she desired it, of deriving benefit from any change that would have affected the body only. But Helen Fleetwood was not one of those impatient characters who having obtained, through faith, a good hope for eternity, desire to cheat their Master of their poor services here, and would grasp at the crown the moment the cross presses on them. She had no desire to escape its farther endurance, except as a compulsory intercourse with the wicked at times burdened her conscience with a dread of being counted a partaker in their guilt. When a mind keenly alive to the sanctity of God's name and word, has become the involuntary receptacle of blasphemous thoughts uttered by others, the merely mechanical act of memory, apart from all volition, bringing them suddenly forward, perhaps when engaged in the very act of worship, will smite the soul with a pang that none can conceive but those who have experienced it; nay, the very effort to forget will imprint the abhorred idea more legibly on the brain. Exposed to all manner of evil communication, though Helen's good manners were not corrupted, nor her principles in the smallest degree shaken by it, still the defilement was felt; and as the severity of temptation becomes more bitterly trying in proportion to the holiness of the mind that encounters it, to her it was exceedingly terrible. She had learned to practise a greater degree of abstraction than her naturally quick and observant habits would seem to have admitted: it was by continuing in secret, ejaculatory prayer, by speaking to herself in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in her heart unto the Lord, that she contrived to shut out a great deal of what others drank in with contented if not with greedy ear; but the relief was partial, the trial perpetual, increasing, and often wholly unavoidable. Yet, occasionally, when emboldened to speak to some of her more immediate associates in labour, she had marked the operations of the hands suspended, and the eye turned with inquiry, not unmixed with anxiety, to her face: and one such instance in a day would send her home resigned to endure for any length of time the trial of her own precious faith, if so she might be made instrumental in leading the poorest, the vilest, the most despised of her class to seek the same mercy. This is Christian principle in its highest, noblest exercise, to stifle self, where self craves spiritual privileges and separation from the wicked, in order to exhibit before others the light that may conduct them into ways of holiness and peace. But what shall we say to this black feature in the factory system? Its existence in the mills generally is too notorious to be denied: no guard is set, no watch is kept, no thought is taken, where the morals of the labourers are concerned. It is to the manufacturing districts that evil men, as to a hot-house, repair to sow the seeds that they desire to see ripening into blasphemy and sedition. The Beast of Socialism fails not indeed to stalk over our fields, and to lay in wait for unwary stragglers among the rural population; but it is in the manufacturing towns he nestles, and builds around him huge trophies with the bones of his slain. There the Chartist is taught secretly to whet his pike, and there the blight of Popery noiselessly spreads, sealing up in a false, fatal peace such souls as may not be prepared to enter into open league with hell. And against this host of destroyers with what armour does the instructed, the loyal, the professedly church-going master provide his poor, ignorant dependents? The toil in which they engage for his advantage, lays them especially open to evil influence, while it debars them from the acquirement of necessary information on matters where to be ignorant is to perish. True, there are not many of Helen Fleetwood's stamp to be wounded unto death by the hearing of what those men would not suffer their own daughters to hear for the wealth, perhaps, of all England's commercial hoards but there are hundreds and thousands daily yielding to the torrent of iniquity that sweeps through the scene of their insipid toil, glad of any excitement to awaken their drowsy spirits, running the short, quick course of unbridled sin, and early dropping off into unnoticed graves. Yes, ye thoughtless holders of these treasuries of immortal souls, your dead are quickly buried out of your sight, and speedily forgotten; but do they not live, to greet you when the earth discloses her blood, and no more covers her slain, and when, in reference not merely to the perished body, but to the writhing souls for ever cut off from life, for ever doomed to conscious, unutterable, interminable death, a voice you cannot close your ear against, asks in thunder the awful question,' WHO SLEW ALL THESE?' C. E. INSCRIPTION. Here lies famed Cæsar-and there rests his slave- The turf his bed, and the rude stone his pillow. J. HUGHES, AN EPITOME OF PROPHETIC TRUTH. MANY of our readers, we are aware, have their attention turned at this time to the consideration of those prophecies which are daily fulfilling before their eyes. To such the following Essay, altered by Mr. Habershon, from the preface to his Pre-millennial Hymus, cannot fail to prove interesting and instructive. The subjects of the following essay, and those portions of Holy Scripture on which it is founded, have latterly occupied the solemn consideration of many among us, and seem in an increasing degree to attract the deep attention of the church at the present time, under a persuasion that the accomplishment of the judgments predicted is nigh at hand, and will be witnessed by the existing generation. The events which are looked for are those which alone remain to be fulfilled on the roll of prophecy, and which necessarily therefore close the present dispensation. They are chiefly the following:-A great and unprecedented Persecution of the followers of Christ, by Papists and Infidels-the fall of Popery and of the ten Papal kingdoms, or the typical Babylon—the Second coming of Christ, and the Saints' consequent deliverance and triumph-the fall of Turkey and Mahommedanism—the dreadful judgments subsequently coming upon the whole |