a considerable space of time he was shut up in the suine cell with eight banditti! A man of admirable education, of refined manners, a companion of the studies of the king, resorting to the baths of Aix for his health, is taken sick from his bed, and shut up in a foul, infected dungeon, with corrupt and disgusting villains, where he cannot enjoy one moment's repose, nor even a corner to himself, but day and night is surrounded with filthy creatures, covered with vermin! All this for giving away a religious tract, at the wily instigation of the priest himself! With all this, it will scarcely be believed that out of this monstrous piece of persecution and deceit the Romish Church arrogated to herself the praise of great tolerance! After M. Pache had suffered in prison nine or ten months, the Bishop of Strasburg interfered in his favour by a pompous letter, which spoke of "the pity and compassion of the Church," and pretended to implore mercy and deliverance for a heretic justly condemned! This was really adding mockery and insult to the punishment; but at length, just as the period of imprisonment for their victim was expiring, M. Pache was set at liberty in consideration of the application of the bishop. Of course this was applauded as a proof of the compassion of the Romish Church, which may well pretend to be merciful, when its very acts of persecution can be turned, by the ingenuity of the priests, into the strongest and most popular proofs of its tolerance. Who can wonder at the appellations bestowed in the Scriptures upon such a Church?" Mystery of Iniquity," "Mother of Abominations," and "Man of Sin!"

I am bound to add that, towards the end of his imprisonment, M. Pache obtained a remarkable alleviation of its miseries, in consequence of his former friendship with the king, and the solicitations and measures of some personages of high rank. He obtained the favour of being transferred from the dungeon where he was surrounded by such a band of malefactors, and was put into another cell, in company with a murderer! This was a pleasant companion for a sick man and a clergyman, and a new proof of the compassions of the Romish Church, in consenting so wonderfully to ameliorate the position of a heretic.

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doubted as Bunyan's, but which of them is at all comparable to Christian? In him the hand of a master has drawn everything that is brave, and honest, and true-everything that is gentle and simple-everything that is lovely and of good report. He is an earnest man. He bears alike the pleasures and toils of pilgrimage, without rising into an immoderate joy or sinking into the depths of despair. He wages a sore combat with Apollyon for half a-day, and when the conflict is over he sits down by the place, and sings a sweet song of thanksgiving to Him who made his enemy to flee. He goes down into that dark valley where are the hobgoblins and the demons of the pit-where there is a continual howling as of people in unutterable misery--over which hang the discouraging clouds of confusionDeath also doth always spread his wings over it; but, nothing daunted, he cries out: "I perceive not yet but that this is my way to the desired haven!" and with his sword drawn he presses onward. See, too, what a tender sensibility there is mingled with his stern manhood! When he lost his roll at the arbour on the Hill Difficulty, he chid himself, and sat down and wept bitterly. And when he had found the roll and gone on to the House Beautiful, he was laid in an upper chamber whose window opened towards the sun-rising. The name of the chamber was Peace. Here he slept until the break of day, and then he awoke and sang. When he beholds the miseries of those who were kept among the tombs by Giant Despair, he "gushes out with tears;" nor can he restrain a laugh at the expense of brave Mr Talkative who came out of Prating Row. As Carlyle phrases it, we find in him a "robust, genuine, noble faculty of a man, with good humour, nay, and tender affection too. Laughter is in him, and tears also appointed unto him. He has a silent sorrow, an unnamable melancholy, the element of all gentle and fine affections; giving to the rest the true stamp of nobleness.” -Nassau Monthly.

Miscellaneous.

What a country is this! what despotism of the priesthood! what degradation and trembling servitude of the people! Surely every man, having the least regard for freedom and piety, is bound to exert himself to the uttermost against such a system of intolerance. It is time it were brought to an end; for the whole creation where it exists groaneth and travaileth in bondage under it.-Cheever.

THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. THE hero of the allegory is not only finely portrayed, but is himself a portraiture of the highest perfection of manhood. We know of no hero, among all the creations of fiction, who is equal to Christian. Bunyan's mind seems to have been fully equal to the conception of the truly great man. A thousand characters have been drawn by writers of piety as un

expire-eternity will last, world without end. When millions, unnumbered millions of ages are passed away, eternity will only be beginning. And this short life, this little span, is the seed-time of the long, long eternity. What we sow in this state we shall reap in the eternal state. Should we not, therefore, be careful, very careful, to improve our time, and make the best provision for an eternity of happiness? Should we not be careful to get faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, to get the love of God shed abroad in our hearts, and our souls renewed according to the amiable example of our blessed Redeemer? This, and nothing but this, is true religion. Going to church, hearing sermons, and receiving sacraments, profit us nothing, unless they promote these desirable ends. Fix, dear friend, this truth in your memory. A true faith in Christ, an unfeigned love of God, and a real holiness of heart, are the greatest blessings you can desire. Without them, we shall not, we cannot, enter into the kingdom of heaven. These you should incessantly, you should earnestly seek, through the whole advancing year.-Hervey.

