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men to reside permanently. These men assist the manager in maintaining order, and their conduct acts as a restraint upon those who are inclined to he unruly. These large numbers show the great benefit of the Model Houses, and how much they are appreciated by the working classes.

"The security to life and health which these houses afford is incalculable., This fact is most conspicuously and incontestably proved by the past and present history of the Grassmarket house-the celebrated Hatters' Land." We formerly mentioned that more fever and cholera had been taken from that single house to the Infirmary than from any other tenement in Edinburgh, and now what is the fact? Since the opening of the house, eight months ago, 13,000 night's lodgings have been paid for. Out of these not a single case of fever has occurred, and only two cases of sickness worth mentioning. It is well known that the first cases of epidemics, such as cholera, can generally be traced to some low lodging-house. Hence the benefit which these Model Houses afford to all classes of the community. Were all lodging-houses conducted on the same principles, they would, humanly speaking, serve as a powerful barrier to the spread of epidemical Scourges. Whenever a case of fever occurs in one of the Model Houses it is instantly sent to the Infirmary.

"Nor is the security to character and property afforded by such establishments less striking. The raw country lad, and the unsophisticated country girl, are both alike comparatively safe from contamination. The hardearned wages of the Highland shearer returning home to his wife and family, and the glittering wares of the travelling pedlar, are equally secure from the nimble fingers of the artful thief. In cases where strangers have died in these houses, leaving money, it has been carefully handed over to their relatives."

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The writer alludes to one crying and enormous evil which it is vain to dismiss from view, and which most loudly calls for restriction and retrenchment, the utterly disproportioned and enormous amount of shops for the sale of ardent spirits, multiplied in the poorest localities of Edinburgh, the proprietors of which, in most cases, open them on Sabbath, with the exception of the period of public worship. It is an easy traffic, requiring little skill, and no great amount of capital; but most injurious to the individuals themselves, and most deleterious to the neighbourhood in which they flourish for a time, amidst the general misery and corruption. We agree with the writer in thinking that this is one of the giant vices of the day; and have no doubt that the Scotch, and more particularly the city population of Scotland, are pre-eminently distinguished by addiction to this failing. There are 965 spirit-shops in Edinburgh, or one to every 33 families, of which no fewer than 69 are found in the space between the Tron Church and the foot of Canongate, many with their back-door, that "the timid, wavering, and respectable" may slink in ;—not a few frequented by the reckless and abandoned of both sexes, and the promoters of beggary and misery in many a household. The payments of out-door paupers, the earnings of youth, the gains of mendicancy and imposture, the Saturday wages of the artisan in no small measure, alike find their way to the till of the publican; and, as if these temples, gaily decorated and blazing with light, did not resemble so many devil-traps sanctioned by the cupidity of proprietors and the culpable remissness of the authorities, to tempt the lower orders of the popu lation, are there not cases in which merchants, otherwise respectable,

dole out the glass of whisky across the counter to encourage their cus tomers; or in which members of denominations too pure to remain in connection with the Established Church, have their place of snug retirement, where the tempting glass may be enjoyed without detriment to outward character and respectability? We are not ascetics, but we thoroughly believe that if more than a half of the spirit shops in Edinburgh were closed at the next licensing term, and if all of them were ordered to be shut on Sabbath, together with the equally unnecessary exception of the low repositories of confections, &c.,--truly described as low greengrocers' shops during the week, but on Sundays spreading out the purchased store for the purpose of tempting the idle and improvident, the result would be that of great benefit alike to the health and the morals of the general population. It is idle to grumble at the increase of poorrates and the prevalence of vice, while the flame is fed and the disease augmented on the part of those who should cordially unite for the purpose of remedying the evil. Dr George Bell, in his " Blackfriars' Wynd," a tract which contains many deeply-interesting but most painful facts, remarks that "nine-tenths of the class now known by the appellation of 'Ragged Children' are the offspring of drunkards." Among the degraded specimens of humanity he met with, he speaks of a cinder-woman who contrived to get drunk every day! "But the adults are not the only consumers of whisky. Mothers give the poison to their babes! and we have often found," says this accurate observer, " 'boys and lads in the dram-sellers' haunts destroying themselves, and being encouraged in doing so by men! From the toothless infant to the toothless old man, the population of the wynds drink whisky. The drunken drama that is enacted on Saturday night and Sabbath morning beggars description. The scene is terrible and the music dreadful. It is impossible to say how much is expended on the chronic drinking or every-day consump tion of whisky, and how much on the weekly exacerbation or grand infernal orgie. The sum must be great." The people of Blackfriars" Wynd alone, which is supposed to contain about a fiftieth-part of the low population of the city, are computed to spend not less than L.2,050 per annum on drink,-part of it, doubtless, the result of precarious industry of an honest kind; the remainder the fruits of street-beggary, profligacy, and theft. Yet the soft-hearted and simple encourage this by giving alms to the shameless beggars that dog them in the streets and infest their doors, unthinking that these are usually the rapacious and unprincipled, who procure the means of vicious indulgence by preying on the respectable portion of the community.

