must be in the moon without an atmospheric with you, and offer you counsel with full confi. medium! Eternal silence must reign there! A dence, based, as it is, on my own experience. Be huge rock may be precipitated from the lofty cliffs patient, and do not direct your thoughts so much of the moon, but no noise is heard it falls noise- to what is behind you, cherishing your grief by lessly as a flock of wool. The inhabitants can con- recalling the beautiful days which are gone, but verse only by signs. The musician in vain attempts rather meditate on what is before you, what is to elicit sweet music from his stringed instrument; above, the far more beautiful days of the golden no note ever reaches the ear. Armies in battle future. And this do, not merely to heal your array do not hear the boom of the cannon, though wound, but do it as Paul tells us he looked unto rifled arms, from the low trajection of the ball, the things which are before. (Phil. iii. 7.) It is must acquire a fatal precision and range. No thus that we get beyond the idea of merely meetmoving thing can live aloft; the eagle flaps its ing again our departed friends, which may still be wings against the rocks in vain attempts to rise. but a cleaving to the creature. It is thus that we The balloon, instead of raising the car, crushes it are brought nearer to the kingdom of God and the with the weight of its imprisoned gas. Lord of glory. It is thus that our loved ones become to us magnets in the higher firmament, drawing us to seek and build up homes in heaven, and to enter into a life-communion with the kingdom above-a communion which is not sentimental and imaginary, but real, and exerting spiritual and moral influence. If we wish to be heavenly-minded and not carnal, we must not merely meditate on eternity, but proceed from such meditations to a practical denial of worldliness-worldly gain and enjoyment. It is possible to think of heaven, merely in order to think of loved departed friends, and to idealise our former connexion with them. God and His kingdom is not the end, but only means to an end. But reverse the order; seek first God's kingdom and His righteousness, press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, press toward it by giving up the past, and the Lord will surely give unto us, in addition, a new and blessed reunion with our friends who have gone before, and who are ennobled by their separation from this world. We may expect to receive this renewed intercourse as a ripe fruit from His merciful hand. May the Lord guide you into all truth, and may He cause a brighter and higher light than you have known as yet to rise out of the darkness, which according to His counsel surrounds His chastisements, so that, after having sown in tears, you may reap with joy! Again, the inhabitants being deprived of an atmosphere to shelter them from the sun, and to stem all its heat, must recoil with terror from its fierce rays. During its long day, the ground must become as burning marl, from which the scorched feet shrink with pain. During the long night, the ground must be colder than frozen mercury. No fuel will burn to mitigate the rigour of the cold, and none but the electric light will avail to dispel the darkness. Then as to light, how strange are the conditions! At noon-day the sky is as black as pitch, except in the region of the sun; and the stars shine out aa at midnight. When the sun disappears in the horizon, darkness is as sudden as the darkness of an eclipse, or the extinguishing of a candle in a room. The inhabitants on the shady side of a range of mountains must be in total darkness, though the sun is above the horizon; and a room lighted by windows in the roof, will be in the same predicament, except when the sun shines directly down. No clouds float overhead; and the murky atmosphere and the dense clouds of smoke hanging over our manufacturing towns must be to them incomprehensible, as they watch our globe making its fourteen revolutions on its axis before descending below the horizon. These are a few of the results involved in the loss of an atmosphere, apart alto gether from the incompatibility of such loss with life. We are every moment bathed in this fluid, which ministers to our wants in a thousand ways; and yet how little are we conscious of its benefits! How seldom do we think of Him who has so wondrously adapted the medium in which we move to the necessities of our nature! It will be then said, that the moon must be abandoned as an argument for the plurality of worlds, seeing that it fails to exhibit the prime condition of life. The advocate of this doctrine, after fruitless endeavour to educe an argument, gave it up in despair. A recent discovery has, however, entirely changed the aspect of matters; and the moon our moon-may be appealed to as probably furnishing a theatre for the display of all the activities of animated and intelligent beings. This discovery, while curious in reference to its bearing on this question, also presents one of the most brilliant achievements of science in modern times. TO THE BEREAVED.