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for them; labouring like St. Paul, and working with their hands the things that are good, even while carrying on their spiritual improvement. So shall the fragments of our barley loaves become as precious as the bread of fine wheaten flour in the sanctuary.. - Callcott's Scripture Herbal.

FRIENDSHIP IN ITS PRINCIPLES AND OPERATIONS.

With a Portrait and Memoir of MARK TULLY CICERO. Foolscap 8vo, about 200 pp. C. E. THOMAS.

THIS work contains a variety of pieces, in prose and verse, on Friendship. It is neatly got up; and the price, in fancy cloth, is 2s. We have heard that about 750 have been sold privately; and that copies are in the hands of her Majesty, Prince Albert, the Queen Dowager, the Lords Brougham, Lyndhurst, Denman, Abinger, Langdale, and Campbell, Sir R. Peel, the Vice-Chancellor of England, the Hon. T. Erskine, &c.; and we think the subject and the book deserve notice.

INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY INTO OTAHEITE.

SELDOM had any enterprise commenced under auspices more favourable, or that could promise more certain or speedy success to its authors, than the introduction of Christianity into

Otaheite; and yet, after the labours, sacrifice, and anxiety of twelve years, it arrived at a termination alike disastrous and fruitless. The missionaries had left their native land to save the remnant of an interesting people from destruction, and to promote their temporal as well as spiritual welfare. But, notwithstanding their utmost endeavours, they had seen the process of depopulation urged on with a fearful rapidity, by causes which, though they regretted them, they could neither diminish nor control; and amidst anarchy, bloodshed, and all the other horrors of barbarian warfare, they were ultimately driven from the field, where they had trusted to gain a triumph for the gospel and the benign spirit of civilization. There were many grounds to conclude that, during the time the mission had existed in Otaheite, the experiment of raising a savage people to the rank of a Christian community had been tried and completely failed; and the result, according to the ordinary grounds of calculation, might be supposed to demonstrate the impropriety of expending more labour or money upon an object, for the accomplishment of which it might be asserted that the time had not yet come. But, as the darkest hour of night is that which precedes the dawn of a new day, so the gloom now cast over the missionary cause was about to be followed by a brighter light than had yet shone upon their exertions in the South Sea. Pomare, who felt that, when the European settlers left his shores, one of the principal means of improvement had been withdrawn from his people, no sooner saw affairs in a somewhat more settled state, than in the most earnest manner he invited them to return. He was still indeed an exile in Eimeo, excluded from his paternal dominions,

and consequently had less power than formerly, either to protect them from danger, or to aid their endeavours for spreading civilization among his subjects. It is doubtful, too, whether his favourable thoughts towards the Christian brethren ought to be ascribed to his late reverses, and to an impression thereby produced, in regard to the inefficacy of idol-worship for obtaining supernatural aid; or whether adversity did not lead him to reflect on the declarations he had so often heard respecting the true God, and to connect his present condition with a sinful life, of which he had not yet seriously repented. But, whatever may have been the motive, there is no doubt that his fallen estate had subdued his spirit, and at the same time weakened the influence which his native superstition had till then exercised over his heart. In the autumn of 1811 the missionaries left their retreat in New Holland, and set sail for the Georgian isles, the original scene of their labours. They joined the king in Eimeo, where they now established a school, and, so far as circumstances would permit, resumed their wonted course of instruction in public and in private. It was not long before their pious efforts were rewarded by a signal triumph of the Christian faith over the absurdities of idolatry. In July, 1812, the king publicly professed his belief in Jehovah, and his desire to be baptized into the sublime doctrines and hopes revealed by the gospel.Edinburgh Cabinet Library, No. XXXIII. Polynesia.

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GOD'S DEALINGS WITH HIS PEOPLE. THE only way of salvation is by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ must dwell in us by his Holy Spirit, and we must abide in him by a living faith: thus Christ is "the way," and no man cometh unto the Father but by him. Convinced of our danger by the Holy Spirit, we flee to Christ as the ark of our refuge; we see him, by faith, dying on Calvary, and we believe that our heap of sins is among those which lie on his head, and we can discern our names "graven on the palms of his hands." We believe what God's word declares as applicable to ourselves, "He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." But as soon as we thus believe in Christ as the propitiation for our sins, it leads to much communication between Christ and us, and we begin to imitate him, and to reflect his image, so that our old companions "take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus"-with him whom our soul used to hate, but now loveth exceedingly. And so, by the Holy Ghost enabling us to believe, and applying the Redeemer's blood to our sins, we "are washed, we are sanctified, and we are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the spirit of our God." We commend our souls into the hands of Jesus, and trust in him to preserve them unto his heavenly kingdom; and with Thomas we can say to him, "My Lord and my God;" or again with the Psalmist, "Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.” “My times are in thy hand." We learn to acknowledge the hand of God in appointing us our life-time in the present age.

His

mercy towards us delayed our birth till after the ages of druidical cruelty, darkness, and superstition; and has caused us to be born at a period in our nation's history when life and immortality have been brought to light through the gospel. By fixing our birth some nineteen centuries forward in the great scale of time, we have been blest with the sanctifying knowledge of the only true God, in this world, and with the hope of glory in the world to come. Why was not the sacrificial knife uplift on us and our infant offspring? or why were not we and our children presented, in a colossal statue of wicker work, a whole burnt-offering to some sanguinary idol deity, as were many thousands of our British countrymen in olden time? The answer is, because our times are in God's hand. Again, our times are in God's hand in respect to the preservation of our lives. No "foeman" can take away our life until our God permits. Our time of death as well as our time of life are determined by our covenant God. Add to which, our times of prosperity and of adversity, of sorrow and of joy, of trouble and of consolation, of trial and of victory, of disquietude and of peace-these all are in God's hand! they come, they continue, they go away at his command. As the sun knoweth its going down, as “the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times, and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming," so do the various dispensations of God's providence come to us at the time of God's appointment. He disposes of everything in its season after the purposes of his own will. "Affliction

cometh not forth of the dust," but from God; and it is he that "giveth power to get wealth." In short, God ordains everything; and he disposes

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