While the Gospel, as to its truths, is to be preached, it is not, however, in the way of merely propounding dogmas. It is to be preached in its spirit, which is love. There must be "simplicity and godly sincerity." The love of Christ must constrain the preacher. His faith is to be such as that he can. speak not as one reporting the opinions of others, but as one giving witness of what he has received in his own soul. He is to have the Gospel in his soul, as having "come to him in power, in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance." Then he shall not be able to hold his lips. The Gospel will come forth from the inner spring, which, continually flowing, fills the heart and runs over.

Evangelical religion is, in its spirit, leavening. It must spread. It can not be shut up in a man's own bosom. "We can not but speak the things which we have seen and heard," is its language. In other words, it is of a missionary spirit. Missions to propagate the faith, the Church is called to engage in, the field being the world. The Lord has left the command, and given the call to all generations. All church history shows that when the Church has been filled with the spirit for propagating the Gospel, then has been its time of life and power. The work of missions is to be proclaimed as the call, the duty, the interest, the high honor of the Church. The spirit which loves this work, and goes forth in it with energy, we would cherish and extend, the Lord giving his blessing. It is the power of God working in the Church for the recovery of the human race to light and holiness and eternal life.

The Gospel, or Evangelical Religion, in its pure elements, was restored by the blessing of God to England and to the English race, by the Reformers of the National Church. It is a vain pretense that any must go out of the Church of England, to find the Gospel. Faults there may have been, and there may now be in it; and its governors may, at times, have been specially faulty; but where is the Church without sin, that may cast the first stone? We are not called to write an apology for it; but we know well, and are ready to bear witness that, in its standards, is found the body of evangelical doctrine. The further we go back in the line of English Protestant writers, the purer do we find the waters of truth. Go

back to the times when controversy had not divided English Protestants, before the name or the question of Puritanism were heard in the Church, and in such writers as Tyndale and Frith you can drink of the stream of Gospel truth running in fullness and freshness through their works. All the evangelical truth received in England among Puritans, Non-Conformists, or Dissenters, can be traced up the line of Testimony to the original Protestants of that land. An English Evangelical Protestant, going out of this Church into some other, to find the Gospel, denies, on his part, his own religious parentage. No body of Protestants, of English descent, can be found, which did not receive its faith through the hands of the fathers of the Church of England. This precious faith is, in in that Church, the gold thread which can not be separated without destruction of the tissue. It is the marrow which can not be taken out till you have gone into the very middle of the bone. When that Church and its daughter in this land lose their Protestantism, (if so monstrous a supposition may be made,) they will have cut the cable of their history, and be left a drift, to be cast on some unknown shore or to founder in the abyss. While they hold by the anchor of their Protestantism, God being their helper, they ride in safety, and we know where to find them. Yes, verily, we know where to find them; for proper or Evangelical Protestantism is no mere negative thing. It is positive, in clear, full, high tones of affirmation of the entire Gospel. It speaks out, in trumpet's voice, whether for defense or for onset, the positive Christian faith. Its negation is that of all errors of the Church of Rome, which have come since the early ages, and in spite of the implicit language or meaning of the primitive forms of faith.

ART. II. THE REV. SIDNEY SMITH.

A Memoir of the Rev. Sidney Smith. By his Daughter, Lady Holland; with a Selection from his Letters, edited by Mrs. Austin. 2 vols. New-York. Harper & Brothers.

THE subject of this memoir was fond of repeating the answer of Junot to the old noblesse, when boasting of their line of ancestors: "Ah, ma foi! je n'en sai, rien; moi je suis mon ancêtre." The pride of descent and ancestral insignia, he utterly eschewed, and always disposed of it with good-humored ridicule. Once, "a pompous little man in rusty black," was ushered into his study. "May I ask," said Sidney, "what procures me the honor of this visit?" "Oh!" said the little man, "I am compounding a history of the distinguished families in Somersetshire, and have called to obtain the Smiths' arms." "I regret, sir," said Sidney, "not to be able to contribute to so valuable a work, but the Smiths never had any arms, and have invariably sealed their letters with their thumbs." During one of his visits to Paris, "the only purchase he made for himself was a huge seal containing the arms of a peer of France, which he met with in a broker's shop, and bought for four francs; and which he declared should, henceforth, be the arms of his branch of the Smith family." "Faber meæ fortunæ," was the motto which he adopted for his carriage.