* I HAVE experienced the same trial with which God has visited you, and can therefore sympathise Having met with the following elevating and con If so, MEDITATIONS ON HEAVEN; OR, "GOOD WORDS" CONCERNING THE BETTER COUNTRY. No. II. "They rest not day and night."-REV. iv. 8. "A little while the fetters hold no more, The spirit long enthrall'd is free to soar, And takes its joyful flight, On radiant wings of light, Up to the throne, to labour or adore!" WHAT a seeming paradox is this! We last contemplated Heaven under the beautiful and significant figure of a state of rest;-here it is spoken of as a state of unrest! "They rest"-" They rest not." It is what the old writers quaintly desig nate, "The rest without a rest." The combination of these two similitudes involves no inconsistency; they bring together two different but not antagosolatory remarks in a German theological pamphlet, which is not likely to become known in this country, the translator offers them with the hope that they may prove valuable to some afflicted child of God. nistic elements of earthly happiness, which will have their highest exemplification in the bliss of a perfect world. The emblem suggests two views of a future Heaven First, As a state of ceaseless activity; and, second, As a state of continual progression. Heaven is a state of ceaseless activity in the service of God. 66 waking up refreshed from the repose of exhausted nature-no more complaining that “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." (Matt. xxvi. 41.) "His servants SHALL serve Him," and serve Him with joyful and untiring alacrity. If any of us have felt the pleasurableness of doing good, even in a present imperfect, chequered world, what will, what must this feeling be in a state of holy activity, with no sin or weakness to Constituted as we now are, a condition of listless-repress our ardour or damp our energies? ness and inactivity is most inimical to true happiness. And what will be the chief ingredient-the grand Indeed, if we can judge from the references in element in this state of holy activity? It will be Scripture as to the constitution of higher and nobler the service of God. They rest not day nor night,” natures, we are led to infer that activity is a great uttering the threefold ascription to a Triune-Jehovah normal law among the loftiest orders of intelligent-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—“ Holy, holy, holy being. Angels and archangels, cherubim and se- is the Lord God of hosts." (Isa. vi. 3.) As we have raphim, the "burning ones and the shining ones,' found activity to be an essential element in true are "ministering spirits," engaged in untiring happiness, surely that happiness will be enhanced errands of love to redeemed man, and probably by the attractiveness, of the service in which it is also to other provinces in God's vast empire; our privilege to be engaged. An earthly servant, nay, with reverence be it said, the Great God possessed of an honourable nature, would feel himHimself is ever putting forth the unceasing self obligated to perform work faithfully and conactivities of His omnipotence. "He that keepeth scientiously even to a bad master; but how would Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps." "My Father," his joy in the performance of his duty be increased said Christ, "worketh hitherto, and I work.” It is by the consciousness that he was serving some lofty sublimely said of Him, "He fainteth not, neither is and beneficent spirit who was an ornament to his weary." (Ps. cxxi. 4; John v. 17; Isa. xl. 28.) station and revered by all? If we carry this law to the pinnacle of all greatness and moral excellence, surely here will be the climax and consummation of creature-happiness-cheerful duty in the service of Him whose favour is life! The human spirit has the same lofty heritage. Activity is linked with pure and unsullied enjoyment. The very curse of labour and the sweat of the brow, the birthright of toil, is the birthright of mercy. A philosopher of ancient times said, if he had truth in his grasp, he would open his hand and let it flee away that he might enjoy the pursuit of it. Transfer this to Heaven. There the law and love of activity will still be a governing principle among the spirits of the glorified; and in this we shall be assimilated to the "living ones," whose very name indicates the ardour of their holy being. They rest not! There will be no more of the lassitude and languor of earth. Here our bodies are clogs and hindrances to mental activity. There the glorified frame will be a help and auxiliary to the ecstatic spirit. Here the remains of indwelling corruption is like the chained corpse which criminals of old were compelled to drag behind them. It elicits the mournful cry, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this body of death?" (Rom. vii. 24.) That soliloquy will be heard no more in the "better country." There, every chain will be unloosed, and the uncaged spirit soar upwards unhampered by the impediments of its earthly coil. Glorious description! "They serve Him day and night." (Rev. vii. 