save much time and fatigue, yet that he cannot, for that at the end of yonder field is a dangerous quagmire, into which, if he set his foot upon it, he must hopelessly sink. We separate. Suppose my caution has escaped his recollection, through something which may have occurred to divert his mind; or, let him wilfully risk the danger, and hold on his way; he perishes. Perhaps he considered me timorous, or trusted to his own superior agility; or perhaps he thought there might be danger, but he hoped not destruction. Make what supposition we will, did he believe me? Certainly not.

Let us apply this to the effects of faith as required in the Gospel. I tell the drunkard that eternal misery will be the just punishment of his guilt. He believes me, he sincerely says, and yet again repeats the crime. Now the first law of our nature is self-preservation, and we instinctively desire to avoid pain: how could he, then, believe me? The child tells us it believes that fire will burn. How is its belief shewn? Throw its dearest toy into the flames, and thus afford it the strongest temptation to evince the reality of its belief will it yield to the temptation? We know it will not, for it really believes that the fire would burn its hand, if thrust into it. But, in a parallel case of temptation, the drunkard, or any other gross sinner, does thrust his hand, so to speak, into the fire of hell for his toy. Therefore the two faiths thus exhibited are not the same in kind or degree. Again: Suppose I have been to a distant country, and on my return home make known to a merchant, whom I wish to oblige, that by sending his ships there he may import a produce of the country which will largely repay the risk. The business of his life is to augment his riches, and therefore he eagerly sits down to examine the informant by the rules resorted to on such occasions. He is satisfied, and sends his ships, in faith in me and my statements. This is unquestionably a different kind of faith from that in the case above stated.

Now let us compare the different kinds of faith above illustrated with that required in the Gospel. The instructed drunkard, in his sober hours, will profess to believe that his guilt will be followed by eternal punishment, yet he again perpetrates his crime. Comparing this case with the above, I ask, does he really believe that the scriptural account of the consequences of his crime is true? Surely not. Such a belief, then, as this, which any man who has been rightly instructed may profess to have, with apparent sincerity, in the prominent and essential doctrines of the Gospel-and among others, the corruption of the principles of human nature by the fall of Adam, the moral necessity therefore of his breaking the laws of God, his just exposure therefore to the wrath of God, the possibility of his return to God's favour through the sacrifice of Christ :-such a belief as this in all these doctrines cannot be, and is not, justifying belief.

Let these same doctrines be preached to another individual who also tells us that he believes them. But the other person told us that he also believed them. We saw the result of the professed belief in the former case; the result in the latter case may be thus stated:-He believes in the miseries of the hell that have been preached to him in the sense that the child believes in the pain that would result from thrusting its hand into the fire, and therefore he struggles to escape it: but how? If he be the drunkard above spoken of, he shudders at the vice, the consequences of which he believes to be so fatal, and resolves no more to repeat it. If he be a swearer, he believes that if he continue in his vice he shall "have his portion in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone," in the sense in which the child believes that fire would burn its hand, if thrust into it to recover its beloved toy; and he therefore resolves no more to repeat it. And this change will pervade all his conduct, as the result of his belief in

the statements of the Gospel. This faith, then, must be that spoken of in the Scriptures; requiring that he who professes to have it should evince that total change of conduct which can alone verify the truth of his pretensions.

This approximation to the scriptural truth expressed by the term faith, may be made use of to trace the source and progress of "justifying faith." (To be continued.)

SUNDAY VISIT TO CHARLESTON PRISON, MASSACHUSETTS. MR. ABBOTT, whose work we reviewed in our Number for March, has given an account of a Sunday visit which he made to Charleston prison, Massachusetts. The admirable order and moral and religious discipline of that penitentiary were not unknown to us; and we think we shall both promote the cause of prison melioration, which we have so long advocated, and also furnish a powerful illustration of the blessed effects of the Gospel in bridling the evil propensities of the human mind, by making Mr. Abbott's interesting description more widely known. We had not room for the passage in our review; but we are unwilling to lose it. If any one magistrate, clergyman, or other individual of influence, into whose hands the statement may fall, shall be excited by it to endeavour to introduce a similar system into our own prisons, its insertion in our pages will not have been in vain. Something of the same sort has been introduced in a few instances, but not with the same systematic effort and success*.

The following is the passage:

"But, to shew distinctly the efficacy of this remedy for sin, I shall point you to its operation in particular cases. And in choosing the cases to present, I have selected some where the disease had indeed made great progress, but which are in other respects very common. They are both cases of convicts in a state prison. I might perhaps have selected narrations far more interesting and striking in their attendant circumstances; but I have chosen to present those which may be taken as a fair specimen of the ordinary effects of the Bible in saving from sin. My object is utility, and it is therefore far better to secure sound logic than to bring forward a romantic story.

