the shock unfelt in Great Britain. There have been serious and fatal riots in Glasgow, and disturbances in London, Manchester, Edinburgh, and other places; while in Ireland rebellion is openly preached. Unhappily we are just now in a condition to draw with dangerous force the electricity of the thunder-cloud towards us. Bankruptcy is besieging our tradesmen, ruin overtaking our merchants, despair seizing upon our manufacturers, and, consequently, destitution making a prey of our industrial masses. At Glasgow, for three weeks prior to the outbreak, it is said, there had been 13,500 persons unemployed, and 5,000 utterly destitute, whilst during that period the total sum expended amongst them amounted only to between £600 and £700! The social condition of the people makes solicitude the universal feeling, and very many with anxious hearts are asking, What will the end of these things be?

ACCOUCHEMENT OF HER MAJESTY.-On Saturday morning, March 18, at eight o'clock, the Queen was safely delivered of a Princess. Both mother and child are doing well. The royal children are six in number, the Princess Royal, who is the eldest, having completed her seventh year in November last.

NEW BISHOP OF CHESTER.-Dr. Graham, the Master of Christ's College, Cambridge, is to be the Bishop of Chester. The Dr. has always been an advocate for the admission of Dissenters into our national Universities. He is one of Prince Albert's chaplains.

LAW IN ENGLAND.-A remarkable advertisement appeared in the Nonconformist of March 15, soliciting assistance in behalf of Mr. John Dufrene, a respectable tradesman of Leeds, who was sent to the Queen's Bench Prison in March 1812, for refusing to state what he believed to be false, and has continued there ever since, a period of thirty-six years. Petitions have been presented to both Houses of Parliament, signed by one hundred gentlemen in London, praying for inquiry, but without effect. He is described as "now an old man, probably doomed to die in prison; his friends are dead before him, and he appears in a deplorable state." The advertisement is headed, POWER OF CONSCIENCE, to which might be added, AND THE INJUSTICE OF LAW.

DEATH OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.-This venerable and universally-respected American statesman, expired at Washington on the 24th of February. He was struck with paralysis in the House of Representatives on the 21st, and lingered till the evening of the 24th, when he ceased to breathe. His death caused the deepest gloom. Congress marked its sense of the mournful event by immediately adjourning for a week. The citizens of the capital partook of a like feeling; business was suspended, and a general gloom took possession of every one, so much so that several persons put on mourning.

THE LAND IN AMERICA.-A Society exists in America, called "The Agrarian League, to prevent the absorption of land into the hands of a few, by which," say they, "the idle are enabled to live on the industrious." They propose to prohibit any person from holding more than 160 acres; and have issued several publications, to prevent the right assumed in this country by individuals of shutting up the use of the earth, and driving men out that beasts may be multiplied. The following is a copy of one of their tracts, only our space forbids us printing the passages referred to at large, which they do:

"AGRARIANISM OF THE BIBLE.

"All men are born free and equal, and have, by virtue of their existence, an inalienable right to the use of the elements requisite for supporting that existence. "The Almighty did not intend that the land should be monopolized, as may be clearly seen from the following texts of the Holy Scriptures:-Levit. xxv. 23; Num. xxvi. 54; xxxii. 18; Deut. i. 21; Neh. v. 5; Isa. v. 8; lxv. 21, 22; Jer. xxix. 5; Ezek. xxii. 12; xxxvi. 34, 35; xlvii. 14-22; Micah iv. 4; Matt. viii. 20; xix. 24; Luke xi. 46; 1 Tim. vi. 10."

TAXATION. The following table shows the relative burden of taxation on the people of the six principal nations in the world :

BAPTIST STATISTICS IN AMERICA.-The Baptist Almanac and Annual Register for 1848, gives the following grand total of Baptist organizations, ministers, &c., in the United States:-Ministerial associations, 564; churches, 9,888; ordained ministers, 5,657; licensed preachers, 1,109; the number of baptisms during one year, 36,509. In the entire world there are said to be 12,804 Baptist churches; 8,468 ordained ministers, and 1,031,836 church members; and the number of baptisms in one year is set down at 57,605. Hence it appears that more than half of all the Baptist churches, ministers, and members, in the world, are to be found in the United States. In the New York Recorder of December 29, the Editor thus writes: "The condition of our churches during the past year has been retrograding. Death has taken away more than have been baptized. Nor are Baptist churches peculiar in this-the statistics of other denominations tell of the same sad result." STATE-CHURCHISM IN AUSTRALIA.-Some months ago, the Legislative Council of South Australia, incited by Lieutenant-Govenor Robe, proposed to take into the pay of the Treasury, the ministry of all religious denominations. The adoption of this policy was perfectly gratuitous, no party of any importance having petitioned for it. Many considered it to involve a breach of faith with the colonists; the largest public meeting ever assembled in South Australia contemptuously rejected the measure; and a memorial was sent home praying her Majesty to withhold her assent from the contemplated scheme. Earl Grey's despatch touching the said memorial was communicated to the Legislative Council on the 5th of October last. His reply is, "You will acquaint the petitioners that I have not been able to advise the Queen to assent to the request-on the contrary, it has been my duty humbly to submit to her Majesty my opinion that the course pursued by the local legislature in applying some part of the local revenue towards the promotion of religion, knowledge, and education in the colony, merits her Majesty's entire approbation; and it is not in any respect at variance with the Act of Parliament under which the colony was originally founded. The Queen has been graciously pleased to adopt and sanction that opinion." The Nonconformist thus comments on the matter: "The outrage committed by this gratuitous policy upon religious sentiment it is difficult to set forth in colours sufficiently dark. The payment of all sects is the national adoption of all creeds-a legislative exhibition of utter indifference to all. Christianity-nay! worse, the spiritual nature of man to which Christianity addresses itself is sacrilegiously laid hold of, and converted into a mere tool of party government. Individual conscience, intelligent preference, faith, love, obedience, --all are set at naught—and the proresses of religious development are debased to the lowest mechanism. Christians of all denominations ought to frown down this official and officious impiety."

