ment without firmness and decision. If firmness | without affection is tyranny, affection without firmness is folly. There lay the sin of Eli. He had affection enough to advise, but wanted decision to command and to restrain. Let no command be given which is not clearly and unquestionably reasonable. But when it has been given, let it be obeyed. Every concession here is weakness, yea, cruelty. A household accustomed to obey, will, in the end, scarce require to be commanded. Intimately connected with firmness, is prudence and discretion. Without this, decision, even when combined with affection, will often defeat its own end. It is a matter of vast importance to know when to command. In some cases mere advice, in others unbending authority, is required. In the whole matter of rewards and punishments, the utmost discretion is necessary. Injudicious rewards render obedience mercenary; too frequent or severe punishments make it slavish and impracticable. The object of rewards should not be to purchase obedience, but to encourage and mark the excellence of it. Punishments often repeated lose their effect. Severity of punishment breaks the spirit of a child, and renders him desperate. In a well governed household, a frown will be felt as a punishment. "Ye fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged." In one word, persevering evenness and constancy is of the last importance in the government of a family. Inequality of treatment, want of any fixed and uniform system or plan, decision and firmness to-day, followed by relaxation and overindulgence to-morrow, concession for a time, stern resistance afterwards, all this is not less fatal than unhappily common. You shall see a parent do nothing but smile, according to the humour of his mind, when his countenance ought to be marked by deep displeasure. And for some venial offence that scarce ought to have been noticed, you shall find him giving vent to the most passionate expressions of anger, which the child scarce knows whether to despise or dread. Christians in general. But if we are not saints, not sanctified ones, what are we? Not the people of God certainly, but his enemies. Let us remember the frequent use of the term saints throughout the Scriptures. The Israelites were called an holy nation,' the people of the Lord who sanctified them;' in the book of Psalms, the godly are frequently distinguished by the name of saints; and in St. Paul's Epistles, Christians are generally described under this name, which, if it does not imply that all to whom he wrote were saints indeed, implies at least, that all Christians profess, and ought to be such.-ISABELLA GRAY MYLNE. and Offices of our Lord Jesus Christ.) (Titles Object of Christ's Coming.-Christ came to heal the sick and let the healthy die.-PASCAL. THE PROTESTANT CHURCH OF FRANCE, FROM THE REVOLUTION IN 1792 TO BY THE REV. JOHN G. LORIMER, MANY men entertain the notion that it is only religious following remarkable passage from Rousseau, in a pub lished letter to D'Alembert, where, speaking of what he calls fanaticism, but what we might probably call true religion, he says, "Fanaticism is not an error, but a blind senseless fury, which reason can never keep within bounds. The only way to hinder it from spread I shall make but one general and closing remark on the corresponding duties of the household, that they are bound cordially to fall in with those various duties of the head, by attending ing is to restrain those who broach it. In vain is it to regularly and willingly on the family devotion, receiving with marked attention and gratitude the demonstrate to madmen that they are deceived by their religious instructions offered to them, and cheerleaders; still will they be as eager as ever to follow fully submitting themselves to the authority, and in every possible way concurring with and aiding the government, by God vested in the person of the head for the welfare of the whole. CHRISTIAN TREASURY. What it is to be a Saint.-If to be a saint is to be conformed to the likeness of Him who was sanctification personified, oh! who among us are saints? Some of us, perhaps, are far from desiring the appellation, deeming it rather a term of ridicule or reproach. Or, if we respect the character it denotes, we are yet, perhaps, contented to admire it in others, especially in those who have departed this life, viewing it as the attainment of but a few, and not to be expected of them. I see but one way to stop its progress, and that is to combat it with its own weapons. Little does it avail either to reason or convince. You must lay aside philosophy, shut your books, take up the sword, and punish the knaves." These sentiments occur in a letter in which he praises pacific dispositions, and denounces persecution. Such is the consistency of infidel philosophers. But it is unnecessary to appeal to the writings of infidelity; her practice, in the treatment alike of Roman Catholics and Protestants, in the course of the French Revolution, has settled for ever the question of her tolerant spirit. On the 20th of September, the Na tional Convention abolished the Sabbath, a day sacred in the eyes of every Christian, by decreeing a new division of the year. The decree runs in these words: "That the era of the French shall be reckoned from the foundation of the republic, which took place 22d September 1792; that the Christian or vulgar era is abolished; that the year is divided into twelve months, each of thirty days, after which five days shall ensue, which shall make part of no month whatever. Each month shall be divided into three parts of ten