I observed, likewise, that their marriage was approved of by the word of God; since it was not his will to make them of a separate caste, with interests inimical to those of society, and to prevent them from practising those numerous virtues to which the father of a family is called. St. Paul says. "Let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn." (1 Cor. vii. 9,) In writing to Timothy: "The Bishop then must be blameless; he must have married but one wife; he must be sober, prudent, grave, and modest, loving hospitality, able to teach; he must not be given to wine, neither violent nor hasty to strike; but just and moderate, far from disputes; disinterested; he must govern well his own household, keeping his children in obedience, and in all propriety." (1 Tim. iii. 2, 4,) He says again: "Have we not power to lead about with us a wife, who may be our sister in Jesus Christ, as do the other apostles, and the brothers of our Lord, and Cephas?" (1 Cor. ix. 5,) And St. Clement of Alexandria says himself, "there are some who condemn the priests that marry, but will they not also condemn the Apostles? for Peter and Philip had children and the latter had his daughters married." (Strom 1.) The ministers of the Reformed Religion follow this principle, and the example of the Apostles; they are, like them, fathers of families, patterns to their flocks; they live in simplicity, making no vows contrary to human nature, the precepts of Scripture, purity of manners, and the good order of society.

I have embraced this communion, because in it there is no prostration before wood, or stone, or old relics of corpses to which corruption has paid no respect.

I have embraced this communion, because in it every thing is referred immediately to God the Saviour of men, and not to creatures like ourselves for, saith St. Paul, "there is but one God, and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus." (1 Tim. ii. 5,)_ And St. John: "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, who is righte ous." (1 John ii, 1.) And consequently, Jesus Christ being here the only hope of believers, they are actively and uniformly Christians.

I have embraced this communion because it does not enjoin upon believers pompously to exhibit their piety in the streets and public placesa pra ctice which Jesus Christ reproves, saying, "be not like the hypocrites, who affect to pray, standing in the synagogues, and at the corner of the streets, in order to be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have received their reward; but you, when you pray, enter into your closet, and the door being shut, pray unto your father in secret, and your father seeing what passeth in secret, will give you its reward. When you fast, be not sad like the hypocrites, for they affect to appear with a disfigured countenance, in order that men may know when they fast. Verily I say unto you, they have received their reward. But you, when you fast, anoint your head, and wash your face that it may not appear unto men that you fast, but to your father who is present in the most secret place; and your father who seeth that which passeth in secret, will give you its reward." (Matt. vi. 5, 6, 16-18.)

I have embraced this communion, because in it there is no assumption that he is a better man who eats fish, than he who eats beef; for I can never believe that it was the design of God, in creating an aliment always wholesome, to prohibit us from using it at certain periods, unless we purchase exemption. Jesus Christ speaks out in the following words: "it is not that which enters into the mouth which defiles the man; but it is that which comes out of the mouth of man, which defiles him." (Matt. xv. 11,) And St. Paul says. "Eat of all that is sold at the shambles, without asking whence it comes, for any scruple of conscience; for the earth is the Lords, and all that therein is." (1 cor. x. 25, 26.)

I have embraced this communion, because in its public service, every thing is understood, and comprehended by every individual; and, having

never learned Latin, I cannot believe it to be the will of God that ministers should edify me in Latin. The custom is condemned by St. Paul: "Also, my brethren, if I should come unto you speaking in unknown tongues, what usefulness should I bring unto you? I would rather speak in the church five words which I could understand, and which should instruct others, than repeat ten thousand in an unknown tongue." (1 Cor. xiv. 6, 19; read all the chapter,) Pope John VIII. was as much a Protestant as myself in this respect; for he said, "let the praises of God be sung in the native language;" and I really think if what is said to us is good, useful and edifying, it ought to be understood; and if on the contrary, it is something bad, it ought not to be said, in Latin, Greek, or Chinese."

I have embraced this communion, because it does not exclude from future happiness poor little children, on account of their parents' neglect in not having them baptized before their death. This doctrine has always appeared to me absurd, unjust, insulting to the divinity, and unauthorized by a single word of scripture.

I have embraced this communion, because in it the Lord's supper is whollyja spiritual ceremony, reminding us of the benefits which the Saviour. came to confer upon humanity-a memorial of his death, in which the bread and wine represent only the body and blood of Jesus; for I never could allow that a God wholly spiritual, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, that God, whose nature alone is infinity, could be swallowed like a pill. It has even appeared to me, that the idea which materialized the Creator was an insult offered by us to him, as it is an insult to reason itself.

