THE

YOUTHS' MAGAZINE;

OR,

EVANGELICAL MISCELLANY.

AUGUST, 1849.

RAILROAD SCENE.

In our number for April last, we gave an engraving of one of those old picturesque coach-road scenes, which the enemies of progress would fain make us believe are now for ever lost, through the introduction of railways. Our engraving for this month will, we trust, serve in some measure to correct this mistake, since it presents as fair a landscape as the other, though of widely different appear

ance.

The portion of country between Broomsgrove and Birmingham here represented, is of wild and picturesque character-the bold height of "The Lickey," over which the old road between these two towns passes, and Lickey-hill to the left of it, enjoying not merely a local celebrity; whilst the village and stately hall of Crofton Hacket, on the other side the railway, form a conspicuous and interesting feature in the landscape.

Art has here added its wonders to those of Nature, as the " Lickey Inclined Plane," on the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway, is regarded as amongst our most celebrated triumphs of engineering. The print represents the Philadelphia engine ascending this plane, which rises one foot in thirty-seven, with a train of loaded wagons, weighing altogether about seventy-four tons, at the rate of nearly ten miles an hour; a feat actually accomplished in June, 1840, and many times subsequently.

S

THE WAY TO THE GIFT.

MANY years had passed away since the quiet summer's evening in which I was a hearer of good Mr. Reynolds. During this period, my interviews with the Walkinshaws had been more frequent than usual; though that family had almost entirely deserted the old church at Springclose. The youngest of the daughters had passed her minority, and become mistress of her little property, so that I had no longer that control over it which had hitherto prevented its application to the purpose already alluded to, and which lay nearest to her own heart. Of one, educated as was Laura Walkinshaw-and she could be called so, only on the lucus a non lucendo principle-little good will be augured. The only earnest thing in all her learningtime had reference to the specious doctrines of Romanism, and before she returned from France, she was far gone in its pernicious and deceitful follies. But her silly parents thinking, as many do, that names and words were a sufficient safeguard against its inroads, allowed her to connect herself with the so-called Protestant community already referred to, where, though conforming to all the idolatries and superstitions of Rome, she flattered herself and persuaded them, that she was sound in the doctrines of the Anglo-catholic church as she herself, and many others, paradoxically called it. Laura became a devotee, a formalist, a pharisee, proud of her "voluntary humility" and vain repetitions; and is now sometimes to be seen doing her alms" in such a way as cannot fail to make her "the observed of all observers," in the neighbourhood of the Institution already spoken of so much at length.

And what became of the other daughters? Caroline was still at "home," though she knew not in its best sense the meaning of that delightful word. Louisa, now somewhat more than thirty, and mistress also of her own property, imagined, for reasons on which we need not now enter, that she should be more happy and independent at the head of a separate establishment. She had consequently built for herself a singularly uninteresting "pavilion" at some little distance, which will be noticed more at length presently, and there she spent her time like certain persons of old renown, in little else but either to tell or to hear some new thing."

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Such, at the end of six or seven years from the time last spoken of in this narrative, was the position of affairs as regarded this family; when calling on them, I found amongst other matters, they were deeply engrossed by the astounding merits of some minister, whose preaching Miss Walkinshaw had lately spoken of in superlative terms; "Had I heard him?" "Had I heard of him?" "Every one was flocking to his chapel." "And such an odd name, too," said Miss Caroline, with a simper, slightly tinged with incredulity-" such an odd name they give the place! They call it, if I understood Loui rightly—The Ill Miser!'"

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"Oh!" said I, bursting involuntarily into laughter" I know it; I was there once, and heard him."

"Well?" said Mrs. Walkinshaw enquiringly.

"No, no; not well at all;" I answered, trusting to a goodhumoured smile to supplement my meaning-" anything but that; the fellow is a mountebank-Waddington might do for a fair; but is sadly out of place in the pulpit."

"Waddington?" said Mr. Walkinshaw, looking doubtfully at his wife.

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'Waddington ?" repeated Mrs. Walkinshaw in the same key, turning towards Caroline.

"Waddington?" reiterated Caroline, looking at both the others in turn; and then after a few moments' deliberation, adding-"No; Waddington was not the name; but I really quite forget what it was.”

Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Walkinshaw could throw much light upon the subject, though the whole three agreed to repudiate the "Vegetable man" of high doctrine and low practice. "Then," said I-"I don't know him;" and in this happy ignorance, I must a little longer leave the reader.

So evenly and easily flowed the tenor of my way for this long term of years, that I fondly hoped all illiberality of sentiment towards dissenters had died out. But I had simply forgotten the little incidents which had called up those asperities of feeling to which attention has been directed in the foregoing narrative. I had made up my mind to lose sight of the great truth, that there were laborers in the same vineyard with myself, called at all hours and laboring in many ways, under

different systems and different forms-hewers of wood, drawers of water, nice and cunning workmen, men rude in speech and rude in knowledge, finished orators, and finished scholars— scattered far and wide over the land, but yet unrecognized by those who held my own opinions.

Yet there was one lesson I carried away with me, which for awhile shed a healthful influence over my spirit, and rebuked my littleness. Mr. Reynolds had done, and was still doing, the work of a good steward of the grace of God. He had received seals to his ministry and souls for his hire. Conversion was the work of the church on earth, and conversion had followed his honest, earnest, faithful labors. And so it had doubtless been with others of the same school. "Forasmuch,

then," thought I, "as God gave them the like gift as he did unto us who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, what was I, that I could withstand God ?"

But about the time of which I am now to speak, it happened in the course of our daily Scripture reading at home that my attention was once more particularly directed to the first Epistle to the Corinthians. In our family study of the first chapter, I had received a new impulse towards catholicity of principle and practice; and had seen, as I thought in its true light, the evils of schism upon some of the more common occasions of difference prevalent among Christians; but it was not till I reached the eleventh chapter, and had read it in connexion with those that follow, that I felt any sincere and earnest desire for greater largeness of heart, or saw in all its hideousness and mischief the evil of contentions in the church. I had again and again-I might say habitually—professed my belief in the communion of saints, and I now saw, in the Electric Light of God's word, that on this point I had been really and practically a heretic. I saw that even the stated administrations of our Saviour's Feast of memorial, were robbed by this narrowness of soul of their true character, and felt the full power of the apostle's reasoning when he told the church at Corinth that they came not together to eat the Lord's Supper, but their own. I could not shift the charge. The Lord's Supper was a common feast-but their's was broken up, and divided into many parties, differing not merely in creed, but carrying out into practice their heresies and divisions.