effectual method to extirpate this abomination from among us.

Resolved, That it is the duty of our Church as a unit to educate her membership to the high standard of these her primitive doctrines, and to this end it is her duty to inculcate them prudently but firmly through her organs, whether press or pulpit.

Resolved, That, while we oppose slavery as citizens, and give our sympathy to those who, in the state, are maintaining the cause of freedom against the slave power, we are especially the opponents of oppression as a sin, and the supporters of emancipation as the requirement of righteousness; and we would therefore remember that our anti-slaveryism should be deeply imbued with the spirit of the Holy Gospel that it should wisely consult the honor and unity of our Church, in the full faith that the highest good will be obtained through the legitimate instrumentality of her established institutions.

Resolved, That we offer our unfeigned thanks to Almighty God, and tender our cordial congratulations to the friends of humanity, for the rapid extension of the principles of justice and freedom during the past year, as well as for the cheering prospects of the extension of free institutions in our country; and we cherish the anticipation that, with proper effort in maintaining and diffusing light and truth on the subject, all misunderstanding will disappear, and the Church will unite, as with the heart of one man, upon the ancient Wesleyan platform, and, as in the great English emancipation struggle, Methodism will be unanimous and energetic in the cause of freedom.

An official Methodist paper, one of the "Advocates," says: "Why any Methodist preacher should oppose such resolutions, we can't tell. To us they sound very fourth-of-Julyish."

Our brother is not alone in this respect. Many of those who listened to the warm discussion occasioned by their introduction, were unable to see why the resolutions were opposed with such zeal. It is gratifying to be enabled to add that the opposition was a very small minority of the Conference, and that with equal, if not greater unanimity, the New York conference, sitting in the same city, a few weeks later, adopted the following:

Whereas, There are few, if any questions agitating more deeply the public mind, or involving moral and religious principles of higher moment, than slavery, we consider it fitting and proper that we as a conference should give utterance to our convictions on the subject; therefore,

Resolved, That the system of slavery is at war with the Gospel of Christ, the rights of man, and the best interests of society.

Resolved, That we point with just pride to the position which the Methodist Episcopal Church has, from her first organization, occupied upon the subject, ever regarding it as an evil, for the extirpation of which all wise and prudent measures are to be employed.

A THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.-The Methodists are awakening to the importance of a more systematic and thorough preparation for the ministerial office and work. The Wesleyans of England have two large, well-endowed, and ablyconducted Theological Schools. The Methodists of our own land have two: one at Concord, New Hampshire; the other near Chicago, Ill. The establishment of a third is under consideration. The New York East Conference adopted the following resolutions:

Resolved, That in the opinion of this Conference the time has arrived when it is the duty of the Church to consider the necessity and propriety of establishing an institution for ministerial and missionary education, to be located in the city of New York or its vicinity, or in the city of Middletown.

Resolved, That a committee of five members of this Conference and five laymen be appointed to consider this matter and report to the Conference during its present session.

This may be regarded as initiating the movement for its due consideration will very naturally result in the determination to establish a school of the kind in one of the localities named. Indeed, the adoption of the first resolution settles the question of necessity in the opinion of the Conference; and all that remains to be done is to project a plan, and carry it out.

AN EDITORIAL CALAMITY.-The Christian Inquirer, in noticing the fact that the editor of the Churchman has retired from his post, thus gives vent to his regret:

We are afraid we shall never find another editor so interesting as this highest of all Churchmen was to us. What shall we do now for an authority in Ecclesiology? His weekly lucubrations were always looked forward to with the assurance of finding, in addition to unquestionable ability, such strange Ishmaelite arrogance, presumption, and contempt for all outside of the "covenanted mercies," as were almost sublime and quite amusing. It was as healthy a laugh provoker to most of the editorial fraternity as if intended for a weekly ecclesiastical Punch, and will be much missed.

