him to a Saviour who can remove all his guilt, and can create him anew after the image of Him that made him, and give to his heart a peace that will never leave it in life or in death; and it alone can conduct him from this world to God's judgmentseat, give him a place on which he may stand without fear, when the heavens and the earth shall flee away, and make him feel, amidst the solemnities of eternity, that because God has justified, there is none who can condemn. Such is the intrinsic excellency of the word which we are commanded to speak faithfully to the people. It has been tried by the scrutiny of ages and of generations, of friends and of enemies, and it has never been found wanting. "It is the law of the Lord, and is perfect, and converts the soul, and makes wise the simple, and rejoices the heart. It is more to be desired than gold, yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and the honey-comb." And in holding back any part of it, or in mingling it with our own opinions, we show, not our unfaithfulness only, but our want of spiritual discernment, and our want of capacity for admiring the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. We thus prefer the chaff to the wheat; and, in the place of nourishing the people with the words of sound doctrine, even the words of our Lord Jesus, we present to them that which will never profit themwe feed them on the wind.-Dr. Dewar.

THE SAVIOUR'S ADAPTATION TO THE SINNER. Are you thirsting for true happiness? Come, and draw water out of these wells of salvation. Are you weary? Jesus is your

soul's rest. Are you heavy laden? Jesus is the sinner's burden-bearer. Are you bowed down with grief and pain? Jesus uncovers his stricken bosom, and bids you come and enjoy repose there. Have you spent your all upon physicians of no value, and are nothing better, but rather grown worse? Jesus is a great physician,-one touch of his hand will make you whole. Do you feel yourself to be the greatest sinner in the universe? Jesus died and rose again to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him. O what a Saviour is he! So lovely, no object of beauty surpasses him. So loving and compassionate, no affection or tenderness is like his. So precious, all other objects lose their sweetness and their value in comparison. So dear, that life were a blank and heaven itself were no heaven without him. Repair to him, then, just as you are, and my life for yours, if he will not save you from hell, and fit you for heaven. "Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out." "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved."-O. Winslow.

SUBSTITUTION.-O unutterable exchange! the sinless one is condemned, the guilty goes free; the blessed bears the curse, the cursed bears the blessing; the life dies, and the dead live; the glory is covered with shame, and the shame is covered with glory. -Lefevre.-Paris, 1512.

HOPE AND FEAR.-Hope is like the cork to the net, which keeps the soul from sinking in despair; and Fear is like the lead to the net, which keeps it from floating in presumption.-T. Watson.

EVENTS OF 1848.

A year so unparalleled in the memory of most, perhaps of all, living persons, deserves to have its leading events and marvellous changes succinctly stated, as the natural introduction to another. All confusion as it seems to the eye of sense, faith and prophecy assure us it is perfect order in the arrangements of the King of Kings.

The key to the whole may doubtless be found in the observation of a foreign correspondent of The Christian Times. He says, "We have passed through a period of history which has served for the trial and condemnation of princes; we are entering upon a period which will put peoples to the proof, and they will be found wanting in their turn." As with our Charles the First and the Stuarts, despotism, deceit, chicanery, and perfidy of the worst kind, have raised up nearly all the nations of Europe against their monarchs, who can never enslave them again, notwithstanding some apparent reaction; but the chief actors in all this, are, in too many cases, infidels of the worst quality,-the offspring of Po

pery and State-churches, men who deem it the highest illumination to disbelieve the existence of a God!

In January, scarce a ripple disturbed the surface of politics at home or abroad; every Government (England of course excepted) was existing for itself, and not for the governed. Only the marvel of a Pope compelled to be a little liberal! But the law in France is first strained to suppress the worship of Baptists, then to prevent a political dinner;-and

February, the twenty-fourth, the French Republic is proclaimed in Paris, the throne literally shivered to pieces and thrown into the river, and the wily King a fugitive!

In March, all Germany and Italy feels the shock. The King of Prussia, after barbarously destroying his subjects for hours, was compelled to yield to the popular demands. In Italy, Lombardy throws off the yoke of Austria. Sicily, Naples, and other states demand, and get constitutional rights. The Minor German powers, course, are obliged to yield; and before April is ended, Metternich, the most

of

cruel and cunning tool of tyrants in Europe, has fled from Vienna to England. And Austria, the stronghold of absolute despotism, of the Jesuits and Popery, is opened to the press, to constitutional liberty, and to the gospel; its idiot Emperor being himself obliged at last to flee. While Bohemia, Hungary, and other provinces, declare themselves independent.

