ing received a grant, through Mr. | Sherman's Fund, to distribute in this neighbourhood, I gave a copy either to Mary Ann or her parents. From that time she was so much pleased with the Magazine, that she began to take it in and read it monthly; and while she sat at work in the stockingframe, would often have open before her the Bible and the CHRISTIAN'S PENNY. She was devoutly attached to this monthly publication to the last, and among the best earthly treasures she had to leave to her most favourite companions were the bound numbers of this youthful instructor.

These simple facts of life were the harbingers of states of mind and behaviour in sickness and death which showed that, although she had not had the courage of openly confessing Christ, yet she was the subject of the fear of the Lord. Previous to the time of her last illness, most of the facts I have now stated respecting her were unknown to me, for I had never had any close conversation with her on the subject of personal religion.

When her friends saw that her sickness was likely to prove unto death, I was invited to visit her at her father's house. On doing so for the first time, I asked her, "Are you happy?" Her immediate reply was, "I am not." "What is it prevents you being so, or what makes you unhappy?" The answer was, My sins." On examining her views of sin, I found them far from superficial. She understood the term sin to include all the irregular thoughts of her mind, all the vain desires of her heart, and all her omissions of duty, as well as all her acts of positive rebellion. So that, although she was highly esteemed by others for her amiability and consistency of outward deportment, yet she could find no comfort in any vague notions respecting Divine mercy, or in thinking that she had not been so bad as others. She knew the love of God to be spiritual and strict, and to require the hourly obedience of our entire souls and lives. She was, therefore, for some time, under a painful sense of condemnation by the law.

After my first visit, I frequently renewed my calls, until for several weeks

prior to her death. I saw her almost daily, spending very pleasant seasons with her. Inquiring what she had found to have produced profitable religious impressions upon her before her illness, she referred to instructions at the Sabbath-school, sermons, and also a tract once given to her by a young friend of ours, now in one of the colleges preparing for the ministry. This she had kept laid up in store, and had it brought out and read to her. Our principal exercises during our visits were reading and expounding the Scriptures, and prayer. Closely and with great satisfaction we watched the operations of her heart and mind under growing affliction, and the daily influence of the Word and Spirit of God. As her afflictions increased, and the Saviour became better known and more clearly revealed to her soul, her convictions of sin and sorrow on its account became gradually mingled with hope of mercy and eternal life through the faith of Jesus. When asked, "Are you happy?" her reply for weeks was,

Not as I could wish to be;" yet her spirit gave expression to peace and submission to the will of God. Nor was she without hope in Christ's power and willingness to save her. She betrayed no fear of death. A few days before her last I renewed the question, "Are you happy?" and, for the first time, she replied, "I am."

She loved Jesus, and could affirm that she did; for when her father and mother, and the rest of the family, were taking their leave of her, she said, "I love you almost to distraction; but I love my Jesus more."

As her end approached gradually, and death appeared for a season to reach her expectations, her sufferings became very great. After a very painful night, she remarked, "It has been a night of great tossing to and fro, but I have been thinking of my dear Saviour, when he was in the garden of Gethsemane, and in an agony he sweat as it had been great drops of blood falling down to the ground."

To her father she said, Prepare to follow me. Pray as you go on." She gave similar advice to the rest of the family. As she had been fond of singing Dr. Watts's hymns, she requested

In little more than thirty years from the institution of the Jesuits, 900,000 Christians were slain. In the Netherlands alone, the Duke of Alva boasted, that, within a few years, he had destroyed 36,000, mostly by the hands of the common executioner. In about thirty years the Inquisition destroyed, by various tortures, about 150,000 Christians. In the other figurative representation the same characteristics appear, and, if possible, in a still more disgusting light. The impious church is represented as the great whore, sitting upon many waters,-the peoples, nations, and languages that have been, or are, the votaries of Popery. She sits on the scarlet-coloured beast, full of the names of blasphemy. She has a cup in her hand, full of abominations and filthiness of her fornications; upon her forehead is written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH," and she is drunk with the blood of the saints.

How awfully these various predictions display the hateful nature of Popery! It is the Man of Sin, that comes after the working of Satan. It is the monstrous beast, full of blasphemy and red with blood. It is a harlot a shameless harlot a harlot drunk with blood, with the blood of God's saints and of Jesus' martyrs! Such is the Church of Rome, which professes to be the one Church of God. Considering these descriptions, we need not be surprised at the darkest and cruelest parts of the Popish system. God, by his servants, foretold what it would be, and represented it as the object of his abhorrence. Pity for Papists is a feeling which every Christian should cherish; but kind feeling towards Popery itself would be high treason against the God of heaven. It must be offensive to him for his servants to look with complacency on the beast full of blasphemy that he abhors,-on the bloody harlot that he abominates.

