mother and myself (my father died in December last year) have to pass the day very often with nothing to eat but a bit of dry bread; I should like to have a little more if I could get it, but I am very happy; my Jesus comes to me and blesses me. I often seem to see him, as, with his arms open to receive me, I say, 'When, Lord, wilt thou come, and take me to thyself?' But I wish not to be impatient; for I know when he has purified me, he will come and receive me to himself. I would not exchange my state for what I was before for all the world." The poor man gave this statement with so much simplicity, and the absence of all voluntary humility, that my heart was drawn out to him in brotherly love; and at that time, and on subsequent visits, I had much conversation with him on the things of Christ, which strengthened me in the conviction that J J is one of the Lord's precious jewels. Let teachers who may read this, take encouragement; though you see no fruit of your labour, teach on; put the Word of God in the hands of your children, they may be brought into circumstances when they will read the one, and recollect the other, and be converted. And parents, " pray and not faint:" you may have your sons and daughters glad to hear you speak to them of Christ and salvation, though they may now mock and deride you for your prayers and care for their souls. And all may learn another lesson of the wonderful methods God has to bring his wanderers home to himself: "Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known." J. II. The Counsel Chamber. THE late Rev. John Macdonald, Free Church Missionary at Calcutta, was well known to many of our readers. That gentleman's Life has recently been published by the Rev. Mr. Tweedie, of Edinburgh, and forms a valuable addition to our Religious Biography. Mr. Macdonald, prior to his departure for India, addressed a letter to his sister, on her marriage with the Rev. David Campbell, which contains much wholesome counsel, and richly merits the diffusion which our pages can give it. We commend it very earnestly to all Youthful Wives, as supplying an exhibition of principles and an embodiment of counsels exceedingly adapted to promote their best interests, and, through them, the welfare of the church, as well as the world: Together with health, may the Lord grant you every other temporal comfort consistent with the covenant of grace, and contained therein; and however much you may desire it, may he never give you any other, lest you fall | into sin, which is worse than sorrow. The desires of my heart for you are larger than I can express, for they are spiritual: the tongue cannot speak them, nor the pen write them; but God knoweth and comprehendeth them, and that is all I want, seeing that it is | state. You have a temporary interval from him I seek them. Whilst a gra- of calm tranquillity and retirement, cious and all-sufficient Father under- peculiarly favourable for spiritual imstandeth my poor lisping soul, I am provement-though, alas! I have too not concerned about results. often seen in my own little sphere of observation, that it is an interval too often given up to sloth and indulgence; and, therefore, that the Lord must soon afterwards arise with his rod in his hand, to awaken and chasten such slumbering children: let it not be so with you. Bestir you to prayer and the Word now-to meditation, repent But there are some of my desires that I can, to some extent, express. I desire that the Lord may be with you in your union. Your natural life is from him; hold your conjugal life from him too, and in him; seek its continuance in conformity to his will who binds and unlooses as he pleases; and seek its enjoyments no further than is consist-ance, and faith. Redeem time for the ent with his holy and spiritual law and presence. That relation which you have formed by his original institution, and in the course of his providential | appointments, you must discharge and exercise according to his revealed will. Search out all his mind on this subject, scattered through his word, and study it, and pray over it; and thus set the Lord before you, and he will be with you. You doing of good. Take an active, spi- Love Christ above your husband: this is essential to true and lasting happiness. I rejoice to think that your husband is one who would love you more for loving Christ better than himself. Be thankful for this mercy, and improve it. It will be a source of increasing conjugal love; for if you find that your husband loves you in proportion as you love Christ, and he HEALTH AND LONG LIFE. finds that you love him in the same proportion, then this will prove as a ONE of the best illustrations that can mutual attraction to the one centre, possibly be given of "a sound mind in a even the heart of Jesus; and, oh! who sound body," is the fact that nearly all can tell the serene, pure, ardent, and the greatest men that have ever lived spiritual enjoyments of two souls at one-those who have been most highly in Christ! May the supreme love of distinguished for their abilities and Christ save both of you from idolatry, achievements-who have been the light and may the mutual reflection of Christ's love and image be the unchanging basis of your mutual delight. Be careful, my dearest Margaret, as to your own personal religion: let not your change of state prove an interruption to this. You have just been withdrawn, by the kindness of God, from the many anxieties, vanities, snares, and wearisome imaginations of unmarried girlhood; and in a little time you may be called into the many cares, sorrows, solicitudes, occupations, and necessary bustle of married womanhood. You are now in a transition of the world, and whose names hold the highest place in the annals of fame, reached a good and some of them an extreme old age before they died. Leaving out of our account the ante-i diluvians, because of the great age to which all attained before the flood, we find that Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Caleb, Samuel, David, and