are completely and absolutely closed. I might refer to numerous facts which have fallen under my observation as illustrating this subject; but the following will be sufficient. An elderly lady had a stroke of apoplexy; she lay motionless, and in what is called a state of stupor, and no one doubted that she was dying. But after the lapse of three or four days there were signs of amendment, and she ultimately recovered. After her recovery, she explained that she did not believe that she had been unconscious, or even insensible, during any part of the attack. She knew her situation, and heard much of what was said by those around her. Especially she recollected observations intimating that she would very soon be no more; but at the same time she had felt satisfied that she would recover; that she had no power of expressing what she felt, but that nevertheless her feelings, instead of being painful or in any way distressing, had been agreeable rather than otherwise. She described them as

very peculiar as if she were constantly mounting upwards, and as something very different from what she had ever before experienced.-Psychological Inquiries.

oceans, that has lain locked in chests

for

family archives, while your friends have years, and buried under piles of been dying and your head has grown white who has not disinterred mementoes-from which the past smiles at you so sadly, shimmering out of Hades an instant but to sink back again into the cold shades, perhaps with a faint, faint sound as of a remembered tone-a ghostly echo of a once familiar laughter? I was looking of late at a wall in the Naples' museum, whereon a boy of Herculaneum eighteen hundred years ago had scratched with a nail the figure of a soldier. I could fancy the child turning round and smiling on me after having done his etching. Which of us that is thirty years old has not

had his Pompeii? Deep under ashes lies the life of youth the careless youth-the sport, the pleasure and passion, the darling joy. You open an old letterbox, and look at your own childish scrawls, or your mother's letters to you when you were at school; and excavate your heart. O me for the day when the whole city shall be bare and the chambers unroofed-and every cranny visible to the Light above, from the Forum to the Lupanar.-Thackeray.

HISTORY.

THE villain who has imposed on mankind by his power or cunning, and whom experience could not unmask for a time, is unmasked at length; and the honest man who has been misunderstood or defamed is justified before his story ends. Or if this does not happenif the villain dies with his mask on, in the midst of applause, and honour, and wealth, and power, and if the honest man dies under the same load of calumny and disgrace under which he so undeservedly lived, driven perhaps into exile and exposed to want-yet we see historical justice executed; the name of the one branded with infamy, and that of the other celebrated with panegyric to succeeding ages.—Bolingbroke.

HUMAN GLORY.

THE Roman forum is now a cow-market; the Tarpeian rock a cabbage-garden; and the palace of the Caesars a rope-walk.

WHAT IS THE RELIGION OF THE
GOSPEL?

TRUE religion is doctrinal, experimental, and practical. If we possessed only doctrinal religion, it would lead to Antinomianism; if only experimental, to enthusiasm; if only practical, to Pharisaism. Therefore, if we would be partakers of the religion of Jesus, all these must be united; we must not attempt to separate them.

WHAT DOES PHILOSOPHY RESEMBLE?

SPECULATIVE philosophy resembles the lark, which mounts into the air with

sprightly song and circling flight, but descends with nothing. Practical philosophy, on the other hand, resembles the hawk, which soars into the clouds only to return with spoil.

A POINTED BLOW.

A SICK man one day said to his physician, "Doctor, I wish you to strike the cause of my ailment, if it is in your power to reach it." "It shall be done,' said the doctor, at the same time lifting his cane, and demolishing a bottle of brandy that he saw on the sideboard.

MOTHER SYMINGTON.

ABOUT a hundred years ago, a clergyman in Massachusetts had a respectable neighbour belonging to his parish, who was notoriously addicted to lying, not from any malicious or pecuniary motive, but from perverse habit. The minister was every day grieved by the evil example of his neighbour. This person was Captain Clark, a friend of the

clergyman in all temporal matters, and a man useful in the parish; but his example was a source of much inquietude to the divine. He was determined to preach a sermon for the occasion.

Accordingly, he took for his text, "Lie not one to another." He expatiated on the folly, the wickedness, and evil example of lying in such a pointed manner, that nearly every person present thought that the clergyman was aiming at the captain. The service being ended, some one said to the captain, "What do you think of the sermon ?" "Excellent! excellent!" he replied; "but I could not for my life keep my eyes off old Mother Symington, thinking how she must feel, for he certainly meant her." This story was told by a daughter of the clergyman who preached the sermon; to which she added, "When you see any folly or vice exhibited from the pulpit, before you look out for a Mother Symington, look within yourself, and see if Captain Clark is not there." Her advice had some effect, and may have again.Belger's Clergy of America.

