gards the word as of Roman origin; and to be explained with reference to Roman customs. A Libertinus was the Latin designation of one who was either the son of a Libertus, (one who had been a slave, and obtained his freedom;) or one who was not born free, but acquired his freedom by an act of grace on the part of his masters, as was the case with many captives taken in war. Tacitus tells us that four thousand Libertini of "the Jewish superstition" were banished by Tiberius into Sardinia, and the rest commanded to quit Italy if they did not abjure their faith by a certain day; and Suetonius and Josephus mention the same fact. Philo also speaks of the city of Rome beyond the Tiber as inhabited by Jews, mostly Libertini. Jewish freed men were then, at one time, numerous in Rome. Love of country, trade, or desire for religious privileges, had brought many of this class back again to Jerusalem; and now, having grown numerous enough, they built a synagogue, which, from their character as freed captives, was called-the Synagogue of the Libertines. SOLEMN THOUGHTS. "NO DISCHARGE IN THIS WAR."-There is a great fortress and line of siege confronting every homestead, and commanding every group of our people-a line whose pointed musketry we are, perforce, sooner or later, all of us to face-and into the very mouth of whose death-dealing batteries we are steadily marching. Sabbath by sabbath-day by day-hour by hour-moment by moment, with each heaving of the lungs, and with each winking of the eyelash-the young, the old, the rich, the poor, the thoughtless and the gloomy, the ignorant and the scholarly, are walking up, in one inevitable procession, with the intermingled tramp of manhood's heavy foot, and the patter of childhood's footfall,-into the flaming range of these terrible bastions. "THERE IS NO DISCHARGE IN THIS WAR." You fall here I fall there. The rattling hail of death is among us at this instant. Sure as the daylight now shines, so sure is it that we must all bide this summoning, and must brook this conflict. I might go from bench to bench in the Sunday-school, and from pew to pew here, and without the least hazard of mistake, say to every one,— "And you, too, must die." "IT IS APPOINTED UNTO MEN ONCE TO DIE" -appointed by an All-knowing One, of whom there is no cheating,—an Omnipresent One, whom there is no shunning-an Almighty One, whom there is no resisting. No skill, nor craft, no force, no tears, no outcries, no affection can baffle the stroke. No heaps of golden ore, no ranges of widest empire can purchase exemption from the confiscations of death. To-day, the capitalist stalks the exchange, wielding his own large fortune, and it may be that of many another household than his own; to-day, the king rules his myriads of subjects, and all the cabinets and courts watch with solicitude the turns of his policy. The war of death comes on; and by to-morrow the grim invader and destroyer has handed over the fortune of the millionaire to greedy heirs, and the keys of the bank to other office-holders; and has tossed the diadem and sceptre of a dead Cæsar, perchance, into an infant's feeble and quivering hands. None pillages like death, with such sweep ing forfeitures; his victims "carry nothing away." None hunts like death, never losing his scent or missing his game. None aims like death, with a shaft that always strikes. Is there no flying-no bribing-no pleading no reasoning-no treating with the enemy? No. "There is no discharge in this war." If death takes you away as you are, and without Christ, your soul is lost beyond a doubt. Will God let the destroyer hurry you away thus unprepared? Why not, if God's book explicitly warns you that "the wicked is driven away in his wickedness?" Why not, if our text most plainly says, rounding out the words we first chose, with this addition: "Neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it?" Why not borne away unprepared, if the fault, as to want of preparation, is all your own? You have been familiar with the gospel; you have lived in a land of Bibles and Sabbaths, and have had your personal warnings from Providence, and your own secret strivings of the Holy Ghost. When this great, dread war, to which you were born, and of which every cemetery, every tolling bell, every funeral notice, every passing hearse, every ache in your own person, and every ailment, warned you-this war, so long foreknown, and so terribly fatal-calls you, the reluctant and the truant, to take yourself the front place-what show of reason is there in your pleading want of preparation as a discharge? For what was life given but to know God? And knowing God, as in Christ he most graciously revealed himself to be known by you, you would have been prepared. Why have you forborne to know your Saviour? why refused to acknowledge his gracious claims, and been ashamed to wear his blessed livery? He shrunk not from ignominy, or any pain, or any loss, that he might reach and rescue you. Why have you withholden the heart that he asked? and why clung to the sins and the idols that he denounced? and why rejected the love, and peace, and the heaven that he proffered freely-proffered sincerely-proffered often-and is proffering you even now,-but as yet has proffered to you all in vain ? It is, indeed, a