"The reason I take the cases of convicts is, because I am now considering Christianity in regard to its power to heal the disease, sin,-of course, the more violent the form of the disease, the more clear is the exhibition of power in the remedy which cures it. The prisons of our country may be considered as hospitals, moral hospitals; where those whose disease has become so violent and malignant that it is no longer safe to allow them to go at large in society, are shut up, so that they can injure no one, at least for a time. It has been, and it is now the practice, in many countries, to shut up these miserable victims together, and leave them to themselves. Of course they grew worse and worse. The practice is as absurd as it would be to send a hundred patients in all the stages of fever, consumption, and plague, into one great crowded hospital together, with no physician, no medicine, and no attendants but turnkeys, and there to leave

We copy from the Edinburgh edition, which is an exact reprint of the original. We were not aware of this edition when we reviewed the work in our Number for March, otherwise we should have noticed it. The readings alluded to in our review, p. 186, and which are altered in the Tract Society's edition, are (with the exception of the word "boys") the author's own. Mr. Cunningham's good taste was not likely to have written, "Providence, he has so formed us," &c.

them; each one, by the unobstructed intercommunication, conveying his own peculiar infection to all the rest; the whole exposed to every cause that can aggravate disease, and thus forming one living mass of pestilence and corruption. Such have been a great many prisons, and those who entered them came out far worse than when they went in.

"Some philanthropists formed, some years ago, the plan of visiting these prisons, and carrying the Bible there, believing that its moral power would be great enough to cure even those desperate cases of disease. And it has succeeded. A vast number of the most abandoned men have been entirely reformed by it. I do not mean that they have pretended to be reformed while in the prison, but have been proved to have been reformed by their good conduct after having been restored to society, when the time of their imprisonment had expired."

Mr. Abbott goes on to narrate two cases illustrative of his argument, which are too long for insertion, and then proceeds:

'Now, although it is not very common to obtain, in writing, accounts of changes of character among convicts so full and minute as this, yet the cases themselves are very common,-so common, that where a prison is regulated in such a manner that the prisoners are not exposed to the evil influence from each other, and the Bible has the opportunity to try its power, the whole aspect of the prison is changed. After I had written the above, I was conversing upon the subject of this chapter, with a gentleman much interested in the improvement of prisons, and he asked me if I had ever visited the prison of Charlestown, Massachusetts. I told him I had not. "If you will go over with me, Sabbath morning,' said he, 'and visit the Sabbath-school formed there, you will see the moral power of the Bible far more distinctly than you can by any such single descriptions as these.'

"I gladly availed myself of the opportunity to accompany him. We walked accordingly on Sabbath morning, at the appointed hour, over one of those long bridges which connect the peninsula of Boston with the main land. The prison is situated in Charlestown, on a point of land near the Charles river. The yard extends to the water's edge, to afford facilities for lading and unlading the boats which transport stone; hammering granite for building being the principal business at which the convicts are employed.

"When we reached the outer gate of the prison-yard, we pushed it open; and on closing itself after we had entered, it struck a bell, which gave notice to the keeper of the inner gate that some one was coming. This inner gate, made of strong iron bars, was opened for us, and we passed up the steps of a large stone building, through which lay our passage to the yard beyond. This building consists of one large central edifice, occupied by the family of the warden and by some of the keepers, and two extensive wings. In these wings the prisoners were formerly confined, in rooms of moderate size, many convicts, however, being lodged in one room. This was the old system of prison discipline, of which I have already spoken; and the prisoners almost invariably grew worse, instead of better, under it. A young man, perhaps, just beginning a career of vice, or overcome, for the first time, by some strong temptation, was placed during the long hours of the night in one of these crowded rooms. Of course he grew worse by such an exposure. Those who had grown old in sin instructed him in all their wicked arts: he became familiarized to infamy; and even while under sentence for one crime often formed plans for others, to be executed as soon as he should escape into society again. The consequence was, that these night-rooms, in the wings of this great building, were, as they were often called, schools of vice and crime.

"The first room we entered in this edifice seemed to be a sort of an office; and a row of swords and guns, which were arranged there, ready to be used at a moment's notice, proclaimed the intention of the keepers to resort to the most decided measures if the prisoners should make any attempt to escape. We passed through this room, and one or two others; every narrow passage being guarded by a formidable door of iron, which a turnkey opened and shut for us as we passed.

We entered a spacious and beautiful yard in the rear of this building. I say it was beautiful, because it struck the eye most pleasantly, by its expression of neatness and industry. It was spacious, and extensive shops were arranged around it, in which the convicts were accustomed to work: and upon the smooth and level floor, I had almost said, of the area enclosed, were many large and beautiful blocks of hammered granite, the fruits of the prisoner's industry.

