days I have heard of two similar cases: two instances of persons who continued under water till every effort to emerge had ceased; and to whose minds, at that moment, the whole of their past life re-appeared and was present at one view.

H. W.

EXTRACTS FROM A SERMON BY THE LATE REV. J. PENTYCROSS. To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

1800.

I SEND you some passages taken from a manuscript Sermon, preached by the Rev. J. Pentycross, Vicar of St. Mary's, Wallingford, about the year To your younger readers they must approve themselves by their intrinsic excellence and value; but they will be doubly interesting to those who remember the high estimation in which that honoured and esteemed servant of his divine Lord was held among those faithful and devoted men of the last century, who, with him, were made honoured instruments in the hands of God for carrying on that great revival of Gospel truth and piety, the blessed results of which we, who have entered into their labours, are privileged to witness.

C.

1 Thess. i. 9. "How ye turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven."-From the impression we discover the seal; and from the nature of the conversions under the Apostolic preaching, we learn what that preaching itself was. Hence it follows, that, as the Thessalonians turned from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, 1st. The Apostle taught them to turn from idols, alleging that if their worship of idols was that of God through their medium, they worshipped God through a medium not only unworthy of God, but inferior to themselves. "Forasmuch as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto wood or stone." That if their worship of idols was that of departed heroes and benefactors, there was no evidence that these knew, when once gone, what was passing in this world, much less that they had power to afford us help. That if their worship of idols was that of the powers of nature, or of virtues and moral qualities, it was most absurd; because the powers of nature are unintelligent, and the moral qualities abstract ideas, which have no personality or subsistence by themselves. Here by the way let me remark, that when the French nation lately discarded "Mr. Jesus," alias Christ, and set up a religion of Reason in his stead, how, manifestly, "professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." For when they erected the worship of humanity, of fidelity, of liberty, of patriotism, and the like, they obliged men to adore things which have no individual and separate existence things which have not so much as the nature of persons, but perfect and acknowledged non-entities. 2ndly. The Apostle brought them to serve the living and true God: the fountain of all being and well-being to others, and a most real and perfect existence therefore himself: one who could never deceive or disappoint their expectations; to whom they were to go as so many poverties to unbounded riches; as so many miseries to essential love and pity; as so many guilts to infinite pardon and salvation; and as so many weaknesses to eternal strength and all-sufficiency. 3rdly. The Apostle taught them "to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come." Consequently he pointed

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out the wrath to come, to which they were obnoxious; the atonement and righteousness of Jesus Christ for all who flee to him for refuge; and the public, high, and formal declaration of its immense sufficiency, by raising him, in quality of Mediator, from the dead. That all who use him should not be left to incur new wrath by their sins, but be sanctified by his Spirit, as well as justified by his merit; fitted for heaven, as well as admitted to it. That nevertheless they must die, in common with all men but that they should be raised from the dead; be transfigured in body like unto Christ's glorious body; should mount up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, who should come first to justify and vindicate Him before an assembled world at a last universal judgment, and afterwards to conduct them, in all perfection of body and soul, to the perfection of all life, bliss, virtue, and glory in the heaven of heavens, where they should be entitled for ever to act their parts assigned to their regenerate natures, and to enjoy all good at the fountain head of goodto eternity. That all this attached to them only upon turning from idols to serve the living and true God, and that thenceforward they were to live and die waiting for the Son of God from heaven. At preaching like this, what marvel if Jupiter, the fabled father of gods and men, perished before the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace! What marvel, if Neptune fell in pieces before Him, who was heard rebuking the winds and the waves, and though all deaf and irrational, yet somehow they instantly heard and felt, and immediately there was a great calm; who was also seen walking upon the sea, and wherever he was going to tread, the waves suddenly hardened for the moment into a pavement of Lacedemonian marble. Pluto was annihilated before Him, upon whose shoulder were seen so conspicuously the keys of death and of hell. Could Apollo stand before Him, who healed all manner of sickness and disease visibly by his word, or rather will; and at whose voluntary crucifixion the sun itself became for three hours self-extinct? What must become of Bacchus, when six water pots, filled to the brim only with water, in a moment are transmuted into wine, with all the properties of the grape long concocted by the sun, and long fermented and matured by age; full of colour, zest, and spirit, without a single particle of the juice of the vine? The goddess of Wisdom could no longer be borne, when the Divine Boy of twelve years of age confounded the sagest Hebrew doctors; and by his Spirit at length imparted to thousands the full knowledge of all languages spoken upon earth, without the least previous acquaintance with any of them. The divinity of the Air died away, when Jesus was seen rising leisurely from the ground, mounting through the regions of air as its proper Lord, walking upon the wings of the wind, and received by a cloud out of all human sight. Isaiah predicted the downfal of Idolatry on the preaching of the Gospel, when he said one and another should be justified in Christ; and immediately adds, "Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth," &c. (Isaiah xlvi. 1, 2.) But let us come to a more minute contemplation of the not negative religion of turning from idols; but positive, of, first, Serving the living and true God, and second, Waiting for his Son from heaven. First, then, What is the nature of, how great the necessity for, and equally the pleasure in, "Serving the living and true God?" Secondly, What is the nature of, necessity for, and pleasure in, "Waiting for his Son from heaven?" You desire both, how shall you attain them? Just like the parties in the text. First, You must turn from your idols: whatever known sin you indulge: worldliness: and, in short, whatever stands either in opposition to, or competition with, God. Else your sins, retained and indulged, render CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 105. 3 X

