CHRISTIAN SPECTATOR.

M DCCC LVII.

JANUARY-DECEMBER.

"IF GOD REVEAL ANY THING TO YOU BY ANY OTHER INSTRUMENT OF HIS, BE AS READY TO
RECEIVE IT AS EVER YOU WERE TO RECEIVE ANY TRUTH BY MY MINISTRY; FOR I AM VERILY
PERSUADED-I AM VERY CONFIDENT THE LORD HATH MORE TRUTH YET TO BREAK FORTH OUT
OF HIS HOLY WORD. FOR MY PART I CANNOT SUFFICIENTLY BEWAIL THE CONDITION OF THE
REFORMED CHURCHES, WHO ARE COME TO A PERIOD IN RELIGION, AND WILL GO AT PRESENT
NO FURTHER THAN THE INSTRUMENTS OF THEIR FIRST REFORMATION. THE LUTHERANS CANNOT
BE DRAWN TO GO BEYOND WHAT LUTHER SAW; WHATEVER PART OF HIS WILL OUR GOOD GOD
HAS IMPARTED AND REVEALED UNTO CALVIN, THEY WILL RATHER DIE THAN EMBRACE IT. AND
THE CALVINISTS YOU SEE STICK FAST WHERE THEY WERE LEFT BY THAT GREAT MAN OF GOD;
WHO YET SAW NOT ALL THINGS! THIS IS A MISERY MUCH TO BE LAMENTED."-Robinson's
Advice to the Pilgrim Fathers.

VOL. VII.

LONDON:

HOULSTON & WRIGHT, 65, PATERNOSTER ROW.
EDINBURGH: ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK.

LONDON:

COCKSHAW, TATES, AND ALEXANDER, PRINTERS, LUDGATE-HILL.

Law, the, abolished but not destroyed, | Prayer-meetings; their Phraseology,

THE MONTHLY

CHRISTIAN SPECTATOR.

JANUARY, 1857.

The Poetry of the New Year.

CHARLES LAMB says, 'Every man hath two birthdays; two, at least, in every year, which set him upon revolving the lapse of time as it affects his mortal duration. The one is that which, in an especial manner, he termeth his. In the gradual desuetude of old observances, this custom of solemnizing our proper birthday hath nearly passed away, or is left to children, who reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor understand anything beyond the cake and orange. But the birth of a new year is of an interest too wide to be pretermitted by king or cobbler. No one ever regarded the first of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam.'

I interrupt Elia to make two remarks. First-he commits a bachelor's mistake (Oh! let us speak softly of this noblest of celibates! Gentle reader, learn, if you know it not, the pitiful story of the single blessedness of this gentle creature)-when he says children think nothing of their birthdays beyond the cake or orange. The visitor, the friend, nay, the brother, may fancy so, if he have, as most likely he has, forgotten his own childhood. But I appeal to Fruitful Vines who read this, and Spouses whose Olive-branches are growing into inquisitiveness, whether, at such sacred moment as the lull of a Sunday evening twilight, a child doth not sometimes put questions concerning himself and his advent which awaken 'thoughts that do lie too deep for tears?' Second-I wish to ask, in passing, why all human intellects seem to have hit upon the king and the cobbler as the natural types of antithetic condition in life? Unless my memory fails me, this idea runs through literatures where the alliteration is lost; so that it is no answer to say that king suggests kobbler as peer does peasant. Let us take up with Elia again: "Of all sound of bells (bells, the music nighest bordering upon heaven), most solemn and touching is the peal