"We walked across the yard, and came to a long stone building, one story high, behind which rose another spacious edifice of stone. In this last were the prisoners' cells. I am not certain that I shall be able to convey to my young readers a very accurate idea of the arrangement and of the interior of these buildings; but I am very desirous of doing so, as it will give them clearer ideas of what I intend to present in regard to the moral aspects of such an institution as this. Will you not, then, make an effort to picture distinctly to your minds what I am describing?

"The long low building which I have mentioned had a strong iron door in the centre, and from that door a passage-way extended across to the great new prison beyond. On one side of this passage-way was a large room, appropriated to preparing food for the prisoners; and on the other side was the chapel. When we came up to the iron door in the front of the building, we found several gentlemen, who had come over from Boston to act as teachers in the Sabbath school, waiting there for admission. They were waiting until the prisoners themselves should have passed into the chapel; for when we arrived they were coming in a long procession from their cells in the rear into this building, each one bringing the tin vessel from which he had eaten his breakfast, and laying it upon a sort of counter, as he passed on into the chapel. We could see this by looking through an opening in the iron door.

"When all the prisoners had gone into the chapel, the outer door was opened by a keeper, and we all passed in; the heavy door was swung to behind us, and its strong bolt secured. We turned from the entry into that end of the building which was used as a chapel. There was an aisle passing up the centre, on each side of which were seats half-filled with the convicts. The chaplain stood in a pulpit at the farther end, and on each side of him were the teachers, gentlemen from Boston, who had come to assist these unhappy men to read and to understand the word of God.

"It was a most delightful May morning; and the whole aspect of the room, as I looked over it from my stand near the chaplain, was that of cheerfulness and happiness, not of gloom. The sun beamed in brightly at the windows; and the walls of the room, of the purest white, the neat benches, and the nicely sanded floor, gave a most pleasant aspect to the whole.

"The congregation presented a singular and striking appearance. Had it not been for their dress, I might have forgotten that I was in a prison. But they were all dressed in coarse clothes of two colours, one side of the body being red, and the other of some different hue. This is the uniform of crime. The object of it is, I suppose-not to mortify them with a perpetual badge of disgrace, but-to expose any one who should by any means escape, to immediate detection by the inhabitants of the country round. CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 377. 2 N

"Is it possible, thought I, as I looked over this most interesting assembly, that all these men have come voluntarily this morning to read and study the word of God? Yes, that was the fact. This exercise was entirely voluntary; and out of two or three hundred, who had been condemned for crime, about one-half were accustomed to come voluntarily on Sabbath morning to study the Book which proclaims from Heaven free forgiveness of every sin.

"The chaplain opened the school with prayer. He then explained to the teachers, that the plan to be pursued was simply to hear the prisoners read the Bible, and explain its contents to them. He desired them to confine their conversation strictly to the business in hand; and requested the prisoners not to ask, and the teachers not to answer, any questions relating to other subjects. He then distributed the teachers around the room, giving each one a small class. Three convicts fell to my charge.

"I opened almost at random in the New Testament, and let them read in rotation; and more apparently humble and docile students of the Bible I never saw. They read slowly, and with hesitation, and I thought at first with a little embarrassment: this, however, soon passed away, and it was most interesting to watch the eager expression upon their countenances as the various truths, which were such glad tidings to them, came to view. We came almost accidentally to the parables of the one sheep and the one piece of money which was lost, Luke xv.; and it seemed as if the whole chapter was written expressly for prisoners.

"One of these convicts, after expressing a strong interest in these parables, said that the Bible appeared like a very different book to him now from what it did in former times,

"How did it formerly appear to you?' asked I.

"Oh, I used to despise it. I used to wonder why so much was made of the Bible. It seemed to me that I could write as good a book myself.' "Well, have your views of it changed now?'

66 6

now.'

Oh, yes,' said he: I am fully persuaded it is the word of God

"What caused you to disbelieve it formerly? was it the influence of bad company

y?'

"Why, sir, to be frank, it was ignorance. I had not studied it. I had read it a little, here and there, but not attentively, or with a right spirit. "What led you to change your views of it?'

"I did not change my views until I came to this institution. I had some days of solitary confinement when I first came, with no book but the Bible and when I first began to reflect, I recollected that a Christian family, whom I once lived with, seemed to enjoy more real substantial happiness than any other persons I ever saw; and this led me to think there might possibly be something in religion: so I thought I would examine the Bible in earnest; and I found it a very different book from what I had supposed. I took a very strong interest in it; and at last a minister preached a sermon here from the text, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?"and that, I hope, led me to the Saviour. I hope and trust that I have really given my heart to God.'

"I told him that what he said gave me great pleasure, and that I hoped he would persevere in Christian duty, and find the Bible a source of happiness to him as long as he should live.

"When I first came to this institution,' he replied, I thought it was rather a hard case to be shut up here so long. My time is, however, now almost out. In a few weeks I shall go away; but if I have really been led to see and forsake my sins, I shall never have any reason to regret coming here.'