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"Ah," said the old sailor "you've anchored me; I'm fast-but I can do it." "I know you can," said the young man, "and I hope you will anchor all your shipmates' oaths with yours."

Not a word of profanity was afterwards heard on board the vessel. During the day, as opportunity presented itself, he conversed with each sailor singly, on the subject of his soul's salvation, and gained the hearts of all.

By this time I was much interested in the young stranger, and determined to know more of him. There was nothing prepossessing in his appearance: his dress was plain; his manners unassuming; but his influence had, by the blessing of God, in a few short hours totally changed the aspect of our crew. tiger seem softened to a lamb, and peace and quiet had succeeded confusion and blasphemy.

The

After supper, he requested of the captain the privilege of attending worship in the cabin. His wishes were complied with, and soon all on board, except the man at the helm, were assembled. The captain brought out a Bible, which he said was given him in early life by his father, with a request that he would never part with it. We listened as our friend read Matthew's account of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection; and then looking round upon us he said, "He is risen-yes, Jesus lives: let us worship him."

It was a melting scene. Knees that seldom bowed before, now knelt at the altar of prayer, while the solemnities of eternity seemed hanging over us. After prayer, we went on deck and sang a hymn. It was a happy place, a floating Bethel. Instead of confusion and wrath, there was sweet peace and solemnity. We ceased just as the setting sun was flinging upon us his last cheering rays. "Look yonder," he exclaimed, "You who have been nursed in the storm and cradled in the tempest, look at the setting sun, and learn a lesson that will make you happy when it shall set to rise no more. As rose that sun this morning to afford us light and comfort, so has the Son of God arisen to secure salvation to all the family of man; and as that sun withdraws its beams, and we are veiled in darkness for a season, so will the Sun of Righteousness withdraw his offers of mercy from all who continue to neglect them. But, remember, that season is one that never ends-one dark, perpetual night." The captain, deeply affected, went into the cabin, lit his lamp, took his Bible, and was engaged in reading till we retired to rest.

In the morning, as soon as we were seated at the breakfast table, the captain invited our friend to ask a blessing. "There, gentlemen," said he, "this is the first time I ever made such a request and never, till this young man came on board, have I been asked for the privilege of holding prayers, though I have a thousand times expected it, both on the ocean and the lake; and have as often been disappointed, cursed religion in my heart, and believed that it was all delusion. Now I see the influence of the Bible, and though I make no claims to religion myself, I respect it, for my parents were Christians, and though I have never followed their counsels, I cannot forget them."

After this, for three days we regularly attended family worship, and had much interesting conversation on various subjects, for there was nothing in the religion of the young stranger to repress the cheerfulness of social intercourse. From his familiarity with the Bible, his readiness in illustrating its truths and presenting its motives; and from his fearless, but judicious and persevering steps, we concluded that he was a minister of the Gospel. From all he saw, he gathered laurels to cast at his Master's feet, and in all his movements aimed to show that eternity was not to be trifled with. A few hours before we arrived in port we ascertained that he was a mechanic.

Before we reached the wharf, the captain came forward, and with much feeling bade him farewell; declared that he was resolved to live as he had done no longer--his wife, he said, wa a Christian, and he meant to go and live with her;

and added, "I have had ministers as passengers in my yessel on Sabbath days, and week days, but never before have I been reminded of the family altar, where my departed parents knelt." As we left the vessel, every countenance showed that our friend, by his decided, yet mild and Christian faithfulness, had won the gratitude of many, and the esteem of all.

CONTEMPORANEOUS LITERATURE.

THE QUARTERLIES.