Solomon, all died in a good and some of them in an extreme old age. And this appears to have been the case with Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the prophets in general. And if we advert to T EX the New Testament, we find that John lived, according to all accounts, till he was almost a hundred years old. Paul, before he suffered martyrdom, was “such a one as Paul the aged." Peter, too, seems to have been far advanced in years before he was put to death. Indeed, it deserves to be noticed as an important fact, that all the penmen of the Scriptures, all who were honoured to be the amanuenses of the Holy Ghost, were blessed with "a sound mind in a sound body." We scarcely ever read of their being the subjects of sickness or disease. None can say that any of their writings-of their sublime and beautiful poetic effusions-of their lofty flights of imagination-of their profuse riches of invention, or their wonderful and instructive narrations, were the productions of morbid sensibility, or of a sickly, disordered, or extravagant fancy. The biographies of the most eminent heathen philosophers and poets, and orators and legislators, present us with the same interesting fact. Homer, who is considered by many as the father of poetry, and as the greatest poet that has ever appeared in the world, lived to an extreme old age. Eschylus, who wrote ninety tragedies, forty of which obtained the public prize, notwithstanding his attachment to the bottle, died, or rather, according to some accounts, was killed in his sixty-ninth year. Euripides, a celebrated tragic poet, died in the seventy-eighth year of his age. Sophocles, another famous Athenian poet, lived so long that his children thought he would never die, and therefore, wishing to obtain possession of his property, they charged him before the Areopagus with insanity. He defended himself by reading the tragedy of Edipus at Colonos, and then, asking the judges whether the author of such a work could be insane, they pronounced a verdict in his favour. He reached the age of ninety-one. Virgil, the prince of Latin poets, died in the fifty-first year of his age, and probably might have lived much longer had he not imprudently insisted, when he was sick, on being removed from Megara to Brundusium; and Horace, notwithstanding his intemperance, reached the age of fifty-seven. De mosthenes, the prince of orators, poisoned himself in his sixtieth year; and Cicero, the great Roman orator, was assassinated in his sixty-third year. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were decidedly the greatest philosophers of antiquity, and, taking everything into the account, the world has produced none superior to them. Socrates was poisoned in his seventy-first year; Plato died in his eighty-first; and Aristotle in his sixty-third. Zeno, the renowned founder of the sect of the Stoics, died in his ninety-eighth yeara stranger to disease, and never incommoded by any real indisposition. Solon, the famous Athenian lawgiver, and reputed one of the seven wise men of Greece, reached his eightieth year. Not to enumerate any more instances, which, however, it would be very easy to do, let us glance at modern times. Roger Bacon, the admirable doctor, as he was called, and the precursor of the great Lord Bacon, died in his eightieth year; and Lord Bacon, the father of the experimental philosophy, in his sixty-fifth. The immortal Milton died in his sixty-sixth year; Shakespeare in his fifty-second. Newton, the prince of modern philosophers, reached his eighty-fourth year; and the famous Locke and Dr. Reid the seventy-second year of their age. Eula reached his seventy-sixth, and Galileo his seventyeighth year. And none of these great men ever manifested, as far as I can find, what have been called the eccentricities of genius. These are inconsistent with "a sound mind in a sound body." They have been exhibited only by men of second or third-rate abilities, at the most; never by the great lights of the world. These have always been distinguished by sobriety of mind. We learn also, from the above list of great men, the wisdom and duty of attending to the health of the body, as well as to the culture of the mind; and that a life of vigorous and determined study, of entire devotion to literature, is by no means incompatible with vigorous health and long life. Indeed, it would not be difficult to prove that the infirm bodies and the premature death of many studious men and preachers of the gospel are occasioned by their great, and, in some respects, unaccountable inattention to the principles and rules, it may almost be said, of common sense, as it regards the preservation of their health; especially to their untimely hours, and to their neglect of well-selected, constant, and vigorous exercise. OBSERVATOR. ADVICE TO A YOUNG MAN ON GOING TO WORK IN LONDON. MY YOUNG FRIEND,-You named to me the other day that you purpose going to London shortly. Permit me to offer you a little advice, which you may rest assured arises from a cherished interest in your welfare, temporal and spiritual, present and future. It is well when young persons going to live in that vast place of temptation and wickedness have judicious and pious friends, to warn, admonish, and counsel them; and when admonitions and counsels are listened to, pondered, and remembered, and, better still, when prayed over, yea, made the subject of humble, fervent, frequent prayer; then may we confidently hope they will, under the Divine blessing, prove really and permanently useful. Allow me then, John, in tendering my advice, to throw it into some such methodical form as may aid your remembering and reducing it to practice: 1. On procuring work, resolve to execute it well. Acquire a competent knowledge of your trade, and seek to promote your employer's interest to the utmost of your power. 2. Studiously avoid over-intimacies with fellow-workmen. 3. Secure a lodging with some respectable family. 