The Resurrection of Life: An Exposition of First Corinthians xv.; with a Discourse on our Lord's Resurrection. By JOHN BROWN, D.D., Senior Minister of the United Presbyterian Congregation, Broughton Place, Edinburgh, and Professor of Exegetical Theology to the United

* Bell's Blackfriars' Wynd Analysed.

→ Presbyterian Church. Edinburgh: William Oliphant & Sons. London: Hamilton, Adams, & Co. Glasgow: David Robertson. 1852.

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A beautiful title! and a beautiful theme!-deserving, as well as demanding, the highest capacity of intellect to deal with, and the loftiest powers of eloquence to adorn. Do not the very words, "Resurrection of Life," leap and thrill within us, like a voice from the eternal future? What to mortal man can be more important or more acceptable than the subject of his resurrection from the dead? He knows he must die: that however wise, however good, however useful in his day and generation, he must go with all his honours, with all his goodness, with all his usefulness-to the cold and silent charnel-house of death, and there moulder away, until not a vestige of the earthly tenement in which “he lived, and moved, and had his being," remained; that his memory must fade away into total oblivion, till, in the town, the parish, the neighbourhood where he dwelt, his name, his history, his existence, are all unknown, and he is as if he had never been. What, then, can come to him with so much reviving and exhilarating power as the prospect of the resurrection? It is as if, in the darkness of the tomb, there burned a lamp, and its corruption and decay there blossomed the effervescence of life, and there issued from its grim and silent confines the voice of our destined immortality," The Resurrection of Life." Ah! is it not the beauteous bow of hope and promise, that overspans the resting-place of the dead, and bearing on its Cerulean arch the inscription, "Death is swallowed up in victory." And who doubts the doctrine of the resur-. rection, even on rational grounds, for is not he who formed at first man out of the dust of the ground able to reanimate that dust, and to give it the proportions, and life, and symmetry, which it formerly wore? And who doubts it on natural grounds? for, if a bulbous root (as has been found to be the case) retains its germinating power for more than four, thousand years, and after the lapse of so immense a period it lives and blooms again, as fresh and lively to look upon as when it put forth its leaves and distilled its fragrance on the banks of the Nile, may not the ashes of the tomb be possessed of the same vitality? And who dare doubt it, with the Word of God in his hand. Every page of Scripture, this glorious doctrine, like a central sun, illuminates. The inspired, record is both a dark and a dead letter apart from the future "resurrection of life;" religion a system of unmeaning dogmas; and the Christian faith, especially, a thing of nought. It is the "resurrection of life" alone that gives harmony, significance, value, and power to the gospel of Jesus. Remove this, and you remove the key-stone of the arch-the chief corner-stone of the building; the whole, in consequence, totters to its fall, and becomes a heap of ruins. The Scripture argument in favour of the "resurrection of life" is very ably conducted in the treatise before us. Dr Brown has evidently girded himself to the execution of the work. It was a fine field for his clear and comprehensive intellect, and he has done the sublime subject all the justice that human mind and eloquence can do. It is the last, and we would say the best, of his publications. The arrangement is logical, the style chastely elo

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quent; and the spirit of the whole singularly evangelical, impressive, and persuasive. It will certainly add to his fame as an enlightened and able expositor of divine truth. The concluding discourse on the resurrection of Jesus is a master-piece, and the entire volume may very fitly form a graceful and suitable conclusion to the series of valuable theological works which have preceded it. We have here the copestone put upon the building-the statue on the summit of the column. Dr Brown may well leave the "Resurrection of Life" as his legacy to the body in which he has been so long a distinguished preacher and teacher; and though nothing but this had ever emanated from his pen, it would have undoubtedly ranked him among our standard theological writers. We give the two following extracts, as specimens of this admirable work,the one from the exposition of the 15th chapter of First Corinthians; the other from the Discourse on the Resurrection of Christ, p. 201 :

"Let the anticipation of a resurrection, and of such a resurrection, comfort those who have been called upon to part with dear Christian friends, and consign their corruptible, dishonoured, weak, animal, dead, decomposing frames to the cold lonely mansions of darkness and corruption,-and sustain our spirits, as we cannot but distinctly perceive that we are steadily moving onward towards the appointed hour, when we, too, shall leave our bodies, only the wreck of the overturned and untenantable earthly house of our tabernacle, and be indebted to others for hiding in the dust the unsightly fragments. The separation from our friends, the separation from our bodies, is but for a season; we shall meet them both again, and though we shall feel no difficulty in recognising them, we shall meet them both wondrously changed, wondrously improved.

