and keep the Lord's-day." He said, nurture and admonition of the Lord. It is said "Bless me, this is a new view of the subject!" that lord Palmerston has yielded to the wishes So I tried to explain to him, as well as I could, of the dissenters with regard to the religious that there was a kind of sobriety and thought- question. When it was thought that each man fulness superinduced in Englishmen's minds, would be requested to state his religious belief, by divine worship, so as to lead them to be very some of the popular newspapers advised the careful and calm in what they do in public people to announce themselves as "Sunday exaffairs a fact which lifts them into the enjoy- cursionists." Five millions of the people of ment of a far greater amount of liberty. You this country, it is stated, were absent from any generally find a strong military arm putting place of worship when the last census was taken. down strong popular opinion. It is so under I Garibaldi, the great liberator, who is forced to expel people from Sicily. When I got to Bordeaux, a gentleman came up to me, dressed in the garb of a clergyman. He said, looking at me for a moment, "I am a catholic priest. Thank you for those profound sentiments that you uttered to those merchants in the carriage." He took a peculiar mode of showing his respect, for he ordered a bottle of Madeira; and I suppose he said in his heart, "That man is an Englishman, and therefore must love strong drink." So I drank his health in a glass of Madeira. All these words are meant to illustrate the advantages of building a church, and the preaching in it the unpolluted doctrines of Christ, and the use of our blessed liturgy, in which we have the best thoughts of the best men of the best times, all brought together to 1 our devotions. It is the safeguard of the admit the day of the census was a bad day; but what were these people doing? Some were asleep in bed: some took rest on the Lord's-day. Some took medicine on that day; for I know people who never take medicine except on Sunday. How can they expect a blessing on their medicine? But, whatever was the cause they were away from God's house, I should like to know the private history of these people. I believe that from these people come those men who rob on the highway, who steal in all shapes they can, and finally come to some great grief. The happiness of a family, the obedience of children, the love of husband and wife, are all promoted by diligent attendance on the means of divine grace. I trust you will pardon me for making this long plain-spoken homily. I came to make it, and I meant to make it. But let me remind you there is something yet higher and more wonderful in the issues of divine worship and churchgoing. I sometimes feel inclined to smile, as Sarah did of old, at the greatness of the destinies connected with churches, compared with the littleness of the buildings themselves. The greatest issues are connected with the least and most trivial events, as men call events trivial; and some of the greatest battles have been decided by the chance of a spent ball or by the loss of a despatch by some peasant-boy, misled by a corrupted guide. You cannot measure the immensity of issues by the littleness of means. You might as well attempt to measure the sunlight by the size and shape of the human eye. That little building may be the instrument of saving many souls from eternal loss. That is a thought to fill one with awful joy: not only may it be the means of making many bad men good, of keeping that drunken man's wages for his wife and children instead of being spent in wretched selfish dissipation; but it may and will be the means probably of saving souls. I have no language, and thought has no words to express the importance of saving one soul. But suppose that soul is your own soul, and that this festival and the mission-church may, under God, be the turning-point in your history, and that you will be better for the time to come. O what hopes may we not have that the divine influence may come down upon you on this occasion, that you may lead hereafter a guiltless life, and so go up to heaven, in God's good time. Or, again, if anything would make me give money, time, or influence to the church, it would be the thought of one of my children being saved. Or, suppose it to be the soul of a servant. You say that servant may look to himself: that servant-boy might, perhaps, put into your own boys' head as much wickedness as may fill them with evil and send them down to the pit; but the influence of this sanctuary may have such an effect on that servant that he will say, “I'll never talk again one bad word to the boy; I am ashamed I ever did so, and I will never do it again as long as I live." Very well, that then may be the means of saving the soul of your boy; for it might have been the first step into the pit-the talking of that man of yours, and the shameful low speech with which they conversed with each other. I feel that I have said too much. I have tried to speak as I am simply and plainly as possible, that all may understand. I shall leave this post to be occupied by others. Although you have done some good service, I hope you will not stop. not an innovator on old-established usages, and I cannot but believe that the same spirit that built the mother-church of this parish in old time, and now the mission-house, will, in God's own good time, so work on the people here, that we shall see a church rising by the side of the mission-house; and that this, our small chapel, will develope into a goodly temple, where men will worship in the full "beauty of holiness." Other speakers followed; and, in conclusion, the doxology was sung, and the company dispersed. SUNDAY-SCHOOL TEACHING*. We should strive to make our church Sunday schools "Sabbath" or "rest" schools; and our Sabbath schools" Sunday" or "festival" schools; and we should greatly condescend to the mercurial temperament of young children, and not exact from them the phlegmatic primness or mental digestion of their elders, but provide for them, both in school and church, the frequent opportunity of change of posturesomething to gratify the eye and the ear; and in doctrine, " milk" and not " strong meat." To carry these principles into practice: should be the ruling spirits of the SundaySuggestion i.