the schoolmaster. I do not object to rags giving place to decent apparel, but it is the duty of the schoolmaster not only to catch the milliner and the tailor, but to give them the go-by. Dress without wit, education, and morals, are dangerous trappings, and like an elegant set of harness on a spirited horse, if in the slightest degree entangled, or if it should not fit or suit the wearer, may lead the driver to destruction.

"In the wooden house previously mentioned was a big, brawny, gigantic woman, whose limbs looked like ponderous levers to be used for weal or woe. The day after I had the honour of visiting this Herculean lady in her own house. She was the staunch and unswerving advocate of city missions, and being a working woman, possessed of moral courage quite equal to her physical, she acted the part of pioneer into parts where even the policeman and missionary dare not enter. She was their forlorn hope, and would be the first to mount a ladder and scale the wall when drunken men or women were laying siege to city missionaries, or thwarting them in any way in their benevolent operations. If moral suasion failed, she invariably had recourse to the physical. She had no respect for the sexes when turbulent and uproarious, and woe betide either the sober or drunken man that misbehaved himself in the presence of the missionary. Her feminine hands would twist him round like a top or toy, and let him understand what it was to come under the clutches of a lady who had, through physical capabilities, transformed herself into one of the petticoat lords of the creation. This woman united fine and acute moral sensibilities to her great physical power, so the sequel will show. I had the honour of paying her a visit in her own house, when she recited to me the following. A scripture reader was going his rounds among his own set (i.e., those who come to church only), when she informed him that some poor invalid man or woman was literally starving on a bed of languishing and suffering. The scripture reader refused to visit the unfortunate man, for the reason that he or she was not an attendant at the church. She being aware of this, and not having the means of relieving the person herself, met with a thief, to whom she communicated the circumstance, who most willingly tendered her all that was requisite for the poor starving individual; thus proving that a criminal could have his heart touched with tender sympathy, whilst the disciple of sectarianism stood aloof in proud disdain, because the sufferer did not belong to his congregation.

"This story fully proves the necessity of all those who visit the poor having a wide sympathy extending to all classes without distinction-a sympathy modelled after the fashion of Him who is our great pattern, who sends His rain and His sun upon the just as well as the unjust. The town and city missionaries recommend no particular church, relieve every class of suffering humanity, of every cast, kind, and colour, the foreigner as well as the native; they read the Bible to all, pray with all, and by so doing approach more closely to that great immortal mode', our Saviour and our Redeemer." (pp.179-181.)

The scripture reader here represented as "going his rounds amongst his own set, namely, those who come to church only," is supported by a grant from the Pastoral Aid Society, under

the care of the writer of these lines. That he confines his labours to those who come to church only, is utterly untrue; if it were so, we say it with sorrow, his labours would be light indeed. That he ever refused to visit a sick and starving person "for the reason that he or she was not an attendant at church," is, he assures us, and we have known him too long to doubt his word because it disagrees with that of Dr. Shaw's Herculean lady, no less untrue. In reading his journal, we have fifty times exclaimed, "Truth is strange, stranger than fiction; here you have brought us materials for stories which would surpass in horrors all that Fiction ever wrote." Yet Dr. Shaw is not ashamed to publish this slander to the world on the authority of the Herculean lady and the town missionary who seems to have accompanied him. On the next page we have an account of a Refuge for fallen females, opened by the committee of the Town Mission, in March 1858. We believe it is doing good: but why it should have been opened when there was already a Magdalen institution of forty years' standing in the town, languishing for want of funds, is not quite so clear to us; especially since the latter has been connected from its foundation with the venerable name of Riland, for many years its almost daily visitor, and (assisted by the Rev. Sydney Gedge, now vicar of All Saints, Northampton,) its voluntary chaplain, and has been all along conducted by a committee of gentlemen eminent alike for their evangelical piety and their high position in the town; yet Dr. Shaw did not know, or affects to be ignorant, that such a hospital existed, and "recommends other towns to follow the excellent example afforded by the people of Birmingham," who, it appears from his statement, expended the vast sum of £277, in the year 1859, upon this newer institution! The older "Magdalen" has expended more than ten times that sum, in the last year only, in providing additional accommodation for its patients in a new hospital at Edgbaston.

His account of Birmingham is concluded in this short

sentence:

"Birmingham has no Ragged schools, except on a Sunday. It has no Model lodging-houses; and the sewage of the town is in many parts in a most deplorable condition. The worst and most degraded part of the town is London 'Prentice Street, through which I passed, and paid many visits to the inhabitants." (p. 187.)

When Dr. Shaw paid his visit to the wooden preaching house, he was within three minutes' walk of "the Industrial Schools," in Gem Street. They owe their existence to the exertions of the rector of the parish, the Hon. and Rev. G. M. Yorke, and have now been upwards of twelve years in vigorous operation; and it is more than probable that the children of

some of those wretched creatures, whom he describes as forming the congregation at the wooden preaching house, were, at the time he saw them, receiving food and raiment, and mechanical instruction, as well as religious education, in these very schools. They have been repeatedly pointed out both by Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, and by the Association for the Promotion of Social Science, as models of their kind, and deserving of the highest praise. They are, in the strictest sense, daily ragged schools, only that the children are fed and lodged, as well as taught. And there is, too, in the town another Ragged day-school, strictly such, supported chiefly by the Friends or Quakers.

