remember if servants are ruined for want of foresight, the fault rests not with the Evening Lecture, but with those who by the neglect of common precautions expose them to imminent danger.

But another We can never says tell when our servants come in-or where they sit. Of course if your servants don't go with you you will not kuow when they come in. Therefore make a point of taking them with you; and a little contrivance will usually enable you to know where they sit. But why should not servants more frequently sit with their masters and mistresses. I have been many times in the rector's seat of a city church where the servants sat with the family, and in one case where the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of the city of London sat by the side of the rector's lady and the female servants opposite. I remember Lady Catherine Murray always sitting at St. John's, Bedford Row, with her two female servants with her. The domestics in both these cases were of superior order; but I own I see no reason why the female servants especially should not ordinarily sit in the family pew. I know indeed, that where pews are hired a few shillings a quarter are saved by thrusting the servants into holes or corners, or leaving them to stand in the aisles; and I have been disgusted with the paltry meanness and the heartless inconsideration which is incessantly manifested in wealthy and fashionable congregations, and especially in the metropolis; but where seats can be hired I should not choose for the sake of a few shillings a year to expose a humble dependant to the inconvenience, the rudeness and

the possible moral dangers which certainly may be occasionally encountered in the dark and obscure corners of a crowded church; especially when the money thus paid is in most cases applied either to the support of a minister who has a right to a decent maintenance; or to provide for the repairs of the fabric and the other necessary expences attendant on public worship. I have now, Sir, for near fifty years been a regular attendant on Sunday evening services. I have worshipped in far distant places, and under very different circumstances; I have seen and heard on various occasions things which I have disapproved; but my deliberate judgment is that so far from Evening Services being necessarily or generally productive of evil, they are most powerful instruments of doing good. Our Sunday evening lectures bring thousands and tens of thousands, yea hundreds of thousands under religious instruction, who would otherwise be exposed to temptation, and our weekday Evening Lectures are most efficient means of promoting growth in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and SaviourJesusChrist. They may be abused. They may sometimes interfere with other duties. Men may run to hear who will not return to pray. Human depravity may thus creep in, and pervert that which is good; but my experience in the metropolis and in different large towns, and in retired country villages, compels me most decidedly to advocate a Sunday Evening service, and one week day lecture, wherever they can conveniently be introduced.

PRESBYTER.

MY DEAR SIR,-Benevolent people are sometimes short-sighted, and not always free from prejudice. Of this your correspondent M. D. is, in my judgment rather a striking proof, in his very severe charges against the New Poor Law. Let him look at the facts of the case, and mark those parts of Holy Scripture which really bear upon the subject; for I must say that I do not perceive the applicability of some of his quotations; and peradventure he may see one or more good reasons for altering and amending his judgment in the case. him, for example, compare Acts ii. 45. glancing as he passes, at Acts vi. 1. with 1 Tim. v. 3, 4, 8-10. and, especially, with 2 Thess. iii. 10-12. He will find these texts completely in point. In the beginning of the Gospel, when love and zeal were animated and warmer, and persecution made the tenure of a Christian's property uncertain-distribution was unreservedly "made to all men

Let

out of the common stock "accord

ing as they had need."

The Christian community, having had no example among either Jews or heathen, of such a mode of proceeding; for our blessed Christianity, you know, Sir, first opened the hearts of men to a practical sense of the duty of providing for the poor, and a previous experience of their own, to guide them, were by the indiscreet profusion of their bounty, generating a serious evil. Christian people were forced even in those trying times, when persecution may be supposed to have tested the sincerity of most, who were disposed to live upon other people's labours, rather than exert themselves to gain a maintenance by their own. No doubt they thought they had sufficient grounds for acting as they did, and had only to make the claim to have