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM TO THE WALDENSES.-The King of Piedmont, Charles Albert, has at length accorded to his Protestant subjects, the Waldenses, the full benefit of religious freedom and civil equality. This remarkable race of early and consistent religious reformers has excited the greatest interest from the days of Cromwell downwards, and it is not many years since their sufferings and grievances formed the subject of an animated debate in the House of Commons. Their emancipation

from political thraldom, therefore, will be hailed with peculiar satisfaction by the people of England universally.

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN TURKEY.-By an imperial edict Protestantism has been legalized in the Sultan's dominions. The concession was secured by the energetic labours of Lord Cowley, and in substance, is as complete and satisfactory as such a document could have been desired.

GOSPEL BANNER,

And Biblical Treasury:

CONTAINING THE WRITINGS OF ALEXANDER CAMPBELL AND COADJUTORS IN AMERICA AND GREAT BRITAIN.

No. 4.]

MAY, 1848.

BIBLE-READING.

[VOL. I.

OTHING is more talked about amongst professors, and nothing is less practised, or indeed less understood, in proportion to its acknowledged importance, than the reading of the Scriptures. The Bible is, upon the whole and in general, in churches, families, and closets, a neglected book. It is, indeed, occasionally and statedly read in many churches and in many families; but it is not read rationally nor religiously; and, therefore, for the most part, fails in being relished, and consequently in reaching the heart, and in being practically believed and understood.

To be read advantageously, the Bible must be read in the order of its books at regular intervals, and with a solemn and religious reference to the most exact and full conformity in heart, in word, in action, to all its pure, and holy, and heavenly lessons and precepts. But even this

is too vague and indefinite for the exigencies of the times. Permit me, then, to explain:-It was not the design of the Author of the Bible that men should have a synopsis or summary of its doctrine, either before their eyes in writing, or committed to memory. Had such been his design, he would have given us, by the hand of some inspired person, just such a summary as would have been complete and infallible. But he has not done it; and, therefore, such a document would be, to say the least, inexpedient and unprofitable. It would have been a substitute for the constant reading and studying of the Book. Now this is the very thing that the Author of the Bible does not desire. His will is that we be constant readers; that by the constant attrition or wearing of the truth upon our moral nature, our minds may be exactly conformed to the image of Him who breathes into us the Spirit of our God. It is impossible to keep any company long and constantly without catching its spirit and becoming assimilated. Equally impossible is it to be frequently in company with Moses and David, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Jesus and his Apostles, without catching their spirit. This is what

VOL. I.

D 2

God designs and desires in giving us the Bible to read. He would that we catch the spirit, rather than learn the doctrine, of this Holy Book. Now this is the philosophy of the fact, that there is no substitute for constant reading: for although all the precepts and promises, or the whole doctrine of the Bible could be learned or committed to memory, and faithfully retained, it could not serve that special and supreme intention of the Author of this Book, in giving it to us as the means of sanctification and of our being imbued and inspired with the Spirit of our God.

Fortunes, it is now well established, are generally the ruin of their inheritors. The exceptions are just enough to make it a general rule that riches are laid up for children to their hurt. It is cruel in fathers to make fortunes for children: for, in so doing, they deprive them of the pleasure of employing their talents as they have done, and thus throw them, in a great measure, idle upon society. They also prevent them of the pleasure of doing, and ultimately enjoying good for we are so constituted that our powers of acquiring pleasure must ever be proportioned to our efforts in communicating it to others. And this is a work for which they are pre-eminently disqualified who are taught to live on energies not their own.

Hereditary orthodoxy, or fortunes of sound doctrine, made and bequeathed by our fathers, are still more fatal to their heirs than large inheritances of earthly goods and chattels. If sons are generally ruined in this world by large inheritances from their parents, they are, perhaps, as often ruined in the next world by large inheritances of orthodox sentiments and opinions, of which they are possessed by the wills of their ancestors, without the trouble of reading and thinking for themselves. There are not more helpless cases on earth than the heirs of orthodoxy; for they are infallibly right without evidence, without examination, without any concern of their own. These persons are wholly unapproachable. They are right by necessity, by prescription, by inheritance, because they are right; and you are wrong because you are wrong, or because you dissent from them.

It is not intended by Him that rules in heaven, that we should pos sess either faith, knowledge, or grace by inheritance from our earthly or ecclesiastic progenitors. He intends that every man should dig in the mines of faith and knowledge for his own fortune-that every man should live and be rich by his own efforts. He thus calls forth and employs all our faculties, and affords us the pleasure of profiting by our own exertions. "If" says Solomon, "thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasure; then thou shalt understand the fear of the Lord, [true religion,] and find the knowledge of God," which is eternal life.

Bible-reading is, therefore, as much an essential part of Heaven's