But, in the midst of all, she felt a chilling dissatisfaction, both with herself and them, which she vainly endeavoured to remove by running the same fruitless round again and again.

Having contracted some slight illness, she thought she would go to Bath, as a place adapted for pleasure as well as health. When she arrived, she was providentially led to consult an apothecary who happened to be a very pious man. He asked her the nature of her complaint. "Why, doctor," she said, "I ail little as to my body; but I have an uneasy mind, which I cannot get rid of." "Truly," said he, "I was so too, till I met with a book which cured me." "Books!" said she, "I get all the books I can place my hands on-plays, novels, and romances—but when I have read them, my uneasiness is still the same."

"That may

be, miss," said he," nor do I wonder at it. But I can say of the book I speak of, what I can say of no other, that I never tire of reading it, but can begin it again and again, as if I had never read it before; and I always see something new in it." "Pray, doctor," said the lady, "what book is it?" "Nay, miss," answered he, "that is a secret I don't tell to every one." "But could I get a sight of it?" said she. "Yes," he said, “miss, if you speak me fair, I can help you to it." "Pray get it me then, doctor, and I'll give you anything you please." "Yes," said he, "if you will promise me one thing, I'll bring it to you; and that is, that you will read it over carefully; and if should not see much in it at first, that you will give it a second reading."

you

She promised faithfully she would; and, after raising her curiosity by coming once or twice without it, he at last brought it, took it out of his pocket, and gave it her. It was a New Testament. When she saw it, she said, "Poh (with a flirt), I can get that

at any time." "Why, miss, so you might,"

replied the doctor; "but, remember, I have your solemn promise that you will read it carefully." "Well," said she, "I never read it before, but I will give it a reading now." Accordingly, she began to read it, and it soon attracted her attention. She saw in it what gave her deep concern; and if she was uneasy in her mind before, she was ten times more so now. She did not know what to do with herself; so she got away back to London, to see what the diversions there would do again. But all was

in vain.

She lived at the court-end of the town, and had a gentlewoman with her as companion. One Saturday evening, she dreamed that she was in a place of worship, and heard a sermon of which she could remember nothing when she had awaked, save the text; but the dream made such an impression on her mind, that the idea she had of the place, and of the minister's face, was as strong as if she had been acquainted with both for a number of years. She told her dream to her companion on the Lord's-day morning; and, after breakfast, she was resolved to go in quest of the place, if she should go from one end of London to the other.

Accordingly they set out, and went into this and the other church as they passed along, but none of them answered to the one she saw in her dream. About one o'clock they found themselves in the heart of the city. They went into an eatinghouse and had dinner, and then set out again in search of the place she had seen in her dream.

About half-past two they were in the Poultry, and she saw a great many people going down the Old Jewry. She determined that she would see where they were going. She mixed herself among them, and they led her to the Old Jewry chapel. So soon as she entered the door of it, and looked about, she turned to her companion and said, with some surprise, "This is the very place I saw in my dream; and, if every part of it hold true, the preacher will take for his text, Psalm cxvi. 7," Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee." When he rose to pray, she was all attention, and every sentence went to her heart. Having finished prayer, he took that for his text; and there God met with her. She was led to trust in Jesus, and thus found what she had so long vainly sought for rest unto her soul.

Who can read this account, and look back at the state of the country here referred to, without being filled with holy gratitude for the privileges we now enjoy? No more ministers are in danger of being imprisoned for preaching the gospel, or others of being subjected to the same punishment for hearing it; but every man is permitted to worship God according to his conscience, while there are none who may lawfully disturb him or make him afraid. May we all feel our high responsibility, and improve to the utmost our distinguished advantages !

"ONE IS NOT."

To the bleeding heart of a bereaved parent there is a volume of meaning in these three monosyllables. It is evening; the father has returned from his toils, and the children from school. What has hushed the sweet carollings which used to ring so joyously in our ear? Why these habiliments of mourning; the unbidden tear, the sadness of every countenance, the heaving of every bosom? Because one is not. The happy domestic circle is broken. A place at the fireside and the table is vacant. The family bow together at the hour of prayer, but one is not. The fond mother puts her little ones to bed, but one is not there to receive her warm kiss and sweet" Good night." The morning comes, the children are gathered for breakfast and devotion-but one is not.