A SABBATH-SCHOOL IN ATHENS.

In a small room I found a young lady, the daughter of Dr. King, the American missionary, seated on a low bench, and a group of Greek children sitting in a circle around her, each with a Bible in hand, while they repeated to her the passages they had committed to memory, and answered promptly the inquiries she made respecting the history they had read. As she put her arm around each one that came and stood by her side, and with sweet, gentle words of

kindness told them stories of this old book, to which they listened eagerly, as if it were a treat to them to be there, it seemed to me that here was the loveliest spirit of the religion of Jesus, at work in the loveliest way. "Of such is the kingdom;" I mean, such teachers, as well as children.-Letters from Greece, by Irenæus.

CHATHAM'S OPINION OF DISSENTERS.

IN 1772 a bill was carried through the House of Commons to relieve Dissenters from subscribing to the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, but was lost in the House of Lords, through the influence of the bishops, who strongly inveighed against the Dissenters. Pitt, the eloquent Earl of Chatham, in replying to the attack on Dissenters by the Archbishop of York, said, "Whosoever brought such a charge against Dissenters without proof, defamed." After a pause he felt the workings of a generous and indignant enthusiasm, and thus proceeded: "The Dissenters are represented as men of close ambition. They are so, my lords; and their ambition is to keep close to the college of fishermen, not of cardinals; and to the doctrine of inspired apostles, not to the decrees of interested bishops. They contend for a spiritual creed and spiritual worship; we have a Calvinistic creed, a Popish liturgy, and an Arminian clergy. The Reformation laid open the Scriptures to all; let not the bishops shut them again. It is said that religious sects have done great mischief when they are not kept under restraint; but history affords no proof that sects have ever been mischievous but

when they were oppressed by the ruling church."

SATAN'S MASTERPIECE.

THE Papacy-that deepest conception, and mightiest achievement of Satan; into which he hath admitted the whole canon of truth, and yet contrived that it should teach only error; into which he hath admitted the whole revelation of light, and yet contrived that it should breed only foul and pestilent darkness. Oh! it is an ample net for catching men ; a delusion and bondage made for the world! Pagan Rome is Satan's work, constructed with his own materials of ambition, arms, policy, and knowledge; but papal Rome is Satan's work, constructed with the materials of God revealed in his holy Word.

ORGANIC LAWS.

THE mind acts wholly in accordance with physiological laws. If we are, therefore, duly to cultivate the mind, its exercise must be regulated by a strict regard to those laws. But how little is this thought of or attended to? At schools and colleges, for example, it secmed at one time to have been taken for granted that the mind had no dependence on the body. I believe the evil has now considerably abated, thanks to the spread of physiological knowledge. Setting aside the violation of the organic laws by the "fast" men, these laws are equally violated in another direction, by crowds of the most steady and gifted youths, in mad haste to come forth early prodigies of learning. But study thus pursued defeats its end. Such men are sure to fail of the great destinies their opening talents promise. We need not quote cases. The annals of literature are full of them, and you find them in crowds at watering places and health resorts.-The Water Cure and Household Medical Science. By Dr. Wilson.

THE SLEEP OF ARCTIC PLANTS.

M. SEEMANN, the naturalist of Kellett's arctic expedition, states a curious fact respecting the condition of the vegetable

world during the long day of the arctic. summer. Although the sun never sets while it lasts, plants make no mistake about the time when, if it be not night, it ought to be; but regularly as the evening hours approach, and when a midnight sun is several degrees above. the horizon, droop their leaves and sleep, even as they do at sunset in more favoured climes. "If man," observes M. Seemann, "should ever reach the pole, and be undecided which way to turn when his compass has become sluggish, his time-piece out of order, the plants which he may happen to meet will show him the way; their sleeping leaves tell him that midnight is at hand, and that at that time the sun is standing in the north."

MURDER IN POPISH COUNTRIES.

Ar the last annual meeting of the Protestant Alliance, in London, the Rev. Hobart Seymour gave the result of his own examination of authentic returns, made by public authority, in nearly all the so-called Catholic states of Europe, as to the single crime of murder. We merely extract the numerical statement from a report of his speech, and leave readers to their own conclusion. Let the plain question be put, How many persons in every million of population are taken up and prosecuted for murder every year? In order to answer this question, Mr. Seymour has examined the judicial returns in each country, for several years, and struck the average. This done, he answers thus:

In PROTESTANT ENGLAND there are prosecuted every year for murder, in each million of the population.