15.) No more pauses from weariness or faintness; no more fitful frames and feelings. It has been said of God's people in the present world, " Though they do not weary of their Master's work, they often weary in the work." Their experience is impressively given in the Song of Solomon, when the Church, or believer in his earthly state, is represented as saying, “I sleep, but my heart waketh" (Cant. v. 2)-worldly cares and business and engrossments chaining down the soul, and inducing a state of drowsy insensibility. But there, they shall not require to "lift up the hands that hang down and the feeble knees." (Heb. xii. 12.) There, there shall be no more What is the truest source of joy to an earthly child? Is it not by active duty, as well as by passive obedience, fulfilling his parent's wishes? Will he not even suffer much for the parent he loves? The earthly relationship is in this, as in many other respects, a beautiful type of the heavenly. What pure and unsullied delight will it afford the sainted spirit to be engaged constantly in doing the will of Him who is better and kinder than the best of earthly parents! Look at Him who, being very man as well as very God, understood all the tenderest sensibilities of the human heart! What was the great (shall we say, the only) joy which brightened the pilgrimage of the Man of Sorrows? What was the one source of purest, ineffable delight to Him, as he toiled on His blood-stained path? Was it not the elevating consciousness of doing His heavenly Father's will? -"My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work!" (John iv. 34.) We are always most willing to serve those we love most. With what bounding joy, then, shall we embark in heaven on errands of active service, when we shall there have unfolded to us (what we here know so little of) the unspeakable love of Him who for us spared not His own, His only Son! Oh, what a motive will there be here for all the energies of the glorified body, and all the faculties of the glorified spirit!-to love, and serve, and honour, and adore Him, around whom our deepest affections are centred, and our heart of hearts entwined;-getting ever nearer Him and liker Him, gazing more intently on His matchless perfections-diving more into the oceandepths and mysteries of His love, and becoming the channels of conveyance of that love to others; then, indeed, will duty be turned into enjoy. ment, and supreme and unswerving devotedness to His service be its own best reward. It will be a consecration, too, not only of unfettered, unclogged, unwearied powers; but there will be the still further element of a pure and single-eyed devotedness, which earth never knew. Here, alas! in the holiest activities of the present state of being, there are ever, even when we ourselves may be insensible to them, the existence of mingled motives. Wretched self, in its thousand insidious forms, so imperceptibly will creep in, marring and mutilating our best endeavours to please God. Our best offerings are full of blemishes our best thoughts are polluted with low, grovelling cares. But there, self will for ever be dethroned. This usurping Dagon will then be broken for ever in pieces before the presence of the true Ark, in that glorious temple wherein "there is nothing that defileth." God's glory will then be the one grand, absorbing, and terminating object of all desires and all aspirations-then, for the first time in reality, shall we come to realise and exemplify that great truth, which many from their infancy have had on their lips-" Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever." Thus will active and ceaseless occupation in 93 66 the service of God form one of the sweetest em- on his embassy of love! But as on earth He ac a drowsy Mohammedan paradise—a state of torpor and inaction; but as it is known to angels, who are now, though unseen to us, speeding down to our world in ceaseless agencies of love and comfort? Do we realise this, and in realising the grand truth, are we training for these lofty duties?-ready to take the angel's place, or to join the angel's company, in travelling on similar ministries to some other distant provinces of creation? What the poet has said of the present life is as true of ite glorious counterpart hereafter— "Life is real, life is earnest.” ed assurance that this future state of active Rest not until you have attained a well-groundblessedness is to be yours;-that you are looking ward," as a saint now in glory expressed it, "uphill for it, preparing for it, ready for it. "Press forand downhill, to the city which hath foundations." Test your meetness for the Heaven that is before you by the question, Do I delight now in active employment in the service of my God? Is prayer a season of joyful refreshing? Does praise call into willing and gladsome exercise all the renewed affections of a heaven-born nature? Is the Sab bath a joyful pausing-place in life's chequered journey;-not a mere interlude of repose for the tired and jaded body after the incessant toils and cares of the week, but the day which summons into exercise the loftier activities of my nobler being? Do I spend it under the feeling of Eternity being an everlasting Sabbath; and that everlasting Sabbath occupied in some personal ministry of holiness and love? In this life there should, at least, be assimilations to the life hereafter. Though activity in a little child gives indication of the not in degree, it should be the same in kind. If energy and resolution of the man, so activity in the service of God, in a state of grace, will be the pledge and earnest of nobler activities in a state of glory. "Oh, blessed rest! when we rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!