satisfied beyond all doubt that I understood the Tongue, and that God had

given me the opportunity of proving that

I was no impostor; I therefore promptly said, The interpretation of the Tongue is 'Jesus will take our hands,' or Jesus will direct us.' How do you know that, Sir, (said Mr. Irving) ?' Because I heard it in Latin.' I recited the above Tongue, as uttered, and remarked that it was repeated three times by the Sister. Well, Sir, how do you make Latin of

that ?' Hoze is Jesus; ha is a contraction of habeo; mena, hands; nostra, ours." Mr. Irving admitted this; but said the Spirit might have another meaning' I then remarked that the Spirit gave the same interpretation in English, which he evaded; and on my reciting the whole Tongue and English, as it came out of the mouth of the Sister (without assuming the awful tone), he said, 'Say no more about it.--[Silence.]--A member of the meeting suggested that if the Gifted Persons were to speak in the congregation, they should endeavour to say as little us possible at first, and that they should be placed in such a part of the church as would enable the congregation to see them without any effort, in order to avoid the noise arising from an anxiety to see as well as hear. Gifted Sister 2 (in English only); Do you not know that the Spirit burneth in the bone?--burneth in the bone?'*-[Silence.]--Gifted Sister 3 uttered in Tongue, "Casa sera hastha caro;' and concluded in English to the same effect as the others.-[Silence] --The Gifted Brother now uttered a crash of tongue, and spoke to the same effect as the Sisters.--[Silence]-I whispered Mr. Irving, Do you wish to know what the Sister said in Tongue?' Yes, Sir, [anxiously].' I told him, This house will still be in my care;' that I heard it in Spanish, and that as there was an objection to my manner of interpreting I did not wish to speak it aloud. He replied, I thank you for that, Sir.' Having prayed, after the usual blessing we parted at half-past six. Thus closed a day so entirely devoted to prayer, that I directed my steps homeward without remembering that I bad eaten nothing since nine in the morning, till accident reminded me that I had not dined."

We have brought together these testimonies, with the persuasion that our readers will concur in the

"This I considered as a reply to the proposal that the Gifted were to speak as little as possible."

a

scene.

numerous congregation, enveloped in a gloom that is not relieved, but heightened by a solitary lamp placed before the pastoral chair, which throws its strong light upon the extraordinary features of the extraordinary man who occupies it. All besides are in dark shadows, and the awful, breathless stillness of devout emotion, or expectant curiosity, powerfully increases the effect of the The Scriptures are read, prayer, though unconnected, yet fervent, is offered, and an exhortation delivered with every indication of entire sincerity; these necessarily produce additional solemnity on a pious mind, for who would wish to trifle with that which is professedly sanctioned and sanctified by the word of God and prayer? The profound silence is suddenly broken by an appalling cry, which reverberates through the beautiful edifice, and produces upon every hearer a heart-chilling

effect. The strangeness of the sounds, their professed author, the eternal Spirit of God, the pathetic tones in which they are uttered, all unite to operate upon ardent and susceptible minds, minds that, by their own fire-sides, would be equally excited while reading a German romance, and would be alike affected by the solemnities of high mass in a popish cathedral, or by the incantations of Der Freischutz, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

Those who have visited the gloomiest mansions of earth's most miserable children; have heard from their pitiable inmates' cries, which in vehemence, pathos, and wildness, painfully resemble the sounds which "the gifted sisters" utter, and we know not whether we were more affected with the painful recollection of such scenes, or with compassion for those who are the dupes of their own delusions.

pre

It is one of the most painful, though necessary features of the whole case, that these tensions are maintained in a spirit of arrogant assumption, most unworthy in those who profess to be the followers of Jesus. The remarks of Mr. Beverley upon this part of the matter are very sensible and pious, and are doubly valuable, as he has not been brought up in that connection which the prophets love to assail.

"To a person who has been worshipping God in the old way; who has been contented with the good books of the old divines, and taken pleasure in their spiritual helps; and who had humbly hoped that the effect of righteousness was to be quietness and assurance for ever, the aspect of the millenarian school, and of its confines, at this present moment, could raise nothing but feelings of terror and amazement. He would behold all the ancient theology of the great reformers entirely set at nought, their views of divinity declared to be nothing but

shortsighted childishness, and a new system of excitation and materialism introduced, with a violence, anger, and fierceness, that the world has never seen since the preaching of the Apollinarian, Nestorian, and Eutychian heresies.