it answered. This seems to have been almost universally the case with widows. But what did St. Paul, in his care of the churches (2 Cor. xi.) and his forwardness to remember the poor? (Gal. xi.) He gave positive orders that all such disorderly proceedings should be put an end to, and laid it down as an invariable rule, that "if any man would not work for his living "he should not eat," at the charge of his brother; and plainly marked those with disgrace who did not "eat their own bread." He went further, and left on record, not so much his sentiment, as that of the Lord himself, that he who did not provide for his own kindred, and especially those of his own house, had denied the Christian faith, and was worse than an unbeliever. Such conduct shewed a man utterly destitute of Christian principle. Not only children therefore, but the nephews of widows, were required to "shew pity at home, and requite their parents" agreeably to the first commandment with promise. Now, Sir, whatever may be said of the principle of the English Poor Law as it was, the effect of its general administration was to produce a state of feeling and of conduct altogether the reverse of St. Paul's poor law principle, i. e. of Christ's; and I cannot but think that our new system has a tendency, and certainly it was the intention of the legislature, to correct the evil thus produced, to bring back the fifth commandment into use and honour among the poor, and to make it a disgrace for any one (who can possibly avoid it) to eat any bread but his own.

This it endeavours to accomplish, 1. By putting as severe a check as possible upon the administration of the law, which, it is well known, has been the chief

source of evil. 2. By letting ablebodied applicants for relief, feel that he who lives upon the fruit of other people's labour must not expect to fare so well as he who maintains himself by his own. And 3. presenting the fifth commandment to the children and near relatives of the aged and infirm, before granting an order for their support, from the funds furnished by those upon whom they have not so near a claim. Meanwhile

the channels of private benevolence are left open, and are likely to be more abundantly supplied, when the abuses of parish allowance no longer operate as a check upon those who really desire to do good. Your correspondent quotes Deut. xxvii. 16. and is afraid that the poor will be led to incur the curse of "setting light by father and mother," in consequence of the occasional separation of parents from their children. This apprehended evil can only take place when the parents become inmates of the workhouse, an evil which will very rarely befal the industrious, provident, God-fearing poor -those, that is, whose association with their children is likely to be a blessing. But if it should, who knows not that the whole country is full of their fellow-sufferers among the rich, who are for the most part separated from their children for nine or ten months in the year, as our sea-faring population are from both wives and children. Let not your friend's kind feelings fill his imagination with grievances for the poor, which possibly may have no instance but in his mind-but let him rather be thankful for the means which are now employed to remove those that are real.

To show to what a fearful degree the evil which he dreads from the new poor law has increased under the old, I mean a contempt of the fifth commandment. I may mention, that I live in a part of the country where the poor are per

haps better provided for than in any part of England, and yet here are two instances which presented themselves to me within the last fortnight. Speaking with a respectable small farmer in good circumstances, about a young woman, an orphan, who had lately applied to him for relief, though she had two uncles by the father's side in good circumstances, and two by the mother's, who were by no means poor; he said he did not expect that the uncles would do any thing for her, but it came the harder upon him, because since this new poor law came into practice, he had been forced to keep his old father. The father, it seems, had been dependant upon the parish, though he had this son in a prosperous condition, and at least one son and one daughter more in the receipt of high wages as farm servants. The other case I refer to is that of an elderly widow, who asking me about the war in Canada, said, she understood the people there hungred to death, and supposed that, as they belonged to us, their misery was occasioned by the new poor-law. I set her right upon this subject, and exculpating the innocent poor-law, charged the rebellion upon the restless men in our country and in theirs, who had provoked the misguided people to quarrel with their best friends. I then told her that I myself was inclined to have a good opinion of this new law, because among other things it pressed solemnly upon children the duty of helping their aged parents. She replied that it had, certainly, done her no harm, for she received the two shillings a week still which she used to receive; though two shillings a week left little for her support when rent and firing were paid out of it. She wanted no encouragement to complain of the hardship of her condition in receiving so little from her neighbours' earnings, though she has un

