to be the temples of the Holy Ghost, and your sin is increased by this your profession. But in works ye are disobedient, and show no proof that ye ever received the grace of God in truth. Remember the ancient Israel. They were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; but with many of them God was not well pleased. He sware in wrath that they should not enter into His rest, and their carcases fell in the wilderness."

A Night in the Snow: Or a Struggle for Life. By the Rev. E. Donald Carr. James Nisbet and Co., London.-The marvellous escape of Mr. Carr from being frozen to death in the terrific snow storm of the 27th of January last, is still fresh in the memory of all who read in the columns of the newspapers the short but graphic account of the perilous night he spent in trying to find his way across the Long Mynd mountain of Shropshire. In the little book now before us, Mr. Carr gives us a detailed account of the perils he passed through, and the suffering he endured on that memorable night. It may well be called "a battle for life;" few men could have undergone the amount of physical suffering which he so bravely struggled against; and had it not been for his unprecedented energy, and God's good providence, he would never have survived to tell the tale of how he passed a night in the snow. The profits from the sale of this work are to be devoted to the restoration of Woolstaston Church, of which Mr. Carr is the Rector, and we are sure that it will be read with deep interest.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS.

THE last session of the old Parliament is drawing to a close, and within a month we shall be in the turmoil of the new elections. Fifty years ago, Legh Richmond and others dissuaded serious professors of religion, and especially the clergy, from taking any part in politics. We do not repeat their arguments, for we by no means adopt the principle. We think that the Christian man, whether clergyman or layman, amongst other duties which he owes to society, is under the strongest obligation to use all his political influence, especially at the time of elections, and to take care that he use it well. And yet the difference between these excellent men and ourselves is not so great as it may at first sight appear. What they were afraid of was, that pious people should be found addressing a noisy rabble at the hustings, or a drunken crowd of excited partisans in the committee-room or the public-house. We mean something very different when we speak in these days of political influence. We would have it fearlessly exercised even in the pulpit. The Christian minister loses sight of his true dignity and of his lawful calling, if he ventures upon what are properly called party politics; such, for instance, as the extension of the franchise, or the relative merits of a Liberal or a Conservative administration: but he is never more clearly within his own boundaries than when he insists upon the duty of all Christian electors to choose

out men of piety for their representatives-men who will do their utmost to promote a Christian education, and no other, whether in our universities or in the lowest of our ragged schools; who will resist to the utmost the aggressions of popery, now so shamefully connived at, if not openly encouraged; who will promote all that tends to the virtue and happiness of this great nation-for instance, the observance of the Lord's day, the suppression of intemperance, and the welfare, we will add, of the National Church. It is true that all these points may be handled rashly in the pulpit. So they may, and so may many others of perhaps greater moment, which still no man thinks it right to exclude from the wide circle of pastoral instructions; but the minister of Christ should have so learned Christ as to be able to infuse the true spirit of his master even into discussions such as these. It may be a difficult work, but in these times it is a work that must be done. Within the last month, painful are the evidences which the expiring Parliament has given us of its indifference to the growth of popery, and of its dislike to those venerable institutions where sound learning is professedly taught only in connection with the pure faith of our Reformed Church, and where public prayer is wont to be made "for the king's most honourable council, and for all the nobility and magistrates of the realm, that all and every of these, in their several callings, may serve truly and painfully to the glory of God and the edifying and well governing of His people, remembering the solemn account that they must make; also for the whole Commons of this realm, that they may live in the true faith and fear of God, in humble obedience to the king, and brotherly charity one to another." (See Canon 55.)

We

We have been for some time aware that a project was on foot for establishing a Church of England College on sound Protestant, that is, distinctly Evangelical principles, (for we plead guilty to no sectarianism,) in the neighbourhood of London. Although great names entitled to our highest respect were connected with it, we confess that we regarded the movement at first with some dissatisfaction. thought that the students would have, if we may so express it, a sort of hot-house education; that wanting the rough breezes, conflicts, and collisions of the university, they would grow up feeble-minded or selfsufficient men. But recent events have shown us too plainly that the scheme was a wise one, and that it was introduced to the public not a day too soon. We did not calculate upon the hollowness of our House of Commons. We did not believe that, in the rush of loose principles and infidel sectarianism, even within our own Church, the time was so near when it would come to be disputed whether our ancient universities should any longer be religious foundations, and gravely proposed that religion should be banished from their studies, or rather from their statutes, and left to take its chance, not only with every species of dissent, but with every kind of natural science. Yet all this has come to pass; and it is highly probable that the new Church of England College, now established at St. John's Wood on a scale of considerable grandeur, will be the only seat of learning to which our young men can be sent to receive a pious as well as a learned education to fit them for the ministry. It has been very liberally endowed by a few wealthy members of our Church, who make their wealth sub

servient to the glory of God; and it seems to be conducted on very liberal principles. We have received a circular letter inviting us to mention the names of pious young men wanting assistance, with a promise of scholarships to those who are found deserving of them. If we understand the circular alluded to, it is not the very poor student, but the son of the merchant or tradesman in middling circumstances, whom it has specially in view; and from no class of society can the Church of England look for a more abundant or a better qualified body of spiritual labourers. The new college at St. John's Wood has our best wishes for its entire success.