-when we shall rest from sin, but not from worship-from suffering and sorrow, but not from joy! Oh, blessed day! when I shall rest with God when I shall rest in knowing, loving, re complishes His purposes in His Church by human agency, and as in heaven ne employs angelic agency -those who "excel in strength" "doing His commandments, hearkening unto the voice of His word," so it would seem, as if in merciful consideration for the happiness of His glorified saints, He is to make this a permanent law through eter-joicing, and praising!—when my perfect soul and nity; so that heaven will be only a development fect God-when God, who is love itself, shall perbody shall together perfectly enjoy the most perof the present condition of grace-with this single, but important difference, that there will be no sin. fectly love me, and rest in His love to me, and I shall rest in my love to Him-when He shall reIndeed, it is this very idea of Heaven as a state of action, that brings out the beauty of the former joice over me with joy, and joy over me with singrepresentation as a state of rest. Rest, to be en-ing, and I shall rejoice in Him." joyed, supposes previous activity or labour; and although it can have no such relation in a place where weariness and fatigue are unknown, we can readily carry out the beautiful idea of Pollok, in his "Course of Time," of the ransomed spirit, retiring from the loud hallelujahs around the throne, to hold its silent meditations apart by "the living fountains of waters: "-this, however, only for a time, once more to return with unflagging and unabated energy to resume the song, and speed on new errands of love! Reader, I ask, is this your anticipation of Heaven? -Heaven, not as it is pictured in the dreams of the sentimental or contemplative Christian,—not PROTESTANTISM IN FRANCE. THERE is no Church that claims from British Christians a more warm and lively interest than the Protestant Church of France. It is not merely the charm of old associations and the bond of spiritual kindred that united the Protestants of France and Geneva, in the sixteenth century, with that of Scotland, and with the most earnest and evangelical party in the English Reformation; but it is, moreover, its own exciting and picturesque story, its roll of martyrs, of "whom the world was * Baxter. not worthy," and whose blood has been the seed of ever new life, through all its oppressions and persecutions, the learning and eloquence of its clergy, and the beauty and activity of its practical philanthropy, that combine to make it interesting, and to draw our sympathies cordially around it. With so much to attract us towards French Protestantism, and so much of affinity of Christian doctrine and enterprise between us, we are far from being well informed as to its present state and movements; the rapid increase that during the last thirty years has taken place in the number of its adherents, of its churches, its schools, its literary, missionary, and charitable agencies. The following pages, founded upon a carefully informed pamphlet of M. Grandpierre,* well known as one of the pastors connected with the Oratoire in Paris, deserve, and will amply reward, in this point of view, the attention of our readers. only three Protestant clergy, with one assistant clergyman, and two churches, with one in the suburbs. There are at this moment six fully endowed clergy, one of these being an assistant, with seven auxiliary clergy; and in the suburbs four churches, with a corresponding number of pastors. That is to say, in all there are in Paris at present eighteen clergy in place of five, and sixteen places of worship instead of three, in 1830, connected with the Reformed Church of France. But this by no means represents the full increase; for in the same space of time that old branch of French Protestantism which adheres to the Confession of Augsburg has made a corresponding advancement. While, in 1830, it had only in the capital a single place of worship, with three pastors, it has now in Paris, and in the suburbs together, ten places of worship, and nine clergy instead of three. In addition to both these forms of Protestantism, which are recognised and supported by the State, there have sprung up during the same period a vigorous Protestant dis sent in France; and in Paris alone, while there was in 1825 only a single dissenting Protestant At the date of the Edict of Nantes, the 22d October 1685, when Louis XIV., by a fatal blow, destroyed at