A

tis,

ment, But to Deists or Theists, that is, those who have no Mediator, all these are as a dead letter, and however devout they may be, they have no name through which to pray, They come to God in their own name, in their own authority, and in their own merits. These persons, with belief in one God, are not apt to become convicted, humbled, and to mourn over their sins. They admit of no commandment or law by which their sins become exceedingly sinful. By their own searching they have found out the God they worship, and how he ought to be worshipped. They want no revelation. They have no godliness to be added. The advancement and the perfection of all their religion is human. Deists have no divine standard, no promises to exercise their faith and hope.

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Atheism, "without God," is the negative of all godliness or religion. We see, then, how godliness may not only be hindered or modified by different doctrines, but also how it may be annihilated out of the mind. In vain do men determine and resolve to be godly, and rely upon their own resolutions. Nothing without us or beyond us obeys the dictates of our wills. In the great controversy about free will it seems remarkable that so little has been said upon this most obvious fact, that, though it may be admitted that we are free, or have power to will what we desire or want, this freedom or power of action gives our wills no control over the external objects we will to have. Whatever of power or control we may obtain over these must be immediate or indirect. Ignorance and error must then set limits to the action and the effects of our wills. A person totally ignorant of godliness cannot will it, and one who hates, it cannot will to have it. But though we may know it and desire to love it, our will to obtain it immediately must be impotent. There are laws for the getting and keeping things not inherent in us, and godliness is not inherent in us. It comes from God, whom we cannot command. We must ask of him, and ask or pray to him aright, that is, with humility and thankfulness, not as our right. Here then we may see how the trinity of doctrine connects with prayer through one Mediator for the Holy Spirit. We ask it through the merits of Christ as a grace of the Spirit. We do not add godliness as we do knowledge and courage, but use in each case means suited to ends. We may, therefore, account for many cases in which men fail of godliness by applying these remarks. Men have the same natural germs of godliness in them that they have of knowledge; and means of knowledge may fail as means of godliness. "Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth."

TT

A MINISTER, having preached on the doctrine of original sin, was afterwards waited on by some persons, who stated their objections to what he had advanced. After hearing them, he said, "I hope you do not deny actual sin too." "No," they replied. The good man expressed his satisfaction at their acknowledgment; but to show the absurdity of their opinions in denying a doctrine so plainly taught in Scripture, he asked them, "Did you ever see a tree growing without a root?"

J. R.

"NOT SLOTHFUL IN BUSINESS.”

BUT this precept is also violated by those who are diligent in trifleswhose activity is a busy idleness. You may be very earnest in a pursuit which is utterly beneath your prerogative as an intelligent creature, and your high destination as an immortal being. Pursuits which are perfectly proper in creatures destitute of reason, may be very culpable in those who not only have reason, but are capable of enjoyments above the range of reason itself. We have imagined a man retaining all his consciousness, transformed into a zoophyte.

Let us imagine another similar transformation; fancy that, instead of a polypus, you were changed into a swallow.

There you have a creature abundantly busy, up in the early morning, for ever on the wing, as graceful and sprightly in its flight, as tasteful in the haunts which he selects. Look at him, zigzagging over the clover field, skimming the limpid lake, whisking round the steeple, or dancing gaily in the sky. Behold him in high spirits, shrieking out his ecstacy as he has bolted a dragon-fly, or darted through the narrow slits of the old turrets, or performed some other feats of hirundine agility.

And notice how he pays his morning visits, alighting elegantly on some house-top, and twittering politely by turns to the swallow on either side of him, and after five minutes' conversation, off and away to call for his friend at the castle. And now he is gone upon his travels-gone to spend the winter at Rome or Naples, to visit Egypt or the Holy Land, or perform some more recherché pilgrimage to Spain or the coast of Barbary. And when he comes home next April, sure enough he has been abroad; charming climate-highly delighted with the cicadas in Italy, and the bees on Hymettus; locusts in Africa rather scarce this season; but upon the whole much pleased with his trip, and returned in high health and spirits. Now, dear friends, this is a very proper life for a swallow, but is it a life for you? To flit about from house to house; to pay futile visits where, if the talk were written down, it would amount to little more than the chattering of a swallow; to bestow all your thoughts on graceful attitudes, and nimble movements, and polished attire; to roam from land to land with so little information in your head, or so little taste for the sublime or beautiful in your soul, that could a swallow publish his travels, and did you publish yours, we should probably find the one a counterpart of the other; the winged traveller enlarging on the discomforts of his nest, and the wingless one the miseries of his hotel or his chateau; you describing the places of amusement, or enlarging on the vastness of the country, and the abundance of the game; and your rival eloquent on the self-same things. Oh! it is a thought, not ridiculous, but appalling. If the earthly history of some of our brethren were written down; if a faithful record were kept of the way they spend their time; if all the hours of idle vacancy or idler occupancy were put together, and the very small amount of useful diligence deducted, the life of a bird or quadruped would be a nobler one; more worthy of its powers, and more equal to its Creator's end in forming it. Such a register is kept. Though the trifler does not chronicle his own vain words and wasted hours, they chronicle themselves. They find their indelible place in that book of remembrance with which human

