No. I. INTRODUCTORY. Every one knows how much there has been said and written of late about Heroism and Heroes. Without expressing any opinion as to whether much of this has been calculated to extend right views, and to exert a beneficial influence,- to do which would be difficult in brief, and would probably lead us far from our present purpose, it is obvious to remark, that many who have been called Heroes, have been men whose Heroism has, to say the least, been of a very doubtful character. We propose now, in a few papers, to present our readers with some samples of Christian Heroism. We think that we shall find in them manifestations of the heroic far higher than any others that the history of the world can furnish; and we hope to meet, as we proceed, with something to learn, and much that may be of use to aid and encourage.

The chief difficulty we shall have to contend with will be that of selection. Perhaps we may obviate this somewhat by placing our Heroes in groups, rather than taking them and representing them individually. Our selection will be made without any particular care about arrangement or order, -certainly we shall not consider ourselves bound to the order of chronological or historical sequence. A few reflections, however, occur to us, equally applicable to the whole, which it may be well to give in this Introductory paper.

In running over, then, the list of Christian Heroes before us, and remarking the actions and spirit for which they have become conspicuous, the thought cannot but suggest itself, first of all, how much nobleness Christianity has evoked.

In one

sense, indeed, every Christian man may Justly be regarded as a Hero. He is engaged in "fighting a good fight," and struggling, with Divine aid, for a victory-over himself-which the wise man declares to be better than any; so that in the highest or the humblest position he is a "man of mark" in the eyes of superior beings; and if we could read the unwritten records which only the Book of Life could reveal, we should find a Heroism in the every-day life of many a man, whose name is unknown, and whose history has never been recorded,

that would outshine very much that attracts the world's attention, and calls forth its loud applause. But age after age has left behind it, deeply written, the names of many who have stood out from the crowd of even Christian nobles. Every century as it has passed has swelled the number of not those "of whom the world was worthy." If we could ask them what it was that made them what they were, the answer would be, the religion of Jesus.

"They marked the footsteps that He trod; His zeal inspired their breast." They, more than others, imbibed the spirit, and appreciated the motives, which Christianity presents. On they have marched, a noble host, with their spirits elevated, and their hearts enlarged, by the truths and the hopes which they were enabled, to such a great extent, to realise and to enjoy. And in the upper world, to which they have been gathered, and where the same truths are presented to them with so much more of glory, doubtless they shine all the more brightly for their higher intelligence and nearer communion with God, as they indeed make that world brighter to us, whom they have left behind them.

And this leads us to remark the pecu liar advantage there is in the study of Christian Heroes, namely, that they, more than any, are or may be examples to us. Granted, that there was much of heroism in Mahomet and Napoleon, and in others whom the world has been taught to "worship," how little there is in them which common men may be exhorted to followhow much, alas, that we must rather condemn! At first, and in the distance, we are apt to think them stars, which may help to guide us along the rough sea of life, but on going nearer, we find them beacons, which are to be noted indeed, but only to be shunned. But this cannot be said of those whose memory we would enshrine. True, they had their imperfections, and we would not hold them up as faultless. But their remembrance is fragrant. They remind and teach us ever, that we also may make our "lives sublime" ones. Every page of their history is calculated to "give heart" to us who are still "sailing o'er life's solemn main." If we are Christians, the principles

which were their pole-star are ours also. We have the same Saviour to follow, and the same truths to aid; and it is only needed that we should live as closely to the Saviour as they lived, and hold our principles in the spirit in which they held them, for us to be as much Heroes as they were, and to live and die as they lived and died.

There is one thing that is evident from the histories of those to whom we shall have to refer in the succeeding papers. Religion was to them a LIFE. They did not regard it merely as a system of doctrines however important, or a form and mode of worship however complete; they regarded it as a LIFE, which the doctrines but aid to develop, and the worship but faintly expresses and shadows forth. And this it was which made their lives, to use a common expression, "so much of a piece." If we could have visited them in their homes, or studied the indications of their character in retirement, we should have found their private life as noble as their public life; they were as truly Heroes at home and by the fireside, when mixed up in the affairs of ordinary life, as when placed, as many of them were, at the tribunal of the persecutor, or immured in the dungeon of the anti-christian tyrant. Oh, how many are there who forget the lesson which is contained in this! Their religion consists in what is called "religious duty," and seems too sacred a thing to be mixed up in the

engagements of common life. They carry their Christianity with them when they go to chapel or church, but they do not carry it with them into the market-place, or the workshop, or the office. They find Sunday religion far easier than week-day religion, -piety in public far less difficult than piety with wife and child at home. Depend upon it, such men as these will never be Christian Heroes! It will not be of such that we shall have to write,-not of such that others in after ages will tell. Let us follow the HEPOES of our religion, and we shall find that their life was always and everywhere the action of a principle. Look reverently upon them, for they are temples of the Holy One! They enable us to understand something of the mystery of a life "hidden with Christ in God." In wealth or in poverty, at home or abroad, alone or in the presence of the great world, struggling with small and petty vexations or engaged in the stern battle of life, in all and always they lived to GOD, and made his love and service the principle of their action. - Is not this the secret of a noble Christian life? Is it not this that makes the poor man a prince, and renders the humblest cottage the dwelling-place of a Hero?