If the philanthropic Doctor paid so many visits to London 'Prentice Street, it is a pity he did not find time to visit a low brick building situate therein, which he could scarcely have overlooked, since it is rather a modern structure amidst the grimy abodes covered with the filth and smoke of a hundred chimneys with which it is surrounded. It bears date 1847; and a slab of stone bears an inscription in the English tongue, setting forth that it is the Infant school room of the parish, as also two texts of holy writ, one of which might have excited his curiosity. It is this, "Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones, it were better for him," &c. &c. There is a pleasant story connected with its foundation, which might have been transferred with advantage to our author's pages. The street, with its courts and alleys, may contain perhaps two hundred families; but with the exception of a lodging-house or two for tramps and beggars, and four or five poor Protestants, all are Irish Papists of the lowest class; such Irish Papists as would do no discredit to their order, whether found in St. Giles's or in the liberties of Dublin. Now it fell out, in the year aforesaid, that the clergyman of the parish gave a Bible to the child of one of these poor Papists; the priest saw the book, and saw it with horror. He seized it with a pair of tongs, for he would not pollute himself with the touch; had a bonfire made on a vacant plot of ground, and with appropriate maledictions consigned the heretical volume to the flames. The clergyman, the Rev. Joshua Greaves (now vicar of Great Missenden), thought such an event not unworthy of an enduring memorial; and through his exertions an infant school arose upon the spot thus consecrated by a happily bloodless auto-da-fe. It was soon discovered that the street was too riotous, and the inhabitants too degraded, for an infant school. The infants were not safe

from violence, far less the teachers. The building has been used for many years as a Ragged Sunday, and during the winter months a Ragged evening school; and both of these have been conducted, as indeed they were created, by the devoted labours of the scripture reader whom our author,

instructed by "the Herculean lady" whom he had "the honour of visiting," describes "as only going his rounds among his own set." It has been carried on in the face of insult and outrage, the children have been beaten and the teachers stoned, and that "not once or twice ;" and the school, humble as it is, has called into existence a rival Roman Catholic school of the largest dimensions, in the same London 'Prentice Street. The children, and lads, and young women collected there, have been, many of them of the lowest class, the Arabs of the streets; and strange and harrowing are the tales they tell of home life as it exists in all its horrors amongst thieves, and prostitutes, and drunkards! Nor are there wanting even here instances of self-devotion, of heroism, and occasionally, we trust, of real piety, such as would not, and ought not to obtain belief were they not but too well authenticated.

But we have spent more time upon this subject than our readers will thank us for having devoted to it. The moral of the whole is, that societies as well as individuals should rejoice in the good done by others, and not persuade themselves, that they have an entire monopoly either of zeal or of success; that town missionaries should take the advice they are daily giving to heedless girls, and beware of flatterers; and that all who profess and call themselves Christians should take a little more pains to discover what is good in others; to remember the words of Him who commanded His disciples not to rebuke the man who cast out devils, though he did not "follow with them;" (anglicè, did, in his humble way, a little good as opportunity offered, out of love to Christ, though he did not parade his journal in the reports of a society;) and lastly, that Dr. Shaw himself, and such as he, who tell us it is no wonder the church of England should be so inert, since "few of her members believe in the pre-millennial advent,' should take care lest the Lord, when he cometh, find them ingloriously occupied in "smiting their fellow servants."

NOTE ON "MADAME GUYON."

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

SIR,-In an article under the above heading in the Christian Observer of this month, there are some very reasonable and sound remarks, but near the close of it is the following paragraph, to which neither of these characteristics belongs. Speaking on the subject of the late Revivals, the writer says::- "The preacher, anxious to see conversions there and then, does not sufficiently press upon his hearers the fact that

if Christ promises immediate rest, it is to the weary and heavy laden; that the gift of repentance must be sought before the gift of pardon can be enjoyed: that the Lord Jesus Christ is exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour that he may give repentance to Israel as well as remission of sins. It is not more caution in the statement of divine truth, but a fuller statement of it, that we want in some popular Revivalists."

Now, sir, I demur to this last sentence, and say, that it is a clearer statement of divine truth that is wanted in a large majority of the evangelical preachers and writers of the day. The passage in italics is in point. Where in the New Testament will the writer find a single text to justify such a statement? I know of none. The gospel trumpet calls upon men to repent and believe the gospel, but nowhere to seek for repentance and faith-the thing is as impossible as it is unscriptural; for how can a man seek anything from God without returning to Him and believing that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him; and what is this but repentance and conversion? The gospel bids men everywhere thus to repent, and to believe that if they return to Him (as the prodigal to his father) He will return to them, for Jesus has died to reconcile them to God. There are some popular preachers and writers who are for ever sending men to weep and pray that they may be converted. Did Peter or Paul do

a

this? On the day of Pentecost, and at the beautiful gate of the Temple, did Peter tell the Jews to go and be more "broken down (a common expression) for their sins and pray for conversion and faith? Did Paul do so to the gaoler at Philippi? Did he himself pray before conversion? Simon Magus was told to repent of his wickedness and pray God to be forgiven, but he had been taught the way of access to God and was a professed believer; he was not told to pray for repentance, but to repent and pray with faith.

Jesus is exalted to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins; repentance is one of those gifts which He has ascended up on high to give even to the rebellious, to give it freely, not in return for many tears and groans and prayers-the tears and groans are the evidences and the effects of repentance and prayer in the cry (it may be feeble) of faith in the Lord Jesus, which it is the duty of the minister of God to encourage by the promises of God and by setting forth the sin of unbelief. (1 John v. 9, 10.) Would the preachers and writers I refer to bid a son who has denied his father's truth and love go to his father and say, "Father, convince me that I have done you wrong, give some further proof that you really love me and mean what you say when you offer me forgiveness?" Would any father receive and restore a son on such terms? Would he not say to his son, "Till you feel your sin and confess it, and