"The scholars of the millenarian school are extremely prolific in their publications; and one great distinctive mark of all their writings is rage. They are true spiritual Ishmaelites; their hand is against every man, and every man's hand is against them. They have declared open war with all the Dissenters, against whom they are remarkably virulent, (as every one who has read the Morning Watch will readily remember.) They are, if possible, still more furious against the evangelical party; and the high-church clergy they rail against with bitter animosity. Their sermons may be called solemn comminations; and they have a judgment and a curse treasured up for all their opponents. When we add to this picture their ultra-mysticism, and the deep obscurity of their logic, they altogether offer as unedifying a picture of Christianity as the eye of man could turn to. When we have, for a time, contemplated their proceedings, and refer to the Sermon on the Mount, we can hardly be persuaded that they profess the same religion as that which is promulgated in the 5th, 6th, and 7th chapters of St. Matthew; and certainly, if the Gospel was preached to the poor, the doctrines of the prophetical school cannot be the Gospel, for it would be impossible to make the poor comprehend the sublimations of their theology

"The gentlemen who advocate the unknown tongues, a physical millennium, dreams, visions, and miracles, are remarkable for two modes of argument, - charges of profound ignorance, urged with the most arrogant taunts and contempt, and solemn assertions that their opponents must go to hell. The following formulary is an epitome of all their polemical writings: You are an ignorant, stupid, illiterate creature; and, if you do not adopt our notions, and repent deeply for having withstood them so long, there is not the least hope of your final salvation.' Turn to any number of the Morning Watch, and this sort of reasoning will readily be found."- pp. 23,

24.

We have already exceeded our limits, and have not given our critical opinion of the pamphlets now before us.

The first was too wild and prophane, even for the party whose

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cause it advocated, and was therefore, as we are informed, suppressed. Mr. Pilkington's narrative is of no value beyond the facts it supplies, though written in a candid tone, betrays his disappointment in not being recognized as terpreter in their church." "The Unknown Tongues, &c." which, through the popular excitement on this subject, has reached a sixth edition, really does not deserve the circulation it has obtained. Indeed we regret that a mere compilation from the daily papers, with out, however securing the best paragraphs which have appeared in them, with a feeble commentary expressed in terms which we can never approve, should have been so widely diffused. Of Mr. Beverley's Sermon, we can, however, speak with great satisfaction: it is sober, candid, pious, and cannot fail to be very useful.

In conclusion we are compelled to warn all the parties concerned in this holy farce of their peculiar and perilous position. A dogmatical interpretation of unfulfilled prophecies, has in a thousand past instances wrought the confusion of those who have undertaken to expound them That pride which has asserted an infallible interpretation will not tolerate the idea of being wrong, and thus we have known cases in which the baffled decipherers of prophetic symbols have shielded their pride, beneath their infidelity and have chosen rather to reject the book itself, than to renounce their fond but fallacious system of its interpretation.

The extraordinary excitement attendant upon such speculations, especially as connected with supposed miraculous influences, must tend to bewilder the soundest intellect, and by its unnatural and feverish agitation to endanger the

mental health of those who are its pitiable victims.

But above all, their moral dangers appear to us most imminent— not to dwell upon the strange and exciting intercourse that is kept up amongst the brethren and the sisterhood from day to day; the remark of Dr. Robertson is obviously true, "that the excesses of enthusiasm have been observed in every age to lead to sensual gratifications; the same constitution that is susceptible of the former being remarkably prone to the latter." This observation is sustained by the whole testimony of Ecclesiastical history; Simon Magus and his concubine Helena; Montanus and his prophetesses Priscilla and Maximilla; John Boccold of Munster and his fourteen wives; Simon Morin and his shameful licentiousness at Paris; John Lacy and his cruel abandonment of a faithful wife for one of the inspired sisterhood; all these, and many more, prove that it is possible for those who have attained the fancied heights of inspiration to fall into the lowest depths of sensuality and crime.

We will not venture to predict, much less would we cherish the desire, that any of these calamitous events should terminate the strange course which is now pursued by this " gifted fraternity," in the Metropolis and in the North; but we solemnly repeat our warning, reckless of their anathemas and of their abuse, that except they retrace their steps and return "to the old paths," they will be led on from step to step, till they find their respective places in the chair of the scorner, the cells of the mad-house, or the chambers of the brothel.

Italy, by Josiah Conder, Author of the Modern Traveller; in three volumes duodecimo. London, 1831. ITALY the land of dreams and wonders-the domain of fiction, and the scene of realities more marvellous than any fiction-the region where all good and evil seem to have met, in ever-changing amalgamation or collision-where the heavens disclose their most enchanting blue and brightness, and where the earth is seen in her imposing grandeur, her fairest beauty, her abundant fruitfulness -where the snow-clad mountain, the dark ravine, the thundering cataract, the silent valley, the lake, the river, and the ocean, all conspire to fascinate the eye and heart of the traveller. Yet, through this living paradise there creeps a pestilence peculiar to itself. Italy, from the nature of the soil, but still more from the degraded state of its inhabitants, the loveliest region of the globe, has most of want, disease, wretchedness, and mortality. It was the cradle of a people, whose veteran strength braved all climates, and all toil; it supports a race which every wind can shape, and every change alarm. It has nurtured the physical powers of man into their noblest state, and it now exhibits them in their meanest. And as it is with the physical, so is it with the intellectual, the moral, and the religious, in this land of contradictions.