A beloved and promising son went to a distant city to engage in business, and in due time return with the gains of honest índustry; but, ah, he is not! The pestilence found him out, and hurried him to his long home.

A blooming daughter, the pride of her mother, and the darling of her father, filled all the house with gladness and love; but, alas, she is not! The angel of death came stealthily into her chamber; all that loveliness faded away; nor father, nor mother, nor brothers, nor sisters, shall see her more. When they visit her places of retirement, the objects in which she delighted are still there; but she is not. When they repeat her name, these mournfully answer, She is not.

So a babe is snatched from the arms of its mother. Her other children may survive, but the precious little one that began to smile and prattle so sweetly, is not. It was a lovely flower; but "the wind passed over it, and it is gone."

Oh, what a world of bereavements and sorrows do we live in ! Where is the family that has never been stricken? Where the happy domestic circle that is safe from being broken? In how many thousands of human dwellings is the voice of lamentation heard every day, that a son, a daughter, a brother, a sister, is not. So it has always been in this dying world, and so it will be in all coming generations. "As death reigned from Adam to Moses," and hath reigned from Moses to the present hour, so will it reign till the last human family is broken up.

And if this be so, how ought parents, whose children are "like olive plants round about their table," to "rejoice with trembling!" How easily, how suddenly, may the fairest of them be plucked up and wither to dust! It does not follow that because they are "like the flowers of the field," and liable every moment to be cut down, that you should love them less; but it does follow that you should ever bear in mind how frail they are, and be habitually ready to give them up when He, who has an infinitely better right to them than you haye, sees fit to take them away.

Another thought, and a very solemn oneIs the bright and joyous circle about your table and fireside, every day, every hour, liable to be broken? May you not, ere

the sun goes down, be called to mourn that one is not, and in a little time that another is not? How fervently should you pray for their conversion; how diligently should you instruct and warn them, while you give your spirit no rest till Christ be formed in them the hope of glory;-then come what will, health or sickness, life or death, they are safe.

Oh, what bitter self-reproach do bereaved parents often feel when a beloved child is taken away, in the retrospect of their own unfaithfulness! How many have gone mourning down to the grave, stricken through and through as it were by this unavailing self-condemnation! And when so sharp are oft the stings of accusing conscience for parental unfaithfulness here, how will it be at the day of judgment, if it shall there appear that the child is eternally lost through such neglect ?-N. Y. Evangelist.

THE CONNECTICUT SAILOR BOY.

The Cornelia was a good ship (said one of the West India chaplains of the American Seamen's Friend Society); but at one time we feared she was on her last voyage. We were but a few days out from New York, when a severe storm, of five days continuance, overtook us. Like a noble charger between two contending armies, did the ship quiver in all her joints, and struggle to escape from the fury of the winds and the waves. At the height of the storm, I must tell you of a feat of a Connecticut sailor boy. He was literally a boy, and far better fitted for thumbing Webster's SpellingBook, than furling a sail in a storm. But

his mother was a widow, and where could the boy earn a living for himself and his mother better than at sea? The ship was rolling fearfully; twice I saw the Captain Jose his centre of gravity-though he kept his temper well-and measure his length on the deck. Some of the rigging got foul at the mainmast head, and it was necessary that some one should go up and rectify it. It was a perilous job. I was standing near the mate, and heard him order that boy aloft to do it! He lifted his cap and glanced at the swinging mast, the boiling wrathful sea, and at the steady, determined countenance of the mate. He hesitated in silence a moment; then, rushing across the deck, he pitched down into the forecastle. Perhaps he was gone two minutes, when he returned, laid his hands on the ratlins, and went up with a will. My eye followed him till my head was dizzy, when I turned and remonstrated with the mate for sending that boy aloft. He could not come down alive!

Why did you send him? "I did it," replied the mate, "to save life. We've sometimes lost men overboard, but never a boy. See how he holds like a squirrel. He is more careful. He'll come down safe I h-o-p-e."

Again I looked, till a tear dimmed my eye, and I was compelled to turn away, expecting every moment to catch a glimpse of his last fall.

In about fifteen or twenty minutes, having finished the job, he came down, and straightening himself up with the conscious pride of having performed a manly act, he walked aft with a smile on his countenance.

In the course of the day, I took occasion to speak with him, and ask him why he hesitated when ordered aloft,-why he went down into the forecastle?

"I went, sir," said the boy, "to pray." "Do you pray?"