days each. The months shall bear the names of the liberty and equality of the people, of the regeneration of the mountain, of the republic, of the tennis court, of unity, of fraternity, of the pikes, of the sans culottes, &c. &c. The days shall bear the name of the level of liberty, of the national cockade, of the plough, of the compass, of the fasces, of cannon, of oak, of rest, &c. &c. "The report on which this decree proceeded is said to have been made up by the first French astronomers, and was received by the Convention with bursts of applause." It may be said that a government is entitled to make what division of the year it pleases, and that this involves no persecution; but what did infidelity do as soon as she had changed the week into a decade or period of ten days? She ordered reclaiming merchants to keep open their shops on the Sabbath, under the penalty of being considered suspected persons if they dared to shut them; and it is commanded, that religious exercises, instead of being observed on the Sabbath, shall be celebrated on the last day of the decades. The municipality of Paris decreed, that "all the churches or temples, of whatever religion or worship existing in Paris, should be instantly shut; and that every individual who shall seek for the opening of a church or a temple, shall be arrested as a suspicious person." It was decreed by the Convention, that a colossal monument should be raised in the great ball of the commonalty of Paris, to manifest the suppression of all religious worship, to bear on its front the word Light, on its breast Nature and Truth, and on its arms Strength and Courage. A deputation of citizens from the department of Cantal addressed the Convention in these terms: "One thing is wanting to the Revolution-one department has been eager to give an example of philosophy-we have suppressed priests and their worship. The Eternal will have among us no other temples than our hearts, and no other worship than acts of civism." When the goddess of Reason, in the person of a prostitute, was worshipped, the multitude exclaimed, "No more altars! No more priests! No other God but a God of nature!" "In the wretched city of Lyons, not only is public worship suppressed, and the churches defiled; but the most gross outrage has been committed on every thing sacred. On the 10th of November last, an ass, dressed out in a sacerdotal habit, was led in procession through the town by two sans culottes, carrying a sacred cup, out of which they gave the animal drink; and when they arrived at one of the public edifices, Bibles, books of devotion, &c. &c., were piled up in a heap, which was set on fire amidst horrid shouts from a vast concourse of people, 'Long live the Sans Culottes !'" It was not mere Popery which was put down, Protestantism shared the same fate. The doctrines of a future state, and day of judgment, were derided,—the Sabbath abolished,-public worship prohibited, the Book of God consumed to ashes,-Christianity, as a whole, nationally disowned and contemned,-the worship of Nature and Reason alone allowed. Many good men imagined that the French Revolution was to prove the handmaid, as well as the harbinger, of true religion, and when the aged Protestant pastor Rabaut, was seated in the chair of the National Convention in 1790, it might well be esteemed a wonderful triumph over former prejudice and persecution, but the freedom was as brief as it was baseless. Soon did infidelity show its native ferocity, its unquenchable hatred to the truth and cause of God, in every form, so that, as has been well said by Mr Haldane, "the little finger of this monster was found to be thicker than its prede cessor's loins." It might have been imagined that infidelity, which boasted so much of philanthropy, would have been kind to the Protestants, as a party which had suffered long and severely at the hands of the Romish Church. But, no. The religious Protestant meetings which had been connived at under Louis XVI. were utterly prohibited. Every private library was plundered of its religious books. Any of the writings of the good old authors of the Protestant Church, which had survived the fury of Popery, were destroyed, or if saved, were saved only by being buried under ground; one of the Protestant pastors was compelled to make gunpowder in his own church on the Lord's day. Whereever a Bible could be found it might be said to be persecuted to death, so much so that several respectable commentators interpret the slaying of the two witnesses in the eleventh chapter of the Apocalypse, of the general suppression, nay, destruction, of the Old and New Testaments in France at this period. The fall of the witnesses is to be accompanied with national rejoicings, and it is a remarkable circumstance, that twenty-six theatres in Paris were open and filled to overflowing, at a season when, in a single month, (July 1794,) not less than eight hundred persons, of chief consideration, perished by the guillotine in the metropolis alone. It is not my object to go into the horrors of the French Revolution. That were foreign to the design of these papers. It is only so far as they have a bearing upon the Protestant Church that I have been called to notice them. The simple fact, which is stated by Mr Alison, that so early as 1792 the Convention had absorbed more than two-thirds of the landed property of the country, owing to the perpetual confiscation of the estates of the emigrant nobility, and that human life was sacrificed at the rate of a thousand lives per day, may satisfy any one that the persecutions of infidelity were of the