when they desired the destruction of the Samaritans, or, when our Lord rebuked "them for their hardness of heart." To be certain that the reformation is genuine, we must know that these converts are not now violent in their opposition to what they suppose to be error. If the Monitor, or Recorder, can assure us, that since their conversion, their conduct has been uniformly mild and gentle, and that they have imitated the example of our blessed Redeemer, supplicating the forgiveness of their enemies' sins, we shall be ever happy in acknowledging it, a genuine, religious revival. But if it should prove that these men, only met with a change in their opinions, and retain the same spirit, being now as violent in their opposition to others, as they were to those with whom they became connected, our confidence in their honesty will be shaken, and our rejoicing, on account of their pretended reformation, be at an end. We hope they will continue "piously engaged in warning their friends and neighbors to flee from the wrath to come, and to do works meet for repentance." Men who should attempt to advocate the doctrine of Universal salvation, "by strengthening the hands of the wicked, by promising him life," can have no hopes of success. The Lord grant that such advocates may be few, and that few, soon put down, by another revival. How different their method from that of an aged and experienced advocate of the doctrine, in the first century. My little children, these things write I unto you that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world."

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But it would be doing injustice to our feelings, and leave our readers to a series of conjectures, neither pleasing nor profitable, not to compare this triumphant account, with the Creed of the Rev. Editor of the Woodstock Monitor, and of his brethren in the ministry. Mr. Chapin is a rigid Calvinist, and holds that God has elected a certain number of the fallen family of Adam, to everlasting life, through a Mediator, and that their salvation was unalterably fixed from all eternity. He also professes to believe, that the rest of mankind were passed by, and pre-doomed to infinite and hopeless wretchedness, without a possibility of escape

or deliverance. Now with this Creed before him, he tells of those, who in "the light of truth, saw their feet on slippery places." But how could that be? Was it the light of his Creed, which revealed that truth? Let us now come directly to the point, from which there is no evasion. Were these converts included in the number of the elect? and if so, could they slip off of that decree, by which their salvation was unalterably fixed, from all eternity? If they could not, and that doctrine be true, its light would have shown them the rock-decree, from which their feet could never slip, or be moved. Though we would by no means question the sincerity and piety of the Rev. Editor, yet we are in duty bound to say, that we do not believe he would have the vanity to attempt a reconciliation of this statement, with his own doctrine. He is a gentleman of talents, education and experience; and do we believe he would undertake to prove, that when a man was enlightened by the truth of his doctrine, and saw his salvation decretively fixed from all eternity, that he then saw his feet on slippery places? Surely

not.

If we say they were not elected, but pre-doomed to endless misery, the story is not mended. There is no more possibility of their being saved, than of the others' being lost. The misery of the non-elect is as fixed and unalterable, as the salvation of the elect.

We heartily rejoice in the conversion of sinners, professors of religion, as well as others. We believe the Lord Jesus can make various instruments subservient to the establishment of his kingdom on the earth. To this end, God, "calls things which are not, as though they were;" and even causes weak, foolish and contemptible instruments, to become successful to the promotion of his own object. Therefore, "though some preach Christ even of envy and strife, and some of contention, and others of good will," we ought, "therein to rejoice, yea, and we will rejoice.'

SHORT SERMONS-No. I.

"Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burntofferings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased

with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my first-born for my trangression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ?"

MICAH, vi. 6, 7.

Who does not clearly discover that all these interrogations should be answered in the affirmative, if christian worship were designed for a scene of bodily or mental affliction? But on the supposition that it is intended for a moral emendation, all this destruction of property, sacrifice of lives, and torture of soul, would be attended with few hopeful consequences. What but a palpable misunderstanding of the perfection, character and government of the Deity, could ever have influenced rational creatures, to adopt a mode of worship, infamous for cruelty, as most acceptable in his sight? Of what advantage to infinite perfection, would be the sacrifice of our herds, smoking on the alter for burntofferings? Is the Lord fainting for sustenance, that he should inhale with expressions of pleasure and satisfaction, the effluvia of burning beasts? Should we conform to the costly and unpleasant modes of superstitious and idolatrous worship, and stain a thousand altars with the blood of twice ten thousand lambs from our flocks; should we fill spacious channels with oil, on which the Orientals in a great measure subsist, and present the expensive provision, on a festival for Jehovah, would it be either necessary or acecptable? Give ear, ye worshippers of the true God, to him, "who holdeth back the face of his throne, and spreadeth the cloud upon it," and at whose reproof" the pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished," to what he hath revealed by his servant David, in that specimen of sacred, elegant, poetic composition, contained in the fiftieth Psalm. Thus saith Jehovah, "I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he-goats out of thy folds for every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine and the fulness thereof." Thus from his high imperial throne, speaks the God and Father of angels and men. It is not an expression of his disapprobation of that religious prodigality, by which men sacrifice their own interest and happiness, to support an imaginary glory, in the bosom of

