religious motives, which convulsed England in the middle of the seventeenth century, bear so striking a resemblance to those which are now attempted to be promulgated, that surely it must be salutary to remind the inconsiderate, that reformists introduced first anarchy and then despotism, and that a multitude of new religions gave birth to infidelity. Nor let the serious hue which a story must wear that is dated in those times, when the church militant was called to the house of mourning, deter the gay and young from a patient perusal. Whatever mere prudential instructors may affirm, worldly prosperity should not be held out as the criterion, or the reward of right conduct. Let us remember St. Augustine's answer to those Pagans, who reproached him with the evils that Christians, in common with themselves, suffered from the then convulsed state of the world. They asked him, "Where is thy God?" But he declined founding the believer's privileges on individual exemptions, or personal providences. "My God," said he, "in all his attributes, different from the false impotent Gods of the Heathen, is to be found wherever his worshippers are;--if I am carried into captivity, his consolations shall yet reach me;--if I lose the possessions of this life, my precious faith shall still supply their want;--and if I die, not as the suffering heathen dies, by his own impious and impatient hand, but in obedience to the will of God, my great reward begins. I shall enter upon a life that will never be taken from me; and henceforth all tears shall be wiped from my eyes."