"But remember that if union to such an assembly be a great honor and privilege, it also imposes great obligations. What ought they to be in temper and conduct, who profess to belong to such an assembly as this? How white, how unspotted ought to be their garments! How should their whole lives testify to whom they belong! And how great and how just will be the punishment of those false disciples, who, while they pretend to belong to this holy assembly, only disgrace it by their ungodly lives, and appear as spots and blemishes in the midst of it. Not long shall they be permitted thus to dishonor it; for he whose eyes are as a flame of fire, will come to purify his church, and to cast into outer darkness those who have assumed his name only to profane it, and professed his religion only to dishonor it. Then will he say to his church, Rejoice, rejoice, for from henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean. Then he will present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or imperfection, or any such thing; but perfectly holy, and without blemish; what manner of persons, then ought ye to be? As he who hath called us is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation, because he hath said, Be ye holy, for I am holy.”

We present one passage farther, for its excellence, and as a fine example of ministerial sincerity, zeal and affection. It is the concluding part of a very impressive sermon on 2 Tim. 3: 4-" Lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God." He shows, in several particulars, who are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, and concludes with a touching exhortation to persons of this description.

"Ye creatures of the Most High! ye immortal spirits! ye probationers for eternity! listen to this call, to the voice of Jehovah. How long will ye continue to be lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God? How long continue to circle round that vortex which draws its wretched captives into the gulf that has no bottom; how long lie buried in slumber and death, dreaming of pleasure, while your Creator is displeased, while your Saviour is neglected, while death is approaching, while eternity is at the door, and your unprepared spirits are momentarily exposed to endless perdition! What meanest thou, O sleeper, to slumber while this is thy condition! Is it a time for mirth, when the Judge stands before the door, crying, Woe unto you that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep! Awake, then, thou that sleepest; escape for thy life; look not behind thee; renounce thy vain pleasures, deny thyself, take up thy cross and follow Christ. Say not, my pleasures are too dear to part with. I know they are dear, dear to you as a right hand or a right eye. But what then? It is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two eyes, to be cast into hell-fire. Say not, if we renounce our pleasures we shall never more be happy. Rather, you will never be happy till you do renounce them, and seek happiness where alone it is to be found. Were the Samaritans unhappy when they had renounced sin

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ful pleasures, and embraced the cross of Christ? No, there was great joy in that city. Was the Ethiopian nobleman unhappy, after he had believed on a crucified Redeemer? No, he went on his way rejoicing. Renounce your idolatrous love of pleasure, and this joy will be yours. Enter the ways of wisdom, and you will find them ways of pleasantness. Cease to drink at your broken cisterns, which can hold no water, and you shall drink of those rivers of pleasure which flow forever at the right hand of God. Imitate the example of Christ, who began early to say, I must be about my Father's business, and you shall have that rest, that peace, which he gives, and rejoice in him with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

"Do any say, we would gladly renounce our unsatisfying pleasures and follow Christ, but we feel unable to do so. We fear that when the hour of temptation comes, we shall forget and break our resolutions, and return to the world? My friends, the power of Christ can render you victorious over the strongest temptations. His grace is sufficient for you; and if you can consent that he should take away that inordinate fondness for pleasure that enslaves you, he will do it. You perhaps recollect that, in the account we gave you last Sabbath, it was mentioned that when the young were persuaded to renounce their vain amusements, a glorious revival of religion soon followed. If you could be persuaded to imitate their example, perhaps the consequences would be similar. Will you not make the experiment at least for one month? Will you not for one month, one little month, say No to every call of sinful pleasure, and devote yourselves to the pursuit of religion? Is this too much time to give to the salvation of your souls? Too much to give to him who gave you being; too much to give to that Saviour, who gave his blood for your redemption, and whose language is, My son give me thine heart?

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My dying, yet immortal hearers, will you not grant him this small favor? If you still hesitate, still feel undecided, let me entreat you, when you go from this house to repair to your closets, and there lay open the Bible before you; bring to your minds the solemn hour of death, and the awful scenes beyond it, and with these scenes full in your view, survey your past lives; consider how you will wish they had been spent, when your last hour arrives; and then with the eye of God upon you, and with your eye upon the judgment-seat, decide whether you will follow Christ or your pleasures."

We are not disposed to lavish upon Dr. P. any indis-· criminate praise. He was a human being, and he had his failings and frailties. As a preacher, though he was neither in his creed nor in his method a faultless model, he had many excellences; he was abundantly honored by his divine Master as a benefactor of souls. And when in the vigor of his intellectual faculties, his weary, wornout body sunk into the tomb, all felt that a new star was kindled to shine in heaven.

ARTICLE VI.

ENGLISH HISTORY.

