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Gems.

FACTS, HINTS, AND GEMS.

WE MAY JUDGE of the state of our hearts by the earnestness of our prayers. You cannot make a rich man beg like a poor man; nor will a man who has a good opinion of himself, cry for mercy like one who feels that he is sinful and guilty.

GOD COMMANDS all men to repent. Christians have enough to repent of a daily; and if they are nor in a penitent frame they are only impenitent

sinners.

ARE YOU SEEKING CHRIST ?— Continue to seek him and you will succeed. I do not recollect ever having succeeded in any thing of importance in which I did not meet with some rebuff at the commence

ment.

EVERY THING WE DO or say should immediately be tried by a little court within our own hearts. Our motives should be examined, and a decision made on the spot.

PRAISE CHRIST for every thing. He is the fountain of every good thought, desire and affection. It should be our aim to draw all we can from him by prayer, and return him all we can by praise.

and in the heart, every where and wherever he is found, he makes a paradise.

GOD IS HAPPY in his own will, and makes it known to us that we may be happy in it too. not happy in the will of God I can be happy in nothing else.

If I am

GOD DENIES US NOTHING but with

design to give us something better. next to the gift of Jesus Christ and his Spirit, is for commanding me to love him with all my heart.

MY GREATEST OBLIGATION to God,

Poetic Selections.

THE WORLD.

"WHAT is the world?" I asked the young,
"A paradise by poets sung;
A scene array'd in brightest dress,
A bright abode of winning spells,
Teeming with joy and happiness;
Where nought but buoyant spirit dwells."
I asked the man, whose summer day
Told youth's bright spring had pass'd away:
"A spot," he said, "where ample scope
Is given to delusive hope;

A scene where bliss and sorrow bear
Alternately an equal share;
Fitfully around us play'd."
A residence where light and shade
I asked the old man. With a sigh
He said: "The trace of things gone by;
A vast creation of unrest,

THE GOSPEL FEAST.-When we
are partaking of the feast which the
Saviour's love has spread for us we
should never forget how dearly it I asked the christian
was purchased.

Unprofitable and unhlest;

A dreary scene of grief and care,
Where nought but tangled sorrows are."
With his eye

"There's not a gift his hand bestows, But cost his heart a groan." OUR DEVOTIONS. We cannot long maintain the spirit of prayer without having a solitary place and a fixed time for our devotions.

HOW CAN WE COMPLAIN or think hardly of God for any thing he does, or have the least doubt of his goodness, when he has given his Son to die for us?

I NEED NOT ENVY any man his station, or wish for a better spot on earth than where I am to find God in; he is found only in the heart,

Turn'd to the azure vaulted sky;
"A little space to mortals given,
To fit immortal souls for heaven;
A spot where worth unknown shall be,
Till viewed from realms of eternity

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THE NEW TESTAMENT HAS TWENTY-ONE BOOKS.

Matthew, and Mark, and Luke, and And Timothy and Titus then

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THE CZAR OF RUSSIA AND HIS SLAVES.

THE Sketch we give beneath is from a clever little pamphlet published we believe at the latter end of the past year, 1854, before the death of Nicholas, who just lived long enough to set all Europe in a flame, and in a few months caused the death or mutilation of hundreds of thousands of his fellow-men. But he is gone to give his dread account!

Russia may summarily be described as the greatest SLAVE country in the world, and the Czar as the greatest slave-owner. This is literally true.

The slavery which exists in Russia is not black slavery; it is white, but not the less slavery on that account. The great majority of the Russian people are, in the eye of the law, mere goods and chattels; they are bought and sold by their owners, together with the land to which they belong.

Of the fifty-three and a half millions of people which Russia contained in 1842, not less than forty-two millions were actual slaves: and of these fifteen millions were slaves of the Czar-that is, belonged to the crown. Where is there a slave-owner in the world to be compared with Nicholas?

These forty-two millions of slaves are the personal property of their owners. They are, life and limb, at their disposal, as completely as slaves have ever been in any country. They can be sold, or hired out as beasts of burden. By a fiction of Russian law, when a slave is sold, a portion of land must be sold with him; but the land in Russia is merely of nominal value. And the practice is, to sell or remove slaves from one *The Encroachments of Russia. London: T. W. Grattan. Price Threepence.

