For Friends' Review.
CHARLES SIMEON.

(Concluded from page 168.)

"When youth's presumptuousness is mellowed down,
And manhood's vain anxiety dismissed;
When Wisdom shows her seasonable fruit
Upon the boughs of sheltering leisure hung,
In sober plenty—"

fore the throne, and what would he care about it. Just such will be my feeling whilst I am hid in the secret of my Redeemer's presence."

The following extracts from a letter to a clergyman are interesting as evidences of his faithfulness as well as of the practical character of his piety. "You have always appeared to admire Christianity as a system, but you never seemed to have just views of Christianity as a remedy. You never seemed to possess selfknowledge, or to know the evil of your own heart. I never saw in you any deep contrition, much less any thing of a tender self-loathing and self-abhorrence. This always made me jealous over you with a godly jealousy; and never till this moment have I had my fears for your ultimate state removed. I beheld in you somewhat of a childlike simplicity; and I well know that if it be associated with contrition it is a virtue of the sublimest quality; but if contrition be wanting, the disposition which assumes that form differs but little from childishness. But now you begin to feel the burthen of your sins; you now begin, though still in a very small degree, to have your mind open to the corruptions of the heart and to your need of a dying Saviour to atone for you by his blood, and a living Saviour to renew you by the influences of His Spirit. Seek, my dear friend, to grow in this knowledge; for it is this that will endear the Saviour to you, and make you steadfast in your walk with God. This is the foundation which must be dug deep, if you would ever build high, and the ballast which alone will enable you to carry sail." "Christianity is a personal matter, not to be commended merely to others, but to be experienced in your own soul; and though you may confound your opponents by your arguments, you will never do any essential good; much less will you reap any saving benefit to your own soul till you can say, What mine eyes have seen, mine ears have heard, and mine hands have handled of the word of life, that same declare I unto you."

These beautiful words of our great living poet may with singular propriety be applied to the old age of Simeon-time and experience had calmed without weakening his ardent mind. He lived for the promotion of Christianity, and to oppose what he deemed error; but he had learned that the example of an earnest yet humble spirit, seeking the good of all around it, and showing "out of a good conversation his works in meekness of wisdom," was a most efficient means in preparing men to receive the truth; and that true Christian kindness was a more formidable weapon against heresy than doubtful disputation. In his sixtieth year he says, "I see many things in a different light from what I once did-such as the beauty of order, of regularity, and the wisdom of seeking to win souls by kindness, rather than to convert them by harshness and what I once called fidelity. I admire more the idea which I have of our blessed Lord's spirit and ministry than I once did." Something having been told him to the disadvantage of another, he makes the following entry in his diary: "The longer I live the more I feel the importance of adhering to the rules which I have laid down for myself in relation to such matters-1st, To hear as little as possible what is to the prejudice of others; 2d, To believe nothing of the kind until I am absolutely forced to it; 3d, Never to drink into the spirit of one who circulates an ill report; 4th, Always to moderate as far as I can the unkindness which is expressed towards others; 5th, Always to believe that if the other side were heard, a very different account would be given of the matter. I consider love as wealth; and as I would resist a man who should come to rob my house, so would I a man who We do not know that we can better close these would weaken my regard for any human being." extracts than by the following passages of a letter My blessed Lord," he writes on another occa- to a correspondent who had requested him to sion, "when he was reviled, reviled not again; attack the work of a clergyman who denied the. when he suffered, he threatened not, but com- restoration of the Jews to their own land :-"I mitted himself to Him that judgeth righteously. have neither taste nor talent for religious controThat seems the right thing for me to do; though versy; nor do I, upon the whole, envy those by some perhaps would think it better to stand whom such taste and such talent are possessed. up for my rights. But to all the accusations I know you will forgive me, if I say that the that were brought against him, our Lord made very account you give of yourself, in relation no reply, insomuch that the governor mar- to controversy, is a dissuasive from embarkvelled greatly.' I delight in that record; and, ing in it. Let a man once engage in it, and it God helping me, it is the labour of my life so is surprising how the love of it will grow upon to act that on my account also the governor him; and he will both find a hare in every bush, or spectator may marvel greatly. My expeand follow it with something of a huntsman's rience all this day has been, and I hope will yet feeling. I am not certain, my dear friend, that continue to be, a confirmation of that word, your preserves, though they have provided many Thou wilt hide me in the secret of thy presence dishes for your table, have administered any from the strife of tongues.' Insult an angel be- I sound health to your soul. As for me, I have