If these papers should teach the writer and reader a few such lessons as these, to neither will the time given to them be given in vain!

A NEW YEAR'S DREAM. "I had a Dream, which was not all a Dream."

Amidst the musings natural to the close of one year and the commencement of another, I retired to my bed in the evening of December 31st, 18-, meditating on the mortality of man, and repeating to myself the words of the prophet, "All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness of man as the flower of the field. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away; but the word of the Lord endureth for ever."

I have no recollection of intervening thought, until I found myself far distant from my place of rest, standing at the great gateway of one of the parks of our metropolis. A peculiar and death-like silence reigned through the extensive

I saw

avenue, of which I commanded the entire view-a portentous sign of silence in all its tributary streets. There was no rattling of carriages; no hurrying or jostling of the crowd; no intermingling of voices; no hum of distant business, though the sun had just passed the meridian, and was pouring his full and unclouded light upon all the haunts and ways of men. only the public and private buildings which human art had reared, as if to mock the frailty of the hands which built them; the trees stripped of their summer foliage, and the withered grass, nature's yearly lesson of mortality to living men; and a mysterious preparation of hearses and mourning carriages, as far as the eye could reach, as though the city were sitting in silent waiting for a universal funeral.

I did not muse long upon the scene before me, when a general knell struck upon my ear from every dome in the city; speaking in deep and varied tones the general calamity, and leaving minutes of silence more death-like than before, the mournful, meditative silence of myriads of souls.

What, thought I, can be the meaning of this awful silence-this pause of motion and business-this mysterious preparationthis universal knell ? Has some fearful pestilence made havoc of the people, some angel of destruction smitten the first-born, and changed the joyous city into a scene of mourning and woe? While I was musing, fixed in astonishment, the whole city, as by one consent, seemed to be put in motion. The narrow houses of the dead, apparently innumerable, were brought out from the abodes of the living; I could hear the sounds of universal weeping and lamentation, and felt unutterable sympathy in the public agony. Immediately the death march commenced to the different cemeteries of various processions, passing in different directions without disorder or confusion, moving slowly to the general chime cf tolling bells.

I attempted to hasten away from the scene which filled me with horror; but I could not escape. Wherever I went, the funeral was there; in every avenue, in every street, the same death-like order and stillness, and weeds of mourning and tolling bells, the same flow of a smitten people to their graves-to which abodes of silence the living were everywhere consigning their dead, as it seemed to me, past numbering.

I would have asked the meaning of a scene of woe so peculiar; but I could not ask to be told a story which I saw written in lines of anguish upon the face of the living. I hastened away, that I might find a place of quiet thought in the winter loneliness of a beautiful promenade, the bright water flowing before me, wont of a summer's evening to be thronged by cheerful groups of young and gay in innocent recreation. But the funeral was there. The clear and transparent waters, gilded with the sun now hastening to set, shewed not their ordinary display of craft of all sorts sporting by wind and steam as if to decorate a holiday. The shipping moored at the wharfs, or anchored in the stream, shewed no other signs of living beings but colours at half-mast; save here and there scattered sail and steam boats

covered with coffins, and dismally decorated with palls, and filled with mourners, apparently carrying their bewailing friends to be buried among grandsires, and parents, and kindred who were gone before: save here and there also a few vessels of larger size, from distant voyages, with dead on board, now disembarking; how differently from their hopes when they went merrily to sea! I felt that there was no escape from the horrors by which I was surrounded; no avoiding this awful funeral, this universal knell, still sounding in softened and distant tones upon my ears; and I sat myself down to give vent to my sorrows in a flood of tears.

As I was weeping, I felt a gentle touch upen my shoulder, such as a kind friend might have given who had become an accidental spectator of my grief. I turned, and saw a face so lovely, so benignant, as seemed to be more than human-a countenance which could never have been ruffled with anger, or radiant with pride; surely, I thought, a ministering spirit, some holy angel, come to unfold the mystery before me, to soothe the anguish of my heart, and to aid me in learning some lesson of salvation.

