"But your own kind of happiness?' pleaded Horace. Your ideal would help me, I feel sure; and we can take other people's into consideration afterwards.' 6 "My own ideal of happiness,' answered Florence, thus pressed, and slightly colouring as she spoke, consists chiefly in the exercise of unselfish affection, which is open to everybody; but to become really unselfish, I think one must first have strong religious convictions, and act up to them.' 666 A truly beautiful feminine ideal,' said Horace, such as I might have expected from you. But I fear it is almost too feminine to apply to men; and, besides, your conditions are so difficult of attainment.' 666 They might be attained with half the time and energy which many men devote to worthless objects,' said Florence, earnestly. But your idea of unselfish affection must be a very narrow one, if you regard it as peculiarly feminine. The love of one's country, of doing good, of searching out and diffusing truth, all come within my ideal.' "It is a far more comprehensive one, I see, than I supposed,' returned Mr. Carysfort; but the unselfishness is a great stumblingblock. Is not one's very wish to be happy, selfish, to begin with?' "Yes, to begin with,' said Florence; so long as we only try to do our duty, and to be unselfish for the sake of being happy; but by degrees we should learn to love duty and unselfishness for their own sakes, and to prefer the happiness of others to our own.'" pp. 70, 71. In every chapter of this delightful work, the reader will find something which, as stated above, not only pleases the imagination, but which also elevates the mind, and associates it with the world of spiritual causes where true happiness can be found. Judging from the pleasureable sensations we have experienced in the perusal of this novel, we can cordially recommend it for the instruction and entertainment of our readers. It is admirably adapted for presentation on all occasions, but especially on the marriage day RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE NEW JERUSALEM CHURCH IN ENGLAND, AMERICA, AND OTHER PARTS: Particularly in reference to its External Manifestation by Public Worship, Preaching, and the Administration of the Sacraments, with other Ordinances of the Church. By Robert Hindmarsh, Author of several Works in Defence of the New Jerusalem. Edited by the Rev. Edward Madeley, of Birmingham. London: Hodson and Son, 22, Portugalstreet, Lincoln's Inn. 1861. pp. 504. As Christians in general look back with deep veneration and thankfulness to Eusebius, one of the primitive historians of the Christian Church, so will future generations of the Church of the New Jerusalem look back with deep interest and gratitude to Robert Hindmarsh, for his clear, simple, and trustworthy statements respecting the "Rise and Progress of the New Jerusalem Church." As successive generations roll onwards, this historical account will be of weightier importance, and will be read with a deeper interest. We can readily imagine that it will become a household book, and that every library, both public and private, of the New Church, will possess it. In one important particular, Hindmarsh, as the primitive historian of the New Jerusalem Church, had a great advantage over Eusebius, who compiled his history of the Rise and Progress of the primitive Christian Church, down to 324, chiefly from traditions, always an unreliable source. Hence so many strange things are recorded in his history, which, at this day, we can scarcely believe to have taken place but in the region of imagination and of fiction. Whereas Hindmarsh was, for the most part, both an eye-witness and an ear-witness of everything he records. Hence the authenticity and reliability of everything he has stated. It is true, that some things may appear, to certain readers, too trifling, or at least too unimportant, to be mentioned in the "Rise and Progress of a Church;" but those who knew the truth-loving spirit of Hindmarsh, will only see therein so many confirmations of the truth of his documents and statements. And here we may mention the fidelity of his editor, the Rev. Edward Madeley, "who has adhered most faithfully to the original throughout." The work is accompanied by many portraits, "deemed to be most correct likenesses" of those who have been active in the dissemination of the doctrines of the New Church. The portraits of Swedenborg and of Hindmarsh, strike us as the best we have ever seen. There are also many fac-similes of the autographs of persons deceased, who have been distinguished for their uses in connection with the Church. On the whole, this work does great credit to the editor, the Rev. E. Madeley, and to the publisher, Mr. Hodson, who has spared no expense in bringing out the volume in as correct and as handsome a form as possible. MISCELLANEOUS. THE MONTH. Our "Times," their "Form and Pressure."-The following remarks, from the Manchester Guardian, on the present age (an age-notwithstanding its self. complacency-of the greatest contrarieties, in which great wealth and great poverty, magnificence and squalor, refinement and barbarism, fashion and vice, knowledge and ignorance, progress and reaction, religion and wickedness, faith and infidelity, earnestness and frivolity, march side by side, and mark its consummation,-when the wrecks of a former effete era and the germs of a new one stand face to face) are so true a critique on our times that we offer no apology for extracting them : "History, we may be sure, will not neglect the manners and customs of the age. Future generations will ask, 'How did those people who lived in the sixth decade of the nineteenth century, who built Great Easterns and Warriors, and created the Volunteer army, occupy their leisure moments? What tastes had they? What books did they read? What sights did they see? What class of performers did they patronise?' The answer will be,They had thousands of amusing and instructive works to select from. Never before was the press so busy, so independent, or served by such highlyeducated men; still the call was not for first-class works. Novels that were somewhat full flavoured in their tone, and catch-penny stories about police detectives, obtained the highest circulation. The public were very fond of reading about thieves; and as for the dramatic art, Shakspere could never find a home in the metropolis west of Whitechapel, until one manager hit upon the bright thought of making him furnish the libretto to a peep-show, and a Frenchman came over and showed us how Hamlet should be played. There were good actors and clever actresses in these days; only playgoers did not care about the first, and only applauded the second when they appeared in short petticoats and spangles, and tortured the Queen's English into convulsions in a burlesque. 