Practical Instructions, and an These works should go together, the last being a continuation of the first, and both doing for the Old Testament what "Early Dew" and "Soft Showers," published by the same parties, have done for the New. Both books are very tastefully got up, and, having gone through them, we can honestly commend them to parents as valuable helps in giving correct bible instruction to their children. They are good books for Sunday evenings, and will give matter for many a happy and in structive hour to the children, if rightly used. THE CHILD'S OWN MAGAZINE for 1852. London: Sunday School Union. This is a pretty little work, designed to meet the felt wants of our Sunday scholars; an improvement on "The Child's Own Book," in place of which it comes, and well fitted to instruct and please those for whom it is designed. It is both good and cheap-giving sixteen pages of letterpress, with woodcuts and music, for a single halfpenny-and should have a large circulation amongst the tens of thousands of children crowding our schools every sabbath day. Chapter of Varieties. SINNERS CANNOT STAND ALONE. One who wanders through low and wet grounds in the months of August and September, will very likely meet with a troublesome weed that goes by different names, as prickly knot-grass, the Polygonum sagitatum and arifolium of botanists -and will be sure to be scratched if he meddles with it. The stalks of this weed are weak and flaccid, and not able, when standing alone, to sustain their own weight; but they are armed at their four angles with rows of prickles, and thus hold each other up. You may often see a mass of them standing erect, each by the help of its neighbours, while not a single one of them has strength to stand alone. Now the application which we make of this is the following:-This weed is an apt emblem of wicked men; not only because of its hurtful character (the sweet Psalmist of Israel describes "the sons of Belial" as thorns thrust away, because they cannot be taken with hands"), but especially in this respect, that it cannot stand alone. It has in itself no strength; but must lean for support on its neighbours. So wicked men are destitute of all true strength, a truth which they inwardly feel, however reluctant they may be to confess it. Take a truly righteous man away from his associates, and shut him in prison with the ungodly, and he is still strong, because he carries his strength with him in his soul. He can rebuke sin with authority, though himself in chains. Place a truly righteous man in the presence of wicked rulers and judges, who have his life in their hands, he is still strong, and can face their frowns and threats without dismay. But a wicked man cannot stand without the help of wicked companions to keep him in countenance. The drunkard in the bar-room, surrounded by men like himself, feels strong and vaunts of his courage; but set him down in the midst of a company of temperate men, and (if he be in his senses) he has no courage left. The very thought of his own bloated countenance fills him with shame. He instinctively retreats to the bar-room again. In like manner, the libertine, when surrounded by his companions in sin, glories of his exploits, and laughs all virtue to scorn. But place him in the bosom of a virtuous community, where he is conscious that his character is known and despised, and he can no longer hold up his head. He has an interest, a dreadful interest, in having his neighbours as depraved as himself; for it is only by the sin of others that he can keep himself in countenance. Hence the disposition of depraved men to sneer at all virtue in others, and to represent the whole world as being like themselves; while truly good men are naturally generous and unsuspecting, and continue, even after they have been often deceived by professions of virtue, to hope the best of their neighbours. We close the similitude with a single reflection. Every ungodly man must die alone. Though his companions in sin may stand around his expiring clay, not one of them can go with him to the bar of God. He must meet his Maker alone; and, oh! how withering will be the sense of his utter weakness and inability to stand before the wrath of God! The ungodly are "like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment." NEVER SINCE I WAS A CHILD." These words affected me deeply. They came to me through the grate of a prison door, from a young man about twenty-five years of age, of good form and intelligent countenance, but quivering and trembling from the effects of intemperance. "When were you brought in here?" "Yesterday." On what charge ?" "Drunkenness and disorderly conduct." "What is your occupation?" "Some years ago I had a very good place in a draper's shop, but I fell into bad habits, and lost my place. Then I tried peddling books. Yesterday I came here, and became intoxicated, and was taken up and put in jail." "Were you religiously brought up?" "Not by my parents; but I had religious instruction in the sabbath school." "Then you have attended sabbath school?" "Yes, sir." "What were your first steps astray?" Going about in the evening, and taking walks out into the country on Sunday." "Did you drink when you went on these excursions?" "Sometimes we did, sometimes we didn't." "Have you been in the habit of praying to God?" "Never since I was a child!" CHAPTER II.