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ready to begin where he left off, finding shall this inborn appetite be fed? Shall that no one since their day had thrown it be treated as a crime, and handed over any additional light upon it. The Dutch to Satan; or shall it be made to minChurch is strictly Calvinistic in its creed. ister to man's happiness according to As to its practice, I believe fifty out of a God's will? Shall it be pent up until it thousand clergy, believe and preach the gathers strength to burst all the barriers divinity of Christ. The Church has be- of law and decency, and rush in annual come the tomb of a dead Redeemer. floods of wild and unbridled passion; or shall society recognise its necessity, perceive how full of goodness and benevolence it is, and adopt such wise plans as will run it off in gentle rills, week by week, or even day by day, to freshen and irrigate the earth, and make our fields more green and beautiful?

One word about Leyden before we leave it. It contains one of the most, if not the most, magnificent museums of natural history in the world. The great naturalist, Temminck, has helped greatly to arrange and enrich this superb collection. Professor Von A-'s family are not forgotten, but remembered with gratitude.

The Hague, or Gravenhaven, is unquestionably the most pleasing town in Holland. The park, with its massy noble trees, gives it a picturesqueness and beauty not found elsewhere. These trees are the mountain ranges of Holland. Except a few steeples, there is nothing higher.

Those who can adjust the demand for excitement to the other and higher demands for man's nature and life, will confer an inestimable boon on society. All classes require their amusements to be reformed, not reduced; spread over, not concentrated; directed, not annihilated; and taken out of the kingdom of Satan and brought into the well ordered and beautifully balanced kingdom of Christ on earth. A danger from all extremes is to be found in their opposites. When the swing is highest on one side, look out for broken heads and falls on the other. One cause of the tendency to pervert the Sabbath from a holy day to a holiday, is the incessant toil, barren of hours of rest, and of all amusement and gentle excitement, during the week. The bouts of hard drinking indicate many previous days of parched thirst.

Let us leave the crowd of the fair, and go to Scheveling, on the sea-coast, about half-an-hour's drive from the Hague, and the only bathing quarters of the capital.

There was the annual kermiss or great fair the week I was there. It would be unprofitable to my readers to describe at any length those Dutch saturnalia. With a few exceptions, they were like every other of the same class; innumerable booths, many of them got up with wonderful taste and beauty, merchandise of all sorts, theatres, shows, horsemanship, giants and dwarfs, gambling, drinking, tons of toys, tubs of pickles, crowds of men, women, and children, dissipation of all sorts night and day. The Dutch are proverbially douce, sober, and formal; they have few amusements or excitements on week days; their Sabbaths are, out- We drove along a road straight as an wardly, almost as well kept as in Scot- arrow, with trees on each side, and at the land. But when such a holiday as a end of which was a village intensely red, kermiss comes round, it seems generally nestled beneath a ridge of sandhills, understood among the working classes, which sheltered it from the ocean. We and even domestic servants, that a gene- ascended these dunes, and reached a café ral indulgence is proclaimed for every on the sea-side, which sprung out of the vice. This is just what one would ex- sand like an Egyptian tomb, and almost pect. It is so with many in Scotland on as empty of living inhabitants. The day our new-year's days, and some of our was cold, and the whole prospect infairs. Men will have amusement and ex- tensely dreary and comfortless ;-fine citement, as certain as the ocean will sand drifting like snow before the cuthave its spring tides, and the world its ting sea-blast, the sea brown, gurly, summer flowers and summer songs. How and sulky-looking, rows of Dutch

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fishing-boats arranged along the beach, their rotund sterns turned towards Great Britain, the café containing only piles of chairs and benches, which prophesied of crowds yet to come,-we saw but one waiter, and nothing more cheering than Schiedam. Such was Scheveling.

There is much in the Hague to interest one. There are many pleasing and undefined memories from the past, of "our ambassador at the Hague,"-" letters from the Hague," "ministers who took refuge at the Hague," and though it was difficult, perhaps, to recal much about any one ambassador, letter, or minister, in particular, yet you felt pleased in knowing that if the Hague could speak, and those old houses tell their story, it would be worth listening to. It had the interest of an old man who had seen strange things in his day, but was not communicative. Then there was for the present a royal family that I knew nothing about; and Paul Potter's bull, with other pictures which the whole world know something about, and which were all worthy of those great artists, who had indeed eyes to see, hearts to feel, and hands to execute; and there were many other things which were associated with historical names and events that can never die, such as the house, the prison, and place of murder of the great De Witt, the house and place of execution of the greater Barnevelt. Alas! may we not pause and mark how often in the history of this fallen race of ours, these two things go together-great men and murdered men! Truly hath Coleridge said :"How seldom doth a good man get what he merits,

