REV. WILLIAM INNES, D.D. IT has been our privilege for very many years to know and to enjoy the friendship of the late Dr. Innes. He was a regular subscriber from the first, and an occasional contributor to our Magazines; and in the very last communication we had from him, not many months ago, he professed himself to be a special admirer of this, the CHRISTIAN's PENNY, a tribute by which we were not a little gratified. Among the many notices of his decease which have appeared, is the following from the Edinburgh Witness, which states the facts of his long life in a few words. "On Saturday, March 3rd, this venerable and eminent man of God passed away from us. A few weeks ago, when visiting a sick-bed, he met with an accident, from the effects of which he never recovered. Dr. Innes died in the eighty-fifth year of his age, and sixty-second of his ministry. He was first licensed to preach the Gospel in connection with the Established Church of Scotland, and was one of the ministers of Stirling till 1799, when, for conscience' sake, he resigned his living, actuated chiefly by a desire for a greater liberty in preaching the Gospel in which he rejoiced, than was to be obtained under the Moderatism which at that time ruled the church with a rod of iron. The name of Dr. Innes will ever be associated with the remarkable revival of living godliness throughout the land which took place at the close of the last and beginning of the present century. He was the early friend and associate of Robert Haldane, along with whom and Dr. Bogue, of Gosport, he offered to lead the‘forlorn hope' of a mission to Bengal, in 1796. On that plan being frustrated by the refusal of the East India Company, Dr. Innes accompanied Mr. James Haldane on some of his missionary tours among the towns and remote parishes in Scotland. In 1799, on his leaving Stirling, he became pastor of a congregation in Dundee; and about ten years later he was removed to Edinburgh. It was not mental power, or theological attainment, or pulpit distinction, which made this venerable minister a burning and a shining light. It was the calm and unbroken consistency of a devoted and blameless life. He was truly a lover of good men.' If a stranger society came to seek sympathy and aid from the Christians of Edinburgh, whoever might be absent, Dr. Innes was sure to be present. Many in Edinburgh will remember the genuine simplicity and meekness with which he was found at all times ready to aid every good work, in connection especially with the va rious religious societies. Whether it was to take the chair, to take the most subordinate part of the proceedings, or merely to be present in case some other fail, one could always count on the disinterested and ready help of that loving old man. He was a warm and earnest friend of the City Mission, Sabbathschools, tract societies, and all other means of usefulness. His death was calm and peaceful. To him to live away the last landmark of that memorable period to which we have was Christ, and, as was to be looked Popery. MAYNOOTH COLLEGE.. REPORT. 1. The plea of poverty urged for the endowment is unsustained. "Sir R. Peel asserted that three students The moment two students are found were necessitated to sleep in a bed. in one bed, they are ipso facto expelled. But the falsehood was suf fered to run through the land uncontradicted, because it served a purpose." MANY of our readers are aware, that | TEN FACTS FROM THE MAYNOOTH for the last ten years the Popish College of Maynooth has received about £30,000 a-year for the support of the college-that is, for the payment of the professors, and the maintenance of the students, and the upholding of the institution generally. A multitude of Protestants throughout Great Britain are deeply distressed at this arrangement, by which so large a sum of money, raised by public taxation, is appropriated to the propagation of the deadly doctrines of Anti-nually for their board before the endowment. Since then, "public funds are almost exclusively employed." christ. The Government, stirred up by Petitions, Memorials, and Protests, were at length induced to appoint a Commission to inquire into the teaching of the college, and its tendencies. The Commission has completed its work, and made its Report; but that Report is in a very high degree unsatisfactory. It is not at all the thing the country was led to expect. Had it been made by a body of Popish priests, instead of Protestant bishops, noblemen, and gentlemen, it could not have been greatly different from what it is. Nevertheless, in spite of their obvious leaning, the Commissioners have been compelled to state much that is seriously entitled to the consideration of Protestants, as will appear from the following: 1 Students paid £2,659 5s. 6d. an 2. The incomes of the Superiors and Professors have in some cases been doubled, and in some trebled, by the endowment of 1845. Thus, the President is advanced from £316 to £594 12s.; the Vice-President from £112 to £326 12s. 8d.; the Dunboyne Professor from £112 to £308 12s. Sd.; the Senior Dean from £112 to £264 12s. 8d.; and all the others have experienced a similar happy effect from the Act of 1845. A high premium is paid to the students. Twenty students on the Dunboyne establishment receive from the endowment £40 a-year each; and two hundred and fifty students receive £20 a-year each, the public press, were Maynooth pocket-money. But, notwithstanding this vast increase of pay, the Commissioners report the discipline of the College defective; the studies a mere system of cramming; and the text-books in many parts unsuited to this country. 3. The oath of allegiance is evaded by many of the students, some feigning sickness, some repeating the words improperly, and others exercising a mental reservation; and all treat it lightly. 4. By statute, which ought to be read twice a year, the Professor of Dogmatic Theology is required "strenuously to exert himself to impress on his class, that the allegiance which they owe to the Royal Majesty cannot be relaxed or annulled by any power or authority whatever." A student declares he never heard of this statute till it was mentioned by the Commissioners; and a professor states that it was never enforced while he was a student, nor did he ever enforce it himself after he became a professor. The money is paid, but loyalty is not taught. Even the Commissioners can only make the negative statement-"We have no reason to believe that there has been any disloyalty in the teaching of the College." 5. One of the professors asserts that the priests who took a violent part in politics of late years were not educated at Maynooth. But it has been found, on examination, that almost all the priests whose violence at the last election was recorded by men. 6. Priests, who are styled "the officers of the Pope," are justified by some of the professors in employing their spiritual power or influence to compel voters at elections to follow their injunctions, under the plea, that the exercise of the vote in a certain way may be sin, and it is the duty of the priest to prevent sin in his people! 