Much discourse and much ink hath been spilt upon the debate of free will; but truly all the liberty it hath, till the Son and his Spirit free it, is that miserable freedom the apostle speaks of: "While ye were servants to sin, ye were free from righteousness.”— Leighton.

character of God-a life whose movements we can follow, and there learn the very mind of God-a voice to which we can listen, for it is not only articulate, but human, and yet the voice of God-a bosom on which our dim humanity can lay its confused and aching head, and whilst first emboldened so to do by the assuring aspect of the Brother, will find, to its sweet surprise, that, in that very act, it has gained the bosom of a reconciled God. God hath in these last days spoken to us by his Son from heaven, who is the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person. To bow at Jesus' name is the true antidote to idolatry-to say, "Whom have I in heaven but thee," is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and soul, and strength, and mind; and till we know God in Jesus Christ, he is still to us a God unknown-we have still to learn the first letter of his name; for in the knowledge of the only true God, Jesus is the Alpha and Omega-the one outlet of the Father's character, and the one inlet to the Father's love.

2. Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, because of his all-sufficiency. Like the literal Alpha and Omega, he includes everything within himself. He is the beginning and the ending, which is, and was, and is to come-the Amighty -the All-sufficient. There is nothing which a believer needs but he will find it in the Lord Jesus.

(1.) A sufficient Saviour. His name was called "Jesus," because he saves his people from their sins. You can do nothing which more truly honours him, than to trust your salvation entirely to him you can do nothing which will more delight his tender mercy, than to avail yourself of his finished work; for, when you do so, he sees of the travail of his soul, and is satisfied. How strangely do they err who fancy that he who bought salvation grudges to bestow it who fear that, now he is ascended up on high, he is more loath to bestow gifts on the rebellious than he showed himself to be when hanging on the cross! Happy they who know his name, and put their trust beneath the shadow of his wings! Happy they who never think of any other recommendation to mercy except the sprinkled blood-who seek no other passport to heaven except the robe of Jesus' righteousness!

(2.) A most attractive and assimilating pattern of all moral excellence. In his direct operations on the mind, the Holy Spirit is the immediate sanctifier of God's people; but it is by revealing the great model of all excellence in the person of the Lord Jesus, that the Holy Spirit changes them into the same likeness. Your growth in holiness will be just in proportion to your knowledge of Jesus, and the love you bear him. If your affection for him be very intense, your resemblance to him will be very visible; and nothing will so edulcorate the acrimonious elements of your character, nor so elevate its depressed and defective features, as

a confiding and endearing intimacy with the Son of God. There is no moralizing, no ennobling influence comparable to communion with Christ. He is full of grace and truth-of all that is noble in the strength of character, and of all that is lovely in its adorning; and he is not more gracious and godlike in his character than he is earnest in his affection for his own, and constant in his purpose of exalting them to an eminent holiness. The only limit, therefore, to the disciple's growth in moral loveliness, is his limited love to Jesus. Let that be but in tense enough-let him but have that adoring affection for his Saviour's person, and that wist ful delight in his Saviour's presence which courts his smile, and lingers ever near him, and there is no fear but, thus beholding the glory of his Lord, he himself will at last be changed into the same image from glory to glory.

(3.) A wise counsellor and unerring guide. There are few things more precious, and few more difficult to get, than sound and seasonable advice. There are persons of singular prudence. There are far-seeing people, who, like the eagle poising in mid-air, have a wide panorama within their field of view, and can speak down to others, and tell them the bearings cf} remote events and distant interests. And there are sagacious persons, who can see the upshot of an undertaking a great way off; and, from a certain practised keenness of vision, can descry failure or success, when others perceive nothing but the purest contingency. And there are disinterested and virtuous friends, who will give you their honest opinion, and offer no counsel which they would not take themselves. But ¦ the sharpest eye and the highest soaring cannot see beyond the horizon, and it may just be beyond the horizon that the danger lies which you wish to shun, or the prize which you wish to gain. The most knowing Ahithophel is apt to be hood-winked, and to give the most fatal counsel in the most critical emergency; | and the most anxious friend, after pondering the problem, and giving the most likely solu tion, instead of that peremptory deliverance which your hesitation craves, is apt to end his opinion with a doubt or a distracting query. But if you follow the Lord Jesus fully, you never will land wrong. He knows the end from the beginning; he sees the issue of every undertaking, not only in time, but in eternity. His counsel is wonderful, for it meets the very case; and what cannot be said of much good advice-he can not only give the best counsel, but he can make you willing to take it. In his ever-living Word, he has left principles available in all the casuistry which ever can occur in your experience-formula which only need to be filled up with your particular case, and the doubt is at once dispelled the path is at once made plain. By the light of his Spirit, he can lead you to the very passages where he him self anticipated your special perplexity hundreds of years ago, and by the delightful suasion of