"Yes, sir, I thought I might not come down alive, and I went to commit my soul to God."

"Where did you learn to pray?"

"At home. My mother wanted me to go to the Sabbath school, and my teacher urged me to pray to God to keep me, and I do."

"What was that you had in your jacket pocket ?"

"My Testament, which my teacher gave me. I thought if I did perish, I would have the word of God close to my heart."-Seamen's Magazine.

MORAL

CONCLUDING ARTICLE.

We adopt the triple division of our mental powers. It is both founded in nature, and exhibits the fundamental error of Edwards with great clearness. According to this division, the two former classes of our faculties are necessitated, the last is free and spontaneous.

1. Our sensations, appetites, passions, desires, and emotions of all kinds, now frequently called, for brevity, SENSITIVITY (necessary).

II. Our perceptions, judgments, reasonings, all our purely intellectual movements, which (in this controversy especially) we may briefly call REASON (necessary).

III. The entire activity of the mind, which is generally called WILL (free).

Now, the first two classes are, in themselves, passive and necessary. 1st. We cannot avoid our desires, &c. being awa

kened or excited, when the appropriate object is before the mind. 2nd. We cannot avoid the conclusions of reason, when the terms of any proposition are understood, e.g. a just being must punish sin; God is a just being understand and admit these assertions, and we are necessitated to believe the conclusion, that God will punish sin. But, 3rd. Will is free. It is the active power of the soul, and it can be directed spontaneously by the mind. It can resist even unto death. It can yield to the slightest allurement, or fear, or call of duty. It can divert attention from any object which is exciting our sensitivity,-from any truths which claim our attention in order to their being comprehended and believed. creation besides the WILL is necessitated; all matter, of course, from the universe around us to the body and its organs in which our mind is placed. Again, in mind itself, a large part is necessary,-all our sensitivity, all our reason. Will, therefore, is the only

All

free existence in creation. If Will be not free, all is necessary,-all mechanical,-all moved by causes acting as necessarily as that by which a stone falls to the ground. Man becomes strictly (according to the Socialist theory) "the creature of circumstances, over which he has no control." Responsibility ceases. Man's actions become only unavoidable consequents of causes set in movement by the Great First Cause. God becomes the author of all human actions, in the same sense in which he is the author of the movements of all material nature. God becomes the author of sin! This reasoning is irrefutable. Nothing but the absolute freedom of man,-nothing but allowing him to be made so far in the image of God, that he has power to cause, in his limited sphere;-nothing, in a word, but allowing man to be a free, though finite cause, can remove the authorship of sin from the Great First Cause of causes.

Now, Edwards and all other advocates of Moral Inability, maintain but two grand divisions of the mental faculties. From Edwards himself to Belsham and Priestley, and Dr. Thomas Brown, they all represent inclination or desire as identical with Will, that is, that Will is the "strongest desire," or "as the strongest desire," or "desire arrived at a certain degree of strength." The opposed theory places Will between sensitivity and reason, and regards it as free to follow the impulses of the one, or to yield to the authority of the other, as competent, naturally, to exert its energy in any of the various directions towards which the activity of the mind may be solicited.

We fully grant that Edwards may seem to prove logically, that any theory opposed to his involves a logical absurdity. Hear him. "Every change must have a cause; every volition is a change of the mind's condition, and must therefore have a cause." True; but what is that cause? This is the hinge on which all turns. Says Edwards, "It must be the strongest motive." His opponents reply," If any motive can be so strong as literally to master the man, so far the man is not free, and responsibility ceases." But rejoins Edwards, "What

