from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be," Gen. xlix. 9, 10. From this, and from the concurrent testimony of Jewish history, it seems that the standard that floated over the royal tribe of Judah, which was always planted before the door of the tabernacle towards the rising of the sun, when the camp was at rest, and led the van of the tribes in the march, was a lion. Hence, the Lord, who sprang out of Judah, being the Son of David by descent, was thus announced in the Book of Revelation to John: "Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof." And John, looking for the Lion, beheld there "a Lamb as it had been slain," Rev. v. 1-6. But, as I before said, power is the characteristic of the lion, and therefore the emblem is continually used in this sense. The righteous are bold as a lionstrong in the Lord, in the power of his might, they need not fear anything, neither life, nor death, nor principalities, nor powers; but, covered with the whole panoply of God, they are more than conquerors through Him that loved them, Rom. viii. 37-39. And thus they are revealed, not only with robes of white, but palms of victory, Rev. vii. 9. At times, when the Lord is revealing himself as coming to punish Israel, then the fierceness and power of the lion are awfully introduced. "For I will be unto Ephraim as a lion, and as a young lion to the house of Judah: I, even I, will tear, and go away: I will take away, and none shall rescue him. I will go and return to my place, till they shall acknowledge their offence, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me early," Hosea v. 14. But the lion is more frequently used to denote the tremendous power and vigilance of the great enemy of souls. He is represented as going about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, 1 Pet. v. 8; continually watching mankind as his prey! It is a fearful figure! Oftentimes, in a moment unlooked for, he springs on his victim, and too fatally succeeds. But the eye of God's children must be to the Lord; and so shall they, with Paul, be enabled to say, "I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion; and the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me to his heavenly kingdom, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen," 2 Tim. iv. 17, 18. And thus, in Isaiah, when that kingdom is revealed, it is beautifully said, "No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there: and the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away," Isa. xxxv. 9, 10. The twofold character of Satan, also, as the cunning serpent and terrific lion, is set forth in the ninety-first Psalm as subjugated under the Messiah's power: "Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder; the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under thy feet," verse 13. In the last days, when Israel shall rise into power, and be (though a blessing to the world at large) as God's avengers on the nations that have despised his Gospel, they are thus spoken of: "The remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles, in the midst of many people, as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep, who, if he goes through, both treadeth down and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver. Thine hand shall be lifted up upon thine adversaries, and all thine enemies shall be cut off," Mic. v. 8, 9. THE WHALE. What the lion is in point of strength, among land animals, that the whale is amongst the fishes of the sea. The history of the ship Essex supplies a melancholy illustration. That vessel was fishing in the great South Sea, between the man, and the dread of man, as God promised to Noah, is upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth on the earth, and upon every fish of the sea; into his hand are they given, Gen. ix. 2. THE BREAST-PLATE OF AARON. The first precious stone on the breast-plate of the High Priest was the ruby, or sardine stone; the last, the Lord was revealed to John at the jasper. And when the glory of main continent of America and the Marquesas. A boat was out, and had succeeded in striking a large sperm whale; but in its agony, it struck the boat, and the crew at once were obliged to cut away their prize, and to make all haste for their ship to repair damages. This they succeeded in; but their safety was short-lived, for a large whale, probably the same, rose near the ship, as if challenging her, and with tremendous power, came with its full force against her. The ship trem-Patmos, this is the description: bled at the concussion! The whale rose, swam some distance ahead, then wheeled round, and came with steady and determined power, lashing the sea with great violence, and struck the ship a second time. This was enough; his victory was complete; and the ship foundered in a very short time, and the crew, twenty in number, took to their boats. The subsequent history is too full of horrors to relate. A few nights after the wreck, a large fish attacked the boat the captain was in, and well nigh destroyed it; and, eventually, but five of the twenty men survived. This is but a specimen of what the whale could do; but it is an exception to the general rule, and well