In NAPLES, where they have a taste for blood, and publicly exhibit the blood of one St. Januarius every year, there is made an exquisitely careful classification of murder into parricide, husband-murder, wife-murder, murder of other relatives, infanticide, poisoning, murder premediated, murder intentional, assassination, murder with robbery, and murder with adultery. Of all sorts of murder, the dreadful proportion to each million in Naples is no less than . But in ENGLAND, let it be once more noted, only

90

200

4

Considering that all crimes flourish together under the Papal shadow with correspondent luxuriance, but, for the present, only setting the scale by murder, we ask the advocates of Popery to account for this vast difference in favour of Protestant England.

Extinction of the Debt upon the United Presbyterian Church, Old Kilpatrick (Rev. J. Russell's).—This congregation has just succeeded in extinguishing the entire debt on its property. The church was built about sixty years ago, and has been burdened with debt during its whole existence. A few years ago, a praiseworthy effort was made towards its liquidation, and the result was that the debt was reduced to £241. Since that time no fresh measures were adopted. In the end of April last, however, some of the young men belonging to the congregation, after considering the various modes by which it could be liquidated or extinguished, formed themselves into a committee, under the sanction of the managers, with the view of wiping off the entire debt by means of subscriptions, laying down as a principle, that none of the money subscribed be lifted, unless the entire amount was made up. This was deemed by some too bold an attempt in so small a congregation; but, thanks to the energy and perseverance of the committee, which were liberally responded to by the congregation and one or two friends, within two months from the preliminary meeting, the entire sum was subscribed, and all claims on the church satisfied, leaving a balance in hand of £8, which was handed over to the managers, to be expended by them in repairs on the church, manse, and offices. This is but another instance of what may be done by a determined effort. Nothing short of the removal of the whole debt would suffice, and it was accomplished. Had a modified or sliding scheme. been adopted, the chances are, that it would have been short-lived, and unsuccessful in its issue. Let the young men of such of our congregations as are still in debt, follow the example of their Kilpatrick friends; and, taking no half measures, we feel convinced that their success will be equivalent to their energy; and that, by and by, the property of all the churches of our denomination will be free, unfettered by the burden and stigma

of debt.

Galashiels.-On the 27th June, the East United Presbyterian congregation, Galashiels, gave a harmonious call to Mr. Alexander Oliver, to be colleague to the Rev. Dr. Henderson.

CLERICAL OBITUARY.

Died, at South Queensferry, on the 23d June, the Rev. William Carruthers, of the United Presbyterian Church there, in the twenty-second year of his ministry.

At Halbeath, near Dunfermline, on the 2d July, Mr. James Hogg, student of divinity of the United Presbyterian Church, in his twenty-sixth year.

At Inverness, on the 15th July, the Rev. Joseph Thorburn, of the Free Church there, in the twenty-fifth year of his ministry.

PRESBYTERY NOTICES.

Berwick. This Presbytery met on Tuesday, the 27th of June-the Rev. John Hunter, moderator. The Presbytery's report concerning the students under their superintendence was made up, and ordered to be sent to the Committee on Theological Education. Mr. John Polson, student of the fourth year, was certified to the hall Mr. James Kerr having gone through his trials for ordination, was appointed to be ordained on Tuesday, the 8th of August.

Buchan.-This Presbytery met at Stewartfield, on the 18th July-Rev. A. Lind, moderator, pro tem. Mr. Duncan Forbes, according to remit of Synod, and Mr. William Frazer, student in philosophy, were examined on the subjects sanctioned by the Synod, for admission being satisfied with their qualifications, to the Theological Hall. The Presbytery unanimously agreed to attest and recommend them for admission at the ensuing session of the hall. Messrs. Allison, M. Arthur, and Adie, gave discourses on the subjects assigned to them, and were Theology, Church History, and Biblical examined on Latin, Greek, Hebrew,

Literature. All their exercises were susmoderation was granted, to take place on tained. A petition from New Deer for a Thursday, 3d August; Mr. Hunter to Presbytery was appointed to be held preach and preside. Next meeting of August, when remits of Synod are to be on Tuesday after the third Sabbath of

considered.