But now till the end of the year, reactions commence. In France, red republicanism attempts, by barricades and street fighting, to overturn the republic while yet in process of formation; but General Cavaignac, with horrid loss of life, restores order. In Naples, the King, one of the incurably relentless and uncivilized Bourbons, manages to destroy the middle class national guard, by the mobs and his soldiers, and to reduce to ashes the principal town in Sicily. Radetzky obtains an immense army from Austria, and re-conquers Lombardy. The Emperor of Austria ravages Hungary by the semibarbarous Croats; next he is detected, when the Hungarians had routed these uncivilized hordes, sending troops against his own subjects; his own people arise against the perfidy of the despot; he flees again. He collects again the Sclavonic and Crotian soldiers against his own civilized Germans; he reconquers Vienna; but, unequal to the helm, he, in December, abdicates in favour of his nephew, Francis Joseph.

Meantime, the treacherous King of Prussia, emboldened by the success of the Austrian despot, seizes his own capital, Berlin, -takes away the arms from the National Guard, dissolves the assembly before it has finished the constitution,--and while we write, he is doing all that brute force can do, to overpower the moral force by which his wise people meet the violence of their loving monarch.

To crown all, the POPE himself is nowthe middle of December an exile from Rome ! The Head of the Roman Catholic Church, has left the Headship of the Roman Catholic State! May our Queen quickly do the parallel deed in England, without, however, needing to be frightened into it. May her conscience learn to shrink from the awful title-Head of the Church.

AT HOME, while thankful for comparative quiet, we have otherwise little to congratulate ourselves upon. Unprincipled and enormous expenditure for the benefit of the few, at the expense of the many. Ireland driven to rebellion, and kept quiet at a tremendous cost to England. Every liberal measure checked in the reformed House of Commons; while measures for restricting liberty, and extending Government intermeddling and patronage, pass with fearful speed. Men of high character imprisoned in Scotland, for refusing to pay State-Church exactions. Proposals to endow Popery, and a Bill enabling our Government to hold ecclesiastical, as well as civil, relations with the Pope. Chartist follies hindering the growth of national liberty. Deep distress amongst nearly all classes, almost the whole year through. Such are a few of the many

things we should like to notice of public events at home. Thus has 1848 prefaced 1849 ! What is to be the state of Europe, and of England especially, at the end of this year?

Never was the church of Christ more urgently called upon to bestir itself. Christian principles alone can heal the nations; they alone can preserve England from being engulphed between the selfishness of her rulers and the recklessness of an infidel mob. This is our deliberate opinion.

The church of Christ, we repeat, must act out its principles,-must equally rebuke the oppressions of governors and the violence of the governed,-must assert the duty which all owe to God and each other, -must teach the principles of the bible to all classes equally,-and then may she, indeed, "be for salvation to the ends of the earth !"

THE REV. BAPTIST NOEL'S SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

We are not so vain as to hope that some letters we addressed to this universally esteemed minister in "The Church" for 1846, had any share in the step he has now taken. We are not indeed certain he ever saw them; but we then thought his christian intelligence as well as piety so far in advance of most episcopal ministers, that we could scarcely believe he would die in the impure embraces of the State. We are truly thankful the event has justified our expectations. The minister of the Parliamentary Church, most conspicuous for sanctified intellect, christian integrity, spotless character, and pastoral excellence; the minister of that Church, whom, if asked to name its best public man, every evangelical christian in Britain would have mentioned without hesitation, this minister has withdrawn from her unhallowed communion! It does, we confess, require extraordinary piety to renounce the carnal seductions of almost every kind which bind a minister to the Church of wealth, aristocracy, and fashion; hence we fear that few will be found to follow his example. We have little doubt, however, though we would not be prophets, that God will soon smite the State-Church Babylon with an utter ruin. Spreading intelligence cannot long co-exist with priestcraft; bankrupt exchequers, with an avaricious and richly endowed clergy; the infidelity gendered by all National Churches, with the domination of its Mother. Hence we have little doubt also that the time is rapidly approaching for voluntary seceders from the Compulsory Church to be the men whom the people will honour. The insane folly and wickedness of our Government in pestering our colonies with the costly plague of bishops, while at the same time they endeavour to save that contempt of Europe, the Irish Protestant Church, by creating a Roman Catholic Church alongside of it; the renewal of antiquated barbarities by the ecclesiastical courts, are all in the hand of God aiding the grand consummation, hastening the advent of the day when little

