Lo! the bread of life, this day's
Triumphant text, provokes thy praise;
The living and life-given bread,
To the great twelve distributed,
When Life himself at point to die,
Of love was his own legacy.

Come, Love! and let us work a song,
Loud and pleasant, sweet and long ;
Let lips and hearts lift high their noise
Of so just and solemn joys,

Which on his white brows this bright
day

Shall hence for ever bear away.

Lo! the new law of a new Lord,
With a new Lamb, blesses the board;
The aged Pascha pleads not years,
But spies Love's dawn and disappears.
Types yield to truths, shades shrink
away,

And their night dies into our day.

But lest that die too, we are bid
Ever to do what he once did;
And by a mindful mystic breath,
That we may live, revive his death;
With a well-blest bread and wine
Transum'd, and taught to turn divine.

We will, in conclusion, present a specimen of George Wither:

IMPROVEMENT OF IMPRISONMENT.

Our correspondent finds nothing better from the pen of King James than the sonnet which he has transcribed. We were driven to the same extremity when we quoted it ourselves, as a specimen, some years ago (1827 p. 299;) but there is more spirit in his Chorus Venetus, which, as being a royal poem, we will cite, though James was only a king among poets, although a poet among kings.

Sing praise to God both young and old
That in this town remain,

With voice, and every instrument,
Found out by mortal brain :

Sing praises to our mighty God;
Praise our Deliverer's name;
Our loving Lord, who now in need,
Hath kyth'd to be the same.

The faithless snares did compass us,
Their nets were set about,

But yet our dearest Father in heaven,
He hath redeemed us out.

Not only that, but by his power
Our enemies' feet they staid,
Whom he hath trapp'd, and made to fall
Into the pit they made :

Sing praises, then, both young and old,
That in this town remain,

To him that hath reliev'd our necks
From Turkish yoke profane.
Let us wash off our sins impure,
Cut off our garments vile,

And haunt his temple every day,
To praise his name a while.
O praise him for the victory,
That he hath made us have,
For he it was reveng'd our cause,
And not our army brave:
Praise him with trumpet, fife and drum,
With lutes and organs fine,
With viols, gitterns, cistiers, als,
And sweetest voices syne.

Sing praise,sing praise both young and old,
Sing praises one and all,

To him who hath redeem'd us now,
From cruel Pagan's thrall.

Our correspondent mentions Raleigh as James's victim; he might have mentioned him also as his rival for poetical honours. Two verses from one of his hymns will shew that when the axe gleamed before him, he was not at a loss where to fix the eye of faith in death.

And thou, my soul, inspir'd with holy flame,
View and review with most regardful eye
That holy cross, whence thy salvation came,
On which thy Saviour and thy sin did die!
For in that sacred object is much pleasure,
And in that Saviour is my life, my treasure.

To thee, O Jesu! I direct my eye,

To thee my hands, to thee my humble knees;

To thee my heart shall offer sacrifice,

To thee my thoughts, who my thoughts only sees;

To thee myself, myself and all I give ;

To thee I die, to thee I only live!

LORD BROUGHAM ON THE VIS MEDICATRIX.

For the Christian Observer.

WRITERS upon what is called Natural Theology have proved beyond contradiction, from a vast accumulation of facts, that the world was not produced, and is not sustained, by chance; but that there is, most clearly, an intelligent, creating, ordaining, and conserving Power; that is, a God; a Being of infinite wisdom and goodness;--though this last attribute is obscured by the phænomena of pain, sorrow, and various physical evils, the existence of which can only be accounted for by Revelation. The disclosures of Holy Writ teach us, that suffering was the consequence of sin; though even now the question still returns, why was moral evil permitted, without which physical could not have existed, and to this question man's finite reason can offer no reply.

This knowledge of God from his works is highly valuable in studying his word; for an atheist cannot be reasoned with respecting the Bible, for if there be no God, a revelation from God must be an idle dream; but when a man admits that there is an all-wise and powerful Creator and Governor, he is in a condition to be plied with those irrefragable arguments, which prove that he has made himself known to his creatures by a declaration of his will.

The various natural illustrations of the being and attributes of God, CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 33.

