table of the Lord. When all had partaken, after a few moments of solemn silence, prayer was again offered. Then another hymn was sung, beginning "O! Lamb of God;" after which the Doctor pronounced the benediction.

At half-past eleven, an English service was held in the same church, conducted by a clergyman of the English establishment; and again at 5 o'clock, when a sermon was preached by an English visitor.

This morning we paid our first visit to the university. Although founded but little more than twenty years since, this institution is fast rising to a high rank among its elder sisters. It appears to be especially favored with the patronage of the great, and in the list of students for this year, there are, I am told, a greater number of princes than in any other university. Here our Prince Albert received his education, and still lives in the very affectionate and respectful remembrance of the inhabitants. It is called the Rhine University, and has been justly described as "situated in the midst of the most delightful scenery, just where the splendid banks of the Rhine change their character of precipitous crags and vine-clad hills, and sink down into a rich and cultivated plain." The principal building was the palace of the former electors of Cologne, who resided at Bonn, and in extent and convenience is said not to be inferior to the university of Berlin. The grounds around this former palace are open to the public, and form the principal promenade for the townspeople. When Buonaparte took possession of the left bank of the Rhine, the French made a bastion overlooking the river; here you have a fine view of the environs. Across the Rhine are the seven mountains with their picturesque ruins; nearer hand the Godesberg with its church and castle, and looking away from the river, a long avenue of trees leads to the chateau of Popplesdorf, formerly a palace, but now used as a museum of natural history, around which is an excellent botanical garden; still farther in the distance the wooded height of the Kreuzberg crowns the picture.

Bonn possesses a Roman catholic as well as a protestant theological faculty, and in both are some professors of considerable note. Of the protestant professors, the most distinguished are Augusti, Nitzsch, Sack, Gieseler, the author of an admirable

manual of church history, and some others. In the catholic faculty the most distinguished name is that of Dr. John Martin Augustine Scholz, Professor of Biblical Literature. This distinguished man is known as the editor of a critical edition of the Greek Testament, which is described as "leaving us little more to expect or desire."

It has been often said with reference to the privations and sufferings of the poor, that " half the world knows not how the other half lives," and this as a general statement, may be very extensively applied to the various circumstances and avocations of the great human family. Notwithstanding the wide extent to which the name of this professor is known, how few, even among the reading and thinking part of the community, have formed a just estimate of the value and importance of his labors. His was, certainly, a work of faith. For nearly twenty long years it engaged his thoughts, and engrossed his time. "Probably no individual, has ever by personal labor, done more for the final and satisfactory settlement of all the questions which concern the readings of the New Testament. During four or five years he travelled through Europe, Western Asia, and Egypt, exploring the most important public and private libraries in France, Germany, Italy, Greece, and the Greek monasteries at Jerusalem. Eight years more were occupied in reducing his collections to order, and applying them to the text of the Greek Testament; and to these must be added five years more, for the completion and publication of his labors, which were finished and published as a complete work, at Leipsic, in 1836. With reference to this, it is only simple justice to Dr. Scholz to remark, that while his standing as a Roman catholic priest and professor, afforded him the greatest facilities for the prosecution of his labors in all the old countries of Europe, this, as well as his other important Biblical labors, manifests a remarkable simplicity of purpose, and superiority to what protestants would justly consider Romish prejudices.

Is my young friend inclined to ask, is there any necessity for all this labor? Do you meet me with the very common and the very English question, though it be in Latin, "cui bono?" Let me answer you in the language of an anonymous writer, and then bring my letter to a close.

A a

"A complete examination of manuscripts, versions, and fathers, proves the inviolability of the Christian Scriptures. They all coincide in exhibiting the same Gospels, and Acts, and Epistles; and among all the copies of them which have been preserved, there is not one which dissents from the rest, in either the doctrines or precepts which constitute Christianity." For the knowledge of this fact, one, unquestionably, of great importance, we are indebted to such labors as those to which I have referred. "To the superficial, and to the novice in theology, the long periods of life, and the patient industry, which have been applied to critical investigation, may appear as mere waste, or, at the best only amusing employment; but to the serious inquirer, the time, the talents, and the learning which have been devoted to critical collation, will be accounted as well expended. The real theologian is satisfied from his own examination, that the accumulation of many thousands of various readings obtained at the expense of immense critical labor, does not affect, so far as results are concerned, a single sentiment in the whole New Testament. And thus is criticism, which some despise, and others neglect, found to be one of those undecaying columns, by which the imperishable structure of Christian truth is supported."

