for all those whose duty it is to supervise plantations in our Southern country. It is to such as these that Mrs. Page's example comes particularly home; for nowhere can they find a truer and at the same time more just exhibition of the way in which these relations can be best met, than in this very book.

STRONG CONSOLATION; or, Three Letters to a Friend in Spiritual Dejection, is a tract of sixty-two pages, issued by the same Society, which in a very forcible and attractive style, exhibits those important spiritual truths which bear upon the class of persons its title describes.

But the most important recent issue of the Society is the life of Mr. Weitbrecht,* a late missionary of the Church Missionary Society of England, who was for years engaged in the field of Southern India. Mr. Weitbrecht was born in Wurtemberg, in 1802; and having at a very early period entered upon a Christian life, became a student in that noble missionary seminary at Basle, from whence so many efficient pioneers of the Gospel have proceeded. To the Indian field his attention was soon directed, and he visited England, at the invitation of the Church Missionary Society, where he was ordained deacon in 1828 by Bishop Bloomfield. For some months he remained as assistant to Mr. Bickersteth, but feeling that his call to minister among the heathen became stronger and stronger, he proceeded, immediately upon his ordination as priest, to the Indian mission. His first field was at Burdwan, where his labors are described with a fullness and vivacity which can not but attract attention. His missionary efforts, in fact, both as a local minister and an itinerant, were eminently laborious and successful, and continued uninterruptedly till 1842, when he returned to Europe, both for the purpose of restoring his shattered health, and visiting his friends. Few clergymen produced a more profound impression than Mr. Weitbrecht on this his second visit to England; for there were few in whom great eloquence and earnestness were more thoroughly sanctified by personal sweetness and spiritual grace. He returned in 1844, however, to India, where he again labored with eminent fidelity and success till 1852, when he entered upon his final rest. We can only add, that the biography is written in an excellent tone and spirit, and is made peculiarly interesting as well as valuable by the copious extracts from Mr. Weitbrecht's journal and letters, which give it the vivacity and naturalness of an autobiography.

BISHOP LEE'S Life of Miss Allibone will receive from us, we trust, a more extended review on a future occasion. At present, we propose barely to notice it for the purpose of giving to it an earnest and unqualified approbation. Few books have been published which present so many points of excellence. As a biography, it is deficient, it is true, in romance of plan

Memoir of the Rev. J. J. Weitbrecht, late Missionary of the Church Missionary Society at Burdwan, in Bengal. Comprehending a History of the Burdwan Mission, compiled from his Journal and Letters, by his Widow. With a Recommendatory Notice, by Rev. Henry Venn, B. D., Honorary Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, and an Introduction by the Editor, the Rev. A. M. W. Christopher. From the second London edition. New-York: Protestant Episcopal Society for the Promotion of Evangelical Knowledge. 1856.

and in variety of incident; but it is a great mistake to suppose that these qualities are necessary to create the highest degree of intellectual interest. To the coarser and more superficial eye, it is true, a water-fall here and a ravine there, may be necessary to call attention to the scenery of life, as well as of landscape; but as in the latter, so in the former, it is the delicate and truthful exhibition of the quiet current of an average life, which, while it requires a higher degree of talent in the author, evokes the most real sympathy and produces the most positive effect in the student. It is just this kind of life that is here narrated. Its deficiency in the extraordinary, and its fullness in the more usual and average experiences of life, will bring it home to the heart of almost every American woman. Susan Allibone was confined for years by a distressing disease to a sick-bed, and yet when thus prostrated, she was able, by the use of the ordinary instrumentalities Providence placed in her hands-those of family and social influence-to do a work for the cause of Christ, which was as remarkable for the unobtrusive meekness with which it was effected, as for the permanent benefits it produced. The history and character of this work is exhibited before us in the present volume; while with a pen which is as masterly as it is delicate, the current of Miss Alibone's life is traced, in all its quiet beauty, from infancy to its close. There perhaps is no book which, even in a mere biographical point of view, is more likely to lead into a right channel those who feel that either the work of an active Christianity is unsuited to them, or that they are incapable of it. And to this it adds claims as a manual of devotion which few books can equal. It abounds with passages, both in Miss Allibone's journal and letters, and in the editor's comments, which no Christian can read without feeling that, with the meditations of Thomas à Kempis, of Searle, of Beveridge, and of Leighton, they should be placed in the closet of all who would live near our Lord Jesus Christ.