great statesmen and assuming ecclesiastics will be swept into disgrace and ruin by the breath of a long defrauded but awakened people. God in his mercy grant it may be without blood! grant that the church, "in whose skirt is found the blood of thousands of innocents," may not have their blood required of this generation! If any thing can avert so just a result, it will be her ministers, like the excellent Mr. Noel, renouncing the establishment principle;- THE ONLY PRINCIPLE by which blood is, or has been, or can be, shed for religion! the principle which has shed blood for religion equally by the hands of men so diverse as Nero and our Edward VI; as John Calvin and Henry VIII; as Pagan priests and English bishops; as Spanish inquisitors, killing men by the rack for heresy, and English soldiers, shooting them for not paying tithes in the 19th century !!! But we have digressed from Mr. Noel to the "abominable thing" which he has renounced. Our hatred of the most hateful and bloodthirsty principle which ever cursed Christendom, has compelled us. Men we condemn not; the history of the horrid cruelties and slaughters which have all been based on the principle that civil force may ally itself with religion, a history we may one day give more fully, is the ample condemnation of that principle. Mr. Noel preached his farewell sermon on Lord's-day, December 3rd. Though prematurely ejected by the Puseyite Bishop of London, he uttered not a condemnatory sentence respecting his persecutors. Both morning and evening his place was crowded

to excess.

"THE BAPTIST MAGAZINE" AND "THE BAPTIST RECORD."

We have much pleasure in once more calling the attention of our readers to these excellent Magazines. The former has peculiar claims, as having been, for a long time, the sole denominational organ, and as containing articles of high ability, as well as all Intelligence worth having. To our readers, too, it will be a recommendation, that a large sum is every year appropriated, from its profits, to the relief of the widows of Baptist ministers.-The latter, though, as will be seen from an advertisement, it is changing its name to "The Christian Record," so as to circulate more extensively in other denominations, is still conducted by one of our most able Baptists; its contents are generally of a more critical and literary character than would be accep table to many readers; and to all who can appreciate articles of the kind referred to, we earnestly recommend it as one of the best sixpenny Magazines of the day. The January Number is announced to contain, amongst other pieces, a Sermon by John Foster, and Papers on the Roman Catholic Endowment Question, on the Memoir of the Rev. J. Ely, and on the Canaanitish Wars of the Jews. The January Number of the Baptist Magazine, will contain an article by the venerable Mr. Lister of Liverpool, and a beautiful miniature likeness of the late William Knibb.

THE NONCONFORMIST.

Are there any of our readers who do not see "The Nonconformist ?" Then they cannot do a wiser or a better thing than commence taking it with the new year. We have frequently drawn the attention of our friends to it as one of the best-if not the best-of Dissenting newspapers; it contains a mass of most interesting intelligence, both political and religious; and its views are generally such as we could wish universally disseminated-not only amongst Baptists, but amongst all Dissenters. Let those who cannot afford to take it themselves, join with one, two, or even six others. The more recent Numbers contain several letters from working men, on the causes for the marked alienation of their class from the religious movements of the day. We commend them to the careful consideration of our ministerial brethren, and, indeed, of all thoughtful christians.

BLOOMSBURY CHAPEL.

This splendid place of worship was opened for worship on the 5th of Dec. 1848. Dr. Harris preached in the morning, and Dr. Godwin in the evening. The congregations were overflowing, and comprised the flower of the Independent and Baptist Denominations in the metropolis. Mr. Peto, M.P. for Norwich, who has built the chapel, took the chair at an elegant dinner, to which between 300 and 400 ladies and gentlemen had been invited, and he having cordially welcomed his guests, brief speeches were delivered by Messrs. W. Brock, the minister of the place, J. Alexander of Norwich, Dr. Thomas Price, and Dr. Archer. Mr. Brock stated the providential arrangements which had led to his quitting Norwich, and taking the charge of the church to be formed in this place; also the munificent arrangements made by Mr. Peto for the erection and conveyance of Bloomsbury Chapel, and the building of a similar place, in due time, in another part of London. Apart from the site, the cost of the building is £8,700; of this sum, £4,700 is given by Mr. Peto; when the remaining £4,000 is repaid, he intends devoting it to the erection of another chapel. The new chapel is furnished with a fine and powerful organ. We trust that the founder and pastor will speedily have the satisfaction of seeing a large congregation in constant attendance, and witness the formation and prosperity of a flourishing church.

SPALDWICK, HUNTS.

On Wednesday, Dec. 6, 1848, the Rev. W. E. Archer, late of Chelsea, was publicly recognized as pastor of the church of Christ assembling in the Dissenting chapel, Spaldwick, Hunts. The Revs. H. L. Tuck, of Fenstanton, A. Newth, of Oundle, M. H. Crofts, of Ramsey, and J. Manning (who for more than fifty years sustained the pastorate of this church, and who is just entering on his ninetieth year, took part in the services. The attendance was very large, and the blessing of the Great Head of the church was realized.