once the civil rights and the religious privileges of his Protestant subjects, they numbered 800 churches and 640 clergy. The vast amount of peaceful industry and advancing civilisa-church, there are now in the same city a dozen tion represented by these figures was then, most disastrously for France, broken up, almost at the very time that the great Revolution was about to secure Protestant liberty and political progress to our own country. In 1808,-six years after the promulgation of the law of the 10th Germinal, as it was called, (the 8th April 1802,) restored the legal existence of the Protestant worship,-there was in the whole of France only 190 Reformed churches, and about 190 clergy. Thus in the course of somewhat more than a century's persecution, upwards of three-fourths of the Protestants may be said to have been expelled or to have disappeared from the soil of France. Thirteen years later, the Protestant Annual, published in 1821, registered the names of 255 clergy and a nearly equal number of churches. An increase of sixty-five churches and ministers had taken place in this time. Seven years later, statistics were published which shewed a corresponding increase. The clergy had risen to nearly 300, while 400 places of worship had sprung up, with nearly as many schools. But it is in the thirty years that have elapsed since then that the most astonishing and rapid increase has been manifested. The Protestant Annual of 1857 reckons that there are now in France 105 consistories, comprising 972 churches, with upwards of a thousand schools, under the direction of 601 clergy. During this period, then, the number of Protestant churches in France have more than trebled. Such an increase can scarcely be paralleled even by our own Scottish Protestantism, with all the singular and exciting causes which have given it development during the last quarter of a century. This remarkable progress of Protestantism in France will be best seen, perhaps, by a single example. Thirty years ago there were in Paris * Rapport sur la situation intériure du Protestantisme en France, par J. H. Grandpierre, pasteur de l'Eglise Réformée de Paris. 1858. such places of worship, with eleven or twelve ministers. The Protestant clergy in Paris, therefore, during the last thirty years, have increased from nine to thirty-nine, or more than quadrupled, and the places of Protestant worship augmented in more than the same proportion. It may be interesting to some of our readers to classify the different forms of Protestant dissent in France. This dissent has arisen in no small degree from intercourse with some of the most active of our British Dissenting Churches; and its several divisions take their name and character a good deal from this circumstance. It falls into three main divisions 1. The Union of Evangelical Churches of France, formed in 1850, which embraces, with certain offshoots from the Established Reformed church, the most of the independent churches which have sprung up in France during the last half-century. These churches have, as their bond of union, a common confession of faith, and biennial synods. There are certain points, however, such as the constitution of the Church, the question of baptism, and the terms of communion, on which they agree to differ. 2. The Wesleyan Methodist Churches, which support about fifty preachers, seven evangelists, and thirty-six places of worship, and reckon about thirteen hundred members. 3. The Baptist Churches, of which there are about ten, employing six or seven clergy, several of whom are supported by the Society of American Baptist Missions. Then there are several evangelical churches, such as those of Lyons and Orthes, which do not attach themselves to any of the above denominations. Summing up, then, all the elements of French Protestantism, there may be fairly reckoned at the present day in France 1000 Protestant clergy, with 1500 or 1600 places of worship, and nearly 1800 schools. During fifty years of comparative liberty, French Protestantism has more than re covered the position which it occupied when the Edict of Nantes shattered and overturned its prosperity. But it shews a feature of progress still more encouraging than this mere numerical advancement. Forty years ago French Protestantism was not only emerging from external ruin, but from the decay of its internal life. Of its three hundred clergy at that time, one might have counted on their fingers, says M. Grandpierre, the few who faithfully and courageously preached the doctrines of the Cross. The misfortune of the times, the poverty of the clergy, the want of popular interest and choice in their appointment, combined with the general laxity of Christian principle which followed the long deadness of the eighteenth century, had ended in such a deplorable result. But at the present time it can be safely affirmed that more than one-half of the Protestant clergy in France are orthodox in their creed, while many even of those who are latitudinarian in their doctrinal opinions are animated by a far higher spirit of religious culture and of pious