WHEN Moses went out, according to the command of the Lord, and gathered seventy men of the elders of the people, and set them round about the tabernacle, the Lord took the spirit that was upon Moses and gave it unto the seventy elders, and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied and did not cease. But Eldad and Medad, although "they were of them that were written," did not go up unto the tabernacle, but they remained, and prophesied in the camp. "And there ran a young man, and told Moses, and said, Eldad and Medad do prophesy in the camp," and Joshua, a servant of Moses, said, "My lord Moses, forbid them." And Moses said unto him, "Enviest thou for my sake? Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them!"

The conduct of this servant of Moses was not unlike that of many professing Christians, and even ministers of the Gospel too, of the present day. To the minds and hearts of such men there is nothing which gives more pain and fear than a knowledge of the fact that Christians unite together for social worship and prayer in those associations commonly called "Prayer Meetings," and brand those who take a part in them as "enthusiasts," "fanatics," "hypocrites," &c.

The sagacious" Squire," whose doleful complaint "to the Editor of the Christian Observer" we here give for the instruction of those who are crying out "Eldad and Medad do prophesy in the camp-my lord, forbid them," has found out that these praying people are addicted to the habit of being more honest and sober than formerly, when they attended church only once a week, or it might be, only once a month.

I AM the squire of a country parish, in the north of -shire, where, till within the last twenty years-that is, during the incumbency of the present rector and his predecessor-we never had any methodistical doings, but were as honest hearty souls as ever mounted a hunter or cracked a bottle. But during the last twenty years there has been a sad change. I do not mean that there is more poaching, or stealing wood and poultry, or robbing barns and orchards; for in these respects we are better off than before, which I attribute entirely to these things having gone out of fashion, just like hard drinking. But what I lament is the great increase of hypocrisy in the parish. When I was a boy we had service at church only once a fortnight; and not always that, especially when the curate, for we had no resident rector, had the rheumatism; but as soon as Mr. F. the late incumbent came to reside, he performed service every Sunday morning, which, however, I did not much object to; though it was sometimes very inconvenient, for, as I made a point of attending whenever there was a sermon, it prevented my taking physic, or VOL. VIII.

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settling some affairs at one of my manors, a few miles off, which I had been accustomed punctually to manage on the alternate Sundays once a month. Mr. F. died twelve years ago, and left in his will a considerable legacy for a second service every Sunday, as the smallness of the preferment had hitherto rendered it necessary for the clergyman to serve another parish in the afternoon. To attend a second service I had always considered great hypocrisy, and therefore I have never once darkened the doors of an afternoon since the endowment; but as the new rector, Mr. H., entered with warmth into the design of his predecessor, and the bishop and patron gave their consent, I could do nothing effectual to prevent it. Mr. H. acted very puritanically in the whole of this business : I am certain he only wished to curry favour with the poor, and to spite me; though I never could see what he could get by doing so. His conduct, however, throughout, was so hypocritically amiable and obliging, that he never gave me a fair opportunity to tell him all my mind. I hate such double dealing: a good hearty quarrel clears the air like a thunder storm, and all is sunshine afterwards.

Well, sir, hypocrisy, I believe, is as contagious as the plague; for in a few years half the parish began to be infected; and what with schools, and sermons, and bibles, and prayer-books, the Sunday, instead of being a day of rest, became as busy as a market-day. Some of the principal farmers, in imitation of the parson, have had the hypocrisy to take to cold-meat dinners on that day, that all their servants may go to church; and as for Mr. H. himself, when or how he gets his own dinner on these occasions, I cannot conjecture: he seems to me to live like a woodcock. But in order that you may understand more fully the nature of the evils of which I complain, I shall give you the following account of one of my tenants, who has for many years been one of the stanchest hypocrites in the parish.

Tim Dobbins was just my own age; and being my foster-brother, he used to be often, when a child, in the servants' hall at the manor-house, where he learned many excellent and diverting tricks. As we grew up, we became constant companions; for my father said, that though Tim was but a poor man's child, he had a good deal of spirit, and promised to be an adventurous sportsman, and might in time, after his death, make me a valuable gamekeeper. In this I was a little disappointed; for though Tim was a good fellow, an exceeding good fellow; yet he took so to drinking, and, what was worse, to poaching in the preserves which he was employed to guard, that I was obliged, at length, to dismiss him. I shall not trouble you with the rest of his adventures; how often he got into prison or sat in the stocks, with similar particulars, &c. What vexed me most was, that in throwing a red-hot poker one day at his wife, he set fire to the new cottage which I had built for him, and, being intoxicated at the time, suffered the flames to spread to one of my barns. I should not, however, have turned him out of his paddock for these offences, if he had not become a hypocrite; for I can forgive many faults, where there is a good heart.

