scanty means may be able to accomplish great things by bringing them openly before the minds of others, and calling in their united aids. Mr. Jay tells us that Cornelius Winter, though poor, yet helped hundreds by pleading their cause with the opulent.

5. If a minister had it in his power to supply all the indigent people in his neighbourhood with food, clothing, Bibles, school-books, and instructors, out of his own purse, it would be both unwise and unkind for him to do it. The attention of all classes ought to be directed to these objects, and in proportion as they become interested in them, it will be found that an unspeakable favour has been conferred on them. The voice of Wisdom has told us, "It is more blessed to give than to receive;" but this is a paradox which

some men have yet to learn, and the sooner they learn it the better; every effort should be made to put them in possession of it immediately.

6. There are many ways of improving our talent and benefitting our fellowcreatures; and if Christians were more alive to the importance of this, and more ingenious in devising plans of usefulness, they would often be astonished and delighted at what God had done for them, and what God had enabled them to do. Perhaps the greater part of the operations which are now blessing the world began in some feeble and apparently insignificant efforts; therefore, let us never despise the day of small things, but let us all remember our responsibility, and try to do what we can.

St. Petersburgh, Aug. 21, 1831.

I HAVE seen with much interest in the Evangelical Magazine a review of several works on Temperance and Temperance Societies; and I rejoice that the writer has strongly urged this subject upon the serious consideration of all ministers, and of Christians in general. I hope that it will be candidly entertained.

If the principle adopted by Temperance Societies is unsound and unscriptural, they cannot be too early exposed; but as a member of the British and Foreign Temperance Society I regret that in so influential a periodical the acknowledged principles of Temperance Societies should not be clearly distinguished from the opinions of the amiable writers of the articles reviewed, none of which have received the sanction of the Temperance Society.

It cannot be too distinctly understood that with the question of Church discipline, or with the lawfulness of using any description of wines-subjects of high interest in their proper places-the Temperance Society has never, in any way, intermeddled. With Church discipline it is obvious that Temperance Societies can have no concern. With the hope of being instrumental in stemming a fatal populár delusion, with the animating experience of partial success, Temperance Societies, while they distinctly disclaim all interference with medical preseription,

Evangelical Magazine.

They merely enable us to expend, by anticipation, our future natural resources, to be repaid with constantly accumulating interest," and with the certainty of ultimate bankruptcy."

The wines in common use are, it is true, highly brandied, but "wine is not diluted alcohol. It is a distinct substance, which holds distilled spirit in chemical solution with other ingredients, by which the dangerous properties of the spirit are partly neutralized."

In the use of all intoxicating liquors Temperance Societies have felt the duty and the consistency of enjoining moderation; but it is only against the use of distilled spirits, as a necessary or luxury of life, that they protest. They are far, however, from asserting that "it is a duty absolutely binding on a Christian man to engage himself to total abstinence," even from this deleterious substance.

licity for the advantage of their neighbours. They are not persons bound by a reluctant vow to abstain from that in which they wish to indulge, they simply express their present conviction and determination, rejoicing in the liberty which God has given them to abstain from that which they see to be the chief agent in spreading around them miseries incalculable, and moral and spiritual degradation and ruin; from all participation in our yearly consumption of 27,719,999 gallons, at an expense exceeding sixteen millions sterling, and of thousands of human lives. The horrible disclosures, recently made, prove the urgent necessity, felt by the most hardened criminals, for such doses of distilled spirits as sufficed to obliterate all traces of moral sensibility, while the mind remained capable of exercising a fiend-like ingenuity.

Persons of common reflection view the progress of crime with concern; they are beginning to ask themselves, Is this substance, which sears the conscience and nerves the arm of the murderer, fit for my habitual refreshment in the course of my duties? And it is the subject of daily thanksgiving, that Christians are increasingly willing to inquire whether they have not some part to take in this noble reformation, and that one after another of the ornaments and lights of the church is giving to it the benefit of his example and influence.

HUMILIATION

Mr. EDITOR, I was rejoiced to see, in the last number of the Evangelical Magazine, an appeal from two of my respected brethren in the ministry to our churches and congregations on the above subject, and most sincerely do I hope that it will not be made in vain. A day for those solemn duties has already been observed in various places, both by Episcopalians and Dissenters, and in none, perhaps, in a more pleasing, devout, and Christian manner, than in the little village of Char mouth, Dorset. On the 8th of Nov. last, in consequence of the receipt of intelligence from Sunderland that the cholera had broken out there, a meeting of the inhabitants of the above-named village was held at the church vestry, to adopt these precautionary measures which the case required; and the worthy clergyman, in addition to them, proposed that his parishioners should set apart a day in the following week for humiliation and

Our Temperance Societies are an attempt, practically, to apply to this kingdom the important discovery made by our American brethren, that the more moderate and measured our use of spirituous liquors, the more dangerous is our example; that temperate consumers are the effective supporters of a practice which must fall if confined to drunkards; and that even for the hopeless restoration of these, total abstinence from distilled spirits, on the part of the temperate, is more effectual than any means hitherto conceived, while it affords the most reasonable hope of cutting off the unhappy succession by which their ranks are maintained. A conviction is daily spreading among the Christian public of the impossibility of expressing, in any terms of practical utility, a "fixed rule of welldefined temperance" in the use of distilled spirits.