earnestness than can be said to have characterised the rationalist clergy of the beginning of the century. There is a living evangelical feeling widely diffused throughout French Protestantism, a feeling which is rapidly spreading and increasing among the younger clergy, even where they do not adhere to the old dogmatic symbols. Works evincing a reviving theological learning of the best kind are frequently appearing; the preaching is at once eloquent and faithful; the pastorate enlightened, laborious and self-denying; and the astonishing progress which, on all hands, it is making, even in the face of renewed attempts at interference, if not persecution, is only the natural consequence of the higher life everywhere animating it, and carrying it triumphantly forward. In our next notice we shall record the progress made by its theological schools, and its numerous literary, missionary, and charitable agencies. TRUE STORIES OF GOD'S PROVIDENCE. FOR THE FIRESIDE. "Praise the Lord, who giveth food to the hungry." JESUS CHRIST forbids us to be over-anxious about anything, so as to be unhappy and miserable, because this state of mind arises from want of trust in God. It would always make us strong in spirit, and keep us quiet and peaceful at heart, if we only remembered that God is a Father who "pities His children," and is always thinking about them and caring for them. We would, then, attend to the one thing absolutely needful, that of doing what is right; assured of this, that our Father, in His own way and time, will help us according to our necessities. Now, there are few times in which persons are more tempted to distrust God, as if He neither knew them nor cared for them, than when in need of food. Oh! it is a very difficult thing indeed to believe then that God is able and willing to provide for a family when, as in the case of the poor widow who was helped by Elisha, the meal in the barrel is almost done and the oil in the lamp nearly exhausted! And those who have money to spare little know of what value a few pence are at such seasons of trial to a poor family; for hunger and cold are urgent for immediate relief. A day without food or fire, is a day of no small suffering to a father and mother, especially when children suffer in their sight. If people thought of this more than they do, and gave themselves the trouble to find out the poor who required a little aid, they would feel what a shameful thing is ingratitude, and forgetfulness of their own mercies; what a severe trial poverty is, and what a blessed thing it is to be able to share with our suffering Christian brothers and sisters, whose bodies and souls are like our own, some of those good things which our Father has given to ourselves in His mercy. But while persons are in poverty, what comforting words are those which are spoken to them by Him who always spoke the truth, and who was Himself so poor that He "had no place where to lay His head!" "Consider," He says, "the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?” And how many thousands of the poor are there who have trusted God, and who in their distress have been provided for by Him in a manner so strange and unexpected that they have said with the Psalmist, "Praise the Lord, who giveth food to the hungry!" It is not, indeed, possible to limit the ways manifold in which God may thus supply the wants of His children. Why are we surprised when we read of Elijah having been nourished by ravens? Is it wonderful that God, who provides so marvellously for bird and beast, should make these creatures themselves minister to the wants of beings more precious to Him than all? Let us tell a story of God's kindness, assuring our readers that it is literally true. THE FEVER-STRICKEN. In a certain village in Scotland, we shall not further indicate its locality, there lived about twenty years ago a respectable and well-to-do family in the humbler ranks of life. The father and mother, with I forget how many sons and daughters, lived under the same roof, and wrought at the same trade, which brought them in regular though moderate wages. The family were, I really believe, sincerely pious-I am quite sure the mother was so, for I knew her well. A dreadful fever entered the village. Its cause was no mystery; for a worse drained village did not exist. It was built on a flat; and a slow, sluggish, almost motionless open drain was cut along the backs of the houses. What stirred up, at the time I speak of, the slumbering wrath of this enemy of the laws of God's pure and cleanly world, I know not. It was probably the hot summer, with previous wet weather and stagnant pools caused by the inundations of small streams. There was of course the usual talk about what should be done to cure the offensive nuisance, which the coarsest olfactory nerves perceived; but the horrible power of which was, like demon possession, unperceived by flesh and blood, yet having to do with both for all that. The grand problem was, who should cleanse the sewers? Landlords or tenants ?-parish board or proprietors? In vain the intelligent medical man lec. |