LOVE PREFERABLE TO KNOWLEDGE.

"Are you persuaded you see more clearly than me? it is not unlikely that you may. Then treat me as you would desire to be treated yourself upon a change of circumstances. Point me out a better way than I have yet known. Show me it is so by plain proof of scripture. And if I linger in the path I have been accustomed to tread, and therefore I am unwilling to leave it, labour with me a little-take me by the hand and lead me as I am able to bear. But be not displeased, if I entreat you not to beat me down, in order to quicken my pace. I can go but feebly and slowly at best— then I should not be able to go at all. May I not request of you further, not to give me hard names, in order to bring me into the right way. Suppose I was ever so much in the wrong, I doubt this would not set me right. Rather, it would make me run so much the farther from you, and so get more and more out of the way. Nay, perhaps, if you were angry, so shall I be too : and then there will be small hopes of finding the truth. If once anger arise, (as Bomer somewhere expresses it) this smoke will so dim the eyes of my soul, that I shall be able to see nothing clearly. For God's sake, if it is possible to avoid it, let us not provoke one another to wrath. Let us not kindle in each other this fire of hell, much less blow it into a flame. If we could discern truth by that dreadful light, would it not be loss, rather than gain! For how far is love, even with many wrong opinions, to be preferred before truth itself, without love! We may die without the knowledge of many truths, and yet be carried by angels. into Abraham's bosom. But if we die without love, what will knowledge avail us? Just as much as it avails the devil and his angels."-An Author of the Last Century.

THE CASE OF THE MADIAI.

The following striking letter has been published in a Parliamentary paper : "LORD JOHN RUSSELL TO SIR HENRY BULWER.

Foreign Office, January 18, 1853. 'Sir,-According to the last accounts received from you, the Grand Duke of Tuscany still hesitates on the subject of the Madiai.

"But this is a matter on which hesitation implie punishment. It is the same thing in effect to condem to die by fire like Savonarola, or to put him to deat slow torture of an unhealthy prison.

"It seems to be imagined, indeed, by some Gove on the Continent, that if they avoid the spectacle of a tion on the scaffold, they will escape the odium to the and the sympathy for their victims, which attends u punishment of death for offences of a political or character.

"But this is an error. It is now well understood wasting of the body, the sinking of the spirits, the w of the mind, are but additions to the capital pur which long and close confinement too often involves. If, therefore, as has been lately reported, on Madiai were to die in prison, the Grand Duke mus that throughout Europe he will be considered as ha a human being to death for being a Protestant.

"It will be said, no doubt, that the offence of F Madiai was not that of being a Protestant, but that vouring to seduce others from the Roman Catholic fa the Tuscan Government had the most merciful in and meant to have shortened the period of impri allotted by law to this offence; that such offences c permitted to go unpunished.

All this however, will avail very little. Throug civilized world, this example of religious persecution cite abhorrence. Nor will it be the least of the re addressed to the Government of the Grand Duke, name of Leopold of Tuscany has been thus desecra the example of a benevolent Sovereign thus depart The peaceful, mild, and ingenuous character of the people, makes this severity the less necessary and t odious.

"As this is a matter affecting a Tuscan subject, it said that Her Majesty's Government has no right to i If this means that interference by force of arms woul justifiable, I confess at once that nothing but the most case would justify such interference.

But if it be meant that Her Majesty has not the point out to a friendly Sovereign the arguments wh prevailed in the most civilized nations against the us civil sword to punish religious opinions, I entirely truth of such an allegation.

ou are, therefore, instructed to speak in the most serious to the Minister of Foreign affairs, and to lay before him e considerations stated in this dispatch. You will do it e most friendly tone, and take care to assure the Governto which you are accredited that none are more sincere ir wishes for the independence and happiness of Tuscany, the Queen of Great Britain.

"I am, &c.,

"J. RUSSELL.”

A REPLY TO MR. BARNETT'S

ctures on the First Volume of the Original Methodists' Record." BY T. SHORE.

