A CHRISTIAN'S TRIAL.

As Christian devotion, self-denial, courage, are tried in this day in little things, so is Christian faith also:it is shown by taking this or that side in the many questions of opinion and conduct which come before us.

Take the most unlettered peasant in the humblest village; his trial lies in acting for the Church or against it in his own place. He may happen to be at work with others, or taking refreshment with others; and he may hear religion spoken against, or the Church, or the King; he may hear voices raised together in scoffing or violence; he must withstand laugh and jest, evil words and rudeness, and witness for Christ. Thus he carries on, in his day, the eternal conflict between Truth and Falsehood.

Another, in a higher class of society, has a certain influence in parish matters, in the application of charities, the appointment of officers, and the like; he, too, must act as in God's sight, for the Truth's sake, as Christ would have him.

Another has a certain political power; he has a vote to bestow, or dependents to advise; he has a voice to raise, and substance to contribute. Let him act for religion, not as if there were not a God in the world.-NEWMAN'S SERMONS.-Vol. 3, p. 230.

A FICTION AND A FACT.

THE Emperor Trajan, ever alive to the true happiness of his subjects, was deeply moved by the ignorance and barbarism of the Italian peasantry. To remove this crying evil, he planned and executed a very extensive measure. He trained up teachers for the people; and having had them instructed in useful knowledge, especially in a knowledge of the duties of men, he sent one into every village in Italy, to live in it, and teach the people, both publicly in schools, and privately from house to house. These teachers were men not of good education only, but for the most part of good birth. Their education was expensive; and was paid for, not by the state, but by the parents of each. It was therefore but common fairness, that they should be paid for their important services; for could it be supposed, that men of birth and education would consent to be banished from the society of their equals, to

gether with all the pleasures of Rome, and all its opportunities of improvement, to some village on the rugged Apennines or the unhealthy plains with which Italy abounds, without being enabled to support themselves and their families in decent comfort? Trajan never dreamt of committing such injustice; his public teachers were paid at first by the landowners of their respective villages; but in many places the burthen was soon removed from their shoulders, by the benevolence of individuals leaving property to maintain them for ever.

This, reader, is the FICTION: neither Trajan nor any other Monarch even did, or thought of doing, so noble a work as this! But the FACT is to be found in christian countries, where every village, or very nearly every village, has residing in it not a moral teacher only, but a teacher of religion; a teacher commissioned by the Son of God himself, to instruct its inhabitants, both publicly and from house to house, in that heavenly doctrine, which alone can make men wise unto salvation.

HUMILITY-FROM BISHOP PATRICK.

THE Humility which I commend unto you, is not to be exercised so much in a direct considering of yourself (though this be very profitable at the first) as in a still, quiet, and loving admiration of the excellent goodness, purity, and love of Jesus. When you believe him to have the fulness of the godhead dwelling in him bodily, and especially when you are indued with a savoury feeling of his holiness and kindness; this sight of him will beget in your soul a more pure, spiritual, and sweet humility, than the beholding of yourself can pos sibly do; which produces an humility more gross, boisterous, and unquiet. As there is a love which is calm and quiet, when, not at all stirr'd with the passion, we remain possessed of all the pleasure of it; so there is an humility of the same nature, which silently sinks us down to the very bottom of our being, without stirring and troubling our souls, as we are wont to do, when we violently plunge our thoughts into them.

Reasons ought to be causes: often they are only excuses.

GUESSES AT TRUTH.

NO SUBSTITUTE FOR THE BIBLE.

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In the first place the Bible is better than all other religious books, in authority. Every statement made in the Bible, has the authority of God for its truth. We may be certain of all that we there read. Now this is not the case with any book written by a mere man without direct inspiration. In every such book there will be some error: if there is nothing false, there will be some things too strongly stated, and some too weakly. Even if we could suppose it free from error, it would not fill the place of the Bible, for we could never be sure of this. We could not be certain, that the human writer was always right and it is not enough that a statement should be true; it must also be believed by those who read it, if it is to do them any good. We must be sure of the truth of what we read, or it will do us no good: it might as well be false, as far as our being bettered by what we read is concerned. The great thing then with respect to the Bible is this; we can say as we go along, God tells us this:-this must be true, it is God who says it: this must be important, for God has taken care that I should know it: this must be wrong, for God condemns it; and so on. To take an instance, many writers (and one particularly of great imagination) have described the terrors of hell, and the tortures of the damned, in the most striking manner; they have drawn pictures that are terrible to read; but then the reader may say, when he lays down his book and begins to recover from his agitated feeling How does the writer know all this? The true answer is, he does not know it: he knows nothing more than the Bible tells him; and by the attempt to complete the picture, he has failed. His additions to it, his filling up of the Bible outline, will not be received; and do harm rather than good. But how different will the effect of the Bible statements be! The wicked shall depart into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. The place of torment is a place, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. These short statements have the authority of God for their truth. God tells us, by these stong, plain assertions, that Hell is a place of intense and endless pain; of unceasing anguish !

