Behind the arch was exhibited Rebellion, in the disguise of Religion, in a devotional posture, with Rutherford's "Lex Rex" in one hand, and Guthrie's "True Causes of God's Wrath" in the other. Above was inscribed, "Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft;" and around were scattered Acts of the Covenanting Parliaments, General Assemblies, and Commissions, Protestations, Declarations, and other Covenanting Documents, published during the twenty years previous to 1660. When the King's health was drunk, the pile was set on fire amid derisive shouts, and an explosion of fireworks, from the ashes of which arose two figures of angels bearing the following rhyming

verses:

Great Britain's monarch on this day was born,
And to his kingdom happily restored;
The Queen's arrived; the Mitre now is worn;
Let us rejoice-this day is from the LORD.
Fly hence all traitors who did mar our peace,

Fly hence schismatics who our Church did rent;
Fly Covenanting Remonstrating race;

Let us rejoice that GOD this day bath sent.

The magistrates then accompanied the Earl into the court of the Palace, where the usual loyal demonstrations were again made; and this severe burlesque on the Covenanters, who would have hanged every one concerned in it, if they had then been powerful, was concluded by a procession through the

town.

Now we have no doubt that the "sincerer sort" were not very well pleased with this fantastical parade, and deeming it highly malignant, in more senses than one, bestowed in their hearts all kinds of maledictions on the actors; but their days of frolicing were over for the present, and it was fair that the other side should now have their turn. And, certainly, these playful methods of retaliation were far more innocent than the hounding down victims, and imprisoning and fining them, and cutting off heads, and suspensions by the neck, and knocking out the brains of women and children, and wading ankle deep in blood, and the other pleasant pastimes in which the Covenanters delighted, while they were at the zenith of prosperity and triumph. At any rate we shall allow our readers to strike the balance if they will.

THE FIVE POINTS HOUSE OF INDUSTRY.

Of all the triumphs which it is given to men to achieve, outside of their own individual being, those of practical philanthropy undoubtedly occupy the highest place. Nothing better was said of the Best, than that "He went about doing good; and to imitate Him herein, is the best that His disciples can do; in fact, they are His disciples so far only as they do thus. We celebrate, and justly celebrate the achievements of mind, whether in serving up the methods and processes of Nature as food and delectation to the rational powers of man, or in setting her forces at work for the facility, the comfort, and adornment of our material being; but all such conquests of wit and thought will bear no comparison with those of Christian ingenuity and art over the desolations and depravities of human passion. To convert a stagnant fen into a pleasant and fruitful field, is much; but a far dearer title is his who makes the virtues spring where sin and shame have laid waste, and who rescues or recovers to a life of honest joys and blessed hopes the victims of debasement and crime.

The present age may, we think, justly challenge to itself something of special forwardness, at least beyond the ages immediately preceding, in schemes and works of practical beneficence. The last century of years has witnessed a prodigious expense of mind and body in such works and schemes; some of the noblest laurels of fame have been won through them; many a man, and many a woman too, have established themselves permanently in the reverence and affection of mankind, by their wisdom in planning and their diligence in executing measures for the relief of suffering and the reformation of vice. It is a glorious and inspiring fact; we are no optimists, but we have to confess an inward glow of enthusiasm as often as we think of it. To be cunning and fruitful in arts for doing good to the souls and minds and bodies of men, however low they may have fallen; to sacrifice time and treasure and health and life itself in trying to make others better and happier in this world and the next, has grown to be a common mark of ambition. Let none receive it in prejudice that "the last infirmity of noble minds" has taken this turn a flaming desire to write

one's name among the immortals by deeds of mercy and pity, is a thing that no man, no, nor the angels in heaven, need blush to own.

And the fact in question is auspicious or significant of much lying outside of its own formal circumference: it shows that the nations of the human family are finding out other paths of distinction, and instituting for themselves quite another class of heroes than those who, through so many long ages of woe, have been growing great by their skill in the dreadful trade of death, and by their exploits in filling the earth with blood and tears. That " 'peace hath her victories no less renowned than war," was once, and not so very long ago either, thought to be a very noble sentiment; it seemed to promise new harvests of poetry; but it now sounds far too tame and cold for the simple demands of truth: for of all the victors in the late Crimean war the richest share in the heritage of fame has fallen to one whose soldiership lay all in the tender and holy ministries of Christian Womanhood. Though late in coming, the time has now come for poets to sing, "Peace hath her victories far more renowned than war;" and even this version of the line may well be thought to sound less of poetry than of truth.

