to sin are not sinful, and that "man's nature is all right," must, of course, suppose that it is vastly easy to spread religion. Alas! Mr. F. neither considers what is to be contended with, nor yet what it is that should be preached to give salvation. May the Lord mercifully grant him a sound mind! We might quote many passages exhibiting lamentable ignorance of truth, and perversion of Scripture, which are interwoven in this volume; but the above may suffice, for if a man be wrong in the foundation, it is but natural that he would be so also in the superstructure. There may be many stones built into the edifice, but if the foundation be faulty, they add nothing to the strength of the building. They may, some of them, be truly taken from the true quarry, and they may thus deceive the unwary; but it is only the semblance of stability that they can give, and this will be found by those who trust in a dwelling thus erected. Of course, we do not pretend to give an account of the contents of this book; this was by no means our purpose. It is not necessary to analyse every part of a quantity of suspected provisions; it is enough to shew what the deadly poison is, that is mingled therewith. We would that all doctrinal delusion and deceit were as palpable as that promulgated by Mr. Finney in these pages. PRAYERS GENERAL INTELLIGENCE. CATHOLICS FOR THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND. THE Honorable and Reverend Mr. It appears, that Mr. Spencer suggested an association of prayers for this purpose, last year, to the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris; and that his eminence has, in consequence, been instrumental in establishing numerous associations of prayers in all parts of France. Mr. Spencer himself preached on this subject, in one of the Parisian Churches; and the Archbishop caused several thousand copies of his sermon to be printed, and distributed gratuitously through all the dioceses of France. Mr. Spencer informs us, that in Rome, "the whole Order of the Passionists, have, ever since their institution, held it one of their peculiar duties, to pray for the conversion of England," and he feels confident that "this charitable practice," will soon become general amongst the religious orders of Italy. The Vicar Capitular of Pisa has recommended the adoption of these prayers to all the diocese of Pisa ; and the Archbishop of Parma has issued a mandate to his clergy to unite in them. In Belgium, at a general meeting of the Bishops, it was agreed, that prayers for the conversion of England, on Thurs days, should be undertaken in all their dioceses, "by which," says Mr. Spencer, "another entire kingdom may be reckoned as uniting in the grand crusade." Thursday is the day for these operations in France and in England. In Paris, “a confraternity of Prayers," established in honour "of the immaculate heart of our Lady," has, by Mr. Spencer's especial request, undertaken to join in " the grand crusade;" twenty other confraternities, in different parts of France, have joined the union. At Lyons the Association "of the living Rosary," has zealously entered into the plan for "the conversion of the sinners in England, and the return of the separated Brethren,"-[who may these Brethren of Popery be?] "The example of your Brethren abroad," says Mr. Spencer, " has already produced great effect. I, of course, lost no time in endeavouring to engage all this kingdom to unite with their brethren on the continent; and most happy am I, in the first place, to say that the Catholic prelates of Ireland, in their last general meetings at Dublin, when the subject was proposed to them, promised to direct their clergy and their flocks to co-operate in the great undertaking. The united prayers of Ireland for England, I could not but esteem powerful in a more especial degree. I have Irish blood in my veins; and I am zealous for the happiness and glory of Ireland! What can be proposed to her more glorious than, in this way, to conquer her conquerors-to bind her oppressors ? But, of course, it is not to be expected that the prayers of our brethren in our colonies will prevail, unless we, the Catholics of England itself, with generous ardour, correspond with their grand and zealous undertaking. "If the return of this country to the true Church be an event of which there is no hope, I really admit that we had better not distract our minds with thinking of it; and I should expect to see no fruit from prayers made with the idea that they should not succeed; for this, I conceive, is just the reverse of praying with faith, and it is to prayers which we make in faith, believing, that the great promises of God are addressed. And, again, when people say that England, indeed, may come round, but that it cannot be for an hundred years, or a much longer period, I do not expect them to take much pains about the object, nor