1. The Pictorial History of England, being a history of the people as well as a history of the kingdom. Illustrated with several hundred wood cuts, monumental records, coins, civil and military costume, domestic buildings, furniture and ornaments, cathedrals and other great works of Architecture, sports and other illustrations of manners, mechanical inventions, portraits of the kings and queens, and remarkable historical scenes. By GEO. L. CRAIK and CHARLES MACFARLANE, assisted by other Contributors. 4 vols. 8vo. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1847-1848. 2. History of the Conquest of England by the Normans; its causes and its consequences in England, Scotland, Ireland and on the Continent. By AUGUSTIN THIERRY. Translated from the Seventh Paris Edition, by WM. HAZLITT. 2 vols. 12mo. London: David Bogue, 1847.

HISTORY, and especially a good English History, has paramount claims on the attention of us all. Our countrymen with all their vaunting, are yet in all their national relations and character, a kind of novi homines— the mere creatures of yesterday. But happily we are not so entirely segregated, as to make it impossible to trace our origin to the parent stock of Old England. Believing, as we honestly do and must, that we have, in this our later edition, vastly improved upon the heterogeneous aggregation and incongruous compound called the British Constitution, it still cannot but be eminently interesting and instructive to trace the mighty stream back to its sources. For though it may lead us through some muddy sloughs and miry bogs, we shall not fail to find, here and there, living springs, sending forth pellucid and healthful

rills.

We have now reached a stand-point of national distinction which ought to elevate us in our own appreciation,

above the petty sensitiveness, which shrinks from a thorough and truthful investigation of the origin and various modifications of our grand experiment of government, religion, literature and the arts, and whatever is most unique in our whole character. Confidently may we assure ourselves in the very outset, that the most rigid examination, while it may detect here and there a transplanted shoot from an older stock-vastly improved, indeed, by its rooting in our fresher soil--and perchance, also, now and then a defect and a blemish, evidently traceable to the diseased character of its parent source, still will it be sure to manifest, in our fair, national achievements, enough to gratify our most laudable ambition for originality; with not a little which ought to humble us, for the inadequacy of our enfranchisement from old, time-honored abuses.

In either aspect, the volumes of English History will be found richly suggestive of profitable lessons, and admirably adapted to incite to their persevering study. Besides what may have special interest for us, as connected with our own origin, the ample field which the earlier portions of that history develop, of mixed races, the danger of conquests, and of attempting to govern by one legislative body, those who require essentially dissimilar codes of law, with varieties of municipal, civil and ecclesiastical immunities and restraints-all this certainly cannot but be regarded as eminently seasonable for us, in the present novel and intensely absorbing crisis of our national affairs.

In our country, where the humblest citizen, in order to the discreet and conscientious discharge of his duties in the elective franchise, must know the elements of national prosperity, or the rocks and quicksands which threaten our security, it cannot but be eminently salutary to bring the public mind as thoroughly and widely as possible into close contact with the revealment of past experiments, in many respects not unlike our own.

For all these reasons, and others of kindred character and importance, we have been inclined to hail the first of the works named above with unusual satisfaction. After all the mighty elaboration of the past and present generation, a good popular history of the British Isles remained a desideratum until the present enterprise supplied it.

What has before been done may fitly and truly be likened to the arduous labors of the attorneys who fully prepare their case by diligently searching out the evidence, pro and con, all the reliable facts and witnesses, and arrange them as best they may-each one for the object he has in view. Then we have the able and ingenious arguments of the advocates on both sides. Sometimes the sides are not limited to two, but we have a very polygon-or keeping more closely to our former figure, we have, like a cause in the Admiralty or inheritance courts, to adjust the rights of many claimants, each with its independent or affiliated relations. With the results of all this labor furnished to our hand in satisfactory abundance and completeness, there was still wanting the luminous, accurate and impartial summing up of the chief justice, on the submission of the cause to the final deliberation of the jury, for their conclusive verdict. We think it would not be difficult to show that former historical labors are with sufficient accuracy described by this simile; and that we have in the ample volume here spread before us, a very satisfactory performance of the impartial service of the learned and upright judge. He does not take it upon him to pronounce a verdict, but he gives you the satisfactory data, the true ground, both as regards the law applicable to the case and the evidence furnished, which will enable you to reach that verdict in an intelligent and honest manner. He who should take the arguments or pleadings of one of the opposing counsel, instead of the unbiassed summing up of the bench, would not be more grievously misled, than the honest inquirer after truth, who should rely on such historians as wrote under the strong influence of party bias, as the truthful utterances of uprightness.

Not only may this freedom from corrupting and blinding party prejudice be claimed for this new history of England; it has also the scarcely less valuable and rare merit of being the product of ample intelligence-a thoroughness of research on almost every part, being always distinctly traceable.

Perhaps we shall render an acceptable service to many of our readers, by showing how these high ends seem to have been so satisfactorily secured in the present instance. The Pictorial History-more than three fourths of which

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