Lastly, I have embraced the Christian Reform communion, and I have embraced it with faith, confidence and happiness, because it is not supported by the sword of the executioner; it does not place the scaffold and tortures of the inquisition beside the cross of him who came, not to destroy men, but to save them. I acknowledge that the violence with which some of its early members may have been reproached, arose from the remains of human prejudice, from a habit of domination and of double power, (ecclesiastical and civil) from which those men could not at once free themselves; but at the present day this church is mild and charitable; it needs not the torquemada to support it; it would not receive such aid; its precept is the precept of the Saviour; "you shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; this is the great- . est and first commandment; and this is the second which is like unto it: you shall love your neighbours as yourselves. In these two commandments are contained all the law and the prophets." (Matt. xxii, 37-40.) In this communion I recognize the true church of Jesus Christ which was restored by the gospel at the time of the Reformation. I bless God for having given me thus to distinguish his divine light; my children will one day bless me for having acted the part of an honest man, which is to embrace the truth as soon as he perceives it without disquieting himself on account of the menaces and calumnies of those who shun the light, because their deeds are evil. If the step I have taken were yet to take, the prospect of tortures and of scaffolds would be vainly presented in order to stop me; truth is my motto, the approbation of God and of my conscience is my law. Numbers are deterred from imitating me by their indifference to the truth, and to religion, and because they fear rather to be censured in this world, than to be condemned in the other.

Such, Sir, are the motives which have actuated me. I believe you have a firm and upright mind, and I feel assured of your approbation. Accept the sentiments with which I remain sir, your very humble and devoted MOLLARD LEFEVRE:

servant.

BY RO. J. BRECKINRIDGE.

Importance of the Religious Anniversaries, as illustrating national manners.--Jews, Society.-Movement amongst them.--Mr. Bickerseth. -Curious Fact of a Cardinal.-Prayer Book and Homily Society.Professor Scholefield. School Society-Speakers.-Curious Incident. -Lord Morpeth.-Dissenters' Society for the protection of Civil and Religious Liberty.--Bigotry and Oppression.-A regular Row.--Lord Ebrington.-General Influence of the London Anniversaries.-Spirit that is intruding into the great Benevolent Societies in Britain.Difficulties of American Delegates in holding any profitable Intercourse with them.

If it were not for the personal traits, and the more important general information, which we find always developed, on occasions like those of which I have been speaking so much; I should not have ventured to expect the attention of any reader, to be engaged so long on the meetings of the London societies. A sample of them at once full, and I think favourable has been presented to him; and what remains, will require less detail.

At some of these anniversaries-I was only present to hear a particular speaker:-at others to spend an hour upon whatever chanced to be offered. It was in this way that I stepped into the annual meeting of the Society for promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, to hear a speech from the Rev. Edward Bickersteth, whose name has become so well known, of late years in the United States. His speech was not different from what a reader of his works, would have expected:--Sensible, rather more than common place, much of it if not relevant to his subject, and the whole destitute of any thing either original or striking. His person

is tall, and exceedingly emaciated, and his complexion saturine to an unpleasant degree. He stated several facts which are at once curious and profoundly interesting. A Cardinal at Rome, (he had personal reason to know, though denied the liberty of nam. ing the individual) had applied for aid in circulating the old and new Testaments in the Hebrew language, amongst the Jews; and he

(Mr. B.) had lately sent him fifty copies granted by the British and Fereign Bible Society. He added that the Society on whose behalf he then spoke, felt authorized, to assure the public, that so great a movement actually existed, amongst the Jews, especially in Germany, that many in the absence of true light were giving up their scepticism in dispair, and throwing themselves into the arms of the Roman Church: while, notwithstanding the feeble and almost faithless efforts of the Protestant world, to save the ancient people of God-more of them, have actually embraced Christianity in its pure form, within in the last twenty years-than in the preceding fifteen centuries! Reader, believest thou the prophets? Then what do such facts as these import, to thee, to this guilty world-and to the slumbering Church of which, it may be, thou art a useless member?