Mr. LITTON's work on the Church, we are extremely glad to hear, is about to appear in this country in an edition corrected by the author himself. To its eminent theological and literary merits our columns have already paid tribute, and not only by this means, but by the extraordinary and most unfounded censures which have been cast at it in advance by the Tractarian organs in this country, the attention of the Church has been called to it in a way which will draw to it a degree of attention such as few other works have received. It has been within our opportunities to examine the work thoroughly, in its present as well as in its former shape; and we earnestly advise all who have it in their power, to make it their own by study as well as by purchase. It is to be republished in this country in such a way as to enable it to be retailed at what is really a nominal price, when the cost of publication is considered.

Religious Book-Store in Philadelphia.-We learn with much satisfaction that a book-store on a liberal foundation has been opened in Philadelphia,

in Chestnut street, below Thirteenth, No. 346, for the sale of religious books, a particular care being exercised to have a full supply of all works which may be relied upon as suitable for use and distribution in the Episcopal Church. The store is under the immediate control of Mr. Henry S. Getz, an experienced practical bookseller, who is a communicant in our Church, who acts as agent for the Episcopal Book Association of the city of Philadelphia; and a depository of the books of the Evangelical Knowledge Society is connected with the same store. The arrangements with publishers generally are such that clergymen and laymen sending orders to Philadelphia, as well as those visiting the city, can obtain a stock of suitable works for theological and family reading at the lowest cash prices.

FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE.

We were able to give in our January number an abstract of the judgment of Dr. Lushington in the Consistorial Court of the Diocese of London, in the cases of St. Paul's Church, Knightsbridge, and St. Barnabas' Church, Pimlico, delivered on Dec. 5th. In the opening paragraph of that article we intimated that the year 1855 had "been marked by no events of seemingly the first importance to the Church of England." We are inclined to consider this judgment as an event of such a character. We look for its standing, even if carried to the highest appellate tribunal; and if infractions of its express terms, similar to the bold offenses against the ruling in the Gorham case, be not permitted, it will lay the axe at the root of some of the puerile manifestations of the system, which has done so much to injure the Church. The appeal was to the law here, and a legal tribunal has decided. We venture to hope that, if the Denison case be allowed, having over-ridden the successive impediments in its way, to come to trial, a similar decision will be had. Toleration to men loyal to the Church, however widely separated the opinions they may hold, is a very different thing from that indifferentism and latitudinarianism to which the name is sometimes given. If men who sign the Thirty-nine Articles and dare to bear the noble name of Protestant, tired of the healthy and invigorating mental and spiritual atmosphere of our Church, wish to substitute for it the close and unnatural air of the Romish worship, or, wearied of the sound sense and rational liberty of her standards, seek to uproot the foundations of her faith, and deny "the Lord that bought them," the word "toleration" is prostituted as to them, so far as it allows them to hold office in our Church, and the law should unsparingly be used to cut them off, on whose consciences their subscription lies so easily; and that whether they be of that party, which the editor of the Edinburgh, in appending a title to Arnold's famous article on the Hampden persecution, styled "Oxford malignants," or of that new school equally disloyal to the

Church, and equally, if not more, dangerous, which strikes at the inspiration of the Scriptures, and seems disposed to explain away much of the precious doctrine of the Atonement. It is yet time to try with reference to the latter what the timidity of her rulers prevented the Church from doing some eighteen years ago with the former.

The judgment has been on the whole well received, and favorable feeling in regard to it has not been confined to one party in the Church. It has been decided to carry up the case to the Court of Arches, and, if necessary, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and a subscription to defray the expense has been commenced. The London Church-Union, of course, approves of this course, which will probably result as a former memorable appeal did. The Bishop of Exeter has published a letter to Dr. Lushington on the subject, in which his remark, "For me to presume to praise a judgment of yours would be foolish," is a decided rebuke to those who attacked it by wholesale. On the other hand, the Bishop of Oxford has not hesitated publicly to condemn it in convocation, an undignified and indecorous proceeding, when it is considered that it is a deliberate judgment of the legal Church tribunal, and his doing so affords an additional argument against the expediency of reviving the active powers of a body, one of the principal advocates of which could so allow himself to act.

