PSALM XIV.

"O that the Lord's salvation
Were out of Zion come,
To heal his ancient nation,
To lead his outcasts home.

How long the holy city
Shall heathen feet profane?
Return, O Lord, in pity,
Rebuild her walls again.

Let fall thy rod of terror,

Thy saving grace impart ;
Roll back the veil of error,
Release the fettered heart.

Let Israel home returning
Her lost Messiah see;
Give oil of joy for mourning,

And bind thy Church to thee.' pp. 18, 19.

Mr. Judkin's volume has been for some time before the public, but has only recently fallen in our way. The Psalms in this Collection are arranged from the authorized metrical versions,' excluding such parts as are purely narrative or descriptive, and retaining only those which are devotional. The number of the Psalm is not given; and the reader will not easily recognize, in all cases, what psalm the metrical version is meant to represent; more especially as Mr. Judkin has taken very unauthorized liberties with the authorized originals. We cannot think that this portion of his labours, which is but a bungling attempt to snpersede Dr. Watts's Psalms, will gain him either credit or approbation. The hymns are original; and from these we shall have no difficulty in selecting some simply beautiful compositions. The first that forces itself on our choice is

Our next specimen must be the XXXIId. Hymn, which is a beautiful one.

very

We cannot pass over the following, though obviously not

adapted for psalmody.

HYMN LVII.

'I.

'Own I a name-which I by works deny ;

Am I the living-and yet counted dead;

Have I a lamp-and lack its due supply;

Move my lips Godward-when my heart hath sped?

'II.

And do I bow my knees-whilst full of pride,
And do I pray-when not a want I feel,
And seem to trust-where I in truth deride,
And seek a balsam-with no wound to heal?

' III.

'Make I the house of pray'r-the mart of gain;
Hear I God's curse-yet cherish still the sin;
Walk I with saints-while leagu'd with Satan's train,
Make Christ my boast-yet feed a hate within?

'IV.

O Lord! arise with mercy all thine own:
O Lord! these solemn mockeries forgive:
With pow'r convert to flesh a heart of stone:

Upon the dry bones breathe and let them live.'

p. 165.

Of two hundred original hymns from the same pen, it cannot be expected that the merit should be at all equal; and we might point out instances of false taste, and other faults. We shall content ourselves, however, with remarking, that the Author is somewhat too fond of making the same line end every stanza, as in the first specimen, and in Hymns IV., XIV., XXVIII., CVI., CLXV., &c.; or with iterating the same words, slightly varied, in each verse, like the heads of a sermon; e. g., in Hymn V., 'a living 'shepherd',- a gentle shepherd', a faithful shepherd,' &c. These little artifices of versification require to be very sparingly and delicately used, and displease when they occur again and again. In Hymn CLXVII., the effect of this iteration is ludicrous, and the metre itself is burlesque. Hymn CXLV., on the other hand, affords a happy specimen of an antithetical repetition of the same leading word.

• I.

·

Art. VI. Letters to a Member of Parliament on the present State of Things: the Land, the Church, the Dissent, Church Reform, Liberalism, &c. In Reference to Scripture Truth. 8vo. pp. 111. London, 1834.

THIS pamphlet has been sent to us accompanied with a request of an early notice.' What sort of notice the Writer expects from us, we cannot divine; but he shall have justice done to him: he shall speak for himself.

Now dissent does this-sets up a ministry and ordinances of a kind which God has not warranted, and is therefore a sinful system even where Christ, the TRUE Christ, is truly preached thereby.' p. 58.

'Dissent is the natural principle of unconverted man, which the purest church-form can never uproot... You see this truth exemplified every where in Scripture, in the midst of the full shining out of God from his own forms. You see it in the dissent of Cain, Korah, and his party, Hymeneus, Philetus, Alexander, Demas, Diotrephes, and others.' p. 93.

Let us examine the grievances,' one by one, by the principles through which we have gone.

The public registration of Births.-This demand of itself is unimportant. But it breaks the oneness of faith as regards the truth of infant Baptism, the present legal registration being that of the admission of infants to the outward church by a Christian rite. Grant

VOL, XII.-N.S.

PP

it, and you sanction the error and schism of the Anti-pædobaptists, who reject infant baptism; of the Quakers, who reject all Baptism; and of the Independents and others, who baptize infants without scriptural ministerial authority, no authority being given by the Word to unscripturally-ordained ministers to administer ordinances. A public registration of births, therefore, is inadmissible on gospel principles.' p. 42.

Nevertheless, this sapient person thinks, that it might be managed, in spite of its opposition to Gospel principles, by allowing courts of justice to receive any proof of births as evidence!! The demand not to pay church-rates, he will not waste time in arguing: the very proposition (proposal) includes the destruction of the national religion'!!! The Writer's politics may be learned from the following paragraphs.

Changes in the Ministry have been going on upon questions involving the principles and truths of God. Not for the better, but for the worse. Every turn of the wheel only serves to throw off another portion of right principle. Let no child of God be looking for changes for the better, but let him be well instructed in the Word, and wait patiently and assuredly for the unfolding of the Lord's purposes according to the Word. The Spirit of the age, as one, who so lately fell before it, called the God-denying Spirit abroad all over the earth, will allow no changes for the better. Truly did he call it a Spirit. It is a Spirit. It is "the Spirit" of the age gone forth with his fellowspirits unto the kings and powers and people of the earth and of the whole world, gone forth out of the mouth of the Liberal-Infidel Beast to do his master's universal work, Rev. xvi. 13, 14. It is "the Spirit," who will give power to the presumptuous and self-willed dreamers, that despise government and speak evil of dignities, and will cause them to walk upon the high places and trouble the heritage of God. It is "the Spirit," who, if the Conservatives, with whom is political truth, were conducting the Government to-morrow, would so press on them with the power of the filthy dreamers without, that, not being rooted in spiritual truth, they would either yield to him, as they did in the Papist Relief Bill, or be soon swept away by him. It is "the Spirit" of the Father of lies, who was a murderer from the beginning, sending forth the promise of great earthly good to poor sensual man, ever minding the things of the flesh and of the earth, and poor man shall follow the Boaster's bubble till it is burst by the thunder of the Lord's dreadful day. It is "the Spirit," who gives out the lie in the mouth of the world's prophesiers of good, and makes them break out with taunts and smitings upon the Lord's prophet of evil; and stirs up the world to hate him and feed him with bread and water of affliction till the good come to pass;-but the good will not come to pass, but as Ahab listened to the lying spirit in his prophesiers and went up and fell at Ramothgilead, so will the world listen to the lie of the Spirit" of the age in the mouth of all its prophesiers, and go up and fall in the battle of that great day of God Almighty.

Above all, let no child of God, deceived by appearances and flat