you incapable of these acts. Secondly, This done, you have only to turn to God for these and all things, in order to have them. They only turned, and were instantly both enabled to serve, &c., and entitled to wait ever afterwards for the happy advent of the Son of God. What greatly commends this Scripture is, that it is self-evidently the Apostle's own abridgment of all the Gospels. The history of grace; the essence of saving experience; the substance of all which the Apostle desired and his people became, was, Serving the living and true God, and waiting for his Son from heaven. Here let me correct an error of the Christian world. We are apt to bound our views too commonly by the happiness of our souls immediately after death; but from very many places of Scripture, and for many reasons, it appears that we ought to carry our views much farther-to the coming of the Son of God; and to take into our fixed expectations the period of the consummation of our bodies and souls, and their ultimate perfect condition and final settlement after the judgment, when no change will take place again, but things be as they are to remain to all eternity.

ON THE UNPROFITABLENESS OF DINNER PARTIES.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

I HAVE often thought the subject of DINNERS might be profitably treated in your pages. In default of something better, you may perhaps give place to the following remarks. Of course, I refer neither to public nor private dinners professedly worldly-which speak sufficiently for themselves, in making no pretensions to high and heavenly converse, much less to spiritual edification, and scarcely even to the collision of cultivated minds or to the coruscation of literary talent; but which are obviously (although sometimes ostensibly for charitable objects) only so many convenient ways of consuming time, indulging appetite, or promoting the connections of business. I advert exclusively to the dinner parties of "those who call themselves Christians;" and the conclusion to which-after some experience-I have been compelled to come, is, that these, if they do not require to be relinquished altogether, need to be quite as strictly watched as any other temptation to which modern Christians can be subjected.

A dear friend in Ireland, (to whom that troubled spot may perhaps discover, when he is gone, that she has been more indebted than to any statesman, of any party, who has ever prescribed for her relief) lately observed in a letter to me, that he had long abandoned the dinner system, as pure Antinomianism. I was somewhat startled by the phrase; but on asking him to explain whether he meant that the professors of Antinomianism were accustomed to dine together in his quarter, he replied that he had by no means intended to convey that impression, but simply to state that the frequenters of such splendid and secular assemblages (all, be it remembered, professedly Christians, and actually hearers of the Gospel) did practically, by keeping up such meetings with each other, prove themselves to belong to no higher a school of theology. Such, at least, was my friend's answer; and I am not prepared to affirm that he took too strong, and still less an unchristian or uncharitable, view of the subject.

In religious families, when a minister is present, the dinner is sometimes followed by an evening commentary on Scripture, and a concluding

prayer; and it is not denied that good may be, and I trust often is, thus obtained, especially for the servants; but even in this case I would ask, What does a dinner do for the party which might not be far better secured without it ?-suppose after the refreshment of tea. Is it not found, that such a dinner as is usually provided, when it succeeds to the business of the day, and is followed by wine, is rather favourable to drowsiness-if not to sleep-when comments are introduced in the evening? And would not some, however short, perusal of the Scriptures, followed by spiritual converse-especially if upon some subject previously stated-and succeeded by a short prayer, be found a far preferable employment of the evening? All persons are not obliged to talk, but all may be hearers; nor is it necessary that any should be excluded from contributing to the common stock, who may prefer to state their views by reading a short paper on the proposed subject. Such a plan has, at least, long had the sanction of my own experience on the advantage to be derived from it.