THE BRITISH QUARTERLY stands in the very front rank of our periodicals, both for its vigour of thought, its geniality of spirit, its advocacy of progress, and its defence of truth. The number for April is one of especial excellence, Article first, on the literature of the Italian revival, is manifestly written by a scholar, and an able critic, if not by a poet. He endeavours to establish the superior importance, and the deeper intrinsic merit of the Italian era, contrasted with the literary epoch of Greece. He traces the steps by which Italy became rich, populous, and powerful. He shows that the leading romantic poems of that period were only so many travesties of the feudal traditions and beliefs, and that Pulci, Ariosto, and Berni consecrated their talents to a species of poetry, which, by appealing to the love of the marvellous and the witty so universal, became exceedingly popular. Their works, especially those of Ariosto, are analyzed. Paolo Giovio, and Bembo are also passed in review. Examples of universal genius are found in Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Brunelleschi, The influence of Italy upon foreign states is noticed, and the writer closes with the expression of a hope, which we could wish were only brighter:

"For ourselves she has a name associated with the world's brightest memories, a people still superior in intellectual and bodily endowments to most continental nations, a soil adorned with the richest scenery that God has lavished on the kingdom of man; and, however slight may be the ground for such an aspiration, we would fain indulge in the hope, that Austria may be led, by the contest which at present absorbs the attention of Europe, to relax her gripe upon the fairest provinces of that favoured country, and thus afford scope for some modern Theseus to consolidate its governments, and form out of the fragments of its broken people a free, happy, and united nation."

The second article is on "James Watt and his Inventions; a very interesting article, giving a graphic account of the struggles of that great genius and of its marvellous triumphs.

The third treats of "Our new religions;" and briefly, but somewhat com+ prehensively indicates some of the more prominent theories regarding the essence of religion itself, the means of arriving at religious truth, and the mode of engrossing and organizing the new faith or the new social system. Under the first and second heads are passed in review the views of Heyel, Fuerbach, Strauss, Auguste Comte, Theodore Parker; and under the third, Irvingism, Mormonism, "The Church of the Future," and "The Organization of Philanthropy" are mentioned as upstart attempts to enshrine and conserve some of the novelies of the age.

THE QUARTERLY gives us a pleasant, instructive, discriminating article on the Crystal Palace of Sydenham ;-an account of the despatches of the Republic of Venice in the sixteenth century, being a review of Four years at the Court of Henry the Eighth; or, selections of despatches by the Venetian Ambassador, translated by Rawdon Brown;" presenting a varied portrait of those times, and farnishing original materials for the history of that period;a biography of Madame de Maintenon, whose long career was marked by every vicissitude

of fortune, rising, from a prison-birth, and the care of poultry in childhood, through a marriage with the needy and deformed poet, Scarron, to be the consort and the adviser of Louis XIV., the vain King, who said, "I am the State" an article, entitled "The Forester," which we commend especially to those churlish landlords who allow vast tracts of land to lie desolate, because they either do not know how to make it productive by planting trees, or have not spirit enough to do it because the harvest cannot be reaped by themselves;then follows an article on "Food, and its Adulterations," the facts of which it behoves honest men to know. Almost everything that man eats or drinks is adulterated; mustard, with wheaten flour for body and turmeric for colour; vinegar, with water and sulphuric acid; pepper, with wheaten flower, ground rice, ground mustard seeds, linseed-meal, pepper dust, and dirt of pepper-dust; cayenne, with brick dust, deal sawdust, and RED LEAD-a rank poison; soup, sausages, a-la-mode beef, and meat-pies, of diseased meat; bread, of inferior and damaged wheat, whitened by alum and other deleterious ingredients; tea, made of re-dried tea-leaves, bay-leaves, sloe-leaves, with copperas; and what is called gunpowder, with Prussian Blue, turmeric, and French Chalk; coffee, not only with chicory, but chicory, with roasted wheat, ground acorns, roasted carrots, scorched beans, roasted parsnips, mangel-wurzel, lupin-seeds, dog's biscuits, burnt sugar, red earth, roasted horse-chesnuts, and above and beyond all, baked horse's and bullock's liver; the milking-pail goes as often to the pump as to the cow, a ball of annatto is swung round in the can, and flour, starch, and treacle are added; sugar. with wheat-flour, the sugar insect and albumen of bullock's blood; butter, with lard; marmalade, with turnips, apples, and carrots; pickles, coloured with copperas; sweetmeats, with chromate of lead, arsenite of copper, Prussian Blue, and Brunswick Green; ale and porter, with sulphuric acid, salt of steel, sulphrate of iron, and cocculus indicus; gin, with carbonate of potash, almond-oil, sulphuric acid, and spirits of wine; and snuff, with yellow ochre, and other poisonous ingredients. The wonder is that John Bull is not long ago poisoned, and some light is thrown upon the reasons why he is so often in the hands of the doctors. Poor man! he is very credulous. "The grossest fraud reigns through the British public commissariat. Like a set of monkeys, every man's hand is seen in his neighbour's dish. The baker takes in the grocer, the grocer defrauds the publican, the publican does the picklemanufacturer, and the pickle-manufacturer fleeces and poisons all the rest."