†The population of Russia is now about 60 millions.

THE CZAR OF RUSSIA AND HIS SLAVES.

estate to another, though they may be hundreds or even thousands of miles apart. In this way, the Russian slave may be separated for ever from his wife, and doomed, as he often is, to perpetual banishment from his home. But the Russian slave has no home-it is his owner's, together with his wife, his children, and all which his dwelling contains.

The Russian serf, as in the slave-holding states of America, cannot marry without his owner's permission; and if married, the owner can at any time separate him from his wife for ever. As for the poor female Russian slave, she is liable to be devoted to all unholy purposes, even the most infamous, nor has she any claim for redress against her lord.

The Russian slave-owner may flog his slave to death; but, as in some of the American slave states, the law only permits him to be fined. The law forbids any court to receive the evidence of a slave against his master. By an Imperial ukase, issued by Catherine II., since confirmed by the great slaveholding Nicholas,-if a serf make any complaint to his superiors against his lord, "he shall be amenable to the punishment which the laws award "-that is, to THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH! There is nothing worse than this in the entire history of slavery.

Such is the actual condition of the great majority of the people of modern Russia-forty-two millions of actual slaves, fifteen millions of them being the property of Nicholas the great slave-owner.

These poor creatures have not only the misfortune to be born slaves, but they live within an entrenched circle of despotism which keeps them slaves, and renders them the unwilling instruments of inflicting slavery on others.

The great slave-owning Emperor has established schools throughout Russia, for the express purpose of indoctrinating the minds of the people with slavery, and destroying their souls as well as their bodies. The schools teach the people how best to be slaves-how they ought to be happy because they are slaves and how grateful they ought to be to the great slave-owner Nicholas, for offering himself for their worship!"

This most religious Czar has, by means of his ready instruments the priests, prepared a catechism for use in the Russian schools, the principal lesson inculcated in which is the worship and adoration of The GREAT SLAVE-OWner.

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THE CZAR OF RUSSIA AND HIS SLAVES.

In that catechism, disobedience to the Slave-owner is "identified with disobedience to God himself"these are the very words; and the Imperial Slave-owner is set before the children of the poor Russian serfs as exercising powers which "proceed immediately from God."

Russian priests, we have said, are the ready instruments of the Russian Czar, in the inculcation of these infamous and soul-destroying dogmas; but, as a Russian writer has said— "The slavish submission of the Russian clergy is only equalled by that of the entire people."

The slaves of Russia have no legal rights whatever. The administration of "justice" to them is vested in their owners; and the perpetration of cruelties upon the slaves has no limit or check beyond the fear of retaliation on their part-the exasperated slaves not unfrequently visiting upon their owners the most terrible revenge. A few years ago, the slaves upon a Russian estate suddenly assembled, and burnt Prince Kourakin, his wife, family, and servants, in his own palace.

There is no law in Russia except the despotic will of the head slave-owner. Puschkin, the Russian writer, exclaims-"There is no law in Russia: the law is nailed to a stake, and that stake wears a crown." Custine says of Russia-that “it is one vast prison," the prison, be it remembered, of the inhabitants of one-eighth of the whole habitable globe!

The air of Russia is heavy and thick with slavery. Man cannot breathe the breath of freedom there and live. And it is not mere political slavery, but religious slavery, social slavery, and physical slavery: of all these Russia is alike full.

In Poland, which is a Catholic country, the Virgin Mary was wont to be called "The Queen of Heaven." But this was regarded by Nicholas as an interference with the Divine Prerogative of the Czar; accordingly the Polish Liturgy was ordered to be burnt as heretical; and the Polish priests who refused to conform, were first degraded and then shot!

The Turks are tolerant as compared with the Czar, who forces the Russo-Greek religion, of which he is the head, on all his subjects. When the confiscated Polish estates were distributed amongst the Russian nobles, they were required to accept this religion with the property; and images of the Czar were set up in the churches, which the people were required to worship.

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