challenge. We never saw it but once, and that was in the library of a Friend. We doubt, indeed, whether any new translation, however learned, exact, or truly orthodox, will ever appear to English Christians to be the real Bible. The language of the authorised version is the perfection of English, and it can never be written again, for the language of prose is one of the few things in which the English have really degenerated. Our tongue has lost its holiness.-HARTLEY COLERIDGE. Biographia Borealis, in Life of Dr John Fothergill.

LITERARY QUACKS.-Literature has her quacks no less than medicine, and they are divided into two classes; those who have erudition without genius, and those who have volubility without depth; we shall get second-hand sense from the one, and original nonsense from the other.-COLTON

Christian Charity.

J. B. SUMNER, Archbishop of Canterbury. [DR. JOHN BIRD SUMNER, Archbishop of Canterbury, was born 1780, and was the son of the Rev. Robert Sumner, Vicar of Kenilworth and Stoneleigh, in Warwickshire. John Bird Sumner, in 1815, published his first work, entitled "Apostolical Preaching." In 1816 appeared his "Records of Creation." To this remarkable work was awarded the second prize of £400, under the will of a Scotch gentleman named Burnett. In 1821 Dr Sumner published the Sermons from which we extract the passage below. All his works are distinguished by their earnest piety, their depth of thought, and elegance of Janguage. When a Fellow of Eton College he addressed a series of discourses to the scholars, and the effect of his winning and impressive eloquence was a marked improvement in the moral habits of the whole school, The standard of thought and action was raised by the exhortations of a man of high talent thoroughly in earnest. He was created Bishop of Chester in 1828, and translated to the Primacy of all England in 1848. He died in 1862.]

My brethren, we are now, upon earth, masters of our own conduct, and accountable to no one here for the tempers which we cherish, or the dispositions we show. We may hate our enemies, and refuse to forgive an injury; we may pass by on the other side, while our neighbour is in grievous want; we may spend our sub

stance in selfish gratifications, or lay it up for our children, and refuse meanwhile to bestow any portion of it upon the bodies or the souls of our poorer brethren; and, at the same time, none have a right to call us to account, except by a friendly warning God leaves us to follow our own bent: no fire comes down from heaven to consume the churlish or the malicious; the sun shines alike on the merciful and on the uncharitable; and the rain fertilises alike those fields which spread their bounty upon God's needy creatures, and those which enrich no one but their covetous owner. We are free to use as we like the gifts of Providence ; and this freedom affords the opportunity by which our characters are formed and displayed.

There will be a time when we

But it will not be always so. must render an account; when all superiority of strength, or talent, or influence, or place, or fortune, will be levelled; when the strongest, and the cleverest, and the greatest, and the richest, must yield up and return their several gifts to Him who lent them; and with their gifts must return an account of the way in which they have used them. The question will be, Have you used your strength to injure, your wit to insult, your power to oppress ? Have you, like the rich man in the parable, kept to yourself your good things, and taken no care to lay up for yourself a good foundation against the time to come? Have you never thought of spreading around you, as far as your opportunities allowed, temporal comfort and religious knowledge? Have you suffered the fatherless and widows to lie unfriended in their affliction, when you might have supported or consoled them? Has the ignorant man, as far as concerned you, continued in his ignorance, and the wicked died in his sin? Then you have shown yourself wanting in that quality which most certainly distinguishes the followers of Jesus: you have borne the name, but you have not possessed the spirit of a Christian: you have not been merci. ful in your generation; and now you have no claim to mercy, when nothing else can snatch you from the wrath to come.

No doubt the scrutiny of the great day will extend much further, and relate to other qualities, besides the grace of charity.

