"Those who say they will repent when they are old, argue ou a wrong conclusion."

"Where are our Shakspeares and our Miltons now? Such names exist only on their monuments:-the fabric of England's glory rests upon stone pillars."

Some are exaggerated and rather affected.

"It is vain that my sister gives me a memorandum-book, and bids me write in it all the occurrences of the week;' for, if I were to write only the acts of kindness she does to me, one work

would ill contain the whole, and thousands might be filled with them." "Some people think that, in parting from your friends, the badness of the weather increases your melancholy. I do not. I would have the rain make me feel dripping;-I would have the lightning scorch, and the thunder shake me: they make me know something else besides the grief of parting,-they accord with my feelings.'

"A rag that belonged to her, I can well conceive making a book of tenderness!"

Others are false, some speciously so; but still false. Let us

see:

"I cannot behave very criminally, as long as I love many whose lives are so virtuous and pure: the thought is too terrible, that our friendship shall not last for an eternity, and that the temp tations of a pitiful world shall be able to separate us from one another." Not so; the heathen was right: "I approve the better, I follow the worse." Piety is not necessarily catching. Man's heart is not a moral Daguerrescope, which takes whatever impression is cast upon it by a reflected ray from the Sun of righteousness.

himself set upon Cain, in order that those who met the brother's murderer should not slay him, have been the mark of repentance?"

Certainly not; for "Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod;" whereas had he been truly penitent, he would, like the prodigal son, have said, “I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto him, Father I have sinned." Adam and Eve were frightened, but not penitent, when they strove to hide themselves from the presence of God amidst the trees of the Garden. Or, if Cain's going from God's presence is only a general expression, and does not bear out the above comment, still Scripture no where speaks of him as having ever repented with godly

sorrow.

"The only certain thing is, that all is uncertain."

It is certain that nothing which God has revealed is uncertain : nor are death, judgment, and eternity, uncertain; though the times and circumstances may not be known to us.

"The only word Walter Scott ever wrote to grieve mankind, was · Finis.'”

Walter Scott wrote many things which grieve Christian minds. Does our author reply "True, but all men are not Christians?"

“What a high prerogative have the beasts of the field, in not being capable of thought!

No; it is an absence of a prerogative.

"A place where there was no bidding good-bye,-no bright eye dimmed, or turned away-would, from those things only, be a heaven."

Not" from those things only;" unless a ball-room, with a smiling bright-eyed partner, is heaven as long as it lasts: but this is not the Christian's description of heaven; though there too will be an "innumerable company," and

they "go out no more," and "God shall wipe away all tears." Heaven should not be spoken of Anacreontically.

"The robe of charity is generally large enough to be able to make cloaks also for a little pride and a little hypocrisy."

Not the robe of true charity: 1 Cor. xiii. 4—7.

"The crier knows he would gain no attention, even though he spake to us of the child we had lost, unless he commenced by assenting to us."

The crier does not say "Oh Yes, Oh Yes;" (as the remark implies) "assenting to us;" but “Oyez, Oyez" (Norman French) Listen, Listen."

Not the "Christian" name.

"The joyful boast that we shall all be equal in the grave, is not true: to talent there can be no levelling; genius never can be annulled,-it is, I had almost said, the voice of Heaven."

The Bible does not connect heaven with talent but with character. The "talent" or "genius" which on earth raised its possessor to a higher level than his fellows, is probably so immeasurably lower than the intelligence (whatever it be) of an angel, or of an infant translated to heaven, that it would not be visible beside it. Gulliver's Lilliputian might better say the three-inch-high men, as distinguished from the two-inch, would be conspicuous for stature in a nation of giants.

We will now select two classes of more pleasing or interesting specimens; the first of a pathetic or sentimental character, (sentimental in the good sense); the second more miscellaneous; generally vigorous, and often satirical, but fairly and not harshly so.

The following fall under the first class :

"I did not know whether it was my CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 32.

long absent father I beheld :—there was something in my eyes prevented my seeing clearly."

seen

The sweet light of friendship is like the light of phosphorus, plainly only when all around is dark."

"We doubt if there be a heaven of answered: we pray for the wind that mercy, if our selfish prayers are not pleases us best, though that wind would make sailors' wives, widows; and sailors' children, fatherless."

"That we have slain our tens of thousands, is a boast in which the Author of all death surpasses us: that we have given birth to one poor man's smile, or wiped away one widow's tear, is a glory we enjoy in common with the Giver of immortality."

"The good man taught the orphan how to write, and the first use he made of the knowledge was to write his benefactor's name upon his silent

tomb."

water.

"To those who taunt us for going to church we may truly reply, that we go, because we see what miserable beings those are who neglect it.'"'

"The talent with which Gibbon denies that there is a God, is the most convincing proof there is one."

"He who wears a demure look on

his face, whilst he drinks in obscene conversation with his ear, resembles those Jews, who, on their sabbath, shut up very carefully their windows, but leave the door open for chance customers."

66

It is a pity that those who practise virtue have their rehearsals only in public."

"The man of spirit will take the inside, though the inside be in a puddle."