7. Maynooth, intended exclusively for Ireland, has furnished Romanist archbishops to Calcutta, Madras, Hyderabad, Trinidad, and Adelaide; twenty-four Missionary priests to Great Britain, whose numbers are constantly increasing; and many to the Colonies. 8. The laws of the Romish Church as to persecuting heretics and keeping no faith with them, are attempted to be explained away by a definition of the word heretic; but the definition is such, that when Romanists are in power any Protestant whatsoever might be treated as our fathers were in the days of Queen Mary. Definition: "Heresy is a voluntary and pertinacious error against any truth of faith, proposed by the Church, in a person who professes himself a Christian." 9. The teaching under the Seventh Commandment is acknowledged to be so bad, that it is put off to the longest possible period, and even then many of the students find themselves compelled to read it on their knees in the chapel, if even by this means they may resist its defiling tendency. Questions which students only dare to read under compulsion, priests are to ask in the confessional! "More priests have been damned from hearing confessions than anything else."-Liguori. what the teaching of Maynooth may be next year from what it is said to have been in the past. The banishment of Bailly as a text-book, because of his unacceptability at the Court of Rome, indicates a determination to teach in full accordance with the 10. Neither the teaching of the Text-books, on questions of moral theology, nor of the professors, is said to be of any authority. The public, therefore, cannot judge of requirements of the Papal See. The Letter Bar. THE SECRET OF FORCE IN WRITING. A LESSON FOR YOUNG MEN. paid to it by people generally, but especially by those whose vocations call upon them to speak or to write. The late celebrated Dr. Griffin, of the United States, had a very clear conception of the matter; hence the matchless success with which he taught his Rhetorical Classes. The exercises of the class in criticising each others' compositions, under his guidance, were the most interesting and profitable of any. He required each student to take notes while one was reading his essay, and then each THE principle of force in speaking | Much more attention ought to be and force in writing is the same. It consists in using the smallest possible quantity of words compatible with the clear communication of the sense. In conversing, you will often meet with people who employ a flood of language without making any impression on the company. The small modicum of sense is quite lost in the stream of sound; on the other hand, you find men who speak comparatively little, but their words are select. Each has meaning, and, for the idea, is the best term that the English tongue can supply. What-in turn was called upon for his ever such persons say is not simply understood, but felt and remembered. As in the one case the subject is lost in the language, so in the other, the language may be said to be lost in the subject. Writers and speakers of this description will always prove telling. The question deserves far more attention than is generally paid to it. Almost every-he inculcated a single rule, till it body in everything uses too many words. This is the source of feebleness both in writing and in speaking. criticism. Then he would criticise both the essayist and the critic. By such an exercise he would impress the minds of the students with the leading principles of rhetoric, so that they could be easily apprehended and not easily forgotten. Nothing was more remarkable than the exhaustless patience with which was well fixed in the practice. For instance, one of the most common errors of young writers is that per petrated in the form of mixed metaphors. Whenever one of these occurred in a composition, he would stop the reader, and say, "Paint it!" That is, complete the image represented in the metaphor, and see if all its parts correspond with each other. To use one of Blair's examples, quoted from Shakspere "Take up arms against a sea of troubles;" he would have them picture in the mind the sea, and then the armed host, that they might perceive that the two were incongruous, and therefore that the metaphor was not fit. After he had made his meaning well understood, he was wont to correct the recurrence of this fault with a single expression, "Paint it!" So of every other common fault in composition; he had it as distinctly labelled, and could as quickly correct it and pass on. His mode of taking the wind out of the sails of a turgid writer, was extremely happy. The student would read off with great confidence a long and, what he conceived to be, a splendid sentence, full of highsounding words and pompous imagery. The Doctor would say, "Stop, let us see." He would then take the evident sense of the sentence, if it had any, and put it in five simple words, and say, "You mean so, do you not?" "Yes, sir." 66 "Then say so." The student would, perhaps, stare, and find out with difficulty at last, that he meant that he should write down those five words, in place of his great sentence, made with learned length and thundering sound. He would then, for awhile, be stumbled at the discovery, that those few simple terms, embracing all the sense which he had to convey, were better than his many portly words employed before. Here, before he thought of it, a new principle of writing had gained possession of his mind, viz.-that the true force of writing consists in the maximum of sense with the minimum of words; and not, as young writers usually have it, in the maximum of words with the minimum of sense. If the student was reluctant to suffer such a collapse, through loss of words and wind, the Doctor would follow him through his composition, making the like change on every sentence that needed it, and then directing him to copy it off, and see how much better it would read. Though the reduction in bulk would be striking, and the labour of copying small, most were compelled to confess the improvement. Indeed, his main labour, as a rhetorical teacher, was in war against words-an effort to drill the student into the condensation of his forms of expression. His theory was, that force in the utterance of a thought was in inverse proportion to the number of words and syllables required; and, therefore, that the short Saxon words, the monosyllables, if we have them, are better than the longer words, of Latin derivation. It was a position of his, that the hearer's or reader's thought travels faster than our language can travel; ¦ and if the expression lags behind, by reason of the lumber of the words, the mind of the hearer becomes tired of waiting for it, and an impression of fatigue and dulness is |