Those on the right hand, who shall hear the summons, Come, j'e blessed children of my Father, must be humble, and penitent, and meek, and pure in heart, as well as merciful. But the very prominent place which our Lord has assigned to charity in this awful description of the tribunal, where He will Himself appear in His glory as Judge, and before Him shall be gathered all nations, shows thus much, at least, that this virtue is indispensable; is one by which the Christian must often examine himself, and prove his own soul; inasmuch as, without it, his Saviour will not acknowledge him he shall not obtain mercy. Not that charity, or any other virtue, can redeem us from the punishment of sin, or entitle us to the reward of heaven; eternal life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ. It would be a miserable error for a man to suppose that by giving an alms he could atone for a crime, or by excusing his debtor here, clear his own account with God. Forgiveness and pity are necessary parts of that character which Christ will save, but cannot alone save us, or be placed in the stead of Christ. But, as I observed, they are necessary features of that character which Christ will save. Without these it will be in vain for a man to cry unto Him in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not been called by thy name? He will still answer, You could not have a proper sense of the mercy which I showed, in bearing your sins in my own bouy on the tree, when you showed no mercy towards your own brethren, who had not offended you by ten thousand times as heavily as you have offended against your Almighty Father. Neither could you value your knowledge of my gospel, when you have employed no pains to give others that knowledge; neither could you love your brethren, as I commanded you to love them, when you refused to do unto them as ye would they should do unto you: therefore, yours is not the character which shall obtain mercy, nor the character for which my heavenly kingdom is prepared.

My brethren, if any of you are conscious that you have not forgiven a neighbour when he trespassed against you; if any of you are conscious that you have taken a malicious pleasure in making a brother's offences known, and injuring his credit; if

any have pushed your rights to an extreme, and insisted on a severity of justice when you might rather have shown mercy and pity; if any have no feeling for their fellow-creatures' wants, and are contented to enjoy themselves, without bestowing a thought on those who have in this life evil things; you plainly perceive that the blessing bestowed on the merciful is not addressed to you: you must expect judgment without mercy, if you have shown no mercy. Pray therefore to the Lord Jesus Christ, that He who first set the most beautiful example of charity, and displayed His almighty power, not by removing mountains or destroying cities, but went about doing good, reforming the sinner, and curing the diseased, and relieving the distressed, and blessing those who persecuted Him, may " pour into your hearts that most excellent gift of charity, without which all other qualities are nothing worth." Whenever you are tempted to resent an injury, reflect with yourselves, has God no account against you? When you are inclined to speak, or to think, hardly of your neighbour, who may have fallen into sin, reflect, Am I so without sin that I can venture to cast the first stone against another? When you are unwilling to take some trouble, or to spare some little of your substance, to relieve another's wants, remember the sentence of your Lord and Judge, Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these, ye did it not unto me.

The Last of the Incas.

WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT.

[THE author of the histories of "Ferdinand and Isabella," and of the "Conquest of Peru," was an American writer, who took the very highest rank as an historian. Mr Prescott was born in 1796, the son of an eminent lawyer of Salem. He died in 1859. He won his reputation under physical difficulties; for, having lost one of his eyes by an accident while at Harvard College, the sight of the other had at various periods so failed him that he was either wholly unable to pursue his studies, or pursued them under no common disadvantages. The defect of his sight was at last compensated by the strength of his will; and he made himself master of a vast mass of information from

Spanish sources for his "History of Ferdinand and Isabella," by having the works read to him. Johnson said that Milton could not write history with the eyes of others, but Prescott accomplished this task. Of late years his sight had been partially recovered. The extract from the "Conquest of Peru," describing the treacherous capture of the last Inca by the Spanish invaders, may be fitly introduced by another passage from the same work.]

"It is not easy at this time to comprehend the impulse given to Europe by the discovery of America. It was not the gradual acquisition of some border territory, a province, or a kingdom, that had been gained; but a new world that was now thrown open to the European. The races of animals,, the mineral trea

sures, the vegetable forms, and the varied aspects of nature, man in the different phases of civilisation, filled the mind with entirely new sets of ideas, that changed the habitual current of thought, and stimulated it to indefinite conjecture. The eagerness to explore the wonderful secrets of the new hemisphere became so active, that the principal cities of Spain were, in a manner depopulated, as emigrants thronged one after another to take their chance upon the deep. It was a world of romance that was thrown open for, whatever might be the luck of the adventurer,