"Testimonium hoc est verum."
"This witness is true."

aking up my pen to give an answer to Mr. Barnett's so-
d "Strictures on the First Volume of the Original Me-
ists' Record," I intend to use all the plainness I possibly
so that none who read it shall mistake my meaning.
is strange, yea, wonderful to me, that Mr. Barnett, who
been bred at a mock-college or parson-making factory, and
professes to be a man of refined taste-of great mental
ure-of spotless morality-and an accomplished literati-
who would like us to believe that he is as full of clerical
om as heaven is full of joy-strange I say-surpassing
nge-that from all these sources he has not been able to
ect matter enough to battle with Free-Gospelism without
n having recourse to the fictions of that licentious poet,
kspeare; yet such is the case. The motto of Mr. Barnett's
ctures is a quotation from Shakspeare's King Henry IV.
es not all this speak on Mr. Barnett's account, that he is
eal lover of the theatricals-an ardent admirer of the
e? Yes, he had much rather idle away his time in read-
Shakspeare's Plays, than by improving it in reading the
red scriptures for divine wisdom! It is evident from the tone
Mr. Barnett's writings, that he would be far more at home
heatres, in the company of play-actors and their sanguine

admirers, than in visiting the fatherless and wido afflictions, and keeping himself unspotted from which is the indispensable duty of every minister pel. Woe to Mr. Barnett! and woe to the flo guided by him. He begins this three-penny pamp following manner:

This pamphlet we understand to be a condem course upon the characters and practices of the Methodists. But we wish Mr. Barnett and all his know, that we neither feel condemned nor yet offe all that he has wrote in these strictures. We fe have come short of doing our duty, in not being earnest in a work of such great moment as this in are engaged. Mr. Barnett by his strictures meant our usefulness-to shorten our proceedings-to give blow, and so for ever make an end of us. But ha ?-No! instead of this being the case, it is just th The Record has been enlarged, and its circulation it is now also read by many who before this contr not know that such a magazine was published. H summarily dealt with the head of this pamphlet, I proceed to dissect the body. Mr. Barnett proceeds

Ignorance is always to be pitied; but when, as is too of it is allied with vanity and presumption, the pity to which it titled very naturally yields the foremost to disgust."

In dissecting the first passage of this three-penn body, it will be obvious to all who are skilled in the of sentences, that the above is one of no comm Ignorance," says Mr. Barnett, "is always to be That is in every case without exception, whether i or inevitable, great or small, "it is to be pitied"-to it is fairly entitled." But no sooner has Mr. Bar one of the broadest of all broad assertions, and place to creep out, than he at once contradicts h saying that if ignorance be "allied with vanity and tion," then the "pity to which it is (still) fairly entit give "place to disgust." Mr. Barnett in the above to speak figuratively, makes a rope one minute, a the next minute he hangs himself. To this, if we

but coarse backalum-"bravo." Could the Hottentot 1 Mr. Barnett mentions, whose moral and intellectual re is so small, according to his statement, have wrote a clumsy and contradictory passage than the one above? tainly not. I have only brought forward the above pas. to show how wofully Mr. Barnett, as a writer, commits elf to public contempt, by saying and unsaying-by making nents and then contradicting the same. An isolated ge might be looked over, but it is always so with Mr. BarThere is not a page, nor scarcely a passage in all that Barnett has wrote, but what is contradictory in itself. I eally astonished that Mr. Barnett, who boasts of having ved a superior education-of being an adept in theology, learned divine-should, according to his own statement, out special cause, be so superlatively ignorant as to make ful exposure of his own "ignorance!" He brands the ginals" with being ignorant of being destitute of "moral ntellectual culture"-of scarcely being able to "ascertain n is their right hand and which their left;" he compares to Hottentots"-to "toads," and ferocious " bulls ;" says-" it is not surprising that we should be prompted ck" them " contemptuously into the ditch." Mr. Bargives it us in plain and unmistakable terms, that if he possessed of physical force, he should deal with the iginals" with a merciless and unsparing hand. What have Originals" done unto Mr. Barnett to merit his hot dissure? They can, to a man, take up the language of the stle Paul, and say, I have coveted no man's silver, or or apparel; yea, ye yourselves know, that these hands ministered unto my own necessities," Acts xx. 33, 34. , what they have done is simply this-unto the poor have preached the gospel freely without charge-have red to pay hirelings to be their masters, and have advised a to lay aside their craft, and preach the gospel free. ry candid and impartial observer will admit that the riginals" have acted with great prudence in withholding r money from hirelings, and in appropriating it to useful poses. For they would, indeed, have been profusely igno had they fallen into the shameful error of paying such as Mr. Barnett for their craft. Had they done this, they ld have rendered themselves worthy of severe castigation. Ir. Barnett proceeds with his strictures by spinning a ewhat long, but very coarse, rotten, unsaleable yarn, made

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