"DAY AND NIGHT IN THE WYNDS OF

EDINBURGH." *

THIS is the title of a pamphlet recently issued by an intelligent and actively benevolent Edinburgh physician, whose valuable labours as Secretary of the Original Ragged Schools have called forth the repeated acknowledgments of their distinguished founder, Dr Guthrie. He sets himself to a description of scenes which his own eyes have witnessed, by day and by night, in the wynds of Edinburgh, and bases on these a warning and appeal to the community. Much as we have lately read, and heard, and seen, of the degradation and crime of the lower parts of our great cities, Dr Bell's pictures present, in some respects, the most vivid and appalling view of these that we have yet met with. As we intend adverting at length to various points which he and other recent writers have been forcing on the attention of the public, we shall at present content ourselves with two short extracts from his pages. The first describes the process and progress of degradation :—

"A few years ago we were called to visit a family occupying a small room in a large and lofty tenement at the bottom of the High Street. The family consisted of father, mother, and five or six children. A number of rooms in the same story of the building were similarly occupied. Typhus fever had invaded the premises. Those in the upper story were first assailed. The messenger of death descended, and his having reached the family to which we allude was the reason why we were sent for. Every member of the family was smitten by the disease. The father, an industrious yet half-starved mechanic, died; the mother made a slow recovery; and the children, who were soon convalescent, for a time ran riot, being free from maternal restraint. Not yet recovered, but still an invalid, the mother began to work; the little strength she had failed her, and in a short time the family of the mechanic were a family of paupers. In process of time they left their dwelling, and we feel assured that they, like hundreds of others whose history is analogous to theirs, were finally absorbed into the class which is at the base of society-a class which is at once a disgrace and a peril to our country. Where did these people go to? Are there cheaper habitations to be had than that which they left? There are none cheaper, but there are many worse, and the class we allude to must inhabit them, or remain without shelter. They constitute what are called lodging-houses; they are in themselves all horror, and are situated in the vilest parts of the city. For the shelter which these places afford, each adult has to pay twopence a-night, which is equal to about £3 per annum. If the family is of average size, their lodging will cost nearly three times this sum. The shelter of these horrible places is resorted to because the parties have no regular income, and therefore cannot pay a rent. They live from hand to mouth, and they shelter themselves on the same principle. Their lodgings do not constitute a home in any sense of the word. The wretched people have only a nightly interest in them; and, besides this, they are crammed full of a motley crew of the destitute, squalid, obscene, blaspheming, vicious, and often criminal of both sexes, young and old. Who or what these people were, the widow of the mechanic knew not when necessity drove her into their company; but she and her family no doubt soon began to feel the influence of the association. Her subsequent history was in all probability iden* By George Bell, M.D.. Fdinburgh.

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tical with that of others. Horror-stricken at first, the subject of a moral skunner, the edge of feeling soon gets worn off, and men get habituated to squalor as they do to other things. Unsympathized with, they gradually cease to experience the working of those affections which whilom rendered their poverty not ungraceful. Being without hope, they don't think about the future. The love of offspring shrinks into something smaller and less kindly than instinct, all sentiment departs, the base elements of nature assume the ascendency, and thus they go down, deeper and deeper still,' until at length we find them in a state of complete apathy, and utterly mother, and such the early fate of her offspring. debased. Such is the acquired condition of many a Death in time removes the mother, but not perhaps until some, if not all of her children, have become pests to society, thieves proper, and thieving beggars."

The second passage is on one of the grand causes, perhaps immediately the chief cause, of pauperism and crime-intemperance, as fostered by the large number of whisky-shops:

"Almost all the whisky-shops are in the localities where the poor reside. They create drunkards as banks create bankrupts. The poorer the district, the more numerous the dram-sellers. They are like Jesuits; they settle themselves wherever they can find men to destroy. None of the sections which compose the plebeian class escape. Even the hackney, coachmen cannot escape from these human spiders. No sooner is a new hackney coach-stand established, than straightway their pimpled and speckled enemy establishes a trap. He catches the poor fellows, and without ceremony makes drunkards of them, and pauperizes their families. But the dram-shops are not only hyper-extravagantly numerous, they are likewise for ever open. They are open before sunrise, and they remain open till an hour short of midnight. They are nice-looking places (so is many a tomb); they are full of light, and all the polished tankards and pewters are burnished, and the warmlooking master of the infernal place-there he is, rubicand, fat, jolly, with his white apron standing behind his counter. He looks as mild as his ale, but he is as fiery as his spirits. How rejoiced he looks! for there is a pale-faced, hard wrought mechanic, on his way to his work. He has passed one hundred of these traps; and he stands at the door of this one. An infernal spirit whispers to him, Gio in '-he dives, and he swallows a morning dram. With this act commences the degradation of the mechanic, and the starvation of his family. He becomes a drunkard; he soon ceases to possess furniture; his home, once cheerful, is now the scene of misery, perhaps of violence; he grows into a public pest, and his family become parasites on society."

