to the three Jewish children and St. Lawrence; and he promised that. masses for his soul's repose should be sung in every church in Oxford. But, lest men might doubt of his repentance, he called upon Cranmer to fulfil his promise, and openly express his faith.

That I will, with a good will,' replied the Archbishop. Having, in the most affecting manner, asked the people to join him in prayer, he kneeled down, and, in an awful hush, made a plain and touching supplication and confession to God. Rising from his knees, he exhorted the people to be loyal, loving, and heavenly-minded. He then repeated the Creed, and said, 'I believe every Article of the Church, and all that var Lord and His Apostles have taught.'

Then there was a pause, and afterwards he said, 'I now come to that which troubles my conscience more than anything I ever did or said, and that is, the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth, which now here I renounce and refuse, as things written with my hand, contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of death and to save my life And, as my hand offended, writing contrary to my heart, my hand shall be first punished; for, may I come to the fire, it shall be first burned.'

The Roman party were pale with rage, and called him traitor, liar, and so forth. There was much confusion, and Dr. Cole was heard saying, Stop the heretic's mouth, and take him away!'

Cranmer was pulled roughly off the scaffold, and would have been mach injured if the Lord Williams had not protected him. The procession then formed once more, and left the church, and where Ridley and Latimer had glorified God, there was Cranmer bound to the stake. The fire was kindled, and over the flame he was seen stretching forth his right hand, crying loudly, ' This hand hath offended! O this unworthy hand!' While his right hand was thus held out, as a sign of his repentance, his left hand pointed upwards in faith to Heaven. Thither, we trust, his soul was borne, in answer to his last humble and fervent prayer, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.' G.S. O.

W

HILE staying in the neighbourhood of the great coal-field of Lancashire, I saw several of the colliers one evening at a large gathering at tea out of doors. I was struck with their quietness of demeanour, as well as with their intelligent faces. I arranged with the foreman on that occasion to give to the men a tale while in the coal-pit the next day, and afterwards to deliver a lecture in the Town Hall to as many as liked to come; and I arranged to spend my afternoon in going about the colliers' cottages, to see their domestic habits, and gathering what I could from wives and children. In this manner I proposed to divide my next day, and accordingly on the morrow I set out with some companions on a journey to the bowels of the earth.

'The scene was novel enough; and after the tales we have heard and read of explosions of fire-damp and the falling-in of shafts, it was not altogether free from peril and apprehension: but this rather lent interest to it. We pulled down the canal, whose dark, greasy waters flowed lazily past our keel; the low and narrow archway of brick seemed sometimes to dip down so as to close quite over us; the candledips, stuck along the edge of the barge, gave just sufficient light to enable one to see the gloom with which we were surrounded.

'There were three men connected with the expedition: one whose work it was, while standing as it were upon his back, to propel the vessel with his feet pressing against the brick roof above him: another, who was my especial friend, sat on a tub beside me; and a third in front, in order to see that there was no danger ahead. During the voyage I took the opportunity of conversing with my friend the foreman—a man intelligent and high-principled; in fact, one of the most striking specimens of the human race I had come across. He very soon assured me that, however wild and rude the appearance of the colliers would be, I should find a great inclination to appreciate and be grateful for what I might do for them; and that amongst them theological discussion was by no means uncommcn on questions connected with the Church, while they were pursuing their work. told me that many would appear in the evening at the Town Hall, to be present at the lecture; and that, being dressed after the fashion of the middle-classses of the day, I should hardly be able to detect my swarthy and half-naked friends of the pit; and that, amongst the various qualities of the race, gratitude and a continued remembrance of any kindness in word and action were amongst the foremost.

He

'We presently approached the opening into a dark passage, which seemed to lead up into realms even darker, and more obscure than those into which we had come. The boat drew up, and we were told to get out; and on doing so we found the coal beach crowded with half-naked boys, of about eleven to fourteen years of age, with ragged hair, blackened breasts and arms, waists bound round with belts and chains, led me to imagine that the assurances of my friend in the bod would hardly be verified.