terrible lot, from a land of light and revivals, to go down, unprepared and unforgiven, to an eternal sorrow. The death of one dying without Christ is a fearful sight to behold: and the departure of such a spirit on quitting the body, is a journey that fancy may well shudder to follow, and faint as she attempts to depict it. But how many have so died! And if death comes for us thus found unready, we may tremble and recoil; but the terrible sacrifice, and the hopeless doom that are before us as we go, are to the grim, pale King of Terrors no discharge. "Not ready!" he may exclaim; "and after all this time-after twenty years, thirty years, fifty years, or even seventy years, not ready? When would you be? Come with me, then, as you are! If you have loitered, I, the messenger of a holy law and a just God, am no loiterer: here is my warrant, and it demands you, body and soul !" The smoke of the torment of the wilfully impenitent will go up day and night, by the purpose of a just and justly incensed Jehovah. But, in this the day of opportunity and of repentance, there is proclaimed to us who yet survive, One mightier than is either death or hell. It is the Prince of Life and the Lord of Glory. He came to destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil. But Jesus, the captain of our salvation, in bringing rescue, must himself "taste of death "-must not only meet the common lot, but must bear upon himself the common and concentrated guilt of our race. Doing it, he tore from death its sting; and to them that believe he is become the author of life everlasting. To them that receive Christ, the war, though fierce, has lost its main terror, and is stripped of its perils. To him, mortality loses its ghastliness, and puts on already hopefulness and promise. The grave is like the wet and cold March day brooding over our heads and miring our streets. Of darker hue, and moister, chiller air, indeed, than he might have chosen; but behind all this gloom, and behind all this damp, lie the treasures of bursting spring, and the glories of refulgent summer. The light afflictions, that are but for a moment, work out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. To the saint, death changes many of his offices. Does pain walk at his side? But is he not also the queller of strife, and the calmer of care? The aching head throbs no more; the swollen heart fetches no more sighs. The weary are at rest. He is, in one sense, the destroyer; but he is also the restorer. He brings back, through Christ's victorious grace, the lost innocence and peace of Eden. Is he the divider, sundering the nearest ties, and riving asunder the household bands? But he is also the re-uniter, gathering me to my dead who sleep in Jesus, and to "the general assembly of the first-born," Is he the curse of the law? Is he not also, through our blessed Master, who magnified and satisfied that law, become to us who believe the end of sin, the gate of paradise, and the guerdon of a new, a better, and an unending life?-W.A. Williams,D.D. THE PRIDE OF UNBELIEF.-To be a Christian, to be given up to the Spirit of God and carefully offered to his holy guidance,-how many look on it as a weakness, a loss of dignity, a thing which only the tamer and less manly souls can descend to? I know not anything else that exhibits the folly and conceit of man like this pride;-as if it were some loss or abatement, to have the inspiration of the Almighty, to receive a higher nature and life in the eternal life and impulse of God. It is as if the world of matter were to be ashamed of the sun, and shrink with inward mortification from the state of day! What is God but our day, the sun of our eternity, the light of our light; without whom, as the light of cur seeing, the universe of nature were a mere phosphorescence of fate, unintelligent and coid, life a driblet of vanity, and eternity itself a protracted and amplified nothingness? Oh, my friends, this pride you have against religion will sometime be inverted, and you will be overwhelmed by the discovery of its true merit. You have read these powerful words, "Shame and everlasting contempt." And what do you think is their meaning? It is to look on the saints in the glory of their resurrection, and see them visibly perfected and ennobled by the inhabitation of God, and remember that such was the honour you rejected; to wither and mentally die in the sense of your own little separated speck of vanity, when surrounded with holy myriads, gloriously transfigured by the light of God upon them,-this is shame and everlasting contempt.-Dr. Bushnell. MY FATHER. In a storm at sea, when the danger pressed, and the deep seemed ready to devour the voyagers, one man stood composed and cheerful amidst the agitated throng. They asked him eagerly why he feared not, was he an experienced seaman, and did he see reason to expect that the ship would ride the tempest through? No; he was not an expert sailor, but he was a trustful Christian. He was not sure that the ship would swim; but he knew that its sinking could do him no harm. His answer was, “ Though I sink to-day, I shall only drop gently into the hollow of my Father's hand, for he holds all these waters there!" The story of that disciple's faith triumphing in a stormy sea presents a pleasant picture to those who read it on the solid land; but if they in safety are strangers to his faith, they will not in trouble partake of his consolation. The idea is beautiful; but a human soul, in its extremity, cannot play with a beautiful idea. If the heart do not feel the truth firm to lean upon, the eye will not long be satisfied with its symmetry to look at. Strangers may speak of Providence, but only the children love it. If they would tell the truth, those who are alienated from God in their hearts, do not like to be so completely in His power. It is when I am satisfied with His mercy, that I rejoice to lie in His hand.