A TERRIBLE FOE.-Banker, in his work on Ceylon, states that on one occasion he came across an enormous serpent which lay in his path. His head was about the size of a very small cocoa-nut, divided lengthways, and this was raised to about eighteen inches above the coil. His eyes were fixed upon us, and the forked tongue played in and out of his mouth with a continued hiss. Aiming at his head, I fired at him with a double-barreled gun, within four paces, and blew his head to pieces. He appeared stone-dead; but, upon pulling him by self into convulsive coils, and lashing himself the tail, to stretch him out, he wreathed himout at full length, mowed down the grass in all directions. This obliged me to stand clear, for his blows were terrific, and the thickest part of his body was as thick as a man's thigh. Cutting some sharp-pointed stakes, I pinned his tail to the ground with my hunting-knife; and thrusting the pointed stake into the hole, I drove it deeply into the ground with the buttend of my rifle. The boa made some objection to this, and again commenced his former muscular contortions. I waited till they were over; and having provided myself with some tough jungle-rope, (a species of creepers,) I once more approached him, and, pinning his throat to the ground, I tied the rope through the incisions, and the united exertions of myself and three men hauled him out perfectly straight. I then drove a stake through his throat, and pinned him out. He was fifteen feet in length, and it required our united strength to tear off his skin, which shone with a variety of passing colors. On loosing his hide he tore away from the stakes; and although his head was shivered to atoms, and he had lost three feet of his neck by the ball having cut through this part, which separated in tearing off the skin, still he lashed and writhed in a frightful convulsion, continuing till I left him, bearing his hide as my trophy.

SLANDER.-Yes, you pass it along, whether you believe it or not. You don't believe the one-sided whisper against the character of another, but will use your influence to bear up the false report, and pass it on the current.

Strange creatures are mankind. How many benevolent deeds have been chilled by the shrug of a shoulder! How many individuals have been shunned by a gentle, mysterious hint! How many chaste bosoms have been wrung with grief at a single nod! How many graves have been dug by false report! Yet you will keep it above the water by a wag of your tongue, when you might sink it forever. Destroy the passion for tale-telling, we pray. Lisp not a word that may injure the character of another. Be determined to listen to no story that is repeated to the great injury of another, and, as far as you are concerned, the slander will die. But tell it once, and it may go as on the wing of the wind, increasing with each breath, till it has circulated through the State, and has brought to the grave one who might have been a blessing to the world.

ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH.-The London Times announces that the general programme of the second, and, it is to be hoped, final attempt to submerge the Atlantic telegraph wire, has already been decided on. The four hundred miles of cable ordered to replace the three hundred and eighty-four which were lost last autumn off Valentia have been completed, and it is intended, in order to make better provision for casualties, that an additional three hundred miles shall be at once proceeded with. The Agamemnon and the Niagara are the vessels again to be employed in the attempt to lay the wire, and the operation will this year be commenced in the middle of June, in which month, it is said, there are some five or six consecutive days during which a gale in the Atlantic was seldom or never known to occur. The line will be joined and laid from the center of the ocean, the Niagara bringing her end of the cable to Ireland, and the Agamemnon conveying hers to America. The Niagara will take on board, at the Keyham Dockyard, one thousand five hundred miles of the wire. On this occasion the cable will not be piled away in one huge mass, but will be distributed equally in the fore, midship, and after part of the vessel, in three coils of five hundred miles each. As soon as the wire has been stowed away, the two steamers will proceed into deep water, when a number of experiments will be made with the paying out machinery, to ascertain practically if any difficulties exist in the proposed plan for submerging the wire from the center of the Atlantic.

ORIGIN OF SLAVERY.-Mr. Bancroft, in the first volume of his History of the United States, gives an account of the early traffic of the Europeans in slaves. In the middle ages the Venetians purchased white men, Christians, and others, and sold them to the Saracens in Sicily and Spain. In England the Anglo-Saxon nobility sold their servants as slaves to foreigners. The Portuguese first imported negro slaves from Western Africa, into Europe, in 1442. Spain soon engaged in the traffic, and negro slaves abounded in some places of that kingdom. After America was discovered, the Indians of Hispaniola were imported into Spain, and made slaves. The Spaniards visited the coast of North America and kidnapped thousands of the