His hypocrisy was very cleverly managed. He did not, like some reprobates I have heard of, boast of sudden conversion; indeed, in order the better to keep up the stratagem, he did not boast at all; but to the hour of his death, professed to be a miserable sinner, while all the while, I have no doubt, he thought himself quite a saint. About twenty years ago, when Mr. F. came to the parish, Tim's cottage was next to the par

sonage, so that his wife and children came in for many a good thing from the rector's kitchen and dairy. Both Mr. F. and afterwards Mr. H. used to visit them and give them little books; and, I must confess, they were very kind and attentive to their wants; all which I attributed to the newfashioned hypocrisy before mentioned. Tim, however, would not be won on, either by words or deeds. Mr. F. tried to break him of the knack of swearing, but did not succeed; for Tim, not being bred a gentleman, did not know that it is uncivil to swear before a clergyman. In three or four years, however, the rector, I perceived, began to gain a little upon him; for I once heard Tim say myself, that Mr. F. was a saint, if ever there was one on earth, and that in the end it might be better luck for us all if we were more like him.

When Tim's cottage was burnt down, the rector lent him one of his own, which happened to be empty; for there was snow on the ground, and Lucy Dobbins was near her confinement: and I had vowed Tim should not have so much as a stable of mine; for, in addition to burning my cottage and barn, which I did not care a rush for, he had betted upon Lord 's piebald galloway, and openly backbited the character of the finest hound in my kennel. As soon as Tim entered the cottage, he swore, with an oath, that the parson was a noble fellow; and by way of quitrent, vowed that he would never swear again while he remained in that cottage, and would even go to church some Sunday, as soon as he had won the new hat and red plush waistcoat to go in, at the cudgelmatch. He did not, however, keep either of these promises.

Some time after Tim was in prison for debt; and was so ill with a neglected cold, which he had caught one night in poaching my fish-ponds, that his life was despaired of. Mr. M. attended him frequently, and gave him food and medicines; for the parish apothecary did not care to trouble himself about him.—From this period I date the commencement of Tim's misfortune. The rector prevailed on the creditor to release him, and had him moved into his old cottage, which I had by this time rebuilt for him, being much pleased with him for keeping up the honour of our county by shooting twenty pigeons in succession-nine of them right through the head, at six yards' greater distance than the best rifleman in the adjoining county, which is half as big again as ours. He was nearly twelve months before he recovered; all which time the rector and his wife continued their designs upon him. Tim's ruin was now complete. I did not see him in prison, or during his illness; for such scenes, you know, only make a man melancholy, especially as I might have chanced to encounter the parson, and have come in for a slice of his Sunday's sermon. Poor Tim, when I first saw him after his recovery, was leaning over the gate on the sunny side of his cottage, as I rode past to go to our annual cock-fight, which, I assure you, Mr. Editor, is one of the finest things in all our county. "Ah! Tim," said I, "I see you will soon be with us again." "I hope not, sir," he replied. "Hope not! and why? do you intend to hang all your life over a gate with your head thatched with a night-cap?" "My thoughts, sir," said he, " are greatly changed, and I trust, in future, to lead a very different life to what I have yet done." He added a few words more, which I did not quite understand; but they sufficed to convince me that Tim was becoming a downright hypocrite: and so I told all the company at the cockpit, who great

ly applauded my sagacity, and lamented that he should have fallen, of late, into low spirits and methodistical company.