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"What you have seen to-day," said he,

you may be surprised to know is nothing new. All that is uncommon in the scene before you is, that, by my aid, the funerals of three hundred and sixty-five days have been clustered before your imagination into one. All that you have seen has passed before the people unnoticed and forgotten. The knell you have heard was the knell of thousands, the victims of death's daily and common work. No other evil has befallen the city than its usual mortality of so many a week. No fearful pestilence, no overwhelming calamity, has filled the city with mourning, or caused the universal knell. Health and prosperity have cheered the past year. The thousands whose obsequies have passed in vision before you, have met their death by the common varieties of human calamity and disease. When the sun cast the shadows last as you now see them, the greater part were in health, and had no reason to expect themselves to be the victims of death. Rapid fevers, and fluxes, and lingering consumptions, have wasted and destroyed multitudes of the strong, active, and blooming, who have gone to their graves, instead of the infirm and aged, whom they were ex

pecting to follow. Some fell down dead suddenly amidst their walks, or conversation, or daily toil, or were blasted by lightning or steam. Some alone, and without forewarning, breathed away their lives amidst the quiet slumbers of the night, and heard not the lingering morning call, as it fell again and again upon their dead ear, nor the cry of astonishment and woe which burst from their friends at the sight of their lifeless corpses.

"Some, as they died, no matter where or how, were met by the angels. No shock came so suddenly, no blast so terribly, as to elude the care of those ministering spirits who have daily, nightly, charge of redeemed souls. Even in the storm and tempest, in darkness and alone, the charged angels covered them with their shields, until they were fitted for their upward flight, then speeded and aided them to the regions of purity and love."

I was waiting in anxiety approaching to agony to hear my heavenly guide speak of those unused to prayer, who had never accepted the offered covenant of their Maker, nor welcomed the Spirit sent down by their exalted Saviour; but the foreboding awoke me. As I awoke, I found myself saying, "The living, the living, he shall praise thee." "Whatsoever my hand findeth to do, I will do it with my might; for I am hastening to the grave." I will be "steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord; forasmuch as I know that my labour shall not be in vain in the Lord."

THE LOST POCKET-BOOK.

A TALE FOR ALL SEASONS.

The other day I stepped into an omnibus, going up the town, in which were some three or four gentlemen, and as many ladies. Soon after taking my seat, a young man, running after us, called to the driver from the causeway. The omnibus stopped, and the young man came up, pulled open the door, and stepped in. He was well dressed, with an overcoat on his arm, about eighteen, and evidently from the country.

The passengers moved to give him a seat, which he did not seem disposed to take, but looked anxiously about the 'bus. "I have lost my pocket-book in this 'bus," he said, as he began to examine the seats and floor. Every man smiled incredulously, as almost every man will at the first mention of any

story of loss or misfortune, suspecting that every such story is simply a ruse to get money.

"It wasn't in this 'bus, I fancy," said one. "Yes, it was in this 'bus. I got out at Street to go to the Railway Station, and, as soon as I was out, found that my pocket-book was gone."

"Oh, yes," said one of the men, “I recollect seeing you get out." This declaration quickened the memory of another, who also now remembered that he left the 'bus at Street.

Here every one in the 'bus commenced a search for the lost pocket-book. The search in a 'bus is not an extensive one; there are few crooks, or crannies, or by-places in a 'bus, where lost treasures may lie secluded. Just cast your eye along the floor, and turn up the cushions, and the work is done. Every one got up, every one looked intently along the floor, and every one assisted in turning over the cushions. But every one failed to find a lost pocket-book. It certainly was not there. Again they looked at the floor, again pulled up the cushions, but with the same success.

The first thought I said always is, where one complains of losing, that it is all a ruse. The second thought is that somebody has stolen it. When no one could find the pocket-book, each one began to wonder who took it from his pocket.

"It was in this pocket," said the young man, "and I sat in that corner; "-which would have made it impossible for any one to have taken it while he was in the 'bus.

"I don't know what I shall do," said the young man, despondingly. "I was going into the country, and I haven't got money enough left to pay my fare. I wonder if the Railway people would take me?" No oneventured a reply to this query, but some one asked how much money he had in his purse. "Oh, only about half-a-crown. don't care anything about it, if I only had enough to get home with."

I

The case now was reduced to a very simple point, and the question was, how should he get money enough to pay his fare. No one moved, but all were thinking, perhaps, though they did not say it, "Well, go to the Station-I dare say they will let you pass; or, "Somebody, if you ask them, will let you have the money;” or, “ Well, I can't do anything for you,-you must look out for yourself." And all looked hard at