-The clergyman and his wife school, and should have it in their hearts to treat the lambs of Christ with double affectioneven as their own children-on that day; and the happiest results I believe would be obtained, if the clergyman could take regularly the first class, and the clergyman's wife the sixth or infant class in the morning-these being the classes on which the success of the Sundayschool mainly depends; and the lady the first class, and the clergyman be allowed rest in the afternoon: while the schoolmaster should be spared Sunday teaching, but act as general superintendent and registrar. Suggestion ii.- While our school-lesson should be real close work as long as it lasts, it should in no case extend beyond half-an-hour when it precedes attendance at church. children to church for discipline's sake, and for Suggestion iii.-We must still take our the sake of laying the foundation of early associations and of church-going habits; but we should not make more than one attendance any case compulsory. in With a view to the improvement of method and skill in teaching: Suggestion i.-Sunday-school teachers' classes for mutual instruction should be held periodically (weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly): a paper the theory or art of teaching, by the clergyread on some practical point connected with man or trained schoolmaster; and a discussion follow. Suggestion ii.-An annual festival-meeting of teachers, with presence of a diocesan Sundayschool inspector, or an organizing catechist. Suggestion iii.-I shall be asked what these may be, and I would hope there is nothing very revolutionary in the idea that some new office or authority over us in this matter is urgently required; I say nothing very revolutionary, though I must confess it is based upon the somewhat-levelling doctrine that clergymen are The rev. J. Jerram, of Fleet, expressed the *From "On the Teaching in Village Sunday-Schools:" a pleasure he felt in the success of the mission- paper read before the Durham diocesan association in the house, and thought the result was highly satis-divinity school, on Thursday, March 26th, 1868, by the Rev. B. E. Dwarris, M.A., vicar of Bywell St. Peter's, factory. He gave some excellent advice to Northumberland, and rural dean. Durham: Andrews & Co. parents upon the education of children. 1868. not-every one, and as it were ex-officio-heaven- | BORROWINGS FROM NATURE'S STOREHOUSE, "Whate'er you possess, 'tis a proof of God's love, THE OCEAN AND ITS ATTRACTIONS. born handlers of a class of children or school organizers. Teaching power is either a gift conferred in high excellence on very few, or it is the result of an art in which every man requires special training to attain proficiency. Might it not be possible that some one of the few who have special catechetical gifts should devote himself and be set apart for the exclusive which possesses the greater aptitude to lift the "WE hardly know which is more stimulating, exercise of that gift of God in each diocese of his mind above its ordinary level, and to awaken church? Would it be anything impossible that dormant aspirations towards the infinite-conthe national society, for instance, should see that it would tend vastly to promote its proper object, verse with the 'everlasting hills,' or with the "the education of the poor in the principles of ever-changing yet unchangeable ocean. We will the church of England" and fully warrant it in not collate their respective merits: both have such a disposal of its funds if it were (perhaps many in common; and each has some distinc in combination with the diocesan school-society) tively its own. Talk of oratory! Is there any to provide a sufficient maintenance for one oratory more penetrating, more musical, more arch-catechist in each diocese-who might at who does not love to watch its moods, marvelsuggestive, more powerful, than that of the sea? the same time, and on the same occasion as he visited schools, act as organizing secretary hour by hour, and to interpret to his own soul lously diversified as they are, day by day, almost for the society, but who shall receive authority the sentiment which each expresses? All these and mission from the bishop to act as yearly moods are eloquent-when its soft ripples upon inspector of church schools not under govern- the sandy or shingly beach whisper in gentlest ment, and occasional organizer of every Sundayschool throughout the diocese which should in- tones of peace, of rest, of heaven; when under vite his services. This is not mere theorizing: the influence of a freshening breeze its waves it is based on the advantage our schools of chase and tumble over each other, as in joyous primary instruction have derived, as is now sport, and laugh out in abrupt outbursts of every day more and more widely recognized, when it lies dark and sullen, as if pondering spray their own playfulness of humour; or from the annual visits of highly-qualified mischief, responding to the black clouds above government inspectors. roused to a display of its terrible power, it hurls it with a scowling look of defiance; when its mighty and wrathful billows against the rocks which sentinel its confines, and rushes tent upon making the solid earth its prey; or and roars, impatient of all obstruction, as if in. when, having spent its forces, it heaves and swells in recollection of the excitement it has undergone, and gradually labours and pants and sobs itself to repose. But, in truth, the sea, at one time or another, aptly and grandly expresses all the sentiments which can move make themselves intimate with its ways, and to the human heart; and they who choose to study the art of reading its countenance and interpreting its speech, will never think of charging it with monotony. It is, as we make it, the liveliest, the most instructive, the most and, if it become dull, its dulness must be attrifascinating, the most majestic of companions, buted to the lack of insight or sympathy with enhanced by the health-giving property of sea, which it is approached. ..... The charm is side pursuits" ("Illustrated London News," August 15). Suggestion iv.