FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY.

Facts, Hints, Gems, and Poetry.

Facts.

OF POPERY.

POPERY is a daring usurper of the rights of both God and man.

THE POPE OF ROME blasphemously takes the names, and claims the honours due alone to God.

THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS is made to supersede the Great Sacrifice which the Son of God made for the sin of the world.

THE VIRGIN MARY is made to take the place of Jesus Christ-the one only Mediator between God and man.

THE TRADITIONS OF MEN are made of greater importance than the word of the Everlasting God.

THE PRIEST assumes the attributes of Deity. He asks for confessions of sins to him which ought only to be made to God; and impiously pretends to forgive them.

EVERY MAN is required to surrender up his judgment and conscience into the keeping of a priest-that is, to unman himself.

Christ of the keys of hell and death, it assumes to open or shut the unseen world at its pleasure.

FINALLY, it is the very masterpiece and perfection of satanic mischiefat once a lie and a curse, it is the most terrible scourge that ever afflicted poor suffering humanity. Never again may this sea-girt island be cursed by this most terrible of all curses; for that would be by far the greatest calamity that could ever befall it.

Hints.

RELIANCE on your own efforts is the great secret of success.

A TRUE MAN will rise above untoward circumstances and conquer them, or make them bend to his purpose and use.

TRUE WEALTH consists in the fewness of our wants. "I can do without it," is a capital maxim to hide in our heart and have ready for use any day.

RICHES often load more than they fill. Wealth often increases wants. A rich man oftener wants appetite and rest than a poor man a bed to lie on. Though a man without money is poor, a man with nothing but money is poorer.

LIKE SATAN it assumes all forms and shapes to accomplish its wicked purposes. Creeping and cringing where it has not power, until it gets hold of it, and then, by relentless CIVILITY is a debt we owe to all men cruelty, binding down or extirpating-rich or poor. It costs us nothing its victims. at all, but it always pays well, for it brings back to us something better than money.

RUDENESS should never be indulged. It is a mean, cowardly, vulgar habit, which sometimes gets repaid in its Own coin, and with interest.

THE DOMINION OF ALL THE EARTH is its great object-princes and peasants, merchants and mechanics, rich and poor, wise and ignorant, are all expected to bow the knee to this usurper. IT IS THE ALLY OF DESPOTIC TYRANNY. The greatest despots who TO WIVES. Never sit with one have trampled on the liberties of na-hand in the other doing nothing. Let tions have ever found popery ready both be at something, for something and willing to aid them, and it always wants them both. flourishes most in their dominions.

IT PRETENDS TO DOMINION IN THE INVISIBLE WORLD-robbing Jesus

A BEAUTIFUL SIGHT in my eye is a nice neat tidy cottage, in which the corners of the floor are as clean as the

FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY.

THE CHILDREN'S CORNER.

The Children's Corner.

A NARROW ESCAPE.

ONE day I saw a little boy who lately had a very narrow escape for his life. He was at play in the yard, drawing about a little cart, but he stepped backwards without minding where he was going, and fell into a well above fifty feet deep.

Some persons were standing near; they thought the poor boy was gone; but not being like those foolish unkind people who think it is of no use to try to help in a case of danger, they ran to the well; a man took hold of the rope, and the others let him down in less time than it has taken me to write about it. There was water at the bottom of the well, and just as the man reached the water, the poor boy was rising for the last time. The man caught hold of him, and sitting down upon the bucket, placed the boy upon his knees, and told the people to draw him up. They did so, but their danger was not over; for just as they came near the top of the well, one of the handles of the bucket gave way, and they had nearly fallen again, but the man laid fast hold of the rope, and so they were brought safely to the top.

I talked with the little boy, and asked him whether he had time to pray, as he fell down the well, and I found he had not time even to think about doing so. Now I mention this to my little readers that they may not put off praying, and think, "O, it is time enough;" or, "I can pray when I am in trouble." Perhaps they may never fall down a well; but many other accidents may happen which leave quite as little time to call upon God.