The remaining articles are on the Emperor Nicholas, Sir Richard Steele, and Public Affairs. The whole number will repay attentive perusal, and if the articles are not strikingly brilliant, they are many of them highly useful.

The literary leviathan of the North, the EDINBURGH REVIEW, though from some freak not appearing till the middle of the month, if less weighty than he used to be in his youthful days, is marked by a more candid and genial criticism, and his dissertations are both instructive and useful. His first is a review of Mrs. Stowe's works treating of slavery. It gives an account of the origen and nature of the Fugitive Slave Law of America; of the different parties in the United States; of the deteriorating influence of slavery upon her statesmen; of the Missouri compromise to which Abolitionists agreed on the under standing that slavery should not be established to the north of latitude 36 degrees. Some burning sentences are penned against that portion of the Fugi. tive Slave Law which enacts that "In no trial or hearing, under this act, shall the testimony of such alleged fugitive be admitted in evidence." "On what tenure," it is asked, "does an American hold his freedom? What stands between him and slavery? Not a trial, not a regularly constituted court, not the verdict of a jury, not an appeal, not even a writ of habeas corpus. He may be torn from his home, from his friends, and from his family, and subjected to a punishment far worse than the scaffold of Robespierre or the knout of Nicholas,

by a procedure and on evidence which, in England, we should not think suffi cient to decide the title to a dog, or to warrant the stopping-up of a footpath." The effect of Uncle Tom," as a blow at the Fugitive Slave Law, is indicated, and traced to the subject, its appeal to our sympathies, and the naturalness of the handling. And the article closes with a statement of the difficulty which must be experienced in any attempt to repeal slavery, on account of the majority required in Congress to introduce any amendment into the constitution of the States.

The second is a short article on Science; the third a learned one on English Surnames; the fourth on the Correction of Juvenile Offenders; the fifth on Hucs' travels in China; the sixth on Pascal Paoli, and Corsica; the seventh a resumé of the Chemistry of Common Life; the eighth an able article on the Autocracy of the Czars; the tenth a few words on Lord Brougham's speech on Common Law Procedure, protesting against the stoppage by war of the great work of social improvement; and the last a vigorous and out-spoken one on Army Reform, with many of the points of which we cannot agree, but which certainly at the present crisis deserves the earnest attention of our legislators. THE LONDON QUARTERLY, still in its childhood, shows symptoms of considerable robustness and energy. "The Albigenses or Cathari," is an article full of interesting information regarding the condition of the papal church and power from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, and with what unrelenting hostility and bloody persecutions she followed those who stood in the way of her all-crushing despotism. Sir Astley Cooper and Abernethy are fairly sketched in the second. George Gilfillan is soundly rated for the arrogance and dogmatism of his criticisms in the seventh; while the last is occupied with a review of the war with Russia, its causes, and the manner in which it has been conducted.

THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW contains, among others, an article of great value on our Army, its condition and wants, and on the reorganization of the civil service; also a sympathetic article on Victor Hugo and his writings. Its Reviews of Theological Literature are conceived in that spirit of false liberalism which has long characterized it, and which proves that liberalism, so-called, has not learned to be candid.