Indians, whom they transported into slavery in Europe and the West Indies. Columbus himself kidnapped five hundred native Americans, and sent them into Spain, that they might be publicly sold at Seville. The practice of selling North American Indians into foreign bondage continued for two centuries. Negro slavery was first introduced into America by Spanish slaveholders, who emigrated with their negroes. A royal edict of Spain authorized negro slavery in America in 1508. King Ferdinand himself sent from Seville fifty slaves to labor in the mines. In 1511 the direct tariff in slaves between Africa and Hispaniola was enjoined by a royal ordinance. Las Casas, who saw the Indians vanish away before the cruelties of the Spaniards, suggested that the negroes, who alone could endure severe toils, might be further employed. This was in 1518. Sir John Hawkins was the first Englishman that engaged in the slave-trade. In 1652 he transported a large cargo of Africans to Hispaniola. In 1657 another expedition was prepared, and Queen Elizabeth protected and shared in the traffic. Hawkins, in one of his expeditions, set fire to an African city, and out of three thousand inhabitants succeeded in seizing two hundred and sixty. Thomas Keyser and James Smith, of Boston, first brought the colonies to participate in slavery. In 1654 they imported a cargo of negroes. Throughout Massachusetts the cry of justice was raised against them as malefactors and murderers; the guilty men were committed for the offense, and the representatives of the people ordered the negroes to be restored to their native country at the public expense. At a later period there were both Indian and negro slaves in Massachusetts. In 1620 a Dutch ship entered James River, and landed twenty negroes for sale. This was the epoch of the introduction of slavery in Virginia, For many years the Dutch were principally concerned in the slave-trade in the market of Virginia.

POINTLESS SERMONS.-In one of his discourses John Newton has this pithy remark:

Many sermons, ingenious in their kind, may be compared to a letter put in a post-office without a direction. It is addressed to nobody, it is owned by nobody, and if a hundred people were to read it, not one of them would think himself concerned in the contents.

lacks the chief requisite of a sermon. Such a sermon, whatever excellences it may have, It is like a sword which has a polished blade, a jeweled hilt, and a gorgeous scabbard, but yet will not cut, and therefore, to all real use, is no sword. The truth properly presented has an edge; it pierces to the dividing asunder intents of the heart. of soul and spirit; it is a discerner of the thoughts and

THE CHRISTIAN OBSERVER thus speaks of a new organization which professes to collect money from Sabbath-school children. It is called the plan of Systematic Beneficence. It

says:

A communication containing a " Plan for the Sabbath School Charity Fund," will be found in another column. The plan proposes the "raising of six cents a week" for this fund "by every Sabbath-school scholar of stock to the amount of ten million dollars. Those in America." The Society proposes to issue certificates who pay six cents a week for three years are to be life

members; those who do it for six years, honorary managers; those who do it for ten years, honorary vice presidents; and "those who do this (from_love_to Christ) while they live, will have a free admission

through the gates into the heavenly city, a crown of gold, and a seat at the right hand of the final Judge." To many this plan appears monstrous! nothing better than buying indulgences, by which papists strive to obtain the pardon of sin, or a licence to indulge their unhallowed passions. It appears to be in harmony with popery, and every other false religion; but our Bible teaches us that the crown of life is a gift, not to be gained as a reward of works; a gift of unmerited, infinite GRACE.

NO JEW FARMERS.-The Friend, published at Honolulu, Sandwich Islands, contains the following curious statement:

Passing along the very busiest street of Honolulu, in the very busiest part of the day, a shopkeeper called our attention to the statement, which he asserted as a fact upon the authority of the last census of the United States, that out of seven hundred thousand (700,000) Jews residing in the United States, only one was registered as a farmer. He desired us to account for the fact. Upon the ordinary principles governing the migration and settlement of different nations resorting to the United States, this fact is unaccountable. It has no parallel. It stands forth marked and isolated. Other nations emigrating to America gradually become absorbed, and mingled with the general population, but not so the Jews. Singular fact. Rare exception.. How shall it be accounted for? Let us open the Bible and read the ninth verse of the ninth chapter of the prophet Amos:

"For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth."

Here is a pledge or promise of God that the Jewish people shall not be lost. They are scattered abroad, but not lost or forgotten. They have wandered among all nations, but do not find a home among the nations.

DIVINITY STUDENTS.-The divinity students of the Catholic Institute, at Cleveland, are forbidden the reading of any newspapers. They must be an enlightened and intelligent set of fellows, and will make exceedingly useful members of society. A Mr. E. O. Callaghan, one of the students, writes to the Cleveland Herald something about its report of St. Patrick's dinner, and says:

Owing to the regulations of the seminary in which I am forbidding all newspaper reading, it was not possible for me to see these papers, so that these criticisms would have easily escaped my notice, had not the kindness of a friend apprised me of them, and not being able to procure the papers without permission, nor at an earlier date, I now reply, and hope my vindication will find a place in your paper.