I have not mentioned the name of this little boy because he is still alive; but I think it is very likely that he may read what I have written about him. If he does, I would remind him of what his minister told him; and I hope he will remember his Creator in the days of his youth; and, like Peter, call upon the Saviour, saying, "Lord save me," for

"Dangers stand thick through all the ground

To push us to the tomb;

And fierce diseases wait around,
To hurry mortals home."

JERUSALEM IN 1866.

Ir is Holy Week in Jerusalem. The city is full of people, for the tide of visitors and pilgrims has been setting steadily and strongly in this direction, for some weeks past, from almost every quarter of the religious world. The culminating point of the festivities is just at hand, and the attraction holds nearly all who arrive. Last Sabbath was Palm Sunday, and the Latins had their usual ceremony in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. To-day is Good Friday, observed by the Catholics and the Episcopalians according to their custom; it is also the great day of the Jewish Passover, and the unleavened bread and the bitter herbs will not be forgotten by any son of Abraham according to the flesh. To-night the crucifixion of Christ is to be dramatized in the Great Church-a performance scandalous enough, one would think, to raise a blush even on the cheeks of the shameless ecclesiastics who get it up in the name of religion and the church. I shall decline to attend it. The very thought of it is shocking. I would prefer to go out alone to Gethsemane, and read by the moonlight half a dozen of those touching and sublime chapters beginning with the thirteenth chapter of St. John. The thousands of pilgrims who went out of the city on Wednesday morning to bathe in the Jordan, are to-day pouring back over the Mount of Olives and through St. Stephen's gate; and the Jews are moaning and smiting their breasts with peculiar unction at their wailing-place, while they look upon the stones of the ancient city wall, and read the passages that speak of the glory which is no longer theirs. Next Sunday will be Easter, and then the living tide will begin its ebbing; though the Greek party will still hold out the attraction of the Holy Fire, and keep another Easter a week hence.

It is not easy to be descriptive here. One would prefer silent meditation to speech, and to leave thought and feeling to themselves, rather than constrain them to flow in any epistolary channel. There is quite too much to be told; and one is likely to feel that very little can be done in the way of telling what is perceived and felt at such a point as this. The historic personages and significant events that are associated with almost every square foot of this territory come crowding upon the mind, and the present is lost in the past. Through the steady murmur

JERUSALEM IN 1866.

of the streets there seems to be coming up the music of David's Psalms, sung over there on Moriah; and while the throngs sweep by, you are wondering how the Great Teacher appeared when He came up to the Passover, and interpreted and fulfilled the ancient ritual by becoming Himself the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world.

But you do not wish a picture of my personal experiences here, written from within. If I write, you would have something said of the actual Jerusalem and its surroundings; and of this let me say a few words. There is such a thing as an actual, material, matter-of-fact Jerusalem and Palestine. To write of them plainly is to write very straightforward prose. The golden haze through which some writers seem to see everything, and the superlatives employed in description, require some special effort, or are the products of an active and not very reliable imagination. Jerusalem is a very ordinary looking town, of less than 20,000 inhabitants. Only when you look down upon or over it from the brow or the shoulder of Mount Olivet, as you come from the east, does it present to the eye anything imposing or beautiful. Its buildings are very ordinary structures generally, greatly wanting in architectural beauty and effect. The streets are mostly narrow, rough, uncomfortable to the feet, dirty, and not without bad odours. The principal thoroughfares are full of people, who -trade, smoke, follow their occupations, beg, converse, and quarrel, without seeming to care for privacy or ampler accommodation. All nationalities appear; the number of different tongues heard may suggest Babel or Pentecost; and the one great feature marking the costumes is variety. All sorts of faces look out upon you-from those that only embody stolidity, to such as nobody except religious fanatics ever carry about. There is a brisk bustling energy which contrasts pleasantly with the stupor of Cairo; but it is plain enough that the energy lacks system and efficiency, that government is not a wise and beneficent power here, that ignorance underlies the self-complacency, and that the ambition which aims at improvement and hits it, is neither prevalent nor active.

The country about the Holy City is uneven, rough, rocky, and mountainous. It is all this in an eminent degree. Some of the valleys are pleasant and fruitful; the husbandman sows his seed or the shepherd keeps his flock on the green hill-sides; some of the mountain-slopes are terraced from base to summit,