-Again, if it be an ugly uth, I fear it is unquestionable that our younger clergy (and I am quite willing to include at least one of more advanced years in the same indictment) have not infrequently, from want of due early initiation into the mystery of giving a compact and pointed lesson to a class of children, felt themselves, the ex-officio managers and supervizors of the teaching, placed in a false position of inferiority by the side of their trained schoolmasters, the children themselves being judges. Now might not the candidate for holy orders, while in training for his profession, especially at Durham, do much by using his opportunities to forestall this inefficiency? For instance, by resorting for information and practical experience, with the permission and under the direction of the respective principals, to some of the classes at the two training-schools for teachers in Durham, or to the model-schools attached to them. Perhaps any diocesan association to be formed for the improvement and encouragement of distinctive church-teaching might find its account in proposing a yearly or occasional prize or exhibition for such divinity students as should give the best religious lesson to a class of national-school children in the presence of her majesty's inspector of schools and the principals of the two training colleges, who should award the prize. IMMENSITY OF CREATION. "Some astronomers have computed that there are no less than 75,000,000 of suns in this uni verse. The fixed stars are all suns, having, like our sun, numerous planets revolving round them. The solar system, or that to which we belong, has about thirty planets, primary and secondary, belonging to it. The circular field of space which it occupies is in diameter three thousand six hundred millions of miles; and that which it controls much greater. That sun which is nearest neighbour to ours is called Sirius, distant from our sun about twenty-two billions of miles. Now, if all the fixed stars are as distant from each other as Sirius is from our suu; if the solar system be the average magnitude of all the systems of the 75 millions of suns, what imagination can grasp the immensity of creation? Every sun of the 75 millions controls a field of space about 10,000,000,000 of miles in diameter. Who can survey a plantation containing 75 millions of circular fields, each ten billions of miles? Such, however, is one of the plantations of him who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with a span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance;' him who, sitting upon the orbit of the earth, stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in' ("The Hebrew"). 66 THE SAGO-PALM (SAGUS GENUINA). One sago-tree will from its pith produce from two to four hundred-weight of flour; from which are made bread and cakes that keep as well as biscuit: the leaf makes the best covering for houses of all the palm kind. When the tree is cut down fresh ones sprout up from the roots. They cut down the tree," says Dampier, in his account of Mindanao, "split it in the middle, and scrape out all the pith, which they beat lustily with a wooden pestle in a great mortar or trough, and then put it into a cloth or strainer held over a trough, and, pouring water in among it, stir it about, so the water carries off all the substance of the pith: they then draw off the water, and make the substance into cakes, which, being baked, proves very good bread. It is used in all the Spice islands." The sago-palm flowers but once, and begins to decay after fructification. As soon as the pith is fit for food, a mealy substance appears over the leaves, which is the signal for felling. CONSCIENCE: THE SENSITIVE-PLANT (MIMOSA There is a plant, a tender plant, So delicate of form, That, touched by us, it seems to say, God made it so: with all his works E'en so, methinks, should mortals shrink Behold a lion in thy path, Or else some secret snare." Conscience, vicegerent of our God, That bids me keep the Star in sight More tender than earth's fragile plant Until the hour when life shall merge Hastings. R. PROVIDENTIAL SUPPLY OF FOOD. A remarkable feature in British Columbia is the abundance of fish, and of salmon particularly. Salmon swarm in such numbers that, according to Mr. Lord, naturalist to the boun dary commission, every rivulet is so crammed that, from want of room, they push one another high and dry upon the pebbles. Each with its head up-stream scuffles for precedence. With one's hands only tons of salmon might be procured. Once started on their journey, these fish never turn back. As fast as those in front die, fresh arrivals take their places and share their fate. For two months this great salmon out which the Indians must perish miserably. army proceeds up-stream, furnishing food withFor six months in the year they depend on the salmon which they obtain in June and July, and preserve by drying in the sun. THE SPARROW'S PLEA FOR PRESERVATION. "In the spring of 1866 four pairs of English sparrows came to the Union-square-park, New York, and there built. Three pairs occupied the trees: one ejected a wren from her little house, the only bird-house then in the square, and took possession: a fifth built in the ivy of Dr. Cheever's church facing the square. The industry of these little fellows in devouring the measuring-worm (so great a nuisance that most persons avoided passing through the park, preferring