Tim continued to manage his hypocrisy in a very plausible ingenious manner. He did not make a great blaze in the village, as I expected he would have done; but went on quietly about his employments; and, to keep up the plot the better, left off drinking, and swearing, and gaming, and poaching, and stealing, and most of his old habits. I suppose he was tired of them. Nay, the sly fellow went so far that, from being the most troublesome and quarrelsome man in the hundred, he, in time, obtained every body's good word as a civil companion, an obliging neighbour, a faithful friend, and the best paymaster in the village. Still further to keep up the farce, he contrived to save money to pay off his old debts, and subscribed a penny a week to a Bible and Prayer-book Society; expecting, I suppose, that they would decline receiving money. Nay, he went so far as to deceive his own family, so that even his wife and children believed him in earnest; and whereas they formerly trembled at his presence, they now became tenderly attached to him, and gave him the best of characters to the end of his life. I do not find fault with any of these good doings in themselves; indeed, I very much admire them; only in Tim they showed great hypocrisy, because he did not even pretend that his temper and passions were changed in themselves— only that religion made him endeavour to subdue them-a plain proof of double-mindedness. I need scarcely add, that he took to going to church twice every Sunday; besides which he read the Bible and Prayer-book to his wife and children at home, as often as he had an opportunity. Thus year after year he went on passing himself for a saint; and this without any sufficient motive that ever I could discover to make it worth his while to do so. It must have been the mere love of hypocrisy. I make no doubt he would have had us believe it was for conscience sake; and many people thought it was so, especially as he never made any difficulty of giving up his interest to suit his purposes. Once I warned him out of his cottage, to prevent the walls being infected with Methodism, and, to my great surprise, he left, rather than give over his hypocritical doings. In short, he kept up his character to the last; and the parson has for many years spoken of him as one of the best livers in the parish, and recommended all his neighbours to imitate his example.

His death has crowned the whole; for he died as he lived, without any acknowledgment of his hypocrisy. He professed to be quite calm, and ready to go; another plain proof of insincerity, for who would die that could help it? I do not hear of his having used any extravagant expressions of joy; I suppose he was too cunning for this; but Mr. M. said, in his funeral sermon, that he was very repentant, and placed his trust in Jesus Christ, our Lord; and he told us a great many of his sayings and doings, which were very good and pious in themselves, only too methodistical.

Now, sir, what I want to know is, what can I do to stop the effects of this example? Tim's pretended repentance and good works and religious discourse, continued for so many years, have made many other persons take up the same kind of hypocritical religion; and they are all treading in his steps, to the great joy of the rector, who is getting an old man and cannot see through these things. Tim's death-bed has strengthened the general impression; and if we go on as we are now beginning,

I fear we must add a new gallery to the church, which would be a great expense to the parish. Pray inform me how to act. Could I not indict the rector for driving his majesty's subjects mad? My own wife and daughters, I fear, are bitten; and, to provoke me the more, are become so doubly kind and amiable, that, do what I will, I cannot find a pretext to quarrel with them. They read your work, Mr. Editor, which is the way I come to know of it; and I am in hopes that, if you admit my communication, they will be so shocked at the above exposure of hypocrisy, as to forsake their new-fangled notions, and go back to balls and cards, and other like Christian amusements, which is the hearty wish of, sir, Your obedient servant, AN ANTI-METHODIST.

For the Christian Herald.

THE JEW.

MR. EDITOR.-The providence of God having placed me in a variety of situations, I have been in the habit of noting, in my memoranda-book, notices of whatever occurrences, at the time, made a forcible impression on my mind. Should you think proper to publish such hasty sketches in your respectable paper as I may have time to furnish, they will be at your disposal. I shall send you nothing but what is founded on fact. I ardently wish you success in your labours, and could I, in the least, assist you, it would afford me great pleasure.

PEREGRINUS.

TRAVELLING lately through the western part of Virginia, I was much interested in hearing an old and highly respectable clergyman give a short account of a Jew, with whom he had lately become acquainted. He was preaching to a large and attentive audience, when his attention was arrested by seeing a man enter having every mark of a Jew on the lineaments of his countenance. He was well dressed, his countenance was noble, though it was evident his heart had lately been the habitation of sorrow. He took his seat and was all attention, while an unconscious tear was often seen to wet his manly cheek. After service the clergyman, fixed his eye steadily upon him, and the stranger reciprocated the stare. The good minister goes up to him; "Sir, am I correct, am I not addressing one of the children of Abraham ?" "You are." "But how is it that I meet a Jew in a Christian assembly?" The substance of his narrative was as follows.

He was a very respectable man, of a superior education, who had lately come from London; and with his books, his riches, and a lovely daughter of seventeen, had found a charming retreat on the fertile banks of the Ohio. He had buried the companion of his bosom before he left Europe, and he now knew no pleasure but the company of his endeared child. She was, indeed, worthy of a parent's love. She was surrounded by beauty as a mantle; but her cultivated mind, and her amiable disposition, threw around her a charm superior to any of the tinselled decorations of the body. No pains had been spared on her education. She could read and speak with fluency several different languages, and her manners charmed every beholder. No wonder, then, that a doating father, whose head had now become sprinkled with gray, should place his whole affec