RELIGIOUS NOTICE EXTRAORDINARY.-A California paper contains the following take-off: "The Rev. Dr. Gaines will preach in the 'Tabernacle,' corner of Bush and Pine streets, tomorrow evening, at eight o'clock, a sermon appropriate to the recent election. SubjectZaccheus up a tree: his mode of climbing.' This will be instructive to little men seeking high positions. The defeated candidates for local offices and legislative honors, are particularly and cordially invited to attend."

THE DIVINITY OF RANK.-The Univers boasts that during the last few years there have been converted to popery in England, three duchesses, one marquis, two countesses, four viscountesses, eight ladies, ten baronets, two archdeacons, eighty-five clergymen, and two hundred and seventy-two persons moving in the upper ranks of life; and further glories in the fact that English titles imply genuine aristocracy, and not sham. Apparently the Univers

thinks that genuine titles involve theological intuitions, and that true aristocracy enjoys an instinct for the discernment of true faith. If the list had run on thus, three mathematicians, one physiologist, two chemists, four geologists, eight natural historians, ten physicians, two surgeons, eighty-five solicitors, and two hundred and seventy-two other persons engaged in intellectual professions, it would have been somewhat more to the purpose.

CURIOUS FACTS ABOUT ALLIGATORS.-Lyell, the geologist, says that alligators' nests resemble hay-cocks. They are four feet high and five in diameter at their bases, being constructed of grass and herbage. First, they deposit one layer of eggs on a layer of mortar, and having secured this with a stratum of mud and herbage, eight inches thick, lay another set of eggs upon that, and so on to the top, there being commonly from one to two hundred eggs in a nest. With their tails they beat down round the nest the dense grass and reeds five feet high, to prevent the approach of unseen enemies. The female watches her eggs until they are all hatched by the heat of the sun, and then takes her brood under her own care, defending them and providing for their subsistence. Dr. Lutzemberg, of New-Orleans, told me that he once packed up one of these nests with eggs in a box for the Museum of St. Petersburgh, but was recommended before he closed it to see that there was no danger of the eggs being hatched on the voyage. On opening one, a young alligator walked out, and was soon followed by the rest, about a hundred in all, which he fed in his own house, where they went up and down stairs whining and barking like young puppies.

SMALL CHANGE.

STICKING TO THE TEXT.-Selden, in his amusing Table Talk, has the following story in illustration of his remark that preachers will sometimes bring anything into the text:

The young masters of arts preached against nonresidency in the university; whereupon the heads made an order that no man should meddle with anything but what was in the text. The next day ono preached upon these words: "Abraham begat Isaac." When he had gone a good way, at last he observed, that Abraham was resident; for, if he had been nonresident, he could never have begot Isaac; and so he fell foul upon the non-residents.

This is something like the anecdote of the minister who was almost possessed on the subject of the prelatical controversy, and could never refrain from introducing his opinion on it, no matter what the subject in hand. Once he was set to discourse upon the first verse in the Bible, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." His first remark was, "Yes, my brethren; but it does not say that God created bishops.”

NOT QUALIFIED.-When John Brown, D.D., had settled in Haddington, the people of his parish gave him a warm and enthusiastic reception; only one of the members of that large church and congregation stood out in opposition to him. The reverend doctor tried all the means

in his power to convert the solitary dissenter to unity of feeling which pervaded the whole body, but all his efforts to obtain an interview proved abortive. As Providence directed, however, they happened one day to meet in the street, when the doctor held out his hand, saying, My brother, I understand you are opposed to my settling at Haddington."

"Yes, sir," replied the parishioner. "Well, and if it be a fair question, on what grounds do you object to me?"

"Because, sir," quoth he, "I don't think you are qualified to fill so eminent a post."

"That is just my opinion," replied the doctor; "but what, sir, is the use of you and I setting up our opinions in opposition to a whole parish?"

The brother smiled, and their friendship was sealed forever. How very true and forcible God's word: "A soft answer turns away wrath."