As to the preference of a light to a luxurious meal, I think little more need be said than simply to request the advocates of dinners to review, on their return home, what they have been enabled to collect, either of religious, or even of intellectual good; or what they have reason to believe they have been happy enough to contribute to others, from which they can either scripturally or reasonably hope that their fellowChristians may have been really benefited. The very nature of this kind of intercourse seems to forbid almost every species of advantage, since the numbers usually assembled at our dinner parties must necessarily preclude all general intercourse, and confine the conversation often to the most trivial subjects with the person who may happen to be seated next to us. It was remarked by a nobleman of taste, in reference to the difficulty of directing the commonest mental intercourse to any advantageous end, that "No dinner party should be more numerous than the Muses, or fewer than the Graces;"-by which I suppose he meant to convey, that the ordinary attentions of courtesy. and the necessary occupation of the moment, must needs interrupt all intellectual good to be expected from a meeting where the parties must inevitably split into sections, and where no topic of discussion could be general, or have a chance of being conducted for the common good. If this remark has any force, must it not equally apply to the intercourse where any higher good is in question, notwithstanding that some of the parties composing it may honestly have anticipated better things?

I am quite aware that in discussing such a topic as this, much must, after all, be left to every one's conscience; and that he whose taste, or perhaps some better principle, may lead him to renounce the dining system as questionable at the best, but perhaps positively injurious, must yet find charity for those who differ in opinion with him—so far "let not him that eateth, judge him that eateth not." Still, after every allowance shall be made, so much of peril will yet remain inseparable, as I apprehend, from the usages of even Christian society in this particular, as will be found calculated to put Christian professors seriously on their guard, and cause them to “ try and examine themselves" on this head; as well as to inquire, as in the Divine presence, whether some remedy, if not that which I have suggested, cannot be discovered; or whether if, in a given case, the practice cannot be wholly renounced-as, for instance, in that of an allegiant and affectionate wifesomething may not be effected in ameliorating the evil, in abridging its excesses, or in diminishing its frequency. Even could it be supposed that

there were nothing abstractedly wrong in the usage; still "we perish," says some ancient, "by lawful things," [Perimus licitis]; and though, when I asked the late Lord Teignmouth (who so approved that sentiment as to adopt it for his motto) who was its author, he could not inform me, its truth must ever recommend it among all who receive as the Divine Word that emphatic caution, "Blessed is the man that feareth always." I suppose that, whatever may be the opinion of your readers on the general question of dinners, it is impossible but they must agree (may it be more than in theory!) on the folly, or rather sin, of Christians vying with each other in splendid displays of plate, a large attendance of servants, or a sumptuous outlay on choice and expensive delicacies. "A friend of mine," says the valued John Newton, "told me that he once dined with Dr. Butler, when Bishop of Durham; and though the guest was a man of fortune, and the interview by appointment, the provision was no more than a joint of meat and a pudding. The Bishop apologized for his plain fare by saying that It was his way of living; that he had been long disgusted with the fashionable expense of time and money in entertainments, and was determined that it should receive no countenance from his example.'' "The economy of this truly venerable prelate," adds Mr. Newton, was not the effect of parsimony; for I have been assured that though he was some time possessed of the princely revenue of Durham, he might be said to die poor, leaving little more money than was necessary to discharge his debts and pay for his funeral; but we may accommodate to him what the Apostles said of themselves on another occasion: 'He did not think it meet to leave the Word of God, and to serve tables ;' and at the tables of some gentlemen of very respectable characters and affluent fortunes, who do me the honour to notice me, I have often seen little more than I should have thought it right to have had at my own, if they had favoured me with their company. It is at least certain, that the waste and parade of which I complain, are by no means confined to those who, according to the common phrase, can best afford it."-Newton's Works, vi. 461.

ZENAS.

THE WORSHIP OF JUPITER AND ST. PETER AT ROME.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

THAT Some of the principal observances of the Romish Church were derived from Paganism, is a fact which many able writers have established. A striking proof that such was the origin of one of the most popular customs of the Romanists, was furnished me in the city of Rome itself, during a recent sojourn there. For the information of those who have never been there, I will describe the custom to which I refer.

In the Church of St. Peter's, mounted upon a pedestal of about four feet in height, is a statue of St. Peter, in a sitting posture, with one hand held up as if to command attention, and holding in the other two keys, while the right foot is extended. The head of this statue has a most undignified and unecclesiastical appearance, and would more suitably represent a barber than an Apostle. It is very generally believed by Protestant travellers, that the statue originally belonged to a temple of Jupiter. Hence the well-known observation of a wit: "The statue is no longer Jupiter; but Jew-Peter." This statue seems to be