Believe me,

My dear H.,

Yours, affectionately,

E.

KINGLY PARDON.*

WHEN God forgives the sinner, and remits the sins of the guilty penitent, he does it once and for ever. He forgives as God. It has been related of Alexander the Great, that on his desiring a person to ask what he pleased, and it would be given him, and on the person asking a paltry and valueless boon, Alexander said "It may be becoming in you to ask this, but it is not in me to give it when I give, I give like a king."

Our Great High Priest "gives like a king," and His gift is as

* We copy this eloquent extract from one of the very powerful and seasonable tracts published by the British Reformation Society-No. III. on Transubstantiation, &c.-ED.

lasting as it is munificent; perfect salvation, nothing less or more, is bestowed; free, full, and final pardon is the royal boon of our Melchisedec-there is no reason why it should not be so. The holiness of God, so pure that it detects imperfections in angels, folly in the bright cherubim, and stains in heaven, is infinitely glorified in that sacrifice. Justice, unbending in the least as in the loftiest of her demands, that before wrote in characters of fearful and mysterious import, "Tekel, thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting," on our every thought and deed, and cast of our race, is met and magnified. The truth of God-that announced with the immutability of heaven's own oracles" the soul that sinneth, it shall die"-looks on the tragedy of Calvary, and finds its threatenings therein exhausted; and God himself proclaims from the opening heavens, with a parent's piercing and melting love, "Why will ye die, O! house of Israel; turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die?" It is within the sacred precincts of Calvary, and around the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, that "mercy and truth are met together, and righteousness and peace have kissed each other;" and a reconciled Father, by reason of this once-for-all Sacrifice, looks down from heaven on his reconciled and ransomed family, saying, "These are my sons ;" and they look up from the scenes of reconciliation, once the scenes of estrangement, and say in extatic and glorious accents "Abba, our Father, and our God!" The church of Rome leads her victims to believe that God is a hard, and tyrannic taskmaster, shorn of all a father's benevolence, something like Pharaoh of old, who called on the people to make bricks when they had no straw-neither to be propitiated by victims, nor to be melted by prayer. So inexorable is God represented in Roman Catholic theology, that the body and blood, soul and divinity of his Son, must be offered up to him four hundred millions of times in forty years! But God is not a hard taskmaster. He says, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased;" and all who appear in that Son before God, clothed with his perfect righteousness, and with raiment washed in the blood of the Lamb, are fully and for ever accepted of God.

KINDNESS TO ANIMALS.

The spring time of our years

Is soon dishonoured and defiled in most,

By budding ills that ask a prudent hand

To check them. But alas! none sooner shoots,

If unrestrained, into luxuriant growth,

Than cruelty, most devilish of them all.

AMONG the various institutions that have been formed, under the influence of christianity, it is pleasing to notice the “ Society for the prevention of Cruelty to Animals," a society which has received the highest patronage, and has been marked with eminent success. There exists a wicked propensity in the young, and, indeed, in persons arrived at maturity, to treat animals with cruelty. How often have we seen children tormenting flies, cockchafers, birds, dogs, and other creatures, within their control. Sports of the most demoralizing character were formerly common in christianized England. Cock-fighting, bull-baiting, badger hunts, were long encouraged by the so-called higher classes, and till lately the brutal practice of boxing, wherein man was set against his fellow man, was patronized by persons of rank, whose position in life ought to have been a powerful argument against their degrading their order by countenancing practices so disgusting.

Much of the cruelty that has appeared in after life may be traced to the habits of childhood; habits unrestrained, and allowed by the overweening indulgence of fond and partial parents to grow with the growth and strengthen with the strength of their children. The child that torments flies, when grown to a boy, will worry dogs, and as he advances in years treat horses with cruelty, goading the noble animal with the spur, lacerating his mouth with the bit, riding him furiously uphill, and affording no relief or respite in the journey. They who have no regard for the life of a beast, will by degrees treat, as of little or no value, the life of man: hence the tormentor of flies, often becomes the murderer of his species, and dyes his hands in human gore.

There are persons who have endeavoured to justify acts of cruelty to the brute creation, upon the maxim that "all things whatever in and upon the globe were created purely and solely