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,

through Mr. Percival, and to bring into contempt the plain and obvious Christian duty of national humiliation and fasting in time of national danger and calamity. It by no means extenuates the crime of the Editor, that it is the mad raving of another; he has indeed made the matter worse by stamping it with his approval, and giving it further publicity: and the advice I would give him is, in future (if he is not above taking advice), not to tell such things in Gath, not to publish them in the streets of Askelon, "lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph," and to refrain from making his paper the vehicle of what is positively bad, although he may refuse conveying what is wise and good.

In the following paper, I find one of his correspondents mourning over a closed theatre, and pleading with the public for its re-opening :—

"Surely they are not smitten with the Irving mania, nor taken fright at Mr. Hatchard's sermons ! One craft should labour as well as another; and it is right the stage should hold up the mirror to nature, paint virtue in its true colors, vice in its own deformity. It is not at this time of day, that the drama is to be cried down," &c.

Yes! blessed be God, it is the time of day when these abominations are being put down, not by legislative enactments indeed, but by the good sense, morality, and piety of the public and it argues much for the increasing good sense, and religion of the good people of Plymouth, that they have given a practical denial that the stage paints virtue in its true colours, vice in its own deformity, and, I trust, they will, as this Mr. Mallet fears, convert this hot-bed of vice, immorality, and irreligion, into a common prison for rogues and

vagabonds. It gives me, indeed, no small satisfaction that the clear uncompromising sound of the Gospel has made the craftsman to cry out, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians;" and I do trust, we shall all have courage and grace still to cry aloud, and spare not.

I have spoken plainly, my Christian friends, on the crying abuses to be found in the newspapers circulated among us; and I have done so, that you may be aware of the matter you haply admit into your families, which I think you must allow tends to promote irreligion and impiety. Much more of what is bad I might have extracted from the same papers, such as the advocacy for a facility in circulating that crying abomination of a Christian land, Sabbath newspapers, &c. &c., but I forbear, trusting your good sense, and Christian feeling, will take the alarm from what has been already said. Should business, or inclination, render it necessary for you to read the papers, I would observe, there are now three published in London, conducted on Christian principles, into which nothing that is positively bad is suffered to enter, while the scope and design of the whole is to promote morality and religion.

And now, Mr. Editor, it remains for me to say, that I have not considered this subject unsuitable to the design of your little periodical. You profess to give light, and your light must make manifest the dark ness, the gross darkness, existing in this Christiancalled land, and this too, whether the darkness will comprehend it or not. This I would say, that you may be encouraged "to speak boldly as you ought to speak," whenever, and wherever you can; time may come, when, through the abounding of iniquity, your

voice may be attempted to be suppressed; but now that you have opportunity, and, as I hear, a wide circulation, let your voice be heard. To the point in question, I know a family, who, not long since, were in the habit of taking up a religious periodical, and a newspaper; the former they did from a sense of the necessity and importance of religion, but the wife a thrifty woman, deeming the expense too great to continue both, she decreed that one must be given up, and subsequently the religious periodical was sacrificed to the newspaper, because the latter was more entertaining. May then your lesser light, and all greater lights, shine so brightly, that all such darkness and error may be altogether dissipated.

A FELLOW LABOURER.

THE PROMISES.

(Continued from page 80.)

There are two chapters towards the close of St. John's Gospel, peculiarly teeming with "precious promises," promises which are doubly sweet, when it is remembered who spake them, and when they were spoken. They are emphatically the promises of the tender Saviour, and they are the words of blessing and peace wherewith he comforted the hearts of his sorrowing disciples, just before he assured them, amidst the agonies of bitterest suffering, that "having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end."

Those chapters are the fourteenth and fifteenth of St. John; they are full of comfortable sayings; but I