Thy infinite goodness prompted | pain, and Thy celestial aid to those Thee to desire, and Thy infinite wisdom enabled Thee to know! We, Thy creatures, vanish into nothing before Thy supreme Majesty; we hourly feel our weakness; we daily bewail our vices; we continually acknow. ledge our folly. Thee only we adore with awful veneration; Thee we thank with the most fervent zeal; Thee we praise with astonishment and rapture; to Thy power we humbly submit; of Thy goodness we devoutly implore protection; on Thy wisdom we firmly and cheerfully rely. We do but open our eyes and instantly we perceive Thy divine existence; we do but exert our reason, and in a moment we discover Thy divine attributes. But our eyes could not behold Thy splendor, nor could our minds comprehend Thy divine essence-we see Thee only through Thy stupendous and all-perfect works; we know Thee only by that ray of sacred light which it has pleased Thee to reveal. Nevertheless, if creatures too ignorant to conceive, and too depraved to pursue, the means of their own happiness, may without presumption express their wants to their Creator, let us humbly supplicate Thee to remove from us that evil which Thou hast permitted for a time to exist, that the ultimate good of all may be complete, and to secure us from that vice which Thou sufferest to spread snares around us, that the triumph of virtue may be more conspicuous. Irradiate our minds with all useful truth; instil into our hearts a spirit of general benevolence; give understanding to the foolish, meekness to the proud, temperance to the dissolute, for titude to the feeble-hearted, hope to the desponding, faith to the unbelieving, diligence to the slothful, patience to those who are in who are in danger; comfort the afflicted, relieve the distressed, supply the hungry with salutary food, and the thirsty with a plentiful stream. Impute not our doubts to indifference, nor our slowness of belief to hardness of heart; but be indulgent to our imperfect nature, and supply our imperfections by Thy heavenly favour. Suffer not, we anxiously pray, suffer not oppression to prevail over innocence, nor the might of the avenger over the weakness of the just. Whenever we address Thee in our retirement from the vanities of the world, if our prayers are foolish, pity us; if presumptuous, pardon us; if acceptable to Thee, grant them, allpowerful God, grant them; and, as with our living voice, and with our dying lips, we will express our submission to Thy desires, adore Thy providence, and bless Thy dispensations, so in all future states, to which we reverently hope Thy goodness will raise us, grant that we may continue praising, admiring, venerating, worshipping, Thee more and more, through worlds without number, and ages without end!-Jan. 1st, 1782.* *The following is transcribed from a paper in the handwriting of Sir William Jones-LANGUAGES. Eight languages studied critically: English, Latin, French, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Persian, Sanscrit. Eight studied less perfectly, but all intelligible with a dictionary: Spanish, Portuguese, German, Runick, Hebrew, Bengali, Hindu, Turkish, Twelve studied least perfectly, but all attainable: Tibetian, Pali, Pha-lavi, Deri, Russian, Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic, Welsh, Swedish, Dutch, Chinese, Twenty-eight Languages. THE MISCHIEF OF RIVAL SECTS, AN ILLUSTRATION. A brig was on the sands within three miles of the shore at Yarmouth, in that tremendous hurricane which will make the 28th of May, 1860, memorable in the register of storms. The lifeboat was got out. with sufficient promptness, but the beachmen whose appointed turn it was to man her, and the coxswain appointed to take permanent charge of her.disputed on his right to command the boat. The men would not go with Mulligan, Mulligan would not quit the boat; and a precious hour was lost in the squabble, which ended in the beachmen quitting the boat, Mulligan remaining without a crew, until a lieutenant and some of the coast guard, and a few volunteers found him, and then they put to sea. But it was now too late. The brig had drifted too far into the breakers to be followed, according to the evidence of Lieutenant Betts, and, strange to say, they could see no persons on board; the boat rode at anchor for hours, at some distance from the brig. The thousands on the beach saw the crew, supposed to be eleven in number, climb the rigging and wildly gesticulate for help. Between one and two o'clock-that is about four hours after she struck, the ship began to break up, and one by one the poor fellows were swept from the rigging till the masts went over, the ship and crew had disappeared. Mulligan and the men who remained on shore agreed that