'Muscular development,' our descendants will be told, was greatly respected in those days. Brains did not go for much. In the year 1861 one man was paid £100. a time for performing upon a tight rope, whilst another received no less a sum for perilling his neck upon a slack rope. And great was the delight of public society when a little man challenged a big man to fight, and pounded him into a hideous jelly in fifty minutes.' Such things, disgusting as they are, do not seem out of place in an age which requires the interference of a Secretary of State to prevent a rope dancer from putting the life of his infant daughter in deadly peril for the amusement (?) of any one who would pay half-a-crown to see the sight. The elegantly dressed ladies and languid 'swells,' who applauded Blondin as he wheeled his child along over that ghastly space, would be surprised, no doubt, were they to be told that there was not one pin to choose between them and the Corinthians,' who rose at cockcrow to see the fight for the championship-that the two exhibitions were equally brutal and senseless. Indeed, were we called upon to decide between them, we should give the preference to the prize fight. True that both parties went willingly. They were both able to take care of themselves. Adile Blondin, aged five years, was wheeled into space nolens volens. If her childish nerve had given way-as it well might do and ever so slight a start had overcome for an instant the delicate balance upon which hung her life, an accident of unsurpassed horror would probably have been the result. The practised acrobat could have caught the rope, and saved himself over the mangled remains of his helpless child. Was there not one hiss from the 12,000 spectators, one indignant line in the published reports of the spectacle, to show M. Blondin what English gentlemen and English mothers and sisters thought of such an exhibition? Not one! M. Blondin was overwhelmed with applause; the press reflected only his praises; and the good people of Sheffield were so delighted with him the other day, that they appeared inclined to take the horses from his carriage, and draw him in triumph through their streets." Italy and Rome.-That the change awaiting the seat of the papacy, and the Romish hierarchy itself, is certainly though stealthily approaching, is evident on every hand. The authoritative and even official statements of the present Italian government, that the restoration of Rome as the capital of united Italy is only a question of time, and demands but the patience of the Italian people to witness its realisation, are unmistakeable indications of the fact. Then, again, notwithstanding the studied mystery relative to the Pope's health, it cannot be concealed that it is in a highly precarious condition; if this, which is not improbable, is the contingency on which the important revolution now impending turns, it cannot, in the natural course of things, be delayed to any very distant date, and may be precipitated almost any day. Father Gavazzi, in a lecture recently delivered in the Assembly-room of the Free-trade Hall, Manchester, confidently stated his conviction that, if foreign intervention did not interpose, he should preach in the Coliseum before the end of 1861. Speaking of the prospects of religion in Italy, after expressing his belief that the Romish Church was unreformable, and adding, that he hoped to see Italy a Christian, instead of a Roman Catholicism, and that, therefore, there would be no Protestants, but Catholic Christians, he went on to say:-"If he looked to he future, it struck him with brightess, so that at present he was full of lopes. If he looked at the governnent of Italy, there were hopes. It had recently been held in a court of justice that an evangeliser was free to worship God according to his own conscience; and the present premier, Ricasoli, had not only confirmed the free grant of land by Garibaldi, upon which to build an English church in Naples, but declared, I shall do my best, all my life, to carry civil and religious liberty to the utmost.' Therefore, he was thankful to God for the man He had given them in the hour of need. Italy had two objects to obtain-her political and religious regeneration. To obtain the first, God exalted a man fitted for the situation, and gave power to the great mind of Cavour; but when Cavour had achieved the political independence of Italy he had done his work, and God recalled him. But Cavour was not the man to accomplish the religious regeneration of Italy; therefore, to attain the second end, God had called a second manRicasoli,-who was a thoroughly Bible Christian man in his own heart; and therefore, under him, the future was bright and full of hopes. He would not deceive his audience by saying that he had the Italian people with him; but they came after him, and they were a people who loved controversy, and from that he had great hopes. The Pope was very greatly alarmed, and that helped his cause; for the Pope had de clared in Consistory, with tears in his eyes, that a new national church had been erected in the country (that national being the one he was establishing); and, of course, what the Pope said was infallible, especially what he said in Consistory. This alarm helped to advertise the new church, and when the Pope prohibited the circulation of Bibles, the Italians became suspicious, and bought them up rapidly. The present congregations were very prosperous and increasing. He hoped no foreign intervention would be allowed to interfere in this evangelisation: for if left alone, he hoped before the end of 1861 to preach his first sermon in the Coliseum at Rome, on Jesus Christ, as he preached the first sermon there in 1848." Turkey.