most appalling kind. How could a Christian Church be expected to live, and far less to flourish, amid such confusion and slaughter? For ten years the Protestant religion, and all religion, might be said to be almost extinguished. During the greater part of this period there was no Sabbath. Time was regulated by decades; and what must be the condition of a Christian Church which is a stranger to the Sabbath? The interpreters of prophecy, who think the slaying of the witnesses fulfilled in the suppression of the Scriptures, have remarked, that agreeably to the prophecy of the raising up of the witnesses in three years and a-half, there was a favourable enactment in 1797, under the head of, "Revision of the Laws relative to Religious Worship," in virtue of which all citizens, Protestants as well as Roman Catholics, might purchase or hire edifices for the free exercise of religious worship, and that without laying ministers under any test or restriction. Whatever mitigation of the universal persecution this may have afforded, there can be little question it was not till 1802, or ten years from the beginning of the Republic, that any steps decidedly advantageous to the Protestant cause can be said to have been adopted. Previous to this the poverty of the Protestants, in a great measure, prevented them from buying or hiring places of worship, and so availing themselves of any favourable change which may have occurred, but now that the bloody republic of infidelity was over, and the consulship of Bonaparte begun, an important measure of toleration was passed. It was found after trial that a nation could not do without religion. The human mind, weary with the uncertainties and horrors of infidelity, longed for peace, and turned towards the old superstition. At the same time a large body of the conquered subjects of the French sceptre were Protestants in their religious profession, and so it was desirable for this, as well as other reasons, that the Protestants of France should be well treated. It was by the treatment measured out to them that Protestants of other parts of Europe were to learn what they themselves might expect. Napoleon saw the force of this, and so, while peace, by a celebrated concordat, was established between the French government and the Pope of Rome, the Reformed Church was favoured with a protection and countenance to which it had been long a stranger. I cannot omit one or two sentences from the speech of Portalis, minister of public worship, on the restoration of religion in France. "It is religion alone that affords a consolation for the inequality of rank, for chagrin and affliction, that collects and relieves from their fatigues the inhabitants of an immense territory. The government could not, therefore, hesitate to adopt an institution which makes the most essential truths the domains of the public conscience, which calms every mind, which calls all men to justice and humanity, and establishes equality among all ranks. Christianity has the sanction of time and the respect of nations, and though it is distinguished into Catholic and Protestant, these are only two branches from the same trunk. Christianity has civilized Europe; it has created a social disposition in the countries where it has penetrated; it connects itself with the progress of the arts and sciences." In accordance with these views of the importance of religion, the First Consul went in great pomp to Notre Dame, from which the altar of infidelity was removed in order to honour Christianity. The statue of Mars was displaced from the Temple of the Invalids; churches were re-opened, and the Sabbath restored to its ancient rule. With regard to the Protestants they were well received at the seat of power. Bonaparte graciously addressed and promised them an ample toleration,-a code of discipline founded on their ancient acts of Synod was authoritatively drawn up for their guidance. We select, as a specimen, an interesting extract from it on the ministry, quoted in a paper on the "History and Prospects of the French Protestant Church," which appeared in the Christian Observer' of 1825, and which, if internal evidence does not mislead me, proceeded from the pen of the present Bishop of Calcutta. "The examination of the candidate shall begin with a theme in French, on certain texts which shall be given him from the Scriptures, and another in Latin, if the Conference or Synod shall judge it to be expedient; for each of these discourses twenty-four hours shall be allowed for preparation. If the company are satisfied with these, they shall examine him in a chapter of the New Testament, to ascertain how far he understands and can interpret Greek; and in the Hebrew language they shall examine whether he knows enough of it to enable him at least to make use of valuable works to assist him in understanding the Scriptures. To these shall be added a trial of his knowledge of the most necessary parts of philosophy; but all in a spirit of kindness, and without aiming at thorny and useless questions. Finally, he shall make a short confession of his faith in Latin, and shall be examined on it by oral discussion. "Those who shall be elected shall subscribe the Confession of Faith agreed upon amongst us, and also the Code of Ecclesiastical Discipline in the churches in which they shall be elected, and in those to which they shall be sent. "The duty of ministers is chiefly to preach the Gospel and declare the Word of God to their people. They shall be exhorted to abstain from every mode of instruction which is not conducive to edification, and to conform themselves