but for the delay the crew of the brig might have been saved. Mr. Palmer, who presided at the enquiry before the Life-Boat Committee, threw the primary blame for this catastrophe on the appointment of coxswains; and by a strange piece of reasoning, made the Board of Trade answerable for those appointments by the National Life Boat Association,— because the Board of Trade rewarded the men for their exertions. But whether these ap pointments were right or wrong; whether Mulligan's claim to the command of the boat was well or ill-founded is nothing to the purpose. Men were perishing within view-was that a time to settle rival pretensions? If the desire had been to save life and not to win reward, would not the Yarmouth men have acted more like those of Ramsgate, who, arriving too late, threw their "waterproofs" to the men in the boat who were without them? Would not Mulligan have yielded to the entreaties of those on the shore to quit the boat? or would not the crew have submitted to his directions, and to every cry of 'Tis my right," "It is our turn," have answered-"But men are perishing !"-" Times," June 6th, 1860. KEVENGE ILLUSTRATED. Tragedies substantially similar are of frequent occurrence in our own day, wherever violent tempers are allowed to gain the mastery. There are several towns in Great Britain of the name of Newport. I refer to one of these, and purposely avoid mentioning the County in which it is situated. In the suburb of that town there were some cottages with small gardens in the front of them. Two of these were, at the time referred to, occupied by men who worked together; the one as foreman, and the other as an artisan. One Monday morning each repaired to the scene of early toil. In the meanwhile their wives were engaged in preparing breakfast against the period of their expected return. In each dwelling the fire was lighted, and the meal prepared, and the table spread. But anger had been aroused, and had already ensured days of darkness, and adversity for both these women. He who acted as foreman had deemed it needful to administer rebuke to the other. This was resisted, and ill-tempered recrimination followed. The foreman seems to have preserved something like self-command; but the other aroused to fury by some remark which was made, seized a hammer which was near, and struck him on his head; he sank down at once to the ground. In a short time the busy housewives learnt that one of them had been made a widow, and that the other was the wife of one regarded as a felon. In a few days the manslayer was taken to prison, and the body of his victim was laid in the grave. The neighbours ceased to talk about the sad event; but those two women and the children dependent on them, were left to struggle as they could through this cold and stormy world.-SMITH. LIFE IN DEATH. But there is life in death. Not in God's inspired writings only, but in every lineament, in every movement, of our great mother earth all around us, all over this globe, death seems to staik triumphant. The summer passes away, flowers fade and fruits decay; field and meadow are buried in deep slumber. Broad lands are swallowed up by the hungry ocean, and gigantic mountains sink to be seen no more. But death has found his conqueror in nature also. What perishes rises again; what fades away changes but form shape. Sweet spring follows winter, new life blossoms out of the grave. and So with stones also. The poor pebble lies unnoticed by the water's edge; soft rains come and loosen the bands that held him together; refined, almost spiritualized, he rises with the gentle water, drops into the delicate roots of the plants, with the grass he passes into the grazing cattle, and through vein and artery, until at last he becomes part and portion of the being into which God himself has breathed the breath of life! And when dust returns to dust, he also is restored once more to his first home, after having served his great purpose in the household of nature-not to rest or perish for ever, but to begin again the eternal course through death and life.-M. S. DE VERE. A SPIRITUAL BODY. As spirit serving the flesh is not unsuitably named carnal, so flesh serving the spirit is rightly named spiritual; not because changed into spirit, as some suppose from the words of Scripture, "It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body," but because, with perfect and most wonderful facility of obedience, it will be subject to the spirit, so as completely to fulfil the serenely calm volitions of a never-ending immortality-all feeling of uneasiness, all possibility of decay, everthing that clogs its motions being done away.