-A new chapter appears to be about to open at last in the history of this hitherto fated country. The decease of Abdul-Medjid-Khan, and the accession of his brother, Abdul Azziz, bids fair to work a complete, and, let us hope, peaceful revolution, not only politically, but also in a social, moral, and religious point of view. Already, it is said, very important reforms are in progress for the maintenance of justice, economy, and especially religious equality. Though it is as yet too soon to speculate on the results of this new movement, we shall watch its progress with the interest it merits. The Established Church.-The signs of breaking up, in the present religious condition of this country, and especially in the Establishment, steadily progress. The worst feature in her current history, and one which we are sure her more sincere members and ministers must as greatly disapprove as regret, is the greed manifested on the part of such parties as the present Vicar of Whalley, in attempting to exact Easter dues from persons for whom, whether church men or dissenters, he has never performed a single religious office. The theological aspect of the church continues much the same, except that the indications of an effort to achieve greater independence of thought-of which the Essays and Reviews form one-multiply on various hands, as will be seen from the following account of an Extraordinary Episcopal Prosecution, which we extract from the public daily press, and which will be read with great interest, presenting, as it does, signs of progress: "A very extraordinary case of a character bearing closely upon the questions raised by Essays and Reviews,' the synodical judgment of Convocation, and the Bishop of Salisbury's prosecution thereupon, is at present before the Court of Arches. The case has been fully heard by Dr. Lushington, but not reported, and is now awaiting judgment. The promoter of the suit is the Bishop of Winchester, through his Secretary, Mr. Burder. The defendant is the Rev. Dunbar Isidore Heath, M.A. (formerly Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge), vicar of Brading, in the Isle of Wight, to which he was presented by his college in 1846. The charge against the rev. gentleman is that he has preached and published a volume, containing nineteen sermons, entitled Sermons on Important Subjects,' teaching doctrines directly contrary and repugnant to the articles and doctrines of the united Church of England and Ireland. The main charge against Mr. Heath is that he denies the doctrine of justification as set forth in the 11th article; that he affirms the doctrine that the crucifixion and death of the Saviour were not accepted by God as a propitiation or satisfaction for the sins of men; that the doctrine that God was propitiated or reconciled by the blood of Christ is an unscriptural and detestable doctrine; that forgiveness of sins has nothing to do with the Gospel, and that sins cannot be forgiven either in this world or the next, although they may be remitted. On this latter subject Mr. Heath says, People generally think that God keeps changing about to every one of us according as we sin and repent, and sin again and are again forgiven. Men seem to think that the great unchangeable God is first angry and then all right again, and then angry again and then kind again; but yet they think that in the resurrection He will alter this character of His, for they imagine He will leave off for ever being angry with them in heaven after the resurrection, and that He will never be kind again to those in hell. Now, brethren, this is a very important matter. For my part, I say God will be the same God, and have the same character at the resurrection as he has now.' Again: Many persons do really seem to believe that before we are baptised God is actually angry with us, and the moment we are baptised He is kind to us again. They think being the children of wrath must mean that God is angry with the poor babes. And why do they think so? Simply because they do not see what I am endeavouring to show, namely, that in Scripture God's wrath means a state of things among men gradually revealed and shown in its true colours by the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ.' On the subject of the sacrifice he says,- Propitiation by the shedding of blood is one of the oldest institutions in the world. Now, I am afraid it is a very common idea that the glorious and great God and Father of mankind, all holy and all loving, was propitiated eighteen hundred years ago by blood, and is propitiated now at this minute by our faith in this blood. I know not how to find words strong enough to express my abhorrence of this detestable doctrine.' Again : 'God's justice is not yet satisfied, therefore God cannot be merciful! What a dissolute, foul abomination; what a crooked notion of Deity! How utterly unscriptural and utterly degrading! And God's justice satisfied by what? By the crucifixion! By the most glaring piece of injustice ever committed in the whole history of the world. * * This well-meant but outrageously stupid doctrine is, that the satisfaction given by the death of Jesus Christ to His Father's sense of justice allows the Father to be merciful to a few people who believe in this supposed satisfaction of Jesus. The death of Christ is somehow supposed to show to the world that the Father is just because He punishes the wrong person; and when people have brought themselves to believe this, then they may expect Him to be merciful.' Passages of this sort might be multiplied, and indeed a multitude of them are before the Court, all being, as it is alleged, 'derogation and depraving of the |