NEW PUBLICATION. 06 The Rev. D. G. Goyder has added to his interesting stories for children, ("By Uncle George, ") a new one bearing the title of "Obstinate Jack." Those who have read with pleasure Alfred," "Tommy Johnson," "The Unturned Cake," ," "Farmer Higginson and his Son," &c., will be able to anticipate the style and tenor of the present pleasing and interesting production. It contains nearly 90 pages, and is respectably got up, and no doubt will be very interesting to its more thoughtful young readers. We say more thoughtful," because the author has introduced not a few mature ideas, calculated to benefit "children of larger growth," taking opportunity to intersperse the spiritual with the moral, and including both in one entertaining envelope. To heighten the pleasure of his young readers, he has also introduced a pretty hymn set to what we hope they will regard as pretty music. The moral of the tale is instructive to both parents 66 and children; to parents that they may know how to deal with their children when resembling "Obstinate Jack," and to children, that they may learn what it is to be kindly and wisely dealt with. The plan of treatment suggested is the mild, patient, and hopeful plan, in preference to the exaction of prompt and strict obedience at once. We are inclined to think that this will suit the taste of many, if not most of our readers who are parents; but we venture to express a hope, that those who rule their children with an uncertain or negligent hand, will not flatter themselves that they are entitled to be classed with the kind and duteous parent of "Obstinate Jack;" whether, however, his firmness was adequate to the exigency of the case, may, probably, be questioned by parents of a somewhat sterner composition than Jack's father. We hope the author will not be disappointed in his expectation of patronage for his well-meant effort, and that parchasers will not regret their acquisition of this simple, pleasant, and instructive tale. Marriages. Married, at the church in Argylesquare, London, by the Rev. T. C. Shaw, on Saturday July 26th, Mr. Arthur Brears Caistor, of 7, Baker-street, Portmansquare, to Mary Ann, only daughter, and only surviving child of Mr. Butter, of Cloudesley terrace, Islington. Married, at the New Jerusalem Church, Cross-street, Hatton Garden, London, on Monday the 14th July, 1851, by the Rev. W. Bruce, Mr. George Webster, to Miss Mary Pitman. Obituary. Died, on the 24th of May, 1851, aged 73 years, Mrs. Susannah Riches, of Brightlingsea, sister to the late Mr. William Maskell. She was a constant and regular attendant for the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ in the church at Brightlingsea for many years, and up to the time of her bodily affliction, her zeal increased for the public worship of the Lord; hence she was never absent from the Lord's Table but from unavoidable circumstances. She had been for some years subject to the rheumatic gout, and for the last three or four years this disease had increased so rapidly as to take away the use of one side of her bodily frame. She had been a great sufferer, and, for the last three years and a half, had been deprived of the privilege of public worship; this, to her, was truly a grief; but she was enabled patiently to bear it. In her long affliction she was much edified Cave and Sever, Printers, Palatine Buildings, Hunt's Bank, Manchester. NOTHING perhaps marks more distinctly the line that separates the man of religion from the man of the world, than the practical belief in an ever watchful and overruling Providence. The nominal belief in the existence of a God, who created the world, and planted man upon it, but who has left to human prudence both the plan and the issues of life, excludes God from his works, and invests human wisdom with the highest of the divine prerogatives-that which is exercised in his moral government. Such a belief amounts to nothing. It has no influence upon the heart or life; it neither looks to God for direction in judging and acting, nor recognises his controlling hand in the results of the operations of the mind or the body. That only deserves the name of faith which sees God in all things; and which rests in the perfect conviction that the moral as well as the physical world would relapse into chaos, unless the same power which originally formed and the same spirit which originally animated the whole creation, were continually operating upon it. This faith not only acknowledges that in God we live and move and have our being, but that his love and wisdom are ever operating to make us feel and think and act in harmony with the laws of his divine order, and thus in agreement with our own best interests; and that, when our ends and our acts are contrary to these, he permits disappointment and suffering, as checks and correctives of our inordinate or rebellious loves. Thus, Providence both leads and restrains, both provides and permits, both acts upon us through the N. S. No. 141.-VOL. XII. 2 N ends and purposes of our lives, and reacts upon us through the conse quences of our actions. And this it does without in the least infringing our liberty. If the divine Being acted upon us without regard to our free-will, the divine Providence would act only in one way, and we ourselves could act only as we were acted upon. But all experience shows us that this is not the case. The divine Being holds the balance, but we ourselves give the preponderance. We stand freely between Providence and permission, which is the same as between heaven and hell, and between good and evil; for heaven and good are of the divine Providence, and hell and evil are of the divine permission, It is of the divine will that we should act freely in agreement with heaven and goodness, for by so doing we enjoy peace and lay up happiness; but it is of the divine permission that we should also be allowed to act freely in agreement with hell and with evil. God does not forcibly restrain us from acting contrary to himself; but he leads us by experience to feel the bitterness and the folly of sin, that we may freely relinquish its pleasures, which are but the sweets of its poison, and gladly live in the exercise of virtue, which brings its own reward of tranquil enjoyment. It is essential to the idea of such an overruling Providence that it should be seen to be most unremitting and most minute. Every act involves a series of consequences to eternity; and God only, to whom all the future is present, knows how to operate for the best on the minds and circumstances of men. In the Scriptures we therefore find that the Lord is ever watchful over, and minutely provident in the affairs of