'We now ascended an inclined plane; it was not high enough to stand on, or smooth enough to crawl in: the only hope was to go in a stooping posture, and that stooping posture was obliged to be sustained

by a kind of half run, as walking was nearly out of the case. We were presently startled by the rattling of wheels, which portended the advance of some vehicle in the direction in which we were ascending; and as from the narrowness of the passage, it was out of the question that it could pass by us without great difficulty, we drew up on the side, and crept into a kind of aperture or excavation in the coal. Several carts loaded, and supported by boys around whose waists the belts were visible, were bearing to the boats in the canal the produce of the mine above: as these dark swarthy bands went by, they certainly did seem more like the inhabitants of some infernal realm than of the intelligent north of England.

'As soon as the caravan had passed on we pursued our wearisome and difficult journey. It was at last at an end, and we suddenly broke into a kind of hall, entirely formed of coal, above, below, and at the ends, just high enough to stand upright in. Candles had been lighted in every part where the slightest ledge of coal offered a standing for a foot. I was astounded at the sight that suddenly burst upon my view. It would be impossible to describe it, as it is to forget it. Lines of colliers, half naked, with their eyes peering out of faces begrimed with black dust, were arranged in tiers upon rough planks of wood, resting upon blocks of coal; while every corner of the cavern was crowded by the forms of boys, who peered forth from the darkness to see what strange being it was who, as they had been told, was coming to tell them a tale in the bowels of the earth.

'I was received with a murmur of satisfaction; and being introduced as "a gentleman from the south," deeply interested in discovering that the colliers were not dragons and griffins, I was received with all the greater good-will and inclination to listen to what I had to say. I immediately addressed myself to my work, and before I began my tale I said what deep interest it gave me to meet them there. I longed to hear, as I told them, the echoes of some hymn to the Name of Jesus resounding through their dark vaults and galleries. I had not long to wait for a response. To my great surprise, that response was earnest and deep. Many began to speak in a way that showed that the Name of Jesus was not unknown in those murky realms; and I was astonished to discover a power of appreciation of the doctrines of salvation, and of interior spiritual life, of which I was nearly ignorant among the agricultural population of the south. The ragged hair and the coal-stained breast hanging over the tightly-drawn trowsers; the bare feet that pressed on the jagged pavement of coal, were indeed but sorry indications of the mind and thought that heaved and swelled within.

'I found it hard to begin my tale. I was fascinated by the discovery I had made for myself. The men were kind enough to be interested in what they thought to be the sympathy that I showed them, and I could not help saying what I felt. "Why should there not be a definite energy of the Church of Jesus amongst all of you below-ground, vieing in intensity and activity with the parochial system above?" They acknowledged the possibility of it, the fitness of it, and the desirableness of its application.

'I told them a tale of a bygone age. I told them the story of that noble boy, the boy-martyr of Rome; I told them of the time when he was brought before the Emperor, and refused, over and over again, to

give up his love of Christ. I told them how he was led in all his noble courage before the Emperor, how he bore the rack and the whip. I told them how in the amphitheatre the Emperor sat, and crowds of Romans were gathered, to behold the young martyr killed. I told them of the sun of cloudless Italy, and the burning heat that hovered over that great Imperial City. I told them how before that noble boy one hundred and thirty people-old men and women-died beneath the hungry lion: how the Emperor bade the boy be kept back to die alone, that he might shake his courage and his faith in Jesus. I told them how, when he alone was left to die, the panther was brought in; how it shook the iron bars of its cage, and ground the hungry tooth, while fire flashed from its eye at the sight of its victim; how upon that boy's shoulder rested a finger, and he looked back, and in the crowd he saw his mother, and she said, "My noble boy, I have come to see thee die; look on me in your last agony, and I will look on you." I told them how the boy stood upright in the centre of the great area, bound to the pole, and how he gazed upward to his heavenly home: how the panther, waiting for his prey, when the iron bars were drawn up, sprang forward, now running to that side and now to the other-not seeing him for the moment-while every eye was fixed upon the boy, and among those eyes his mother's. I told them how the panther, nearing the boy, saw his prey-slank down into the dust, gazed up with eager eye, extended the claw, drew in the breath, and opened the mouth-and how the boy looked from heaven to his mother, and from his mother back to God; and how the next instant, on the boy's bare bosom the panther flung its claw, and in his neck its tooth; and as from the severed artery the purple stream flowed down his neck he looked, smiled at his mother, and went to Heaven. I told them that, and who shall tell me that colliers have not got hearts and souls?