4. Spend most of your evenings at home, in reading solid, instructive, and really salutary works. Avoid reading novels, with all other light, ensnaring, and demoralizing publications. 5. Sternly resist all temptations to bad company, as you would avoid hell itself! There is no surer way there! Mark this! 6. Dabble not in politics; read no Sunday newspapers, nor suffer yourself so much as to look into any infidel publications. Many young men have been ruined thereby! 7. Hear occasionally Temperance and other useful lectures, and attend some evening religious meetings; but all plays, and other entertainments of a dissipating or questionable character, go not near. On this point hearken to Scripture admonition, "My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not: avoid it, pass by it, turn from it, and pass away." 8. Make your mind up fully to strict, stern, unflinching Teetotalism! 9. Avoid smoking and snuffing, as low, vulgar, silly, expensive and perInicious habits. How much better to lay out your spare money on books, and store your mind with useful knowledge! 10. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Consider who has said this. Avoid all rail, river, and other pleasure-taking excursions thereon. 11. Attend regularly the house of God-twice in the day, at least. Seek out some faithful, pious, devoted minister. Engage a seat. Be punctual. Make yourself known to some of the elders, and so get introduced to the minister. Ask, covet, and value his counsels. Moreover, seek to become connected with the Sunday-school: many a young person has had cause to bless God for that. 12. Read your Bible: it is the word of God! Read it daily. Read it with prayer-humble, believing, persevering prayer for the teaching of the Holy Spirit, that you may be made "wise unto salvation," through faith in Jesus Christ. 13. Lose no time in showing kindness to your widowed mother. 14. Don't destroy this letter after reading it. Look at it again and again. Ponder it, pray over it, and may a good and gracious God, for Christ's sake, deign to own and bless it to your good -your temporal and spiritual, present and everlasting good. O cry unto him to be your Father, your God, and the guide of your youth. Such, my dear John, is the heart's desire and prayer of your assured friend, E. R. Newcastle-on-Tyne. Church Affairs. THE REV. MR. DODSON, late Vicar of Cockerham, Lancashire, a gentleman of high position in society, who has been fourteen years a Clergyman, has at length, from a sense of duty, been compelled to withdraw from the Establishment, and has published his reasons for so doing. While the work is brief, and the reasons much condensed, they yet comprise a beautiful digest of the subject, and deserve to be extensively circulated. The following are extracts: REASON I. My first reason is, I cannot maintain my subscriptions. Continuance in the Established ministry would be, in me, a continual falsehood. In becoming a clergyman, and on various occasions since, I have been required to make certain subscriptions; to sign with my hand, and affirm with my lips, and, in some instances, to confirm with an oath, certain propositions, which I did not then perceive to be, but which I do now perceive to be, indefensible and untenable. It was only through making those subscriptions that I obtained admission into the orders and benefices of the Established Church. And it is only through my continued adherence to those subscriptions, through the daily affirmation of their truth, (implied by, and justly inferred from, my continuance in the Established ministry,) that I am allowed to retain my orders and emoluments. Now the subscriptions referred to, and the propositions involved in them, I believe to be false. REASON II. My views and convictions are increasingly at variance with the system of the Establishment: a reason which applies to continuance not merely in its ministry, but in its communion. Whether in the officers or the private members of any society, loyalty to the system and constitution of that society is demanded. But I cannot be loyal to the Established system. I dislike it. The more I see of it and reflect upon it, the more I find myself illaffected to many of its main parts. Of its prelatical episcopacy, of its Statesupremacy and government, of its patronage, of its surrender of all pretensions to any exercise of a scriptural discipline over its members, of its tyran nical discipline over its ministers, I can truly say that, in my heart, I renounce them all. I believe those and other principles of the Establishment to be essentially unscriptural and anti-christian; and, as such, necessarily most hurtful to the life and spirituality of the Christians connected with them, and a fatal obstruction to the success of religion in the world. I do not vindicate these views at present, but I ask any honest man, how, entertaining them, be they right or wrong, can I belong to the Established system? Can I maintain a position in which my actions and my feelings must ever be at variance? Can I outwardly approve and sanction what I inwardly condemn ? Shall I renounce my own judgment? or shall I retain my judgment, and still outwardly cleave to the Establishment, whilst inwardly reprobating it? No! a dutiful Dissenter, with my views, I may be; but a dutiful Churchman I can never be. We cannot act dutifully to a system that we condemn, except by quitting and openly denouncing it. We may wear its livery and eat its bread, but we must needs be betraying it. We cannot defend it against its assailants. We must abandon it at the first assault. And so, from time to time, we shall be giving most just occasion, to conforming Tractarians and others, to hold us up as being, like themselves, insincere hypocrites, in allying ourselves with a system, only to wound and betray it. But further, as I cannot defend the system, so neither can I work in harmony with it. I have often been made to feel this painfully. REASON III. My third reason for secession is, that I believe many of the fundamental principles of the Establish |