mankind. "He who keepeth Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps." "A sparrow shall not fall to the ground without your Father who is in heaven. The very hairs of your head are all numbered." No language could more forcibly express the idea that the divine care is continual and particular. No point of time is so minute as to pass unnoticed with the Eternal, no circumstance so trifling as to be beneath the care of the Infinite. But the Lord's declaration that the very hairs of our head are all numbered contains more than an assurance that the divine care is extended to the minutest particulars of our temporal and spiritual life. Every expression in the divine volume contains not only a general, but a particular meaning. The divine wisdom does not express itself in the human language of figure, but in the divine language of correspondence. And to see the precise meaning of the Lord's words we must inquire what is meant by the hairs of the head, and by their being numbered. The head is the supreme part of man, and in the Word signifies what is highest or inmost, not only in relation to the natural but the spiritual life. The hair of the head signifies what is outermost, as proceeding immediately from what is inmost. Thus the head and its hair signify what is first and last; or the life of man in its first principles and in its ultimates. The Lord himself is therefore described in Scripture as to his head and his hair, which are said to be white as wool, as white as snow. In the Revelation, where this description occurs, the Lord is spoken of as the Word, or the divine wisdom itself: and the inmost of the Word is signified by his head, and its outermost or ultimate, by his hair. His hairs are said to be white, because whiteness signifies truth in its purity; and comparison is made of its whiteness with wool and snow, because the whiteness of wool signifies the truth of love, and that of snow the truth of faith. some truth. As the head and the hair signify the highest principles in man, and their appropriate outward manifestation and covering, they therefore signify the internal and external mind, with the particular goods and truths of which they consist. For the mind, in reality, consists of nothing else than goods and truths; since nothing can be called mind but what has relation to affection and perception: and every affection is the affection of some good, and every perception is the perception of These affections and perceptions, like the organical vessels of the brain and the hairs of the head, are indefinite in number, and in their interior forms ineffable. Their almost infinite number and variety are also denoted in Scripture by the uncounted multitude of the stars of heaven and sand upon the sea shore; where the stars also signify the principles of the inner man, or spiritual mind, and the sand of the sea those of the outer man, or natural mind. But although these are unnumbered and innumerable by man, they are numbered by the Lord. And his claim to omnipotence and omniscience is sometimes in the Word grounded on his ability to number the host of heaven, and his particular knowledge of them all. In the Scriptures the Lord is spoken of as numbering both the stars of heaven and the hairs of the human head. In the 147th Psalm it is said, "He telleth the number of the stars, he calleth them all by their names;" which is repeated in more ample language in the 40th of Isaiah:- "Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their hosts by number; he calleth them all by names, by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth." Thus the stars of heaven, like the hairs of our heads, are all numbered. God, who created the universe and who made man, alone knows what is in them. But this numbering of the stars aud of the hairs involves something more still than infinite knowledge. To number, in the spiritual sense of the word, signifies to ordinate. And the ordination of all things on earth and in heaven is truly the work of an infinite mind. The order and harmony displayed in creation, the balance of powers by which the planets are preserved in their orbits, the laws in obedience to which the whole starry heaven moves in majestic harmony round, some common axillary centre, are indeed wonderful, but are not more wonderful and admirable than the order and harmony existing in a well-regulated mind a mind regulated by the laws of heaven's eternal Word, by which its faculties are maintained in that balance which preserves them in perfect freedom of action; and by which every one is preserved in his place amongst the hosts of heaven, and is enabled to move in unison with the whole host of the regenerate on earth, and afterwards with the blest in heaven. This is a work which noné but an infinite Being can perform. But though a divine work, it can only be effected during man's coöoperation. As action is the all of reaction, the work is of the Lord alone. A further view of the subject will shew this to be the case. It has already been remarked that the internal of the regenerate man is an image of heaven, and his external is an image of the world; but in this case we must think of the world as it was when it came from the hand of its Creator, when man was in innocence, and all other things in harmony with him. Now one of the essential attributes of heaven and the world in such a state is order; and order implies the subordination of one thing to another-the lower to the higher, by which there is cooperation and harmony. We have only, then, to transfer this law to the human being-the little heaven and little world, to see the necessity of the introduction of a divine order by a divine Power into his mind and operations. In a general view there must be a subordination of what is worldly to what is heavenly, of what is natural to what is spiritual, of what is temporal to what is eternal. The whole natural mind, with all its natural affections and thoughts, must be subordinated to the spiritual mind, with its spiritual affections and principles. Heaven must be more to us than all the world. When this is the case the first universal principle of order is introduced into our nature. But there is a more particular order which enters into this, and gives it distinctness and fulness. There are various principles both in the natural and in the spiritual mind;—and all these must be in subordination, from the highest to the lowest: the corporeal must be subordinate to the sensuous, the sensuous to the natural; the natural to the rational, the rational to the spiritual, the spiritual to the celestial. But the highest of these principles, and, by means of that, all the others, must |