existed, independent of any conceivable cause, and uninfluenced, imparts his infinitely deversified benignities, to this, and innumerable seen, and viewless worlds around, thrusts from his holy lip, the presented cup, full and running over, from the sacrificial slaughter-house!

But this sacred penman proceeds to expose the errors of idolatry and fanaticism, in a light, still more revolting and horrible. He inquires," shall I give my first-born for my transgression; the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ?" As though the God of boundless compassion would be rejoiced and gratified, with the profusion of infant tears, and cries, and sufferings ! As though the crimeless, unoffending posterity were to be committed to the fury of the flames, as an expiation of their parents' offences! Does the Lord require fathers to stain their hands, in the blood of their sons, to appease his incensed justice?

Shall the fond mother nail the soft hands of her screaming infant daughter to the stake, and with the gentle breath which fanned its heaving bosom to rest, enkindle the raging flames, by which its torture is consummated? O sympathy! thou angel of paradise, tell me! is this the demand of heaven's King? Look! O look ye feeling mothers, and, "tremblingly alive all o'er," say, what would your gentler natures dictate? Does the Father and Friend you serve, and love, and worship, demand your "cherub-boys and angel-girls," as the victims to his next-to-implacable wrath, and receive fresh accessions of honor, from the infant screams of burning millions? If so, ought you not to rejoice, and sing, and shout by the light of the flaming pile, from whose quenchless flashes, issue the dying yells of your precious children? When" the glory of God and the happiness of the redeemed require it," could you not accelerate your steps to the glad scene of immolation, and not only dye your hands and redden your bosoms, in the crimson tide which glows and blushes in the countenances, of your playful offspring, but perform it with the same alacrity, with which you would now pluck them from the merciless flames of a burning habitation?

Are there any present, whose midnight repose has been disturbed by the thousand exclamations of "Fire! fire."

Have you beheld the flashes from conflagrant dwellings, burnishing with angry beams the high vault of heaven? Ah! and did you descry the dear form of infant woe, and catch, with listening ear, the last bitter groan which escaped the angry billows of the ocean of flames? And did you rejoice, and ******. But, away ye dread scenes of human wretchedness and anguish! Ye belong not to the temple of religion, adoration and praise. Reconciliation to acts of cruelty has no more relation to christian humility, than the foppery of pride and the domination of arrogance have, to real politeness and dignity of manners. All the forced and far-fetched humility, expressed in a pretended willingness to suffer merciless vengeance ourselves, or see our children and fellow creatures endure it, is as foreign to the abasement of the pious heart, as the clumsy egotism of the would-be-praying Pharisee was, to a Saviour's ejaculation-"Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Under that thin and suspicious veil of humility, almost every species of iniquity, is supposed to be concealed. Those who are so professedly willing to suffer for the glory of a god, are as willing to behold misery in others. They who expect to look with waterless eyes, and hearts unmoved, on the populous realm of burning darkness, in a world to come, are daily disciplined, to view with pitiless breasts, the exhibitions of human wretchedness, in the present state. No religious body of men ever adopted such an idolatrous, superstitious and barbarous mode of worship, as has been now exposed, but such as have believed there was positive wrath and cruelty in the object of their worship! The belief of pure, universal and unchangeable benevolence, in the God we adore, and the full conviction that he designs no injury to any portion of his vast family, would never be productive of cruelty in the worshippers. The awful apprehension that somebody must suffer the future, unmerciful wrath, and endless vengeance of sovereign justice, has given existence to an inglorious family of superstitions, cruelties, and iniquities. Cruelty, in the object of religious adoration, is the same, whether in the name of "Jehovah, Jove, or Lord;" and all who cringingly bow to a supreme they do not admire and love, to ward off the "thunderbolts, red hot with wrath," are as really deceived, however sincre in the devotions, ast