TIIT ENGLISH PRESBYTERIAN MESSENGER. 1857. ** Oh ! that it would please God, that my own and every other teacher's comments were set aside, and that every Christian would read the Word of God for himself! Thou seest, how infinitely superior the words of God are to the words of man; how that no man is able to improve a single word of God, or explain it by his own vocabulary. If we could obtain the Scriptures without gloss and compent, then mine and all other comments would not be needed : therefore, dear Christians, let mine own and every other man's comment be but a scaffold to the true building; take only the pure Word of God, taste and rest there, and there alone. God resides in Zion." LUTHER, VOL. IX.-NEW SERIES. LONDON: MARLBOROUGH & Co., AVE MARIA LANE. INDEX TO WOLUME IX.-NEW SERIES. Alexander, the late Dr. Archibald of the – Wives and Gospel in Stones, the, 220 INDEx. - iii Spare, Warriors, Spare! 342 Veni Sancto Spiritus, Paraphrase of the Wictor, the, 217 \ Correspondence. Church Extension, 233 America, North, Presbyterian Proceed- THE ENGLISH PRESBYTERIAN MESSENGER. THE INDUSTRIAL CLASSES : WIVES AND MOTHERS.* It is now some three or four years since we brought under the notice of our readers a volume by Mr. Marshall, in which were blended “ Lays and Lectures," of much pith and point, addressed to “Scotia's Daughters of Industry." That volume bas been reprinted in a new form, and is made to stand as part second of the intended series in which this fresh volume now figures as part the first. Some good family reason appears to have prompted this transfer of the rights of primogeniture from the elder to the younger volume. We are fortunate to live in times like the present. Not only does the legislature sit year after year carving out good educational intentions in behalf of the people; not only do royal commissioners assemble in council to direct through the empire the grand sanitary sweep of besom and broom, or walk forth through towns and villages, nimble as conjurers, to exorcise from close and alley the evil spirits of typhus and typhoid; not only are there springing up, on all sides, parks, museums, institutes, and free libraries for the industrial classes, such as philosophers might covet; but we see princes constructing model cottages for working men's families, and countesses awarding prizes to their wives for the cleanest hearthstones. Benevolence is descending from the aërial regions of romance; and, folding up her wings, she puts on her apron to do certain definite pieces of practical work. Philanthropy is fashionable. We rejoice in this movement. It is certainly in the right direction. Thirty years ago, politicians, noblemen, with others of rank and wealth, cared for none of these things. But now sounder and more enlarged notions of their own interests, as bound up in the interests of the ranks beneath them, have effected an entrance into their minds. Wiser men than themselves have forced on their attention the principles and the duties which pertain to civic economy and national well-being; and, as a consequence, the shrewd policy of the worldlings is now enlisting itself, as an auxiliary, to carry into effect all sorts of beneficent plans. Whoever they be that, at the present time, are, from whatever motives, coming forward as benefactors of the working man, they have all been set in ! * "Homely Words and Songs for Working Men and Women.” By the Rev. Charles Marshall, Dunfermline. Part I. Wives and Mothers. No. 109.- New Series. B Vol. IX. |