STANDING CAUSE FOR THANKSGIVING. WHEN peace was restored after the war of the American Revolution, a day of thanksgiving was appointed by authority of George III. In the vicinity of Windsor Castle dwelt a most estimable minister, with whom the king, who had no High Church antipathy to pious Dissenters, sometimes conversed with much freedom. This worthy divine ventured to say to him, "Your Majesty has sent out a proclamation

* In the Castle Hill, on a surface containing about 1520 square yards, there are eighteen spirit-shops. This is over and above the low eating-houses in that locality. The whisky-selling trade is a profitable one there, as elsewhere. We understand that one man pays £90 of rent for the cellar which he occupies. It is a profitable trade; one firm has seven establishments in Edinburgh.

for a day of thanksgiving. For what are we to give thanks ? Is it because your Majesty has lost thirteen of the fairest jewels from your crown?"

"No, no," replied the monarch; "not that!" “Well, then, shall we give thanks because so many millions of treasure have been spent in this war, and so many millions added to the public debt?"

"No, no," again replied the King; "not that!" "Shall we, then, give thanks that so many thousands of our fellow men have poured out their lifeblood in this unhappy and unnatural struggle between those of the same race and religion?"

"No, no," exclaimed "good George "for the third time; "not that!"

"For what, then, are we to render our thanks? asked the persevering dissenter.

"THANK GOD," cried the King energetically, THAT IT IS NO WORSE!"

This is a source of public and private gratitude which never exhausts itself. It is never so bad with the children of men in this life, but what it might be far worse. In pouring out the vials of his wrath, God does not empty them to the uttermost.

APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION.

THE Rev. Mr Carruthers of Liverpool, formerly missionary in the Crimea, related at a missionary meeting in Leeds, an amusing instance of the importance attached to apostolical succession among the Kalmuk Tartars. When at Astracan, Mr C. visited the church of the Kalmuks, and saw their high priest, arrayed in splendid yellow pontificals, pour some dirty liquid out of a large bottle into a small phial, and solemnly drink it off. On inquiring why this was done, he was told that that bottle contained the ashes of the high priest's predecessor, and that it was the custom to burn the dead body of a deceased high priest, and then to mingle the ashes with water, a portion of which was drunk every morning by his successor, until the whole of the former pontiff had been received really and bodily into the system of the existing pontiff. This practice is worthy of the devout consideration of the Oxford divines, as it affords the truest realization of apostolical succession that we have ever heard of.

COLERIDGE ON CALVIN AND SERVETUS. WHAT ground is there for throwing the odium of Servetus's death upon Calvin alone? Why, the mild Melancthon wrote to Calvin expressly to testify his concurrence in the act, and no doubt he spoke the sense of the German Reformers; the Swiss Churches advised the punishment in formal letters, and I rather think there are letters from the English divines approving Calvin's conduct. Before a man deals out the slang of the day about the great leaders of the Reformation, he should learn to throw himself back to the age of the Reformation, when the two great parties in the Church were eagerly on the watch to fasten a charge of heresy upon the other. Besides, if ever a poor fanatic thrust himself into the fire, it was Michael Servetus. He was a rabid enthusiast, and did every thing he could in the way of insult and ribaldry to provoke the feeling of the Christian Church. He called the Trinity, "triceps monstrum et cerberum quendam trie partitum," and so on. Melancthon's words are :-" Tuo judicio

prorsus assentior. Affirmo etiam vestros magistratus juste ficisse quod hominem blasphemum, re ordine judicata, interfecerunt."—"I entirely concur in your judgment. I affirm, also, that your magistrates acted justly, by putting a blasphemer to death according to law."-14th October 1554.-Table Talk, vol. ii. p. 282.

FOR MINISTERS.

No ministry will be really effective, whatever may be its intelligence, which is not a ministry of strong faith, true spirituality, and deep earnestness.-British Quarterly Review.

We are weak in the pulpit, because we are weak in the closet.-James.

The apostle said, "We believe, and therefore speak." We not only speak what we believe, but as we believe. If the faith be weak, so will be the utterance.-Ibid.

It behoves ministers to unite the cherub and the seraph in their ministry-the angel of knowledge and the angel of burning zeal. If we would win souls, we must point clearly the way to heaven, while we cry flee from the wrath to come. I believe we' cannot lay down the guilt of man-his total depravity, and the glorious gospel of Christ, too clearly; that we cannot urge men to embrace and flee too warmly. O for a pastor who unites the deep knowledge of Edwards, the vast statements of Owen, and the vehement appeals of Richard Baxter !— M'Cheyne.

SCRIPTURE AND THE CHURCH.

THE Scripture is the sun; the Church is the clock, whose hand points us to, and whose sound tells us, the hours of the day. The sun we know to be sure, and regularly constant in his motion; the clock, as it may fall out, may go too fast or too slow. We are wont to look at and listen to the clock, to know the time of day; but, where we find the variation sensible, to believe the sun against the clock, not the clock against the sun. As, then, we would condemn him of much folly that should profess to trust the clock rather than the sun; so we cannot but justly tax the miscredulity of those who will rather trust to the Church than to the Scripture.-Bishop Hall.