Thrice happy meeting!

Nor time nor death shall ever part us more.'

"Let the aged pilgrim, bending beneath the weight of years and sorrows, cheer himself with the thought that he bears within him the germ of a frame of immortal youth and untiring vigour, which, to be laid beneath the clod, has undying vitality in it; and rejoice that, ere long, the aching head and the throbbing heart shall rest in a bed of profound repose, assuredly to awake at the appointed season, to become the seats of intenser thought and deeper feeling, ministering thenceforward only ever-growing enlightenment and delight throughout eternity. The Christian doctrine of the resurrection of our bodies is well fitted to teach us how we should use these vessels, as the Apostle calls them, in sanctification and honour. Is it meet that these bodies, which are to become spiritual bodies, should be treated as if they were nothing but animal bodies? Should we, who call ourselves Christian, not remember that we have spirit as well as soul, and show that we are sanctified wholly in soul and spirit by being sanctified wholly in body. Whether we eat, or whether we drink, let us do all to the glory of God.' Let us glorify God not only in our spirits, but our bodies, for they are His, bought with a price, the price of the blood of his Son, and to be transformed by the power of his Son. Our bodies are the members of Christ, and must not be desecrated; our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost, and must not be polluted by idols. Even in the present state the body may be rendered subservient to the spirit, and the more this can be done, the Christian will find it the better for him, both now and at the resurrection. Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in the justs thereof; neither yield your members, as instruments of unrighteous

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ness, unto sin; but yield of yourselves unto God as those who are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.' It is a serious reflection to all: We are not done with our bodies at death, we must meet with them again; and according as we use them now will they be to us through all eternity,-the instruments for higher enjoyment or for deeper suffering than they ever have been in this world; For,' in our bodies, we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.' Little do the drunkard and the sensualist consider that, when revelling in their gross and debasing pleasures, they are inflicting on themselves wounds, and inducing distempers which shall rankle and fester to all eternity; that, while feeding their unhallowed lusts, they are providing nourishment for the worm that dieth not, and fuel for the fire that shall never be quenched. Happy, inconceivably happy, they who are then found in Christ, clothed upon with their house from heaven;' with their bodies fashioned like unto the Lord's glorious body,-bearing no longer the image of him of the earth in the animal body, but of the Lord from heaven in the spiritual body-in body and spirit fit for heaven. They shall be received into heaven-the heaven of heavens, and so shall they ever be with the Lord.'”

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The following is the extract from the Discourse on the Resurrection of Christ. We would that we could have given the whole; our space,

however, forbids :

"Its practical importance.-But the resurrection of Christ has an important bearing on Christianity practically as well as doctrinally considered, which well entitles it to be habitually remembered by us. With a few remarks in this view of the subject, I will shut up this discourse. The resurrection of Christ ought to be remembered by us, for it is fitted to relieve the conscience burdened with guilt, to sustain and comfort amid the afflictions of life, and to present powerful motives to diligence and perseverence in the discharge of duty. A word or two on each of these topics:"(1.) It relieves the conscience burdened with guilt. First, then, we should remember the resurrection of Christ, because it is fitted to relieve the conscience burdened with guilt. There can be no acceptable duty, no real solid happiness, without a conscience purged from dead works. That can be obtained only by the sprinkling of the blood of atonement, i. e., by believing the truth respecting the atonement made by the blood of Christ. The efficacy of that atonement can be seen only by the man who believes our Lord's resurrection-the proof of his sacrifice having been accepted. The faith of his being delivered for our offences' alcne will not save; it must be conjoined with the faith of his 'being raised again for our justifification. The answer of a good conscience is to be obtained only through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our confidence and hope in God rests on his having raised Christ from the dead, and given him glory.' It is in bringing again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,' that God appears to be the God of peace. Who can condemn' the believer? It is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again.' The believing sinner, looking at the risen Saviour, may well say,

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Our Surety freed declares us free,
For whose offences he was seized;
In his release our own we see,
And joy to view Jehovah pleased.

- “(2.) It comforts amid the afflictions of life. Secondly, we should re

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