'In return for what I had done for them, they wished to show me the wonders of their world. The pit was to a certain degree clearedseveral pillars that I had noticed supporting slabs of coal which formed part of the roof were, as I was now told, simply temporary, and were about to be knocked away. Knowing that there was but one narrow outlet, we could not help fearing that more coal might fall in than the pillar supported, but our friends assured us that all was perfectly safe, and three or four of them drew us on to a ridge of coal, that we might sit close amongst them, while they threw parts of their own dress over our shoulders, to protect us from the small fragments of coal which would be likely to fall. The knocking down of these posts appeared to be rather hazardous. One man was told off to do it, and when it came to the last remaining support, he approached his work with some degree of anxiety and caution: at last, however, the column gave way, a low, creaking sound was heard for a few seconds, as our eyes were fixed upon the vast and glittering roof which covered the greater part of the ebon hall, when it suddenly yielded with a crash, and broke to a thousand pieces on the pavement of our palace. The instant of its fall was startling, but even this feeling was quickly dispersed by that of interest when from all sides the boys rushed forward to pull the broken pieces of coal into little carts, and wheeled them off in the direction of the inclined plane.

'We were next to witness a blast of coal, which surprised us rather

less than what I have just described. A fire-damp explosion concluded the exhibition, the execution of which was certainly anything but agreeable to the nerves of a Southron; the men discovered a small stream of fire-damp in a remote corner, and set light to it, only in such a manner as to give us an impression of its colour and general appearance.

The visit was over. We stepped into our barge, surrounded by a crowd of friends, all of whom shook hands with us with a heart, and warmth, and earnestness, that delighted us; they begged us to come again, and they asked us not to forget the idea of an underground mission, of which we had said something.'

Short Sermon.

BY THE LATE REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY, CANON OF WESTMINSTER.
THE CURSE-COMMINATION SERVICE.

Deut. xxviii. 15.-' It shall come to pass, that if thou wilt not hearken
unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all His statutes and
His commandments
that all these curses shall come upon thee

and overtake thee.'

SIH

curses men.

may seem somewhat of a stern text, but if it be a stern text, it need not be a sorrowful text to any of you. Moreover, it deals with a matter on which we must think in these days of Lent—that is, what a curse means, and how God

I know that 'curse' is a terrible word, and I know, too, that many people dislike, conscientiously, the Commination Service which is read on Ash-Wednesday, because it talks of God's cursing, and as they fancy bids us curse our fellow-men. But there may be a right and a wrong use of the word 'curse,' as of all words. Let us try to find it out. will be wiser and safer for us so to do.

It

Wise men of old used to say, that the greater part of human ignorance and folly came from the wrong use of words; from men not clearly understanding the meaning of the very words in their own mouths, from using words loosely and vaguely. And in like wise (I know well) much ignorance and folly, and that harmful and dangerous, has been talked about this word 'curse,' because people have not taken the trouble to find out what it meant.

Now let me begin by asking you one simple question: If I say to a man, 'You are ill,' is that the same as saying to him, 'I hope and wish that you may be ill?' Of course not. In the first case I am doing him a kindness, for I am warning him of his danger; in the second, I am doing him an unkindness, for I am wishing him harm.

So is it the same thing if I say to the sinner, 'You are cursed already, whether you know it or not; or if I say to him, ' May you be cursed. May God curse and punish you.' In the first case I am doing the sinner the greatest kindness; I am warning him of his danger, his lost and ruined state, and warning him to escape from the curse which he has brought on himself. But if I say, 'Cursed be the sinner,' if I