A FRIEND across the ocean, than whom none can better enjoy or crack a side-shaking joke, sends us the following copy of a hand-bill, which he assures us was lately distributed extensively in a town at which he was sojourning in the west of England:

Roger Giles, surgonn, parish clark, and scoolmaster, reforms ladys and gentelmen that he draws teeth without waiting a moment-blisters on the lowest terms, and fysicks at a penny a peace. Sells Godfather's Cordel, cut corns, and undertakes to keep any bodies nails by the year, or so on. Yong ladees and gentelmen tort their grammer langwage in the neatest manneralso grate care taken of their morals and spellin. Also sarme singing and teeching the Ho! Boy. Cow Tillons and other dances tort at home and abroad. Perfumery in all its branches. Sells all sorts of stashonary wares, blacking balls, red herrings and coles, scrubben brushes, treecle, mouse traps, and all other sorts of sweetmeats-likewise taters, sassages, and other garden stuffs also frute, hats, ballits, hoyl, tinware, and other eatables. Tumher sarve, corn sarves, and all hard wares. He also performs fleebottomy in a curious manner. Fathermore in particular, he has laid in a large sortment of tripe, china, dog's meet, lollipops, and other pickles, such as hoysters, &c. Old rags bought and sold here, and not any ware helse- and new laid eggs every day, by me Roger Giles. P. S. 1 teeches joggrefy, and all them outlandish things. N. B. A bawl on Wednesdays.

Outsiders find Cairo a very unhealthy place, financially speaking. Yankees are nowhere. One of em started a shaving mill to negotiate business paper, loan money, buy and sell exchange on all parts of the globe, etc. Mr. Tucker applied for a loan of six hundred dollars for ninety days, offering as security a cut-throat mortgage on a very fine frame house which he had erected on one of the several lots leased from Mat. L, who owns two thirds of the city. Yank agreed to the loan, charging five per cent. commission and six per cent. a month interest. Tucker allowed that was a big figure to ax, but the money must be had, and accordingly a trust deed was made out and duly recorded, of "one frame house situate on lot 9, blockL. and G.'s addition to town of Cairo." Pay day came and the note laid over. Yank, in high glee, thinking to get possession of the house without further cost, caused the trustee to publish the usual ten days' notice of sale, at the expiration of which time he bid in the property, and on going to take possession, found that the darned Tucker had moved the house to the next lot, No. 8, and thus knocked the mortgage calling for "a house on lot 9, etc.," higher 'n a kite. One of the Yankee's eye-teeth first saw the light through his tobacco-stained gums at that precise moment.

A GOOD story is told of a "country gentleman," who, for the first time, heard an Episcopal clergyman preach. He had read much of the aristocracy and pride of the Church, and when he returned home he was asked if the people were stuck up." "Pshaw! no," replied he," why, the minister actually preached in his shirt-sleeves."

Lord Chancellor Northington suffered much from the gout; and once, after some painful waddling between the woolsack and the bar in the House of Lords, he was heard to mutter: "If I had known that these legs were one day to carry a chancellor, I'd have taken better care of them when I was a lad."

MAGNIFICENT NAMES.-What a people we Americans are for magnificent names! Just think of it. A little four-by-six apartment in

a steamboat is called a "state-room"-a name borrowed from the most ample and gorgeous room in a royal palace! And the word "saloon," (from the French salon,) which indicates, properly, nothing less than the most spacious and splendid of drawing-rooms, we have painted over the door of a dirty shanty in a New England city, and often embellishing the front of a low grog shop in the western states.

seen

"DID you mean to settle the bill at all, sir, when you made it?" said a creditor, in a passionate manner. "Well, my dear sir, I assure you I meant to settle, and when I meant to settle, that was clearly a settle meant! Good morning, my friend; I will see you in the fall."

MR. FUM.-" Sigma" furnishes the Boston Transcript with the following, as his opinion of Mr. Fum's (Ralph Waldo Emerson's) literary and "transcendental" performances:

On leaving the lecture-room, leaning on the arm of an old friend, one of the pleasantest fellows by the "All this," said he, as we walked along, “is very way-"A delightful." "All what?" said I. "Fum's lectures, he replied; "very pleasant, indeed-very." Could you understand him?" I inquired. "God bless you," said