to the simplicity and general style of the Spirit of God, taking care that there shall not be any thing in their discourses which can detract from the authority of the Holy Scriptures, which they shall generally follow, and from which they shall take a text which they shall explain to the best of their ability; abstaining from all unnecessary amplifications, from long and irrelevant digressions, from quoting a mass of superfluous passages, and from a useless repetition of various interpretations. They shall quote the writings of the ancient doctors but sparingly, and still less profane histories and authors. They shall not treat of doctrines in a scholastic manner, or with a mixture of languages; in short, they shall avoid every thing which may lead to ostentation, or excite a suspicion of it. "The churches are enjoined to make more frequent use of the catechism, and the ministers to explain it by succinct, simple, and familiar questions and answers, adapting themselves to the ignorance of the people, without entering upon long discussions of common place subjects. It will also be the duty of ministers to catechize every individual of their flocks once or twice a-year, and to exhort every person to come carefully to the examination. "Those to whom God has given talents for writing are exhorted to do so in a modest manner, becoming the majesty of God, consequently not to write in a light and injurious strain; which propriety and gravity they shall also maintain in their ordinary style of preaching." lations, much more unexceptionable than might have These were, all circumstances considered, good regubeen expected, and much more in keeping with Scripture. Some of the following arrangements for the better understanding of the position of the Protestant Church at that time, we beg leave to submit to the reader. "No doctrine, nor alteration of doctrine, shall be published or taught, without being first authorised by the Government. "The maintenance of ministers shall be provided for, wherever the property and oblations of the communities fall short. "The articles for the liberty of foundations in the organic laws of the Catholic worship, shall be common to the Protestant Churches. "There are to be two seminaries, one in the east of France for the instruction of ministers of the confession of Augsbourg; and the other at Geneva for the Reformed Churches. The professors are to be named by the First Consul, and no minister to be appointed without a certificate of his having studied in the seminary of his religion. The rules for the government of these seminaries to be also settled by the Government. "The Reformed Churches of France shall have pas "Each Synod shall be composed of a pastor and a notable of each church. The Synods shall superintend the celebration of worship and conduct of ecclesiastical affairs, and all their decisions shall be submitted for the approbation of Government. The Synods cannot assemble until they have received the permission of Government, and no Synodal Assembly shall last more than six days." seminaries were opened for the instruction of young men intended for the ministry. These were most important benefits. In some respects, indeed, the Protestants were more favoured than the Roman Catholics. The former enjoyed theological seminaries, which were not granted to the latter. The Protestant pastors at Paris were decorated with the gold cross of the Legion of Honour, of which Roman Catholic priests of the same rank could not boast. When the Popish party began to murmur, Protestants were raised at once to the vacant offices of Minister of Public Worship and Minister of Police,-situations of great power and responsibility, which afforded the best means of protecting the Protestant cause. Imperial edict after edict was issued in their behalf, nor was Napoleon long in possession of the sovereign authority, before he restored to the Protestant Church the University of Montauban, of which the revocation of the edict of Nantes had deprived them. All this was most en for their devoutest gratitude to God. Comparatively If the Church of France had reason to complain be-couraging, and whatever might be his motives, called fore of the persecution of the ecclesiastical power, she had not less reason now to complain of the unscriptural interference of the civil authority. The deliverance vouchsafed, and the protection afforded, after a long course of suffering, might tempt her members to acquiesce in the jurisdiction of Napoleon in sacred things, but nothing could be more inconsistent with the spirit or requirements of the Word of God. The very fact of the Protestant Church so universally and tamely submitting to it, is a plain proof that her people had lost much of the religion for which they were once distinguished. It would have been bad enough to have given such a power as that of determining what doctrines were to be taught,—the number of ministers, their appointment,—the judging of their dissensions, and resignation, &c., to any civil ruler, even the most eminently Christian, but to commit it to the hands of one so unprincipled, ambitious, and wicked as the First Consul, was in the last degree unwarrantable; but the Church was daily becoming more and more unsound, and irreligious men care not about compromises, they prefer peace to principle. It appears from the statement of a deputation from the London Missionary Society to France at this period, that it was estimated there were not less than from thirty thousand to forty thousand Protestants in Paris, and that, so far as could be gathered, they were, as a