But

power but a motive can cause our volition to be what it is?" Answer: "The man himself causes it to be what it is." "But," says Edwards, "he must then cause it to be what it it is by another preceding volition; for we have no active or causal power in our nature but Will; so that any volition, to be free, must, according to this reasoning, have another preceding it; and that also, to be free, must have another causing that; and so on without end, which is absurd." Yes, it would be absurd logically. logically only. It is refuted, 1st, by its own inevitable and strictly logical consequences, which are, amongst others, the awful ones that man is a merely necessary and irresponsible creature, and God the author of his sin. Indeed, Pantheism and Atheism are its unavoidable conclusion. This has been amply shewn by our first modern philosophers. But, 2ndly, it is refuted by the grand guide which God has given us,the guide which, if it deceive us, deceived we must remain, and all knowledge and reasoning, all faith and religion, become an impossibility. We mean, CONSCIOUSNESS. We know nothing, literally nothing, unless we can trust the veracity of our own consciousness. Why do I believe that I am? I am conscious of it. Why do I believe that I remember, and judge, and feel? Because I am conscious of it. Why do I believe that there is a world without me, something besides myself (without believing which I could not believe even in the Creator of that world), why? Because I am conscious of it in my sensations and perceptions. And why do I believe that every act of my Will is unforced and free? Because I am conscious, in each case, that a different choice and volition lies in my power. This is what each man is conscious of, "I am free to will." If I am not, my consciousness deceives me; if it deceives me in one thing, it may in another. All existence may be a delusion. I may believe with the great sceptic Hume, that there is neither mind nor matter, neither cause nor effect,neither a creation nor a Creator,-neither a miracle nor a religion !

The foundation of Edwards's logical mis

take is in reality materialism. He reasons from mechanical to mental causes, as if their nature and mode of action were the same. Experiment, which is the basis of scientific knowledge, assures us, that mechanical causes do act necessarily, and he conceives of mental causes only according to the analogy of material ones. But our consciousness is the final appeal in all discussions on the nature of the mind's operations, just as experiment is the final appeal on the properties of matter. Now consciousness, on the simplest or the profoundest inspection of it, invariably testifies, "I can resist, or I can modify, or finally triumph over any motives presented to me. I can weaken those which appear strongest, or I can even look them full in the face, and still say I will not." Thus speaks the final arbiter on mental questions. We have, indeed, no notion of efficient cause at all, except that which we derive from our own Will, as an un-mechanical, self-acting cause; and a cause, therefore, in regard to

which logic based on mechanical analogies wholly fails.

We have only room to add, that we consider Scripture to assert with equal clearness, the freedom of the human will, and absolute divine predestination. We think a fair reconciliation between the two may be pointed out; but if we did not think so, it would not interfere with our as readily accepting both, on the authority of inspiration, as the union of Deity and Humanity, or the divinity of Father, Son, and Spirit, in connexion with the unity of God.

If any of our thinking young readers will lay aside light books for a time, and study the subject in the pages of that noble thinker (though we hold him to have erred), Jonathan Edwards, and his modern opponent, Tappan; if they can add a look into Morell's History of Philosophy, or into Sir W. Hamilton's Notes to Dr. Reid, they will find the effort to master this most difficult of subjects, both instructive and invigorating to their minds. F. CLOWES.

MEMOIR OF THOMAS BURChell, TwentyTWO YEARS A MISSIONARY IN JAMAICA. By his Brother, W. F. BURCHELL. Pp. 416. London: Benj. L. Green.

We have here a biography every way worthy to be committed to the "immortal custody of the press." We cordially thank Mr. W. F. Burchell for his valuable little volume.

We had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with Mr. T. Burchell shortly after his arrival in England, when he had been driven home by the white savages of Jamaica, for the single offence of loving the souls of negroes, and winning them to Christ. He was in company with Mr. Knibb, and in a city built, it is often and justly said, by the "blood of slaves." The "prudent ones would have restrained these prophets of the Lord from publishing the "Burden of Jamaica." They met with but equivocal encouragement. The writer, with others, admired the noble spirit of the men, unable to be silent on the foul iniquities of slavery, and deemed it a privilege to offer them his comparatively humble chapel. Soon they succeeded in bursting the trammels of

"judicious committee men," and quickly all the real christianity of the kingdom was in a blaze of holy wrath. Each of the great actors nobly bore their part; and it may be safely affirmed that if Knibb was the Luther to consign slavery to public execration, Burchell was the Melancthon, whose polished manners and superior education, combined with great mental vigour, and a firmness and fearlessness of which Melancthon had little or none, carried the more educated and influential with him. Not equal to Knibb in impassioned eloquence, he surpassed him in the parlour. As a man, probably, he was generally the favourite; though to us the benevolent, though somewhat blunt, indignation of Knibb was equally interesting. Both were devoted men, consecrating sincerely and without envy their different talents to the object equally dear to both.

The part of Mr. Burchell's life hitherto unknown to the public, and the develop ment of his character as a man and a christian, will be found unusually interesting. To us of this generation this life is deeply interesting; but there will be ages when