3 Z

and of his providential government, strike different minds with varied force. Those which most clearly indicate design, are the most convincing; as the wonderful construction of the eye and the hand. But the evidence is augmented when the effect takes place in a manner which sets aside the notion of appetency. Thus Paley particularly urged the valves in the blood-vessels, and the strapping down of the tendons at the ankles; because both these instances exhibit an important end, produced without any tendency of the parts to produce it. If a man should choose to say that the cameleopard's long neck and the elephant's trunk were not bestowed, that the first might browse upon trees, and the latter lay hold of food and convey it to his mouth; but that the neck of the one, and the snout of the other, had been elongated in the course of perhaps millions of years, by the efforts of the animals to procure food; the former having occasion to reach high, and the latter to counteract the effect of its heavy construction, which rendered it inconvenient to stoop its head to the earth, or to raise it to the branches of trees; he could not say that the strapping down of the tendons could be accounted for upon any such principle of appentency.

So decisive are the marks of intelligent design throughout the works of God, that the most sceptical man of science, when he discovers any new organ or remarkable structure in a living creature, nay, in a fossil relic of some unknown animal, never doubts that it was adapted to some useful purpose, and begins speculating upon its probable application; a proof that chance was not the author.

Lord Brougham, in his concluding Volume of "Dissertations on Subjects of Science connected with Natural Theology," in illustration of Paley, urges, in a very able and striking manner, what is called the Vis Medicatrix in living creatures, and the argument might have been extended to vegetable nature. He very justly shews that this is a property with which the organized being is endued by its Creator; for the effect is certain, and it would be absurd to call it a self-derived power; as though every bone and animal tissue possessed intelligence; and could think, and design, and perform, more than the brain of Newton himself. He justly remarks, that the facts are undeniable; so much so, that anatomists and physiologists speak of them as though every particle of animal matter had consciousness; an inherent volitional self-healing power. This of course is not literally true; it is but an expression of an effect-the designer is the Creator; the Creator is God. If we interpose the word Nature, the result is the same; for Nature is only an expression for certain effects; just as when, for brevity, we say steam-engines are very apt to do so and so; not meaning that steam-engines are conscious beings. Nature is but an expression for certain laws or phænomena; the Lawgiver is God. Once exclude Chance, as we do by such facts as those under consideration, and we must arrive at this high result, whatever intermediate expressions we may use for the sake of convenience.—The following is Lord Brougham's paper.

"On the Vis Medicatrix.

"Under a former head this interesting subject was considered as connected with Evils of Imperfection. It furnishes, however, so many striking proofs of design, that some further remarks may be added.

"Some have objected to the expression as grounded upon an assumption,-the

hypothesis that nature acts in each instance for the purpose of remedying some mischief which has been done. But the facts are undeniable: a healing process takes place; a remedial effect is produced; and the expression only states the fact. It may be added, that the power is sometimes preventive, or prophylactic also. Thus the tendency of some poisons taken into the stomach is to induce vomiting, which throws out the offensive matter before it can produce its deleterious effects. Such, perhaps, is also the tendency of profuse perspirations, to throw off a malady in the first instance, and prevent it from taking hold of the system. When these preventives fail, the remedial power is required, and comes into action.

"So convinced have some anatomists been, by daily observation, of a kind of active power pervading and moving the system, that some speak of the vital energies, as if thought as well as life could be predicated of the parts of our system. The celebrated John Hunter is an example. That great and original pbysiologist, being any tendency to refining, and as little certainly as any one, under the dominion of vulgar prejudices, speaks familiarly of limbs and bones acting in disease, or when suffering from injuries, as if they had an intention of inflaming, and knew how to execute it. This habit of expressing himself could only have resulted from constantly observing the exact adaptation of natural operations to the uses and wants of the system on each occasion, and the exact coincidence, in point of time as well as in proportion, of the supply to the demand.

"The formation of bony matter, when a fracture has taken place, and the pieces of the broken bone are required to be knit together again, has been mentioned before, and the whole process is striking and instructive. First, blood is poured out into the fracture, it coagulates; soon after, very small or capillary blood-vessels shoot into the coagulated blood; the blood disappears; gelatinous matter alone remains; this gradually hardens; and bony particles are deposited which fill up the break and knit the bone. Where a dislocation has taken place there is no similar process; but as soon as the luxation is reduced, and the bones are replaced, in a very little while all the fine apparatus of the joint is restored with wonderful perfection, so as speedily to obliterate the traces of the mischief. Even where the restorative process has proved inadequate, and a distortion takes place, as when, by some natural defect in the firmness of some bones, they sink under the pressure of the body, a new weight being thrown upon other bones, these are strengthened additionally for the purpose of enabling them to meet the new demand upon their powers. Thus the leg and thigh bones are fortified by additional secretions of bony matter, and these are thrown up on the yielding side, and perpendicularly to the line of pressure, with as manifest a design of strengthening as is shown by those who shore or prop an old wall. Again, when after a fracture the bone of the limb is set, the ends may overlap, and thus the limb be shortened. What then shall become of the muscles which had been of a length to fit the former size of the bone? Those muscles immediately begin to shorten much beyond their original natural contraction, and they acquire a power of further contraction to suit the altered length of the bone. It is as if upon any accident happening to one part of a steam-engine, whereby it had changed its dimensions, the neighbouring parts, wholly unaffected by the accident, were of themselves to change their dimensions, or their position, so that their action should also be varied, and varied exactly to suit the alteration in the part affected; thus continuing the movement of the machine, but in a different adjustment, and all without any interference of the engineer.