will the prayers be such as I wish to see universally made. I mention that the conversion of this country is a work which God, and only God, can effect; to remove the mountains of prejudice by which the Catholic religion is yet obstructed, is a work impossible with men, but possible with God," Whatever, then, Popery on its knees can do for the conversion of this kingdom, seems to be now in full operation; but, when the means of aggression shall become more apparent, Popery will assume another attitude, and undertake the "grand crusade" by some other means than confraternities of prayers. MODERN MARTYRDOM. "Now I will relate a remarkable instance of modern martyrdom. A young Greek, some years ago, whose name was Paniotes, was servant to a Turkish nobleman, called Osman Effendi. He came with his master to Jerusalem; and when Osman Effendi went to worship in the Mosque of Omar, this young Greek accompanied him. Soon after, Osman Effendi undertook a journey to Damascus, intending to return to Jerusalem, and left Paniotes to await his return. When the Pasha of Damascus arrived here on his annual visit, Paniotes was accused to him of having profaned the Mosque of Omar, by having entered it; he was summoned to appear before the Pasha, and questioned as to why he did so; he answered that he had followed his master, whom it was his duty to follow. The penalty was death, or to turn nothing.' "They led him out before the castle of David, and drew up the soldiers around him, with their swords drawn ; but Paniotes exclaimed, 'I am a Christian! Christ is risen! I fear nothing!' He knelt down, and prayed to Jesus Christ the Son of God, and exclaimed, 'Christ is risen! I fear nothing.' Even Christians advised him to turn Mohammedan. He exclaimed Christ is risen! I fear nothing.' The executioner lifted up his fine hair which he wore, as many Greeks do, flowing down to the shoulders, and struck him several times with the sword, so as to draw blood, in the hope that he might relent; but Paniotes continued, Jesus is the Son of the living God;' and, crossing himself, he exclaimed, 'Christ is risen! I fear nothing!' and his head fell. The Greek convent paid 5,000 piastres for leave to remove his body and bury him."-Wolf's Journal. 6 To the Editors of the "Friend of India." SIRS,-I have always considered that the habit of compelling every native to take an oath, whose deposition is required to be taken in our courts, tends directly and powerfully to exclude from our tribunals, as witnesses, the most respectable class of native society. A respectable Hindoo, a public officer of Government, on being asked what he thought of, one of the Hindoo gentlemen most held in esteem by the Europeans in Calcutta, applied to him a term of contempt, because he had taken an oath in the Supreme Court! Many Hindoos positively refuse to take an oath! It is certainly a most inconsistent process for a christian judge, in the administration of justice, to attempt to rear the superstructure of truth upon a foundation of acknowledged falsehood!—unnecessarily to compel witnesses to swear by false gods !-to offend the only one true God, by calling into the courts of Christian justice, priests of Baal to invoke idols! For a Brahmin usually attends to administer the oath! Nor is there any necessity, politically or judicially, for this honour being paid to idols in Christian courts of justice. On the contrary, the demand for such idolatrous oaths is repugnant to the witnesses, and appears distinctly to impede the administration of justice. If to satisfy English prejudices in the demand for oaths-oaths must be taken; the inhabitants of India, high and low, are all, so far as my experience goes, ready to execute what is called a " Hulufnamah;" that is to sign an oath, declar ing, as in the presence of the Omnipresent God, that they will speak the truth. Here no idol is invoked. I had once occasion to administer an oath to a Nawab of high rank, in a case of much importance, and I did so by his signing this written oath. Why, then, compel men to swear by the Koran ? Why do honour to it in a Christian court, by obliging men against their wills, to swear by it as a volume of truth! I have been in the habit of administering an oath, without the invocation of idols, both to Hindoos and Moosulmans to this effect: “I swear, as in the sight of the all seeing and Omnipresent God, who will recompense men according to their deeds, whether they speak the truth or falsehood, that the testimony I am about to give, shall be truth, and nothing but the truth." The Christian Observer for this month (May) has the following striking pas sage: "Let us do justice to idolators, as to all men; but let us not engraft our justice upon their idolatry. These are two distinct things; let us confer upon them every rich benefit of our heavenly divine religion; but let it not be in such a manner, as to make them think that they may have the fruit, without the tree; or that Christian justice can grow on the stem of idolatrous swearing. To convey such an impression, is to encourage men in their present base superstitions. Again, we say, let us do justice to all sinners; but let us not seek to engraft the administration of that justice upon any form of their sin." I remain, Sir, Your obedient servant, A FRIEND TO JUSTICE, AND A SINCERE WELL-WISHER TO THE COMPANY'S GOVERNMENT. HYMN. "It became Him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings."-HEB. ii. 10. Son of God! with joy we praise Thee, On the Father's throne above; All Thy wondrous work displays Thee For our sins Thou once wast slain, All the Church He chose in Thee; Thus wast then ordained to be. All the chosen heirs from God, And with Thee hath made us one! Thou to heaven hast now ascended, Entering there with Thine own blood; All Thy work of suffering ended, Fully wrought the will of God. For Thy Church Thou still art caring, For them pleading in Thy love; And their place of rest preparing In the Father's house above. Now, the Holy Ghost doth gather Unto God, Thy brethren here; We, as sons, cry, "Abba, Father," For God's love excludeth fear. What a debt of love we owe Thee, Love, that we can ne'er express, Since we thro' the Spirit know Thee, Christ, "THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.' As in love Thou didst receive us, Ere creation, as "Thine own," So that love will never leave us Short of sharing in Thy throne. Thou wilt come, and we shall meet Thee; Then the saints whom Thou wilt raise, Will with those remaining greet Thee, Joining in one song of praise. Then shall we, Thine image bearing, Know Thee, Lord, as we are known; With our blood-washed robes declaring What for us Thy death hath done. Then we all, our joy expressing, Shall for ever praise Thy name; "Glory, power, dominion, blessing, Be to God, and to the Lamb !" THE INQUIRER. FEBRUARY, 1840. What saith the Scripture ?-Rom. iv. 3. ON THE RESTORATION OF THE NATION OF ISRAEL. PART I. "Beloved for the fathers' sakes, for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance." -ROM. xi, 28, 29. In looking at the history of Israel, as contained in the Scripture, the first question which arises before us is this, "Will that nation of Israel-once blessed in Canaan, the land which the Lord sware unto their fathers to give it them-once brought by the Lord out of Egypt, through the Red Sea and the wilderness, into the land of promise, and there blessed until they were cast out on account of their sin-will they be again restored to that land by the Lord? and will they there be blessed?" It is not for us to judge of this according to what we may think likely from probability or experience; but we have simply to bow before the testimony of the word, and bend our minds to its teaching. Every one who reads the Scriptures of the Old Testament must know, that promises, history, and predictions concerning Israel form a very large portion thereof; indeed, I might briefly say, that from Genesis to Malachi, the subject of which the Scripture treats is Israel. Now, before entering upon those promises of restored blessing to Israel, of which I wish especially to speak, it will be well for us to look at the original promise by which God gave the land to Abraham, His confirmations of that promise, and the circumstances through which the tenure of the land became for a time conditional. We read in Gen. xii., that, when Abraham went forth, trusting in God, it was to go "unto a land which I will shew thee." The land was thus mentioned; but although there were promises then to him that he should be great, &c., yet the land was not promised as yet; he was simply told that he was to go thither; and it is afterward, at Sichem (ver. 7), that he receives from the Lord this simple promise, "Unto thy seed will I give this land." Directly before we read, "the Canaanite was then in the land;" but the "father of the faithful" had it set before him as the inheritance of his secd, and not of the Canaanite; he had the word of the Lord to rest upon, and this was to his soul a secure warrant. Again, we find in chap. xiii. this promise, "The Lord said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land, in the length of it, and in the breadth of it: for I will give it unto thee." The third promise concerning the land is found in chap. xv., in which the promise is made to Abraham that his own son should be his heir, when the Lord shewed him the stars of heaven, saying, “So shall thy seed be: and he believed in the Lord, and it was counted to him for righteousness. And He said unto him, I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it." After this we read of the sign and covenant concerning the inheritance, together with the account of the affliction of Abraham's posterity