The system of superstition thus predicted gradually advanced in folly, wickedness, and power, till, about the fifteenth century, it reached its meridian.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, ecclesiastical government, instead of that evangelical sim

plicity which Christ and his apostles had instituted, was become a spiritual domination under the form of a temporal empire. An innumerable multitude of dignities, titles, rights, honours, privileges, and pre-eminences belonged to it, and were all dependent on a sovereign priest, who, being an absolute monarch, required every thought to be in subjection to him. The chief ministers of religion-bishops, abbots, &c. were actually become temporal princes; and the high-priest, being absolute sovereign of the ecclesiastical state, had his court and his council, his legates or ambassadors to negotiate, and his armies to murder his flock! The clergy had acquired immense wealth. The functions of the ministry were generally neglected, and gross ignorance prevailed. All ranks of men were extremely depraved in their morals, and the court of Rome had fixed the price of every crime, and published the rate at which it might be commuted for money, in the tax- book of the Roman chancery. Marriages, which reason and revelation allowed, the Pope prohibited, and, for money, dispensed with those which both forbade. Church benefices were sold to children and to laymen, who then let them to under tenants, none of whom performed the duty for which the profits were paid; but all having obtained them by simony, spent their lives in fleecing the flock, to repay themselves. The power of the pontiff was so great, that he assumed, and was permitted to exercise, a supremacy over many kingdoms. When monarchs gratified his will, he put on a triple crown, ascended a throne, suffered them to address him as "His Holiness," and to kiss his feet. When they disobliged him, he suspended all religious worship in their dominions; published false and abusive libels, called bulls, which operated as laws. to injure their persons; discharged their subjects from their allegiance to them; and gave their crowns to any who would usurp them. He claimed an infallibility of knowledge, and an omnipotence of strength; and he forbade the world to examine his claim. He was addressed by titles of blasphemy; and, though he owned no jurisdiction over himself, yet he affected

Religion itself, under such a system of church polity, consisted in the performance of numerous ceremonies, of Pagan, Jewish, and Monkish extraction, all which might be performed without either faith in God or love to man. The church ritual was an address, not to the reason, but to the senges of men; it was calculated to excite and interest the feelings, while it left the understanding and judgment uninformed and unaffected. Music stole the ear and soothed the passions. Statues, paintings, vestments, and various ornaments, beguiled the eye, while the pause which was produced by that sudden attack which a multitude of objects made on the senses, on entering a cathedral, or other spacious decorated edifice, was enthusiastically mistaken for devotion. Public worship was performed in an unknown tongue; and the sacrament, as they called it, was adored as the body and blood of Christ. The pomp attending the cere monial produced in the people a notion that the performance of it was the practice of piety, and religion degenerated into gross superstition. Vice, uncontrolled by reason or Scripture, retained all its heathenish enormity, committing the most horrid crimes; and superstition atoned for them, by building and endowing monasteries, churches, and religious houses, and bestowing donations on the church and clergy. Human merit was introduced, saints were invoked, and the perfections of Deity were distributed by canonization among the creatures of the Pope.

If we inquire, What is Popery now? we have ample evidence that it is substantially the same wicked system as in ages past. It maintains for the Pope the same impious claims. These impious claims are thus put forth in the Popish Calendar:

"The Pope is the first minister of God, and has his own exclusive privileges as successor of St. Peter, and head of the whole Catholic Church.”

"He is spiritual sovereign, ruling in the power of the keys committed to him, and his kingdom is none of this world.”

"His authority extends to every part of the Church."

"The Papal chair is the channel and source of authority."

"The Pore pronounces absolutely on the schismatical and heretical character of persons, of books and writings, and places obstinate members out of the Church.”

Jesus taught his disciples that he alone was their master, and they all were brethren, Matt. xxiii. 8. The blaspheming Pope, however, impiously arrogates such authority for himself; and with equal blasphemy his votaries claim it for him.

This

While Popery thus maintains the same impious claims for its head as in ages past, it diffuses, wherever it can, the same ignorance and superstition. This is seen in the countries where it can exert an unmolested sway. cannot yet be done in England; it dares not show itself in its naked deformity, lest even its own votaries should turn from it with horror. The dress is modified, in order to deceive; but the foul and plague-struck carcass remains the same! When England can bear more, she will have it!

DOWN WITH FOREIGN PRIEST-
CRAFT.

CHRISTIAN England! where so long
Freedom's trumpet, clear and strong,
Still has stirr'd the patriot song-

Down with foreign priestcraft!
England! Truth's own island-nest,
Pure Religion's happy rest.
Ever shall thy sons protest,

Down with foreign priestcraft! What! shall these Italian knaves Dream again to make us slaves, From our cradles to our graves,

With their foreign priest craft?

Out on every false pretence!
Common right and common sense
Shout against such insolence,

Down with foreign priestcraft!

SCARCELY a week passes without the exhibition, in the Metropolitan PoliceOffices, of cases of individuals, respectably connected, disgracing themselves and their families by the crime of forgery, theft, or some sort of peculation. The record of such cases for a year would present one of the most heart-rending chapters of the history of social life. We know not that we can do a better service to the Young Men who read these pages than by bringing them into the presence of the excellent Chaplain of Newgate, London, the Rev. John Davis,-who has just published An Appeal to Young Gentlemen in the Metropolis; founded on a great many instances in which young men of respectable families and virtuous parents have become the slaves

of vice, and then of crime, and have been imprisoned or transported." The following passages, describing cases that have occurred during 1850, will interest many readers:

The sentence of transportation, as now carried out, is much more severe than people imagine. Men are kept in solitary imprisonment for about twelve or sixteen months. Some go mad from the severity of this mode of imprisonment. Their thoughts about home, their wife, children, father, mother, brothers and sisters, and their own folly, as well as guilt, are very bitter to endure. Many of their kindred they will never see again; and when they do meet any of them again, the shame they feel that is on themselves, the disgrace, to a certain extent, on others, their ruined character, their suspicious condition, make them meet under circumstances so different from what was formerly the case, that it is almost like getting into another and a lower world.

When twelve months or more of this

sad life of separate confinement is over, all right-minded men are deeply humbled. Poor fellows taken out of solitary incarceration are not like the same class of men they were beforehand. They are afraid to speak and move like other people. Many of them (who can) read a great deal, and pray almost without ceasing. When illbehaved they are immured, for several days together, in cells totally dark;