hand cannot tamper, and from which no erasure, save one, can blot them. They are noted in the memory of God. And when once this life of wondrous opportunities and awful advantages is over-when the twenty or fifty years of probation are fled away when mortal existence, with its facilities for personal improvement and serviceableness to others, is gone beyond recall-when the trifler looks back to the long pilgrimage, with all the doors of hope and of usefulness past which he skipped in his frisky forgetfulness-what anguish will it move to think that he has gambolled through such a world without salvation to himself, without any real benefit to his brethren, a busy trifler, a voracious idler, a clever fool!-Life in Earnest.

REMINISCENCES OF MOSSLEY.

Most of our recollections of the scenes and events of our early days are attended with more or less of pleasurable emotion. To revive the images of things past as they are imprinted on our memories, and to review circumstances long gone by, at once soothes and entertains the mind. Charmed by the pleasing reverie, we enjoy some moments of "sweet oblivion" of our present trials, and seem to live an agreeable portion of our time over again, and to converse and to hold intercourse with times and events long since passed away, and to revive our acquaintance with friends who for many years have been inhabitants of the eternal world.

Some of my own most pleasing retrospects are associated with the retired and lovely village of Mossley. In this sequestered spot I spent four or five years of my early life. Here, from the age of seven to nearly twelve, I lived with my much-esteemed and amiable uncle, Richard Oldham; and although I had not then learned either to read or to write, or scarcely to speak-for at that time, and for years after, I was so grievously beset with stammering as to be unable to utter a sentence or even a word without painful and disagreeable hesitation-yet I could observe, and think, and reason, even then; and I am quite certain I could feel with as much intensity and with as lively an interest as at any subsequent period.

The moment I glanced on the name of Nathaniel Buckley, Esq., on the cover of our Magazine for the present month, there awakened within me a thousand recollections connected with him and with Mossley. These to me are so interesting that I cannot resist an effort to describe them; and I find them so very refreshing amid the cares of life—which are at present not a few-that I cannot forego the desire to depict, at least, a part of them, and to make an attempt to sketch from the tablet of my memory -before they are for ever obliterated-the names and some of the doings of several of the worthy men employed there at that time in carrying on the cause of God as identified with Methodism.

Perhaps there are few places in the British empire where Methodism has been more fairly tried, and where, for many years, this modification of Christianity has more fully produced its effects, than at Mossley. In the order of Divine Providence there were located in this neighbourhood a number of discreet and pious men who heartily espoused the cause of Christ, and who were knit together in love. If ever modern times ex

hibited the delightful similitude of the primitive church when the enemies of Christ were constrained to bear testimony to the concord, and peace, and mutual affection of his disciples, it was at Mossley. Verily for a time believers in this "happy valley " appeared to be of one heart and of one soul. Lowly and sequestered as is the situation of this village, it was impossible that the people assembling there for worship could be hid. They attracted the attention, overcame the prejudices, and won the affection of many of the surrounding population. The extensive moorlands, with their sombre wastes and spiral summits, which skirted the north and the western horizon, and which appeared to frown upon the vale below, could not prevent the genial breezes of prosperity from blowing upon this garden of the Lord; nor could the lofty acclivity which rises still more immediately on the opposite side of this village, and half conceals the western skies, obstruct the free course of the clouds of heaven, which wafted onward by gales of divine blessing, poured refreshing showers of grace, and mercy, and peace from our Lord Jesus Christ, on the plants of his own right-hand planting, which bore abundant fruit, much of which is now gathered unto life eternal. Here, for a number of years, the word of God grew and mightily prevailed. During some seasons of special revival believers were added to the church daily. Not only was the gospel the subject of address from the pulpit-the love of Christ formed a pleasing topic of conversation in the social circle and in the workshop, and supplied the chief theme of domestic intercourse and fireside enjoyment. Distinctly do I recollect when-availing themselves of the short intervals from labour-one and another stepped into the humble cottage of my late uncle to testify of the goodness of God, both to themselves and to others who had been lately made partakers of gospel liberty. Even now I seem to myself to see the manly countenance of my departed relative lighted up with a smile by the cheering intelligence, while tears of gladness glistened in his eyes.