in a strange land; the Lord not only gives him promises, but admits him into His counsels;-past, in His object in bringing him into the land-and future, respecting his seed. Then we find " In the same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Fgypt, unto the river Euphrates:" and then He adds the names of ten nations whose territory was thus promised. I would briefly refer to the appropriateness of these three promises to the circumstances in which Abraham was, at the time in which they were respectively given. We see in the first (xii. 7) he was almost alone in a strange land, to which God had led him. Blessings had been promised him; and though the Canaanite being in the land, must have made him feel deeply his solitariness and strangership, the promise that that very land should be the possession of his seed, must have been to him the grace suited to his need. In chap. xiii., the strangership of Abraham was the more manifest, from Lot being separated from him; and there again promise meets him. He had been dividing the land as a place of sojourning with his nephew; but the promise then given bestows upon him the whole, not as a temporary possession, but as the inheritance of his seed for ever. Again, in chap. xv., we see that Abraham deeply felt his circumstances, he was in a strange land, and childless. It was true that blessings had been promised him; but it was not manifested how they could be accomplished; and here God again meets him with amplified promise. The inheritance is spoken of in its length and its breadth, and the whole made secure by the covenant of God. True it is, that he was told of what would intervene; but this only introduced him the more intimately into the fellowship of the mind of the Lord. Now, here I would observe, that it was promise, absolute, unconditional promise, which God made. Nothing short of this would have suited the case; and it is on the faithfulness of "the promises made unto the fathers" (Rom. xv. 8), those promises for the confirming of which "Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God," that the blessing of the offspring of Abraham depends. Their title to the land is the simple promise of God made unto Abraham their father; a proInise which was not made conditionally, as depending upon what they might be, but absolutely, as resting upon what God is. Again, we find this thrice-repeated promise confirmed by the Lord just before the birth of Isaac; "I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God" (Gen. xvii. 8). This promise was accompanied with "the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had being yet uncircumcised" (Rom. iv. 11); the mark by which the Lord saw fit to separate a nation to Himself, as the heirs of the land of promise. To Isaac, the child of promise, the inheritance is again confirmed, "Unto thee and unto thy seed I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father" (xxvi. 3). To Jacob, the type of the election of God, the promise is again declared by the Lord: it was when he was departing from his father's house, leaving the land of promise, that God spoke to him thus graciously in his vision at Bethel; "I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac; the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed," &c. (xxviii. 13). And again, after the Lord had brought him back into the land, He again confirmed his former promise, “The land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land" (xxxv. 42). Thus do we see that the land was a free gift; not, it is true, a present possession, but not the less a gift; its bestowal unconditional, unpurchased, and its tenure the promise and the faithfulness of God. Just so it is that we are made heirs of a heavenly inheritance, as being believers in Christ. We are not yet brought into possession; but we depend upon the love and the faithfulness of that same God who sware unto Abraham, and who has made our blessings steadfast in the blood of His own blessed Son. Can the promise of God fail? If not; why is it that the seed of Jacob have for so long a time been wanderers through all lands, instead of enjoying the land of their inheritance? Because they have taken it upon terms of their own obedience; they have made their own ability the ground of their tenure, and thus they have failed in retaining the possession: but their failure is not God's failure; and the promises made of God unto the fathers, and confirmed by Christ, remain as the still unfulfilled, but not the less assured, ground of Israel's blessing in their land. It is needless to go into the detail of the receiving of the law. The Book of Exodus narrates, both the deliverance effected by the hand of God in leading the people out of Egypt, and also the voluntary departure of that people from terms of promise to terms of obedience: they took their blessing into their own hands, as |