The first great advantage then possessed by the Bible, is our being sure that what we there read is true.

Another great advantage is the manner in which the instruction is given. Our Saviour's lessons were often given in

short sentences like proverbs. They have no useless words; but are strong, plain, never weakened by any mention of exceptions, which may be left to a man's own conscience, and which we are all quick enough to make for ourselves. "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon:" here the ground is cut away from under the feet of the covetous man, who is not prepared to give up God. "Strive to enter in at the strait (that is, narrow) gate. Striving then is necessary; and the gate of salvation is narrow. Striving is necessary; and he who teaches us that we may wait, and can do nothing for ourselves, is a deceiver. The Gospels are full of such short sentences; and nothing can come near them for authority, for plainness, for strength, for wisdom. Another favourite way of our Lord's for conveying instruction, was the use of parables; and I trust you know and have felt how beautiful, and full of meaning, our Lord's parables are. Take for instance the parable of the sower. How admirably are the cases chosen: how strongly does it teach us, how deeply does it impress upon us, the fact, that there is no good soil in which the seed of religion will spring up and bear fruit, but the soil of an honest and good heart! Take the parable of the wise and foolish virgins; teaching us that we are to take measures ourselves for supplying our lamps with oil; for adorning, that is, our hearts and our conduct with holiness; and that they will be shut out, who leave the thing to chance at the proper time, and then bestir themselves too late. Take the parable of the talents: take the parable of the prodigal son: take every one of our Lord's parables and say, where the substitute for them is to be found.

And now for the statement of facts: what can supply the place of the Bible statement of our Lord's death? of the reality of his sufferings? of the meekness of his character and behaviour? of the proofs of his resurrection and of his love, of his tenderness, his holiness, and what is sometimes too much forgotten, his dignified firmness and severity upon occasions? Plain, earnest writing by eye-and-earwitnessess is always the most striking: we have this in the Bible; it has an originality of character, a liveliness, a vigour, a simplicity, that is unequalled. There is no book which loses so little of its freshness by going over it again and again. It retains this freshness by being so plain, so natural, so earnest, so fitted to our wants; yet so full of mysterious glimpses of what is still unrevealed; of difficulties reserved by God for

future explanation, (but not in this world); that we feel, as we read it, that it is a gift of God to man; a book that for manner as well as mutter is such, as no man or generation of men, unassisted by God's spirit, could possibly have produced!

THE MARTYR'S FIELD, AT CANTERBURY.

(From the British Magazine.)

"The noble army of Martyrs praise thee."

It was on a calm evening in May that I took my first walk about the old city of Canterbury. We had climbed the singular and steep mound called the Dane John, and were looking with interest on a scene very new to us. The wide hopgrounds, the lath-and-plaster farm-houses, the beautifullycultivated and fertile-but, to our minds, used to our own rugged hills and banks, not picturesque-country, reminded us, on every side, that we were far from home.

But there was no absence of the picturesque in our close neighbourhood: here were the old city walls and its beautiful towers; and here, at every step, was some name that awoke ancient associations-some place connected in our minds with the most interesting passages of the history of our country.

We were travellers, and, in the few last hours, had seen the memorable places of which we had heard all our lives, and of which our children's children will be taught to tell. For the first time, on the evening before, I had seen the sun light up the purple towers of Windsor, dear to many an English heart as the favourite abode of her good king—the place of his long seclusion and of his last rest. I will own that, as I saw the flag stream out against the setting sun, to indicate to the surrounding country that the King was himself there, I felt the tears in my eyes as the church's prayer rose to my lips-" O Lord, save the King !" 'Send peace in our time, O Lord, for there is none that fighteth for us, but only thou, O God!" Early in that morning I had had one glance at the old tower, "by many a dark and midnight murder fed," and stood on the very spot where the seven noble bishops had landed on their way to their prison, whilst the crowding spectators, and the very soldiers who

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