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"Without weakness or wandering of

mind during his severe suffering, in which patience had indeed its perfect work '-abounding in perfect love and thanksgiving, he was enabled to testify to the last, of the mercy and faithfulness of his God, and so having fought a good fight, and kept the faith, he finished his course with joy." He terminated his remarkable career in his 78th year.

been a dying creature these fifty years, and have, | peace and love; and enjoying such a sense of as on the borders of eternity, sought for truth God's pardoning love himself, he longed to manionly, and that from the fountain of truth itself. I fest an affectionate and forgiving spirit to all have never had time or inclination to run after around. error in all its windings; in fact, there are so many errors that one can never search them out." "This is a day of trifling. But I am a dying man, and view these things as I shall view them from the bar of judgment. All these things are about religion, but they have very little to do with religion itself. One drachm of contrition and of simple affiance in the Saviour, and of an admiring and adoring sense of redeeming love, is worth all the knowledge that has been, of late, conveyed to us on these subjects, and all the feelings that have been generated by the prose-To

cution of them."

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"The chamber where the good man meets his fate
Is privileged beyond the common walks
Of human life-quite in the verge of heaven."

From the Anti-Slavery Reporter. ADDRESS OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN A. S. SOCIETY,

the Friends of the Anti-Slavery Cause on the Disuse of Slave-Labour Produce. The system of slavery, whether viewed in its origin, its incidents, or its results, is now generally admitted to be not only an enormous crime against man, but an act of daring impiety against God; and that, therefore, every legitimate means should be used to secure its universal abolition.

The slavery of modern times, we speak of that which exists among professedly Christian and civilized nations, had its origin in THE SLAVE-TRADE, and is, in one form or other, fed and sustained by it at the present hour. The Spanish Colonies and Brazil derive their supplies of new slaves direct from the Coast of Africa, whilst the southern sections of the United States depend for theirs, in a considerable degree, on the slave-rearing states, where the victims of oppression are as regularly bred for sale as cattle are for the markets. In the one case, we have the foreign African slave-trade, with all the horrors of the capture and the middle passage; in the other, the internal or domestic slave-trade, with all its loathsome and atrocious incidents; and in both, an epitome of all the crimes that can darken or debase the character of man.

Yet its reports are far from uniform. For some the final struggle against the enemy of man seems to be reserved to the dying hour, as if to magnify that grace which shall triumph when Strength and heart faileth." Others, who, through the efficacy of the same heavenly gift, have been enabled to accomplish the work of their day, are permitted to descend to the valley of the shadow of death, fearing no evil; and in the beautiful language of the Apostle, "to sleep in Jesus." Simeon died like the warrior in his armour; his trust was in his great Captain; yet he seems to have felt to the last, the necessity of watching against the frailties of nature, and the temptations of the evil one. An incident which occurred about two weeks before his death, and when all hope of recovery was gone, is singularly illustrative of this feeling. An attendant remarked to him that his work was now quite done, and that it was a privilege to see the peace he enjoyed, and with how much patience and submission he bore his afflictions. He instantly rebuked her in a tone of unusual severity, and calling for writing materials, dictated with great solemnity, an earnest entreaty that nothing laudatory of him, or of any thing he had done, should be uttered in his presence; expressing, in strong language, his conviction, that could he be pleased with it, it might be his ruin. When his attendant subsequently explained that she meant to refer to the power of Divine Grace which enabled him to exhibit so much patience under suffering, he replied in the It is unnecessary that we should dwell on the gentlest manner, that she might speak of Divine goodness as much as she would, but not of him. essential unrighteousness and hateful cruelty of "There was," says his biographer, "a remarkable slavery; or depict its fearful results either on and rapid maturing of all the finer parts of his the slave or his oppressor: it is sufficient to character, from the very commencement of his say, that it is full of" deadly evil to both." It is, illness, and a corresponding diminution, and ul- therefore, against slavery, rather than the slavetimately a disappearance of those symptoms of trade, which has now become its adjunct, that haste and irritability which sometimes were our most strenuous efforts should be directed; visible in his days of health and vigour." He for as long as slavery exists, there is no reasonseemed now to breathe entirely an atmosphere of able prospect of the annihilation of the slave

It is a melancholy and startling fact, that, with very few exceptions, all the slaves, upwards of seven millions in number, now held in bondage in the New World, are either the immediate victims, or the descendants of former victims of the slave-trade. They are the sad remnants of that mighty host which have been stolen from Africa, and doomed by the wickedness of their fellowmen, to hopeless captivity, unrequited toil, and premature death.

trade, and of extinguishing the sale and barter of human beings.

