The That I may kiss my brethren before death.' lieutenant assented: then Martial, who was not on the pile kissed again and again his four brothers, they being tied; he said to each, Adieu, adieu, my brother; then the other four, although tied, kissed also and turning their head said to each other the same words, • Adieu my brother.' This done, after Martial had recommended his brethren to God, he would before he ascended the pile kiss the executioner also, saying these words, My friend, do not forget what I have said to thee.' He, when he had bound all the five, passed a chain around them to the stake. Then the executioner, having received from the judges an order to hasten the execution, put a cord round each of their necks to strangle them all at once with a machine prepared for the purpose; but the fire having burnt the cords, they heard them in the midst of the flames exhorting each other in these words, 'Courage, my brethren, courage.' These were the last audible words. All that was mortal was soon consumed. They died at Lyons on the place of Terreaux two hundred and eighty-nine years since, but their faith, like that of Abel, still speaks, and it will long speak. LECTURES ON THE CHURCH SERVICE. PSALM LXV. 4. "We shall be satisfied with the goodness of thy house." HAVING solemnly confessed our sins, and rejoiced in the assurance of absolution, we are thus ready to approach our God in the prayer of faith-the only kind of prayer that finds acceptance, as St James testifies, chapter i. 6, which can be begun in no words so properly as in those which our Lord himself has graciously left for the use of his disciples. The comparison of St. Matth. vi. 9, and St. Luke xi. 1, sets before us the form of sound words as given by our Lord both as a pattern to copy, as in St. Matthew, and also as a form to use, as in St. Luke. This fact is fatal to objections against forms of prayer. It has been, as we should naturally expect, in daily use by the Church from the beginning. Our Church has continued it in all our services, rightly judging that none is complete without. And delightful is it to the spiritual mind to cease at times from the mixture inseparable from all words of man, and refresh itself before the throne of grace, in pouring out its desires in the words of God; nor will such an one attribute his wanderings in the midst of such words to its frequent use, (which is the refuge of the thoughtless, the ignorant and the selfconceited,) but rather, with more humility and truth, to the corrupt proneness to wander, which he finds seated in his own heart. For we would fully agree with Luther, that whoever is enabled to give the full attention of his mind to every petition in the Lord's Prayer, has made no small progress in religious attainments. We have here then, a Preface, Petitions, and a Conclusion. First, a Preface, leading us to consider the Being into whose presence we come, and the feelings with which we should draw nigh. A « Father," -Not merely by creation, as in him we live, and move, and have our being, but by adoption, as he hath made us to be his children by adoption and grace; and therefore the feeling with which we should draw nigh to him, is with the confidence of children. "Ask and ye shall have," says our Lord, "seek and knock and it shall be opened unto you." being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?" Matth. viii. 7. 11. 66 ye shall find, "If ye then "Our Father,”-not merely as children, but children of one family, having one common interest at the throne of grace, having one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." "Which art in heaven." The consideration of where he is fills us with the thought, that our "God is greatly to be feared in the assemblies of his saints, and to be had in reverence of all them that are round about him," Psalm lxxxix., being that "High and Holy One," "he who filleth heaven and earth," Jer. xxiii. 24, but manifests himself in his special glory in that abode of the blest; yet there as a Father to be reached by the prayer of faith. We now come to the Petitions ;-and surely the child of God will set first and foremost in his desires the glory of that God who, of his abounding grace, hath privileged him to call him by the name of Father; especially too, considering how the true happiness of himself and of the whole of that family for which he is here taught to pray is connected with that grand object-the glory of God. "Hallowed be thy name."-When Moses said unto God, "Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, the God of your fathers," &c. (Exodus iii. 13,) God said unto Moses, "I am that I am ...... this is my name for ever," (Exodus iii. 14, 15.) Whilst the very names of the false gods, whom the heathen hallowed, whether ancient or modern, Egyptian or Grecian, Canaanitish or Roman, Indian or African, proclaim aloud their human or bestial origin, and their patronage of every kind of lust and abomination. The name of God, the Jehovah, Elohim, the I am that I am, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of the ancient Church; and the God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, the holy blessed and glorious Trinity, as manifested in the full blaze of noon-day light in the Christian Church. His name proclaims the incommunicable glory of him who is, and was, and is to come, without beginning of days or end of life, the Being who is of purer eyes than to look upon iniquity, whose name is holy, whose names proclaim the immensity of his love, the unsearchableness of his wisdom, the unerring sternness of his justice, the unfathomable depth of his compassion; his perfections as the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sanctifier of his Church. That his name should be hallowed-dealt with by his family with the honour due unto it-set apart by an eternal distinction in the thoughts, words, and actions of men -from the false and polluted names which the heathen, in their dismal darkness, defile themselves with-as they hallow their gods many, and their lords many, which having eyes see not; set apart by an eternal distinction from the deluded Mahometan, who calleth him indeed by the name of Allah-God, but robbeth the Godhead of the glory of the eternal Trinity, and polluteth the name by worshipping him as the patron of a heaven of carnal lust and sensual delight which he hopes to attain to;-set apart by an eternal distinction from the blinded followers of the Romish Apostacy, who by setting up the Virgin Mary, and angels many, and saints many, as objects of prayer, and mediators of intercession, rob him of that honour due unto his name, by giving his glory unto anotherthe glory of hearing prayer which can belong only to him the Being unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known; and by submitting themselves to him "who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God," which the head of the Romish Church has done and does still more or less with awful boldness, using that power of pardon and forgiveness which can belong to none but God alone.-Set apart by an eternal distinction from the worship of the Socinian, who, as the unbelieving Jews their stones, casts his blasphemous reproaches at him, whose name, before Abraham was, was still the great I AM, the same yesterday, today, and for ever: set apart as the object of the faith, love, and holy worship of his Church militant on earth, and finally of his Church triumphant in heaven. THE CHURCH MISSIONARY DEPUTATION. DELIGHTFUL was the morning when we left our home and our parish, to advocate the cause of the Church Missionary Society in a neighbouring county. Groups of children, carrying garlands of oak and |