largest manufacturing towns; besides creating Birkenhead and a few other new boroughs. The important point is, that it lowers the franchise to six pounds in the boroughs. We do not anticipate much either of good or evil from the change. Not much good, because the new electors, as a body, will not be influenced either by religious or patriotic principles, but simply by self-interest. Not much evil, because their interests, according to their own view of them, are always jarring. The iron-founder's labourer clamours for free-trade, the silkweaver for protection; neither of them viewing the question in any broader light than that which it casts upon their own pay-day. They are a class more under the influence of the publican than the demagogue for they love beer better than speech-making; and therefore they will be formidable to the candidate who is too virtuous or too poor to gain the publican. A mournful picture, but unhappily too true. Several measures affecting religion have been introduced, but all have been abandoned. One for the better observance of the Lord'sday was brought forward by Lord Chelmsford; he described it as a bill, not of coercion, but protection; and we have no doubt his lordship had the best intentions; but as it would legalize Sunday trading before the hour of divine service in the morning, it could of course give little satisfaction to us who believe that the Lord's-day is of divine appointment. The legislature exceeds its authority when it offers a compromise. We would rather leave Sunday trading to cure itself, as in fact it begins to do. We read lately that the gold-diggers of California, in self-defence, and with no pretence of religion, had combined to prevent the desecration of the day; and in some of our larger towns the local authorities are taking up the evil, and inflicting fines upon Sunday traders in the same spirit.

We must deviate from our usual custom, and for once ask the attention of our readers to an advertisement which appears upon our cover. It solicits contributions towards the erection of a district church in the parish of Harrow. Not a few of our readers, now filling important stations in church and state, feel towards Harrow those grateful and even tender recollections which school-boy days inspire; and to these not a few of them, we hope and believe, add still deeper feelings of regard to the venerable vicar for spiritual benefits. They have now an opportunity of at once gratifying their own feelings and of paying a not unwelcome tribute of respect to him. How deeply he feels interested in the work appears from the fact that, as an endowment fund, he is prepared forthwith to convey over a freehold property, estimated to be worth £1200, to trustees, "provided that the church be completed in three years from January 1st, 1860." We will add no more, but conclude with a few words from Mr. Cunningham's own appeal. The patronage, as will be seen from the advertisement, will be vested in trustees, whose principles are well known:-"It is not likely, from my own advanced period of life, that I should ever have any additional request of a public or parochial character to urge upon my friends around me- -and I am not sorry that this probably last application should be one, in which I call upon them to assist in the raising an edifice to the honour of our Divine Redeemer, and for the instruction and salvation of those for whom He has shed His most precious blood."

THE CONSOLATIONS OF A BELIEVER UNDER AFFLICTION.

"MAN is born to sorrow." There may be a difference in circumstances, or in mental constitution, that renders one more liable to it, or liable to a greater share of it, than another. But none can wholly escape from its predominating influence. And the Christian has his full share of sufferings and afflictions. A life of holiness will indeed enable him to escape from many of the evils that afflict our fallen humanity. For vice retains its own punishment, as well as virtue its own reward. But he who thinks to escape from sorrow by fleeing to Christ, calculates wrongly. "In the world," said Jesus, "ye shall have tribulation; but in me ye shall have peace." And we have no more reason to expect the fulfilment of the latter part of the promise than of the former part. The consolations of the gospel are intended, not to prevent affliction, but to ease or cure it; not to prevent our being wounded, but to heal our wounds.

There are sufficient reasons why the Christian should have his full share of affliction. The softening and purifying influence of true religion refines the feelings, and renders the heart more susceptible. There is a new and higher mental and moral development. Sensibility has attained a keener edge. The nerves vibrate with a touch which would have been before unfelt. Nor is this all. The very circumstances in which the Christian is placed demand that it should be so. There is a "needs be" for every trial, every bereavement, every pang. Pain, in the natural world, is the great incentive to action. Thus, that which is commonly looked upon as an evil is seen to be really a merciful provision of the Omniscient One, warning of danger, stimulating to exertion, and acting as a counterpoise to the love of rest and ease.

"This

is not our rest;" but affliction is as needful to the spiritual man, 2 Q

Vol. 59.-No. 269.

as pain to the natural man, to keep him from seeking to rest, and settling on his lees. And therefore, in the arrangements of Providence, is his cup of bitterness so often filled to overflowing.

But if the believer's sorrows are abundant, his consolations also much more abound. He has comforts, as well as afflictions, of which the world knows nothing. Whatever be the nature of his trouble, it is his privilege to exclaim with the psalmist, "In the multitude of my thoughts within me, Thy comforts delight my soul." His sources of consolation are great and manifold; and they are adapted, not only to the afflictions which are peculiar to him as a believer, but also to all those which he shares in common with the rest of mankind. Herein lies another advantage which he possesses over the unbeliever. Not only does he escape the pains, bodily and mental, which follow the indulgence of sinful propensities; but if he have afflictions of his own, proceeding from tenderness of heart and conscience, the consolations which abound by Christ not only turn the notes of wailing which these awaken into the sweet calm "joy of grief," but pour oil and balm into the common wounds of suffering humanity, healing what otherwise might have proved long-festering sores.