So true is this, that in our time infidels and atheists scarce have the heart to show themselves otherwise than in the character of philanthropists: if they scoff at the Gospel, it is in the strength of ideas which the Gospel has transfused into them or their audience; they dare not attempt to dispute its claims but by appealing to its spirit; having thus stolen from Christianity the whole stock and capital of thought wherewith they vainly hope to supersede its office and mission in the world. That theft, however, is the most creditable part of their proceeding it shows a strength of grace in the heart reproving and refuting the perversities of the head; and the Christian may gladly accept it as argument of a divine and holy sweetness in the charities of the Gospel, such as even the Scribes and Pharisees of modern illumination cannot resist, however they may refuse to acknowledge its source.

But we have a still better consideration than this, in the change that seems to be gradually working its way through in the Church. Christianity has been too often held, virtually if

not explicitly, as a system rather of truth than of charity. In its original and proper character, it is not so much a scheme of belief as a power of beneficence: we say, not so much, because, while it is both, everything depends on its forces being taken hold of by the right handle, and on its elements being kept in the right place. And the great secret of its early triumphs lay in that, though it had much to say, it was not a talking religion the world was already full enough of talkative powers; and the great want was, a power that could work and be silent; a wisdom spreading itself by deeds, not by discourse. And because its constituent principle is thus an operative vir tue, not an eloquent speech, therefore it ought to be set forth and insisted on more in what it does for men, than in what it demands of them. In other words, the true methods of propagating the Gospel are not so much by converting men to its doctrines, as by making them partakers of its benefits. He who goes to the fallen in the simple character of a benefactor, endeavouring to lift them up, not telling them how they can lift themselves up, and pointing to CHRIST as his pattern, his motive, and his reward, touches them with an argument that neither men nor devils can answer.

An inversion of this order has for centuries been far too much the habit of the Church, and impressed itself more or less on all her forms of thought and modes of procedure. This inversion is what Christians are now in process of unlearning. And infidelity is doing them good service when, by its preaching, it is suggesting to them, and perhaps enforcing upon them, in self-defence, an amendment of their practice. Nor is it unlikely that this same inversion may have borne a considerable part in generating the infidelities of modern times. And it may well be thought that many infidels understand the Gospel better than a majority of its own ministers do, though, to be sure, their knowledge is altogether of the talkative, not of the operative sort; and that they have been led to misplace the sources of this knowledge, because, while unconscious of its true origin and genesis, they have found it at strife with al they had been consciously taught. In other words, that they have, though without knowing it, derived from Christianity their ideas of the true order, (for it is merely an ideal matter

with them,) and then mistaken the inverted order of Christians for the original and formative law of Christianity. At all events, Christians have nothing to fear from infidelity, if in this matter they will set themselves to practise in faith what infidels from vanity preach. And we acknowledge a degree of comfort in thinking that even infidels may have, under GOD, a mission to perform; and that this mission may be none other than to set Christians right in the very points where Christians have commonly thought them to be wrong. And it seems not very difficult to perceive, that the infidelities of the time may be justly credited, in part, with the growing disposition of Christians to propagate the Gospel rather by living it out as a power of beneficence, than by talking it out as a scheme of belief; or, which comes to the same thing, rather by making men partakers of its benefits, than by converting them to its doctrines.

As might be expected, many good Christians find it very hard to unlearn their old notions on this subject; nevertheless they are unlearning them; and the purpose of our present undertaking is, to set forth a living illustration of the process whereby so important a change is working itself through.

The powers of Christian philanthropy have hitherto, at least in modern times, found one problem that seemed too much for them. Attempts have often been made, to grapple with the evil in question, but in vain, and sometimes worse than in vain, as if the disease were of such a nature as not only to baffle the arts of remedy, but even to turn those arts into means of spreading its infection. We refer to the plans and efforts that have been set on foot for the recovery of fallen women; if indeed the term woman may be lawfully applied to a class of beings from whom the constituent grace of womanhood has departed. The subject is fraught with infinite sadness. "All hope abandon, ye who enter here," seems written with inexorable sternness over the entrance of this dreadful prison-house. It has seemed as if the very thought of res cue or deliverance in this case must be given up in despair; as if the evil, with all its unutterable complication of horror and loathsomeness, were one over which humanity could only heave the sigh of unavailing sorrow. Yet the case is one in which,