3 S

"The vain man is easily gulled. Every piece of a looking-glass he looks at appears to him a jewel."

Gold did not bring evil into the world; evil brought gold."

"How uncertain is the continuance of glory! Franklin says, The lightning always strikes the highest objects.'"

"Singing is the utter ruin of thousands of men: Niobe is far from being the only mother whose children have been destroyed by Apollo."

"You can trace a pure example through a family, as you can know where the sun has set by the brightness it leaves in the place where it descended the death of a good man is life to his relatives."

"The good man's wealth is like the rain which falls on Ethiopia,-it descends plenteously there, in order to fertilize all Egypt."

"Time's chariot, like those of the ancients, hath scythes fastened to its wheels."

"Idleness is not Vice: it is not the destroying lion, it is only the jackal, -the lion's provider.'

"Common sense' is put, I suppose, in opposition to genteel folly.'"

What dire events from trivial causes spring!' A word, a look, has bathed a world in blood: how hard is it to find the source of the Nile, that overflows Egypt!"

"A bad man cannot make himself look white instead of black by endeavouring to appear so: he only looks like a negro in the leprosy."

"When a man 'gives us his honor' so freely, it is natural to inquire, Is it yours to give?'

"The conceited man knows himself;'-but it is only a bowing acquaint

ance.

"How disgraceful it is to read of a set of men meeting together, successful in getting green peas at five guineas per peck, and for this good luck humbly chanting out Non nobis, Domine !"""

"Let us learn wisdom from conversation with all ranks, the labourer and the beggar: there is no degradation in stooping thus, since we stoop only to gather pearls."

"Men do a mean act, and then boast of it as clever: if they will skin a flint, must they show me their choice collection of skins?"

"The sinecurist says to the beggar, Go, and work.'"

"In preaching and in speaking, the 'one word in conclusion' is never 'finis-there is as long a space between going and gone, as in an auctioneer's oration!"

“Masculine, gaiety; feminine, vice.” "We read in novels, he wittily said;'— -as linendrapers put on their goods very cheap,' for fear you should not know."

THE chief events of Luther's life are too well known to require that we should attempt a meagre recital of them; but we take up this publication for the sake of a few extracts from the Introductory Essay of Mr. Taylor, who should no longer entitle himself

Author of "Natural History of Enthusiasm," but of " Ancient Christianity," which is incomparably his most laborious and important work. In the Essay prefixed to the Life of Luther, he treads in his own steps in regard to the early corruptions

foisted upon Christianity, particularly that of asceticism, and the evils which grew out of it; and which he considers were rife long before the establishment of the Papal despotism. We may touch upon this by and bye; but we must just ask, before we advert to his observations, whether he has carefully considered the memoir to which they are prefixed? It is remarkable that he makes but slight allusion to it, though it goes out with the weight of his name attached to it. We suggest the question, because, though Pfizer's work furnishes a very copious account of Luther's life as a matter of biography, and presents also a running commentary upon the facts, it fails, and worse than fails, in bringing out the true character of the Protestant Reformation;-we say worse than fails, because it leaves a false impression, as if this great event were but a step in the modern "march of mind," an advance towards that mental philosophy and political liberty which are to constitute the perfection of a coming age; so that instead of viewing Luther as an instrument employed by the Great Head of the church for the revival of pure Gospel truth, we are rather to contemplate him as a deliverer from the chains of intellectual thraldom, who laid down principles which are eventually to produce fruits of rationalistic philosophy, of which he himself had no expectation. Mr. Taylor justly says, that "the doctrine of grace was God's truth, and Luther not only found it in the letter of Scripture, but he felt its vitality as a heaven-descended energy;" and accordingly we cannot open the writings of those historians of the Reformation, or biographers of Luther, who have correctly estimated the character, and felt the scriptural importance,

of that memorable event, without observing how strongly they dwell upon the "articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiæ." But does Pfizer do so? Far from it; he throws this great characteristic of the Reformation into the shade; so that in perusing his pages side by side with those of such writers as Scott and the Milners, (not to mention the early narrators), we find the whole moral and philosophy of the piece changed. There is a singular contrast in this respect between the estimate of Mr. Taylor himself and of the author whom he introduces to English society. Mr. Taylor represents Luther as impelled by his hearty reception of the "doctrine of grace" to reject whatever contravened it; and hence arriving by successive steps at the assertion of the supreme and sole authority of Scripture; thus placing the "doctrine of grace" upon an immoveable foundation. But the German biographer appears to regard the recognition of the sole authority of Scripture as important, chiefly as vindicating individual liberty of conscience; and as a lever for ultimately overturning Luther's own views of Christian doctrine. We do not say that this is distinctly propounded; it is rather to be gathered negatively than positively; from omission than assertion; and yet we think that such a passage as the following speaks pretty plainly to those who are acquainted with the philosophising style of modern German-and we may add French and Swiss-Protestant theology; and who remember that at the tercentenary commemoration of the Reformation, the most marked feature of panegyric was, that Luther had thrown open the flood-gates to Rationalism, Neology, and Socinianism; that in emancipating the human mind from Popery, he had also laid a