-THE FIRST INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY. WE took a brief glance, young reader, a month ago, at the dark night of paganism which once spread itself over our now highly-favoured land. We saw our forefathers as a set of painted savages, brave and warlike, but utterly unacquainted with the civilities of life, ruled over by a superstitious priesthood, and living without hope in the world. Upon that dark night we have now to mark the dawning of a bright and glorious day. Amid that mass of ignorance, superstition, and sin, we are now to observe the introduction of the element of a purer faith, which working up, and gradually pervading the entire mass, changes all the scene, and produces in the place of pagan barbarism the soft and holy forms of christian life. By whom this introduction was first attempted, exactly when or in what manner accomplished, we know nothing. BIBLE CLASS MAGAZINE.] [FEBRUARY, 1853. с No written records, if any ever existed, have survived the revolutions and conflicts of those early days. All we know on this matter with certainty is, that Britain became very early converted in some sort to the christian faith, and that if not within the apostolic age, yet soon after, some heralds of the cross had preached the Saviour on its shores. Everything else is involved in the greatest confusion and mystery. There are not wanting legends and fables on the subject, but careful examination, with comparison of circumstances, dates, &c., only prove these legends to be utterly unworthy of confidence. Some are evidently pure fables, invented by lying monks to fill up a gap in history, or serve a turn for their interest; while others are clearly adornments and additions of some simple tale which has once had about it the features of probability and truth. Among the candidates set up by various parties for the honour of bringing Christianity to our shores may be found St. Peter, St. James, the son of Zebedee, Simon Zelotes, Aristobulus, mentioned incidentally in Rom. xvi. 10, Joseph of Arimathea, the disciples of Polycarp, and the apostle Paul himself. Very amusing is it, and curious too, to see the ingenuity and apparent show of learning that has been adopted by various writers to make good the claims of their favourite hero; some of them writers of great worth, fine mind, and general good sense. To us, however, their entire argumentation amounts to nothing more than a large note of interrogation, and leaves us just where it found us, in mystery and doubt. Of these legends there are three or four that claim a passing notice. The first is that which makes St. Paul the first herald of the gospel here, and which one could almost wish might be true, but which on close examination seems, if not impossible, to be most improbable. A few words, however, on this tradition. The earliest writer who affirms this opinion is a French bishop, called Venantius Fortunatus. He lived near the close of the sixth century, and wrote a poem in praise of St. Martin, in which he states that Paul "crossed the ocean, where he found an island-port, and preached the gospel, so that Britain and Thule had heard the blissful tidings." This, however, is of no historical weight. What a poet may say in the sixth century about what happened in the first can go but little way in deciding such a case as this. The next writer who asserts the same thing is Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, who lived about fifty years later, and who says in a discourse on Paul, that he visited Spain and Britain, and preached the gospel there. This, too, is too late an authority to be of any value, unless sustained by some prior records. Then comes a note in the Greek calendar of saints, where it is stated that Paul ordained Aristobulus "bishop in the country of the Britons." But such an old calendar of saints, full of confessedly old wives' fables, is but poor authority to go upon. Some statements of the early fathers have been thought to give countenance to the idea that Paul preached in Britain. Thus Clement of Rome says of Paul, that "after having proclaimed the gospel both in the East and the West, and taught righteousness to the whole world, and having come to the boundary of the West, and having testified before the rulers, left the world, and went to the holy place." The words come to the boundary of the West," in this passage, are thought to point to Britain. But different writers explain them very differently; some thinking they must take in Britain, others that they are only expressive of the western part of the Roman empire. 66 The next ancient authority quoted is that of Jerome, who says that Paul "preached the gospel in the Western parts;' and that having been in Spain, "his diligence in preaching extended to the ends of the earth." This is, however, quite as indefinite as Clement's history. 66 Then comes Theodoret, who says that Paul, after visiting Spain, 'preached salvation to the islands that lie in the ocean," but which may have been the islands of the Mediterranean as well as the Atlantic. These are all the worthy testimonies to the fact that can be brought forward, and which our young readers will see are as inconclusive as possible. Stillingfleet has endeavoured to make out the case by various concurring circumstances in the life of Paul, but which on examination contain so many gratuitous assumptions and conjectures that one rejects the whole as but a pure supposition, unsustained by any adequate and worthy proof. |