How seldom doth he merit what he gets!" It must be so until the kingdom comes! The clay world is not capable of understanding genius, unless it makes itself "useful," by working in clay, to supply the world with bowls and basons; the selfish world cannot believe in the unselfishness of the truly great; the proud yet little world cannot brook superiority; the hating world cannot admire love; and so in all ages hath it been. The world "loves its own," and hates those who are not of it. It is so with the clerical

world and lay world,-with the world, whether seen in presbyteries or Parliaments, in synagogues or senates. The huge shams and humbugs hate the honest men and true,-and there are none so fierce and unscrupulous as those who think that they are doing God a service, while serving their own passions.

I liked right well to see in the Museum of the Hague the arms, clothes, &c., of such men as De Ruyter and Van Tromp the Lord St. Vincents and "mighty Nelsons" of Holland. The nation, like the family, is God's blessed and wise ordinance, and its independence should be defended with its last drop of blood! And therefore one of the greatest gifts God gives a nation is that of great heroes, men who will "hazard their lives unto death" for their country, who will " wax valiant in fight," and "put to flight the armies of the aliens." Noble fellows were De Ruyter and Van Tromp! Even England was afraid of them. Greater were they than our big talking and small doing admirals of the present day. I heard Mr. Boucher preach at the Hague. He is a minister of the French Protestant Church, and some years ago electrified the General Assembly by the unusual eloquence of his address. He is now chaplain to the king of Holland. The royal family were in church, and generally attend his ministry, for which, it is said, they have the greatest admiration. Mr. Boucher is in every respect a very remarkable man. He is the superior of even Adolphe Monod in depth and range of thought, and especially in width of sympathy with an educated French audience, but his inferior in the depth of re ligious feeling and experience, in which Monod stands alone in France. Monod, when he dies,-and alas! we fear he is on his deathbed,-will have no second in France except Boucher. A little more subduedness, willingness to be led as a child, and, if it be God's will, to be like his Master despised and rejected of men, and Boucher will be spiritually, as he now is intellectually, the most powerful and eloquent preacher in the Reformed Church of France. It is alleged that the Paris preachers are jealous,

not only of his great talents, but more especially of his great boldness and independence of thought in political matters, and hence his being at the Hague instead of the capital of his own country. But his time is coming!

I could not learn that there were any great preachers or men of any rank in the Church of Holland. The evangelical party is, I am inclined to think, in every respect small; the heterodox party formal and dead

What a charming thing it is to voyage by a trackshuyt along the canals. What perfect repose; what placid enjoyment; what rest in motion; what an epitome of Holland, and what a contrast to England or America! The sunny canal, the quietly trotting horse, the regular and orderly succession of Dutch gardens, Dutch villas, and Dutch comfort, the sense of having nothing whatever to do, or railroads could not be so despised,-a glory from the past, when men were not rush

ing like mad bulls over the earth, as Carlisle would say, "from the inane to the inane again,' but could quietly browse and chew their cud,--all this made the sail from the Hague to Delft singularly pleasing.

Delft itself has now no manufacture of "Delft ware," as far as I know. But crockery is not at best interesting to me, Hugo Grotius or De Grot, on whose honoured grave I stood at Delft, bearing the inscription,-"Ingang tot de Graff Kelder Von Hugo de Grot; "the house where the good and great William was shot; the hospitable home of good Madame E-t, where I dined, are all I recollect of Delft. Then came Rotterdam at night, the steamer in the mooring, the ocean at mid-day and next night; London in the morning, with Blackwall and the weary custom house. Then farewells to my travelling companions, the best ever man had; then home. So ended my last Peep across the Channel.

N.

"THE PEOPLE'S DAY." *

A LONDON AND PARISIAN SABBATH.