married sons in the receipt of from £14. to £30. a year each, beside their food and lodging; another son lately married, and a daughter who has, till lately, been in the receipt of good wages as a servant. If such a district as this can supply so readily instances of the disregard of filial duty, and this in the persons of what would be called decent and creditable people, to what an extent must the evil prevail in places encumbered with poor. Indeed, my dear Sir, it becomes benevolent men while condemning what they suppose not scriptural, to guard against the prejudices and mistaken views which may lead them to condemn that which God may be employing for the healing of some of the most grievous disorders of our country. Feelings of kindness to his poor brethren, which fill the heart of every Christian would, if allowed to act without the correction of experience, lead him at once to set them all at ease, and give them all, without reference to the causes of their poverty, full meals and warm clothing, but in so doing we should be counteracting the order of God's wise Providence, who will have men suffer the consequences of their own imprudence and miscon

duct. What we designed for good would, as was evidently the case even in the apostles' times, turn to evil: we should have to correct our error, as St. Paul did that of the Christians of his day, and put our zeal under the guidance of sound wisdom and discretion. This new system of poor law, whatever its faults may be, recommends itself by its general harmony with the order of God's government, and as having what H. D. so much desires, a direct scriptural sanction for its most important provisions.

I have spun out my remarks to too great a length, and will only say further, that if H. D. will study the subject accurately, and read the documents which are before the public, he will find less reason than he thinks for censuring the scarcity of food at the workhouses; and if he be a clergyman, he will perhaps allow me to request him when he next preaches on the fifth commandment, to urge upon parents the duty of training up their children to understand what this meaneth-" Love, honour, and succour your father and mother.” I am, my dear Sir, very truly

yours,

2. A.

tine; the re-establishment of their civil and ecclesiastical polity; their advance to a measure of preeminence over other nations, and their enjoyment of the personal reign of the Messiah; while the neglect of proclaiming these future glories of the Jewish race is mentioned as one obstacle to their reception of Christianity; an obstacle which Christians are called upon immediately to remove out of the way.

There is another idea which appears to be gradually, though somewhat silently gaining ground; which is that the Jews are kept separate for judgment rather than mercy; that they are an apostate race under a curse; that so long as they continue Jews they have no share in the promises; that their restoration to their own land, the re-establishment of their civil and ecclesiastical polity, their exaltation over the nations, and all their alleged future glories rest on very uncertain foundations that though "all Israel shall be saved," it will only be by becoming converted to the faith of Christ, united to and incorporated with the Christian Church, and virtually renouncing the distinctive name and character of Jews, and that the proclamation of their future glories and pre-eminence is calculated to encourage false and erroneous expectations, and to impede rather than advance their conversion to the faith of Christ.

There is indeed something humbling in the thought that such very contrary ideas on so important a topic can be for a moment entertained by wise and good men; and yet I must freely own that I am very much at a loss to determine which position is the most correct. I have read many, indeed most of the writings on prophecy which have appeared in the last twenty or thirty years, and am familiar with several of the most approved commentators; and yet there are

some important points on which I have not hitherto been enabled to arrive at any thing like a satisfactory conclusion.

I know indeed that such a confession will excite the surprise of some, and the indignation of others. When a late eminent divine was asked by a young enquirer for some clear proof of the restoration of the Jews to their own land; he somewhat flippantly told the young man to open his Bible, for that he could not read a page without meeting with a passage in point. I have opened my Bible-I have carefully read and considered the Prophecies; I have studied Newton, and Scott, and Faber, and Brooks, and Bickersteth, but I am yet in doubt whether the Jews will ever be restored to the literal Jerusalem. All the early fathers and commentators were indeed of this opinion. Mr. Scott observes, "it is now becoming more and more the opinion of serious Christians, that when Israel shall be converted to their long rejected Messiah, they will be gathered from their dispersions and reinstated in their own land;' and it seems therefore somewhat presumptuous to express any doubt of so generally a re-ceived opinion. Yet Mr. Jenour commenting on Isa. xi. 11-13, observes, It is said expressly the Lord shall recover them (the remnant of his people) from the four quarters of the earth, which would appear to intimate that he will assemble them together in one place. But may not these and similar expressions merely signify in the style of prophecy that Jehovah will recover his people in a spiritual sense; that is, remove every obstacle and bring them into his church? Is it not probable that when the Jews have become Chris.. tians, they will so intermingle with the Gentiles, that all distinctions between the two will soon be done away?'

One grand argument for the