Any one visiting Mossley a little while before the New Connexion was formed, would have found the Society in a quiet, collected, and harmonious condition; waiting the result of the agitation, but agreed among themselves, almost to a man, to claim a greater measure of lay influence than was then enjoyed in the Methodist body. After the Leeds Conference, therefore, in 1797, when the division took place, they formed a part of the New Itinerancy. It is not my purpose to enter into the merits of the state of affairs in Methodism which led tc this separation. The leading friends at Mossley were unanimous, and conceiving that, as they had built the Chapel, and were solely responsible for any encumbrance on the property, they had a just claim upon it, they retained it in possession. This question I will not attempt to adjudicate, further than to express an opinion that, right or wrong, it would, in my view, have been the more advised and peaceable course, if here, and in all similar cases, the Societies forming the New Connexion, had left their old friends in quiet possession of the chapels, and either erected new ones, or contented themselves with such accommodations as they were able to procure till they could obtain better.

The friends at Mossley were steady and persevering. They wisely avoided embroiling themselves and the people in the disputes then afloat, and thereby many, no doubt, were preserved from turning aside to vain jangling, by which numbers in that day first wounded their own charity, and subsequently made shipwrek of faith and a good conscience, Nothing

perhaps, in its commencement, more retarded the progress of the Connexion than the prevalence of this spirit, which was much provoked and long perpetuated by the odium cast on these new adventurers from the camp of their old friends. To be scouted and almost anathematized by men who had heretofore caressed them as brethren in Christ, and whom they had received as heralds of salvation and messengers of peace, because nothing more was sought than a scriptural participation in administering the affairs of the church, was no slight trial of their faith, and it is scarcely matter of astonishment that many should hereby be offended and fall away. The friends at Mossley passed through this fiery ordeal as little scathed perhaps as any Society in the Connexion. Their escape, under divine grace, was doubtless to be attributed to the prudence and sobermindedness of the leading members of that Society.

In those days, the means of grace were highly valued. Many of the friends came from a distance. The cottage of my uncle, "which joined hard to the synagogue," used to be thronged, even on a dark and stormy winter's evening, with persons from the edge of the moors, and from other places equally remote, for an hour or more before the Chapel doors were opened. It was the uniform habit of my uncle to make all welcome who came within the doors of his habitation. In his leisure hours the good man was seldom without company; but our greatest influx was on the Sabbath, and on the evenings of other days when service was held in the Chapel. There never lived a more happy, social, and agreeable companion than Richard Oldham, of Mossley. It is true, my aunt would at times manifest some slight displeasure at having her domestic arrangements a little incommoded by so large an acquaintance, and my uncle would be sure to hear of it when they were alone; but his native sweetness of disposition easily softened down the asperity of her temper, and upon the next occasion of meeting, the friends were as welcome as ever. At those times my uncle-ever watchful for opportunities to please and to edify his guests-would have marked some portion of a book or a periodical, and after the accustomed salutations, when all were seated, he would turn over and read to as many as were present. My uncle, when a boy, attended the church of Mr. Simpson, of Macclesfield, one of the best readers in England, and he insensibly acquired much of the cadence and accentuation of Mr. Simpson; nor were the tones of his sweet-tuned voice much unlike those of that great and holy man, of whom the mother of my uncle used to say, "I would rather hear Mr. Simpson read a chapter, than hear a common preacher deliver a sermon."

There was, in short, a charm in my uncle's reading; his voice was clear, his articulation distinct, his delivery easy and fluent, and above all, there was something so agreeably touching in his peculiar tones and emphasis, accompanied by becoming and correspondent glances of his excursive and eloquent eye, that, if his author had beauties, he was sure to bring them out; and if his hearers possessed the smallest measure of taste, they were certain of being interested and entertained. Every one present would, at those times, manifest deep concern in the matter discoursed upon, except my aunt. Nor, indeed, would she be unaffected; but then her feelings were of a different class-her mind was cast in a totally different mould. While satisfaction rested on every other countenance, her's betokened impatience and rebuke; and well do I recollect that, when my attention has been rivetted on my uncle, and my thirsty understanding eagerly drinking in every word which fell from his lips,