calculated to fill the heart with thanksgiving, that it is but a solitary case; for the whale fishery still goes on, and the fear of "And He that sat upon the throne was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone," Rev. iv. 3. The I whole family of God are on the heart of the great High Priest; and God's glory, the fulness of that glory, is there manifested. (Eph. fii. 19.) THE PRINCIPLE OF EVAPORATION. The following beautiful passage, in Ecclesiastes, is very descriptive of the sources of rivers, their ebb into the ocean, and their return to their original source: "All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again," Eccl. i. 7. The principle of evaporation draws up the waters to the clouds; and the clouds, in their turn, empty their contents, and so the supply never fails. Biography. REV. A. TOPLADY. gelical religion. NOT a few of our readers are fami- great things for the cause of evanliar with the hymns of Toplady, some of which are among the most ethereal compositions of the kind in the English tongue. It may be, however, that a portion of them are unacquainted with the leading facts in the history of that remarkable man, whose sun went down at noon, but not until he had achieved Augustus Toplady, the son of a major in the British army, was born in Surrey, Nov. 4, 1740. Having very early lost his father, who died at the siege of Carthagena, the care of his education devolved exclusively on his mother, a daughter of a clergyman of the Church of Eng land. And so faithfully did his mother plan for and care for her son's best interest, that he ever expressed the deepest obligations to this best of earthly friends for her maternal solicitude. We are told that he received the first rudiments of his public education at the Westminster School, where he discovered peculiar genius. But a sense of religious responsibility does not appear to have characterized him until at about the age of sixteen, when, having accompanied his honoured parent on a journey to Ireland, it pleased God, in his providence, to direct his steps into a barn, at a place called Codymain, where a layman was preaching. The word of God, there delivered, was fixed upon his conscience "in demonstration of the Spirit and with power." In a diary, found in his manuscript remains, we have Mr. Toplady's own reflections upon this decisive event of his life, by which we shall learn better its nature, and obtain a very satisfactory view of the inward and humble piety of this eminent man, writer, and preacher: "February 29, 1768, at night, after my return from Exeter, my desires were strongly drawn out, and drawn up to God. I could, indeed, say that I groaned with the groans of love, joy, and peace; but so it was with comfortable groans that cannot be uttered. That sweet text, "Ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ,' Eph. ii. 13, was particularly delightful and refreshing to my soul; and the more so, as it reminded me of the days and months that are past, even the day of my sensible espousals to the Bridegroom of the elect. It was from that passage that Mr. Morris preached on the memorable evening of my effectual call; by the grace of God, under the ministry of that dear messenger, and under that sermon, I was, I trust, brought nigh by the blood of Christ, in August, 1756. Strange that I, who had so long sat under the means of grace in England, should be brought nigh to God in an obscure part of Ireland, amid a handful of God's people, met together in a barn, and under the ministry of one who could hardly spell his name! Surely it was the Lord's doing, and is marvellous! The excellency of such power must be of God, and cannot be of man; the regenerating Spirit breathes not only on whom, but likewise when, where, and as he listeth." Toplady is always thus fervid and childlike in faith-a writer to be loved. The above passage was penned six years after he had been an acting minister of the Church of England, the " Articles, Homilies, and Liturgy of which, he mentions, that he subscribed five separate times, from principle; he did not believe them because he subscribed them, but subscribed them because he believed them." And these few paragraphs exhibit his hearty recognition of their honest Calvinistic sense. Indeed, the principal object of all his rather numerous controversial pieces and it was in this species of composition he excelled-was to defend and set forth this as the true doctrinal stand-point and spirit of the English Church, according to its reformed basis. The most extensive work of his pen, and one of deep learning and research, rich in biographies of the most eminent reformers and worthies of the Anglican Church, and extracts from their writings, is entitled, "Historical Proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England." It is a work that no scholar could read without delight, and no Christian without edification. Happy would it be for the cause of truth, were all our Episcopalian brethren, especially those in the ministry, familiar with this masterly work. A reprint of it, we think, would do more to bring the whole Arminianizing and Romanizing tribe to their senses than anything else. In this case, we should