Of news from abroad, we have none of much importance. The Maori war is not concluded. Our relations with Japan are in a more promising state. But we cannot forbear expressing a wish that our colonial secretaries would write and act with more consideration for our colonies, even where they are decidedly wrong. Our persistence in the plan of sending convicts to New Holland or Western Australia has produced a degree of irritation, totally disproportioned, it may be, to the injury anticipated, but yet nothing more than a wise home government ought to have foreseen. With Canada, we are happy to say, a perfectly good understanding once more prevails.

The Southern States of America, now that they are once more open to English travellers, present a dismal spectacle of the consequences of civil war. The country is laid waste; the gentry are ruined; and the slaves are rebellious. They cannot understand that, being emancipated, their masters are no longer obliged to feed and clothe them; they expect to be maintained in a life of idleness. This is but natural; for their reasoning is that of children, or rather perhaps of savages. Collisions with the military have taken place, and some of the negroes have been "burnt" or shot. The South is conquered; but its restoration to the Union seems at present to be a task too great for those who rule in the Northern States.

Against Jefferson Davis the monstrous charge of having been concerned in the plot for the assassination of President Lincoln has been abandoned. It was evidently introduced without a shadow of evidence, solely to inflame the passions of the people; yet he is brought to his trial on the charge of treason. We can scarcely believe that the Federal government will dare to put him to death. But there is no knowing to what excesses a wild spirit of revenge will not lead them. If it should be so, the day of his execution will be a day of mourning in England, though President Davis was no friend to this country. It will be the greatest outrage committed against the society of nations since Louis XVI. and his beauteous wife fell beneath the guillotine. Queen Elizabeth has given us a precedent how to act. After the massacre of the Huguenots, when the French ambassador desired an audience to justify or explain away the atrocity, he found the Queen and all her Court dressed in the deepest mourning; a solemn silence prevailed; a frown was on every face, except on that of the Queen and her ladies, whose eyes were turned to the ground with an expression of the deepest sorrow. The French ambassador, writing to his court, admits that he was utterly disconcerted, and retired abashed. Such an audience ought the American ambassador to receive from Queen Victoria, should Jefferson Davis be put to a felon's death.

Christian Certainty. By Samuel Wainwright, Vicar of Holy Trinity, Micklegate, York. Hatchard and Co., London.

"A SYNOPSIS of the Christian Evidences" would be no untrue title for this work. It brings together and presents in one view such an accumulation of proofs of the truth of the Bible, as we never remember to have met with before. The author has evidently read a great deal, and thought a great deal, upon the subject; while, in his manner of treating it, he has as evidently aimed to give to truth all the force of truth.

The credulity of Scepticism is one of the most marked characteristics of that malady-a symptom at once of the existence of the disease, and an evidence that there is some wrong action of the heart. When a man can believe (as most sceptics do) almost anything without proof that seems to contravene the statements of the Bible, and yet can question here where he cannot disprove, it shows a weakness of judgment indicative rather of the want of soundness of mind than of the possession of superior sense. No one is required by Scripture to believe without reason, but only upon sufficient reason. Provision is made for this in the nature of the Christian evidences themselves. Of this we have proof in the words of St. Luke, which Mr. Wainwright has taken as the motto of his work:-"That thou mightest know the Certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed."

A question may naturally be raised as to what constitutes "certainty." This, as a matter of course, varies with the nature of the things to which it relates. I cannot expect to have the same certainty, or, rather, kind of certainty, of the

existence of such a country as New Zealand, which I have never seen, as I have of the existence of my own hand with which I am now writing. Moral certainty, and ocular certainty are two very different things. The certainty of scientific experiment is not equal to the certainty of my own consciousness. There may be mistakes on my part as to the causes of the observed results. The certainty that arises out of geological discoveries must necessarily be far less than that which is grounded upon known and unmistakeable facts. This certainty varies both in kind and in degree. There is no certainty of an external kind which comes nearer to absolute certainty than history, written by the very persons who witnessed the facts recorded, and had no possible motive for stating anything but what was strictly true: and this is just the kind of certainty which we have of the truth of the Scripture records. It is the certainty of "eye-witnesses."

In founding moral lessons and great spiritual facts upon the basis of human history, the All-Wise seems to have consulted for the unchanging security of the truth which he would impart to mankind. Had religion been made to rest upon opinion, or upon the progressive sense of the human race, or upon any of those external influences which are always varying, it would necessarily, in a measure, have been uncertain, doubtful, liable to directly opposite apprehensions; but, by being fossilized in the facts of history, it remains from age to age the same. The facts recorded by eye-witnesses respecting the exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt, their passage through the Red Sea, their journeys through the Wilderness, the manner in which they were sustained for forty years, their settlement at last in the land of Canaan, connected as they are with observances that continue to this day: or again, the facts respecting our Lord and Saviour, His wonderful birth, His superhuman wisdom, His miracles, His death, His burial, His resurrection, His ascension into heaven,-will ever remain certain, because they are facts, and cannot be changed.

It is a point that ought never to be overlooked when we are considering the question of the truth of the Scriptures, that the facts which the Bible records would, most of them, be just as much facts, if the religion of the Bible were proved to be a fiction. The facts, to wit, of man's creation as a being of a peculiar order, and of his condition as a sinful creature, conscious of his need of a Redeemer, exist apart from the Bible, constituting in themselves a great mystery, and all that the Bible really does is to give the solution of that mystery. Unless some other and better solution can be given of it, men are bound to receive the solution which the Bible supplies, or they put themselves not only out of the pale of Faith, but out of the pale of Reason.