On another occasion an hour spent in the twenty fourth annual meeting of the Prayer Book and Homily Society, was not without itsuse. It seemed to be assumed on all hands, that the book they were met to aid the circulation of, was the best in the world after the Bible and one quite indispensable for the spiritual good of the world; and yet as far as I could learn the state of their operations, their annual income, after a quarter of a century of exertions was not much above two thousand pounds. A sum which the gentlemen on the platform could have trippled by giving up only so much as they themselves derived from pluralities, and other preferments, for which they rendered no sort of service. It would be a curious balance sheet, to compare the amount forced out of dissenters, to keep the lawn of the established ministers clean,―with that paid by themselves to give the world forms of worship, and rules for ceremonies which they deem so vital to true peace of the soul rules.-That I present this subject in no exaggerated light, will be the more apparent when it is known that one of the speakers, asserted in the most unqualified terms, that missionaries, after translating the Bible into all languages, next translated the prayer book! "For when they went to visit the heathen, the first thing they did after making translations of the Bible-was to give them translations of our prayer book:" such were the words of the Rev. professor Scholefield, of one of the universities. And he added his authority; this was attested by Dr. Morrison, by Dr. Cary, by the Rev. Mr. Yate, and by many Missionaries of the highest character."-It was a most singular commentary of another speaker, on the same occasion, upon statements, which I will not venture to characterise,-who after praising the Homilies, nearly as extravagantly as Mr. S. had the prayerbook,-candidly confessed he had never read them! Whereupon the audience, instead of hanging their heads in ingenious shame,burst into a laugh!

The British and Foreign School Society, had an exceedingly interesting meeting. The whole was conducted with peculiar propriety,-under the management of the excellent secretary, Mr. Dunn, who had exhibited sense and tact, in nothing more clearly, than in substituting a short and lucid statement-in the place of the tedious, and ill-read reports, which are the bane of these meetings. Would it not be better for the proper officers to make themselves masters of their business--and state in a short comprehen

sive address,-what is diluted over an hour of restlessness and impatience on the part of every audience on whom I ever saw it inflicted! Most of the speeches on this occasion too were excellent.Sir Cullen Eardly Smith, a short, broad Irish member of parliament; the Rev. Mr. Robins, an evangelical minister in the establishmentthe Rev. Mr. Hamilton of Leeds, the largest and the most hospitable man I saw in the three kingdoms; and the Rev. Mr. Smith of Sheffield, a professor in the dissenting college at Rotherham in that neighbourhood,-deserved, and some of them obtained the thanks of the audience, in the most boisterous manner, for a very pleasant and profitable entertainment. All of them however did not satisfy "a British audience;" which is a formulary their speakers always use, where one of another nation would say "a Christian audience"—or “an enlightened audience."-The last named of these four gentlemen-was virtually applauded down; or at the least would have been in a few minutes more, if he had not broken off his speech in the midst. For the last two minutes of it, nobody could hear a word he said, for the clapping and stamping sometimes, in a sort of roll, like random shooting,—and then in a volley, like a whole line firing at once.

This was peculiarly edifying to me, as I was just on the eve of making a speech myself; the second one I had made in the realm, and just after I had seen the first one (made at the Bible society) so horridly reported, that I was forced to report briefly what I had said, and send it to America, to keep my friends from supposing me capable of uttering the gross folly, adulation, and lies which I had been made to speak.One of the speakers had made an allusion to Franklin; two of them had argued the question somewhat at large, and on opposite sides, as to the value of knowledge in itself considered. I seized the two suggestions to make a speech of ten minutes. The chairman of the meeting had admitted_in his opening address, that "it is a just cause of reproach to England, that in the great work of the elementary education of the people, she lags behind cotemporary nations."-I first compared the state of public instruction in America, very briefly with that in Britain; then pointed out the difference between public crimes in the two countries; then the difference between the actual means of preserving the public peace. On one side no system that deserves the name for general education: on the other, in many states every body educated, and almost gratuitously. On one side, hundreds of offences punished capitally; on the other, in all the states not above three or four,-in a few, one only, namely deliberate murder. On one side a standing army of a hundred thousand men; on the other, a few half filled regiments, along thousands of miles of frontier. I then pointed out, that it is by the condition of the great mass of the people, that the power and happiness of a state and the utility of its institutions, are to be decided; quoting those noble lines of one of "their own poets:

Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,

A breath can make them, for a breath has made:

But a bold yeomanry a country's pride,

When once destroyed can never be supplied!

Behold then, I added in that Benjamin Franklin-of whom you have heard, the epitome of his country; itself an emblem