whole, deplorably ignorant. In proof of this, it may be mentioned that it required four days' search among the booksellers of the metropolis ere a single Bible could be found. No wonder that, in such circumstances, the Protestants humbled themselves as a Church to the most unworthy concessions. The dread of Napoleon's arm, if provoked, might tend to the same acquiescence; but while we mark what was contrary to principle in the conduct of the Protestant Church, we must not lose sight of the important good to which her members were now admitted. They were protected in the free exercise of their religious worship, and many public edifices were granted for that end: some of them being deserted Roman Catholic churches, others public barracks, or buildings used for similar objects; land, too, was given to aid the cause of this Church extension; nor were the pastors forgotten they were, like their fathers at an earlier day, favoured with assistance from the public purse, while All that can be said of And even as the Printed and Published by JOHN JOHNSTONE, 2, Hunter Square, Edinburgh; and sold by J. R. MACNAIR & Co., 19, Glassford Street, Glasgow; JAMES NISBET & Co., HAMILTON, ADAMS & Co., and R. GROOMBRIDGE, London; W. CURRY, Junior, & Co., Dublin; W. M'COMB, Belfast; and by the Booksellers and Local Agents in all the Towns and Parishes of Scotland; and in the principal Towns in England and Ireland. Subscribers will have their copies delivered at their Residences. THE SCOTTISH CHRISTIAN HERALD, CONDUCTED UNDER THE SUPERINTENDENCE OF MINISTERS AND MEMBERS OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. THE FIVE ARTICLES OF PERTH. KING JAMES VI. paid a visit to Scotland in the year 1617, having, as he expressed it, "a natural and salmond-like affection to see the place of his breeding his native and ancient kingdom." He had been led by the bishops to believe that the people and their ministers were now quite submissive to all his wishes on the point of church order. But he soon found himself mistaken. Among other directions for his reception, he ordered repairs to be made on the Chapel of Holyroodhouse; an organ was sent down, and the English carpenters began to set up statues of the twelve apostles, made of carved wood, and finely gilded. The people began to murmur: "First came the organs, now the images, and erelong we shall have the mass." The bishops became alarmed, and, at their solicitation, the king, though mightily of fended, agreed to dispense with the gilded apostles. His other wishes, however, were gratified. A splendid altar was erected, with two closed Bibles, two unlighted candles, and two basons without water; the English Liturgy was ordered to be read daily, and the communion was taken in a kneeling posture, in the king's chapel; and the roofs of that venerable pile again echoed to the sounds of choristers and instrumental music. In the Parliament, which was held soon after his arrival, James manifested his determination to have his example imitated in all the churches of the kingdom. With this view, he prevailed on them to pass an article, ordaining "that whatsoever his majesty should determine in the external government of the church, with the advice of the bishops and a competent number of the ministry, should have the strength of a law." In vain did the more prudent of the clergy warn him of the danger of such an enactment. "To have matters ruled as they have been in your General Assemblies," said his majesty, "I will never agree: for the bishops must rule the ministers, and I must rule the bishops."* Intelligence of this having Spottiswoode, p. 531. No. 23. JUNE 8, 1839.-14d. ] reached the ministers, a number of them, out of several parts of the country, met and drew up a supplication to the king and Parliament, in which, after protesting against any innovations being brought into the Church without the consent of a free General Assembly, they pled that their Church had attained to a degree of purity in doctrine, discipline, and worship, which had been acknowledged rather as a pattern to be followed, than as one which required to be modelled in conformity with other Churches less reformed; that, under their form of government, which had been ratified by various acts of Parliament under his majesty's reign, they had enjoyed a peace and freedom from schism, which the introduction of any novelty would miserably destroy; that his majesty had repeatedly assured them of his determination not to impose upon them the English forms, which had allayed all their suspicions: they therefore prayed that his majesty would not suffer the article of which they had heard to pass into a law, "to the grief of this poor Church, that the universal hope of thousands in this land, who rejoiced at your majesty's happy arrival, may not be turned into mourning." This faithful and respectful petition, which was signed by fifty-six names, through the cowardice of the person intrusted with it, was never formally presented; but a copy of it came into his majesty's hands, who was highly incensed at it, and though he found it expedient to defer giving the royal sanction to the obnoxious article, he determined to wreak his displeasure on some of the most zealous of the ministers, who were summoned to appear before the High Commission at St. Andrews. As a specimen of the manner in which the ministers were treated at this court, we may select the case of Mr David Calderwood, the author of the famous history of the Church of Scotland, an account of which he has given us in his own simple and graphic manner. "What moved you [SECOND SERIES. VOL. I. |