In arts, in poetry, in history, in oratory, and in all the great lessons of political wisdom, Italy, when viewed in her ancient and modern history, stands unrivalled. It has not supplied greater men than Greece; but, in consequence of its more extended and more favourable history, it has supplied them in greater numbers; and even the want of originality, the charge so commonly brought

against the old Romans and their descendants, has always seemed to us to have been not a little gratuitous. Yet the land of Virgil and Livy, the land which affords the most continuous series of illustrious names in nearly every path consecrated by genius; the land abounding with princely collections of art, with princely libraries, and with venerable establishments for learning-this land is the scene where the people are every where perishing for lack of knowledge, and where the men who should "unbar the gates of light," study to perpetuate the darkness, and to render the bondage of their victims irretrievable. There may we see the brilliant things which the human faculties can achieve; and there may we see how completely these noble attributes may be subdued or perverted in the many, by the designing and dastard policy of the few. Learning is a patrician thing, the rest are made for the yoke.

In the moral and religious history of Italy, there are the same bold contrasts of light and darkness. The language of this people abounds with the wisest lessons on all moral subjects; and their history contains the most striking examples of heroic suffering in the cause of recognized virtue. Yet, where is the land in which these lessons are so flagrantly and so generally disregarded, their examples so readily forgotten? Exceptions may, no doubt, be formed in the case of individuals, and sometimes of families, in the history of the last thousand years; but with respect to the great mass of the Italians, through that long interval, it may truly be said, that they have loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil."

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With respect to religion-that of which Italy was so long the accredited centre is the best, and there it has been degraded to the level of the worst. It is the only true religion, and there it has been made to conform itself in nearly all respects to the false. To that country, it came as the brightest, the perfected emanation of the divine benevolence; and there has it been converted into the mere tool of the oppressor, and ployed to build the prisons of the Inquisition, and in preparing victims for the rack, the dungeon, and the stake! The men who have claimed a precedence of all others in authority, and seal, for the protection of Christianity, has excelled them all in the arts of corrupting it—their better faith, and better seal, being chiefly manifested in their stronger vices, and their more bitter intolerance. The land that should have been as the confine of paradise, has thus become the place "where Satan's seat is."

But Italy has her reward. She has abused the greatest light, and must inherit the greater punishment. Throughout the length and breadth of the guilty region, the attention of the traveller is arrested by the gloomy remains of departed grandeur. Castles mouldering into ruin, of whose owners not a trace, even in tradition, is remaining; universities without students; libraries without readers; palaces without inhabitants; and even churches without worshippers-these, and more than these, all concur to impress the thoughtful stranger with a feeling of the vanity of earthly greatness, and especially to admonish him of the withering curse which follows in the train of vicious greatness. The yoke of a master has long fallen heavily N. S. No. 85.

on the neck of the people. Their rulers degraded them into slaves, and, as a natural retribution, lost them as defenders-forgetting, that the baseness which fits men for domestic tyranny, fits them for a tyranny from without; that to make people the wall of their country, you must make them love it. The despots of Italy, civil and ecclesiastical, have generally scorned this policy, and they have reaped as they have sown.

The following remarks on the character of the modern Romans are quoted by Mr. Conder. They are from a shrewd observer, and will confirm much of what we have stated.

"The national character is the most ruined thing in Rome. The character

of the common people is usually locked up, yet, subject to strange escapes. They can make long sacrifices to a distant pleasure. Thousands starve during the whole month of September, to provide for one extravagant feast in October. Though timidly cautious in common transactions they are desperate at play. This passion pervading every rank, finds all the lotteries of Italy open at Rome.

In

Many call religion in to the aid of gambling. They resort to San Giovanni Decollato, a church devoted to condemned criminals, and try to catch in prayer ticket. Their resentments can lie broodcertain divine intimations of the lucky ing for years before they start out. their quarrels, I never saw any approach to fair fighting. Boys fly to stones, and men to the clasp knife; but the most desperate ruffians abstain from firearms To shoot your enemy is held atrocious, to plunge a stiletto into his back, a proof of spirit. When dazzled with the splendour of the Roman clergy, through all their gradation of colour, grey, black, purple, scarlet, up to the sovereign white; when we have admired their palaces, their liveries, their to be admired; let us then reverse the medal, carriages, wheeled out in rows and view the exhaustion which this gross plethory of clerical wealth leaves below it. Let us survey all the forms of misery, the sickness, the sores, the deformity, the hunger, which infest the streets, where every beggar is distinguished by his own attitude, tone, and variety of

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