The earliest European Temperance Society was formed in Scotland; and "of the Presbyterian Synod of that nation more than half the ministers are members." On the principle of the homely adage, that "Prevention is better than cure,' especially where prevention is easy and cure almost miraculous, Temperance Societies hope, under the Divine blessing, to save, at least, the rising generation.

A MEMBER OF THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN TEMPERANCE SOCIETY.

AND PRAYER.

prayer, not only on account of the pestilence in the North, but the various other alarming signs of the times; in which measure Mr. Jeanes, the Independent minister of the parish, most cordially concurred; and in the services of the day so employed, viz. Nov. 16th, the inhabitants, without distinction of sect or party, worshipped together, at the parish church in the morning, and at the Independent chapel in the evening. Both places of worship were crowded. The clergyman, and all his family and flock, were at the chapel in the evening, as were the Dissenting minister, his family and flock, at the parish church in the morning. Never was there greater occasion for Christian union than the present, and it is to be hoped that such instances as the above will become more frequent, and be the means of great good. In haste, your affectionate brother in the gospel, Charmouth, Jan. 6, 1832. B. JEANES.

hearts, "Lord, what wilt thou have us to do?" To an unprejudiced looker-on it must be obvious, that but few well-instructed Christians have been entangled in the strange excitements of the prophetic school; and to those who study the workings of the human mind, and who observe the course of human events, it must be equally clear that the personal-reign scheme is the soil in which pretended tongues, and gifts of healing, &c. have sprung up. Not that we charge all who are looking for the personal reign of Messiah on earth with a belief in modern miracles; we know some of them, indeed, who entertain this expectation, who are shocked at what is now going forward. Two things, however, we must maintain: first, that the miraculous pretenders are all personal-reign men; and second, that the very anticipation of Christ's coming to dwell a thousand years with men upon earth tends to awaken and foster enthusiastic pretensions of almost every description. It has ever done so, indeed, in the different ages in which it has been agitated; and it is a well-known fact, that Messrs. Irving and Armstrong point to the tongues, &c. as actual verifications of the special mission of themselves and others as the chosen denouncers of the apostate Gentile church, and as the immediate heralds of Zion's King, who, it is declared, will smite in judgment all who do not receive the doctrines of the sinfulness of Christ's human nature, the pardoning love of God to all men, the power of working miracles co-extensive with the church's faith, and the reign of Jesus upon the earth for a thousand years.

Dr. Fletcher's sermon, founded upon Mark xvi. 17-20, is an enlightened and powerful defence of the miracles of the primitive age as contrasted with the absurd and presumptuous attempts going forward at Greenock and Regent's Square. The respected author first shows the ends for which miraculous gifts were bestowed on the first Christians ;-that they were designed to accredit the mission of those who possessed them, and to establish the divinity of the gospel;-that they were de signed to impart such an ability in making it known to others, as was essentially requisite to accomplish the objects of their mission ;and that they were designed to prepare the church, while under apostolic superintendence, for that more permanent state of things which was intended to result from these varied and extraordinary manifestations. He then proceeds to exhibit the fallacy of modern pretensions to the exercise of miraculous gifts. Under this head of discourse the preacher proves first, that there are passages in the apostolic writings which convey presumptive intimations of their discontinuance ;-that miraculous gifts were designed to cease, as appears from the fact that the apostles alone had the power of conferring them ;-that we have no satisfactory evidence that miraculous

powers were possessed after the apostolic age; that the scriptural authorities cited in defence of modern miracles are inapplicable, and proceed on gratuitous and unfounded assumptions ;-that the evidence adduced to support modern pretensions is altogether inadequate, and unworthy of the character of miraculous attestations ;-and that the spirit and tendency of the whole scheme of modern pretensions are such, as to prove their fallacious and delusive character. The whole sermon is worthy of a most careful perusal, and will undoubtedly outlive the present controversy. We have been greatly pleased with Dr. F.'s account of the primitive gifts; it will be found to present an admirable exposition of the 12th and 14th chapters of Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians.

We

Mr. Leifchild's sermon is well worthy of himself, a bold, uncompromising, and faithful exposure of prevailing errors; and a sim ple, practical, and eminently pious exhibition of vital and important truth. It manifests strong evidence of close and accurate thinking, and is addressed with great energy to the men of the present generation. think it is eminently fitted to recall good minds from the wanderings of error, and to induce them to search diligently for the good old paths. In the appendix our readers will find abundant evidence that ours is not the only age in which the Millennial doctrines have obtained; and they will learn with equal certainty, that whenever they have gained ground, they have been associated with an almost endless variety of folly and extravagance. After all, we may cheer ourselves in the belief that after the present stormy conflict with error shall have subsided, the moral atmosphere will be clearer and more refreshing than before.

THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR VISITING HIS FLOCK, and the Flock reciprocating their Shepherd's Care. By JOHN MORISON, D.D. Westley and Davis.

A GRAPHIC title, indeed,-presenting at a single and the first stroke a grateful picture; and those who had the pleasure of listening to the contents of this volume, at the Barbican chapel, as we did, and who now have received it in its present elegant and inviting form (as another of the series of the Rev. Author's "Counsels for the Communion Table," "Counsels for a Newly-wedded Pair," "To Sunday-school Teachers," and "To Servants,". -so well known and deservedly approved), may well feel that they have a feast in recollection, a treasure in hand, and an earnest of much good.

The office of spiritual pastor over an associated mass of immortal minds, under Christ the great Shepherd, may well challenge a superiority over all other earthly relations,

both in dignity and importance. The king and every civil magistrate are appointed to administer a government for this world, and are to be honoured and obeyed. The father of a family providentially holds an interesting, endearing, and important relation. He is the provider of the temporal comfort, and guardian of the temporal welfare of his offspring; and he ought not to forget their immortal destiny. But these and all other relations of this life give place, in their relative importance and in their prospective interest, to the relation of a pastor to his flock. This man has charge of interests, which look and tend directly to eternity; and it is incumbent upon him so to administer them, as to hallow and sweeten all the relations of the present time, and make their use and enjoyment here minister to the highest perfection of man's after-being. He presides instrumentally over two worlds, and, in the highest and most delicate sense, is responsible for the comfort of the present and for the issues of the future. It is his to be a father to all, to instruct the ignorant, to admonish the wayward, to awaken the careless, to guide the inquiring, to edify the church, to comfort the afflicted, to "minister to the mind diseased" of sin, guiding all to heaven, himself leading the way.

"By him the violated law speaks out
Its thunders; and by him, in strains as sweet
As angels use, the gospel whispers peace.
He stablishes the strong, restores the weak,
Reclaims the wanderer, binds the broken
heart,

And, arm'd himself in panoply complete,
Of heavenly temper, furnishes with arms,
Bright as his own, and trains, by every rule
Of holy discipline, to glorious war,
The sacramental host of God's elect.
Are all such teachers? Would to heaven
they were!"

The Rev. Doctor has given us as fine a picture, in sober prose, of this high and sacred office, as the peet conceived in the chamber of his chaste and correct imaginings. Like the poet, he has evidently made Paul himself sit, till his very features could be sketched and bodied forth in forms of speaking thought. And all that was suitable, and all that was demanded for the pastoral office, in the days of Paul, is suitable and needed now. All that Paul was himself, in this respect, and all his precepts to Timothy and Titus, appertaining to this point, comprehend the sum and minutia of this character. And when copied and well sustained, it is, indeed, an endearing relation, shedding a sweet and heavenly influence. Any well-done effort to exhibit this character, to illustrate its practical forms, and to inculcate its importance, is to be welcomed as a grateful contribution to the means of rendering more useful and effectual the ministry of reconciliation. And

we hail this little volume as timely in its production, inviting in its form, and eminently felicitous in the construction and elucidation of its parts.

And we like it so much the better, and commend it so much the more, inasmuch as the author, always fruitful in useful device, has not forgotten to declare, define, and enforce the reciprocal obligations of the flock to their pastor. This is as it should be. We are very apt to be willing to know what duties others may owe to us; and it is well if a code of institutes be so constructed, as that in our endeavours or in our curiosity to ascertain those duties, we shall be obliged to become acquainted with our own. Whoever, therefore, takes up this little volume, to study his or her pastor's duty, let that person be careful to read it through, and mark well the second part. We do not undertake to make a thorough review of so brief a discourse, nor to quote from it-believing, that for the trifling consideration of one shilling and sixpence, no pastor or Christian interested in the subject would be willing to be without it, especially as it combines so many excellences in so short a compass.

9, Amelia Place.

C. C.

VIEW OF ANCIENT AND MODERN EGYPT, with a Map and Ten Engravings.

PALESTINE, or the Holy Land, from the earliest period to the present Time. By the Rev. MICHAEL RUSSELL, LL.D. With a Map and Nine Engravings..

Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh, and Simpkin and Marshall, London.

THESE two volumes of the Cabinet Library accord more fully with the strain and the object of our work than those respecting Africa and the Polar Seas, which we have already noticed. While Egypt is interesting to the scholar by its hieroglyphics, its pyramids, and other remains of former magnificence, its river Nile, the contests of which it has been the scene, its ancient literature, and its modern degradation; to the Christian it is still more so, as the place of Israel's bondage and redemption; for its ten plagues, in which the hand of God was put forth in such varied and marvellous operation; as the country where the infant Saviour was sheltered, as well as the patriarchs in the days of old; and on account of the predictions which, in the height of its glory, foretold the ignorance, oppression, and wretchedness into which it should sink, and in which it should continue for ages.

Palestine is a land the most interesting of all others, for the temple which God filled for ages with his glory; for the peculiar providence which watches over its people; for its relation to so many parts of our sacred books; for the pure worship offered in it to the Most High, while the whole world was given to