COWPER ON HIS PERSONAL TRIALS.

"A THREAD of mercy ran through all the intricate maze of those afflictive providences, so mysterious to myself at the time, and which must ever remain so to all who will not see what was the great design of be laid open. How is the rod of iron changed into them; at the judgment-seat of Christ the whole shall the sceptre of love !"

PRAYER-A TEST.

WE may judge of the state of our hearts by the earnestness of our prayers. You cannot make a rich man beg like a poor one; you cannot make a man that is full cry for food like one that is hungry: no more will a man that has a good opinion of himself cry for grace like one who feels that he is poor and needy.-Payson.

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IT was the sagacious opinion of, I think, the late Professor Porson, that he would rather see a single copy of a daily newspaper of ancient Athens, than read all the commentaries upon the Grecian tragedies that have ever been written. The reason for this preference is obvious. A single sheet, similar to our daily newspapers, published in the time of Pericles, would admit us at once to a knowledge of the habits, manners, modes of opinion, political relations, social condition, and moral attainments of the people, such as we never could gain from the study of all the writers that have ever attempted to illustrate the nature of Grecian civilisation.

The same remark is true in respect to our knowledge of the character of individuals who have lived in a former age. What would we not, at the present day, give for a few pages of the private diary of Julius Cæsar, or Cicero, or Brutus, or Augustus; or for the minute reminiscences of any one who had spent a few days in the company of either of these distinguished men? What a flood of light would the discovery of such a manuscript throw upon Roman life, but especially upon the private opinions, the motives, the aspirations, the moral estimates, of the men whose names have become household words throughout the world! A few such pages might, perchance, dissipate the authority of many a bulky folio, on which we now rely with implicit confidence. Not only would the characters of these heroes of antiquity stand out in bolder relief than they have ever done before, but the individuals themselves would be brought within the range of our personal sympathy; and we should seem to commune with them as we do with an intimate acquaintance.

It is worthy of remark, that we are favoured with a larger portion of this kind of information, respecting Jesus of Nazareth, than almost any other distinguished person that has ever lived. He left no writings himself; hence all that we know of him has been written by others. The narrators, however, were the personal attendants, and not the mere auditors or pupils of their Master. The apostles were members of the family of Jesus; they travelled with him on foot throughout the length and breadth of Palestine; they partook with him of his frugal Imeals, and bore with him the trial of hunger, weariness, and want of shelter; they followed him through the lonely wilderness and the crowded street; they saw his miracles in every variety of form, and listened to his discourses in public as well as to his explanations in private. Hence their whole narrative is instinct with life; a vivid picture of Jewish manners and customs, rendered more definite and characteristic by the moral light which then, for the first time, shone upon it. Hence it is that these few

pages are replete with moral lessons that never weary us in the perusal, and which have been the source of unfading illumination to all succeeding ages.

The verses which I have read as the text of this discourse, may well be taken as an illustration of all that I have here said. They may, without impropriety, be styled a day in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. By observing the manner in which our blessed Lord spent a single day, we may form some conception of the kind of life which he ordinarily led; and we may, perchance, treasure up some lessons which it were well if we should exemplify in our daily practice.

The place at which these events occurred was near the head of the Sea of Galilee, where it receives the waters of the upper Jordan. This was one of the Saviour's favourite places of resort. Capernaum, Chorasin, and Bethsaida, all in this immediate vicinity, are always spoken of in the gospels as towns which enjoyed the largest share of his ministerial labours, and were distinguished most frequently with the honour of his personal presence. The scenery of the neighbourhood is wild and romantic. To the north and west, the eye rests on the lofty summits of Lebanon and Hermon. To the south, there opens upon the view the blue expanse of the lake, enclosed by frowning rocks, which here and there jut out far into the waters, and then again retire towards the land, leaving a level beach to invite the labours of the fisherman. The people, removed at a considerable distance from the metropolis of Judea, cultivated those rural habits with which the simple tastes of the Saviour would most readily harmonize. Near this spot was also one of the most frequented fords of the Jordan, on the road from Damascus to Jerusalem; and thus, while residing here, he enjoyed unusual facilities for disseminating throughout this whole region a knowledge of those truths which he came on earth to promulgate.

Some weeks previously to the time in which the events spoken of in the text occurred, our Lord had sent his disciples to announce the approach of the kingdom of heaven in all the cities and villages which he himself proposed to visit. He conferred on them the power to work miracles, in attestation of their authority, and of the divine character of him by whom they were sent. He imposed upon them strict rules of conduct, and directed them to make known, to every one who would hear them, the good news of the coming dispensation. As soon as he had sent them forth, he himself went immediately abroad to teach and to preach in their cities. As their Master and Lord, he might reasonably have claimed exemption from the personal toil and the rigid self-denials