THE DUBLIN REVIEW, the organ of Roman Catholicism, has a long article of seventy-two pages-a defence of "Bad Popes"-an attempt to parry the blows and destroy the influence of Savanavla by recrimination. Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, meets with an apologist in the writer of the second article, and we do not say that no points have been brought out by Miss Strickland which go to prove that Mary Stuart in some respects has been falsely condemned. There is a notice of Marsden's Puritans, in which occurs the wonderful statement : "A skilful use of the weapons employed against each other by various sects of Protestantism, in their interminable warfare, would supply one of the most curious, and, we will venture to say, one of the most sound and convincing arguments of the truth of the Catholic religion to be found in the whole range of polemical literature."

Our Open Jage.

THE MEAGRENESS OF PULPIT TEACHING.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE DEFENDER.

Sir,

Have you never thought of the meagreness of pulpit teaching-of its straightened means of moral influence, and of the non-relationship between

some of its doctrines and sound moral, useful ends? It seems to me that these positions are proved when I consider what my own experience of Christianity furnishes me with, and especially when I consider the number of Christians compared with other sects (say Mahometanism or Paganism), and with the very efficient help Christianity must receive from what is called a brighter and a more rational civilization. I say my own experience of Christianity furnishes me with complete evidence of the meagreness of pulpit teaching-of its inadequacy to help one on in the business of life of strict, unselfish, physiological life, I mean, and, I say, of the non-relationship between some of its doctrines and healthy, moral ends. For instance, where is there a more important science than Physiology-a science where all our knowledge should begin and end? Where is there a more important text than, "Man, know thyself?"—and physiology not being in the circle of Christian teaching, we can never know ourselves physiologically from the pulpit. When we consider how very important it is that every bite we eat should properly do its work of health in the human economy, and when we consider that we should be more morally useful if we were more physically healthy, I say, when we consider these things, it seems very strange in ministers not to give the people physiological sermons-teaching them what to eat, drink, and avoid," and that their present happiness is very dependent, and that their health is wholly so, on the kind and quantity of their food, and on the nature of their work and exercise. People get tired of hearing (I myself am weary of hearing) continually of the blood of Christ doing this and that. Blood-blood-for ever are we hearing of blood, the very sight of which in an ordinary company makes people sick. How can the blood of Christ influence people's conduct? It may be a fact that the blood of Christ was spilt in defence of truth, but other men's blood have been spilt for what they considered truth; but, to propagate the truths that these men died for, are we to be for ever harrowing people's feelings by talking, and preaching, and praying of their blood? It would be considered coarse and offensive to do so of common martyrs, but the chief martyr, Christ, was more than man, for Wesley sings in his 564th page of his hymn book

"Thou Sun, as Hell's deep gloom be black,
'Tis thy Creator dies!"

"See, streaming from the accursed tree,
His all-atoning blood!

Is this the Infinite ?-'tis he!

My Saviour and my God!"

So here we are, in the 19th century, in the full daylight of electric-telegraphcivilization, brought down to the barbarism of singing of the Creator's blood streaming from the accursed tree! Rationalists, hide your diminutive headsdon't peep out, lest the bright glare of this Christian civilization makes you as blind as old Bartimeus! And this is the pulpit teaching of ministers who pray that knowledge may cover the earth as the waters cover the face of the mighty deep! Are the means fitted to the end prayed for? I have said they are not; I have tried to prove it, but a very superficial glance at their doctrines would satisfy any thinking mind of the non-relationship between some of their doctrines and moral, useful ends. There are just a string of doctrines hung-up, as it were, in every church and chapel in the land, and off this string the pulpitteacher is to pluck one for expatiation,-and the more inconsistent with reason his doctrine is, the more pains has he to bestow, and the more special pleading has he to exercise, to "make ends meet." For instance, there is the Trinityhow many heads have ached in studying to make these three ends meet? God

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