his Spirit, can make you willing as a weaned child to do as he directs. And perhaps there is no more blessed state than to feel that you are wholly in the hands of the Wonderful Counsellor Abraham-like, going where Jesus guides, and doing what Jesus bids, in the face of worldly interest perhaps amidst the arched brows and bitter smiles of mortified friends and mocking worldlings- leaving in the distance familiar comforts and prized possessions, and encountering obvious dangers; but, Abrahamlike, hearing his own glad whisper," Fear not, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward." No one ever yet inquired at the Oracle-no one ever took the Bible for his directory in any omergency, and put himself in that docile attitude of soul which says, "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth," and regretted following the counsel so given.

3. Jesus is the Alpha and Omega, because all things that concern the Church are in him summed up or "recapitulated." In his person the Church on earth finds its access to God, and the earnest of its everlasting life; and in that same person the Church of the glorified finds the guarantee of permanent joy-the stability of its bliss secured.+ Jesus is the home of all the ransomed. All that is holy is already with him, or is going to him; and if aught that was truly holy, or truly lovely, has vanished from your view, it is not lost;-when you find the Alpha and Omega you shall find it again. All that belong to him are safe within the circle of the changeless love and all-embracing might of Him who filleth all in all.

4. For, lastly, Jesus is the Alpha and Omega, because he is the first and the last, the beginning and the ending-he that liveth, and is alive

for evermore.

There are some objects with which you do not easily associate their opposites. You can scarcely realize their absence or annihilation you have difficulty in conceiving of them as existing otherwise than they presently are. You look to the monarch mountain, raising his snowy front into the tranquil blue of the upper firmament, and in those skirts which flow in verdure over many a mile, affording room enough for a nation to nestle in; and as you leisurely scan him, from his glistening pinnacle to his imperial roots, a firmness, which no strength can overthrow, and a duration which no time can register, convey a shadowy immortality into your awe-struck spirit, and the epithet "eternal" is rising to your lips. You gaze on ocean's billowy bulge, till, weary with its perchless flight over leagues of the liquid immensity, your evening fancy, like Noah's dove, comes gladly back to roost among more familiar notions. Or you cast a hesitating glance at the lord of day, and when you think what a flood of glory this moment left him, and that this moment's flood is but one pulse of the self-same tide which bathed in blessedness the * Dr Owen. + Col. i. 18-20.

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bowers of Eden, and kindled the covenant-bow far above the dripping crags of Ararat, and lit the morning tents of Padan-aram, and lingered with evident desire to come again on the freshchiselled snows of Salem's first and fairest temple-when you think how, day by day, for countless ages, that brimming fountain has been squandering joy and glory on the universe, and knows no ebbing, grudges no largesse of the sultry past, and seeks no resurrection of the prodigal sunsets which he lavished on nature's carnivals millenniums ago-no emblem of exhaustless bounty strikes your fancy equal to the giant profusion of that ever-during sun. But old as the mountains are, and many though the drops in the ocean be, and long as the sun has shone, and longer as he yet may shine, they are all but emblems of a bounty that cannot ebb, and a life that cannot die. There is a power which bade Lebanon rise, and a power which can bid Lebanon and his continental roots subside in flat chaos again. The day will come when that hoary deep must die-when old Ocean will lift up his waves and clap his cymbal hands no more. The day will come when the fires of the great conflagration shall send his wreathing volume into viewless space, and dissolve his very elements in the fervent heat; and the day will come when the ancient giant shall be loath to quit his languid tent-when the sun will falter on his path, and not have light enough to guide him on his funeral way. Yes, old apparatus of the universe, obsolete version of a system fast verging to decay, ye soon must vanish, and make room for a world where there is no more sea, and for cities which don't need the sun. But when ye are gone-when the mountains have departed, and the hills been removed into the midst of the sea, nay, when seas themselves are gone, and some star-gazer in a distant world points his brother sage to the vacant spot where used to blaze our sun -when these materialisms are only traditions of eternity, and the sons of God have shouted at the foundation-laying of fairer worlds "Supreme in wisdom and in power," the Rock of Ages will still gaze in serene sublimity on revolutions of which himself is the Alpha and Omega; the Fountain of Life will still include in his all-encircling fulness everything that lives, and the Sun of Righteousness will pour his beatific beams on every creature to which life is blessedness and sensation ecstasy; for Jesus is the first and the last-the beginning and the ending-he that liveth; and behold, he is alive for evermore.

ENTHUSIASM AND FAITH.* "He that believeth shall not make haste." "O FOR the great archangel's trump, to spread the joyful sound,

Proclaiming freedom to the slaves in Satan's fetters

bound!

* From " Songs of the Vineyard." By Rev. James G. Small.