-Augustine, book xiii., chap. 23. DEATH IN EVERY PART OF US. So many members as we have, so many deaths have we. Death peeps out at every limb. LUTHER. Literary Notices. [WE hold it to be the duty of an Editor either to give an early notice of the books sent to him for remark, or to return them at once to the Publisher. It is unjust to praise worthless books; it is robbery to retain unnoticed ones.] THE REVIEWER'S CANON. In every work regard the author's end, Since none can compass more than they intend. AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN; by GEORGE HUTCHESON. Ward and Co. THE EPISTLES OF PAUL; by JAMES FERGUSON. Ward and Co. MORE than two long centuries, with all their wondrous revolutions, have rolled over our planet since these two volumes first made their appearance. Though mental science, Biblical criticism, and various other branches of enquiry that throw light upon the Inspired Record, have made considerable advancement since these venerable expositors lived and studied here, there is much in their commentaries that will repay the study of modern students, and not a little equal to the best of modern expositors. The mental powers, scholastic attainments, theological views, and methods of study, of our authors, are so identical that you can scarcely make a remark to characterize the one that will not apply with equal force to the other. We like their method: it seems to us the most true and profitable manner of dealing with God's great Book. Their plan is, to offer exegetical remarks upon the separate verse or paragraph, and then to deduce the "doctrines" or general truths therein expressed or implied. Modern expositors, especially of the German school, seem almost systematically to neglect this latter operation,— as if unworthy of modern scholarship and science. This we deem a great mistake. The "doctrines," or general truths, contained in the passage, are its very heart, spirit, worth; and the man who cannot bring them out clearly to the common sense of the common reader, lacks the fundamental qualification of a Biblical expositor, however deeply read he may be in philological lore, or skilful in 'hermeneutical tactics. We love old Matthew Henry, because of the general truths that he brings out from the passage. His "Note here," which meets you in every turn, like finger posts pointing you into glorious districts of general common sense sentiment and divine truth gives his commentary immense charm, and is, we think, the philosophy of its popularity, and the guarantee of its continuance through the coming ages. We should like to see commentaries constructed after the following fashion-A simple condensed statement of the universal truths, contained in the various verses, paragraphs, chapters, and books of the Bible. Whilst to do it well, the author should be a most competent scholar, and a philosophic thinker, we would not have a word in his commentary of verbal criticism or speculation. All the processes through which he reached his conclusions should be hidden. His work should be to strip The Book of all its orientalisms, localisms, ceremonialisms, &c., and bring out the general truths. Such a commentary, instead of being like other commentaries, larger than the Bible, would not be a quarter of its size, but it would be the spirit of the Book, essentially the Bible itself, commended irresistibly to the common reason and the common conscience of humanity. As the excellencies of these works are nearly the same, so are their defects; there is in both too much Calvinistic rigor, narrow saintliness, sermonic mannerism, and clumsy verbosity, to allow us the gratification of writing an unqualified commendation. THE ANTIQUITIES OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Translated and compiled from the works of Augusti with numerous additions, from Rheinnnald Siegel and others, by the Rev. LYMAN COLEMAN. THE object of this work is to furnish the student of Divinity with a book of reference, and the scholar and antiquary with a guide, in his more extended and original investigations. The merits and need of this work are variously estimated by different individuals, according to their religious creeds and intellectual habits and tastes. He who regards—as does the Papist-THE CHURCH as the source of religious knowledge, and its rites and doctrines as revelations of the Divine mind, will, of course, study the history of these doctrines, and rites, with as much earnestness and zeal as he would study the scriptures themselves. Protestants have too long neglected the study of this important branch of enquiry, mainly, we presume, for the reason that "the voice of the Church" with them has of course no authority co-ordinate with that of the Bible. Their interest, when they have it, in ecclesiastical antiquities, arises from other considera |