Sidney had no reason to be ashamed of his kindred. His father, Mr. Robert Smith, was a very respectable man, quite clever, though very eccentric. His mother, Miss Olier, was the youngest daughter of a French emigrant, from Languedoc, who was driven over to England for his religious principles at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. She was distinguished both for her noble countenance and superior mind. Sidney, the second of four sons, was born at Woodford, in Essex, 1771. The talents of the young Smiths were very early discovered. The games of childhood were often neglected for the excitement of disputation, which they extended to subjects above

their years, and conducted with a pertinacity and vehemence worthy of a county court or legislative assembly. As the boys were so nearly of an age, the father wisely determined to separate them at school, as much as possible, that there might not be too strong rivalry between them. Robert, the eldest, who was known through life by the name of Bobus, given to him by his school-fellows, and Cecil, the third son, were sent to Eton. There, and subsequently at Cambridge, Robert distinguished himself for scholarship and classical composition, foreshadowing the eminence which he attained in after life. Sidney was sent, when only six years of age, to a school at Southampton, kept by the Rev. Mr. Marsh, and from thence with his younger brother Courtenay, to the foundation at Winchester, where he endured such hardship and almost starvation that even in old age, "he used to shudder at the recollection." But despite of rough usage and scant fare, they attained the preeminence to which their talents and application entitled them. Sidney became "Captain of the school," and he and Courtenay received "a most flattering but involuntary compliment from their schoolmates, who signed a round-robin, 'refusing to try for the prizes, if the Smiths were allowed to contend for them any more, as they always gained them.""

Sidney mentions, as among the first things which stimulated him in acquiring knowledge, that a person of considerable eminence found him reading Virgil, under a tree, when all his school-fellows were at play. He took the book out of his hands, looked at it, patted the boy's head, gave him a shilling, and said: "Clever boy! clever boy! that is the way to conquer the world." By no means a solitary instance to show that judicious commendation may prove a more powerful incentive to mental improvement than the ferule of a passionate pedagogue.

During the interval between quitting Winchester and becoming a Fellow of New College, his father sent him to Mount Villiers, in Normandy, to perfect his knowledge of French. The Revolution was then in fierce progress, and for his personal safety, he found it necessary to connect himself with one of the Jacobin clubs of the town.

Of his college course little is known, except that he obtained

his Fellowship as soon as possible. With this event, the contributions of his father to his support ceased. His only dependence now was the £100 per annum which his fellowship afforded, yet such were his habits of economy and judicious. management-habits which, much to his credit, were maintained in an exemplary manner through life, that on this pittance he not only kept out of debt and lived honestly, but also was able to indulge his generous feelings by liquidating a debt incurred by his younger brother whilst at school at Winchester, and which he was afraid to confess to his father. Apart from the immediate pleasure experienced in the exercise of such self-denying kindness, it is rarely left unrequited in kind by the providence of Him who has said: "With what measure ye meet, it shall be measured to you again." The fortune accumulated in India by the brother whose indiscretion he so nobly covered, became the means of placing the benefactor in circumstances of affluence.

In the choice of a profession, Sidney's own preference was for the Bar. His father, however, urged his entering the Church, and, after much consideration, he concluded that it was his duty to sacrifice his own predilection to the earnest wish of his honored parent. The motive, every one must respect. But though the motive was commendable, it furnished no justification of the deed to which it prompted. His admitted state of mind, and the vows of Ordination, were absolutely repugnant. Whilst this "animus" continued, to make those vows were either to act in most inexcusable ignorance of their import, or with most reprehensible insincerity. Deliberately to declare in the house and presence of Almighty God, and before his people, "I trust that I am inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon me this office and administration,' and at the very moment to be conscious that a secular calling had his heart, was a shocking profanation. Similar instances have occurred in every Christian communion; but, perhaps, in no Protestant communion more frequently than in the Church of England, where, to a lamentable extent, the same considerations merely, which determine in favor of other Fofessions, have been allowed to decide for the ministry, and induce thousands to assume its sacred responsibilities who had no pro