"Suppose that next Sunday morning your Lordship started from Charing-Cross for a walk through London, which your honourable helpers in the late debate thought had such need to take a lesson from continental cities. In the vicinity of Trafalgar Square you find no shopmen or shopwomen behind the counter; it is the assistant's day. At the National Gallery no porter is in waiting; it is the official's day. In Long-Acre the coachmakers' workshops are silent; it is the mechanic's day. In Lincoln's Inn Fields the lawyers' offices are peaceful; it is the clerk's day. In the Strand and Printing-House Square the offices of the great daily journals are at least partially at rest; it is the pressman's and compositor's day, the reporter's day, the editor's day. At the Post-Office no car is clattering, no man hurrying; it is the carrier's day. In Cheapside and Wood Street no warehouse is open; it is the salesman's day. At the Bank no pen is moving; it is the clerk's day. In Spitalfields no foot is upon the treadle, no hand upon the shuttle; it is the weaver's *By William Arthur, A.M. London: Hamil.

ton, Adams, & Co.,

day. In Brick Lane no drays are rolling, no whips cracking; it is the drayman's day. In new streets no shoulder bears a hod, no hand is on the trowel; it is the bricklayer's day. At the wharves no figure bends under a load; it is the porter's day, the coalheaver's day. Surely your lordship does not bear within you a heart which, reviewing all this, would not fill with emotion, and thank God! Surely, as your thoughts passed over the three kingdoms, and you marked the millions of labourers, from little girls to wrinkled men, who, for the moment, with no master over them but the Almighty, rested safe from the call of the covetous, the thoughtless, or the cruel, you would say, 'He spake well who called that institution "a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable," whereby these eyes are enabled to see this touching image of a world where "the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest!" Surely you could not, then, look without compassion on those who, in low shops and on railways, say, To us this is not the Lord's day, it is our master's day!'

"At the same hour on the following Sunday your Lordship starts for a similar walk in Paris. The moment you leave

the Place de la Concorde you find, in the Rue Royale, shopmen and shopwomen behind the counter; it is the employer's day. In the first bank you reach on the Boulevards, the clerks are at the desk; it is the banker's day. In the Faubourgs the mechanics are busy; it is the manufacturer's day. The Post-Office is full of working men; it is the merchant's day. The Rue Rivoli rings with the mason's hammer; it is the contractor's day. In the timber-yards you hear the saw; it is the master's day. In the Rue Montmartre Emile de Girardin is at his desk, and his fellow-editors, his reporters, his printers, all are busy; it is the subscriber's day. Turn where you will, every man is in his employer's power just as on other days; the charter of freedom is in no hand, the joy of freedom at no fireside. In the shops of the Palais Royal are hearts which would love a rest as dearly as those of Regent Street; but what Mr. Kinnaird called 'the hand of rapacity' is over them. The working men of Paris are no more enamoured of labour than those of Westminster or Spitalfields; but the hand of rapacity' is over them. Nor does the evil press on the humbler workers only. Each man in turn has his employer; the merchant, the banker, the legislator, does not escape the burden which he compels his inferiors to endure; the curse he imposes upon others comes back upon himself, and none can call the day his own; he only excepted to whom every day is a rest if he chose,

"Why, then, is this, that here, in London, every man can defy the hand of rapacity' on one-seventh of all the days that come, whilst in the neighbouring capital no man can defy it but he who is totally independent of occupation? Because here is a day which no man can claim, the LORD's day, too sacred for amusement, too sacred even for work; a day on which the labour that is profitable must stand still, under the assurance that the God of the Sabbath will more than make up the loss. Because there is no LORD's day; the Sunday is not too sacred for amusement, consequently far less so for profitable labour. Where the Sabbath is used for its own ends, rest promotes religion. Where to these ends the foreign one of amusement is added, instead of a day of rest and religion, it is a day of drudgery, with an evening of dissipation. The barrier between a day of rest and religion, and one of drudgery and dissipation, is only the sacredness of the day. Man's rights rest upon God's rights; the repose of the Sunday, on the religion of the Sabbath. Destroy that in England,

then the physical toil and the moral pest of the French Sunday will at once invade the nation. From the rough hodman to the accomplished editor, THE SACREDNESS OF THE DAY IS THE LABOURER'S ONLY SHield.'

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS.

"Whether we judge by the experience of all Europe and America, or by the natural connexion existing between the different steps of a social process, we are led to these conclusions:

"You cannot open great exhibitions without opening lesser ones.

"You cannot open exhibitions without opening shops.

"You cannot open shops in the daytime without opening places of amusement at night.

"You cannot do all this on the Sabbath without destroying the public sense of the sacredness of the day.

"You cannot destroy the public sense of the sacredness of the day without letting loose the tide of ordinary secular labour.

"My Lord, as you love a people who are worthy of your love, be entreated to retrace the one step you have taken in a course which would deprive the English labourer of what a labourer's daughter has called, The Pearl of Days! For, rob him of the Lord's day, and his week would be a hard, rude shell, from which the 'pearl' was taken.

GOD'S TEACHING ON THE SABBATH.

