fervently;" may "stand fast in one spirit, with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel:" and for ourselves, let us not cease to bless God that he has given us the church, and that he has made our English Zion a praise in the earth.

And now take a final survey. "Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that ye may tell it to the generation following." Primitive in foundation, apostolical in constitution, pure and scriptural in faith and doctrine, worshipping God in the beauty of holiness, endeared to us by many sweet associations and sacred recollections, is she not a church to love? Is she not a church to cleave to? Is she not a church worthy of our deepest attachment, of our best affections? Is she not a church for whose sake, if need be, we ought willingly to lay down our lives? Shall we not bless God for such a church? Is it an unholy or an unworthy feeling which causes us to cling with fondness to our holy mother, to grieve over her wayward children who refuse to be gathered under her wings, and to burn with shame and anger at the assaults of rude and violent men who see in her no beauty, who would take away her vail, and smite and wound her? No, my brethren! Again I say, let us bless God for His church; and let us also bless His holy name that, notwithstanding the rage and malice of her enemies; notwithstanding the supineness, the luke

warmness, the timidity, the treachery of those who ought to be, and who profess to be, her friends; that, notwithstanding the presumption and the tumult of them that hate her and rise up against her are increasing ever continually more and more, still her lamp burns brightly and with increasing lustre; her morning and evening sacrifice still rises up to God pure and scriptural, and reasonable and seemly; honest and true-hearted men still rally around her altars, ready and resolute to resist even unto blood, rather than she shall be polluted by the red hand of Rome, or paralyzed by the chill grasp of rationalism. Her foundations are upon the holy hills. The gates of hell shall not prevail against her. She may be persecuted; she shall never be forsaken. She may be cast down ; she shall never be destroyed. She may have to encounter the storm; she may have to face the tempest; she may have to pass through a long night of darkness and dreariness, and gloom and heaviness: but we know that in the end she shall "look forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners."

London: J. Rider, Printer, 14, Bartholomew Close..

The Tradition of Confirmation.

2 THESS. ii. 15.

"Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught."!

THERE are two opposite mistakes with regard to religious observances, both of which we must take care to id; one, a superstitious dependence upon such observances, the other an unbelieving contempt for them.

Some persons so exalt and magnify forms and ceremonies, as to make it appear that these constitute the whole of religion; forgetting the words of Christ, "It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing; " others, with equal unspirituality, undervalue and cry down those godly and wholesome customs which have been handed down in the church of Christ, even from apostolic times.

This is by far the worse and more dangerous error of the two. Reverence for the house of God, for the church, the ministers, the ordinances of God, is a religious, a Christian feeling—a feeling