to go round during their occupancy, and so numerous were they that they did not leave a leaf on any tree except ailanthus) was such that boxes were provided on almost all the trees for them. They were very prolific, those hatched in the spring rearing a brood in the autumn, and the old pair rearing four or five broods. In one year they increased from five pairs to a flock of seventy, and these are now estimated at 600. Last summer a reward of one dollar a-head was offered for worms, but the birds had eaten the last one: they also ate moths, grasshoppers, and many other insects. These birds have extended about forty miles in every direction. The estimate that they destroy in Europe one half-million bushels of grain was probably correct; but how much more or less the insects they devour or destroy? The question is simply, Which is the greater evil, worm or bird; and which most readily controlled ?" ("Quebec Gazette"). Weekly Almanac. M. C. "Because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience."-EPH. v. 6. "Walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment."-ECCLES. xi. 9. O ALMIGHTY and most merciful God, of thy bountiful goodness keep us, we beseech thee, from all things that may hurt us, that we, cheer being ready both in body and soul, may fully accomplish those things that thou wouldest have done; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. "Look now at sin: pluck off that painted mask, and turn upon her face the lamp of the bible. We start: it reveals a death's head. I stay not to quote texts descriptive of sin: it is a debt, a burden, a thief, a sickness, a leprosy, a plague, a poison, a serpent, a sting-everything that man hates it is; a load of evils beneath whose most crushing intolerable pressure 'the whole creation groaneth.' Name me the evil that springs not from this root--the crime that lies not at this door. Who is the hoary sexton that digs man his grave? who is the painted temptress that steals his virtue? who is the sorceress that first deceives and then damns his soul? Sin. Who, with icy breath, blights the sweet blossoms of youth? who brings grey hairs with sorrow to the grave ? who, by a more hideous metamorphosis than Ovid ever fancied, changes sweet children into vipers, tender mothers into monsters, and their fathers into worse than Herods, the murderers of their own innocents ? Sin. Who casts the apple of discord on home-hearths? who lights the torch of war and carries it over happy lands? who, by divisions in the church, rends Christ's seamless robe? Sin. Who is the Delilah that sings the Nazarite asleep, and delivers the strength of God into the hands of the uncircumcised? who, with smiles in her face and honeyed flattery on her tongue, stands in the door to offer the sacred rites of hospitality, and, when suspicion sleeps, pierces our temples with a nail? what syren is this who, seated on a rock by the deadly pool, smiles to deceive, sings to lure, kisses to betray, and flings her arms around our neck to leap with us into perdition? Sin. Who petrifies the soft and gentle heart, hurls reason from her throne, and impels sin ners, mad as Gadarene swine, down the precipice into the lake of fire? what witch of hell is it that thus bewitches us? Sin. Who nailed the Son of God to that bloody tree? and who, as if it were not a dove descending with the olive, but a vulture swooping down to devour the dying, vexes, grieves, thwarts, repels, drives off the Spirit of God? who is it that makes man in his heart and habits baser than a beast, and him who was once but little lower than an angel but little better than a devil? Sin. Sin, thou art a hateful and horrible thing-that 'abomin And what wonable thing which God hates.' der? Thou hast insulted his holy Majesty: thou hast bereaved him of beloved children: thou hast defiled his power: thou hast despised his grace; and, in the body and blood of Jesus, as if that were a common thing, thou hast trodden under foot his matchless mercy. Surely, brethren, the wonder of wonders is that sin is not that abominable thing which we also hate" (Guthrie). "This commends the love of God: it's Christ dying for men without strength-for men whilst sinners, whilst enemies; and shall we seek for the root of our comforts within us? What God hath done, what he is to us in Christ, this is the root of our comfort: in this is stability: in us is weakress. Acts of obedience are not perfect, and therefore yield not perfect grace. Faith as an act yields it not, but only as it carries us into him who is our perfect rest and peace, in whom we are accounted of, and received by the Father, even as Christ himself. This is our high calling. Rest we here, and here only" (O. Cromwell). H. S. NATIONAL SIN THE CAUSE OF NATIONAL CHASTISEMENT: A Sermon*, BY THE REV. J. JOHNSON CORT, M.A., Vicar of Sale, and late Fellow of St. John's College Cambridge. JER. v. 25. "Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have withholden good things from you." IT is a severe charge which the prophet brings against God's ancient people, the Jews, in the verses which immediately precede our text, and which has just been read to you in the first lesson for this morning's service: "This people hath a revolting and a rebellious heart: they are revolted and gone. Neither say they in their hearts, Let rain, both the former and the latter, in his us now fear the Lord our God, that giveth season: he reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest." And we know but too well the sad tendency of the fallen heart in every age to ignore the high claims of the God of creation and of providence. Daily does the sun pour his cheering radiance over mountain and plain and valley, the refreshing rain descends from the canopy of the skies, the seasons recur at their appointed periods; and yet there is no grateful and devout recognition of the bounteous Giver of all good. after Trinity. *Preached Sept. 13, being the fourteenth Sunday |