"As to revelation, whether it assigns heavenly or earthly purposes to the Sabbath, no argument need be raised. If any one tells me that the Creator deals with our race as so far gone, that the highest thing to which He can invite us is the study of curiosities and pictures, which not one in ten thousand of that race can ever by possibility see, I lay my hand upon my Bible, and look up, and say, 'The Father of spirits loves us better.' Fallen though we be, His redeeming mercy invites us even while on earth to taste somewhat of the spirit of Heaven. During one-seventh of all time that passes over us, He unnerves alike the hand of rapacity and the hand of power, permitting no hand to be lifted above us but His own, thus appealing to our reverence and loyalty; ordains that we shall have bread without labour, thus appealing to our trust and gratitude; appoints for us engagements which have no sensual zest and no worldly return, thus appealing to our hope of a life wherein we shall be as the angels of God; sets before us themes of thought, each of which reaches out on all sides into infinity, thus appealing to our desire for fellowship with Himself!"

GLASGOW MISSION TO SCUTARI.

JOURNAL OF REV. R. MACNAIR.

(Continued.)

before

September 8th. Another week has passed without much deviation from the ordinary routine of hospital work here. Mr. Drennan, after being kept in suspense each day as to the time of embarking, was ordered on board the "Trent" last evening, and in all likelihood has proceeded on his passage now. During the last two or three days I have been trying to make the round of the Barrack Hospital, and though I have not quite finished, have found upwards of fifty men in the sick wards to add to my list, besides a considerable number more in the convalescents' sheds. Of twenty-five whom I saw for the first time, six embarked to-day for England. My visit was just in time to give me the opportunity of furnishing some with copies of the Scriptures, and with other reading for the voyage. Of those who remain in hospital, several have

mised to be at church to-morrow.

September 9th-Sunday. This day, for the first time, since my arrival, had four services, Met in the morning (a quarter before seven), the men on duty in one of the huts occupied by the Highland Brigade. About fifty might be present, and three or four women also came in with children in their arms. Altogether, this was more like a home congregation than the ordinary assemblies of invalids I have been in the

assistance, many of the patients must be neglected, or the whole of the visiting be gone about in a very perfunctory five hours in the hospitals, and with very manner. To-day I have spent nearly few exceptions have not read or prayed with the men. My object in this case has been to see as many as possible, and invite them to the various services tomorrow. About 300 or 400 arrived of whom had landed when I visited the yesterday from the Crimea, some only

wards.

much time with each man, care must be As it is impossible to spend taken to give as much publicity as possible to the Sabbath services. Week-night services, as held by the Episcopal chaplains, might also be advantageous. The great drawback I find to be, that my

men are so much scattered. In a ward containing upwards of twenty, I have perhaps not more than two or three Presbyterians, and thus it is impossible pro-reach of any considerable number; and to get a convenient place within easy this is one reason why the Sabbath' services are not more numerously attended. In the midst of the routine of daily visits, interesting incidents do occasionally occur. This morning I found one young man (Irish) engaged reading "Baxter's Call to the Unconverted," and seemingly much interested in it. Another, on returning "Fuller's Gospel Worthy of all Acceptation," expressed a wish that he might be able to act up to what he had been reading. A third remarked upon "Bunyan, that he thought he had been made for his own time, and that we do not see such men that the promise of great gifts and great nowadays. I tried to explain to him grace was not limited to one generation, and that if we had faith and prayer sufficient, we might see greater things than these. One man told me the other day that he had experienced a saving change since he came to the East. One night, struck with his perilous position, and being on guard, he was particularly asked himself," Am I prepared to die?" Being obliged to answer the question in the negative, he prayed that his life might be spared, and vowed that if it was, he would, from that day, begin to seek God,-which vow he believes he has been enabled to keep.

habit of addressing, but the preponderance of men, and the display of uniforms, still reminded one that a congregation of soldiers was before him.

Preached in the Palace Hospital at half-past ten to a smaller audience than for some time back. Several men have gone to England during the past week. Preached in Barrack Hospital at two. Twenty-four were present, of whom twenty were invalids; and in General Hospital at four. About twenty attended, of whom seventeen were invalids. September 10th.-Heard it reported that the "Prince of the Seas" had been wrecked at the mouth of the Dardanelles. Earnestly hope it is not true. She carried a great many men from all the hospitals, in some of whom I was much interested.

September 15th.-Have been enabled to finish a second somewhat hurried visit to the wards of the Barrack Hospital, including the sheds in which the convalescents stay. But, without some

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