"The throwing out of new vessels, or enlarging smaller lateral ones, in order to continue the circulation where a large or main one has been stopped up, or cut through, is another example of a kind equally striking. But the whole progress of aneurism affords perhaps the most remarkable instance of any when that progress is fully gone through. This, as is well known, is a tumour formed by the partial bursting or giving way of an artery; and if the vessel be of any considerable size, death must immediately ensue, but for a process which as immediately takes place. The blood which escapes on the rupture of the vessel coagulates and becomes solid. A kind of temporary plug is thus afforded, and time gained for a

It is so in the volume: - we suppose free from" is omitted. There is a strange error in a Scripture quotation in the same volume (referred to in our last Number;) "to every soul

[instead of seed] its own body." It is evidently a mistake of his Lordship's amanuensis or printer, there being no such reading.

more durable repair being supplied by a more solid work being executed. Coagulable lymph is formed and thrown out, and it soon becomes firm membrane. Layer after layer of this is deposited, so that a bandage or coating is provided sufficiently strong to resist the continual pressure from the impulse of the blood. Thus the inflammatory action which ensued upon the rupture produces a new substance required for counteracting the effects of that rupture, and enabling the artery to continue performing its functions as a conduit for carrying the blood to its destination; and this fluid itself supplies the materials with which the breach in the conduit used for carrying and distributing it, is first temporarily plugged and then repaired, as if the water in a pipe were to secrete, first a sediment, or lute, to make the channel water-tight, and then different plates of metal and braces to mend the pipes wherever its own pressure had burst them.

"A similar provision is observable where a tumour has been formed in any muscular part of the body. It results from a morbid action of those parts; but in the progress of the disease a barrier is thrown up, likewise formed out of the blood; a hard welt of a firm condensed membrane is formed surrounding the tumour, and interposed between it and the healthy portion of the limb.

"In the case of aneurism, however, there is a still more remarkable provision added. The pressure must be relieved of the main stream of blood upon the channel, which is no longer of sufficient strength to resist it. Accordingly bloodvessels, which before had hardly been discernible, begin to work with new energy, and are enlarged in their capacity. These run parallel to the artery injured, and convey the blood, so that the requisite supply continues to be afforded for the relief of the injured channel, as soon as its damage has, by the first natural operation, been repaired. What engineer-what Smeaton, or even Watt himself, ever constructed a pipe, such, that when it was fractured, it could not only provide itself with a plug to stay immediate mischief, and enable the machine to go on, but could also provide splices for a permanent repair; and not only that, but could of itself, immediately after the accident, form new conduits and other parts exactly fitted to continue the general movement, but also to afford such relief as the injured part required,-relief exactly proportioned at once to the amount of the weakness occasioned, and to the extent of the service required? And all this without the necessity of the engineer himself being once appealed to, or any extraneous aid called in. Is there any thing like this in all the works of these great men? Is there any thing more marvellous even in the works of the grand Artist himself? Yes-for He too made the minds as well as the bodies of those men, and the wondrous mechanism of such minds as theirs, and those of the Newtons and La Places, which proceeded from the same hand, incomparably surpasses all the marvels of their bodily structure."

BISHOP BURNET ON THE DANGERS OF PROTESTANTISM, AND ON HIGH AND LOW CHURCHMEN.

For the Christian Observer.

HAVING Occasion to refer to Bishop Randolph's collection of Tracts for the instruction of the Clergy, published at the Clarendon Press, we observe that, in reprinting Bishop Burnet's Pastoral Care, the Prefaces (that to the first and that to the third edition) are omitted; and there is the same omission, we believe, in some other editions. Mr. Dale has reprinted them in his edition lately published (with a seasonable prefatory address); and they contain some matters, which though not essential to a treatise on the Pastoral Care, yet explain the Bishop's object, and were by him considered important to be mentioned.

Those of our readers who have only the mutilated copies may not be displeased to peruse some striking passages upon the dangers of the Protestant church; and the characteristics of what are often called High and Low Churchmen. We say " called," for we do not