have less chance of seeing novel-writing divines, of that communion, bringing in such a name as Rev. Jonathan Edwards with anything less than the profoundest respect. Toplady, a very "malleus hereticorum in his day, and whose vigorous pen was incessantly busied against the noisy camp of Arminians, thus speaks of this greatest of American divines, or rather of his masterpiece, "The Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will:" "It is a book which God has made the instrument of more deep and extensive usefulness (especially among deists and persons of science), than almost any other modern publication I know of. If such of my readers as have not yet met with it wish to see the Arminian sophistry totally unravelled and defeated, let them add that excellent performance to their literary treasures. A more nervous chain of reasoning it would be extremely difficult to find in the English language. Consequently, it is not one of those treatises that can be run through in a hurry. It must be read deliberately, and weighed with attention, else you will lose half the strength of the connection." 66 Although devotedly attached to the government and worship of his mother church, the Episcopal, which he thought, of all others, the nearest right, both in matter and form, he was too much absorbed in the great things of God to be a sectarian, or an exclusive, except with respect to those who rejected the peculiar doctrines of the Christian religion. No one contended more earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints of old;" but this very zeal for the doctrines of grace, in all the simplicity and fulness, as set forth by the Reformers, caused him to overlook all minor differences, and united him as one spirit with all of every communion who lived spiritually on the same orthodox truth and confession. The man who could pen this passage could not have been a very High Churchman: "Bigots are stiff, straitened, and confined; like Egyptian mummies, which are bound round with thousands of yards of ribbon;" or this, "One moment's communion with God is worth all the controversial volumes in the world; " or this, "You may have seen the children of some fruitful family walking to church, all clothed in a different colour. Yet are they all children of one parent; all brothers and sisters. So the various denominations of God's believing people." And here is another still more to the purpose, and let all the proud ignorers of any other than old spiritual authors, such as Gurnall, Arrowsmith, Crisp, Rutherford, Wilcox, Gill, Owen, Boston, etc. His writings are full of the unction of an experimental, simple-hearted piety, while they evince a great ab "the Church" in these Islands note it well: "In North America have been lately reckoned no fewer than seventy-five religious denominations. And were there seventy-five thousand, it would not signify seven pins' heads. Denomination is no-horrence of a mere subjective, sentithing. Grace is grace in every con-mental, legal religionism. Toplady verted person. There is but one died August 11, 1778, in the thirty. Church after all." Behold the ca- eighth year of his age, at Broad tholicity of a genuine Calvinist ! Hambury, of which he was vicar. His remains lie buried in Tottenham Court Chapel, London, erected by George Whitfield, of whom Toplady was an ardent admirer. In a beautiful selection, entitled "Excellent Passages from Eminent Persons," Toplady has shown his preference, above all others, for the Popery. POPERY AND ITS FRUITS. his suggestion. In France, there are 33 murders to each million of persons, or 800 per cent. in excess of England; and in France the illegitimate births are 8 per cent. of the legitimate, but only 6 per cent. in England and Wales. BIBLES and Testaments, in Great inquire into facts before we adopt Britain, are freely given to the poor; and if Dr. Wiseman's inquisition had the power, it would speedily burn both givers and receivers upon a pyre of the books. On these books, however, are founded the systems of morals which pervade the Protestant nations of Europe, while it would puzzle a cleverer man than Dr. Wiseman to discover the revealed foundation of the morals which characterize the opponents of the Protestants. The effects of the two systems in the repression of vice and crime have been fully shown by the results of Mr. Seymour's elaborate examination of the statistics furnished by the governments of the Protestant and Roman Catholic States of Europe. Dr. Wiseman recommends the example of France for our imitation. We are obliged to him for his left-handed kindness, but beg to The books which Dr. Wiseman would substitute for our Cottage Literature, and support with his censorship of the press, are unquestionably of the same character and moral tendency as the "Bibliothéque Chrétienne pour l'Edification de la Jeunesse," which is a series of lives of fanatics, saints, and lunatics, constituting, as the general title expresses it, a Christian library for the edification of youth. We shall make no extracts from any of them; but the following passage is the conclusion of an English review of Bouden's "Life of Marie Angélique de la Providence," printed at Paris, in |