Whilst slavery existed in the British colonies, or the territorial dependencies of the empire, we had the power of overcoming it through the constituted authorities of the realm. Our efforts to enlighten the public mind, and to move the legislature, were, under the divine blessing, crowned with success, and that dreadful evil has disappeared. But we could not use the same means with foreign states, and were limited to moral suasion, the adoption of fiscal regulations in favour of free labour, and the disuse of slaveproduce. It has pleased the Imperial Legislature to enact laws which admit the free importation of slave-grown produce into the British market for home consumption, and very shortly the duties will be equalized, so that the last restriction upon it will cease to exist, and the produce of piracy, rapine and murder, will be elevated to the same dignity with that of free labour, honestly obtained and fairly remunerated. We deeply regret this; but we fear that government will not retrace its steps; there remains, therefore, only two modes of action left, that of moral suasion, and the disuse of slaveproduce.

with the produce of slave-labour; yet we hold it to be a duty wherever there is liberty of choice, or a substitute for slave-produce can be found, to avoid it; and we earnestly recommend this view of the subject, and a corresponding practice, to the immediate and serious consideration and adoption of every friend of humanity throughout the country.

If the demand for slaves is now the sole cause of the slave-trade, and its accumulated crimes, the demand for slave-produce is the prolific source, the main prop and stay of slavery, with all its terrible and revolting circumstances and awful responsibilities. It requires no powers of reasoning to demonstrate that if this demand were to cease; if the righteous indignation felt against slavery led to the general disuse of its produce; and if compassion for the slave produced its legitimate fruit in a resolute determination thus practically to discountenance the sin we profess to condemn, it would soon be abandoned. It is the market for slave-produce which gives energy and extension to the system of slavery. Unhappily, in our own country, that demand has greatly increased, since the last alteration in the sugar duties, and the result has been, that a vast stimulus has been given to the It is extremely satisfactory to know, that the slave-trade; that slave property has greatly augmeans to which the British and Foreign Anti-mented in value; and that the progress of emanSlavery Society have resorted to promote the abolition of slavery by foreign states, have been followed by a large measure of success. Already Sweden and Denmark have decided the question of freedom, and the slaves in their colonies are now in course of being emancipated. France is prepared, we trust, shortly to follow the example, and Holland cannot hesitate much longer to give liberty to her slaves. Nor is this all Tunis has listened to the voice of humanity and justice, and her noble prince has destroyed the last vestiges of slavery and the slave-trade, throughout her coasts. Turkey has abolished her slave-markets. Rajpootana has terminated her slave-system, and Lahore has declared her bondmen shall be free. To this we may add, that many noble minds and generous hearts in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and the Spanish colonies, sympathise with us in our struggles for the freedom of the whole human race. We shall, therefore, persevere in the use of those moral and pacific means which have hitherto been so remarkably blest. One means, however, has been, we fear, much overlooked. We allude to the disuse of slave-labour produce; a weapon which all, more or less, can use with great effect. To this we invite serious attention.

The rule of the Society, adopted in 1839, is, "to recommend the use of free-grown produce, as far as practicable, in preference to slavegrown." "The qualification, "as far as practicable," is added, because of the necessity of the case, for it is, perhaps, impossible, under existing circumstances, wholly to avoid all contact

cipation has been greatly impeded thereby. Such
being the fact, the question is simple and the an-
swer obvious, with regard to our duty-we must
abstain from the use of slave-produce.
It may
be said that isolated efforts of the kind
recommended can do little towards the giant evil
of slavery. We admit it, but the question of
individual duty remains the same. Every one
who uses slave-grown produce, when it is in
his power either to do without it or to choose
that which is free, does in reality sustain the
system of slavery; whereas, on the other hand,
every one who abstains from it not only bears
his protest against the iniquity of enslaving man,
but attacks it in its most vulnerable point.

But, however weak the effort may be in the first instance, yet, if it be based on a right principle, others will engage in it: the units will become hundreds, and the hundreds thousands, and their abstinence will not fail to make a decided impression on the market for slave-produce. If the abolitionists of this country-and who is not an abolitionist?-would ally themselves to this branch of anti-slavery effort, the consequences would be not less surprising than beneficial, for we may be assured that no slave-holder would add to his stock of slaves under a decaying demand for his productions. Hence, among the first consequences of abstinence from their use would be, that a smaller number of ships would be freighted for the slave-trade-that fewer wars would be waged in Africa to obtain slaves-that a less number of victims would be destroyed; and, as the public conscience became awaken

ed, the demand would gradually decrease, until slavery would become unprofitable-a burthen RISING AND SINKING OF LAND IN NORTHERN and a yoke too heavy to be borne.