This circumstance very naturally made a great impression upon the minds of their countrymen, and powerfully recommended to them the "God that heareth prayer.”—Bennett and Tyerman's Journal. SCRIPTURE ILLUSTRATION. Mr. WARD has given the following description of a Hindoo wedding, which furnishes a striking parallel to the parable of the wedding feast in the Gospel. “At a marriage, the procession of which I saw some years ago, the bridegroom came from a distance, and the bride lived at Serampore, to which place the bridegroom was to come by water. After waiting two or three hours, at length, near midnight, it was announced, as if in the very words of Scripture, "behold the bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him." All the persons employed now lighted their lamps, and ran with them in their hands to fill up their stations in the procession; some of them had lost their lights, and were unprepared, but it was too late then to seek them, and the calvacade moved forward to the house of the bride, at which place the company entered a large and splendidly illuminated area, before the house, covered with an awning, where a great multitude of friends, dressed in their best apparel, were seated upon mats. The bridegroom was carried in the arms of a friend, and placed on a superb seat in the midst of the company, where he sat a short time, and then went into the house, the door of which was immediately shut and guarded by Sepoys. I and others expostulated with the doorkeepers, but in vain. Never was I so struck with our Lord's beautiful parable, as at this moment :"And the door was shut !" HOLD fast Christ without wavering, and contend for the faith, because Christ is not easily gotten or kept. The lazy professor hath put heaven (as it were) at the very next door, and thinketh to fly up to heaven in his bed, and in a night-dream; but truly, that is not so easy a thing as most men believe: Christ himself did sweat, ere he won this city, howbeit he was the free-born Heir. It is Christianity, to be sincere, unfeigned, honest, and upright-hearted before God; and to live and serve God, suppose there were not one man or woman in all the world dwelling beside you, to eye you. Any little grace ye have, try it by these marks: 1. If ye prize Christ and his truth so, as ye will sell all and buy him, and suffer for it. 2. If the love of Christ keepeth you back from sinning, more than the law or fear of hell. 3. If ye be humble, and deny your own will, wit, credit, ease, honour, the world, and the vanity and glory of it. 4. Your profession must not be barren, and void of good works. 5. Ye must in all things aim at God's honour; ye must eat, drink, sleep, buy, sell, sit, stand, speak, pray, read, and hear the word with a heart-purpose that God may be honoured. 6. Ye must shew yourself an enemy to sin, and reprove the works of darkness, albeit the company should hate you for so doing. 7. Make conscience of your calling, in covenants, in buying and selling. 8. Acquaint yourself with daily praying, commit all your ways and actions to God by prayer, supplication and thanksgiving; and count not much of being mocked, for Christ Jesus was mocked before you. POETRY. "Set your affections on things above." TASTELESS the cup of earthly pleasure, Be mine the peace, whilst here I live, Be mine the all enduring faith, That spurns each lure of time and sense, Be mine the Spirit's promis'd aid, The powers combined of earth and hell! And oh, be mine a Saviour's love, And when I seek his rest above, REV. H. A. SIMCOE, (Penheale-press) Cornwall. THERE are very few persons now-a-day, arrived at the years of maturity, but are either readers, or hearers of newspapers. So universal is the rage for this sort of reading, that both in town and country, among the middling and lower orders, we find two's and three's, and even half dozens, uniting for a weekly supply of its fare: and so indispensable is it found for the entertainment of guests, that not only in hotels and taverns, but in almost every village beer-shop, this commodity is found necessary to keep together the customers; and here for the benefit of those who cannot read, we find the schoolmaster, or some other village politician, summoned weekly to convey its contents to untaught multitudes. All this is no doubt owing to the spirit of the age;' the schoolmaster is abroad,' and hear we must all that is going on, the mind of man is marching, and the multitude is summoned to march also, though it be in the ways of vice and irreligion. This circumstance has led me to the consideration of the character of the Newspapers circulated in our Western counties, which, after due examination, I must pronounce one and all to be highly objectionable, and such as no real Christian may allow, with safety, to be read by his family. True it is, they are not all alike positively bad, nor at all times equally injurious; but from those upholding Church and State, down to the bold avower of loose and infidel principles, they contain matter, the tone and temper of which tends to promote immorality and impiety, for which alone they ought to be proscribed. That I may not be considered as bringing charges without proof, I shall adduce extracts from one of them, (by no means the worst that is circulated in Cornwall) which I found in two of its following numbers, and by these your Christian readers will be able to judge whether 'there is not a cause' for lifting up my voice. Speaking of Mr. Percival's motion, in the House of Commons, for a public Fast, it says,— "That precious pot of ointment, that godly gentleman, Mr. Percival, has at last had his pious will of us, and obtained from Ministers a promise of a General Fast, or rather an order for one-for as it is true that any man may take a horse to the water, but no one can make him drink; so also it is certain that any rulers may direct a General Fast, but no power can prevent men (who have the means) from ministering to the carnal cravings of their stomachs.” The above is a part of a scurrilous article, headed * General Hypocrisy,' copied by one of our Western Papers, from The Examiner, a well known latitudinarian print. I say a part, for the whole of it I would not defile your pages with. The object of it clearly is to cast ridicule on religion, and religious men, |