-Arnot. Boetry. SPEAK TO ME, O MY SAVIOUR! And if no precious gums my hands bestow, Its song-bird being lost, fled evermore, SELF-KNOWLEDGE. LORD, many times I am aweary quite And hate against myself I often bear, Take thou my part against myself, nor share In that just hate. Best friends might loathe us, if what things perverse Shouldst loathe us too! Brief Hatice. THE PEERAGE OF POVERTY: or Learn ers and Workers in Fields, Farms, and Factories. By EDWIN PAXTON HOOD. 1st series, 3rd edition, crown 8vo, pp 235. London: Judd and Glass, New Bridge street. The "Peerage of Poverty" is a very healthy book. Pleasant and chatty, too, with much to provoke further inquiry. Mr. Hood's purpose is not a new one, but it is none the less needed, as the "fine gentlemen notions" one hears from many young men, too abundantly prove. "The idea floats about, that it is elegant to be idle, to appear full-dressed, to walk through the world as through a ball-room, or a saloon: that it is most inelegant to plead guilty to the crime of dirty fingers, or hard hands, or to any acquaintance with forges, factories, or threshing floors. Now, before any man can be a true man, he must be cured of this insanity; he must learn that the dishonourable thing is to endeavour to skulk through the world without working;" and the attempt of this little book is to shew that mental labour may very frequently combine nobly with manly labour; and that, in illustration of this, it is noticeable that there have been many men confined to the loom, to the flail, and the hammer, whose intellectual attainments have been amazing; and who, from the various departments they have worthily filled, have added to the stores and treasures of their country's genius and intellectual worth." Nine chapters are devoted to the working the divinity of labour; the mind, and the out of this plan. Mr. Hood touches on hand, and the productiveness of mental labour; and the characteristics of humble genius. The stories of Leyden, the learned Scotchman, the son of a small farmer; of Cedmon, the ancient Saxon Sextus ploughman poet; of Felix Peretti, who sprang from a swine-herd to be Pope V.; of Pallisy, the French American potter; of Bowditch, the second Burns" and of Clare, the bard "Scotland's arithmetician; of Nichol, of Northamptonshire, are told with spirit. The two chapters on Nichol and Clare are the longest in the book, and are, evidently, a labour of love. Of the four episodes given at the end of the first, second, fourth, and ninth chapters, the one on the " order of vagabonds" is the least satisfactory, and the one on "the home of taste is the most worthy of attention. The first is mere rhapsody, but the second should be read by every working-man in the United Kingdom. Correspondence. SALTED WITH FIRE. FURTHER REMARKS ON MARK IX. 49. SIR,-When the serious and devout, mind contemplates the teachings of the Scriptures, it will often pause to preserve itself from mistakes in its conceptions of truth. Especially may this be when it meditates on the declared effect of final unbelief and impenitence. We can easily understand and readily admit the declaration that God is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works; with much of similar import in his holy word; but, how can this consist with the assurance that the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God, and he that believeth not the Son, shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on Him? "Contemplating the world lying in wickedness, we either turn aside from the prospect, or seek for some means to avoid the awful conclusion. We ask, is this really the doctrine of Scripture? Can it be that the Almighty Creator, the benevolent Father of mankind, who is declared to be love, will, under any circumstances, retain his anger for ever, against any of the human family, and allow them to abide under His wrath? We cannot wonder if the sensitive mind questions this conclusion, and looks again at the correctness of its foundation. Still, here is the Bible which teaches, in the plainest terms, that the impenitent unbeliever is without hope, as he is without God in the world; and this doctrine seems to run through all its teachings. Let us not then explain it away from some fancied necessity to harmonize it with, perhaps, an exclusive or perverted aspect of the love of God. This can do no good. The fact will not become different whoever may refuse to look at it. Let God be true, though every man be a liar. Far better will it be to look the truth in the face, and endeavour to exhibit it in the clearest light, than to attempt to conceal any fancied deformity |