He sees no

In the darkest night of tribulation, when the Christian can neither see nor feel his way, he is yet often able to hold out the trembling hand of faith, in the full conviction that a kind and guiding hand will grasp it and lead him onwards. In spite of present suffering, he is convinced that "all is well." "chance-work" in the universe. The wisdom that guides the stars in their courses, and provides, by compensatory attractions, a counterpoise for all their apparently dangerous deviations, he sees also as presiding over the fall of a sparrow-the death-pangs of an animalcule-the dropping of a hair. He can trust in God's wisdom and goodness; although, in the deep darkness that involves him, every starry eye of heaven seems hidden. The darkness may be felt; its chilly damps may cause soul-shivering; a feeling of desolation may come over him, when forms, which were dearest of all earthly objects to his heart, are removed from his sight, to be watched with tenderness in this world no more. But in the midst of his sad feeling of loneliness he knows that he is not alonethat he is not the mere butt of fortuitous occurrences, unthought of, uncared for. He sees God, not as an imperturbable Being, whom nothing can move to sympathy or pity; not as one who has left the universe to wander at its will, and committed his moral, sentient creature to the iron destiny of principles and laws, to be the sport of circumstances which no intelligence can control. He may not be able, in the dimness of his soul's vision, to recognise the wisdom of the arrangements under which he suffers; yet he nevertheless believes there is wisdom in them. Convinced that "the Judge of all the earth will do right," that He "doeth all things well," he bows with submission to His will. His tears are

not the tears of rebellion or despair, but the tears of faith. And, as they rush from his swollen eyelids, he can utter the confiding exclamation: "I was dumb; I opened not my mouth, because

Thou didst it."

The believer sees also justice, yea mercy, in the afflictions which are allotted him. He does not, indeed, regard suffering as the natural condition of the creature. It is, in his view, unnatural. It is a discord in the once perfect strain of nature's harmony. It proceeds from a dislocation of her own beautiful framework; a violent upheaval of her own strata. He traces up all suffering to sin, whose fierce convulsions in the moral world have broken, contorted, dislocated everything, and thrown all into dire confusion; and, feeling as well as confessing himself a sinner, he patiently submits to the afflictions that may befall him, in the full consciousness that they are far less than he deserves. "Mine iniquities," is his patient exclamation, "have separated between me and my God; and my sins have hid his face from me." "Wherefore should a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?" "I will patiently bear what He layeth upon me, who endured far greater agony for my sake." Thus the believer's deepest sorrows are endured without murmuring. His tones of grief are not, in the strictest sense, complaining notes. He is convinced that God is just and good in every pang that He inflicteth. As sorrow is respired, consolation is inspired; and thus every breath the spirit draws gives added strength to "endure as seeing Him who is invisible." "Tribulation worketh patience; and patience experience; and experience hope."

But the believer has a yet higher source of consolation in the reflection that all we suffer is the chastening of a Father's care. In the hand that brings his sorrows he recognises a parent's hand. Submissively he "hears the rod, and Him that hath appointed it ;" because he hath been taught that "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." Yea, that "if we be without chastisement whereof all are partakers, then are we bastards, and not sons." His very submission carries consolation with it. It is not mere submission. It is not the stoical apathy or pride that refuses or disdains to utter a complaint. It is not the philosopher's submission to "inevitable destiny." It is not the slave's submission to the will of a master whose decrees he cannot alter. It is not the worldling's formal acknowledgment of a superintending Providence, in the oftrepeated but little-reck'd-of words, "It is the will of God, and so I suppose I must submit." Oh, no! In the believer's heart, even under the severest and heaviest trials, there is something more than these. There is acquiescence, as well as submission. There is an acknowledgment of superior wisdom, as well as superior power-of a parent's heart, as well as a master's hand. And while he tremblingly utters the pathetic exclamation, "Thy will be

done!" it is, in some good measure, in the spirit of Him who, in deeper, unapproachable agony, exclaimed, "The cup that my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it ?" The loving child can submit to correction even from an earthly parent, without murmuring. He may weep-weep to think he should need to be corrected. He may feel: for the loving heart is never callous. He may suffer, severely suffer, under the temporary infliction. But he draws consolation from the thought that the hand that punishes him is a father's hand; that though his face may now be clothed with frowns, those frowns will pass away; that the ties which bind them together are not broken; that He who wounds and punishes will not cast him off. And since the apostle, in the 12th of Hebrews, legitimately reasons, that because we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence, we should much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live; legitimately also may the Christian carry upward the consolations of a child under the corrections of his earthly parent, and rejoice in the filial and parental bonds which unite him with his chastising God, who has promised that He will 'never leave him nor forsake him.”

The consolations of the Christian are heightened too by the reflection that his Father is a loving father; and that every affliction which befalls him is sent in love. He may not be able to trace this clearly on the map of life. He may not see his way to reason it out, steadily and succinctly. The problem may be too difficult for him to solve, in the midst of that confusion of mind which deep, heart-paralyzing affliction commonly induces. But he believes it. Faith gives her assent to it, not only as a general truth, but as a truth in his own particular case, however terrible the infliction, however poignant the sorrow. Faith looks to Calvary, and argues, "He that spared not his own Son, but freely gave Him up for my sins-He that spared not his own life, but endured for my sake the very pangs of hell, can send me no affliction save in love and mercy." And this reasoning is cogent: it is convincing. It requires no long process of ratiocination, of which the suffering soul is incapable. The conclusion rests upon the surface; and, however depressed or paralyzed the rational faculties may be, faith can grasp it. The Christian's pain may be excruciating; his losses may be ruinous; his prospects may be dark beyond expression; or his bereavements such as have left his earthly career one blank of desolation. Yet, in the midst of all can he be enabled to exclaim, "Though He deprive me of the light of my eyes, and the treasure of my heart, yet I believe that all his dealings are in love and mercy. Yea, 'although the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls; yet will I rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.""