The Denison case has advanced one stage. The Court of Queen's Bench, on Jan. 24th, without hearing the counsel for Dr. Ditcher, made the rule for a mandamus on the Archbishop of Canterbury absolute, that is, directing him to proceed.

The Rev. W. J. E. Bennett, of Frome, seems to share with the Bishop of Exeter and Archdeacon Denison the faculty of stepping from one difficulty into another, though in his case the weight falls on him, as he possesses neither the same opportunity and position, nor, perhaps, the happy indifference and ease with which the Bishop invades the rights of the unhappy Evangelical Clergy. Mr. Bennett has, it seems, celebrated the Romish festival of All Souls' Day, with administration of the Communion, and supports his act by references which it is not necessary here to give at length, but concludes by promising to abstain in future from pressing the public observation of that day.

The indications are increasing that there is, if not a school, united in form, yet a formidable number of men, more or less united by similarity of principles, who are utterly unsound as to some of the essentials of Christianity, deny the inspiration of Scripture in any full or satisfactory sense, sympathize with semi-infidel writings or tendencies, and are disposed to make a sort of different religion from what we have been accustomed to consider the true one. Reason and civilization are exalted to, or at least near to, an equality with its influence; a more lenient eye is cast on forms of error, and, as a necessary consequence, the tendency to a looser life, and a desire to escape from the positive in Christianity, must exist. The recent works of Dr. Donaldson, Pr. Baden Powell, and Pr. Jowett, are all liable to one or other of these charges. It is scandalous that such men should remain

in the Church of England. It is surprising how they can reconcile it to their consciences to do so. And yet Pr. Jowett (summoned by the ViceChancellor of Oxford, on the application of Dr. Macbride, Principal of Magdalen Hall, in whose honor the "Macbride scholarship" was founded, and Mr. Golightly, of Oriel College) deliberately renewed his subscription to the Articles, and that in the face of matter extracted from his book which appeared to the applicants, and appears to us, plainly contrary to both the Articles and Prayer Book. Some eighteen years ago a movement originated with some men in Oxford, to reform the Church of England, and bring it back to what was called "the Primitive Church." The Articles did not stop them, however contrary their phraseology was to their views; the Bishops did not stop them; and the consequence was the spread of their doctrines, till, many of them having dropped into the abyss of Romanism, and a few having fallen back to the old ways, a reäction has at length fairly set in, which we thankfully accept as an earnest of better things. But in how many a Protestant heart, some of the poison, more or less diluted, remains; how much it is at this very time doing against our Church, who can tell? Pr. Powell and Pr. Jowett are both of Oxford, and it is due to the character of that University that she purge herself, if she can, from the charge of being the nest of this new brood of errorists. It would seem as if subscription weighed as lightly on their consciences as it did on those of the Tractarians: it is a dangerous thing to the moral sense of a man to tamper with truth. We do hope the same misplaced lenity will not be shown them as was shown to their predecessors. This rationalistic band are even worse than the Tractarians. For while the latter held a system, fascinating indeed, but containing what to manly thinkers and sound reasoners was sufficient for its downfall, a system, however pernicious, outwardly reverencing the authority of God's Word, the other class strike at the foundations of our religion, and at what successive ages have esteemed sacred and precious. The attempt to desecrate the Lord's day is a development of the same general disease which has given rise to these rationalistic works. Though the Metropolitan Committee for the observance of the Lord's day met and agreed on three points to be aimed at, up to the meeting of Parliament little was done; but then the opponents of the attempt seemed to start at once into unwonted activity. It was a time of meetings, special sermons, petitions, and deputations. Meetings in the metropolis and in the provinces, and meetings of various classes of the community, attested the depth of the opposition to the destructives, and the sense of the religious world of the importance of the contest. Of these we may especially single out that of the Clergy and Dissenting ministers of the Metropolitan borough of Marylebone, especially called on to speak out, in consequence of the stand taken by its representatives, (Lord Ebrington and Sir B. Hall,) presided over by the rector of Marylebone, Mr. Pelham. A deputation waited on Lord Palmerston, and at its head was the venerable Primate, Archbishop Sumner; which we mention, not because it should excite surprise that the head of the English Church should head a deputation for so deeply important an object, but be