ing, lying, and interested pretentions; then we should have the studden sails set, "and the wind right aft."

In the second section of the act of March 16th, 1809, page 340, under the title Libel, abridgment of the Laws of Pennsylvania, by John Purdon, jun. we read, that "In all actions or criminal prosecutions for a libel, the defendant may plead the truth thereof in justification, or give the same in evidence."

Yet, in page 109, of the act of the 31st March, 1806, we read, sect. 5. "If any person or persons shall presume to publish in any newspaper, or post handbills written or printed, or otherwise, any other person or persons as a coward or cowards, rascal or rascals, liar or liars, or use any other irritating or abusive language, for not accepting a challenge or fighting a duel, such person or persons shall, for such offence, being thereof convicted, be subject to the same punishment as though he or they had fought a duel, as provided by the first section of this act."-Which act, in its first and second sections, reads as follows:

SECT. 1 "If any person, within this commonwealth, shall challenge, by word or writing, the person of another, to fight at sword, rapier, pistol, or other deadly weapon, or if any person so challenged, shall accept the said challenge, in either case, such person so giving, or sending, or receiving any such challenge, shall, for such offence, being thereof lawfully convicted in any court of record within this commonwealth, by the testimony of one or more witnesses, or by confession, forfeit, and pay the sum of five hundred dollars, and shall suffer one year's imprisonment at hard labor, in the same manner as convicted felons are now punish

ed; and moreover, shall forfeit, and be deprived of all rights of citizenship, within this commonwealth, for the term of seven years.

Thanks to heaven, and to the immortalized legislature of March, 1806, here is an overwhelming exception to the justification of an infamous libel, though true; and herein we rejoice that they enforce that part of our Lord's sermon on the mount, "Whosoever shall say to his brother Raca, (that is, from the Hebrew word rack, saith A. Clarke; it signifies a vain, empty, worthless fellow, shallow brains, a term of great contempt,) shall be in danger of the council."

And, SECT. 2. "If any person shall willingly and knowingly carry and deliver any message, purporting to be a challenge, he shall pay five hundred dollars, and suffer one year's imprisonment at hard labor, and forever hereafter be incapable of holding any office, &c. within this commonwealth." "In the same manner as convicted felons," saith the act.

If, then, to save the state from confusion, and preserve such refractory gasgonaders as duel gladiators from death, stimulated the enlightened legislature of 1806, to make slanderous words, written and circulated, amount to felonious acts, and punished them accordingly, by such an inimitable statute, (except that of Virginia, January 26th, 1810) would it not be equally wise, politic, and just, to make slanderous words spoken, written, and otherwise uttered, to be also felony, when they shall be proved to have been so spoken, written, or otherwise uttered, of malice aforethought, to produce killing, and other losses to appetite, memory, peace, health, property, life, conjugal harmony, civil losses, punishments, vexations, and deadly

prosecutions, to which direful results we may add the loss of heaven, and the damnation of hell? More especially, when we have discovered that slander is the devil's compound mechanics, producing perpetual motion in tongues, pens, fists, cowskins, sticks, steel and lead, ropes, poisons, cups, glasses, nods, winks, mysterious whispers, ludicrous grimmaces, distrustful glances, earthquaking shrugs, and hydra headed signs, from the stamping foot up to the stiff, surly, sly, palechin, grinning jaw, serpentine upper lip, tossing nose, winking, screwed up, and fiery opened lightning eye, Vesuvius eyebrow, and harpie dishevelled hair, propelled by the large boiler of Satan's steam engine in hell, smoking, heating, tarnishing, and bursting from a windy kitchen up to the horns of the altar, flowing down upon society like vials of the lowering heavens, inundating us as the sea which shipwrecks from a canoe, up to a first rate ship of the line; in a word, slander being the overflowings of the highest rectified implacability of hell, is the cholera morbus of that bottomless pit, is its fiery bile raised to the greatest acme of irruptive irritation, and disgorged over this (thereby) shaking, tottering, putrescent fire and brimstone, Sodom and Gomorrah-and should be punished by statute law, referred to the jury.

"The sense in which words are received by the world, is the sense which courts of justice ought to ascribe to them in actions for slander. Slander imports an injury, and the injury must arise from the manner in which the slanderous language is understood." 2 Dallas, p. 59. 1 Dallas, p. 114.

The Rev. William M'Kendree, senior bishop of the Methsdist Episcopal Church, was told a villainous tale, slyly and slanderously, against one of

the brethren; and the good father of our itinerant society, our Elisha, who walked with Elijah Asbury until he received his senior itinerant mantle, sent him off with a reproof worthy of St. James, for he asked him, "brother, brother, did you tell him of it?" Thus did our Joshua fulfil the Scripture, which observes, that "the north wind driveth away rain: so doth an angry countenance a backbiting tongue.' Prov. xxv. 23; and we hope that the whole triumvirate are of his mind. We wish to God that all our preachers may follow herein his example. Hear also the Washington of Methodism, we mean John Wesley. "Hear evil of no man: if there were no hearers, there would be no speakers of evil. And is not the receiver as bad as the thief? If, then, any begin to speak evil in thy hearing, check him immediately; refuse to heart the voice of the charmer, charm he ever so sweetly let him use ever so soft a manner, so mild an accent, ever so many professions of good will for him whom he is stabbing in the dark, whom he smiteth under the fifth rib; resolutely refuse to hear, though the whisperer complain of being burdened till he speak. Burdened! thou fool, dost thou travail with thy cursed secret as a woman travaileth with child?" Go, then, and be delivered of thy burden, in the way the Lord hath ordained. Matt. xviii. Put ye away evil speaking, talebearing, whispering; let none of them proceed out of your mouth. mouth. See that you speak evil of no man;' of the absent, nothing but good. Let this be the distinguishing mark of a Methodist. He censures no man behind his back: by this fruit ye may know him. Suppose having seen a man drunk, or heard him curse or swear, I tell this when he is absent, it is evil speaking." So much

for John Wesley. See how we, who are called Methodists, imitate him!

in

"Not to mention the faults of any behind his back, and to stop those short that do; reprove love and meekness of wisdom."-Directions to the band societies, Dec. 25th, 1744, and again in 1812.

Our experience is a lie, if we are slanderers; for he that saith I know him, and keepeth not his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 1 John ii. 4.

What are the negative commands on this point? Answ. Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people. Lev. xix. 16.

What is a talebearer ?

Answ. A pedler, a trader, saith the Hebrew.

A talebearer, then, according to this text, so far from being a Christian, is the devil's pedler, or trader; and by not attending to the prohibitory command, Thou shalt not be a talebearer, he, as our text hath it, is a liar, he lies against God.

What! if he or she got drunk, and I told a preacher or leader, and I knew it to be a fact?

Answ. Yes: The telling of the fact in a talebearing, unscriptural way, is the lie against God's truth.

Whew! Then the truth is a lie, you say ?

Answ. Undoubtedly it is a lie against God's truth; that is the Scriptures of truth.

What dost thou mean by God's truth?

Answ. I have produced it in that emphatic negative, Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer he then is a liar who does go up and down as a talebearer, for he sins against the words of truth, prompted by the father of lies.

But suppose a preacher or leader ask me-must I not tell him of their crimes to keep up discipline?